Spitfire

That was so very sweet and helpful of you to provide a wikipedia link for something that you know I have surely never, ever, EVER heard of before............ :Cheeky:

You will find some commentary from yours truly on this issue in this very thread: http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=155817

gudanov

Just about to outlawed in South Dakota.

I can understand objecting to abortion. I don't think you have a human being at conception, but I think you have one before birth. So where to draw the line and how do you balance the rights of the mother over her own body verus ending at the least a potential human life. Very difficult issue for me. I tend toward pro-choice out of a desire for the state not to deciding very personal issues for people, but I don't like frequency of abortions in my country.

Chili

Well if Catholics are sinners and Christ was without sin how can Catholics be Christian?

If protestants are 'saved sinners' and Catholics are not saved by protestant standards Catholics are not Christian (ask Baptists or fundy Christians that love to go around zapping Catholics into their Christian fold if Catholics are Christian and they will say: definitly not.

So we may have a definition problem.

Imnotspecial

I am quite aware of the lofty teaching of the Church in this regard. Nevertheless I believe that popular beliefs deriving from their teaching are important, not official pronouncements only.

I also believe that the Church has substantially changed it's position on the death penalty. One hundred years from now, they will officially pronounce the death penalty to be imoral and then state that they have always taught so.:devil1:

Spitfire

Yes. A heretic cannot be forced to repent. They must freely and willingly do so. The same goes for getting married, and shotgun weddings are not valid. The same principle applies here. Look at the wikipedia article on the Inquisition if you're unwilling to lend credence to the Catholic encyclopedia.

Her detractors became so desperate to find some way to discredit her that they dressed her up in mens' clothes at one point, yes. But the "crime" for which the English wanted to find some reason to put her to death was simply that she had fought against them and they were terrified of her.

I don't know that anyone responsible for her death eve made any such confession, otherwise I would think she should have been exhonerated much sooner after her death.[/quote]

You were talking about infallibility in particular.

Imnotspecial

I had read "Characters of the Inquisition" by Thomas Walsh. One cannot get a more favorable history (for a Catholic) about that institution. When I read this book I was still a Catholic and I was satisfied with the historical context and how people in those days dealt with each other and how intolerance was the norm. Nevertheless there was always a bit of cringing in my soul that Holy Mother Church would have done these things. This was just so different from the story about Jesus. It is not good enough to say, that the secular powers did the burning.
I am concerned about the change of beliefs. Catholics like to separate infallibly defined dogmas from the ordinary teaching of the Church, which she requires the "faithful-unfaithful:devil1: " to give assent to.
I repeat that this is much more relevant than a dogma like the Immaculate Conception or the Assumption of Mary. Both of these dogmas have really no impact on a persons behavior.
What gives me so much trouble is that the Church imposes so many restrictions on its adherents, i.e. divorce, remarriage, birth control, Sunday obligation, confession, that she better be infallible in those things as well or it would have to be viewed as severe abuse of power.

Imnotspecial

[/QUOTE]


Of course I knew that they needed a reason to condemn her. The disturbing part is that they were able to use mens' clothing as a doctrinal point and make it stick and believable among the English.
Perhaps they did not need to go to confession because they sincerely believed that they did the right thing?:devil1:

Spitfire

They were looking for any reason at all to say that she had "re-lapsed" into her old "heretical" ways. If it had not been that, they would have tried to get her on something equally stupid and trivial.

If they somehow honestly believed that they were doing the right thing, then would have needed to give God a very convincing explanation for how they managed to screw things up THAT badly through absolutely no fault of their own.

Proxima Centauri

I hope one hundred years from now the Roman Catholic Church won't exist any more.
:devil: :devil2:

Spitfire

The Catholic Church has been unsuccessfully trying to destroy itself from within for two thousand years, I don't think your hoping from the outside will have much effect.