Interesting debate about Catholics that I'd like to contribute to if I may:-
i) somebody wrote as if Catholics and Christians were two different religious groups, but surely Catholics are just one sub-division of the Christian faiths?
ii) What makes Catholics different? someone asked. Mainly, it's because they believe that in a Mass there is a literal physical miracle taking place: wine really does become the blood of Christ. Most other faiths which go through that ritual concede that it's just a metaphor.
iii) Lucem is right to point out all the different gradings of Catholics. Some, for instance, just put "Catholic" on a questionaire and never go into a church. In my admittedly-skewed experience, there are a lot of these lazy, lapsed, unaffiliated Catholics around.
iv) I was brought up Catholic: indoctrination at school and Mass every Sunday until age 15. In all that time I never heard a hint of a whisper of a rumour that priests were anything other than men of good conscience. So that's another group of Catholics to add to Lucem's list of divisions, albeit a group that only existed in the past: innocent Catholics who knew nothing about sex scandals until the first one broke in modern times, whenever that was.
v)
Quote:
Originally Posted by DwnWthVwls
Anecdotal experience tells me athiests know more about religion than the religious. Which makes sense considering how ****ing ridiculous religion is.
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^ I agree with this completely: you have to be outside a faith to get a clear perspective on its concepts - the same way you can't understand a chess game if you're down there at pawn level; you have to get some distance to understand what's going on.
vi) Most people know that story about eating an apple from the Tree of Knowledge and getting booted out of Paradise. What's that about? Catholicism is based on faith (see item (ii) above): too much knowledge, too much science, and you'll lose your faith. That's why that story gets promoted - and anyone who abdicates their reason in favour of a system that denies rational evidence is making a very foolish mistake imo.
vii) Today the apple of knowledge includes a pip that's particularly hard to swallow - the fact that for decades the Catholic hierachy has been enabling and abetting sex abuse. So, yeah, Frownland's dismissal of today's Catholics is in many ways justified: with a stain like that on the church, why maintain any loyalty to it at all?
Finally, abuse in the Catholic Church is currently hitting the headlines, but I suspect the turn of other faiths may come too. After all, in the UK, that cultural flagship, the BBC has been rocked with sex scandals in recent years, from Rolf Harris to Top Of The Pops. Surely that more than anything justifies the outraged cry,
Is nothing sacred?! 