Parishioners asked to fund pay-offs for paedophiles victims

truthseeker said:
Dont you think if it were natural we wouldnt be here talking about it at all as the species would have died out?
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hetero, homo, celibate only one of these contributes to the reproduction of the species, therefore by your statement the other two are unnatural.
 


I reckon you'd feel differently if you'd just been blown up by a suicide bomber as he believes he will be rewarded in heaven with 76 virgins, or whatever it is he believes..

Also if your daughter was about to be stoned to death in Iran for exposing some skin...

Or what if a nephew of yours was about to die because his parents thought that God has commanded no blood transfusions.. and so they refused life saving treatment.

Or maybe your best friend was about to be sacrificed to a sun god?

The point is that faith based beliefs should be exposed wherever they are found, as the world will continue to be a dangerous place, until everyone agrees that faith based belief, without evidence, is silly and potentially dangerous for everyone...
 
My post made reference to aspects of religion that don't impinge on my life - your examples would. As I said, I would have a huge problem with that.

There is a difference between what people simply believe and how they live their lives as a result of that belief.
 
So basically we agree that religion is fine, just don't make it a way of life
 
JoeBallantin said:
The point is that faith based beliefs should be exposed wherever they are found, as the world will continue to be a dangerous place, until everyone agrees that faith based belief, without evidence, is silly and potentially dangerous for everyone...
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I agree. Will it happen I wonder? Will the world abandon these organised religions and faith based beliefs as time goes by? What will replace the need for these beliefs? I suppose it will take time but its more likely now than ever before with global communications.
 
Personnaly speaking, as a practising Catholic of 40 years I was appalled by the request for parishioners to cough up. I know the Church is asset rich and cash poor and a lot of the assets are largely unsellable but they could raise the funds via other means if they put their mind to it. I was talking to an old schoolfriend of mine who is a curate in Cork and he said he'd be too embarrassed to stand up and make the request. Like a lot of priests, he's not happy with the lack of leadership and cover ups that occured. Frankly, if the basket passes my way for this collection, it'll get nothing from me and I don't know anyone who will contribute.

Lots of comments on here about religon, each to their own as far as I am concerned, I'm not going to get into a religous discussion, although I do find it interesting that people who condemn Christians for expressing their views are often quite quick themselves to let others know their own views on religon. Personaly, in this crazy world we live in, I enjoy sitting down for an hour once a week in church in peace and quiet.
 
There is an inverse relationship between the cohesiveness of a society and the freedom of the individual within that society. It was true in ancient Greece between Athens and Sparta, it was true in Rome and it is true now.
As our society become richer and more secular and the individual becomes paramount society becomes less cohesive. This will eventually lead to it breaking down. Therefore eventually the cycle will repeat itself and somewhere along the line we’ll end up poor and oppressed again.

That’s my home-spun philosophy anyway.
 
Well, I think that some countries, possibly the likes of Sweden and Norway, have low rates of religious belief, yet it doesn't seem to harm them..

I further believe that if donations to 'your' religion were compulsory then religious membership would plummet in Ireland..I reckon at least 80% or more of people would be happy to be listed as 'athiest / agnostic' if it saved them 10% of their wages.. as is done in Germany I believe. ('tithe' is it?, derived from 'ten', i.e 10%..)
 
So right you are JB. In my days there a Kirkensteuer was deducted from PAYE. But this was avoided if you declared athiest. All the guys I worked with suddenly became non believers. I've read that the government have brought in a charge for leaving one of the main churches and becoming a non believer now. Around €40. People used to call it a God tax and I guess they'll call the leaving one a Devil tax
 
MrMan said:
To answer your question I'd give you an F- for balance. For balance you would need to include fact throughout your rant.
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Then why don't you balance it. Where did I make an error on the way the Organisation is run.

I forgot to mention the gulags. Institutions where the poor and abandoned children were taken in under the guise of taking them in off the street for their own good and disciplining the wayward petty criminal ones. Not to mention those taken illegally off their parents because courts/society deemed the parents inadequate. In these 'gulags' the children were set to work toiling the fields and doing the laundry of the rich. The rich paid the Organisation for the laundry etc and were glad the Organisation dealt with the downtrodden orphens, for it gladened their hears to see good being done, for they did not like to acknowledge that the slums existed in certain cities and they didn't want to sort it out so they let the orgainasation do it in their place and they pretended these gulags didn't exist. Even to this day certain people in certain cities deny that such slums or evil instituions ever existed. The government was also in on the act and paid the institution handsomely for the slave labour, but they said it was for the education of the children, many of whom were fit only for manual labour when finished in the gulags. And what did the institution do with the money, why they bought land and property and shares and assets and sent plenty off it to a land far away so their prince could become more powerful and protect them with his power and might. Which indeed he did. All the way to March 2010. Meanwhile the Organisation at home lived happy lives, well fed and clothed till the end of their days and it was generally agreed they were a great bunch of the most good men and in this case the women were allowed in as any source of getting money is generally a good thing so to run certain gulats the women were allowed a tiny bit of power but not too much mind. To this day we can see the strong remains of the gulags, the vast properties, the land, the palaces the large houses single men live in, the cars, the lifestyle, the money in the bank, the money bequeathed and yet to be bequeathed and still they claim poverty for such is the way the Organisation is run and will continue to be run. And to this day we can also see another legacy of theirs the broken men and women they left behind, those that are in our decrepid psychiatic hospitals that are not fit for purpose, the wino on the street corner, the lunatic down the road. The man who burnt himself to death a few years ago, the man who walked into the sea, the woman who overdosed and cannot speak of that which we do not speak about.

Where MrMan am I not balanced.
 
It is worth noting that society in general took a very dim view of the poor and poor or destitute children in particular. There was also a huge amount of anti-male sexism which took the view that men could not raise their own children so if women died young, as they often did, whole families were taken away from their fathers. It is easy to blame the Catholic Church for this but that would allow society in general to avoid its culpability. To what extent society was a reflection of the Church or the Church a reflection of society is a more complex debate but blaming the RC Church for the evils of society in general is just deflected guilt and allows us to avoid the necessary broader introspection that it required.

Church run laundries did laundry for anyone who was willing to pay for it. Again, you are exempting broader society from culpability but everyone knew what was going on; poor, rich, high and low.

The state (that’s all of us by the way) outsourced its responsibility to care for “all of the children of this land” to people who were untrained and utterly unsuitable for the task. That same state then never bothered to check up on what was going on. The funding was just as inadequate for the task as the people carrying it out. In this case the guild rests with the state.

The RC Church always sides with the establishment, in every country.

I agree with you there but the primary responsibility still rests, and rested, with the state.
 
Caveat said:
Should be easy enough but need more info.

Did you post in the thread? Do you know who started it?
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Thanks Caveat, I'm absolutely useless at finding things on AAM. I posted in it and it was mainly an argument against one poster who objected to the fact that they could only send their child to a Roman Catholic run school and other posters told her to basically drive miles to find another school and had no sympathy for the posters plight. They just didn't get that in Ireland people don't have much choice when it comes to who is in charge of the education of their children. It has a bearing on this thread and I want to have a look at it to see what people said at that time.
 
Yes Purple you are right. That's an interesting reply. I'll have to think about it over the weekend.

I do agree that the people in the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland couldn't have done what they did if everyone wasn't in on it and those that were part of it's organisation were just ordinary Irish people themselves. Does that then not mean that basically we are all evil and don't care about anyone else? Why did everybody turn a blind eye to what was going on. I've often wondered about that. And what to do about it now. Because I don't believe that things have changed much, there are still bad things happening. A young mother just out of care commiting suicide and getting platitudes from Ministers and more reports. The word report makes me want to scream. It means nothing has changed.
 
On a related point, will there maybe be a renewed interest in protestantism?

I'm being serious. Apparently the COI is the fastest growing church in the country. Not sure if the growing numbers are as a result of 'defectors' from the RC church, latecomers to christianity just picking a church, or maybe even recent immigrants (e.g. Lithuanians, but I get the impression they are largely not church goers) or maybe it's a bit of all three.

The conditions are certainly right for another mini reformation as such - criminality, abuse of power/wealth and corruption in the RC church - which was why people 'protested' in the first place after all. I realise many would argue that relatively speaking, these conditions haven't really changed much in the last few hundred years - and I also realise that despite everything, the RC faith and tradition is not something simply to be abandoned by many people.

Just curious if any disillusioned practicing or semi practicing catholics have ever considered 'the move to the other side' ?
 
I don’t agree that nothing has changed. We have freed ourselves from generations of unquestioning subservience to the Church and, to a lesser extent, the state. People are generally more educated and informed about their rights and, most importantly, those who make accusations of abuse are taken seriously.
In generations gone by if a priest was raping a child the parents of that child went to a parish priest and asked if he wouldn’t mind asking his curate to stop. If I found that one off my sons was being raped by a priest he would be found emasculated and nailed to the front door of the church. The days of such deference from the people are gone. The days of deference from the police are also gone. This, in my view, is a good thing.

The institutions of the state are still not perfect but they are not constrained by a monolithic theocracy which puts its own interests ahead of the most vulnerable of children. The states services will change, adapt and improve. Things are and will get better.
 
Caveat said:
Just curious if any disillusioned practicing or semi practicing catholics have ever considered 'the move to the other side' ?
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Interesting you should ask that question.
Our eldest is starting school in September and will probably be in a COI school, purely because it has a good reputation. They have said that because we are RC they can make provisions that our child can make their communion and conformation with the local RC school.
I don't know if I would go as far as to 'move to the other side', but it has made we question why I should let him make his communion and conformation at all, as we are not practising RC.
 
For a start you state that it is an imaginary organisation made for the sole purpose of making money and power, a statement that really doesn't leave room for balance. As regards deciding that all women should pro-create, this is the churchs stance and it is an ignorant one that is pretty much ignored across the board so doesn't really impact on peoples lives, but it is a true statement.
You say they go to the poor countries and instead of helping poverty and lowering child mortality rates, they dictate that women must continue to procreate. To my knowledge they do help with the poor and have done before it became fashionable, they are usually helping peolple who are not Catholic so their stance on contraception impacts little.

As for your paedo theory, I find it hard to believe that you can be initiated into it and that it is part of the churchs system.

Bronte, you obviously are not a fan of the RC but for all of the horrible acts that have been carried out by its members and facilitated by its powers, there are two sides. It needs to be pulled down to size and realise that it is not a law making power, but it also needs respect for ther good it does.
 
MrMan said:
To my knowledge they do help with the poor and have done before it became fashionable, they are usually helping peolple who are not Catholic so their stance on contraception impacts little.

.
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Why do you think they go to 3rd world countries and it is not to help the poor.

Of course I'm not a fan of the RC church, they hate one half of the human population.
 
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