quote:

ORIGINAL: UPSG

That's not what the Church teaches on the doctrine of infallibility. And I would challenge you to prove such a thing.

Catholics have always regarded Popes as sharing in the possibility of being sent to eternal damnation in hell - in fact a few are suspect of being there. Infallibility as a doctrine basically asserts the Pope can not teach what has not already been taught.

Furthermore, the Pope only speak infallible when speaking ex cathedra (spelling?). Which has only been a few times throughout Catholic history.

And if Catholics were taught as you say they were then logic dictates every utterance out of the Popes mouth is immediately regarded as dogma and not doctrine or personal opinion.

And it should be pointed out Catholic doctrine - as it relates to the culture of good or bad Popes via Petrine succession and the Holy Spirit - is more mature than the partisan political culture in contemporary United States. It is not a black and white issue. In the Catholic view a Pope with great personal failings or who decides wrongly on a number of issues can still be used for some greater, unknown, good in God's ultimate historical plan. Or as Thomas Merton (well studied on Zen Buddhism but a Catholic monk) once questioned to himself, Could Hitler have been used in some greater plan of God?

That should not be crazy for an American population that dropped two atomic bombs on men, women, and children and for a nation determined to keeps so many hydrogen bombs it could not the entire world back into the stone age. Won't stop Yankee's from doing their fireworks or waving their flags on 4 July though.

Roberto Saviano pointed out something rather interesting in his book Gomorrah. He stated that the AK-47 has killed more people than the atomic bombs have, and I believe he even stated it has killed more people than HIV/AIDS. Now, for the record, the Catholic Bishops of the USA state all Catholics in the U.S. must vote for gun control. (gun violence is the leading cause of death for young black males - to bad the Catholic Church can't be blamed for that)

quote:

ORIGINAL: kittinSol
Every sperm is sacred.

Hindu, Taoist, Mormon,
Spill theirs just anywhere,
But God loves those who treat their
Semen with more care.

Every sperm is sacred.
Every sperm is great.
If a sperm is wasted,...
...God get quite irate.:

Monty Python

quote:

ORIGINAL: rulemylife

quote:

ORIGINAL: UPSG


The problem tends to be of the heterosexual promiscuity type for both clergy and laity. Catholic Priests over in certain parts of Black-Africa (I'm distinguishing from Arab or Semitic Africans) have raped Nuns and forced Mother Superiors to send them scores of Nuns to have sex. Catholic laity on the other hand are known sometimes to marry multiple wives, as traditional in Pagan African ways, and Catholic men married to singular ladies, have been known to cheat on their wives.

Uh-huh.

While I am definitely a lapsed Catholic and have many issues with my own Church, I think you really need to provide some documentation when you throw out these types of accusations.

quote:

Cultural and Traditional Practices

Polygamy In Africa, polygamy is a social practice used to ensure the continued status and survival of widows and orphans within an established family structure.[32] Demographic and Health Surveys in Ghana (1988), Senegal (1986), Kenya (1989), and Zimbabwe (1988–89) showed that the proportion of women in a polygamous union was 31% in Ghana, 48% in Senegal, 23% in Kenya, and 16% in Zimbabwe.[33] In urban settings and other areas where traditional polygamy is no longer the norm, men tend to have many sexual partners and employ the services of sex workers.[33] Mitsunaga and associates[34] found that men who have 3 or more wives were at a high risk of engaging in extramarital sex, reinforcing the belief that men are biologically programmed to need sexual intercourse with many women.[35] Also putting young African girls at risk of contracting HIV is the false belief that men can rid themselves of HIV/AIDS by engaging in intercourse with a virgin.[36] As a result of this misconception, many young girls have been raped and, subsequently, infected with HIV.

quote:

Injection-drug use

Sex between men and women is by far the most common mode of HIV transmission in Africa. However, the significance of intravenous-drug use appears to be higher than commonly believed.[75] Heroin injection is a serious problem in Kenya and Mauritius and is now emerging in other countries in the region, including Ethiopia. In Mauritius, where HIV/AIDS prevalence rates are lower than in other Eastern and Southern African countries, a sample of HIV-infected people revealed that 21% used intravenous drugs.[76]

quote:

ORIGINAL: UPSG

quote:

ORIGINAL: rulemylife

quote:

ORIGINAL: UPSG


The problem tends to be of the heterosexual promiscuity type for both clergy and laity. Catholic Priests over in certain parts of Black-Africa (I'm distinguishing from Arab or Semitic Africans) have raped Nuns and forced Mother Superiors to send them scores of Nuns to have sex. Catholic laity on the other hand are known sometimes to marry multiple wives, as traditional in Pagan African ways, and Catholic men married to singular ladies, have been known to cheat on their wives.

Uh-huh.

While I am definitely a lapsed Catholic and have many issues with my own Church, I think you really need to provide some documentation when you throw out these types of accusations.

Here is one link. Off the top of my head if I remember correctly there are quite a number of Catholics in Kenya.

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1868366

quote:

ORIGINAL: Aynne88

" That should not be crazy for an American population that dropped two atomic bombs on men, women, and children and for a nation determined to keeps so many hydrogen bombs it could not the entire world back into the stone age. Won't stop Yankee's from doing their fireworks or waving their flags on 4 July though. "

Umm? Not the American Population, newsflash. I also don't want the blame for Bush either. Fuck sake we just god rid of a warmongering President and elected Obama, not good enough? The American population suffers under these regimes as much as if not more than you do so get a grip. There are different parties here in case that simple fact eluded you.  

quote:

ORIGINAL: rulemylife

quote:

ORIGINAL: UPSG

quote:

ORIGINAL: rulemylife

quote:

ORIGINAL: UPSG


The problem tends to be of the heterosexual promiscuity type for both clergy and laity. Catholic Priests over in certain parts of Black-Africa (I'm distinguishing from Arab or Semitic Africans) have raped Nuns and forced Mother Superiors to send them scores of Nuns to have sex. Catholic laity on the other hand are known sometimes to marry multiple wives, as traditional in Pagan African ways, and Catholic men married to singular ladies, have been known to cheat on their wives.

Uh-huh.

While I am definitely a lapsed Catholic and have many issues with my own Church, I think you really need to provide some documentation when you throw out these types of accusations.

Here is one link. Off the top of my head if I remember correctly there are quite a number of Catholics in Kenya.

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1868366

I'm sorry but did I nod off and miss something here?

I was looking for the part where Catholic priests raped nuns "and forced Mother Superiors to send them scores of Nuns to have sex".

It would also be interesting to know about the Catholic laity who "are known sometimes to marry multiple wives".

quote:

PMC Overview
PubMed Central is a free digital archive of biomedical and life sciences journal literature at the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), developed and managed by NIH's National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) in the National Library of Medicine (NLM). With PubMed Central, NLM has taken the lead in preserving and maintaining access to the electronic literature, just as it has done for decades with the printed biomedical literature. PubMed Central aims to fill the role of a world class library in the digital age. It is not a journal publisher. NLM believes that giving all users free access to the material in PubMed Central is the best way to ensure the durability and utility of the archive as technology changes over time.

quote:

ORIGINAL: rulemylife

As someone with years of indoctrination, trust me, it is not hubris.

It is an archaic belief system but he does sincerely believe what he says, as many of his followers do.

quote:

ORIGINAL: rulemylife

quote:

ORIGINAL: UPSG

That's not what the Church teaches on the doctrine of infallibility. And I would challenge you to prove such a thing.

Catholics have always regarded Popes as sharing in the possibility of being sent to eternal damnation in hell - in fact a few are suspect of being there. Infallibility as a doctrine basically asserts the Pope can not teach what has not already been taught.

Furthermore, the Pope only speak infallible when speaking ex cathedra (spelling?). Which has only been a few times throughout Catholic history.

And if Catholics were taught as you say they were then logic dictates every utterance out of the Popes mouth is immediately regarded as dogma and not doctrine or personal opinion.

And it should be pointed out Catholic doctrine - as it relates to the culture of good or bad Popes via Petrine succession and the Holy Spirit - is more mature than the partisan political culture in contemporary United States. It is not a black and white issue. In the Catholic view a Pope with great personal failings or who decides wrongly on a number of issues can still be used for some greater, unknown, good in God's ultimate historical plan. Or as Thomas Merton (well studied on Zen Buddhism but a Catholic monk) once questioned to himself, Could Hitler have been used in some greater plan of God?

That should not be crazy for an American population that dropped two atomic bombs on men, women, and children and for a nation determined to keeps so many hydrogen bombs it could not the entire world back into the stone age. Won't stop Yankee's from doing their fireworks or waving their flags on 4 July though.

Roberto Saviano pointed out something rather interesting in his book Gomorrah. He stated that the AK-47 has killed more people than the atomic bombs have, and I believe he even stated it has killed more people than HIV/AIDS. Now, for the record, the Catholic Bishops of the USA state all Catholics in the U.S. must vote for gun control. (gun violence is the leading cause of death for young black males - to bad the Catholic Church can't be blamed for that)

So, we've gone from the Pope, to Hitler, to nuclear warfare, to the Fourth of July, to the Ak-47, and on to Hiv/Aids and gun control.

Bravo.

Never before have I seen someone able to tie together so many unrelated and distinct topics into a few short paragraphs.


Papal infallibility - Wikipedia, the free encylopedia

Papal infallibility is the dogma in Catholic theology that, by action of the Holy Spirit, the Pope is preserved from even the possibility of error[1] when he solemnly declares or promulgates to the Church a dogmatic teaching on faith or morals as being contained in divine revelation, or at least being intimately connected to divine revelation.


Ex cathedra

For the early music choir and ensemble based in Birmingham, England, see Ex Cathedra. See also: Roman Catholic Dogma In Catholic theology, the Latin phrase ex cathedra, literally meaning "from the chair", refers to a teaching by the pope that is considered to be made with the intention of invoking infallibility.


The "chair" referred to is not a literal chair, but refers metaphorically to the pope's position, or office, as the official teacher of Catholic doctrine: the chair was the symbol of the teacher in the ancient world, and bishops to this day have a cathedra, a seat or throne, as a symbol of their teaching and governing authority.

The pope is said to occupy the "chair of Peter", as Catholics hold that among the apostles Peter had a special role as the preserver of unity, so the pope as successor of Peter holds the role of spokesman for the whole church among the bishops, the successors as a group of the apostles. (Also see Holy See and sede vacante: both terms evoke this seat or throne.)

quote:

ROME - The Vatican acknolwedged yesterday a damning report detailing dozens of cases of Roman Catholic priests and missionaries focing nuns to have sex with them, including one case in which 29 nuns in a single diocese became pregnant. 

In some cases, nuns were raped or forced to have abortions.  Others were forced to take the contraceptive pill, said the report, cited in the Italian daily newspaper La Repubblica. 

Though most of the problems were in Africa, the report indicated similar incidents have taken place in at least 23 countries, including the United States, Ireland, India and Brazil.

quote:

As Pope Benedict XVI prepares for his African debut March 17-23, visiting Cameroon and Angola on his first swing through Catholicism's most dynamic "growth market," he faces a series of dilemmas:

• How to raise consciousness about the continent's travails without feeding African resentments that Westerners only report bad news;
• Signaling that despite his European baggage, the pope "gets" Africa — for example, that his crusade against a Western "dictatorship of relativism" is largely moot here, since the grass-roots reality is not secularism but rather vibrant religious pluralism;
• Keeping lines of communication open with his local hosts without glossing over a serious "democratic deficit" in their regimes;
• Encouraging the vibrancy of African Catholicism without turning a blind eye to its growing pains — including a sometimes shallow sense of Catholic identity and the lingering tug of tribal and regional divisions.

quote:

Africa, in many ways, symbolizes the Catholic future. Two-thirds of the world's 1.1 billion Catholics today live in the Southern Hemisphere, a figure projected to be three-quarters by midcentury. In September, Africa's bishops will hold their plenary assembly in Rome, and in October Benedict will summon a synod of bishops on Africa. (The pope will present the Instrumentum laboris, or "working paper," for the synod in Cameroon March 19.)

Perhaps Benedict's main advantage on the 11th foreign trip of his papacy is that, at least demographically, it takes him to the heart of the most compelling success story Catholicism has going.

During the 20th century, the Catholic population in sub-Saharan Africa exploded from 1.9 million to 130 million, a staggering growth rate of 6,708 percent — a result driven by a combination of overall population growth, the breakdown of old tribal religions, and missionary success. Religious vocations are also booming. For example, Nigeria's Bigard Memorial Seminary, with an enrollment of over 1,100, is the largest Catholic seminary in the world, and more than 700 African-born priests are now estimated to be serving in American parishes.

quote:

There's also little evidence that Christian morality has transformed African societies.

For example, Benedict will have a chance to see the problem of corruption up close, as Transparency International ranks both Cameroon and Angola among the 40 most corrupt nations on earth.

quote:

Memories of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda also still smolder, when Catholic Hutus and Catholic Tutsis slaughtered one another with appalling indifference to the dignity of human life. Other commonly cited challenges include:

• Reconciling church teaching on marriage with the still-common polygamy in some parts of Africa;
• Addressing intra-Catholic tensions between vigorous African orthodoxy on matters such as homosexuality and clerical authority, which sometimes chafes against more liberal currents in the global North;
  
• Managing the sometimes fractious relationship with Islam. In Nigeria, occasional interfaith violence since the late '80s has left hundreds dead.