[pattricia]

Originally Posted by buck

My wife Pauline was a devout catholic, and when we decided to get married she wanted it ti be in her church. We were then told by the pastor that we had too attend martriage counselling. We were both widowed, she after 8 years of marriage, me after 23 years. When I went to see him, I said I think I know more about a happy marriage than he ever would, and if I'm anything I'm a protestant. The child abuse scandal was the last straw for her, she hasn't been to a catholic church in years.

I too was raised a Catholic and like your wife I was disgusted by the priests in the abuse case. More sinful than that, was the bishops who covered up for them, by moving them from place to place.

[shanes teeth]

Originally Posted by rabitter

hope i never meet a nazi catholic

If you ever do you may have to kiss his ring.

[Harleyman]

Originally Posted by buck

My wife Pauline was a devout catholic, and when we decided to get married she wanted it ti be in her church. We were then told by the pastor that we had too attend martriage counselling. We were both widowed, she after 8 years of marriage, me after 23 years. When I went to see him, I said I think I know more about a happy marriage than he ever would, and if I'm anything I'm a protestant. The child abuse scandal was the last straw for her, she hasn't been to a catholic church in years.

I was baptized a Catholic but for years believed I was C of E. All my records in UK show this.
I only found out in later years that I was a Catholic. My wife is a Lutheran but non practicing. Didint matter as we were married in Vegas.

I dont bother with church either. I'm not up to sitting in a box "confessing" to someone half my age sitting in another box next door and the molestation scandals put paid to any prospect of "returning to the fold"

[Aleksandr]

Originally Posted by pattricia

Catholics brought it about, so Catholics should carry the can.

Yes, even the vast majority who were not responsible or knew anything about it!

[mj.scuba]

Originally Posted by rabitter

hope i never meet a nazi catholic

You missed the Pope's visit then?

[Harleyman]

Originally Posted by Bloomdido

Their limits know no bounds. The lengths they will go to to maintain those limits are legendary.

They've gotten away with a lot thanks to the the hesitation and apparent reluctance of civil authority to intervene and prosecute everyone involved in molestation of these boys... even those who who were not actually molesters yet who knew about it.
It was left to the church to deal with it internally and it was a failure

The cardinal of a diocese in southern California was found during an investigation to have transferred molesting priests to another parish even though he was aware of it at the time.

Did he ever go to jail or subjected to disciplinary action of any sort?
Not on your life. To his devout followers he remained some kind of sacred entity who was capable of walking on water

[Harleyman]

Originally Posted by mj.scuba

You missed the Pope's visit then?

To be fair the Pope like all boys in Nazi Germany was required to enlist in the Hitler Youth. If you didnt you were thrown in a concentration camp as an enemy of the state.
The Pope's war record shows him serving in an anti-aircraft battery as a member of a gun crew.
Hardly right therefore to classifiy him as a Nazi IMO

[Bloomdido]

Originally Posted by evildrneil

Oooooh a new contender for the most moronic thread on Sheffield Form - and it has to be the bookies favourite!

How is it 'moronic'? The comment came up in a Facebook group and I had not made the comparison previously. There have been some thought-provoking comments made.

My history is patchy at best but I know it got very bloody when Henry VIII parted company with the Catholic franchise Mary had 280 dissenters burnt at the stake.

Both regeimes considered that they were acting for the 'common good' of their people and could only operate their ideologies if people were willing to carry them out. The renowned psychologist, Alice Miller wrote a fascinating biography of Hitler and the trends in child-rearing in Germany that produced a generation of people who would do exactly what they were told to, without questioning it. "Spare the rod and spoil the child" ideology.

Are there similarities to be drawn in how the Catholic church placed the sanctity of its child-raping priests above all else? What motivated people like Brady, despite knowing the truth, to do nothing at best and at worst, to be complicit in spreading the abuse to new parishes.

[davi]

As Dougal once asked Father Ted,"Are Nazis like priests Ted?"
"No Dougal, Nazis like to dress in black and tell people what to do, whereas priests........"

[pattricia]

Originally Posted by davi

As Dougal once asked Father Ted,"Are Nazis like priests Ted?"
"No Dougal, Nazis like to dress in black and tell people what to do, whereas priests........"

Now thats funny !

[Ryedo40]

The Nazis weren't doing anything different from what the Church had systematically being doing throughout its history: persecuting, oppressing & slaughtering Jews(and others - including the wrong sort of Christians). The only real difference is the Nazis, with the support of both Catholic & mainstream German Protestant churches, did it on a more industrialised scale.

Because the Catholic church actively supported the Nazi regime, my vote has to be the Catholic church.

[evildrneil]

Originally Posted by Bloomdido

How is it 'moronic'? The comment came up in a Facebook group and I had not made the comparison previously. There have been some thought-provoking comments made.

Take one organisation that exists to spread a religion, provide aid and support but that has attracted some ****ty people and compare it to another organisation built on nationalism and racism who attempted to murder entire sections of population and take over the world. To even contemplate making such a comparison you would have to be so divorced from reality as to be deranged.

Originally Posted by Bloomdido

My history is patchy at best but I know it got very bloody when Henry VIII parted company with the Catholic franchise Mary had 280 dissenters burnt at the stake.

You can't make comparisons of what happened in turn of 15th/16th century to what happened in the 20th - comparisons only stand in the era and society in which they happen. Would you consider say the fact that Romans would enjoy a day out watching people thrown to the beats or burnt alive as entertainment means that modern Romans are similarly barbaric? Of course not.

[evildrneil]

Originally Posted by LeMaquis

Fascism came from Catholic areas, Italy and Bavaria in paticular.

So of course it influenced the rise of fascism!? Way to draw a conclusion on not even a correlation!

[LeMaquis]

Originally Posted by evildrneil

So of course it influenced the rise of fascism!? Way to draw a conclusion on not even a correlation!

But that doesn't mean that Catholicism was worse than fascism even if it influenced it. Protestantism also played a part in Nazism. Our own royals had Hitler admirers among them and they definitely weren't catholic.

[mort]

Posts removed for a variety of reasons.

So we are clear - if this gets dragged off topic again it will be closed. If you start bickering and insulting each other again I will be issuing bans to all the participants.

[flamingjimmy]

Originally Posted by evildrneil

Take one organisation that exists to spread a religion, provide aid and support but that has attracted some ****ty people

That's a very rose-tinted view of the Catholic church, it has been about politics from thew very beginning, they aren't just a missionary and aid organisation, that's absurd. Over the centuries the church has wielded enormous power, certainly comparible to states. Remind me, who was it who called for the crusades and by his words alone mobilised most of europe to mount one of the largest military campaigns of all time?

[evildrneil]

Originally Posted by flamingjimmy

That's a very rose-tinted view of the Catholic church, it has been about politics from thew very beginning, they aren't just a missionary and aid organisation, that's absurd. Over the centuries the church has wielded enormous power, certainly comparible to states. Remind me, who was it who called for the crusades and by his words alone mobilised most of europe to mount one of the largest military campaigns of all time?

Sigh. And did you miss or just ignore the point about only being able to make comparisons in the time and society in which they took place? The crusades took place in an era of widespread religious and political warfare such as the Moorish invasion of Spain. And if we're talking about the role of the Catholic church lets look at The Children's Crusade. 30,000 odd children who as a grass roots movement took up arms and started a crusade frequently urged on by their parents against the wishes of the Pope and Bishops.

As to largest military campaigns of all time - the first and largest crusade had about 30-35,000 crusaders take part lets weigh that against say the English Army in the Napoleonic wars of over 250,000

[Bloomdido]

Originally Posted by evildrneil

Take one organisation that exists to spread a religion, provide aid and support but that has attracted some ****ty people and compare it to another organisation built on nationalism and racism who attempted to murder entire sections of population and take over the world. To even contemplate making such a comparison you would have to be so divorced from reality as to be deranged.


You can't make comparisons of what happened in turn of 15th/16th century to what happened in the 20th - comparisons only stand in the era and society in which they happen. Would you consider say the fact that Romans would enjoy a day out watching people thrown to the beats or burnt alive as entertainment means that modern Romans are similarly barbaric? Of course not.

The Catholic Church doesn't want to take over the world? I think perhaps it has realised that it can't but that didn't stop it from trying and killing thousands and thousands along the way. By your rules, we can't go there because it happened a few hundred years ago so it's not relevant.

Look at what the Catholic heirachy is trying to do to Obama because they don't like his policies. Look at Brazil and the nine year-old rape victim whose mother has been excommunicated, look at the uber-bishops kicking off about Gay marriege and trying to recruit children to sign a petition against it.

Let's reflect on what the world would be like if Catholics wielded today, the power they once had. There would be;

No contraception
No abortion
No divorce
Programmes to convert Gays to being straight
All children to be raised as Catholics (Or a return to sectarianism)
All schools to be Catholic
No women priests ever
All 'issues' to be dealt with internally
All dissenters to be quashed.

Tell me who is deranged.

[evildrneil]

Originally Posted by Bloomdido

The Catholic Church doesn't want to take over the world? I think perhaps it has realised that it can't but that didn't stop it from trying and killing thousands and thousands along the way. By your rules, we can't go there because it happened a few hundred years ago so it's not relevant.

I haven't said that what happened hundreds of years ago is irrelevant what I have said is that you can only draw a comparison in a single frame of reference. So lets take a look at the frame of reference - WW2. In WW2 the Nazis murdered over 20 million people of various flavours. At the same time the pope at the time (who Stalin later tried to smear as a silent pope) was regarded by Hitler as "the only human being who has always contradicted me and who has never obeyed me" and gave orders that the church was to aid jews in escaping the holocaust which lead to the saving of at least 700,000 lives. In fact so strong was the Catholic church in the face of the horrors of Nazism that Albert Einstein (a refugee from Hitler's rise to power and with a bounty on his head through the war) stated: "Only the Church stood squarely across the path of Hitler's campaign for suppressing truth. I never had any special interest in the Church before, but now I feel a great affection and admiration because the Church alone has had the courage and persistence to stand for intellectual truth and moral freedom. I am forced thus to confess that what I once despised I now praise unreservedly." I'm sure to any reasonable and rational (or if you prefer not deranged) person that this shows that the Nazis were considerably worse than the Catholics.

Originally Posted by Bloomdido

Look at what the Catholic heirachy is trying to do to Obama because they don't like his policies.

You mean campaigning against him because they don't agree with what he's doing? That's called democracy.

Originally Posted by Bloomdido

Look at Brazil and the nine year-old rape victim whose mother has been excommunicated

Which was a stupid act - but hardly encapsulates the entirety of the catholic church.

Originally Posted by Bloomdido

look at the uber-bishops kicking off about Gay marriege and trying to recruit children to sign a petition against it.

Again, democracy. It's not just democracy when they say things you like you know. As to trying to recruit children - so you have never seen a child at a political or pressure group rally for anything else? It is the norm not some vile aberration.

Originally Posted by Bloomdido

Let's reflect on what the world would be like if Catholics wielded today, the power they once had. There would be;

No contraception
No abortion
No divorce
Programmes to convert Gays to being straight
All children to be raised as Catholics (Or a return to sectarianism)
All schools to be Catholic
No women priests ever
All 'issues' to be dealt with internally
All dissenters to be quashed.

Which is all supposition on your part. The Catholic church doesn't have that power and as such you have absolutely no idea what would have happened or how it would have changed if it had. Introducing your magical all knowing view of a parallel universe is evidence of nothing at all.

Originally Posted by Bloomdido

Tell me who is deranged.

That's pretty self evident.

[flamingjimmy]

Originally Posted by evildrneil

Sigh. And did you miss or just ignore the point about only being able to make comparisons in the time and society in which they took place?

No I didn't miss that point, you seem to have missed the OP which asks us to consider the long view, because clearly, if we only looked at the period when the nazis were in power, then it would be no contest who was worse. That's rather the point, whether the centuries of corruption, malice, and bigotry of the catholic church adds up to as much as the horrors of the Nazis. Personally, I don't think it does but it's an interesting discussion and if anyone deserves to be godwinned, it's the catholic church.

Originally Posted by evildrneil

The crusades took place in an era of widespread religious and political warfare such as the Moorish invasion of Spain. And if we're talking about the role of the Catholic church lets look at The Children's Crusade. 30,000 odd children who as a grass roots movement took up arms and started a crusade frequently urged on by their parents against the wishes of the Pope and Bishops.

Originally Posted by evildrneil

As to largest military campaigns of all time - the first and largest crusade had about 30-35,000 crusaders take part lets weigh that against say the English Army in the Napoleonic wars of over 250,000

Seriously? You chastise me about "only being able to make comparisons in the time and society in which they took place" and then you compare two campaigns that 700 years apart? for real?

In any case all of this is a sideshow, you completely ignored my main point which was a rebutall of your false portrayal of the catholic church as being a benign organisation that mostly does good but just attracts a few bad apples. Like 'aw poor little catholic church, they try to do good, but are let down by a minority'.

I'm sorry but that is absurd, it is a sinister backwards force that held back human progress for centuries, and caused the deaths of who knows how many people.

And right up to this day it is still corrupt, they are still more concerned about the image of the church than they are about the safety of the children in their care, they are still contributing to the aids crisis in africa.

Mother Theresa raised millions under the pretense of caring for the sick, and then the overwhelming majority of the money goes to building new convents to train more nuns to spread the religion further.

the amount of money they horde in the vatican is obscene, Jesus would be so ashamed of the way they live whilst millions of his followers starve and die.

They are pretty much indefensible.

The size of the crusades does not alter my point, at all: The popes have wielded and abused enormous amounts of power over the centuries, to the point of what amounted to being able to dictate foreign policy to multiple powerful states.