Catholoic Church says: Pro Choice = No communion for you!

Joe · Post by **Joe** » 2004-04-23 05:30pm

how is a church a private organization when effectively everyone can join it or participate in its services?

Most churches are pretty lax about that sort of thing, but they reserve the right to ask you to leave if they no longer desire your presence, and you have to comply.

General Zod · Post by **General Zod** » 2004-04-23 05:34pm

Joe wrote:
how is a church a private organization when effectively everyone can join it or participate in its services?
Most churches are pretty lax about that sort of thing, but they reserve the right to ask you to leave if they no longer desire your presence, and you have to comply.

True. But you could argue the same thing about, say, restaurants or stores. They're pretty lax about who they admit and they can ask you to leave if they no longer desire your presence.

Batman · Post by **Batman** » 2004-04-23 05:37pm

Darth_Zod wrote:
Joe wrote:
how is a church a private organization when effectively everyone can join it or participate in its services?
Most churches are pretty lax about that sort of thing, but they reserve the right to ask you to leave if they no longer desire your presence, and you have to comply.
True. But you could argue the same thing about, say, restaurants or stores. They're pretty lax about who they admit and they can ask you to leave if they no longer desire your presence.

Err, you are aware that the vast majority of restaurants and stores ARE private organisations?

Joe · Post by **Joe** » 2004-04-23 05:39pm

Darth_Zod wrote:
Joe wrote:
how is a church a private organization when effectively everyone can join it or participate in its services?
Most churches are pretty lax about that sort of thing, but they reserve the right to ask you to leave if they no longer desire your presence, and you have to comply.
True. But you could argue the same thing about, say, restaurants or stores. They're pretty lax about who they admit and they can ask you to leave if they no longer desire your presence.

Not exactly. Businesses certainly can get in legal trouble if they deny service on the basis of race enough; look at what happened to Denny's.

tharkûn · Post by **tharkûn** » 2004-04-23 11:13pm

Were they anything except a church attempting to pull this shit they'd be hammered down so hard by lawyers thier grandkids would feel it. A hospital certainly would be in deep shit if they said their patients could only think a certain way or they'd be refused treatment x y or z.

How about a club. A club where members pay money for upkeep of said club, socialize, and generally feel good when attending said club; perhaps they might even do some humanitarian work on the side? If that what golf course can ban women from membership; I see no reason why a church can't. It is all voluntary association; and part and parcel of freedom of association is the ability to exclude others.

how is a church a private organization when effectively everyone can join it or participate in its services?

Umm correct me if I'm wrong but the whole point of booting out the pro-choicers was to prevent anyone from joining or participating. Seriously try taking communion while dressed in drag and tell me how it goes. Hell they still have this little exclusion about women in the priesthood.

How is it morally acceptable for any organization to tell others what to think about subjects which that organization has no actual authority over?

Because its a voluntary association. If you don't want to abide by the rules of the group, feel free not to join. Absolutely nothing stops you from starting your own church with its own membership rules.

PS:

Now, the logical interpretation for this passage is that Onan was punished for the most obvious offence: defying the word of God. This interpretation was the prevailing one for 3,000 years, more or less. Then, at a more recent date (19th century, I think) the religious types became unaccountably concerned with the "problem" of non-procreative sexual acts, and the Onan story was resurrected and re-packaged to be a condemnation of said acts.

Latest would be the 4th century with Augustine, though I think it may possibly have been 2nd century with Clement. Essentially he thought the entire sex drive except the procreation part was evil. I whole heartedly agree with most of your points, but you can trace Catholicism's problem with non-procreative sex way farther back than the Victorian era.

Pablo Sanchez · Post by **Pablo Sanchez** » 2004-04-23 11:18pm

tharkûn wrote:Latest would be the 4th century with Augustine, though I think it may possibly have been 2nd century with Clement. Essentially he thought the entire sex drive except the procreation part was evil. I whole heartedly agree with most of your points, but you can trace Catholicism's problem with non-procreative sex way farther back than the Victorian era.

It's traceable but it wasn't an important force until the Victorian era.

Johonebesus · Post by **Johonebesus** » 2004-04-24 12:10am

Darth_Zod wrote:how is a church a private organization when effectively everyone can join it or participate in its services?

The distinction between a public and private organization is that public organizations receive public support through tax money and private organizations support themselves. Churches are in an interesting position because they receive tax exempt status, but the courts have ruled that they are still private organizations. They are not actively supported by the People, but by the select people who voluntarily support them. Just because their doors are open to all who wish to enter does not make them public institutions. One still has to choose to enter and choose to support the institution. It's no different than if I

How is it morally acceptable for any organization to tell others what to think about subjects which that organization has no actual authority over?

It is morally acceptable if everyone has the free choice to ignore the organization's dictates. In the U.S., the Roman Church has no governmental authority. If anyone does not agree with the Church, he can just leave. No-one is forced to be a Catholic or support eh Church in any way (except passively through their tax status). There are lots of other churches to attend. In fact, the Episcopal church uses the same liturgy as the Catholic church, practices the same sacraments, and has maintained apostolic succession, despite it's rather liberal position on private morality and sexuality, so it is a very palatable choice for Catholics who cannot in good conscience remain in communion with Rome.

Pablo Sanchez wrote:
tharkûn wrote:Latest would be the 4th century with Augustine, though I think it may possibly have been 2nd century with Clement. Essentially he thought the entire sex drive except the procreation part was evil. I whole heartedly agree with most of your points, but you can trace Catholicism's problem with non-procreative sex way farther back than the Victorian era.
It's traceable but it wasn't an important force until the Victorian era.

Whoa, you need to learn your history. The Church was rather anti-sex almost from the beginning.

Saint Jerome wrote thousands of words imploring the faithful, particularly women, to avoid the temptations of sex. One of Jerome's favorite examples of Christian virtue was a girl who wanted to remain celibate. She was forced into marriage, and for obvious reasons her adolescent husband didn't agree with her choice. They finally reached a compromise; he would get sex until she gave him a son. She quickly got pregnant with what turned out to be a boy, but the child was still-born. She convinced her husband that this was a sign from God, so they both took vows of celibacy and lived as siblings for the rest of their lives.

One early saint, still in Roman times, won fame for taking to heart Jesus' line about "if your hand offends you, cut it off." The saint cut of his penis. For this he was considered very holy. He was not an isolated example. Many folks emulated his blessed dedication to Christ.

In the early Middle Ages there was a saintly monk who had to carry his elderly mother across a river. He was so worried that touching her woman-flesh would inflame his passions (since everyone knew that sexuality came from females) that he bound her from head to toe, making sure that not a single inch of her skin was exposed so that he wouldn't come into contact with her flesh and be corrupted. He bragged about this and so did his biographers.

Celibacy was an original rule of asceticism and monasticism. Even in the Bible one sees a general disdain for sexuality and a great admiration of chastity, especially in the Letters. Read Paul, he was the one who sang the praises of marriage by saying, "better to burn in the marriage bed than to burn in hell." Not much encouragement for a couple in love. I could go on and on, but the point should be clear by now. The Roman Church has always considered sex to be, at best, a necessary evil. The only thing notable about the Victorian Age is that it was the first time that the majority of ordinary folks bought into the sex-hating culture. For most of its history, the Church was very much at odds with popular attitudes towards sex. But it wasn't until Vatican II that the Church actually said that sex was a good thing. That was truly a revolutionary statement.

Uraniun235 · Post by **Uraniun235** » 2004-04-24 12:34am

Why? Why do people become so convinced that sex is evil?

Pablo Sanchez · Post by **Pablo Sanchez** » 2004-04-24 01:06am

Johonebesus wrote:Whoa, you need to learn your history. The Church was rather anti-sex almost from the beginning.

SNIP

This is a classic case of trying to hold up atypical examples as a perverted standard. Certainly, there were saints revered for their chastity. There were also saints revered for living inside barrels and on top of pillars. The standard by which the medieval church should be judged should be that which was applied in general... that is, masturbation was not particularly frowned upon, men were permitted to engage in limited homosexuality (see Richard the Lionhearted, a stout servant of Christianity), and most persons within the peasantry never actually married in the strict sacramental sense. They just declared that they were so.

Celibacy was an original rule of asceticism and monasticism.

Which applies to... ascetics and monks, not your average church-goers.

Even in the Bible one sees a general disdain for sexuality and a great admiration of chastity, especially in the Letters.

This is true. Unfortunately it fails to challenge the point that the church did not make significant attempts to stop non-procreative sex.

Read Paul, he was the one who sang the praises of marriage by saying, "better to burn in the marriage bed than to burn in hell." Not much encouragement for a couple in love. I could go on and on, but the point should be clear by now. The Roman Church has always considered sex to be, at best, a necessary evil. The only thing notable about the Victorian Age is that it was the first time that the majority of ordinary folks bought into the sex-hating culture. For most of its history, the Church was very much at odds with popular attitudes towards sex.

This is all very nice but it fails to challenge my substantive point, which was that the church made no serious attempt to discourage such actions or to emphasize that it was a cardinal sin. It was at no point until the Victorian era a cornerstone of the doctrine. Your examples amount to a lot of finger-wagging--along with which there must have been a good amount of playful winking, considering the prevalence of extramarital affairs in the aristocracy, and the fair number of priests who sired children.

HemlockGrey · Post by **HemlockGrey** » 2004-04-24 01:17am

Not to mention the fact that the Lateran Palace was converted into a school for prostitutes in the 10th or 11th century.

Johonebesus · Post by **Johonebesus** » 2004-04-24 02:33am

Pablo Sanchez wrote: This is a classic case of trying to hold up atypical examples as a perverted standard. Certainly, there were saints revered for their chastity. There were also saints revered for living inside barrels and on top of pillars.

Ah, no, my examples were not atypical. Paul, Jerome, Augustine, these fellows were not fringe loonies, but mainstream Christian leaders, Church Fathers who defined Christianity for over a millennium. There are many, many more examples of Christians being praised for their chastity. Why would these stories be so popular and numerous, if the Church didn't place a great value upon celibacy? The only ecclesiastical stories describing sexually active characters presented the randy persons as sinful. Lust was even one of the Seven Deadly Sins. Yes, there were sexually active clerics, even popes, but they were breaking Church law (at least by the Middle Ages) and generally earned scorn from more holy members of the clergy.

The standard by which the medieval church should be judged should be that which was applied in general... that is, masturbation was not particularly frowned upon, men were permitted to engage in limited homosexuality (see Richard the Lionhearted, a stout servant of Christianity), and most persons within the peasantry never actually married in the strict sacramental sense. They just declared that they were so.

You are partially correct in one way. As I pointed out in the previous post, the Church was not very effective at enforcing its sexual standards on society at large; sometimes it even failed at enforcing its values upon itself. There is, however, a huge difference between turning a blind eye and actively condoning. Throughout the Middle Ages, the Church preached against masturbation. I don't know where you got the idea that it was condoned. Lay society generally condoned masturbation and homosexual play, but the Church did not. Le Roy Ladurie's famous study of 14th century Inquisition records from Montaillou includes the story of a scandalous affair between a priest and a teenage layman. His crime was not simply the breaking of his vows of celibacy. There are many records of monasteries being chastised or sanctioned for permitting masturbation. Most of the monastic orders were established as attempts to fight against Church corruption, including illicit sexual activity. One of the things that fueled the Protestant revolt was disgust over the sexual corruption of the Papacy. There are a great many letters and proclamations from Rome ordering bishops to crack down on their parish priests and enforce celibacy, and from prince bishops to local Church leaders complaining about the sexual immorality of the clergy. The fact is that the Church has always held sexuality to be nasty and bad.

Now, as I said before, the Church was not very successful at controlling the behavior of the laity. Up until the Reformation, the Church had a general attitude that the laity were only half Christian, so to speak. It had a hard enough time controlling the Clergy. The Church did not exert terrific and constant effort to control the laity's sexual activity. It simply wasn't feasible. It made some efforts. I remember seeing a Medieval Church calendar listing all the days a layman was permitted to have sex. The list was rather short. However, the Church was still fighting against paganism and Islam and heresy. As long as the folks weren't sacrificing to pagan gods or preaching blasphemous doctrines, the Church was content. It wasn't until Protestantism took off that the Church really started to clamp down on the laity and tell them exactly what they could and couldn't do. The Church took up a sort of besieged mentality, and began to place a great deal of emphasis on defining exactly what made a good Catholic and what didn't.

You should not confuse social mores with ecclesiastical mores. There was often a dichotomy between what the Church preached and what the folks did, and the Church accepted that this was so. Just because the folks engaged in a certain behavior does not mean the Church officially encouraged or even condoned that behavior. You are committing a classic mistake of pointing to folk practices or attitudes and claiming that these represent Christianity. The standard by which to judge the Church is not the general practices of the laity, but what the Church preached over and over, what each reform movement was concerned about, what the great leaders and thinkers of the Church wrote, what was held up as examples of virtue time and time again.

This is all very nice but it fails to challenge my substantive point, which was that the church made no serious attempt to discourage such actions or to emphasize that it was a cardinal sin. It was at no point until the Victorian era a cornerstone of the doctrine. Your examples amount to a lot of finger-wagging--along with which there must have been a good amount of playful winking, considering the prevalence of extramarital affairs in the aristocracy, and the fair number of priests who sired children.

My examples are a lot more than finger wagging. You should read some of the vitriol that was heaped upon fornicators in the Middle Ages. When the Vatican or the a Prince Bishop was railing against local Church leaders for permitting secular priests to keep concubines and regular priests to masturbate or even sleep together, there was no winking.

Victorian morality was not dominated by the Church. Hell, it's called after the Head of the Protestant Church of England at the time! Victorian morality was religiously based, but that religiosity, at least in England, the Northern Countries, and America, was not Catholic in the least. It is very true that it was the Victorian culture that embraced an anti-sex attitude at a popular level, but the Church of Rome had been highly critical of sexuality from the beginning. Just because it wasn't very good at enforcing that attitude doesn't mean it wasn't important.

Stuart Mackey · Post by **Stuart Mackey** » 2004-04-24 05:36am

The Catholic church in America could always have a good ol schism and pull a Henry V111 move and flip Rome the bird...

Skelron · Post by **Skelron** » 2004-04-24 12:19pm

Col. Crackpot wrote:
Darth_Zod wrote:damned assholes. Yet another case of the church guilt tripping the public into following what they want them to do. I see this going over not so well for them.
This is the Catholic Church seeing that for the first time in 40 years the United States could have a Catholic President, and they are already trying to control him. Fuck them.

Erm hardly, considering it was the reporters who brought up the issue of politicians and kerry not the Cardinal, one suspects it was more conservative papers looking for something to embarress the democrat cadiate with, and using the Church to do it.

As it is it's a very overblown case, The document itself actually had more to do with 'alter Girls,' etc in the mass than Abortion, and it was only when he said those who needed to go to Confession should go before going to communion that the matter of abortion was brought up... With the Cardinal seeming to fall back on stock answers, 'said the church's position was clear and that U.S. bishops should decide.' (That is, look elsewhere and hay ask your Bishops about such things, as your own politicians thank you very much)

Then the questions went more general, and we get an actual basic answer 'When pressed to speak generally about the case of "unambiguously pro-abortion" Catholic politicians, Arinze concurred that such a politician "is not fit" to receive communion.' However unambiguously is not exactly what Kerry is. ((Also I'd like to draw attention to the bit in Italics which I added, this would go against the initial bit I quoted where the person said the Church was trying to push it's weight around in the events of this article. Clearly if the reporters had to press him he wasn't exactly pushing to make a point))

'The Democratic presidential candidate says he personally opposes abortion, but supports the rights of others to have one.' That is, hay I'm against it, but I won't impose my morallty on the others, I will support ways to convince people not to have an abortion and present other options but...

The Vatican directive, commissioned by Pope John Paul II, softened a stricter earlier draft that had discouraged the use of altar girls and denounced such practices as applauding and dancing during Mass.

It said, however, that "shadows are not lacking" and that the Vatican cannot remain silent about abuses that "not infrequently plague liturgical celebrations."

And it reiterated the pope's view that the "mystery of the Eucharist is to great for anyone to treat it according to his own whim."

Roman Catholics believe that they receive the body and blood of Christ when they take communion.

The Second Vatican Council in the 1960s led to many liberalizing changes in the Mass, such as having priests face the congregation and celebrating the service in the local language rather than Latin.

The 71-page document, called an instruction, keyed on what the Vatican considers such abuses as lay people increasingly taking on the role of priests, even non-Christians "out of ignorance" coming forward to take communion and the introduction into the Mass of books and rites of other religions.

The document said only priests may read the Gospel to congregations, and that only priests or deacons may deliver the homily — never lay people. However, it allowed that bishops can appoint "extraordinary ministers" to give communion when there is no priest available.

It said the use of altar boys was "laudable" but repeated Church policy that girls or women may also serve at the altar.

((what is actually covered in the document directly, as oppossed to what Reporters decided to infer from it.))