My understanding is that there was one Nazi excommunicated for marrying a protestant woman. Goebbels.

SafeAsMilk wrote:

Skinny Puppy wrote:

http://camelswithhammers.com/2010/05/18/legalism-over-life-nun-performs-life-saving-abortion-and-gets-excommunicated/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excommunication_of_Margaret_McBride

That’s one example of charitable love by the church, if anyone wants 1000s more, let me know.

Great post. I would be very happy if you provided more, I've got a few apologists that need to get nipped in the bud. As far as I'm concerned, such a list would be thoroughly on-topic

I used some poetic license there regarding the numbers in order to emphasis the absurdity of the church’s doctrines of hypocrisy. However, more relevant is latae sententiae excommunication, or automatic excommunication.

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

Here’s a list of some recent and some not so recent excommunications. It includes only excommunications acknowledged or imposed by a decree of the Pope or a bishop in communion with him

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

This case in particular is revolting.

The case of the pregnant 9-year-old was shocking enough. But it was the response of the Catholic Church that infuriated many Brazilians. Archibishop Jose Cardoso Sobrinho of the coastal city of Recife announced that the Vatican was excommunicating the family of a local girl who had been raped and impregnated with twins by her stepfather, because they had chosen to have the girl undergo an abortion. The Church excommunicated the doctors who performed the procedure as well. "God's laws," said the archbishop, dictate that abortion is a sin and that transgressors are no longer welcome in the Roman Catholic Church.

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/ ... 98,00.html

Just do a web search and you’ll find many cases.

I should have added to my previous post. Anyone not familiar with Pius XII may conclude that to excommunicate Nazis would be fruitless since weren’t they heathens? Truth be told, no. A good percentage of them were practising Catholics and had Pius XII begun to excommunicate them would have caused a crisis. They (despite their barbarity) still held onto their faith and would have been at a crossroad since to follow Hitler would have put their souls at risk. That was conveniently solved by Hitler with the signing of the 1933 concordat between Nazi Germany and the Vatican.

This concordat with Nazi Germany was negotiated by Cardinal Pacelli, who in 1939 became Pius XII. Undaunted by his wartime record, the Vatican is now attempting to have him declared a saint. In his ongoing canonisation process he has reached the venerable stage, which is Church certification that he was "heroic in virtue".

http://www.concordatwatch.eu/showtopic.php?kb_header_id=752

In my opinion, Pacelli (Hitler’s pope) should have taken whatever action was necessary to oppose Hitler and the barbarities that were committed by his regime. As god’s representative on earth (so they say) he would have had the power of god behind him in order to denounce such evil. Since (in their view) if they are the one, true church, what would they have to fear?

Matthew 16:18 KJV

And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.

And who is Peter?

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12272b.htm

Oh my, he was the first pope.

Now if 'the gates of hell' won’t stop Jesus’ church, could the Nazis have?

A first definite step by Pacelli the evil would have been to excommunicate Nazis by the 100s or the 1000s. That would have sent a shock wave throughout Germany and would have forced Hitler to take immediate action against the church. That action would then have put the beloved Führer in direct opposition with the majority of Catholic Germans. What would have happened can only be speculated upon now, but the church would at least be able to hold its head high for having done the right thing at the right time.

They didn’t, they wouldn’t and many had to die because of that.


Now to put this into a fair perspective, yes, Pacelli did do some good. He sheltered many Jews so the story isn’t one of non-stop evil. However, a tiny hill of goodness doesn’t outweigh a mountain of evil, and as the Catholic Church would have us believe, they represent god on earth, their first thought should have been for the good of mankind, not as it appears, what was the safest course for the church to take.

Onyx8 wrote:My understanding is that there was one Nazi excommunicated for marrying a protestant woman. Goebbels.

As the Hitch always puts it, the capital "c" church does have its standards.

Thanks for complements, Skinny Puppy!

I was about to add Goebbels's name as the example of the single person who was ex-communicated (for marrying a protestant), but Onyx8 beat me to it.

I will also go over your links in detail! Thanks!

Onyx8 wrote:My understanding is that there was one Nazi excommunicated for marrying a protestant woman. Goebbels.

You’re correct, I’d forgotten about him. It’s odd too, when one looks at the reason. I wonder if this list would make the Catholic church’s list of things to do on a sunny afternoon.


Mass killing… church approval
torture… church approval
Human experiments… church approval
Genocide … church approval
Butchery … church approval
Killing unarmed people … church approval
Slaughtering babies … church approval

Being with a protestant!…church DISAPPROVAL! Hellfire, damnation and eternal torment for such a barbaric deed.

It does seem confusing at first when one looks at all of these apparently inconsistent and hypocritical decisions by the RCC. The confusion vanishes, however, when one realises that it is not the goal of the church to protect people from harm, or make their lives better. The goal of the Church is to protect the church.

This is not to say that there are not individuals within the church who adhere to something that a normally sane individual might recognise as morality. The thing about propaganda is that people believe it. The character of the institution as a whole,however, is that of a political organization. Once you understand that it is about power rather than morality (as are virtually all political considerations) then these decisions all start to make sense.

I’m only trying to address religion with an open mind, Metraton, and merely noted the influence of ‘commercial brainwashing’ as a simple fact of modern life, one form of conditioning affecting us all.

The most effective and deadly lies are those of omission, something at which some of our atheist heroes are quite adept! Simply don’t tell the full story! Water is wet and drowns people and floods their homes … water is evil! Are the religious really ‘delusional’ compared to atheists? Reason and evidence suggest otherwise.

Most people probably also assume that people are generally fairly rational. Do away with religion, and Bob’s your uncle! We can pretend as much sophistry or forms of logic we fancy, talk forever of ‘evidence’ and wonderful science, but nothing is less true: human irrationality is deep-rooted, as manifests itself in countless ways, even where it does often seem at least superficially sane, or where deemed ‘normal’ by tradition or through general acceptance.

Yup – “Give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man”; as a youngster each one of us, either passively or more directly, falls prey to a whole swarm of values and cultural syndromes.

Largely drawing on man’s essential nature, a good slice of it derived ancestrally, religion operates on many levels, each individual taking or ‘cherry picking’ from it as suits, as you say, as also applies to other ideologies and whatnot.

Mentioned findings declare that religion offers various personal benefits, both psychological and physical, a sense of community not the least, with its followers on average happier, healthier and better self-adjusted than atheists. It follows, assuming it were simply a matter of choice rather than one of faith, and irrespective of obvious internal illogicalities, that it’s thus generally a more rational way to live. For what it’s worth, believers are also more ‘viable’ from a Darwinian perspective, leaving more offspring.

It’s thus simply not about god existence (some other mental projection serves just as well) or whether Lot’s wife turned to salt, especially not psychologically. It’s really about ‘positive thinking’, mindset, and the power of the human mind itself, of concentrating on the positives rather than negatives, as psychologists or sports coaches aver. The same effect as underpins that of placebo and Chinese ‘luck’ and as drives self-fulfilling prophecies or the power of an idea, and invoked in self-improvement courses. A person approaching a task or challenge in a positive frame of mind is more likely to succeed. When enough people feel that war is inevitable, is usually is.

Then, religion of one sort or another, belief in afterlife particularly, has existed in just about every culture one cares to name. Sure, tradition, society and parental inculcation clearly play a major role, yet if it didn’t also serve some human need, had something to sell, could it really have survived to this day.

Religion was obviously invented by man for man, Metatron - whatever its supposed ‘evils’, aren’t they therefore the evils of man himself? Patriotism, love of country, is generally thought of as fairly admirable, yet it greatly contributed to the carnage that was WWI. Does waging war, or say destroying our own planetary life support systems exemplify human rationality?

And if religion is ‘evil’, evil as compared to what exactly?

Cherry picked mores of course “exist perfectly well outside the domain of religion” - societies are riddled with them. Philosophy, religion and the law have always overlapped, interacted and borrowed from each other, as one might expect.

I said: “rational people don’t go around knowingly harming themselves”, and you underscore ‘knowingly’ as the keyword; sure, self and collective ‘awareness’, however gained, means everything.

A smoker informed as to its ills patently acts irrationally (damage presumably hugely outweighing the pleasure or other benefits gotten), as opposed to the one who doesn’t know any better. Similar applies to innumerable activities, including politics, business or private life, with what seemed logical and rational at one point, subsequently proving to be anything but, if not at times catastrophic. When coal-burning steam power first came along, what rationality, what a boon! Yet now we’re facing potentially disastrous climate-change - centuries-long modes seemingly rational, proving instead irrational.

You say: “what one believes satisfies those survival needs is not necessarily the same as doing what really does satisfy them”.

Please see what I just wrote, but ‘survival needs’ are only distinguished from all else because here’s there’s little choice (except death!) I mean, whether carried out rationally or not, we’ve got to eat, stay warm when it’s cold and usually demand some shelter, as separate from whatever doings satisfy ‘inner’ needs.


Sure, MattHun, belief in the supernatural is a matter of faith, just like putting faith in luck or what have you As said, we’re all variously ‘indoctrinated’, and subject to a whole cluster of potent emotions, verily making us human.

“Prevailing cultural norms in the face of evidence that disproves, or at very least, makes the validity of said beliefs obsolete, is exactly how religion managed to survive this long”?

There exist, or there did once anyway, innumerable, often delightful creation tales. As explained, the beliefs themselves, as distinct from acting on them, don’t matter that much, as opposed to actual outcomes. You could probably devise a thousand different sets of rules for golf but the only thing that really matters is the satisfaction gotten by those playing it.

I said that in order to lead a decent life, “even” the atheist needs to cough up some set of ethical values, and for some reason, one beyond me really, you find the word ‘even’ offensive. I merely meant that most religions provide some sort of ethical template, however basic in some. The atheist, on the other hand, ignoring those innate or such as normally develops over time anyway, apart from those collectively shared, hasn’t got this ready convenience. And yes, religious and secular philosophical moral concepts tend to be fairly similar, emerging in tandem.

Majority will usually holds sway in most societies; if faith-based education or whatever else is perceived as desirable or acceptable, that’s what tends to prevail. Man’s capacity for ‘evil’ is only limited by his imagination, and matched by his ability to rationalize whatever suits momentary ends by one pretext or another, religion but one vehicle among many. And people now essentially aren’t all that different from those two thousand years ago.

Ghenghis Khan’s troops couldn’t afford to leave troublesome tribes in their rear, so they simply lined up all the males and chopped off every head standing higher than a wagon wheel, piling the skulls into neat mounts as a warning to others. Only 65 or so years ago we turned whole civilian cities into infernos with phosphorus bombs. What’s really changed?

“People can be rational in just about every other aspects of their lives, but throw religion in their, and you have otherwise rational, well-meaning, content, fulfilled people, forcing their views on their children who are too young to know about, see, and understand the entire picture”?

Please see my comments to Metraton. Ignorance certainly is bliss.

It’s also fine of you to narrate all the adverse effects supposedly directly attributable to religious beliefs but unless it’s possible to quantify them in some meaningful way, weigh or compare in some way, what’s it worth, especially since the evidence demonstrates otherwise?

Belief is one thing, acting on it another. People also compartmentalize activities mentally, and people don’t normally act grossly in contradiction of daily realities.

Onyx8 wrote:My understanding is that there was one Nazi excommunicated for marrying a protestant woman. Goebbels.

Let me share with you a truly horrifying tale regarding excommunication.

A doctor and mother of a nine year old girl who authorised an abortion were both excommunicated. This happened in Brazil where abortion is illegal in all circumstances. The girl had been raped by her uncle and as a result had suffered an ectopic pregnancy - which is one that occurs outside the uterus. She was pregnant with twins. All three would have died if a termination had not been granted. The Church didn't want it. It was ignored. The twins died, but the girl's life was saved. What does it say about an institution that is prepared to let an innocent die rather than deviate from doctrine ? As far as I know, the uncle wasn't excommunicated. I know that this is an extreme case, but the actions of the Church mystify me here. I am dumbfounded at how anyone would take the stance they did.

Skinny Puppy wrote:The case of the pregnant 9-year-old was shocking enough. But it was the response of the Catholic Church that infuriated many Brazilians. Archibishop Jose Cardoso Sobrinho of the coastal city of Recife announced that the Vatican was excommunicating the family of a local girl who had been raped and impregnated with twins by her stepfather, because they had chosen to have the girl undergo an abortion. The Church excommunicated the doctors who performed the procedure as well. "God's laws," said the archbishop, dictate that abortion is a sin and that transgressors are no longer welcome in the Roman Catholic Church.

I only saw this after submitting my last post. Apologies to Skinny - sorry.

surreptitious57 wrote:

Skinny Puppy wrote:The case of the pregnant 9-year-old was shocking enough. But it was the response of the Catholic Church that infuriated many Brazilians. Archibishop Jose Cardoso Sobrinho of the coastal city of Recife announced that the Vatican was excommunicating the family of a local girl who had been raped and impregnated with twins by her stepfather, because they had chosen to have the girl undergo an abortion. The Church excommunicated the doctors who performed the procedure as well. "God's laws," said the archbishop, dictate that abortion is a sin and that transgressors are no longer welcome in the Roman Catholic Church.

I only saw this after submitting my last post. Apologies to Skinny - sorry.

I can almost understand people who want to murder when I read this sort of shit.

Onyx8 wrote:

surreptitious57 wrote:

Skinny Puppy wrote:The case of the pregnant 9-year-old was shocking enough. But it was the response of the Catholic Church that infuriated many Brazilians. Archibishop Jose Cardoso Sobrinho of the coastal city of Recife announced that the Vatican was excommunicating the family of a local girl who had been raped and impregnated with twins by her stepfather, because they had chosen to have the girl undergo an abortion. The Church excommunicated the doctors who performed the procedure as well. "God's laws," said the archbishop, dictate that abortion is a sin and that transgressors are no longer welcome in the Roman Catholic Church.

I only saw this after submitting my last post. Apologies to Skinny - sorry.

I can almost understand people who want to murder when I read this sort of shit.

Aww...just "almost".

MattHunX wrote:

Onyx8 wrote:

surreptitious57 wrote:

I only saw this after submitting my last post. Apologies to Skinny - sorry.

I can almost understand people who want to murder when I read this sort of shit.

Aww...just "almost".

Deniability, yes?

Belief in God as crutch. And if you rely on a crutch for too long, you'll end up always needing it. Best to learn to stand & walk on your own two feet, without aids.

Nicko wrote:It does seem confusing at first when one looks at all of these apparently inconsistent and hypocritical decisions by the RCC. The confusion vanishes, however, when one realises that it is not the goal of the church to protect people from harm, or make their lives better. The goal of the Church is to protect the church.

This is not to say that there are not individuals within the church who adhere to something that a normally sane individual might recognise as morality. The thing about propaganda is that people believe it. The character of the institution as a whole,however, is that of a political organization. Once you understand that it is about power rather than morality (as are virtually all political considerations) then these decisions all start to make sense.

That’s it in a nutshell. I couldn’t agree more with you.

When one looks at their entire history it’s enough to make even the most hardened heart soften. The history of their barbarity, cruelty, complete disregard for human suffering, the infliction of the most barbaric methods of torture upon innocent people… well the list goes on and on.

Looking at it from the perspective of a loving god’s church makes one stand aghast and scratching their head as to how they could have even thought of such barbarities, let alone commit them.

Every day, every single day they go against everything that Christ taught without so much as missing a beat and yet the vast majority of Catholics seem to take no notice of that.

But, remove the idea of a god, remove the idea of a church that was founded by Jesus himself, and turn it into a lucrative business, and of course, (previously held) absolute power over life and death… and it makes perfect sense.

The sad part is that despite their unmitigated evil, billions follow them (and have followed them) as if they’re a shining beacon of decency and good in a world of evil. What most believers don’t seem to grasp is that much of the evil in this world has come from the very church that they look to for moral guidance.

If their history was a work of fiction and were it to be published today, it would probably fall flat and certainly wouldn’t make the best-seller list, it would simply stretch one’s imagination too far.

And yet its true and is accepted without so much as even a smile or a smirk on any believers’ face.

Onyx8 wrote:

surreptitious57 wrote:

Skinny Puppy wrote:The case of the pregnant 9-year-old was shocking enough. But it was the response of the Catholic Church that infuriated many Brazilians. Archibishop Jose Cardoso Sobrinho of the coastal city of Recife announced that the Vatican was excommunicating the family of a local girl who had been raped and impregnated with twins by her stepfather, because they had chosen to have the girl undergo an abortion. The Church excommunicated the doctors who performed the procedure as well. "God's laws," said the archbishop, dictate that abortion is a sin and that transgressors are no longer welcome in the Roman Catholic Church.

I only saw this after submitting my last post. Apologies to Skinny - sorry.

I can almost understand people who want to murder when I read this sort of shit.

I prefer to dissociate myself from the monkeys, in these circumstances.