Amos

Sullster I am trying to justify the medieval church in today's world or have you not noticed that I am pointing at the problems of the world today that exist only because of our ignorance to reality.

I point at the flip-side of religion and I know that there are many females (and males) who could present the arguments I make with much more eloquence, finesse, devotion and emotion. I just give you the cold hard facts and can actually tie them down into reality--which they might not be able to because they are tied up in faith.

And please, don't bring up the modern mind because soon we will not be able to live off the loot we stole from the rest of the world while we had an advantage over them because we opened the flood gates to entropy within our own mind that had been compiled during the heyday of the Church. Soon it will be a matter of brilliance that must keep us afloat because power and might will also be a thing of the past.

What the medieval Church was trying to avoid is the diversion of potential Divine Comedies into Senecan tragedies and that is all the Church was really concerned about. The rest (prosperity) will fall in place which is why the Church was never really part of the state.

For example, today they do speak against abortion but do not encourage physical interference and promply forgive the sins of the Catholics that procure an abortion. I admire pro-lifers but am not one myself. My problem is that I just don't have enough faith to be "a good Catholic."

daemon

Sure, they talk a good game...
What? No, use of the word "infallible" doesn't make you anything except literate enough to use the word "infallible."
I think you've had a complete breakdown of coherency here.

daemon

You don't discuss with religions, you discuss with people.
So anything he says is of relevance only to people mired in the past, which I can say from personal experience doesn't include many Catholics.
Ah, so those people I used to go to church with must have been hallucinations, their ideas about religion meaningless against the backdrop of their professed religion.
What what whole thing is about? His mind?
Well, whatever. It's your life, waste it as you see fit. Just realize that about half of what he says about Catholicism is irrelevant today, and the other half was probably never in it at all. Were it 1302, he'd be on the stake faster than we for heresy.

[ August 29, 2002: Message edited by: daemon ]</p>

sullster

Thanks Amos for confirming my points made to Daemon. You always come through for me.

I must strongly disagree with your statement about your midevil religion not associating with the state. That is historically incorrect and a reading of the history of Europe until the French Revolution, will reveal the absolute interplay of the catholic church with all the regimes of Europe. The catholic church was and is a very political religion. The King of France was also "The Defender of the Faith", catholic of course. The church never got over the beheading of one of their defenders by the French revolutionaries.

OK, Amos , continue your war against modernity. Lead your ancient religion on to its true roots.

Bible Humper

I was about to say that as well. It is a damn good thing for all of us, including Amos, that the church no longer has the power to order the painful executions that they used to love so much. A situation that is much to their chagrin indeed.

sullster

The people going to church these days are for the most part inheretors of the modern world's viewpoints which have been shaped by the Scientific Revolution, the Enlightenment and what is called Modernity. The catholic church is still the medieval thing it always was. It has just learned to live with modern times and modern people. If given the chance, it would return to the killings and obscuritanistic dogmas of the middle ages. I am utterly convinced of this.

Amos? Well, he is unapologetically affirming the medieval ideologies of the church. That some of what he says is his own iterpretation does not invalidate my point that his general thrust is in the tradition of medieval catholic obscuritanism and dogma.

If this was 1302, you and I would be at the stake long before Amos. The medieval catholic church killed its enemies first and used its loyal obscuritans for its own purposes. Amos would have been able to privately recant any heresies. Us unbelievers would have become well done.

daemon

I do not see the Church as utterly divorced from its parishoners as you do, apparently. If given the chance to return to the past, I think it would promptly destroy itself, fragmenting into a million bickering pieces before it actually did anything.
Okay, perhaps. I dunno, Amos seems pretty dedicated to his odd vision of Catholicism--I honestly wonder whether he would recant. As for myself, I'm pragmatic enough that I would lie, heh.

Amos

LOL, Amos would be the gladiator and sullster would be called innocent because of unbelief. It is the heretics and witches that get well done on their own accord to get their name written in the Book of Martyrs (we have the Book of Life).

I actually wrote this to let you know that I am gone for a couple days and won't be here often. Darn it.

sullster

Daemon,

I have been witnessing the reaction of Cardinal Law here in Boston and his actions utterly confirm my thesis that the catholic church remains an exclusive male hierarchy divorced from the masses and entrenched with medieval theology. There is a raging modern world out there and the church is content to protect child rapers who are one of their own.

During the Middle Ages, the rulers of the catholic church lived like kings and kept the irrational obscuritanistic theologies running over all thought and actions. The only group which smashed them for a while were the protestants of Martin Luther's Reformation, but they ended up creating an even worse theological prison for the human mind-fundamentalism. The catholics retrenched and to this day are retooling their medieval world. The retrenchment was called THe Counter-Reformation, and it is still running.

Amos is a reminder of the type of theological thought which ran rampant in the Middle Ages. It is a cold reminder of what this religion is all about. If you think I am nailing Amos to the foundational muck of catholicism, then you would be thinking correctly.

daemon

Well, I'd say this attitude is more prevalent on the east coast of the US than the west, especially the classic centers of Catholicism in the States.
I would say that some, perhaps most, within the Church have this attitude, but to say the Church, as a whole, has this attitude would be incorrect.
Umm, the Counter-Reformation, according to the sources I've read, is long over. Huge changes have hit the RCC since then... are you even aware of the Second Vatican Council? Why do you think the Counter-Reformation is "still running?"
I don't think you're doing anything except addressing an increasingly irrelevant religious view, and that's assuming your view of medieval Catholicism is correct.