Catholic Church: You so crazy
Posted by Brandon | Filed under Articles
Why is it that the catholic church does so many weird things? They “got rid” of limbo. Limbo being the place at the edge of hell where unbaptized babies would go if they died at an early age. I’m not sure what that means. I guess there was this sort of bad place with a bunch of confused babies and aborted fetuses crying and crawling around. Then one day it was cool and they floated up into heaven because some guy here on earth said it was ok.
Well, that’s some pretty weird stuff. But what about these “new deadly sins”. It appears that there are some more deadly sins that the pope has come up with. Here’s the original list and their punishment:
Pride - Broken on the wheel
Envy - Put in freezing water
Gluttony – Forced to eat rats, toads, and snakes
Lust - Smothered in fire and brimstone
Anger - Dismembered alive
Greed - Put in cauldrons of boiling oil
Sloth – Thrown in snake pits
I can dig these, they are all pretty good. But these new ones are even better:
The new ones include: environmental pollution, genetic manipulation, obscene wealth, infliction of poverty, drug trafficking, morally debatable experiments, and violation of the fundamental rights of human nature.
It’s not too clear if these will grant you immediate access to the underworld or if you get a second chance. We’ll have to see. I’m definitely guilty of a few of these.
I think this shows the strength of the Catholic church. Often when it is criticized, it is doneso from the outside without much understanding of it. Before the protestant reformation, there was only the catholic church. It is the foundational Christian church. Aside from that, these changes that we see in the doctrine of limbo, purgatory, and even the deadly sins are the Catholic Church’s way of being reflective and evolving. On the one hand, people criticize churches for being too stubborn, but when they change, they get this kind of stuff. Maybe just be more tactful or say something that actually means something. And I’m not saying I agree with the Catholic church, but it’s this kind of stuff that gets spread on the internet with a base knowledge of the subject matter that does just as much damage as a fundamentalist mindset.
@boomer: My problem with any sort of reformation of any church doctrine is that it is all supposedly based on a preexisting information, and as such, should be inherently set and not changeable by any person or persons at a later time. If the bible is interpretable enough to suggest a need for a change in doctrine, than we can not say whose authority it is to make that interpretation for us, and the church loses it’s importance. If it is not interpretable, then one entity could be responsible for organization and distribution of that knowledge, but loses it’s control over it and has no ability to decipher meaning.
@Mike: Yeah, I completely understand the dilemma, but part of the function of a church is to foster a community and to use the strengths of each other to determine certain things. Within the Catholic church community, theologians, philosophers and ordained officials all dialgoue on their revelations and interpretations of scripture. It is not a fault of God or necessarily the church that causes these reformations. Rather, it is a human admittance that, assuming the divine exists, we cannot help but need revision. The question of authority and the ambiguity of interpretation are valid issues, but they’re not issues that are not handled within the church. And I think that that shows a maturity within the church’s structure.
@boomer: If the church is authoritatively making a revision for said community, then you are right; They are not handling the issue of the ambiguity of interpretation, they are ignoring it. That being said, if the admittance has been made that the existence of the divine presumes a need for revision, then there is no way to define a stopping point. Thus, if we can not help but need revision, we have to assume that we need revision right now. I think your statement assumings a gross fallacy on the part of not only your own argument, but Christian belief in general. To land on any one ideal strongly enough for it to largely affect your life, you must assume, at least for the moment, that you do not need it to change, or you risk basing your behavior on rules that you know are not right.
People have faith in what they learn from Christianity because they accept it as truth. If that truth is not static, how can they continue to have faith? It’s a rather rhetorical question, and not fit for fellow atheists to answer since the views between a theist and an atheist are so completely different, but still.