Faith-based blackmail

The Roman church has a poor theology, the result of being more interested in defending entrenched positions and people than any interest in scripture or truth.

My wife used to cook for a group of them - the priests had a set of apartments that were very nicely appoointed, a flat-screen tv, and drove around in a Mercedes; they received their dinner in their quarters. The nuns - most of them in their eighties - scrubbed floors and did other menial tasks, lived in their cells, and ate in a separate dining room. The sense of privelege on the part of the priests was palpable, and reflects the general attitude of its leadership. It is also reactionary, as evidenced when any woman suggests a bit of power-sharing or consideration.

As the rest of the world continues to advance, it is more and more out of touch with that world, and appears more and more rediculous. At the same time, it continues to retrench, giving more of its resources and energy to defending itself. The current debate has come down to a matter of the church trying to defend its sense of privelege; when it loses, it will decry the perverseness of the world, rather than its own foolishness, as the source of the problem. It has become a church of old bachelors, who want to be coddled and slavishly obeyed, who need to maintain their sense of privelege, and who can't figure out why no one listens to them anymore.

Roman Catholicism has always been a reactionary force. Just look at the history of Spain or any country where the Catholic Church has had a monopoly in terms of population. Ireland and Poland are just two more examples. This is a church of ignorance and prejudice against women and Gay people. Roman Catholicism is the perfect example of the banality of a system based on patriarchy. All progressive and secular forces must strongly resist Catholic attempts to impose their stale dogma on the rest of the American public.

Mr. Spong writes:
The United States Roman Catholic Bishops always have a hidden agenda, which is to impose their faith and value systems on the rest of the nation. They also operate out of a conviction that they possess the only true faith. I am not impressed by either of those principles.
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The same is true of Protestant Fundamentalists and certain Orthodox Christians with whom you should be similarly unimpressed. Since our Congressmen lack the courage, it remains for a brave Constitutional lawyer to file suit against religionist churches for their aggressive lobbying, breaching the republic's nonestablishmentarian principles.

That suit will not succeed; however, it may well usher in legislation that keeps the churches out of the Congress, a development devoutly to be wished.

Pegwukguy1: If the previous commentor knew the history of the RC church, he'd know that the church never formally acknowledged their error; and even when they did, they never admitted an error, just a slight problem with .. oh .. whatever."

I'm not sure what you thinking of as the error. You say that the Church never formally acknowledged its error, but with regard to heliocentrism it never formally *committed* an error, so what's the big deal? The Church never declared Galileo to be scientifically wrong (although he turned out to be partly wrong, and the part he guessed correctly about was not actually demonstrated until later). The Church has since indicated that some of its theologians involved in Galileo's trial drew incorrect *theological* conclusions about the significance of Galileo's theories might be, and of course its treatment of Galileo was wrong. But the Church never declared that the Earth does not revolve around the sun, an idea that originated with a cleric (Copernicus) and received a rather decent reception from the Church for a long time before Galileo. Moreover, in the 18th century the first edition of Galileo's collected works was published under the auspices of - surprise - the Catholic Church, and the Church was largely responsible for the dissemination of Galileo's ideas in later years.

Clearly, the Church had not been stubbornly refusing to accept Galileo's ideas all those years.

tojby_2000 stated, "Jewish law of the day treated the fetus as a paternal property issue and could lay fines on one who delivered a blow to another man's wife that resulted in damage/death to his property."

I am sure he/she is referring to Exodus 21:22-25, "If men strive, and hurt a woman with child, so that her fruit depart from her, and yet no mischief follow: he shall be surely punished, according as the woman's husband will lay upon him; and he shall pay as the judges determine. And if any mischief follow, then thou shalt give life for life, Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, Burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe."

This verse has been misinterpreted to suppose that by the "fruit depart from her" means that the child died. That simply is not true. It means that the woman gave premature birth caused by induced labor by the fighting participants. The key phrase is, "yet no mischief follow..." If mischief does follow, then it will be life for life, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, etc, etc. That applies for both the mother and the child.

The Catholic Church has had its knickers in a twist for a while now over abortion. The issue has become the animating force behind their political (and fundraising) drives. But their principal deity had no trouble with it.

1. Jesus lived and taught at a time when exposure (infant abandonment) and abortion were routine practices throughout the Middle East and the world.
2. While he had a great deal to say about a number things, neither of these legal practices were mentioned in any gospel, let alone condemned there. Do believers really think that it was an oversight?
3. Jewish law of the day treated the fetus as a paternal property issue and could lay fines on one who delivered a blow to another man's wife that resulted in damage/death to his property.
4. Silence = Consent

A good link for those that need clarification on the dogma of the Roman Catholic Church.

The fact is, the Church actually has doctrinal leeway on liberalizing it's stand on many issues, including allowing marriage for the clergy, gay marriage, ordination of women, the active support of a broad array of birth control methods, and even abortion itself - at least under certain circumstances.

Currently, the Church is unwilling to support abortion even in the case of rape, incest, or an overt threat to the life of the mother.

I suppose rational folks should consider that a reasonable position?? The Bishops are doing the bidding of a Pope steeped in medievalism....how else can all of this be interpreted?

As other posters have said both here and elsewhere, a majority of Catholics are very far from unanimous in their support of official Church positions on these and other issues.

A good many Catholics simply do what seems morally and ethically called for, under a given set of circumstances. They live with that mindset quite comfortably, as they recognize that they are solely responsible for their own destiny, and that of their families.

People follow the dictates of a solitary and remote authoritarian figure walled away in the Vatican at their own risk.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Catholic_Dogma

But Galileo was right, wasn't he?

He described the planet Jupitor, and observed that it had moons that orbitted it, and came to a conclusion about the nature of the Solar System, which is now recongized by just about everybody as being true and correct. Even Catholic clergy, I am sure, know the true nature of the Solar System, a system of planets, that orbit the sun, even if they still cling to some Medeival legal technicality that Galileo's conclusions were wrong.

If the previous commentor knew the history of the RC church, he'd know that the church never formally acknowledged their error; and even when they did, they never admitted an error, just a slight problem with .. oh .. whatever. As for being homophobic homosexuals Spong is spot on.

The 1991 paper wasn't a case of the Church "finally" acknowledging that Galileo was correct any more than Bill Clinton's apology for slavery was a case of the United States "finally" acknowledging that slavery was wrong. Nice try though. I get the sense that most of what Spong thinks he knows about the Catholic Church is just plain wrong.