Christian Discussion Thread XI: Anicetus’ Revenge

[Kowani]

It's barbarism of the lowest order. Let us hope if aliens ever find us that they don't mutter some gibberish about their imaginary friend and leader, and then set about murdering everyone.

"Barbarism of the lowest order"? Which atrocities do you mean? I would say human sacrifice rituals, including children, as practiced by the native American peoples was the worst. Or do you disagree?

There was also the publication of Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias. In Spain, there was the Leyes y ordenanzas nuevamente hechas por su Majestad para la gobernación de las Indias y buen tratamiento y conservación de los Indios . Also Pope Paul III issued Sublimus Dei. People can look these up.

Here's a link to Sublimus Dei. https://www.papalencyclicals.net/Paul03/p3subli.htm

By the way, slavery was abolished in Mexico before it was in the USA. I mention this because I know from personal experience that many of us native English speakers grow up thinking we are somehow superior morally to the Mexicans or other Latin Americans. In fact, we all share exactly the same human nature. As the saying goes, people in glass houses should not throw stones.

okay
an order from de las Casas or the Pope or the King doesn't mean much if it's not followed

[Albrenia]

"Barbarism of the lowest order"? Which atrocities do you mean? I would say human sacrifice rituals, including children, as practiced by the native American peoples was the worst. Or do you disagree?

Yeah, killing innocent people in the name of one's faith is barbarism. Be it cutting the heart out of some poor child to appease a thirsty god, or slaughtering his relatives because they don't simultaneously speak a language they've never been exposed to and submit to the 'divine' right of a crown they've no knowledge of.

[Karlopetrus]

"Barbarism of the lowest order"? Which atrocities do you mean? I would say human sacrifice rituals, including children, as practiced by the native American peoples was the worst. Or do you disagree?

There was also the publication of Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias. In Spain, there was the Leyes y ordenanzas nuevamente hechas por su Majestad para la gobernación de las Indias y buen tratamiento y conservación de los Indios . Also Pope Paul III issued Sublimus Dei. People can look these up.

Here's a link to Sublimus Dei. https://www.papalencyclicals.net/Paul03/p3subli.htm

By the way, slavery was abolished in Mexico before it was in the USA. I mention this because I know from personal experience that many of us native English speakers grow up thinking we are somehow superior morally to the Mexicans or other Latin Americans. In fact, we all share exactly the same human nature. As the saying goes, people in glass houses should not throw stones.

okay
an order from de las Casas or the Pope or the King doesn't mean much if it's not followed

Very true, in practice. But there was an official teaching. The King and the Pope were in Europe, the colonizers were in America. Perhaps the King or the Pope or other people could have done more, but it's not for me to judge. Even today many Catholics ignore what the Church teaches when it's convenient for them, politically or otherwise. Just look at the pro-life issue. Some say "I'm a devout Catholic, I pray every day, I go to Mass regularly" and then are against the pro-life movement. Another example is Mit brennender Sorge by Pius XI, published in 1937. It was written in German and smuggled into Germany where it was read on Palm Sunday in the Churches. The so-called government of Hitler responded rather viciously. I provide a link below.

There is a quotation from Goebbels about this. I have not sourced it yet, but I think it expresses the actual Nazi view of Christianity. He said the Christian world view is the opposite of the heroic German view, and that after the war Germany would need to deal with the "Christian problem." They had particular hatred for Catholics, because the Church is global, not national. But for political reasons they couldn't herd all the Christian ministers into concentration camps right away. As far as Catholics who supported the Nazi program, the ones who were in church that day and heard the Pope's statement knew the score. But I don't judge them either. The Nazi government killed many Christian German citizens who opposed it. I'm no hero, so who am I to judge them?

http://www.vatican.va/content/pius-xi/e ... sorge.html

[The Archregimancy]

While this is new for this particular position, female advisors to the Pope are not ENTIRELY unprecedented.

Yeah, I even missed the other part of that story-The day before, he appointed Catia Summaria as the first woman Promoter of Justice in the Vatican’s Court of Appeals.


I need better sources for religious news
What do you guys use, anyway?

This is really, really tricky for Orthodoxy given the jurisdictional and language issues involved. Almost every Orthodox news site emphasises a particular viewpoint - so calibrating for this can be important.

But a few English-language sources that can be of some use:

1) Orthodox Times; fairly new English-language online 'newspaper' that professes to be independent, but is clearly affiliated with Constantinople at some level. This means it often foregrounds the views of the Patriarchate with a primacy of honour while nonetheless striving for a pan-Orthodox approach. Offers strong coverage of American and Australian issues: https://orthodoxtimes.com/

2) Moscow Patriarchate English-language site; very much the official news arm of the Patriarchate, and therefore unlikely to say or do anything to upset the Patriarch or the Russian state, but still representative of the thinking of the demographically largest wing of Orthodoxy: http://www.patriarchia.ru/en/

3) Orthodox Church in America; official website of the website of a North American jurisdiction whose canonicity is fully recognised even while there's disagreement over its autocephaly; not really a news site (though there's some news, with a focus on the OCA), but has excellent theological resources for anyone casually interested in Orthodoxy: https://www.oca.org/



I also had a quick search for Spanish-language resources for you.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, I didn't have too much luck in Spain itself, though I did come across the website of the Spanish parishes of the French & Western European diocese of the Serbian Orthodox Church (!): http://www.iglesiaortodoxa.es/

I had better luck in South America, where there's a bit of a diaspora (a branch of my wife's family ended up in Buenos Aires after the Russian Revolution, for example). Here's the site of the South American diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia: https://iglesiarusa.info/

The Greeks only seem to have a Facebook page for their South American archdiocese: https://www.facebook.com/pages/category ... 568171511/

I tell a lie! Here's Constantinople's (rather good) South American website: https://ortodoxia.com.ar/


Finally, there's an Orthodox Wiki with both English and Spanish articles (though there are several thousand of the former, and only 133 of the latter).
English: https://orthodoxwiki.org/Main_Page
Español: https://es.orthodoxwiki.org/Portada

[Lost Memories]

The youtube channel of the vatican just streamed the audience of the pope with the diplomatic corps.
The speech of the pope to the diplomats was not very different from the his common comments after the angelus prayer, but with more details on the various international issues.

Dubbed in English
Dubbed in Spanish
Dubbed in Portuguese
Dubbed in German
Dubbed in French
Dubbed in Italian
Original sound (opening in french from the ambassador of cyprus, speech of the pope in italian)
Other channels in other languages
(the vietnamese channel seem to be very popular, they don't have the translation up yet, must be because of the timezone difference)

Original stream, with some of the farewells which were cut at the end. (it may be available for around 10 hours)

[Neutraligon]

Not sure if this has been posted, and I have no idea how trustworthy the source but if true the report should be released immediately https://www.thedailybeast.com/german-nu ... ays-report

From the look of it, it looks kind of like a tabloid.

Edit: Since apparently multiple sources are confirming this story, I suppose it's just another incredibly sad and tragic part of our history.

Hopefully those responsible will be brought to justice.

Unfortunately many ho took part are apparently dead, and so cannot take responsibility.

[Diahon]

Not sure if this has been posted, and I have no idea how trustworthy the source but if true the report should be released immediately https://www.thedailybeast.com/german-nu ... ays-report

"too gory to publish"? coming from the country whose denizens once upon a time went full holocaust, then made sure to account itself for posterity's sake, that shit don't wash, not at all

those directly responsible -- those who turned a blind eye -- those still alive -- want no accounting, want no reputations destroyed (now)

[The New California Republic]

Not sure if this has been posted, and I have no idea how trustworthy the source but if true the report should be released immediately https://www.thedailybeast.com/german-nu ... ays-report

"too gory to publish"? coming from the country whose denizens once upon a time went full holocaust, then made sure to account itself for posterity's sake, that shit don't wash, not at all

those directly responsible -- those who turned a blind eye -- those still alive -- want no accounting, want no reputations destroyed (now)

Indeed. It reeks of attempted coverup.

[Lost Memories]

From the look of it, it looks kind of like a tabloid.

Edit: Since apparently multiple sources are confirming this story, I suppose it's just another incredibly sad and tragic part of our history.

Hopefully those responsible will be brought to justice.

Unfortunately many who took part are apparently dead, and so cannot take responsibility.

Nor defend themselves, before taking responsibility, as rule of law goes. Nor be available to the law, to uncover further past issues.
These cases being so old doesn't really help anyone. Both the victims and the people involved in managing and improving institutions.

[New Visayan Islands]

Unfortunately many who took part are apparently dead, and so cannot take responsibility.

Nor defend themselves, before taking responsibility, as rule of law goes. Nor be available to the law, to uncover further past issues.
These cases being so old doesn't really help anyone. Both the victims and the people involved in managing and improving institutions.

And conspiracy loves an information vacuum, especially one where the information fades away from living memory.

[The New California Republic]

Unfortunately many who took part are apparently dead, and so cannot take responsibility.

Nor defend themselves, before taking responsibility, as rule of law goes. Nor be available to the law, to uncover further past issues.
These cases being so old doesn't really help anyone. Both the victims and the people involved in managing and improving institutions.

Actually it does. Meticulously scrutinising these cases does help assure that they can never happen again. And it appears that the victims want this story heard.

[Sundiata]

I had a spiritual director and friend who was really helpful. He told me that choosing to live his life in a virtuous way would make it enjoyable independent of what religious path he had chosen. He practiced hinduism at one point.

[Lost Memories]

Nor defend themselves, before taking responsibility, as rule of law goes. Nor be available to the law, to uncover further past issues.
These cases being so old doesn't really help anyone. Both the victims and the people involved in managing and improving institutions.

And conspiracy loves an information vacuum, especially one where the information fades away from living memory.

Yeah. But at least the historians of our time have learned a bit from the mistakes of the historians of the past. So it should be less likely for an historian in the future, to use the "dailybeast", taken literally, as a primary source for their professional history articles. (like instead happened in the past)

But the popular news feed instead will continue to ride on the narrative built on lack of informations. We are still dealing with popular beliefs with no historical basis, afterall. That may be something every age will have to deal with.

Unless every person becomes an historian, or literate in historical standards.
That goes to show how the history lessons at school, can be terrible tools of national propaganda, but they also can be the antidote to propaganda, if done properly. (not just memorizing dates and names, but understanding the course of events, their context, and how the pieces were put together by historians)

[The New California Republic]

And conspiracy loves an information vacuum, especially one where the information fades away from living memory.

Yeah. But at least the historians of our time have learned a bit from the mistakes of the historians of the past. So it should be less likely for an historian in the future, to use the "dailybeast", taken literally, as a primary source for their professional history articles. (like instead happened in the past)

But the popular news feed instead will continue to ride on the narrative built on lack of informations. We are still dealing with popular beliefs with no historical basis, afterall. That may be something every age will have to deal with.

Unless every person becomes an historian, or literate in historical standards.
That goes to show how the history lessons at school, can be terrible tools of national propaganda, but they also can be the antidote to propaganda, if done properly. (not just memorizing dates and names, but understanding the course of events, their context, and how the pieces were put together by historians)

It doesn't help when a Bishop of an archdiocese tries to suppress information either...

[Luminesa]

Semi-relevant to the latest discussion, today is the Day of Prayer and Awareness Against Human Trafficking. Let us remember today the little thousands of little children missing in the US and abroad, and let us continue to pray and work for their recovery. Human trafficking is in everyone’s backyard. The kidnapping of a little girl from New Iberia last night reminded me of this tragic reality. She was found safe this morning, but how many more go missing and are never found? We must pray that justice and mercy may come for these children, and that their kidnappers may be punished.

Some relevant links below, both to educate yourself and others:
https://www.usccb.org/committees/admini ... inst-human (The USCCB’s official statement on the date.)
https://www.missingkids.org/theissues/trafficking (The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children’s article specifically on child trafficking-there are plenty more resources on the website for the variety of reasons why children go missing, and how you can help.)
https://www.missingkids.org/gethelpnow/search (A current active AMBER Alert for anyone in the Davenport, IA area, as well as a search engine for children who might be missing in your area.)
https://www.missingkids.org/blog/2020/r ... -community (Resources for missing Native/First Nations children)

[The New California Republic]

Semi-relevant to the latest discussion, today is the Day of Prayer and Awareness Against Human Trafficking. Let us remember today the little thousands of little children missing in the US and abroad, and let us continue to pray and work for their recovery. Human trafficking is in everyone’s backyard. The kidnapping of a little girl from New Iberia last night reminded me of this tragic reality. She was found safe this morning, but how many more go missing and are never found? We must pray that justice and mercy may come for these children, and that their kidnappers may be punished.

Some relevant links below, both to educate yourself and others:
https://www.usccb.org/committees/admini ... inst-human (The USCCB’s official statement on the date.)
https://www.missingkids.org/theissues/trafficking (The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children’s article specifically on child trafficking-there are plenty more resources on the website for the variety of reasons why children go missing, and how you can help.)
https://www.missingkids.org/gethelpnow/search (A current active AMBER Alert for anyone in the Davenport, IA area, as well as a search engine for children who might be missing in your area.)
https://www.missingkids.org/blog/2020/r ... -community (Resources for missing Native/First Nations children)

Poverty is by far one of the biggest causes of child trafficking, so tackling poverty is the best way to tackle this issue.

[Luminesa]

Semi-relevant to the latest discussion, today is the Day of Prayer and Awareness Against Human Trafficking. Let us remember today the little thousands of little children missing in the US and abroad, and let us continue to pray and work for their recovery. Human trafficking is in everyone’s backyard. The kidnapping of a little girl from New Iberia last night reminded me of this tragic reality. She was found safe this morning, but how many more go missing and are never found? We must pray that justice and mercy may come for these children, and that their kidnappers may be punished.

Some relevant links below, both to educate yourself and others:
https://www.usccb.org/committees/admini ... inst-human (The USCCB’s official statement on the date.)
https://www.missingkids.org/theissues/trafficking (The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children’s article specifically on child trafficking-there are plenty more resources on the website for the variety of reasons why children go missing, and how you can help.)
https://www.missingkids.org/gethelpnow/search (A current active AMBER Alert for anyone in the Davenport, IA area, as well as a search engine for children who might be missing in your area.)
https://www.missingkids.org/blog/2020/r ... -community (Resources for missing Native/First Nations children)

Poverty is by far one of the biggest causes of child trafficking, so tackling poverty is the best way to tackle this issue.

Absolutely agree.

[Kowani]

Yeah, I even missed the other part of that story-The day before, he appointed Catia Summaria as the first woman Promoter of Justice in the Vatican’s Court of Appeals.


I need better sources for religious news
What do you guys use, anyway?

This is really, really tricky for Orthodoxy given the jurisdictional and language issues involved. Almost every Orthodox news site emphasises a particular viewpoint - so calibrating for this can be important.

But a few English-language sources that can be of some use:

1) Orthodox Times; fairly new English-language online 'newspaper' that professes to be independent, but is clearly affiliated with Constantinople at some level. This means it often foregrounds the views of the Patriarchate with a primacy of honour while nonetheless striving for a pan-Orthodox approach. Offers strong coverage of American and Australian issues: https://orthodoxtimes.com/

2) Moscow Patriarchate English-language site; very much the official news arm of the Patriarchate, and therefore unlikely to say or do anything to upset the Patriarch or the Russian state, but still representative of the thinking of the demographically largest wing of Orthodoxy: http://www.patriarchia.ru/en/

3) Orthodox Church in America; official website of the website of a North American jurisdiction whose canonicity is fully recognised even while there's disagreement over its autocephaly; not really a news site (though there's some news, with a focus on the OCA), but has excellent theological resources for anyone casually interested in Orthodoxy: https://www.oca.org/

ooh, thank you

I also had a quick search for Spanish-language resources for you.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, I didn't have too much luck in Spain itself, though I did come across the website of the Spanish parishes of the French & Western European diocese of the Serbian Orthodox Church (!): http://www.iglesiaortodoxa.es/

I had better luck in South America, where there's a bit of a diaspora (a branch of my wife's family ended up in Buenos Aires after the Russian Revolution, for example). Here's the site of the South American diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia: https://iglesiarusa.info/

The Greeks only seem to have a Facebook page for their South American archdiocese: https://www.facebook.com/pages/category ... 568171511/

I tell a lie! Here's Constantinople's (rather good) South American website: https://ortodoxia.com.ar/


Finally, there's an Orthodox Wiki with both English and Spanish articles (though there are several thousand of the former, and only 133 of the latter).
English: https://orthodoxwiki.org/Main_Page
Español: https://es.orthodoxwiki.org/Portada

ah hell yeah

[Kexholm Karelia]

No offense but I really don’t understand Catholic theology. Why do you guys treat Mary as if she is a deity? Of course she is not as important as God or Jesus, but still. Same with the Saints

[Sundiata]

No offense but I really don’t understand Catholic theology. Why do you guys treat Mary as if she is a deity? Of course she is not as important as God or Jesus, but still. Same with the Saints

So we don't worship Mary or treat her like a deity. We just ask her to pray on our behalf. Anyone praying to Our Lady is doing it wrong.

[Tarsonis]

No offense but I really don’t understand Catholic theology. Why do you guys treat Mary as if she is a deity? Of course she is not as important as God or Jesus, but still. Same with the Saints

Her being less important doesn't make her unimportant.

[Luminesa]

I have to say that while I understand sometimes this thread has its moments when it is slow, recently we have had quite a lot of arguments back and forth about human trafficking in this thread. In particular, people were upset over the article about German nuns trafficking children, and not because of the actual story, but because they wanted to debate it had come from a tabloid (when Kowani graciously posted more reputable links in the same vein as his first post on the subject) and thus should not be taken seriously. Others did then back-track and say that the issue was important. You know who you are.

And so this morning, given that the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops marked this day as a Day of Prayer and Awareness of Human Trafficking, I figured that we might be able to turn some of that anger into something that not only will bring healing to the Church, but to ALL people who have ever lost a child or a family member to trafficking. I figured WE could stand-up for the voiceless. I don't have Facebook, I don't use most other social media for a variety of reasons (Facebook and Twitter are inherently toxic and also spy on you), but there are absolutely people HERE who can spread the word to those larger websites because THEY have those social media accounts. And so I posted resources to give people some way to educate themselves, to pray on this matter, to even take a second, just a second, out of their day to consider the active AMBER Alert in Davenport, IA,and to pray for this missing little girl's rescue. While we are having our debates on this website, her life is in imminent danger.

I am ashamed that I have to write this post. This is not me saying, "Why is nobody responding to Lumi's post?" This is a matter of people taking their time to show they are willing to step-up as people, as Catholics, as whatever denomination you are when you come into this thread. I speak to my Catholic brothers and sisters who have come and scolded other posters for daring to point-out that we have wounds to heal in our Church, and I say: Shame. On. You.

Even just a SINGLE prayer for one of these children could save their life. The little girl who was kidnapped in New Iberia, Louisiana could have been gone forever, if not both for the man who found her during his service route and for the many, many prayers that most likely went out for her safe return. I don't take this silence as an insult to me. I take it as an insult to these children who cannot speak for themselves. Who need genuine pro-life voices to fight for them. They are voiceless. Little Jalisa Dessalle was voiceless. The thousands of other children on The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children's website are voiceless. Shame. On. You.

THANK YOU, New California Republic, for taking a moment out of your day to acknowledge these resources on behalf of these missing children. I hope you are able to pass them to someone who needs them. (There are other resources for the UK, I imagine, but I can go look for those as well.)

These children's lives are on our hands. Remember what Christ told His followers in Matthew 25: "Whatsoever you have done for the least of these, so you have done onto Me."

[The New California Republic]

^ Try not to read too much into the lack of responses, as people sometimes just don't respond because the subject matter is difficult to think about and acknowledge. You might have made a difference without realising it, as having talked about it has made people at least aware that it's still an issue that needs dealt with.

[Saiwania]

Poverty is by far one of the biggest causes of child trafficking, so tackling poverty is the best way to tackle this issue.

The problem is that so long as people either make bad decisions or have bad circumstances, at least some people out there will remain poor. Its even more complicated that its not mutually exclusive. We have to conclude that the LBJ attempt of a war on poverty failed. Every approach to resolving it seems to require post scarcity. Which doesn't look like will happen.

The larger point is that some people will regularly waste or not recognize opportunities that others might and so on. That is the cost of incompetence or mistakes. Every society that has formed seems to naturally divide itself into a low, middle, and high in due time. And if you've declined or already are of low status, there are only so many ways to get on the path of financial mobility if not stability, which is that it probably won't happen without wiser choices if not sacrifice.

Bad begets more bad and the opposite seems true as well, where if you make truly good decisions, it leads to better outcomes that build on eachother, similar to how enough money makes more money by default just in terms of interest or investments.

[Kowani]

Poverty is by far one of the biggest causes of child trafficking, so tackling poverty is the best way to tackle this issue.

The problem is that so long as people either make bad decisions or have bad circumstances, at least some people out there will remain poor. Its even more complicated that its not mutually exclusive. We have to conclude that the LBJ attempt of a war on poverty failed. Every approach to resolving it seems to require post scarcity. Which doesn't look like will happen.

The larger point is that some people will regularly waste or not recognize opportunities that others might and so on. That is the cost of incompetence or mistakes. Every society that has formed seems to naturally divide itself into a low, middle, and high in due time. And if you've declined or already are of low status, there are only so many ways to get on the path of financial mobility if not stability, which is that it probably won't happen without wiser choices if not sacrifice.

Bad begets more bad and the opposite seems true as well, where if you make truly good decisions, it leads to better outcomes that build on eachother, similar to how enough money makes more money by default just in terms of interest or investments.

By what metric did the War on Poverty "fail?"
from where I'm, standing, and from the perspective of most economists, the WOP was a pretty fucking successful endeavor
we can make people's lives better