Your Beef with Catholicism

Patiently waiting for response.
Did you lose interest in your own thread?
Please understand that I make a distinction between Catholics and CatholicISM.
Genuinely hoping to continue discussion.

Well, the things the Catholic church did to mutilate the Bible irritate me, for one; if it wasn't for the Catholic Church Christianity might not be generally so intolerable to me.

Even Protestants, who have the right idea, don't have everything right due to the parts of the Bible that were permanently destroyed/changed in the past by the Catholic Church.

The Abrahamic God in both Judaism and Islam is gender-neutral; Jews just use male terms in English due to the common rule of defaulting to the male term when there is a lack of a gender-neutral term. The Catholic Church made the Abrahamic God a male because they were/are chauvinistic sexist pigs; many protestants don't even know that God has no gender, and have sexist rules also along with the Catholics as a result. The fact is, it seems to me that the things lost due to the Catholic Church's meddling are permanently gone and true Christianity seems lost forever.

Now, I am a pagan, why should I care so much? I shall tell you why; these glaring mistakes are so obvious that I have a hard time believing that the Catholic church is unaware of their mistakes; they are phony and just get high with power off of it; in fact I think they want to take over the world.

Catholicism has secretly supported the Nazi regime and I heard conspiracy theories that they may have secretly supported communism but outwardly opposed it, in an attempt to manipulate people. And we all know about the Crusades; the Catholic church killed more people than any other religion.

Catholicism is a horrendous cancer and needs to be cleansed from society by any means necessary. It is scum, it is pollution, simple as that.

Originally posted by EricD

Originally posted by Clearskies
There are christians within the catholic church, but for anyone to be obedient to Jesus, they must focus on him and his word. Not the traditions of men.
The vicar of christ(The pope),
according to church dogma is Christ until christ returns.
One definition of vicar is "instead of"
Beware.

That is completely untrue. I would appreciate it if you could find any statement from a Catholic source that supports the belief that the Pope is Christ until Christ returns.

Thanks,

Eric

From the Catholic Magazine
The Pope is not an invention, and he does not replace Christ. In Mt. 16:18-19, Jesus made it clear that he wanted Peter to lead his church on earth. Why? Jesus knew that he would die and that everything that he accomplished would be gone without someone to guide his Church. Jesus does not tell Peter that he will replace him; He only states that Peter will be given authority and power to act in His name.

Hi,

I have to apologize. I'm helping to run two large charity events and they are within a few weeks of each other, so spare time has been VERY limited. I have enjoyed all of the discussions to date and I look forward to jumping back into it with both feet, but I don't want to give any point or counterpoint short shrift, especially ones that force me to research obscure quotes.

I'll try to get back to this asap.

Thanks for understanding.

Eric

reply to post by Kacen


ok so let see if we have this right. You have issues with Catholicism because of the mutilation of the bible. So you must be referring to the Apocropha here. Just because they werent considered canonical didnt mean they werent useful, just that they werent believed to be Divinely inspired. so many people feel that there are enough contradictions in biblical texts now, so why would you even justify adding more so?

The God of Judaism and Islam being gender neutral, and that the only reason he is reffered to as a he is because of the lack of a neutral gender term. This is someone pretty much lying to themselves. Lets see we are smart enough to have this entire well thought out belief system but somehow the ability to create a word or term that describes a neutral gender God evades us, so we will just give him male attributes, please you would create a word to describe it, it happens all the time.

To credit the church with collaborating with the Nazi's and Bolshevik's is rather absurd seeing as how they have very different and incompatible ideologies. Were there collaborators certainly, humans are corrupted by power oure and simple, not to mention both of these parties had a toe the line or die philosphy to boot. The Crusades well if we want to go that far back, why not go all the way back to the dawn of religon and blame every single Pagan for all the wars and deaths that resulted up to the rise of Christianity? Oh wait that would mean the Pagans of today couldn't get up on their soap box and cry foul because proportionally have caused just as many deaths as anyone else for exactly the same reasons so please quit espousing this holier than thou rubbish, when it comes to blood on your hands your religon is no more innocent than anyone elses.



[edit on 17-10-2007 by Jovi1]

Jov1

you are both right and wrong.

you are right that christianity is not the cause of wars.
you are wrong in assuming that the roman empire of the caesars ever fell.

read daniel's dream, follow the clues.

kacen,

you'd be surprised how many things paganism and catholicism have in common.

the big difference appears to be that it's thoroughly patriarchal and instead of many gods, it has saints, who you treat just like you would God anyway (praying to them for example, intercession and so on and saints can be any gender).

they follow the same template for worship as the babylonian, medo-persian, grecian and roman empires did. their holidays are babylonian pagan holidays. to be more precise, it's a Nimrod-based system. the christmas tree is a pagan symbol, ringing in the death of the old year (god) and the birth of the new year (god). yada dada.

the names and rituals have changed slightly, but the pretexts are identical. you shouldn't feel so alone in that regard, knowing that the biggest religion in the world is basically the same as your own.

not that i agree with it, cause i don't, but that's at least less reason for you to feel isolated.

doesn't help me much though, as i don't agree with most of it anyway.


[edit on 17-10-2007 by undo]

I'm born Catholic, but I don't practive it. I choose to believe what makes sense. In history catholics done wrong, but at least they learn from the past. Without Christianity, this world would be in chaos like it was during the dark ages. Christianity brought rules and morals, some people just happen to take avantage of the religion and give it a bad name. Christianity is not the problem, it's humanity itself.

reply to post by EricD


My "beef" with catholicism, other than the baby raping thing, is that it is a religion founded on planned falsehoods as a means of control and gaining wealth.

There are so many "scandals" and lies that plague the catholic church, it's a wonder they are allowed to exist in today's society. The church is guilty of CONSTANT no-no's and yet, it is covered up and overlooked on a constant basis.

This, if nothing else, is a sure sign of the power they have and of the ways they achieved that power.


When the hierarchy of the church starts practicing what they preach, then they MAY deserve a tiny bit of respect.

Until then, it's nothing more than a widely accepted version of NAMBLA.


Jasn

Originally posted by undo

AKA, a rape and pillage of pagan customs, turned to supposed monotheism. It rapes both the monotheist religions and the pagan faiths.

Actually though now I do not care much anymore specifically about the Catholic church, amazing how beliefs can change in a short period of time.

I'm Catholic, and I don't know anyone who has a problem with it. If anyone does have a problem, please don't share the problem to everyone else. I don't know if anyone else has answered these questions because this post is very long, but Catholics don't pray to a cross, it's not even idolism. They pray at a cross sometimes to remember them of Jesus and how he died to save us. Catholics aren't bad at all. I think everybody is equal, and every Christian follows almost the same things. Please do not hate anyone or think something is wrong with anyone because they aren't like you.

Ok, I'm back for a bit. Shwew. Been busy. Fruitful, but busy. I helped to run an event for charity this last weekend that took a lot of planning and time so attention to ATS had to suffer. Unfortunately these discussions weren't timed well on my part as I'm helping to run another event in mid-November and have to spend more time on that shortly.

First to Whitewave. I apologize for keeping you waiting. I have about a page or so of a written response prepared but I keep running into the same problem. I can't find source material for the quotes that you are providing (my fault, not yours) and I can't comment without reading them contextually. I will say that they are certainly quotes that raises ones hackles and should be examined and I'm going to continue to look for references.

Let me say that I certainly don't agree with many if not all of the quotes if I'm reading them correctly that may be equating the Pope with Christ. I appreciate you pointing them out and it is something that I'm going to have to continue to look into. The links to newadvent that you provided gave me 404 errors. Again, most likely my fault.

I will backtrack a bit and try to address posts by others that I have missed in my interim.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts.

Eric

reply to post by SimiusDei


Can you please provide examples instead of generalities so that people know what you are referring to?

I'm not trying to criticize you, but it's hard to have a discussion without knowing what your specifically talking about or seeing any source material for your claims.

Thanks,

Eric

Originally posted by undo
kacen,
the big difference appears to be that it's thoroughly patriarchal and instead of many gods, it has saints, who you treat just like you would God anyway

they follow the same template for worship as the babylonian, medo-persian, grecian and roman empires did. their holidays are babylonian pagan holidays. to be more precise, it's a Nimrod-based system. the christmas tree is a pagan symbol, ringing in the death of the old year (god) and the birth of the new year (god). yada dada.

[edit on 17-10-2007 by undo]

Regarding the saints, you are completely wrong. Saints are in no way worshiped or treated as God.

The tree is NOT a religious symbol and new years is NOT a religious holiday. What is the relevance here?

Eric

Originally posted by Kacen
Well, the things the Catholic church did to mutilate the Bible irritate me, for one; if it wasn't for the Catholic Church Christianity might not be generally so intolerable to me.

Even Protestants, who have the right idea, don't have everything right due to the parts of the Bible that were permanently destroyed/changed in the past by the Catholic Church.

The Abrahamic God in both Judaism and Islam is gender-neutral; Jews just use male terms in English due to the common rule of defaulting to the male term when there is a lack of a gender-neutral term. The Catholic Church made the Abrahamic God a male because they were/are chauvinistic sexist pigs; many protestants don't even know that God has no gender, and have sexist rules also along with the Catholics as a result. The fact is, it seems to me that the things lost due to the Catholic Church's meddling are permanently gone and true Christianity seems lost forever.

Now, I am a pagan, why should I care so much? I shall tell you why; these glaring mistakes are so obvious that I have a hard time believing that the Catholic church is unaware of their mistakes; they are phony and just get high with power off of it; in fact I think they want to take over the world.

Catholicism has secretly supported the Nazi regime and I heard conspiracy theories that they may have secretly supported communism but outwardly opposed it, in an attempt to manipulate people. And we all know about the Crusades; the Catholic church killed more people than any other religion.

Catholicism is a horrendous cancer and needs to be cleansed from society by any means necessary. It is scum, it is pollution, simple as that.

Throughout this thread I have tried to be as civil as possible, but your post makes responding with charity extremely difficult. If you want to be taken seriously you may want to consider providing source material for any of your claims.

At the very least you may want to try to be slightly more specific when bandying about calumny. Are you talking about excluding gnostic gospels when mentioning 'mutilating' the bible?

Are you even aware of the Church's stance on gender identity of God? What about the posit of Scott Hahn of the feminine attributes of the Holy Spirit?

Have you done ANY research or are you purely speaking from knee jerk bigotry?

Eric

Originally posted by Kacen
Catholicism has secretly supported the Nazi regime and I heard conspiracy theories that they may have secretly supported communism but outwardly opposed it, in an attempt to manipulate people. And we all know about the Crusades; the Catholic church killed more people than any other religion.

Catholicism is a horrendous cancer and needs to be cleansed from society by any means necessary. It is scum, it is pollution, simple as that.

If I were to actually point out to you where you can find well researched evidence by NON CATHOLICS regarding the nazi canard about Pope Pius would you even look at it? Or do you prefer to revel in unreasoned antiCatholicism?

Eric

Just watch Zeitgeist already and stop being a zombie drone. It's all a bunch of nonsense.

But hey, if you are happy worshiping personified balls of gas in space, fine. Keep living in the Stone Age.

Originally posted by ModernDystopia
Just watch Zeitgeist already and stop being a zombie drone. It's all a bunch of nonsense.

But hey, if you are happy worshiping personified balls of gas in space, fine. Keep living in the Stone Age.

Uhhhhh, was that comment directed towards me? Regardless of who it was directed at, Zeitgeist is pretentious drivel that has been debunked time and again. Do a little research before pointing fingers at the beliefs of others.

Eric

I'm Pagan and I have no "beefs" with catholics. People are allowed to follow their own faiths and beliefs, the only thing I have against catholics is how some of them treat other religions.
As for the pagans and catholics having similarities there are a few theories that I've heard of about the church taking certain aspects of the pagan religion and putting a catholic view on it, such as the trinity, the holidays.
I agree there are alot of similarities but the reasons for this will never be known.