Kevin's Watch

wayfriend wrote:I don't think any government prosecuting an Inquisition can be called "secular".

The Spanish and the Portuguese weren't really that concerned about whether the recently converted Jews and Muslim (Mahommedan back in the day, or Moor) was properly Catholic so much as a sustained charge of heresy or apostasty meant that the accused lands and money could be seized, and the Jews were considered to be filthy rich by many at the time with ill gotten money earned by cheating good christians.

Fist and Faith wrote:What kind of animal has no use for the Legion of Superheroes?!?

Wayfriend wrote:burn em

Oh Id hope that non religious folk wouldn't be sooo quick to pull out the stakes and torches and get with the burning

But lol wow .. just wow

Shame on you V

Today's entree from the Serendipity menu: I found this this morning.

I give you ... Batman & Jesus, the movie.

AintItCoolNews wrote:As the filmmaker himself clumsily explains in the films' final moments, the purpose of the picture is to cast a light on the arbitrary acceptance of Jesus's exploits as liturgical truth by comparing it to the fierce protection that passionate fans will place on select stories of one of pop culture's greatest fictional creations, The Dark Knight. [link]

Sounds like a must see

wayfriend wrote:The religion vs people-in-charge-of-it distinction doesn't matter. It's the people who run it who influence political policy. So it's apples to apples here.

Anyway, here's at least one nice list someone made.

If all of the small acts of kindness/good the church has performed or inspired on a daily basis the world over were listed, it's influence on the ethics and morality we all, at least the most of us, - atheist and Christian alike - unthinkingly follow in our daily lives, the balance sheet would sit massively in its favour as a force for good, historically and now.

We are all the products of the churches legacy. That we understand the difference between right and wrong at all is down to the church. The church has bought us the luxury of indulging in atheist belief without having to pay the price for it's consequences ....... yet.

I don't understand your last sentence, peter. What do you mean by luxury? What are the consequences; and what price will be paid?

Peter, what is wrong is wrong. You suggest that what was right and good is more than enough to forgive the wrong ... but that's wrong in so many ways it's impossible to count. Even the Church itself teaches us that being good is not sufficient to forgive us our sins. And the cloak of righteousness is worn the most prominently by the doers of evil.

I think the point was made early in this thread (possibly by you Fist) that it isn't 'the Church' that commits atrocities - it's people that do terrible things. And more than this - it's individual people. We each take responsibility for our own actions - if not in court, before God or even when looking in the mirror, then at least in 'the great chain of being' where the consequences of our actions ripple out through time. So let's stop blaming things on the Church.
That someone would sit down and compile such a list as 'all the bad stuff the Church has done' demonstrates enough of itself that they have an agenda in so doing and while (the above qualification not withstanding) I don't deny the truth that bad stuff has been done in its name, I still maintain that on balance it has been, and remains, a force for good. The Church has few people left who will say a word in its favour - especially from amongst those who never even go into one, let alone from those who have no belief in God or God's and are of a purely materialistic bent - but I don't believe that either is necessary to recognise that the Church, whatever it's 'crimes', is a thing that was created out of the good part of our nature - was created for the right reasons and has been a force for good over the course of its history despite the much more tangible (by virtue of their isolated nature) lapses into the bad. As I point out above, there is not one of us that is not a product of over fifteen hundred years of the churches religio-ethical thinking - it imbues the very way we develop from the cradle upwards and the most of us are pretty happy that it has given us the reasoning tools to make a pretty good job of deciding what's good and what's bad, what's right and what's wrong (are we not?).
As to the 'luxury of atheism'. If you accept what I've said above (and I suspect you don't ) then it follows that we exist in a bubble of widespread more-or-less rectitude based behaviour, seen as the norm and within which people stray to commit bad acts, within which a society ordered on high moral standards (by and large) dispenses punishment/justice with the intention of maintaining that order. This is the legacy of the 'belief' that the Church has instilled into us over the fifteen hundred years it has been shaping our system, curbing the worst excesses of what would have been despotic barbarians that had hacked and killed their way to the to of our societies. And the point is that even in the face of the breakdown of belief, the rise of a fatalistic acceptance of the brute reality of science, that there is no God, that death is the tunnel at the end of the light (rather than being the churches other way around) - the bubble I refer to persists, at least for a while, and we still convince ourselves that even in the face of the erosion of belief there is reason to continue to be good. But how long will this persist - and this is the price I refer to. What will the result of fifteen hundred years of never having to answer for our undiscovered crimes, of nihilism and cold looking into the face of the purposelessness of it all be on our collective behaviour. I don't know the answer to this, but I suspect that it might be less preferable than the one we experience now.

wayfriend wrote:Peter, what is wrong is wrong. You suggest that what was right and good is more than enough to forgive the wrong ... but that's wrong in so many ways it's impossible to count. Even the Church itself teaches us that being good is not sufficient to forgive us our sins. And the cloak of righteousness is worn the most prominently by the doers of evil.

If you rape or murder someone; does any amount of "good deeds" earn you forgiveness from the person and family of the person whom you harmed? Particularly if you haven't asked for forgiveness, nor offered recompense for said offenses?

It's up to the victim and family. Some will forgive, and some will not. But it's not like you get to say, "I've done X,Y, and Z since I raped/killed. You have to forgive me! I've earned it!" Some forgive without any attempts at atonement. Some never forgive no matter what. But the rapist/murderer gave up any right to demand, or even expect, anything by committing the act.

None of which negates the argument that over the course of it's history, the church's sum contribution to humanity might be seen as positive rather than negative. To answer the question of the original post, the answer is a simple "yes". Equally, in terms of my above observations, it is a simple "no". Remember that after all, in reality 'The Church' does not exist other than as a collective fiction that we choose to append to the coordinated activities of individual people.

Yeah, it's a different topic. The people who are part of the church who have done horrible things should be judged as individuals.

The tragedy though is that many will not. I think of the incidents of institutional abuses .. and sadly we've seen the churches close ranks to protect their own from accountability, criticism or judgement.

Though hopefully we are also witnessing an progressive sea change.

I once saw a highly respected Judge in a TV interview say that the maintaining the high level of respect in which the Law was held by the people was more important than that a single innocent person had being convicted of a crime they did not commit. I was horrified then as now by such a viewpoint, all the more so by virtue of its coming from one of the chief lawmakers of the land, but it may well be that this odious reasoning is the cause of the covering up you refer to Sky.

But further, to judge en masse these individual acts of abuse is dangerous. There is a fantastic film called Doubt that addresses the very greyness, the lack of certainty that can pervade such cases. Can't recommend highly enough that you search this one out if you haven't yet seen it.

Will look out for it Pete

peter wrote:None of which negates the argument that over the course of it's history, the church's sum contribution to humanity might be seen as positive rather than negative.

What facts back up that argument? What list of accomplishments outweighs the long, long list of atrocities?

Does stability under a feudal dictator counterbalance religious wars?
Does preservation of the written word counterbalance misogyny spread through the written word?
Do good deeds done out of fear of God outweigh spreading fear of God?

+JMJ+

peter wrote:[...]

We are all the products of the churches legacy. That we understand the difference between right and wrong at all is down to the church. ...

[...]

... As I point out above, there is not one of us that is not a product of over fifteen hundred years of the churches religio-ethical thinking - it imbues the very way we develop from the cradle upwards and the most of us are pretty happy that it has given us the reasoning tools to make a pretty good job of deciding what's good and what's bad, what's right and what's wrong (are we not?).

[...]

Bingo!

What do you have that you've not received? (1 Cor. 4:7)

OTOH, I'd add that the greater question turns upon whether or not the tomb is empty.

If the tomb isn't empty, then a cost/benefit analysis of the Church is the best that can be done.

If it is empty, then where else shall we go? The Church has the words of eternal life.

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peter wrote:... Remember that after all, in reality 'The Church' does not exist other than as a collective fiction that we choose to append to the coordinated activities of individual people.

To this, I would say that the Church is first and foremost, a family -- a divine family.

And unless one is consciously committed to the idea that the Family is nothing but an insubstantial and impersonal construct or legal fiction (and with all of the contemporary attacks on the Family, this seems to be an increasingly widespread assumption), then one might want to consider reflecting upon one's possible residual assumptions and the potential limitations these might contribute to one's approach towards the Church.

A question which one might ask is, Did Jesus establish a real world, visible Church which could be personally localized and petitioned for admittance (for adoption into the Family) by those hearing the Gospel call? This is the perennial Catholic question addressed to the modern world.

I do not use this argument in any perjorative fashion; in any way as a diminishment of the important role the Church serves. As with any such 'idea', it serves as the binding force that holds the disparate units of which it is formed together. I think above and beyond that - say on the matter of whether Christ has imbued the body with a spiritual matrix, a 'fascia' that is outwith the human constituents of the body - it becomes a matter of faith. I'm probably arguing from the point of view of the 'full tomb' above, even though this is by no means the position I take on the resurrection, because I think it's entirely possible to do so without recourse to faith based argument. Wayfriend perfectly fairly questions my argument that the ether of the benefits outweighs the ingots of the costs attributable to the Church, a point I can only answer by referring to my use of the words "might be seen". The point is that neither all of the good that has resulted from the Church, nor the charge sheet of ill's can be quantified in this way. It's like comparing oranges with apples. Yes, is the answer to the original question, I concede that; but it is a simplistic answer that denies appreciation of the full picture of the Church's vastly influential role in our collective history.

peter wrote:I once saw a highly respected Judge in a TV interview say that the maintaining the high level of respect in which the Law was held by the people was more important than that a single innocent person had being convicted of a crime they did not commit. I was horrified then as now by such a viewpoint, all the more so by virtue of its coming from one of the chief lawmakers of the land, but it may well be that this odious reasoning is the cause of the covering up you refer to Sky.

But further, to judge en masse these individual acts of abuse is dangerous. There is a fantastic film called Doubt that addresses the very greyness, the lack of certainty that can pervade such cases. Can't recommend highly enough that you search this one out if you haven't yet seen it.

Not sure if it was spoken in that context, but I do believe that Scalia did say:

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/scali ... lty-quote/

not sure if this is what you meant

Interesting link Rawedge, particularly where the author comments that it is not so much important as to what Scalia said as to what he meant (or words to this effect). I would think it important and quite possible for a Supreme Court Judge to marry the two together, but there you have it. I think the instance I was referring to was an interview by Lord Hailsham, a fellow who iirc occupied a similar role as a Law Lord in the UK constitution. Actually might have been Lord Denning - certainly one of the two - but I always remembered it with horror as to how misguided the thinking of a person in great power could be and the damage they were capable of inflicting thereby.