Who Can Mock This Church?

[mgc1961]

Maybe the Catholic Church should be turned upside down.

Jesus wasn’t known for pontificating from palaces, covering up scandals, or issuing Paleolithic edicts on social issues. Does anyone think he would have protected clergymen who raped children?

Yet if the top of the church has strayed from its roots, much of its base is still deeply inspiring. I came here to impoverished southern Sudan to write about Sudanese problems, not the Catholic Church’s. Yet once again, I am awed that so many of the selfless people serving the world’s neediest are lowly nuns and priests — notable not for the grandeur of their vestments but for the grandness of their compassion.

As I’ve noted before, there seem to be two Catholic Churches, the old boys’ club of the Vatican and the grass-roots network of humble priests, nuns and laity in places like Sudan. The Vatican certainly supports many charitable efforts, and some bishops and cardinals are exemplary, but overwhelmingly it’s at the grass roots that I find the great soul of the Catholic Church.


More at http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/02/opinion/02kristof.html?hp

[LiberalLoner]

1. There are many great people in the church. It is sad and deplorable that the

whole church has been besmirched by the actions of a few and by the misguided actions by those at the top.

[LiberalLoner]

2. My mother's side of the family is Catholic and while I am Lutheran, not Catholic, I

find much to admire in the people of the Catholic church. My relatives are some of the most humble, caring, wonderful people I know.

[mgc1961]

3. An interesting catholic:

Meister Eckhart (Eckhart Von Hochheim) (ca. 1260-ca. 1328), the most important German mystic of the Middle Ages and one of the most original religious thinkers of the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. Eckhart's impact on contemporaries was primarily as a teacher and preacher, and his extant sermons in Middle High German are powerful monuments to a high-flying poetic spirit and linguistic genius. No one before Martin Luther expanded the possibilities of religious expression in the vernacular as much as Eckhart, and no other mystic described the experience of the mystical union in such intellectual terms as he did.

Not much is known about Eckhart's early life. He is first documented as a member of the Dominican Order and a student of the arts at Paris in 1277. He was born probably about 1260 in one of the two Hochheims in Thuringia. In 1280 he was a student at the studium generale of the Dominicans in Cologne, where he most likely met Albertus Magnus. In 1293 Eckhart lectured at St. Jacques in Paris, and from 1294 to 1298 he held the posts of prior of the Dominican convent in Erfurt and vicar of the Dominican vicariate of Thuringia. He had become an important administrator and a leading intellectual personality in his order while still in his thirties.

Later, in 1302-1303 and again in 1311-1313, he held the only chair reserved for non-French professors at the University of Paris, where he obtained the honorific title magister sacrae theologiae, which in German was translated into Meister. He was also elected provincial of the Dominican province of Saxony (1303), vicar-general of Bohemia (1307), and head of the Dominican studium generale (1322).

During the last years of his life, Eckhart came into serious conflict with the Roman curia: in fact, he became the first Dominican friar to be accused of heresy. His trials in Cologne (1326) and Avignon (1327) have been the subject of much scholarly discussion, most of it colored by denominational bias. The papal bull In agro dominico (27 March 1329) condemned as potentially heretical (prout verba sonant) twenty-eight sentences in Eckhart writings and noted that Eckhart recanted these statements before his death. (Since he is elsewhere mentioned as being still alive early in 1327, the year of his death can be approximated.)

Although the papal condemnation cast a shadow on Eckhart's reputation immediately after his death, he inspired the sermons and writings of such popular religious figures as Tauler and Suso (who were students at the studium generale in Cologne) and numerous nuns and layfolk who heard him speak. Eckhart's influence extended to Nicholas of Cusa, Martin Luther, Jakob Boehme, Hegel, Fichte, and the existentialist philosophers. Recent comparative studies have pointed out similarities between Eckhart's mystical doctrines and certain aspects of Hinduism and Zen Buddhism.

The bulk of Eckhart's German works consists of fifty-nine authenticated sermons. He may have dictated some of these sermons to followers, but most were probably written down from memory by listeners. The only signed sermon is "Vom edlen Menschen" (On noble men), composed in 1313 in conjunction with Eckhart's most beautiful work, the Buch der gottlichen Trostung (Book of divine consolation). He also wrote two German tractates: Reden der Unterscheidung (Talks of instruction) (1289) and Von Abegescheidenheit (On emptiness) (ca. 1290).

Eckhart's Latin work was conceived on a grand scale, probably during his first professorship in Paris: but apparently the master did not find time to execute his plan of presenting to posterity the sum of his theology. What remains of his Opus tripartitum is an introduction to the first part, the Opus propositionum, and nearly all of the third, part, the Opus expositionum, but nothing of the seoncd part, the Opus quaestionum. Thus the Opus expositionum, the expository part, constitutes Eckhart's principal Latin work. Because of its precise vocabulary and clear syntax, it contains many valuable clues to the interpretation of some of his German sermons. Of considerable importance is the Rechtfertigungs-schrift (Writ of justification, 1327), in which Eckhart adamantly rejects the accusation of heresy. His minor Latin works include a commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard (1293/1294), a collatio, or inaugural lecture (ca. 1297), and three disputations (1302/1303).

Eckhart's Latin works, though helpful to the modern scholar, would not secure his reputation as a great mystic or innovative theologian. The German works, by contrast, bear witness to his brilliance. There is little in Middle High German prose that can bear comparison with Eckhart's style and diction. His semons are filled with unique images and metaphors; his use of paradox, abstraction, hyperbole, asyndeton, and circumscription appears exaggerated by modern standards, but it must be kept in mind that there was no ready-made working German vocabulary for complex theological matters, and that it was primarily Eckhart who created one. The doctor extaticus, as he was called by a contemporary, was a "God-intoxicated" mystic who addressed believers eager to share his experience of the mystical union.

Eckhart's early training was as a Scholastic, and there is much in his writings that he learned from Peter Lombard's Sentences and Thomas Aquinas' Summa contra gentiles, both staples of Scholasticism. Later, though, as his mysticism crystallized, he learned more on the writings of St. Augustine, Proclus, Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, Plotinus, and the Jewish philosopher Maimonides, whose Guide of the Perplexed seems to have had a special impact on Eckhart. Although he built his theology on Scholastic (that is Aristotelian-Thomist) foundations, the spirit that permeates his ideas and make him a mystic is Neoplatonic. Eckhart's greatest achievement as a religious innovator was to solve the contradiction between divine transcendence and divine immanence, though in doing so he made himself vulnerable to charges of pantheism and heresy.

The central idea in al of Eckhart's teachings is the Gottesgeburt in der Seele (birth of God in the soul): God can fill the soul with himself; he can be born, or "generated," in the "empty" soul. The human soul is a mirror that "absorbs" the divine light and reflects it back to God without losing its identity. The point at which God and the soul "touch" is the very depth of the soul, at the Seelengrund. From there emanates a spark (Seelenfunklein), a part of the soul and of God, yet external to both. It "leaps" spontaneously from one to the other, connects them but leaves them separate and differentiated.

How does a person prepare for the leap of the Seelenfunklein? Eckhart says that just as God ultimately is nothingness, so man must rid himself of all physical and spiritual desires that remind him of created things; in other words, his aim should be to approximate God's nothingness as much as possible. When the individual has become "nothing," has achieved poverty in spirit, then the attraction between God and the soul is so great that the spark of the soul "ignites" and athe mystical union takes place. Thus Eckhart in his sermons emphasizes again and again that the only purpose of life in the physical would is to engage in a spiritual cleansing process, and asceticism that allows the soul to realize its Adel, the nobility with which God endowed it on its creation. In one of his most famous sermons there is the following passage:

When I preach, I usually speak of "emptiness," of the need for man to rid himself of his self and of all things. Then, I also preach the possibility that one can be molded into the uniform goodness that is God. And third, (I preach) that one should think of the great nobility that God has given to the soul so that man might use it as a miraculous link with God (Quint, ed., Meister Eckhart. Die deutchen Werke, I, 528; my trans.)

Eckhart advocates not renunciation of all worldly activity, but rather a state of nonvolition, an existence that is void of ambition and nonspiritual desire. It is not surprising, then, that Eckhart ascribes little importance to good works. In fact, he considers good works in themselves worthless as far as the relation between the soul and God is concerned; what really matters is the attitude of the individual. "Goodness" is obtained through the grace of God, and even a life led in close imitation of Christ would not avail an individual who lacked inner nobility. In this attitude there are clearly germinal elements of Luther's doctrine of salvation.

Eckhart also has little to say about the historical Christ. He is much more interested in the "role" or "function" of the Son in the triune God, and in such eternal Trinitarian processes as the begetting of the Son by the Father and the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son. He is also very much concerned with the manner in which the birth of Christ takes place in the soul, a process that, in his opinion, constitutes the most vital aspect of human existence.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Sources. Meister Eckhart. Die deutschen Werke, Joseph Quint, ed., I-III, V (1958-1976) - IV still in preparation - the only critical ed. of Eckhart's German works; Meister Eckhart. Die Lateinischen Werke, Joseph Koch et al., eds., 5 vols. (1936-1964), the only critical ed. of Eckhart's complete Latin works; Franz Pfeiffer, ed., Die deutschen Mystiker des 14. Jahrhunderts, II, Meister Eckhart (1857, repr. 1966), not critical and unreliabe.

Modern German translations are H. Buttner, Meister Eckhart's Schriften und Prdeigten, 2 vols. (1903); Joseph Quint, Meister Eckhart, deutche Predigten und Traktate (1955, repr. 1963).

English translations are J. M. Clark, ed. and trans., Meister Eckhart; An Introduction to the Study of His Works (1957); J. M. Clark and J. V. Skinner, eds. and trans., Meister Eckhart, Selected Treatises and Sermons... from Latin and German (1958).

Studies. J. Ancelet-Hustache, Maitre Eckhart et la mystique rhenane (1956); I. Degenhardt, Studien zum Wandel des Eckhartbildes (1967); Alois Dempf, Meister Eckhart (1960); Dietmar Mieth, Meister Eckhart (1979); Ernst H. Soudek, Meister Eckhart (1973); F. W. Wentzlaff-Eggebert, Deutsche Mystik zwischen Mittelalter und Neuzeit, 2nd ed. (1969), 301-307.


Ernst H. Soudek

Dictionary of the Middle Ages, vol. IV, pgs 381-382. (1989)

[Blue_Tires]

11. fascinating...

how did I never hear of him?

[CTyankee]

14. Echhardt was mysogynist to the bone. I studied Meister Eckhardt in a graduate studies class.

It was in a Catholic college, Albertus Magnus, in New Haven CT. Our professor was the head of its Religion Department.

In Eckhardt's writing he proclaimed that women could not preach and that they should not have any say over men.

So, based on such mysogynism, I will not accept his pronouncements as something I, as a woman, should believe or follow. If he could not accept ME and my gender's opinions, screw him. Just another prelate of the almighty church, establishing their authority over women...

no dice, buddy...

[mgc1961]

16. I didn't say he wasn't.

Most men in the past were probably misogynists to some degree just like many men are today. I take from them what I find interesting and leave the ugliness behind. Just like I do with women.

[CTyankee]

19. No, not all. In the same class we studied Jalal al din Rumi, a 13th century

Sufi mystic. His beautiful writings were extraordinarily respectful of women and their autonomy. It was an interesting class (called The Eye of the Heart, it was a class in mysticism). I did my class paper of Hildegard of Bingen, a 12th century nun who was a wide awake mystic...and a lot more...

[mgc1961]

20. Beyond their personal lives,

I find the circumstances of their existence interesting too. In this case for example, is the similarity of some of Eckhart's writing to Hinduism and Buddhism. Or his teaching position in a country other than his birth. In political terms, those factual tidbits take some of the shine off xenophobic cries about an impending New World Order fueled by the immigration of impure cultures into western lands, as if white Christian culture was pure at some distant point in the past and we're losing it to foreigners and poor people.

Here's a bit about the economics of the Medieval period. I underlined sections that illustrate what I'm talking about in regard to understanding the pernicious nature of racist political slogans, or ideas as they like to call them, being spread by some conservative economic think tanks and right-wing radioheads:



TRADE, WESTERN EUROPE

The trade of Western Europe in the Middle Ages was, on the large scale, divided into two great "trading spheres," each centered on an inland sea, and each with its own special characteristics. The trade of northern Europe centered on the Baltic and North seas and the river systems that empty into them. Southern European trade looked to the Mediterranean as its great highway. In general terms the northern trade was characterized by bulk goods, such as foodstuffs and other basics, with few luxury goods of any importance. The trade of the south, while it included a large and active trade in bulk goods, took its characteristic "flavor" and much of its vigor from the carriage of Eastern luxury wares. These trading spheres overlapped in Flanders and Champagne, where merchants from all over Europe met at the great international fairs of the High Middle Ages, and later at the markets of Bruges and Antwerp.

There is also a fundamental chronological division of medieval trade that is as important as its geographical division. From the late Roman period until the end of the first millennium, trade was minimal and, as a general trend, in decline. Then, around the end of the tenth century, Western Europe began a period of sustained economic growth that was to last for 300 years.

The decline of the Roman Empire in the West was economic as well as political. The well-developed trading networks that existed within the empire began to crumble even before any significant barbarian incursions. The hold of Rome on the Western imagination has been such over the centuries that it is easy to forget that the magnificent life in marble halls was lived by only a very few. The typical denizen of the Roman Empire was not a toga-draped senator but a peasant living on the verge of starvation. Even in Rome itself the vast majority of the population was underemployed and living on the dole.

The largest-scale movement of goods within the empire was the regular shipment of grain from Egypt to Rome, but it is doubtful whether we should consider this to be trade at all, since it was organized by the government, paid for by tribute from all over the empire, and distributed to the emperor's clients, the Roman mob. The remaining movement of goods seems to have gone largely to support the army (again this was essentially a government activity) and to provide luxuries for the elite.

The civil wars of the third century A.D. had a disastrous effect on the fragile Roman economy. Diocletian's Edict on Maximum Prices, issued in 301, is dramatic evidence of the inflation and increasing government rigidity that the previous century's disturbances had brought about. This decline was accelerated in the West as the empire broke up into many kingdoms. It was increasingly impossible for the declining economy to support the refined and expensive tastes of the elite. In general, the standard of living of the upper classes continued to fall until after 900, despite occasional periods of amelioration. The standard of living of the majority of the population, the peasants, could not have fallen as much, since most of them were living only at a subsistence level even while the empire prospered. Still, their lot could not have been a happy one as the upper classes struggled to maintain their standard of living. This overall decline in the economy brought with it a reduction in the already small exchange of goods, both in the total amount of goods moved and in the distances over which they were transported.

EARLY MIDDLE AGES

Henri Pirenne's description of Western Europe in the ninth century as "a civilization which had retrogressed to the purely agricultural stage; which no longer needed commerce, credit, and regular exchange for the maintenance of the social fabric" became the central issue in a debate that has dominated discussions of the early medieval economy throughout most of the twentieth century. The "Pirenne thesis," simply stated, argued that commerce between East and West continued, though the center shifted eastward, until the rise of Islam broke the essential connections in the seventh century. Then, after the middle of the tenth century, commercial contacts were renewed through the Mediterranean and Baltic seas. In this view the Western European economy was dependent on the East, and through a kind of "contagion" theory of economic development it was assumed that once economic connections were opened, they spread and grew. The cause of the economic revival of Western Europe was seen as the obverse of the cause of its decline: the reestablishment of contact with areas where commerce had continued unbroken.

Two fundamental criticisms of this picture of the early medieval economy can be made. First, there was a good deal of decline before 700 that Pirenne minimized. Second, many of the details of the cutting of trade by Muslim expansion have been modified. It now seems clear that, just as the trade of the Roman Empire was not as extensive nor as rich as is often popularly imagined, so also there never was a time when trade disappeared entirely or when the economy of Western Europe "reverted completely to barter."

Studies of the early medieval economies that were prompted by Pirenne's seminal work have shown that trade, even long-distance trade between East and West, never entirely disappeared, though it did become exceedingly tenuous. Though undoubtedly the volume of commerce declined precipitously from an already small Roman base, there was, even in the eighth and ninth centuries, always some exchange. Even the costly fabrics and spices of the East continued to find their way west. In the tenth century Gerbert of Aurillac found Eastern silks and spices readily available in the markets of Italy. Still, there is no doubt that trade in the Carolingian period was pitifully small when compared to that of the Roman Empire, which Charlemagne wished to emulate.

As the standard of living declined in the West it remained relatively higher in the East, so that the goods and commodities that the West was able to provide were not particularly attractive in Byzantine and Islamic markets. Slaves, certain raw materials, such as timber, leather, grain, and salt, and a few cheap goods were sufficient to bring only a trickle of the coveted Eastern luxuries to the Germanic kingdoms. Trade within Western Europe itself also declined as local economies approached a degree of uniformity that made any substantial exchange of goods pointless. The growth of trade in Western Europe from the late tenth century on should be seen as the development of an underdeveloped area, rather than as the revival of a lost Roman economy.

Still, several forces were at work to maintain at least a minimal level of trade, even in the worst of times in the ninth century. First, necessity dictated that some goods be moved. Salt, the only effective preservative known and a highly prized condiment, was available in only a few places and was thus the object of a considerable commerce. Both archaeology and documentary sources attest to a trade in quernstones, which were necessary to grind grain into flour and for which really suitable stone was available in only a few geological formations. In the Merovingian period there was an important center of quernstone production in the Eifel Mountains that sent stones as far away as northern England. There is also evidence of trade in grain and other foodstuffs.

A second motivation, and one that produced a commerce whose historical visibility is out of all proportion to its size, was the demand of the elite political and religious leaders (a very small proportion of the population) for prestigious luxuries either for themselves, to underscore their rank in society, or to give to one another as suitably impressive gifts. The variety of these luxuries was much greater, even if the quantity in circulation was much smaller, than that of the more utilitarian goods. In the luxury category were precious metals, both as coin and plate; fine textiles (silks and fine woolens); fierce hunting dogs and spirited horses; falcons; strong, sharp swords; earthenware pots of striking design and elaborate decoration; glassware and window panes; wines; and spices. There were also stunning individual items, such as the elephant given to Charlemagne by Harun al-Rashid or the small seventh-century statue of Buddha from northern India which was found at Helgo in Sweden.

The considerable traffic in human beings was also important. Slaves were the only product of Western Europe in great demand in the sophisticated markets of the East.

In the West, the establishment of the Frankish kingdom in the fifth century brought a shift toward the north in the demand for luxury goods. The heart of Frankish government was in the northern part of what had been Gaul, and the courts established there inevitably drew a large proportion of the luxury trade.

Most prominent among the merchants of the Frankish era were the inhabitants of Frisia, which lay along the North Sea coast of Europe. The Frisians engaged in a trade that linked the Frankish lands, Scandinavia, and Britain from the seventh to the ninth centuries. These coastal inhabitants were primarily farmers and fisherman whose familiarity with the seas and whose central location fitted them admirably for the role of part-time merchants. The scant and loosely organized commerce of the period could not support many full-time traders.

In the ninth century the Scandinavians burst on the European scene, opening the last period of barbarian invasions. The destruction wrought by Viking raids is well fixed in the popular imagination; their role as traders is less well known. The Vikings displaced the Frisians in the trade of the North Sea and the Rhine Valley and established a trading sphere of their own in the Baltic area that reached down the Russian rivers as far as Byzantium and Persia. They offered furs from Finland and Russia and slaves captured in their many raids. Indeed, slaves may well have been the staple item in Viking trade. Their greed for slaves undoubtedly contributed to the fear that their raids inspired. The Viking center at Hedeby in southeastern Jutland was well situated for access to both the Baltic and the North Sea. In many ways the trade of the Vikings foreshadowed that of the later medieval Hansa.

In an age when the scale of trade was very small and the merchant's occupation was only part-time, buyers and sellers commonly gathered in convenient locations at prearranged times to exchange goods. These fairs soon became regular features of the medieval economic landscape. Regional fairs existed all over Europe, but a few became centers for the wholesale exchange of goods from distant lands. By the end of the eleventh century fairs located close to one another were being organized into 'cycles' that spread the trading activities of the region in an orderly way through the year. One of the earliest of such cycles of fairs was organized in Flanders in the twelfth century. As the Flemish cities developed into permanent centers of exchange this fair cycle was abandoned. The best-known and most important of the medieval fair cycles was held in Champagne, a cycle of six fairs held in various towns on a rotating basis throughout the year. Carefully cultivated by the enlightened policies and good government of the counts of Champagne, these fairs were a crucial international market from the twelfth until the fourteenth century, when changing trade patterns and chronic warfare brought about their end.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

To extensive to list here


John E. Dotson

Dictionary of the Middle Ages, vol. 12, pgs. 108-110. (1989)

[CTyankee]

21. Thank you! I love historical exegesis. There's a lot here.

This reminds me of how much I loved watching "Civilization" with Sir Kenneth Clark many years ago...

[Scuba]

4. Resemblence is remarkable

Your thoughtful comments about there being two Catholic churches made the Church sound alot like the good old US of A. Remarkable. Thank you.

[get the red out]

5. Absolute power corrupts absolutely -

The people you describe have no power. I wish they had a bit more of it, the world would be a better place.

[Peace Patriot]

6. "...there seem to be two Catholic Churches..." So true!

"...there seem to be two Catholic Churches, the old boys’ club of the Vatican and the grass-roots network of humble priests, nuns and laity in places like Sudan."

There is the Church of Father Dan Berrigan, who burned Draft records during the Vietnam War, and Sister Corita (the joyful artist whose religious order of well-educated, high-powered women was drummed out of the Church), and the Catholic Workers--those amazing people who serve meals to the homeless all week and pour blood on missiles on the weekend (and go to jail for it). There is the Church of the monarchical crowns and swishy gold and velvet robes--the Church of popes and cardinals who think that God invests their pricks with special powers to change bread and wine into Jesus's body and blood, and that ONLY people with pricks can do this, and aren't they special!?

I am being deliberately crude about this--bear with me--because they are crude, in their egocentric assertion that half the human race is not qualified to be priests FOR ONE REASON and ONE REASON only--that they are not men. Time for them to grow up and abandon this adolescent fantasy and great sin against the very Christian principles that they claim to avow--that there is something unworthy in the biology of women--whom they, until recently, banned from communion as "unclean," after giving birth, until they could be "purified" by a priestly ceremony and, until recently, banned from the sacred precincts of the altar entirely. (Both practices may still be on-going in some churches.) This " boys' club" has made itself unfit to preach Christianity in the modern world. And it is my contention that this sickness--their worship of their pricks, which, in Catholic theology, makes they themselves idolators and heretics--is the origin of their massive child abuse scandal. They KNOW that it is WRONG to elevate themselves over women. They know this deep down but cannot admit it. It is a POWER issue. And that is also the issue in child abuse--power.

And this is NOT an easy illness for them to cure. Their entire identity is wrapped up in "tracing" their "ancestry" "back to St. Peter," with no women involved in that heritage. So, too, the so-called Trinity (Father, Son and Holy Spirit) contained no female, neither Mother, Daughter nor Sister. This weird notion developed in the 3rd to 5th centuries AD, and was "codified" to the exclusion of all other Christian ideas--which were violently purged and anathematized--when the early "fathers" of that era cemented their power with the power of the state (5th century). The first bishop to call himself a "patriarch" was Cyril of Alexandria (5th century), who was obsessed with gaining CIVIL power, and who was morally--if not directly--responsible for the death of the neo-platonic philosopher Hypatia, a woman of impeccable reputation and high repute--she was the teacher of bishops, though she was not a Christian--and whom I believe was trying to bring the religious factions of the day together --the Jewish and other religious scholars at the Alexandria Library (which she headed) and the various Christian and Pagan scholars (representing a wide variety of opinion and practice). Cyril first clashed with the Roman Prefect (a friend of Hypatia's) by instigating pogroms against the Jews and driving them out of Alexandria. He then sent mobs of his desert-crazed monks to attack the Prefect. And finally one of his mobs of Nitrian monks attacked Hypatia and skinned her alive in a Pagan temple that had been converted to a 'christian' church.

This is the mentality that seized the Church in subsequent Church councils, which basically created the monolithic structure of today, with its swishy robes, many worldly properties and insistence on DOGMA, and which ruled over Europe for a thousand years. Anti-woman. Anti-freedom of thought. Into power of every kind, including caging the human mind and spirit into a tight box of enforced and often absurd beliefs, upon pain of eternal damnation. It is so diverged from Jesus' original teaching (very simple--"love they neighbor") that it is doubtful that these ego-centric, sick men can ever find the path back.

But if they do, it will be because of the Dan Berrigan's of our era, and the Sister Coritas, and the Catholic Workers, and the mostly low level priests and nuns in Latin America who identify with the poor, and all the truly great and truly Christian Catholics who try to live what Jesus actually said, over and over and over again, in every way that he could: Love thy neighbor.*

---------------------------------

*(I am convinced that Jesus never said, "Thou art Peter and upon this rock I will build my church"--the phrase upon which the Vatican constructs its whole, ego-centric and strange edifice of male power. I think it was interpolated into the 'synoptic' (official) gospels in the 3rd to 5th centuries, when all the other gospels (some of earlier vintage, much more open-minded and non-dogmatic and many mentioning both God and Goddess) were burned. It is wholly out of character. It makes no sense. It flies in the face of everything else Jesus said and did, even in the 'sanctioned' (edited, expurgated, messed with) gospels. And if he did say it, he meant it ironically, i.e., 'please DON'T build a church, and above all, not on this stupid blockhead and coward.')

[Cartoonist]

7. I can

While I applaud their charity, it still comes with a price. That price is evangelism. When they give their charity anonymously without commercials, then they will earn my respect.
Does a murderer get a free pass if he buys a bowl of soup for a homeless person? I'm sorry, but the church has committed genocide in such large numbers that all the free soup in the world can never buy forgiveness. To earn that, they would have to end their homophobia, misogyny, religious intolerance, and sincerely and meaningfully admit and apologize for their transgressions against humanity. That's not even being contemplated in any religious body or by any grass-roots network of humble priests, nuns and laity in places like Sudan.

[Demeter]

8. Would It Be Too Much To Expect Respect for Science, Too?

because ignoring god's reality for some ignorant posturing has got to be the biggest insult one could offer one's god. Not to mention it makes the Church look incredibly foolish.

[Cartoonist]

9. The speed of holiness

It took the church what, 400 years to apologize to Galileo? It took 40 years to apologize to the Beatles. I guess that's some improvement.

[Tutankhamun]

18. The church appears incredibly foolish because it _IS_ incredibly foolish.

The child rape, the misogny, the cover-ups are a separate, secondary kind of foolishness spawned from their fundamental foolishness, though.

The fundamental, original foolishness such as talking snakes, advocating slave ownership, the death penalty for adultery, zombie Jesus rising from the dead, etc. is the kind of biblical nonsensical horse shit that attracts horrible people with screwed up belief systems. These people then go on to commit the sort of deeds (child rape, cover-ups, imprisoning men such as Galileo, torturing, killing "heretics") that continue to eat away at Christianity's rotten core.

[Skittles]

10. any thinking person

[salguine]

12. If it's a church, I can mock it.

[AJD48]

13. Jesus wasn't known for . . .

"Jesus wasn’t known for pontificating from palaces, covering up scandals, or issuing Paleolithic edicts on social issues."

But he is known for torturing people in hell forever . . . unless they are saved.
And exactly how do you get saved?
Ask any denomination, they all have an answer.
Unfortunately, they give contradictory answers.
Become a Catholic and Baptists will tell you you're going to hell.
Become a Baptist and Catholics will tell you you're going to hell.
So pick a denomination, follow what they say, and if you're lucky you'll be saved.
A hell of a situation.

[awoke_in_2003]

15. name me a church...

and I can mock it :)

[Tutankhamun]

17. People who call themselves Christians tend to be horrible human beings.

Just like their church leaders.

[Swede]

22. Over 50% of DUers identify themselves as Christian.

What a bunch of horrible DUers we have.

[Tutankhamun]

23. Whether or not this handy statistic is correct is irrelevant to my point.

If I say, for example that most weebers are wobblers, and most blobbers are weebers, that doesn't mean most blobbers are wobblers.

Another example: If I say most Americans are ignorant, and most DUers are Americans, that doesn't mean most DUers are ignorant.

Such a conclusion isn't based on sound logic. It's a fallacy.