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Post by JustSayingLike on Jun 11, 2010 21:02:47 GMT
"... they mourn it" This is a quote from the film Dogma in which the director and writer Smith tried to get across the concept that "it does not matter WHICH faith you have but that you HAVE faith" which were the words of a character called "Muse" within the film. With that in mind I thought an interesting comment from a website: williamedelen.org/archives/57#more-57might interest the users of this site and I thought I would put it forward for comment. What is the general impression of the above article? What is the general impression of Catholicism as a source of joy in the more jovial sense, rather than the "joy of god" sense? And where would one reckon Jesus found humour in his life if he were to be what AND whom he claimed to be? Catholics celebrate Jesus as taking on human form in not just flesh but in character too... surely there was joviality in his life yet for me at least this appears to be the most under discussed aspect of his humanity.
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Post by Hemingway on Jun 12, 2010 8:56:50 GMT
I wouldn’t agree with the sentiments expressed in this article at all. I am sure Catholicism brings joy to many people. It’s not for me, but then neither is sky diving. Each to his own. I am convinced that many people actually do obtain a joy that can be compared to laughter/excitement/joviality from their religion. I personally feel that putting a "picture" of Jesus on the cover of Playboy was in bad taste. Although I do not accept Jesus as the Son Of God (as I don’t believe there is a god), I would never endorse an action that is purposely going to offend someone. I would suggest it was not the smiling Jesus that offended people, but rather that the depiction of him was placed on the cover of a "nudey mag". Why purposely go out of your way to offend someone? That is not constructive, nor is it nice. I support freedom of expression and free speech, but there has to be ground rules for these things. I supported the Danish Magazines “right” to publish pictures of Muhammad, but I thought that they were ill-advised to do it. Not because of the violent, over the top reaction it would generate, but because it offended so many people – extremists and moderate Muslims alike. We may be of the opinion that it is silly to be offended by a drawing, but that is not the point. Muslims DO find it offensive and they are a part of our community. It’s the same for people of all faiths, races and creeds. If the English newspapers constantly published pictures and caricatures of “Paddy” falling out of the pub or tilling his spuds in the field (similar to cartoons that used to appear in “Punch”), I am sure I would get upset too. I may not take to the streets and be violent, but then I am not that way inclined anyway. Here are some example of how the Irish were depicted by "Punch" in the 19th Century. Maybe it’s just me, but I would never go out of my way to try and upset someone (except maybe Manchester United supporters).
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Post by monkeyman on Jun 12, 2010 23:53:10 GMT
Lets get away from equating Catholism and sky-diving in terms of taste Hemingway please. Skydiving hasn't produced what institutions of mercy which we now call hospitals or indeed the modern concept of the university as we have it. It also doesn't deserve to be equated with other supernatural beliefs such as "santa claus" or the "tooth fairy" which are beliefs aimed at children for a particular purpose. Neither should Catholis or those who believe equate non-belief witha form of sickness. Afterall the beliefs we hold are ones which we believe only by virtue of grace.I admit that reason can be used also to come to belief in the existence of God. I would ask those that describe themselves as people who see no reason to believe to at least have an open mind and also an open heart. I have seen next to none of that here by the atheists that post.The burden is not on us Catholics to be open minded to unbelief because that in itself is sinful for us. JustSayingLike you state regarding the film "Dogma" about Catholics mourning their faith. Its often Catholic especially lapsed ones who come away from the Church with that impression. Other people ,people of other beliefs are not always in agreement. Ghandi said the folowing when visiting a Cistercian Abbey in Durban , Zimbabwe near the turn of the century. "The settlement is a quiet little model village, owned on the truest republican principles. The principle of liberty, equality, and fraternity is carried out in its entirety. Every man is a brother, every woman a sister. The monks number about 120 on the settlement, and the nuns, or the sisters as they are called, number about sixty... None may keep any money for private use. All are equally rich or poor... A Protestant clergyman said to his audience that Roman Catholics were weakly, sickly, and sad. Well, if the Trappists are any criterion of what a Roman Catholic is, they are, on the contrary, healthy and cheerful. Wherever we went, a beaming smile and a lowly bow greeted us, we saw a brother or a sister. Even while the guide was decanting on the system he prized so much, he did not at all seem to consider the self-chosen discipline a hard yoke to bear. A better instance of undying faith and perfect implicit obedience could not well be found anywhere else." About Christ laughing. The scriptures don't speak of it but then again neither do they speak of him having a wife. The accepted oral tradition within the Church esp from one of the Church Fathers is that he did not.
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Post by hibernicus on Jun 14, 2010 9:38:21 GMT
In the last chapter of ORTHODOXY GK Chesterton suggests that the Gospels do not describe the laughter of Jesus because it was too tremendous; and one certainly gets the impression that He was fond of puns. Chesterton's whole apologetic is based on the idea that mere existence is a wonderful and joyous thing for which we should be grateful; it's no accident that one of his finest books is on St. Francis of Assisi, whose love of animals and deliberate decision to live in poverty and embrace lepers both reflected his central love for God. Asceticism and puritanism only make sense when they are pursued for the love of Something greater; if done out of sheer fear or pride they can turn into something very nasty, and I suspect this was an element in some of the recent scandals. There is a passage in THE SCREWTAPE LETTERS where the devil Screwtape actually sneers at "the Enemy" as he calls God, because He offers the "vermin" eternal happiness, and claims that their endurance of eternal suffering makes the devils morally superior. Lewis was very perceptive about this sort of perversion of asceticism into spiritual pride, because he was aware of his own sadistic tendencies. If you want a laughing saint, pray look at the material about St Philip Neri which I posted on my Saints thread. If you want some atheist despair, look at some of Woody Allen's films. There you see a hedonism based on absolute nihilism, on the belief that we should pursue every sort of sensual pleasure (including, one presumes, sex with your stepdaughter) to evade the fear of death and the knowledge that life is driven by meaningless suffering and ends in nothingness. One of the pleasures thus advocated is sneering at the rubes who retain any belief in God and therefore any wider hope. Now THAT'S a life merely endured.
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Post by Hemingway on Jun 14, 2010 11:31:25 GMT
Lets get away from equating Catholism and sky-diving in terms of taste Hemingway please. I didn’t equate skydiving with Catholicism Monkeyman. I merely stated that Catholicism is not for me much like skydiving, or garlic, or S&M, or cricket, or high board diving etc….. I wasn’t equating anything with any other thing. I was merely stating that I have no interest in partaking in any of the above. Maybe you misunderstood? Skydiving hasn't produced what institutions of mercy which we now call hospitals or indeed the modern concept of the university as we have it. Hamas in Palestine have developed institutions to help young people wean themselves off drugs, to develop better housing standards, to encourage sense of community, to establish a better education system, to encourage devotion to Islam amongst other things. Does this mean we should all admire the works of Hamas without question? Clearly not. Although religion has brought many good things to humanity (I am a great admirer of Religious Art. Muisc and Architecture for instance), it has also brought great sorrow and brutality. Just look at the inquisition, the writings of the Old Testament, the separation of the Indian state, the 9/11 atrocities, child rape, the crusades, East Timor, repression of the Jewish people throughout History etc. Religion has as many skeletons in the closet as it has good deeds. It also doesn't deserve to be equated with other supernatural beliefs such as "santa claus" or the "tooth fairy" which are beliefs aimed at children for a particular purpose. Well, without wanting to come across as being rude, to me religion DOES fall into the same category as fairies, goblins, Santa, Pixies, unicorns et al. But what would you expect from an Atheist right? For me there is as much evidence for the existence of the aforementioned as there is for gods. There is just nothing to suggest that the deity you worship exists at all in my opinion. However I do respect people’s right to believe whatever they want. However, I also reserve the right to challenge that belief though, especially when people of faith pronounce that what they believe is actually fact. Statements of “Fact” need to be proven or at least have some kind of supporting evidence before they can actually be considered as true. With religion, we do not get this. It always comes back to a faith issue. “Well we can’t prove it, but we believe it nonetheless because we have faith.” I’m sorry, but that doesn’t wash with me. As soon as “Big G” announces his presence on CNN or comes to visit me personally, I will convert and repent my sins, just as that Iron Age book tells me to. But until that day…….
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Post by Hemingway on Jun 14, 2010 11:44:22 GMT
I would ask those that describe themselves as people who see no reason to believe to at least have an open mind and also an open heart. I have an open mind. I think you'll find most Atheists do. We just don’t accept “facts” without proof. Does that constitute a closed mind in your book? And what is an open heart by the way? Some kind of medical procedure? Just because we dont accept fantastical claims without proof it doesnt make us closed minded. I have seen next to none of that here by the atheists that post. Please elaborate…… Whats wrong with challenging claims that have no supporting evidence? It happens in Courts of Law every day of the week! Asking for evidence is not being closed minded. To claim it is, is in itself, a grossly close minded statement. The irony burns…… The burden is not on us Catholics to be open minded to unbelief because that in itself is sinful for us. A cop out my friend. “I cant show you evidence because it will mean I will upset my god!” Come on monkeymen…. Are you serious? You, (well religions to be precise) make the supernatural claim. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Can you provide us with this evidence? If you cannot, thats fine too, but do not state that others are closed minded because they require a higher standard of proof than you.
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Aug 23, 2010 8:48:22 GMT
Lets get away from equating Catholism and sky-diving in terms of taste Hemingway please. Although religion has brought many good things to humanity (I am a great admirer of Religious Art. Muisc and Architecture for instance), it has also brought great sorrow and brutality. Just look at the inquisition, the writings of the Old Testament, the separation of the Indian state, the 9/11 atrocities, child rape, the crusades, East Timor, repression of the Jewish people throughout History etc. If we look at two aspects of this, the separation of the Indian state (partition, I think you mean) and 'East Timor'. One, like partition of our own country was due to British political interests and not religion. The other mess was equally due to Dutch political interests (not a state one hears condemned for abuses - but there are plenty of skeletons in the cupboard). It is interesting to see the writings of the Old Testament (which include things like the Book of Ecclesiastes which is hardly bloody) and the persecution of the Jews. The most horrendous persecution the Jewish people ever faced was done on the foot of a secular ideology in the last scientific century. The Inquisition is an old chestnut - this institution was at its worst when it served political interests. Child rape happens most frequently in the context of the nuclear family, especially by step-fathers, which is not especially religious. Don't get me wrong, I think the 2% of clergy or their functional equivalent is horrendous, but this is abuse of religion by predators. The crusades is another old chestnut - but these took on a life of their own after their initiation and a lot of them were to a point comical (especially when crusader states went to war with each other and created alliances with Moslem factions in civil war with each other at the time). Much of the worst of the crusades was about politics and money rather than faith. And I am not going to offer an apologia for 9/11 or Al Quaeda, but one doesn't need to be a fervent Moslem to see this attack was only superficially due to religion.
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Post by hibernicus on Aug 23, 2010 13:26:42 GMT
The East Timor conflict was not specifically religious - the Indonesian military dictatorship co-opted some Islamic political forces but was not specifically Islamist; it was more a nationalist dictatorship which used some of the symbolism of the old sultanate of Yogyakarta, just as the Burmese military dictators deploy some of the more warlike kings of the Burmese past as exemplars. (In fact some of the separatist movements which they repressed, such as the Achinese, had strong Islamic inspiration.)
It was aggressively anti-atheist as part of its anti-communism, and anti-animist, I suspect because they saw it as primitive; its official ideology required belief in God and Indonesians were supposed to belong to one of the country's three traditional religions - Islam, Hinduism (Bali is Hindu) or Christianity. This meant that they encouraged animists in East Timor to convert to Catholicism - a move which unintentionally strengthened separatism because the Church provided the only social sphere with some autonomy from the state, and its international contacts publicised the east Timor situation abroad.
East Timor BTW was a Portuguese colony, not Dutch - Indonesia (which is the successor state to the Dutch east Indies) moved in when the Portuguese left after the 1974 revolution.
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Aug 23, 2010 13:46:43 GMT
My point was that the Dutch internationally supported the Indonesian annexation of East Timor very subtly and Portugal tried unsuccessfully to draw attention to the plight of the East Timorese.
But religion was not an issue in this.
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Post by hibernicus on Sept 6, 2010 9:44:35 GMT
To be honest, Alisdair, I think a couple of your claims about certain conflicts being non-religious are a bit overstated. Al-Qaeda is certainly a specifically religious organisation in its inspiration (remember Mohammed was a temporal as well as spiritual ruler); its interpretation of Islam may not be the only one possible, and its adherents may not always be shining examples of piety (though in some instances this reflects a religiously-based antinomianism) but that is not the same as being only superficially religious. British "divide and rule" policy may have influenced the partition of India, but it couldn't have done so if there were not pre-existing religious differences. The big problem with Hemingway's claim, it seems to me, is the suggestion that these conflicts are EXCLUSIVELY religious in origin and that they could be ended if everyone was an atheist. This is like saying there would be no religious conflict if everyone was Catholic - firstly it has been falsified by history, secondly the claim has been used in the past, and is being used now, to justify frightful tyrannies (cf the attempts of communist states to impose atheism, and the attempt made by some present-day atheists to argue that parents should be prevented by law from bringing up their children in their own religious beliefs), thirdly, even if it were possible to accomplish it new sources of conflict would arise.
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