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Nessus posted:I think if you are interested in discussing the historical details of the Inquisition, you would perhaps put it something like this: "It is interesting to consider that, despite their many evils and cruelties, the Inquisition were also among the first recorded situations where people were provided with defense attorneys or their equivalents. (Perhaps include a source document here.)" My issue is that if we’re supposed to know who’s so bad that we can’t allow any possibility for anyone to think we approve of them, how do we determine who they are so we can prevent something like this happening again? Either we need a set of explicit rules or we have to trust that we all mean well and any oversight is just an honest mistake. For (vague) example some people have very strong opinions about the sex lives of some major religious figures, if we don’t include disclaimers about them whenever they’re mentioned does that mean we approve of what they did?
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Jul 21, 2021 17:43
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The hint would be that, again, you could write the sentence 'I know they were founded for a crime against humanity, but-'. If you've said the first clause of that sentence, you know there were serious issues with the foundation and purpose of an organization. This is not actually as difficult or complex as you're making it out to be. And I say this as someone who also knows the Inquisition did a great deal to limit the damage of witch trial hysteria in Spain, accurately citing exactly how ridiculous most standards of evidence were, etc. Before going back to 'It's also taking away time we could be using for persecuting the Jews' as another critical reason to cease dealing with witch trials. Judge Salazar's writings on the Witch Trials are kind of a rollercoaster that way.
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Jul 21, 2021 17:52
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Crazy Joe Wilson posted:Just my two cents. Tias posted:We nordic heathens Valiantman posted:I I believe time will heal much. First of all, thank you very much for your perspectives on my situation. I really do appreciate it. Nessus posted:I will say that you may wish to contemplate how you consider the feelings of others. This would have never been easy, but it seems that you were greatly surprised at her reply. By cultivating this kind of a perspective - which can be challenging to do, and which is not necessarily urgent if you are at the point of 'I just chopped this cord, I need it to clot and heal some' - you can act skillfully and avoid causing such harms in the future. I'm wondering if you could elaborate on this point of "how you consider the feelings of others." Because while I was surprised at her reply, I knew it was going to hurt her a little bit. I guess the surprise came in the form that I mattered to her enough to make her cry and break her heart. What I'm saying is, I knew we both cared about each other rather deeply, but I didn't know she cared that much. I had quite literally no knowledge that she felt this deeply. Obviously we had a very deep friendship, but it never felt like we needed to explicitly state these things. Some things, such as our mutual care for one another, were just evident without needing to be made explicit. So I knew there was a mutual care involved in this friendship, I knew it ran deep, I just didn't know how deep it really ran. In any case, thank you again for the advice. I appreciate it.
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Jul 21, 2021 18:32
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Hello, I have never posted here before, but I have a sincere (if slightly silly) theological question for any Catholics (or other Christian denominations that recognize sainthood): can a dog (or other animal) be a saint, and if not, why not?
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Jul 21, 2021 19:47
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Viscardus posted:Hello, I have never posted here before, but I have a sincere (if slightly silly) theological question for any Catholics (or other Christian denominations that recognize sainthood): can a dog (or other animal) be a saint, and if not, why not? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Guinefort
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Jul 21, 2021 19:52
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Viscardus posted:Hello, I have never posted here before, but I have a sincere (if slightly silly) theological question for any Catholics (or other Christian denominations that recognize sainthood): can a dog (or other animal) be a saint, and if not, why not? god is dog backwards I am afraid
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Jul 21, 2021 19:52
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This is just my gut reaction, but no. Animals do not have immortal souls as taught by the Catholic Church, and lack the capacity for free will, relying instead on instinct/training/familiarity. Without free will, one cannot choose good or evil. That isn't to say animals can't do good things, love their owners, show emotions like bravery or loyalty, or show some empathy. They can do all those things, but not out of a conscious choice, where they weigh the consequences of their decisions. There is an urban legend of saint Guinefort. Supposedly the dog was venerated by locals as a protector of infants, but I believe there was evidence that people actually were engaging in infanticide by leaving their babies there to die. Needless to say, the Catholic Church tried to suppress the cult and stop the infanticide, intentional or accidental. Crazy Joe Wilson fucked around with this message at 20:02 on Jul 21, 2021 |
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Jul 21, 2021 19:59
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Yeah, I'm familiar with the story of St. Guinefort, which is what led indirectly (by way of another conversation I had) to my asking the question. Crazy Joe Wilson posted:This is just my gut reaction, but no. Animals do not have immortal souls as taught by the Catholic Church, and lack the capacity for free will, relying instead on instinct/training/familiarity. Without free will, one cannot choose good or evil. I apologize if this is an obvious question, but I'm not a Christian. Why do they need an immortal soul to be a saint? Don't they just need to be present in heaven and thus able to intercede with God? Did Don Bluth lie to me about the ability (and in fact certainty thereof) of dogs to go to heaven?
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Jul 21, 2021 20:24
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Viscardus posted:Yeah, I'm familiar with the story of St. Guinefort, which is what led indirectly (by way of another conversation I had) to my asking the question. They need a soul to go on existing after death. No creature without a soul can exist in heaven. And no creature without a soul can have real morality - to say dogs are good is obviously true but it's not the same kind of good. A dog can't choose good or evil. ...this isn't my personal position, but it's the Catholic position.
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Jul 21, 2021 20:36
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Viscardus posted:Yeah, I'm familiar with the story of St. Guinefort, which is what led indirectly (by way of another conversation I had) to my asking the question. To add to what HopperUK said, pets can be in Heaven, according to several Catholic theologians, but they can only be there as an expression of God's love for you. A dog itself is not getting into Heaven, and Christ did not die so that all dogs might live. Father Mike Schmitz explains it better than I can. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDI0vn83Y-g
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Jul 21, 2021 21:00
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Viscardus posted:Hello, I have never posted here before, but I have a sincere (if slightly silly) theological question for any Catholics (or other Christian denominations that recognize sainthood): can a dog (or other animal) be a saint, and if not, why not? Come to Buddhism where you cat might one day end up being the next Buddha. I’m joking of course the Maitreya currently dwells in Tusita heaven awaiting Shakyamuni’s dharma to perish so that he may reestablish it. Now the Buddha after the maitreya…
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Jul 21, 2021 21:30
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Cool, thanks for the answers.BIG FLUFFY DOG posted:Come to Buddhism where you cat might one day end up being the next Buddha. This seems more my speed, personally.
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Jul 21, 2021 22:03
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My oft-repeated joke on this subject (a couple times in this thread or its predecessors even) is that there are without question cats in heaven because you try keeping a cat out of somewhere it really wants to be. I don't have a strong position on the question of non-human creatures having or not having eternal souls, access to the afterlife, access to sainthood, etc., because I simply don't know. Aside from a number of metaphors involving sheep and shepherds applicable to an agrarian society, the one thing I recall Jesus saying about God's love as it relates to the animal kingdom is that he cares if a sparrow falls out of the sky, so I figure there's a chance, you know?
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Jul 21, 2021 22:10
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Animals came from paradise, just like humans, so why shouldn't they go back there when they die?
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Jul 21, 2021 22:27
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Crazy Joe Wilson posted:This is just my gut reaction, but no. Animals do not have immortal souls as taught by the Catholic Church, and lack the capacity for free will, relying instead on instinct/training/familiarity. Without free will, one cannot choose good or evil. "Man is just an animal; sometimes better, more often worse than those who walk on all fours." - Anton LaVey
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Jul 21, 2021 22:45
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Freudian posted:Animals came from paradise, just like humans, so why shouldn't they go back there when they die? I mean in Christian thought the Garden of Eden and Heaven are two different places.
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Jul 21, 2021 22:59
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Vasukhani posted:A day ago I accidentally went to a cafe owned by these assholes, it was a big red flag when I noticed that all the front of house was men and the kitchen was all women. I obviously didn't want to patronize the place, especially considering the children that seemed to be "helping their parents" bus tables and such. When I was thinking about the experience, it struck me however that I wouldn't have the same issue if the staff were, say, Hasidic Jews, even though they might be just as regressive and practice as much child abuse. It's a long time ago now, call it '95 or '96 or thereabouts, but I had a friend of a friend (or more accurately the ex of a friend, names changed, call them "Mark" and "Melanie") who fell in with this group. I didn't know Mark very well, he was a mutual friend of Melanie and some other college friends who'd known each other a bit longer than I'd known any of them, but he seemed a nice, friendly guy, someone who'd clearly been through some poo poo but it hadn't wrecked him or turned him bitter, you know? Anyway, they (then known to us as "The Community") had a little encampment not far from where we all went to school, and I'm not sure exactly how he got in with them, but in he got, and Melanie was Not Best Pleased. (That's what precipitated them breaking up, though I couldn't say for certain whether the writing was on that particular wall anyway.) I went with her to visit him (and them) one evening, and honestly it was a pleasant enough time, if off-putting. There was nothing outwardly anti-semitic or white supremacist on display that night (not that those elements may not be present in their beliefs, but it wasn't being advertised then and there), but it was definitely the case that the men were in charge and the women were there to wait on them and otherwise stay out of the way. (The very hesitant way the female community members acted, particularly around us as outsiders, is what I found most disturbing in retrospect.) He moved away to another of their enclaves and kind of disappeared into their world despite Melanie's best efforts to keep in touch. I am honestly not sure if she ever found him again, and I know it didn't sit right with her. (He wasn't, again, someone I knew especially well, so while I was sad, it wasn't a gutwrench like it might otherwise have been.) Anyway, as for the Community/Twelve Tribes themselves, I definitely got more of a "new religious movement" vibe off them than a "scam" vibe. We were not pressured to stay, or to join up though they were certainly happy to tell us about themselves and we got loaded down with literature. Mark definitely chatted me up a few times about the group after that, too, but he backed off when I wasn't interested, and I think he was pretty typical of their number, at least those I ran into. Their beliefs are absolutely not my beliefs, and I think their treatment of women in particular is appalling, but I'm not sure I'd think of them that differently from any other separatist religious group beyond that. These memories are distant in time and space, and all tied up with my memories of my friend and her friend, so I would in no way consider myself an authority of any sort on them, just that I did meet them once. I didn't go back. And, absent a very good reason, I wouldn't.
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Jul 22, 2021 02:14
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So I've occasionally mentioned my past in here, about how my family was Catholic with one side being much more devout than the other. Can any Catholics or anybody who knows tell me what it was that, if I was over their house during a "holiday", they would make little me turn off TV and not play games for like an hour or so? I think it was maybe for Easter or Lent or something? Vaguely related, I've really been interested in education reform theories and practices. I think one thing our schools need is not prayer exactly but meditation. I've seen that suggested a few places and it makes so much sense to me. I bring this up here though because my super Catholic grandparents did what they did entirely wrong and I fear any school meditation sessions could be bungled just as badly. Don't just sit a 9-year-old down and tell them no TV or talking to friends. I didn't learn poo poo, I was just annoyed. You have to properly instruct them in what they are to do instead and not just tell them no or give vague guidelines. Basically the idea of school meditation is great just like teaching classic literature is great but we gently caress that up already too with its execution and turn people against reading. I fear that could happen with the meditating if poorly done.
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Jul 22, 2021 08:20
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Re: animal chat, I think that the question concerning the ultimate fate of animals actually a deeper and more interesting theological problem than a lot of people give it credit for, particularly as it concerns theodicy. While there are many theological solutions to the problem of suffering and the problem of evil, the trouble is that a lot of them don't account for the suffering of animals. It may be asserted, for example that worldly suffering is necessary because the provision of free will is a greater good, or because suffering is necessary to the process of 'soul-making' (a la John Hick), or because worldly suffering will be compensated with heavenly bliss, but the trouble is that none of these solve the problem of animal suffering (as philosophers of religion such as William Rowe have famously pointed out). That is, if God is truly good, then why do animals suffer? For some philosophers of religion, like Trent Dougherty, the most attractive solution is to assume that the ultimate fate of animals will actually be no different to the ultimate fate of people: quote:[Animals] will not only be resurrected at the eschaton, but will be deified in much the same way that humans will be. That they will become, in the language of Narnia, “talking animals.” Language is the characteristic mark of high intelligence. So I am suggesting that they will become full-fledged persons (rational substances) who can look back on their lives – both pre- and post-personal – and form attitudes about what has happened to them and how they fit into God’s plan. If God is just and loving, and if they are rational and of good will, then they will accept, though with no loss of the sense of the gravity of their suffering, that they were an important part of something infinitely valuable, and that in addition to being justly, lavishly rewarded for it, they will embrace their role in creation. In this embrace, evil is defeated. I understand that that's an unorthodox position, but I at least admire it for taking the problem of animal suffering seriously.
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Jul 22, 2021 10:16
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NikkolasKing posted:So I've occasionally mentioned my past in here, about how my family was Catholic with one side being much more devout than the other. Can any Catholics or anybody who knows tell me what it was that, if I was over their house during a "holiday", they would make little me turn off TV and not play games for like an hour or so? I think it was maybe for Easter or Lent or something Nope, sorry, no idea. Though of course individual practice varies so much and my Catholic upbringing was a lot less intense than some.
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Jul 22, 2021 11:17
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Quoting James Herriot from memory: "Of course there are pets in Heaven. It wouldn't be Heaven unless our pets are there waiting for us"
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Jul 22, 2021 12:05
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BattyKiara posted:Quoting James Herriot from memory: "Of course there are pets in Heaven. It wouldn't be Heaven unless our pets are there waiting for us" 
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Jul 22, 2021 12:28
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Blurred posted:I understand that that's an unorthodox position, but I at least admire it for taking the problem of animal suffering seriously. In the bible, God is said to have compassion on all he's made, to have his eye on every sparrow, to have instituted laws that explicitly require good treatment of animals, and so on. In the famous episode of Balaam's rear end when a donkey is miraculously enabled to speak, the donkey complains about ill treatment in basically the same terms as the problem of evil. (“What have I done to you, that you have struck me these three times?” And Balaam said to the donkey, “Because you have made a fool of me. I wish I had a sword in my hand, for then I would kill you.” And the donkey said to Balaam, “Am I not your donkey, on which you have ridden all your life long to this day? Is it my habit to treat you this way?” And he said, “No.”) Clearly animals are important to God, even if they haven't been a theological focus to us preoccupied humans. I don't think animals are moral agents with souls in need of redemption, but I don't see why God wouldn't take care of them after death, particularly the ones with consciousness.
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Jul 22, 2021 12:40
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SwbGjzF3mB0
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Jul 22, 2021 20:02
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Please pray for my aunt P. She is super morbidly obese to the point she can’t release enough carbon dioxide from her lungs so she had to be hospitalized and put on a ventilator. The doctor says if she can breath without the ventilator later on she will be OK, but that’s a big if. My mother is, obviously, quite upset and will be driving 500 miles there after work tomorrow and then 500 miles back on Sunday for work Monday (my mother is a beast). Please pray for her as well.
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Jul 22, 2021 23:45
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Thirteen Orphans posted:Please pray for my aunt P. She is super morbidly obese to the point she can’t release enough carbon dioxide from her lungs so she had to be hospitalized and put on a ventilator. The doctor says if she can breath without the ventilator later on she will be OK, but that’s a big if. My mother is, obviously, quite upset and will be driving 500 miles there after work tomorrow and then 500 miles back on Sunday for work Monday (my mother is a beast). Please pray for her as well. Of course! And sorry to hear of your troubles.
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Jul 22, 2021 23:48
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Night10194 posted:The hint would be that, again, you could write the sentence 'I know they were founded for a crime against humanity, but-'. Since everyone else wants to move on, and I can’t see how I can continue trying to make my case without explicitly saying things that’ve only been alluded to, I hope I’m proven wrong and the thread never has the sort of problem I’ve been predicting. I’m going to limit my involvement so I don’t come across like I’m trying to vindicate myself by stirring things up. I’m sorry for dragging out something so painful.
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Jul 23, 2021 00:05
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Cardinal Burke adds his voice to Cd. Sarah: https://twitter.com/cardinalrlburke/status/1418342207443066884?s=20 Thirteen Orphans posted:Please pray for my aunt P. Prayers for Orphans' family. NikkolasKing posted:I think one thing our schools need is not prayer exactly but meditation. I agree. My 10th grade English teacher taught us meditation. He was all "Lol tenure. Let's read existentialism."
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Jul 23, 2021 00:20
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Actually took longer for Burke to weigh in than I expected. He's very vocal about his opinon on the 'deficiences' of the Ordinary Form, and onging feud with Pope Francis over not being sufficiently conservative.
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Jul 23, 2021 06:39
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Thirteen Orphans posted:Please pray for my aunt P. She is super morbidly obese to the point she can’t release enough carbon dioxide from her lungs so she had to be hospitalized and put on a ventilator. The doctor says if she can breath without the ventilator later on she will be OK, but that’s a big if. My mother is, obviously, quite upset and will be driving 500 miles there after work tomorrow and then 500 miles back on Sunday for work Monday (my mother is a beast). Please pray for her as well. Light surround Aunt P and all her family. May she find the strength to get through this. Amen.
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Jul 23, 2021 11:45
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I say this with all the love and good faith in the world, I feel like every time I pick a random Bible section, I pick something that deeply irks me. Like a sample I used to listen to a lot before I even I got my first Bible was from Romans so I thought I'd start there. This was years ago but anyway, I got to the part condemning being gay and was like nope. The other day I started reading Genesis and God gives Adam dominion over Eve and women.... Just now I was downloading a Bible from Audible and clicked on a part to see if everything was fine and heard God Himself commanding the death of women and infants. I know Christianity is more than the Sermon on the Mount and peace and love. That's fine. But I guess my thing is I would hope anything you devote your life (and afterlife) to would be perfect. Homophobia and baby murder is the total opposite of that. Humans can be flawed, the Church can be a horrible institution of injustice, but God and the laws he lays down? Is it too much to ask they all comply with what you believe? I dunno. I think I believe in God. A personal God, not just the idea of a God. Or maybe it's more of a Goddess for me, even. (thanks to the poster from pages ago recommending She Who Is) But the details are always working against me. A poster earlier suggested I'm just afraid, and I don't doubt that is part of it. But I also don't think it's all of it. I know these objections are fairly common. But I always hated the New Atheist types. I would never wanna be that.
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Jul 23, 2021 18:31
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NikkolasKing posted:I say this with all the love and good faith in the world, I feel like every time I pick a random Bible section, I pick something that deeply irks me. The most important thing to remember is that the Bible was not handed down from On High, penned directly by the Hand of God. It is an amalgamation of hundreds of works by dozens of writers over the course of a couple thousand years. When you study a piece of scripture, the first things to ask are, "Who wrote this? Who were they writing to? When did they write it? Why did they write it?" Everything in the Bible needs to examined in terms of the culture it came from and the accepted norms of the time. There's a lot of passages that seem quite regressive today, but when you compare it to what was expected at the time turn out to be rather radical. You have to peel back the words to understand the message, then translate it through time and space to what is relevant for today.
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Jul 23, 2021 18:39
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NikkolasKing posted:I say this with all the love and good faith in the world, I feel like every time I pick a random Bible section, I pick something that deeply irks me. Are you familiar with the Talmud, the commentaries on the Hebrew Scriptures? We didn’t adopt them into our canon when we broke from Judaism but those commentaries are eye-opening. They really wrestle with the Scripture, sometimes to the point of breaking it over their knee. A good example “spare the rod and spoil the child” was commentated “let your rod be as a shoelace.” Stuff like that. Kinda similar to our Early Church Fathers.
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Jul 23, 2021 22:39
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Thirteen Orphans posted:Are you familiar with the Talmud, the commentaries on the Hebrew Scriptures? We didn’t adopt them into our canon when we broke from Judaism but those commentaries are eye-opening. They really wrestle with the Scripture, sometimes to the point of breaking it over their knee. A good example “spare the rod and spoil the child” was commentated “let your rod be as a shoelace.” Stuff like that. Kinda similar to our Early Church Fathers. I will say, you guys didn't adopt them because they had yet to be written for several centuries  but otherwise I endorse this point. There's even a school of thought in Jewish theology that asks whether permitting the Holocaust was a breach of contract on God's part - a famous story along these lines talks about Jews in a concentration camp, who put God on trial for his crimes, and find him guilty. Having done so, they adjourn to pray.(the best thing about this level of critique of God is that you have the precedent to hold the Sages to the same level of scrutiny - my first sermon was calling out the Talmud on covering up sexual assault in the Torah)
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Jul 23, 2021 22:57
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Freudian posted:I will say, you guys didn't adopt them because they had yet to be written for several centuries Whoops, got my dates mixed up.
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Jul 23, 2021 23:02
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For a Christian there's basically three approaches to moral difficulties in the bible. The first is to explain them away, and I should put that in scare quotes because it's not a fair description. It really is true that what seems like a plain black-and-white problem to us might not be a problem when armed with a few thousand years of missing cultural and linguistic context. The second is to admit that our own secular cultural mores are extremely unlikely to be the One True Final End of Moral Progress and we might be the ones in the wrong. Maybe if the bible isn't so keen on something that we consider acceptable or even obligatory, we should be open to the idea that it's us who're mistaken. But of course that assumes that you have correctly interpreted the bible in the first place - plenty of people have gone totally off the rails by reading isolated verses through their own lenses divorced from any holistic framework of theology. (This is why Catholics and Orthodox are so big on tradition and continuity.) The third is to say "Yes, the bible says this, but it's wrong, and we know better now." Whether it's ever legitimate is a pretty heated topic, as you'd expect. Related to some of the discussion on previous pages, it's almost the definition of modernism. (This argument seems to be active between the various strains of Judaism as well, but I'm not well-versed on that.)
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Jul 23, 2021 23:44
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I think I've got a handle on Motu Proprio, but as a non-Catholic, I have no idea what's going on in Germany. Everything I've heard about it is contradictory. It's either extremely chill and normal or the signs of a schism waiting to bring the church to its knees. Are there any Catholics willing to give the basic rundown for confused onlookers?
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Jul 24, 2021 00:59
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Canine Conspiracy posted:I think I've got a handle on Motu Proprio, but as a non-Catholic, I have no idea what's going on in Germany. It's the same, except in a mirror.
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Jul 24, 2021 01:08
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Canine Conspiracy posted:I have no idea what's going on in Germany.
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Jul 24, 2021 01:13
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NikkolasKing posted:I dunno. I think I believe in God. A personal God, not just the idea of a God. Or maybe it's more of a Goddess for me, even. (thanks to the poster from pages ago recommending She Who Is) But the details are always working against me. A poster earlier suggested I'm just afraid, and I don't doubt that is part of it. But I also don't think it's all of it. I know these objections are fairly common. But I always hated the New Atheist types. I would never wanna be that. For me the way out of the problems with the Bible is to see the humanity of God. The Word of God was a person. There is an old folk song. “If anybody ask ye, Who I am, Who I am, Who I am? If anybody ask ye, Who I am, Who I am, Who I am? Tell em Im a mother’s child. Jesus was a mother’s child.” God’s revelation was a person, Jesus. And as people we are all his brothers and sisters. So when I look at the Bible, this was written by people in particular times and places, imperfect, with agendas, in sin. We don’t get to live in the world with Jesus. So where can we look for God’s revelation? Other people, other mother’s children and the Father’s children, and the brothers and sisters of Jesus. They aren’t God’s word like Jesus is, but God’s word is in them (I am a trinitarian after all) by the Holy Spirit. But they’re still people in sin too. In this way I look at the Bible as written by people and thus produced by sinners but still containing God’s word.
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Jul 24, 2021 04:29
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