Christian Discussion Thread XI: Anicetus’ Revenge

[Salus Maior]

Since the post is too long to quote for just a small remark and deleting chunks of text on my phone is tiresome, I just want to note regarding the church covered in bones.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedlec_Ossuary did you mean this?

No, that originated from the Black Death. Well before what happened at these women's houses.

[Punished UMN]

And yes, it's always uncomfortable to talk about the skeletons in the closet of organizations, faiths, movements, etc. that we're a part of, but deflecting from those skeletons to make ourselves more comfortable should be the opposite of how we, as Christians, think about sins of the past. We should steel ourselves in our faith by working to be better and to heal the body of Christ. Having scars means one was hurt, but it also means that one survived and healed.

[Sundiata]

"The greatest destroyer of peace is abortion because if a mother can kill her own child, what is left for me to kill you and you to kill me? There is nothing between."
-St. Mother Teresa

[Lost Memories]

Since the post is too long to quote for just a small remark and deleting chunks of text on my phone is tiresome, I just want to note regarding the church covered in bones.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedlec_Ossuary did you mean this?

Yep. So it was in the Czech Republic. Thanks for finding that.

@Salus Maior
I hope you are being ironic, because that bone church has nothing to do with that century old report.

@UMN
It's nice to see you still are capable of compassion. It would be also nice if you could drop the strawman about denial, which you, Senkaku and others, have been touting.

@Senkaku
Aren't you conflating "scapegoating" with "to held accountable" ?
Scapegoating always involves a shift of responsibility (or blame), and where there is a shift of responsibility, at least one subject is going to be held accountable for more responsibility than they deserve, and at least one subject is going to be held accountable for less or no responsibility than they deserve.
To support scapegoating, is to approve for the lack of accountability over some subjects, and for an unfair and biased application of justice.
And you aren't supporting that, right?

Once again, I'm talking about scapegoating, which is not the same as being held accountable.
If you want to insist with your exclusive use of language, be free, but that would mean you are not replying to me any longer. But rather strawmanning.

And no, your solution about not talking about terrible things, for fairness, sucks as solution.
I'm rather for the opposite, when the informations are available extensively on all involved subjects, to talk about all of them, which actually helps addressing the issue in its wholeness.
And when the informations aren't complete, to expose and discuss the available informations with fairness, without media clickbait titles and sensationalism, for more ad revenue and subscribers. That is not only unfair to the issue, but also immoral, to distort facts for greed. And without political score settling, or for bias confirmation of historical or new prejudices. (anti-catholicism being the prejudice in question)

I'm hoping for too much? This is probably not the best place for explorative discussions anyway, as what runs 90% or more of this forum is spite, and not curiosity.
Likewise on other internet outlets, without spite, most internet boards and sites would be barren, which sucks for anyone driven by curiosity.



This is the revised version of the prayer for the spreaders of deception. (thanks for the suggestions)

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit
and by the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary
May peace find those who are full of hatred
May truth find home in those who are full of lies
May they abandon the rancour and deceit born of their own vainglory
But may they find comfort in fraternity with their neighbour
and in being children of God.
Amen

Dedicated to this forum and the wider internet.

[Punished UMN]

Since the post is too long to quote for just a small remark and deleting chunks of text on my phone is tiresome, I just want to note regarding the church covered in bones.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedlec_Ossuary did you mean this?

Yep. So it was in the Czech Republic. Thanks for finding that.

@Salus Maior
I hope you are being ironic, because that bone church has nothing to do with that century old report.

@UMN
It's nice to see you still are capable of compassion. It would be also nice if you could drop the strawman about denial, which you, Senkaku and others, have been touting.

It's not a strawman, you're denying a well-known historical fact by attributing it to a disease which wasn't rampant at the time and comparing it to death rates which were not around at the time.

[Senkaku]

@Senkaku
Aren't you conflating "scapegoating" with "to held accountable" ?
Scapegoating always involves a shift of responsibility (or blame), and where there is a shift of responsibility, at least one subject is going to be held accountable for more responsibility than they deserve, and at least one subject is going to be held accountable for less or no responsibility than they deserve.
To support scapegoating, is to approve for the lack of accountability over some subjects, and for an unfair and biased application of justice.
And you aren't supporting that, right?

No one is being “scapegoated,” you’re using the term in a hysterical fashion to paint any discussion of dark parts of Church history as anti-Catholic bigotry of some form.

Once again, I'm talking about scapegoating, which is not the same as being held accountable.
If you want to insist with your exclusive use of language, be free, but that would mean you are not replying to me any longer. But rather strawmanning.

Going to go out on a limb and guess that you do not know what that term means either lol

And no, your solution about not talking about terrible things, for fairness, sucks as solution.

I know. I was comparing your argument to another hypothetical bad one, which I assumed would be obvious.

I'm rather for the opposite, when the informations are available extensively on all involved subjects, to talk about all of them, which actually helps addressing the issue in its wholeness.

Manifestly not, since you’re upset about this information being publicized.

And when the informations aren't complete, to expose and discuss the available informations with fairness, without media clickbait titles and sensationalism, for more ad revenue and subscribers. That is not only unfair to the issue, but also immoral, to distort facts for greed. And without political score settling, or for bias confirmation of historical or new prejudices. (anti-catholicism being the prejudice in question)

Since no historical record can really ever be said to be “complete,” unless you have futuristic super-fMRI brain scans of everyone present or something, this is just giving yourself a way out on squashing information you don’t like— since the media is a business, everything it publishes will be for the purpose, ultimately, of gaining ad revenue and/or subscribers, and could be argued to be tainted with “clickbait titles” or “sensationalism,” since those things are easy to re-define to fit different situations. You’re just finding ways to justify suppressing information that makes you uncomfortable.

I'm hoping for too much? This is probably not the best place for explorative discussions anyway, as what runs 90% or more of this forum is spite, and not curiosity.
Likewise on other internet outlets, without spite, most internet boards and sites would be barren, which sucks for anyone driven by curiosity.



This is the revised version of the prayer for the spreaders of deception. (thanks for the suggestions)

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit
and by the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary
May peace find those who are full of hatred
May truth find home in those who are full of lies
May they abandon the rancour and deceit born of their own vainglory
But may they find comfort in fraternity with their neighbour
and in being children of God.
Amen

Dedicated to this forum and the wider internet.

Cute.

[Old Tyrannia]

The controversy about Ireland's Magdalene Laundries, and the women and children who were mistreated and died in them, is nothing particularly new. It has been rumbling on for some time in Ireland, and along with the more publicised child abuse scandal has likely contributed significantly to the decrease in trust towards the church amongst the Irish population. I've seen many Catholics, and many non-Catholic Christians as well, bewail the fact that Ireland has gone from one of the most staunchly Catholic societies on the planet to an increasingly secularised and irreligious country in the last few decades, but the role of the church itself in bringing about this sea change is rarely discussed. The idea that hostility towards the church could be a justifiable and reasonable response to the actual behaviour of the church and its representatives is one that many Catholics refuse to even consider; many would rather fall back on comforting sentiments like "the Church is a perpetually defeated thing that always outlives her conquerors" (Hilaire Beloc) or "there are not one hundred people in the United States who hate The Catholic Church, but there are millions who hate what they wrongly perceive the Catholic Church to be" (Fulton Sheen). These kinds of quotations summon up a comforting image of the church as an institution of noble martyrs, continuously slandered and oppressed by the secular world, just as the apostles were two thousand years before.

The problem is that this is not an accurate portrait of the Roman Catholic Church at all. There are many devout Catholics in the world who have been inspired by their faith to do good, that is indisputable. But it's also quite indisputable that for much of its history the Catholic Church has not been a "defeated thing" but rather an institution of almost unparalleled reach and power, and that power has often been abused by those within the church. It is easy for Catholics to claim that such abuses are the fault of individuals within the church and don't reflect the fundamentally good nature of the church itself, but this is a cheap cop-out and utterly unconvincing to non-Catholics who don't start from the position that the Catholic Church is a divinely sanctioned institution with exclusive claims to higher truths. When Catholics respond to valid criticism of the church's actions in the way certain individuals in this thread have, by dismissing it as propaganda and the critics as bigots, or by painting well-grounded anger against the church as irrational prejudice, it strengthens the impression in others that the church as a whole is irredeemably corrupt and malevolent rather than it being an organisation of generally good people marred by a minority who do not live up to its higher ideals.

The Catholic Church is unique amongst Christian churches and denominations because of its great size, its highly centralised structure and the institutional power and wealth it has possessed through its history, often with a great degree of independence from any outside influence. As such it not only has a particularly chequered history but the church as a whole bears a greater responsibility for horrors like the Magdalene Laundries than other Christian denominations do for many of the skeletons in their own closets. You can't, for example, lay the responsibility for parts of the Orthodox Church's complicity in genocidal actions in the former Yugoslavia in the 20th century at the doorstep of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, because the latter has no real authority or jurisdiction over the autocephalous churches in the Balkans. The Vatican, though, has to bear ultimate responsibility for the historical crimes committed under its jurisdiction just as governments of former imperial powers must bear the ultimate institutional responsibility for atrocities committed during their colonial periods.

Nonetheless, it is fair to note that nursing a victim complex rather than accepting responsibility for the faults of the church is by no means a uniquely Catholic phenomenon. Indeed the determination on the part of many Christians to see themselves as faultless victims of persecution regardless of the veracity of that worldview has wreaked enormous damage in Protestant Christianity in the United States, where the Religious Right have effectively convinced American Evangelicals that they are the target of a grand anti-Christian conspiracy and in doing so won uncritical support for the politicians they favour. Undoubtedly there are many places in the world, including in Western countries, where Christians face some degree of prejudice and marginalisation, including here in England where being an observant Christian is increasingly regarded by society and in media as somewhat eccentric and even unsavoury. But we also need to be aware that people hurt by the church- by any church- are not going to be won back by closing ranks and covering our eyes, ears and mouths at any mention of the darker parts of the church's history. And we certainly do Christianity no favours by pretending that we're the victims of serious religious persecution when we clearly aren't.

tl;dr: Many Catholics have a frustrating tendency to always cast themselves as victims and ignore their church's history of doing bad things or write it off as anti-Catholic propaganda; other Christians are not innocent of this either, and Christians in general suffer from a collective delusion that we are more persecuted in the modern West than we really are. We should really stop this because it doesn't do us any favours when it comes to spreading the Gospel or even just convincing non-Christians that we're decent people.

[Lost Memories]

AUSTRAC claimed the Vatican wired $2.3 billion to Australia. The true figure was $9.5 million

The financial crime watchdog has issued a grovelling apology after accidentally telling Parliament that the Vatican transferred $2.3 billion to Australia over seven years when the actual amount was less than $10 million.

Review shows Australia made huge miscalculation on funds transfers

Australia’s financial watchdog has drastically reduced the sum of money it says was sent from the Vatican to Australia, the Vatican said on Wednesday, after it earlier reported a huge figure which raised suspicions of money laundering.

The joint Vatican-Australian review showed only A$9.5 million ($7.35 million) transited between 2014 and 2020, a fraction of the A$2.3 billion ($1.77 billion) originally reported by the watchdog to widespread astonishment.

The Vatican contested the huge figures in December and asked the Australian financial intelligence unit, known as AUSTRAC, to review its calculations. Some media had speculated that the Vatican could have been used to launder money.

AUSTRAC’s error was first reported by the Australian newspaper earlier on Wednesday, which said it was due to a computer coding mistake.

From looking at comments over the news, the silence of the people who had their anti-catholic tirade over the previous mistaken report is deafening. If not for few comments still in denial.
But well, that's the world we live in. May they find peace in their minds.


@Old Tyrannia
I friendly suggest you to inform yourself about hate crimes against christians, in the west.
People rarely get murdered for their faith in the west, but that doesn't mean it's either all roses and flowers. (I can provide sources if you need)

[Salus Maior]

*snip*

Well spoken I'd say. But I would note that is is difficult to lay blame on the Catholic Church as a whole. You could issue blame vertically, as it were, to the administration, but your average parish Priest doesn't really have any knowledge or ability to prevent scandal in the Church as a whole.

[Neanderthaland]

"The greatest destroyer of peace is abortion because if a mother can kill her own child, what is left for me to kill you and you to kill me? There is nothing between."
-St. Mother Teresa

Are countries where abortion is illegal statistically more peaceful then nations where it is legal?

[Adamede]

"The greatest destroyer of peace is abortion because if a mother can kill her own child, what is left for me to kill you and you to kill me? There is nothing between."
-St. Mother Teresa

Ah yes the Catholic Church, well known historical pacifists.

[Salus Maior]

"The greatest destroyer of peace is abortion because if a mother can kill her own child, what is left for me to kill you and you to kill me? There is nothing between."
-St. Mother Teresa

Are countries where abortion is illegal statistically more peaceful then nations where it is legal?

Legality and acceptability are not necessarily the same things.

[Salus Maior]

"The greatest destroyer of peace is abortion because if a mother can kill her own child, what is left for me to kill you and you to kill me? There is nothing between."
-St. Mother Teresa

Ah yes the Catholic Church, well known historical pacifists.

Peace is a Catholic virtue. Not always followed very well, but it is.

Which is the same that I could say for Jains or Buddhists for that matter.

[Luminesa]

"The greatest destroyer of peace is abortion because if a mother can kill her own child, what is left for me to kill you and you to kill me? There is nothing between."
-St. Mother Teresa

Are countries where abortion is illegal statistically more peaceful then nations where it is legal?

There's...not a lot of those countries remaining, but the correlation between abortion being legal and countries being violent seems a bit...slim?

[Luminesa]

And yes, it's always uncomfortable to talk about the skeletons in the closet of organizations, faiths, movements, etc. that we're a part of, but deflecting from those skeletons to make ourselves more comfortable should be the opposite of how we, as Christians, think about sins of the past.We should steel ourselves in our faith by working to be better and to heal the body of Christ. Having scars means one was hurt, but it also means that one survived and healed.

Amen!

[Luminesa]

We shouldn’t ignore the dark parts of our history. We should take note of them and strive to be better. Let God’s will be done on earth as it is in Heaven. That means we need to do God’s will, and that is to bring peace and healing.

Quite.

Catholics should no more dismiss the troubling legacy of the treatment of infants in Catholic institutions in Ireland or the impact of 20th-century child abuse as 'defamation' than Orthodox Christians should dismiss the horrifying recent legacy of the support of some Orthodox priests for genocidal nationalists in the Balkans as 'defamation'.

Unfortunately, some people do horrible things in the name of Christianity. Brushing aside attempts to address those horrible things as defamatory attacks on the relevant denomination, or on Christianity as a whole, helps no one.

...I mean, yes, it was a tumultuous time, but over 40% is still pretty staggering (and I’m pretty sure the Spanish Flu had blown thru by the ‘30s?)

Yes, it had blown through. I did some work commemorating the centenary of the Spanish Flu pandemic in a past role as the heritage manager for a national Red Cross society. That pandemic lasted from early 1918 to spring 1920, and the Spanish Flu would have been irrelevant to infant mortality rates for infants under a year old in the 1930s through 1940s.

We should punish these actions and seek to do better in the name of representing what it means to truly be pro-life: to acknowledge pain so that it may be healed by genuine compassion.

[Senkaku]

"The greatest destroyer of peace is abortion because if a mother can kill her own child, what is left for me to kill you and you to kill me? There is nothing between."
-St. Mother Teresa

Ah yes the Catholic Church, well known historical pacifists.

To be fair to the Church, I imagine it would be difficult to exist for two millennia and not kill anyone. It’s a long time, shit comes up, mistakes are made.

[Adamede]

Ah yes the Catholic Church, well known historical pacifists.

Peace is a Catholic virtue. Not always followed very well, but it is.

Which is the same that I could say for Jains or Buddhists for that matter.

Real world concerns almost always takes precedent over virtues.

[Tarsonis]

Peace is a Catholic virtue. Not always followed very well, but it is.

Which is the same that I could say for Jains or Buddhists for that matter.

Real world concerns almost always takes precedent over virtues.

not always but sometimes the stakes are that high.

[Adamede]

Real world concerns almost always takes precedent over virtues.

not always but sometimes the stakes are that high.

More often than not.

[Tarsonis]

not always but sometimes the stakes are that high.

More often than not.

id say no.

[Adamede]

More often than not.

id say no.

I’d say yes. Checkmate.

[Tarsonis]

id say no.

I’d say yes. Checkmate.

mmkay

[Salus Maior]

id say no.

I’d say yes. Checkmate.

No u.

[Luminesa]

Peace is a Catholic virtue. Not always followed very well, but it is.

Which is the same that I could say for Jains or Buddhists for that matter.

Real world concerns almost always takes precedent over virtues.

Virtues should be a part of dealing with real-world concerns.