RSS
What formerly hot button word is missing from these long articles about the current Catholic Church confab on family and sex?
From the Washington Post:
First reports on hot-button issues from Pope Francis’s meeting reveal deep divisions
By Michelle Boorstein October 21 at 11:10 AM
At Pope Francis’s closed-door meeting in Rome this month, top clergy are intensely debating whether the church should bend more to the messy realities of modern families, and on Wednesday they released some early reports revealing their deep divisions. In daily life, however, contemporary messiness has already changed the Catholic Church.
Questions on the agenda at the rare high-level meeting, called a synod, include whether those who divorce and remarry outside the church can receive Communion, and whether there is a place in Catholic life for same-sex couples.
From the New York Times:
Pope Francis’ Plans for Inclusiveness Divide Bishops
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN and ELISABETTA POVOLEDO OCT. 21, 2015VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis had encouraged bishops from more than 120 countries to speak freely when they gathered at the Vatican nearly three weeks ago for a broad discussion of family matters to guide the world’s 1.2 billion Roman Catholics. And speak freely, they have.
The result has been the most momentous, and contentious, meeting of bishops in the 50 years since the Second Vatican Council, which brought the church into the modern era. The meeting has exposed deep fault lines between traditionalists focused on shoring up doctrine, and those who want the church to be more open to Catholics who are divorced, gay, single parents or cohabiting. …
Progressives, led by the contingent from Germany, are pushing for a church that is more welcoming toward divorced, gay and other parishioners who are not living the Catholic ideal of family. The German bishops have found allies among some prelates from Western Europe, Asia and the Americas.
The traditionalists — whose standard bearers are the African and Eastern European bishops — have resisted any proposals that appear to soften the church’s doctrine that marriage is “indissoluble” and homosexuality is “intrinsically disordered.”
In one indication of their fervor, Cardinal Robert Sarah, who is from Guinea and leads the Vatican’s Congregation for Divine Worship, told the synod, “What Nazi-Fascism and Communism were in the 20th century, Western homosexual and abortion ideologies and Islamic fanaticism are today.”
The missing word is “contraception.”
Back in the 1960s and 1970s, the Catholic Church’s 1968 encyclical Humanae vitae reaffirming the Church’s teaching against most forms of contraception other than the rhythm method was hugely controversial. It was widely alleged that this stance threatened overpopulation.
Since 1970, world population has exactly doubled from 3.68 billion to 7.35 billion.
But the Washington Post and New York Times don’t seem to much talk much about birth control, family planning, or contraception anymore. And it’s hardly important compared to the huge issue of our time: gay marriage.
Besides that’s racist.
Granted, I doubt if the Catholic Church’s position on contraception is as much of a problem at present in contrast to the general lack of interest in the subject among progressive elites.
As I’ve mentioned before, one Catholic country where the population does keep rising is the Philippines, where the population this year surpassed 100,000,000. This is perhaps due to the prestige of the Church there due to Cardinal Sin standing up to President Marcos in the 1980s.
P0pe Francis himself mentioned on his way home from a visit to the Philippines this year that Catholics aren’t compelled to breed “like rabbits.”
My graph of Southeastern Asian countries above suggests that Islam is presently a bigger cultural factor than Catholicism in overpopulation. Thailand and the Philippines started out with similar populations in 1950, but Thailand has pretty much stabilized in population, increasing only 8% from 2000 to 2015, while the Philippines have grown 29%.
But Malaysia has grown even faster: 30%.
The growth rate in this century for Indonesia is 22%, which is pretty high considering that the moderate-sized island of Java has notoriously been jammed for roughly ever. The current population of Java is estimated at a crazy 143 million, on about 45% as much land as the Philippines.
The big driver of overpopulation these days is less religious doctrine than lack of female education. Catholics have been relatively pro-female education since at least the time of the abbess Hildegard von Bingen nine centuries ago.
English
Arabic
Chinese (Simplified)
Dutch
French
German
Hebrew
Hindi
Italian
Japanese
Korean
Persian
Polish
Portuguese
Russian
Spanish
Swedish
Turkish
Vietnamese
Steve Sailer misses the point; population divided by land area is pretty much meaningless; population divided by habitable land area allows meaningful conclusions. M
Over the years people have grown weary and discouraged by the conservative hierarchy of the U.S. Church. Really, they have been killing the Catholic Church here in the U.S. Now there is a Pope who has the ability by the way he lives and teaches (in such a kind way) to return so many lapsed Catholics to the fold and attract new members. Yet, the U.S. Cardianls and bishops led by the rickety and doctrinaire Cardinal Dolan want to sabotage all the good that Pope Francis as done.
Anyway, the Catholic solution, the moral law, would solve your population problem better than contraception (and is more practical to boot).
Francis concerns nearly every thinking Catholic. We know that the final battle between Lucifer and the Church will be over marriage and the family. That is from Sister Lucia. We know that satan prowls the darkness like a lion seeking our destruction.
Either your post was poor satire or you have no idea about the divisiveness of Francis.
The Lutheran church I attended as a kid was filled with nice old white people. There were so few kids, they had to combine their Sunday school program with a neighboring Lutheran church. The members are literally dying out. Every Christmas, it's full of their kids and grandkids who don't show up the rest of the year.
Is this satire?
Anyway, the Catholic solution, the moral law, would solve your population problem better than contraception (and is more practical to boot).
By Michelle Boorstein… By LAURIE GOODSTEIN
Two Jewish females writing articles in the elite prestige press, the diversity overwhelms!!
But note the birthrates among Jewish females, esp non-religious and educated…down the drain.
Idiots like Merkel will say migration is caused by “globalization”, others blame “climate change”.
Basically its all about differing birthrates where people, mainly males, from countries where women are treated like garbage migrating to/invading countries where women are treated well, are educated and rarely reproduce.
The one child Hillary and the no children Merkel or Ann Coulter should know that. African and muslim women with 5+ children each are sending the sons.
No mystery.
And the White men in those targeted countries aren’t going to do anything but sometimes complain then passively watch, grow old, die and be replaced by a different race and culture.
Some are perversely encouraging the process. Including Catholic dork boys like Paul Ryan.
High birth rate + female infanticide creates a lot more spare men than high birth rate alone.
I wonder if there''s a direct correlation between the countries with the highest emigration numbers and highest female infanticide numbers?
That would crank up the moral sickness of pro-immigration feminists even further into the stratosphere.Replies: @Reg Cæsar
I think the child abuse scandal was a bigger contributor. It’s *really, really disturbing* to have these people who are supposed to be moral examples and God’s people *molesting children*.
Why not just let the priests marry? The Orthodox Church seems to do well enough with that, and you’d have fewer closeted gays in the priesthood (which is the real problem nobody wants to bring up, because it’s not PC).
I’m not Catholic, and it’s none of my business, but I hate to see a 2000-year-old institution go down like this.
As for Pope Francis…I suspect he pleases mostly the people who aren’t Catholics or likely to become Catholics. But I could definitely be wrong.
While I'm not much of a Mormon anymore, one thing I like about the LDS Church is the idea of a lay clergy. Beyond the top levels of the hierarchy, Mormon clergy are unpaid, have families, and have regular day jobs. This provides benefits in a lot of ways. It's cheaper, it doesn't allow people to select themselves for the occupation (which often attracts the wrong sort), and it allows you to kick out misbehaving clergy without worrying that you're destroying their livelihoods. It has its downsides - a more poorly trained priesthood and a big demand on the time of men with families (which could be solved by choosing older men whose children have grown), but overall it's superior, I think, to a paid, more professional clergy.Replies: @josh, @Steve Sailer
Haredi Rabbi Charged With Molesting And Sodomizing Girls Who Came To Him For Advice.Yesterday,
Harassment Of Chabad Child Sex Abuse Victims Continues, A Survivor Asks Why.Last Week,
Rabbi Ephraim Karp Sentenced To Serve 22 Years In Prison.And so forth; you get the idea.For some reason, these stories seldom appear in the MSM.
Back in the 1980s a friend of mine and I wrote a song–narrated by a Cardinal–that included the couplet:
Now that was a good song. My friend now lives in Valley Village, eerily enough.
I like how the NYT feels they need to ease us into the concept of the synod in the second graf. I may be mistaken, but I don’t think they’re similarly helpful when they bring up minyans or whatever.
And then there’s the fundamental misunderstanding of the Church’s prescriptive function, family-structure-wise:
“What is the Roman Catholic Church for?” doesn’t seem to be a question that’s ever occurred to anyone at that paper.
FWIW, I’m a Catholic who’s a pretty big fan of Francis. And like most American Catholics, I pretty much ignore Church teachings on birth control. I’ve noticed that there are active families in our parish that have enough kids that they’re probably not using birth control, but most active families (the ones who show up at Mass every week and volunteer for various ministries) have too few children for that to be likely. If you’re a healthy couple in your mid-40s who got married in your 20s, with no birth control and a healthy sex life, you’re going to have more than 2-3 kids.
Obviously, there is no such thing as a Catholic who pretty much ignores the Church's teachings on birth control. But zombies carry their briefcases to work, don't they?
“Why not just let the priests marry? The Orthodox Church seems to do well enough with that, and you’d have fewer closeted gays in the priesthood.”
While I’m not much of a Mormon anymore, one thing I like about the LDS Church is the idea of a lay clergy. Beyond the top levels of the hierarchy, Mormon clergy are unpaid, have families, and have regular day jobs. This provides benefits in a lot of ways. It’s cheaper, it doesn’t allow people to select themselves for the occupation (which often attracts the wrong sort), and it allows you to kick out misbehaving clergy without worrying that you’re destroying their livelihoods. It has its downsides – a more poorly trained priesthood and a big demand on the time of men with families (which could be solved by choosing older men whose children have grown), but overall it’s superior, I think, to a paid, more professional clergy.
They weren’t “molesting children.” Creeping liberalism permitted homos to invade the priesthood. Homo priests do what homos do: seduce vulnerable teenaged boys. Rates of such behavior are not lower among churches with married clergy.
The UK probably now has a higher population growth rate than Thailand.
It is solely due massive immigration. Doubtless the indigenous population shrank markedly in the past 30 odd years.
Indeed, it seems to take several generations for the memory of an actual religion to fade. Anglicanism didn’t cease to exist instantly once its churchmen ceased to believe. It took a long time. And the whole way down, the ladies with the short grey hair were coming to services, giving away the money their husbands had left them, and volunteering for “ministries.”
Obviously, there is no such thing as a Catholic who pretty much ignores the Church’s teachings on birth control. But zombies carry their briefcases to work, don’t they?
So the Pope is going to save the Catholic church by copying the Episcopalians?
Being allowed to marry hasn’t stopped rabbis and ministers from molesting children. The only way to solve the problem of clerical abuse among Catholic priests is to kick the gays out of the priesthood.
Of course, the big ‘cultural phenomenon’ of recent years has been the massive availability and ubiquity of hard core pornography, mostly on cheap, portable, hand held devices, which has reached such an extent that the most primitive, impoverished, remote peoples on earth are watching it.
It is easier – and cheaper – to watch hard core porn than it is to make a cup of tea – that measure is the yardstick by which every activity is measured, back in Blighty.
Not wishing to rib Steve, California’s San Fernando Valley is the global epicenter for this ceaseless torrent of filth.
Anyhow, my point is that the Roman Catholic Church seems no longer to have a position, if you pardon the pun,on a subject which exercised it mightily only a few decades ago.
Indeed, I’ve been told no copies of Playboy were ever on sale in Eire prior to the 1990s.
Thank you for explaining why white Catholics are dying out across the United States and being replaced by Hispanics.
The Church for 2000 years grew the old fashioned way, by its members having children. Now members quickly become ex-members; if I don’t have to follow Church teachings on contraception why do I have to do any of the other things?
The Germans are trying this divorced and remarried stunt because they want to get more from the church tax that is imposed in Germany.
Your kids are much safer in the sacristy with Fr.X than in any public school.
Try to name any other religious group that is growing its clergy-it doesn’t have anything to do with celibacy.
Francis has done nothing to bring back people to the fold or inspire conversions
Literally the only people I have heard talking like this are Protestants. The RCC will last fifteen minutes if they turn into the Lutheran Lite church. The only thing holding the church together as a united Church is the traditionalists fighting this kind of moral garbage seepage.
Francis concerns nearly every thinking Catholic. We know that the final battle between Lucifer and the Church will be over marriage and the family. That is from Sister Lucia. We know that satan prowls the darkness like a lion seeking our destruction.
Either your post was poor satire or you have no idea about the divisiveness of Francis.
Isn’t gay marriage a form of birth control?
Oscar Wilde had 2 kids-had there been gay marriage in Victorian England he likely would have had none.
You might consider it a variant of the gangster "goomar" ('comare') tradition.
Wilde is a prime example of how homosexual behavior is not "born this way" or a straight binary, but rather that sexual fluidity is a human characteristic. People aren't stupid, and for many generations recognized that sexuality could be very much influenced by environment and personal responsibility.
But think about this: what if the possibility that their child might be raised by two men makes pregnant women less willing to give their babies up for adoption? Do gay rights increase the gender wage gap?
Why not just let the priests marry?
Well, rabbis are married.
If you visit Failed Messiah.com, you’ll discover they have their fair share of perverts, e.g.
Today,
Haredi Rabbi Charged With Molesting And Sodomizing Girls Who Came To Him For Advice.
Yesterday,
Harassment Of Chabad Child Sex Abuse Victims Continues, A Survivor Asks Why.
Last Week,
Rabbi Ephraim Karp Sentenced To Serve 22 Years In Prison.
And so forth; you get the idea.
For some reason, these stories seldom appear in the MSM.
Two Jewish females writing articles in the elite prestige press, the diversity overwhelms!!
But note the birthrates among Jewish females, esp non-religious and educated...down the drain.
Idiots like Merkel will say migration is caused by "globalization", others blame "climate change".
Basically its all about differing birthrates where people, mainly males, from countries where women are treated like garbage migrating to/invading countries where women are treated well, are educated and rarely reproduce.
The one child Hillary and the no children Merkel or Ann Coulter should know that. African and muslim women with 5+ children each are sending the sons.
No mystery.
And the White men in those targeted countries aren't going to do anything but sometimes complain then passively watch, grow old, die and be replaced by a different race and culture.
Some are perversely encouraging the process. Including Catholic dork boys like Paul Ryan.Replies: @Prof. Woland, @anon
I suspect this is one reason “rape culture” is the new rallying cry for feminism. Roe v. Wade / Abortion is a non-issue. Women are not even getting pregnant in the first place and if they want to abort, they always can. Period. A new slogan for a new era.
There is considerable illegal immigration from Philippines to Malaysia (especially in East Malaysia on the island of Borneo), which has caused a major backlash from the natives.
While I'm not much of a Mormon anymore, one thing I like about the LDS Church is the idea of a lay clergy. Beyond the top levels of the hierarchy, Mormon clergy are unpaid, have families, and have regular day jobs. This provides benefits in a lot of ways. It's cheaper, it doesn't allow people to select themselves for the occupation (which often attracts the wrong sort), and it allows you to kick out misbehaving clergy without worrying that you're destroying their livelihoods. It has its downsides - a more poorly trained priesthood and a big demand on the time of men with families (which could be solved by choosing older men whose children have grown), but overall it's superior, I think, to a paid, more professional clergy.Replies: @josh, @Steve Sailer
Priestly celibacy is one (of the many) disciplines that makes sure that the right people self-select. Priestly celibacy is nearly 2000 years old and priests qua priests have never had a reputation for being sodomites. In decadent societies, such as renaissance Florence, oriental kiddie-diddling seems to have made a comeback, but not among priests per se. Even during the course of the scandals, the fraction of pedo-priests was lower than the fraction of pedos in the general population. This was a result of the sexual revolution infecting the Church, not something specific to Catholicism or even to the discipline of priestly celibacy. When you accept that you are implicitly accepting Freudian garbage about “repression” causing “neurosis” rather than the classical understanding of man as needing to make his passions subject to reason.
Oscar Wilde had 2 kids-had there been gay marriage in Victorian England he likely would have had none.Replies: @PB and J, @whorefinder, @WowJustWow
Perhaps. But there’s a fair amount of homosexual men who might prefer straight marriage for two reasons: 1) biological progeny, and 2) freedom from monogamy.
You might consider it a variant of the gangster “goomar” (‘comare’) tradition.
Yes, caving in to every trendy form of social disfunction or perversion is definitely the way to promote a church, as the Church of England has shown….
Hildegard was a nun, which in Catholic teaching is a special vocation that a small minority of women are called to. Most women are supposed to stay at home and breed like rabbits to produce more Catholics.
The Catholic Church is a spiritual institution whose interest is the salvation of souls, not the worldly and material comfort and prosperity of its flock. It teaches that poverty and suffering are noble and dignified.
Secularism and science have been so influential and dominant that modern Westerners simply believe in Catholicism like their ancestors did. Furthermore, the Catholic Church is now a truly global institution, not merely a nominal and self-proclaimed one, and thus no longer a Western parochial institution. Thus contemporary Westerners, whether they like it or not, are alienated from Catholicism, and Catholicism can’t be re-purposed into some practical philosophy to satisfy contemporary material conditions and concerns with intellectual honesty and without undermining Catholicism. This is of course where Protestantism, which can be fashioned into almost anything, or more likely, agnosticism or atheism, come in.
Two Jewish females writing articles in the elite prestige press, the diversity overwhelms!!
But note the birthrates among Jewish females, esp non-religious and educated...down the drain.
Idiots like Merkel will say migration is caused by "globalization", others blame "climate change".
Basically its all about differing birthrates where people, mainly males, from countries where women are treated like garbage migrating to/invading countries where women are treated well, are educated and rarely reproduce.
The one child Hillary and the no children Merkel or Ann Coulter should know that. African and muslim women with 5+ children each are sending the sons.
No mystery.
And the White men in those targeted countries aren't going to do anything but sometimes complain then passively watch, grow old, die and be replaced by a different race and culture.
Some are perversely encouraging the process. Including Catholic dork boys like Paul Ryan.Replies: @Prof. Woland, @anon
Female infanticide would be another driving factor.
High birth rate + female infanticide creates a lot more spare men than high birth rate alone.
I wonder if there”s a direct correlation between the countries with the highest emigration numbers and highest female infanticide numbers?
That would crank up the moral sickness of pro-immigration feminists even further into the stratosphere.
This is mostly an Oriental and Subcontinental issue (though it may seep into the eastern reaches of Dar-al-Salaam), and doesn't apply in the particular countries now being deserted. Sex ratio isn't the driver of the present exodus, but age ratio.
By becoming more liberal, the Catholic church risks alienating conservative Catholics. At the same time, the Catholic church won’t gain many new followers, since liberals are mostly nonreligious. The people praising Pope Francis for being progressive are nonreligious, and will remain nonreligious. There’s a reason liberal churches are dying out, while conservative churches are full of young adults with children.
The Lutheran church I attended as a kid was filled with nice old white people. There were so few kids, they had to combine their Sunday school program with a neighboring Lutheran church. The members are literally dying out. Every Christmas, it’s full of their kids and grandkids who don’t show up the rest of the year.
First, there’s actually pretty strong evidence that celibacy amongst priests goes back to the beginning of the Church. A lot of people argue that Innocent III forced celibacy for monetary reasons., and that before that priests had sex. While the latter is true—priests have done a lot of things—-the dogma of the Church was long pushing celibacy, and punished priests for such acts. Innocent III was merely trying to re-enforce the old custom and clean up certain aspects of the church.
Most of this can be gleaned from both the celibate practices of monks and nuns going back to the beginnings: members of the Roman Empire’s imperial families are recorded as taking vows of chastity, Desert Fathers did so, and Benedict made it part of his rule, and church officials like Saint Ambrose, St. Augustine, and Saint John Chrysostom were celibate. If you take a gander at the Gospels and read what Christ said about sex and marriage its pretty clear that his instructions on the matters were extremely socially conservative: no sex before marriage, no divorce except in one rare case, and strong implication that sexual roles were to be regulated and that sex was a potential downfall of a man. The letters from the Apostles also strongly support limited to no sexual intercourse.
Arguments that “the apostles were married” ignores the fact that celibate marriage is a very long tradition in the Church. Basically, priests who were previously married can stay married so long as they and their wives do not have intercourse; it’s a conversion sop to rabbis, orthodox priests, etc. who come in wanting to be holy men still but have wives with them. This tradition of abstention from sex to deliver the sacraments can be traced to the Apostles own words to Jesus in a discussion about whether its even worth it to be married.
Second, the Church has lasted about 2000 years with priestly celibacy and done just fine. Those who claim it needs to modernize are just being short sighted; many, many millions lasted quite fine in celibacy. We live in an r-selected environment where sex is abundant, physically safe, and easy to get, so celibacy just doesn’t strike us as possible or doable or worthy, but that’s in our own limited, secular environment.
Third, the gay infiltration of the church waxes and wanes throughout history, but it always appears when liberalization occurs and the congregation is dwindling. Like any organization, when people aren’t paying attention to it one group can take it over and abuse it. It’s going to take many decades to clean out the gay rot that has come in since Vatican 2, which largely got in because the Vatican 2 reforms created lukewarm and lapsed Catholics due to its hippie-dogma and liberalization.
Fourth, you’re right about the people who like Francis the most are the people who aren’t Catholics or aren’t going to go to church anyway. I’ve hoped that Francis’s lefty statements were part of a greater ruse organized by Benedict and Francis: Francis is the lefty frontman who gets the church good press and distracts, while Benedict reforms the church inside through ruthless cleansing. Sadly, it may simply be that Francis really is the SJW he appears to be.
Oscar Wilde had 2 kids-had there been gay marriage in Victorian England he likely would have had none.Replies: @PB and J, @whorefinder, @WowJustWow
That’s nonsense. Wilde always maintained he had attraction to women, it was just that, in his 40s, when his testosterone dropped and he got rich and famous, he became more interested in men; however, he never claimed he found women not to be sexually attractive.
Wilde is a prime example of how homosexual behavior is not “born this way” or a straight binary, but rather that sexual fluidity is a human characteristic. People aren’t stupid, and for many generations recognized that sexuality could be very much influenced by environment and personal responsibility.
Not just the rhythm method, but also the “Pull and Pray” or “Cast and Blast” method are allowed.
Rhythm method, huh?
I recall vividly the cause of my becoming an ex-Catholic (or, as my mother referred to me, a lapsed Catholic)
During John Paul’s trip to Africa back in the 80s, he “clarified” the doctrine, such that all forms of contraception, including the use of the rhythm method as a contraceptive (abstaining specifically to avoid pregnancy), were unacceptable.
And now that I type it out, it still strikes me as so fundamentally stupid that it must have been a bad translation. Either that, or a convenient excuse at the time for losing my faith.
My experience is the opposite of Betty piuy’s: it’s the failure of the church to embrace tradition (not its suffocation by it) that’s leading to the church’s decline. Many of us, including myself, desire a church of order and beauty, not of convenience and feels. John Paul and Benedict may have been socially conservative, but their influence upon their (sadly) decadent American flock, including myself, was nil. Pope Francis has much more in common with the ethos of my lifetime (1970 -) and it’s not panning out. https://www.unz.com/isteve/the-dog-thats-not-barking-in-vatican-city/#comment-1198066
Oscar Wilde had 2 kids-had there been gay marriage in Victorian England he likely would have had none.Replies: @PB and J, @whorefinder, @WowJustWow
Since marriage is already a dead institution, and nobody cares whether gays get married or not, just that they have the option to, I’d guess no.
But think about this: what if the possibility that their child might be raised by two men makes pregnant women less willing to give their babies up for adoption? Do gay rights increase the gender wage gap?
Mr. Sailer is likely right in thinking that the Catholic prohibition on contraception doesn’t make all that much of a difference to overall population growth in the long run, though it is probably makes short-term difference at the margins and under unusual conditions (the American Baby Boom, for example, was a substantially Catholic phenomenon). The collapse of religious orders that followed in the wake of Vatican II has obscured this to modern eyes, but traditionally, couples pious enough to obey all of the Church’s strictures on sex usually end up raising at least a few kids destined for celibacy. They may have a lot more kids than their contracepting neighbors, but not necessarily a lot more grand-kids. St. Louis Martin and his wife, parents of St. Thérèse of Lisieux, were an extreme example- 9 pregnancies, 0 grandchildren. Likewise, contraception probably doesn’t restrain the fertility of people with poor self-control and high time preference as much as you’d expect, because, “Aw crud, I forgot to buy rubbers again”.
The Catholic Church, with a long lifespan and resistance to rapid change, makes an excellent yardstick against which to measure these shifts of respectable opinion over the decades. In 2065, if the NYT or anything like it still exists, I’m sure they will have forgotten all of their current complaints against the Church, and will have moved on to new obsessions. This is worth paying attention to, because unless Steve is still blogging at 107, we won’t have his keen memory for old editorials to remind us how much liberalism has changed its mind over the decades.
While I'm not much of a Mormon anymore, one thing I like about the LDS Church is the idea of a lay clergy. Beyond the top levels of the hierarchy, Mormon clergy are unpaid, have families, and have regular day jobs. This provides benefits in a lot of ways. It's cheaper, it doesn't allow people to select themselves for the occupation (which often attracts the wrong sort), and it allows you to kick out misbehaving clergy without worrying that you're destroying their livelihoods. It has its downsides - a more poorly trained priesthood and a big demand on the time of men with families (which could be solved by choosing older men whose children have grown), but overall it's superior, I think, to a paid, more professional clergy.Replies: @josh, @Steve Sailer
Like the Mormon bishop of Boston for many years was Mitt Romney. Granted, his flock was only getting 10% or 20% of his time, but still, that’s pretty decent quality of religious leader.
Once upon a time it was the Church not the State, that took care of the indigent so they damn well had a stake in regulating the number of bastards. Now that it is paid for by a third party (like insurance) they don’t have to care so they are free to abandon their opposition.
JPII was smarter than you are, and I don’t even think he was that great a pope. People ought to understand the incredible philosophical tradition of the church as the torch barer of the unbroken philosophical tradition going back to Plato. The conclusions might strike a modern utilitarian as stupid, but when you actually understand the arguments, going all the way to first pronciples, which must be metaphysical, it’s never obviously wrong. Metaphysics and philosophy of the good are not modernists strongpoints, but they must be the foundation of any ethical system. People today don’t seem to think they even have to think about these things. I bet somebody will respond to this comment with a comment demonstrating that they don’t even know what metaphysics is, but they are sure it’s stoopid.
Replies 30& 31 are hysterical.
30 says “pull and pray” is sanctioned by the Church-wrong. That’s the sin of Odom; clearly forbidden in the OT.
Then 31 says JPII forbid even the rhythm method. First of all where do you non-Catholics come up with your terminology? I doubt there is a single non-contraceptive Catholic couple that uses the rhythm method in the US.
Get some facts before displaying your lack of functioning brain cells. Or your hatred of the Catholic Church.
What has always interested me is the forked tongues of the left when it comes to Christianity in general and the Catholic Church in particular. On the one hand, they want to say that they’re irrelevant and dying. On the other hand, they’re anxious for these “irrelevant and dying” institutions to come out in favor of contraception, birth control, aborticide, gay “marriage.”
High birth rate + female infanticide creates a lot more spare men than high birth rate alone.
I wonder if there''s a direct correlation between the countries with the highest emigration numbers and highest female infanticide numbers?
That would crank up the moral sickness of pro-immigration feminists even further into the stratosphere.Replies: @Reg Cæsar
As bad as Islam is about women, this isn’t their problem. Allah has decided that thou shouldst have a daughter, and thou shalt not question Allah. End of story, Sheherazade.
This is mostly an Oriental and Subcontinental issue (though it may seep into the eastern reaches of Dar-al-Salaam), and doesn’t apply in the particular countries now being deserted. Sex ratio isn’t the driver of the present exodus, but age ratio.
Pope Francis is immensely popular with people who hate the Catholic Church and everything it stands for. They adore him because he’s helping them to destroy the Catholic Church.
Similarly, this Pee Center poll shows 50% of Catholics saying Francis has improved their view of the Church.
If I were a more skeptical person, I might just conclude you don't know what you're talking about.
30 says "pull and pray" is sanctioned by the Church-wrong. That's the sin of Odom; clearly forbidden in the OT.
Then 31 says JPII forbid even the rhythm method. First of all where do you non-Catholics come up with your terminology? I doubt there is a single non-contraceptive Catholic couple that uses the rhythm method in the US.
Get some facts before displaying your lack of functioning brain cells. Or your hatred of the Catholic Church.Replies: @Rob McX
You’re thinking of Onan, surely? You’re getting him confused with that guy who was found comatose in a brothel.
“The sin of Onan” v. “the sins of Odom”
Check this out, from Wikipedia:That was Blue Moon Odom.
Oddly, this appears to include the people in my parish who are at Mass every Sunday and holy day, volunteer for all kinds of ministries, send their kids to catholic school, etc. Somehow we must hate the Church because we like Francis.
Similarly, this Pee Center poll shows 50% of Catholics saying Francis has improved their view of the Church.
If I were a more skeptical person, I might just conclude you don’t know what you’re talking about.
“Thou shalt not get mixed up with the Kardashians.”
Yeah, I put a 21st century spin on it. Fortunately for Lamar the good book is strangely silent on banging trannies.
If only there were some other way of preventing fast demographic change in the U.S. Ah but that’s crazy talk–clearly it’s either reproduce faster than poor people can walk across the border, or nothing.
“Odom golden slippers…”
Check this out, from Wikipedia:
That was Blue Moon Odom.