Pope Francis, I once thought you were good but I see you are bad
NOprophet_NØprofit
Shipmate
in Hell
Francis said that abortion is like "hiring a contract killer", a "hit man". This man can believe whatever the hell he wants, but comments like this get people killed. Just wait. Someone is going to want to stop abortion and feel they are justified because of what this guy said. Disgraceful.
I wondered for a few minutes if he didn't understand the gravity of his words. Then thought: totally unacceptable. He's not allowed at his level of leadership to not know the seriousness of words like this. So disappointed in him.
I wondered for a few minutes if he didn't understand the gravity of his words. Then thought: totally unacceptable. He's not allowed at his level of leadership to not know the seriousness of words like this. So disappointed in him.
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If one says abortion is murder, then it follows that those doing it are murders. If one says it is a genocide, then it doesn't take much for an individual to think that they're justified in taking extreme measures to stop it.
This is totally unnecessary. One can campaign against abortion without using this language.
According to an episode of QI I saw, no. "Pope" is not one of his official titles. However, this is the Pope. Who is not Catholic. So said the elves.
As you were.
And that's not even touching the explosive aspect of how it is fuel for crazies to be violent.
But he did! In your name O Pope, we kill.
Ya think?
No one likes abortion; most of us realize that there are times when it's the least awful of several bad options. But no matter how you feel about it, there is no excuse for inciting the zealots to violence.
But - but - but - rhythm! But - but - but - abstinence!
What drives me up the wall is the internal contradiction. If you're starting from the basic premise that the SkyTyrant commands us to produce more (Catholic) babies (because that's the sole justification for tolerating the existence of adult human females, those fallen, wretched, corrupt-and-corrupting daughters of Eve), then surely anything we do to prevent conception is also preventing (A) any possible redemption/justification for the un-impregnated adult female, (B) the production of another (Catholic) baby, and (C) is therefore in direct contravention of the SkyTyrant's stated will (be fruitful and multiply and all that).
In terms of preventing conception, the only differences between (A) not having sex, (B) avoiding "fertile" spells, and (C) using barriers, chemicals, washes, etc. are in their effectiveness and ease of use. The human intention -- to prevent conception in defiance of divine will -- remains the same. So how can the rhythm method be kosher? Sure, it doesn't work very well, but the intention -- to avoid conception -- is exactly the same as it is for the couple using the pill, backed up by by diaphragm and condom and a just-in-case morning-after pill stashed in the nightstand drawer.
It takes a LOT of people's tithes to keep these buggers (and I mean it in the purest sense of the word) holed up, well fed and comfy in their gold plated palaces.
For that you have to have women churning out new church members for tithes, and new children to exploit (because the little wuggins have a limited shelf life), and not extinguishing them in utero.
Can we please stop pretending that this church has anything to do with Christ's disciples now?
AFF
RooK, that link was amazing. Gabrielle's words expressed so much better the thoughts I've had over many, many years.
Like NOprophet_NØprofit, I at first thought Francis was a good person. Over the last few months, my opinion has completely changed.
I hope you caring, thoughtful gentlemen who are fighting and hoping for women's reproductive rights will know you aren't included in my condemnation of men who make rules for what women can and can't do. When a man can get pregnant, and birth a baby, then he can have a say. Otherwise, those
So I saw that Christian went on his way; yet, at the sight of the Old Man that sat in the mouth of the cave, he could not tell what to think, especially because he spake to him, though he could not go after him, saying, "You will never mend till more of you be burned." ‘
Sometimes the Ulster Proddie in me surfaces.
A pretty gentle telling off francis the pope. As if the Roman Catholic Church has the foggiest about sexuality of any sort, as they continue to find more perverts among themselves.
Can you show me one that does? On that scale? It still does more good than harm. Obviously. Like Islam. Not as good as that obviously. But on the way. As good as Hinduism may be?
If by "it" you refer to the church, I wonder if it really does do more good than harm. We don't even have to drag up all the child victims of priestly abuse; we could start with a much larger group. Half the population in the pews, perhaps more, is female. Do you really think it's good for 50% of a body numbering 1.2 billion souls worldwide to be taught from infancy that they are lesser beings than their brothers? That in all spiritual matters, their judgment is inferior, their images of God never be quite as Godlike as their brothers' are, forever dependent, always guided by people who have no concept of what it is to live in a woman's body in a world ruled by men, always suspect, always wrong, always fallen, and always further fallen than the men who sit in judgment upon them?
The church oppresses its women -- 500 million of them. It takes their sweat, their tears, their money, and sometimes their very lives. And it does so in service to oppression.
Not that the Catholic Church is alone in this; no: what major religion on the face of the globe doesn't practice its own subjugation of women?
No, not obviously.
Nobody has cared to definitively quantify the effects of religion on the overall quality of human existence, Martin. So, no, not obviously at all.
And this is hell, and so I'm not obliged to debate the point with you.
Enjoy your weekend.
AFF
This current pope's expressed views are very much in line with traditional Catholic teaching, ie. mixed economy/moderate welfare state on economics, socially conservative on "moral" issues. But he's a bit more media savvy, and more into anguished hand-wringing than thundering condemnation when it comes to sexual morality, so gives off a surface impression of being a bit more "modern" than his predeccesors.
Back on Ye Olde Shippe, Ingo B explained to us many, many times that the act of intercourse has to be "open to conception", so the wad must be directly shot into the vajayjay every time. Apparently the god that impregnated the Virgin Mary can't poke a hole in a condom but he (of course this god is a "he") can make a woman ovulate after menopause. He can also make a woman ovulate at any time in her menstrual cycle if he wants to, unless she's on the Pill. Talk about the lord's mysterious ways ...
Note, too, that the gold-plated palaces are pretty much reserved for the males. Meanwhile, the dedicated sisters of the faith -- the ones of my acquaintance, anyway -- are all out working at paying jobs, often outside the church, to support their communities, including sisters too old or ill to bring in revenue. Turns out that being married to Jesus is a lot like having a husband on the dole, only without the dole.
Soror Magna, I remember Ingo B well, if not particularly fondly. I recall especially the detailed explanation of why it was perfectly fine to let some poor woman die of a doomed ectopic (I think it was) pregnancy than to remove the fetus (which had no chance of surviving).
But sure: religion does so much more good than harm in this world.
Exactly. As long as the Catholic Church teaches that a woman cannot act in persona Christi, I have no time for it.
Ruth you and I have had our differences, but on this I wholly concur.
I can even go one further, after having lived for the past three years in very rural and very poor Spain, Fuck the RC Church and the three-digit beast it rode in on.
There, I said it.
AFF
Well, mostly, it does - but not entirely. I concur with Ruth on the Church of Rome. I know many wonderful members of the RCC who truly mirror Christ. I can't say the same for the hierarchy.
Re Ingo:
He often drove me to wanting to hit my--or his--head against the wall--for posting/debate style, as much as anything else.
He did eventually show that wasn't all he was. Anyone else remember his lovely little "pearl of great price" moment in Hell, where he posted something to the effect of "we're all damaged zombies, inching our way towards God"?
The thing to remember, IMHO, about Ingo's fiercely-held ideas is that he tries to swallow a faith whole, from the inside, all at once. He did that with Buddhism, before Christianity and Catholicism. It's his way of full dedication, throwing himself completely into a faith, and taking on all its ideas.
FWIW. I sometimes miss him on the boards, and I hope his time away is helping him heal.
Yes. I've never understood why the RCC is like that. Even if, by RCC lights, a particular occasion of sex is an occasion of sin*, birth control would be harm reduction. If you've got a kid who's bought a motorcycle, has no helmet, and refuses to give the motorcycle up, do you give the kid a helmet and insist they use it? Or just shrug, and figure out they'll learn the hard way...if they survive?
As to sanctioned sex in marriage: people can't always afford (physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, financially) even one kid. Permitting birth control in marriage is an act of mercy and compassion.
*And speaking of the RCC and occasions of sexual sin...Jesus said that whatever you do to kids, you're doing to *him*. The abusers may not be able to stop. But if that doesn't shake up the enablers, then the only two things that might are the real possibility of prison (where they may well suffer what they enabled); and fear of an actual, literal hell. And those possibilities don't seem to be making a difference.
Abortion and pro-life issues are a Dead Horse topic. If you want to discuss them, please use the existing thread(s) there. Thank you kindly.
DT
HH
No it's not absolutely good at all Ohher. The lot of women in the Abrahamic religions is predominantly 3rd rate. That's as good as it gets. There are no better alternatives. Nobody has anything better to offer. From their, our helpless privilege.
Me, too. I used to work as a consultant for a Catholic social service organization. Very good people for whom "pro life" was a term that meant more than being anti-abortion. The Catholic women I met absolutely did not accept the idea that they were "less than." And most of the couples I knew (married or not) found ways to not get pregnant. American Catholics don't seem to pay much attention to the prohibition on birth control.
Meanwhile, the Catholics I became friends with found their spiritual nurturing within their own congregation, not from on high.
I don't know if it's going to happen in my lifetime, but I think the drifting away from what the large and in charge men have to say is eventually going to change the nature of Roman Catholicism.
So . . . that's it? "Sucks to be female where religion's concerned. Pity nothing can be done."
Fuck that shit. I start a thread in Purg precisely to explore alternative points of view, and what do I get? Two pages of nitpicking insistence that males and females were equally oblivious to the Resurrection based on non-eyewitness accounts written generations after the alleged events; a few wan suggestions that Jesus's gender doesn't really matter (despite the fact that this IS PRECISELY the rationale used by wide swathes of so-called Christian churches to deny women leadership roles in their heirarchies, and to control use of their bodies as incubators for more (male, and therefore REAL), Christians; and one lonely metaphor about a mother hen, as though that somehow FUCKING COMPENSATES FOR TWO THOUSAND FUCKING YEARS OF GRINDING WOMEN'S FACES, BECAUSE THEIR FACES ARE NOT IN GOD'S IMAGE, INTO THE FUCKING DIRT.
FUCK THAT SHIT. FUCK CHRISTIANITY, JUDAISM, AND ISLAM. FUCK THE WHOLE FUCKING SHAM FOR A MISERABLE, CHEAP, CON JOB.
That was my first thought, but I think he is being a dick even on his own terms.
Hiring a hitman isn't just bad and wrong, it's the sort of evil act that no normal person could believe to be anything other than bad and wrong. The implication isn't just that people who are pro-choice are wrong (which would indeed be the official Catholic view), it's that either they know they're wrong and are lying about their reasoning, or else they are sociopaths. Now from a Catholic perspective this should be an important distinction, because one of the good points (IMV) of Catholic ethics is that it regards intention as important.
The Pope, as per the OP, compared abortion to hiring a hitman. My point is that even if the RCC's current position on foetal life is 100% correct, the comparison is invalid because hiring a hitman implies a degree of intent that is not present at an abortion.
But irrespective of one's view of his rhetoric or of the actual validity of his comparison, as a separate question, is your rhetoric and reasoning valid? Unless you're usage of 'abortion' includes miscarriages, people don't normally have them unintentionally.
My wider point, insofar as I have one, is that no-one is going to get anywhere arguing on abortion, for either side, unless they are willing to acknowledge where the other side is coming from, and the Pope is being a dick by implicitly imputing motives to his opponents that he must know are not really present even if his opponents are in the wrong.
Ma'am.
You know that and I know that. But to the tabloids, Guardian readers and others - well lets just say we've heard it all before - the usual self-righteous crowing.....
Of course, I am worried too ...that there are not enough
I'm not RC but quite a big element in what he's saying appears to be that the commitment to celibacy applies just as much to priests who happen to have a gay orientation as to those who have a straight one. The same applies to the avoidance of particularity among the religious. Those who have an emphatically gay lifestyle shouldn't become priests any more that those who want to continue to have affaires with women shouldn't.
Indeed, if clergy are required to be celibate anyway, and are abiding by that commitment, perhaps it becomes irrelevant which sex they would choose if they could have a relationship.
" those responsible for training priests must make sure candidates are "humanly and emotionally mature" before they are ordained.
"For this reason, the Church urges that persons with this rooted tendency not be accepted into ministry or consecrated life.""
The applicable bible verse is:
"He that is wounded in the stones, or hath his privy member cut off, shall not enter into the congregation of the Lord." (Deut. 23:1)
God has always wanted his priests to be ready to hump, but just not with each other.