You may want to reconsider your position. Study the Bible for yourself and decide whether the Vatican, Pope and holy mother have anything to do with worshipping God.

I'm going to have to ask for a source on that one. I'm no Catholic, but that's a pretty extreme claim, and I can't help but think it's exaggerated. 

This stuff about hell I actually DO find insightful. I think the fear tactics used by Catholics and (some) Protestants alike turns as many people AWAY from religion, as it draws in.

In Judaism, it's not about avoiding hell, but returning to the source of everything, to G-d, who created us all, and with whom we want to spend eternity. Hell is not even a doctrinal matter, although there are Jews that do believe in it. The words typically translated as hell, more literallly mean either "the grave" or refer to a large refuse-burning site outside Jerusalem. I find that the typical Christian view of hell and the devil is based at LEAST as much on Dante's Inferno as it is on anything in the Bible. 

So either you're fakeposting or you're dumb as shit.

Succinct! I love it! haha

Honestly, I was going to post a 'jk' post early on but then I saw the first response and I laughed so hard that a theist was the first person to seemingly try to talk me out of it that I forgot to hit post comment.

I was just bored...problem solved.

 The punch line? Just trying to make some blood boil for a couple seconds...took me a couple minutes to write...reading back, I still laugh at my wonderful 'atheist faith' line...c'mon...that's an instant classic!

 My kid had a hard time getting to sleep so I'm hiding in a corner being extra quiet so I'm abusing you people for my own entertainment.

So umm..

Thanks! I love you! I'll pray for your forgiveness now!

maybe you could hook me up with some communion wafers?

gonna get some cheese and little bits of meat or something

make jesus sandwich hors d'oeurves 

 Hmmm, in all honesty I am a 'confirmed catholic'.  Odd that I never asked if they accepted to-go or bulk orders. 

When going through my first communion I was always told that you're not supposed to 'eat' the eucharist but only to let it dissolve in your mouth....is this because Jesus was a male? You're allowed to suck on him, but not eat him.

If Jesus was a woman would you be able to eat on it? Maybe get a choice?

Catholics should seriously reconsider which part of hte body the eurchaist is if all they are allowed to do is suck it...that's all I'm saying.

There's a right way and a wrong way to appeal to a malevolent space monster -- get it through your head, man! 

http://www.theosophy.com/theos-talk/200408/tt00210.html

Dude. I have been trying to get my hands on consecrated hosts for years. They won't give 'em up! But I must get some, so I can perfect my masterpiece!

Chili con Dios.

Ah well... I'm off for a bit! Via con carne! 

Only if you're MUCH younger 

I'm hurt. 

Okay, I'm convinced. You are right. I renounce my religion.

And everyone made fun of the Theist for not getting the joke

I wasn't being "kind", Conor.  I was giving credit where credit was due.

I'm a former baptist so I don't have the same experience reasoning out the catholic faith as you.  I thought you brought out some really good points there.

You've only been here a couple days and already you are kicking some ass.

Misplaced ass-kicking, but you've got some skills, bro.

Nor is the presence of a priest, or the performance of the marriage ceremony in a Church a strict requirement of the Sacrament today.  The ordinary ministers of the Sacrament are the spouses themselves.  The requirement is for the priest to act as a witness on behalf of the Church.  The Canon Law also calls for two other witnesses, who particiapte on behalf of the community. 

The sacrrament is established by Christ in Matt 19.  The sacramental nature of matrimony has been held from the beginnings of the Church, Paul demanding that it be contracted "in the Lord" (1 Cor 7:39), proclaiming its indissolubility (1 Cor 7:10).  He establishes its dignity and sanctity in Eph 5:32.

In the late first of early second century, Ignatius of Antiock writes, "It befits the bridegroom and the bride to enter the nuptial relationship with the approval of the bishop so that marriage may be according to the Lord..."

Tertullian attests to this fact as well ,"How shall I be able to describe the happiness of a marriage whi the Church performs, the offering of the scarafice ratifies, and the blessing seals, to which the angels assent, and which the Heavenly Father recognizes."

St Augustine mounts a lively defense of matrimony as a Sacrament against the Manicheans who rejected it as a source of evil.

That matrimony has always been recognized as a Sacrament is undeniable.  That the canon law regarding its administration has changed does not affect its validity.

Again, this is a very minor point.  Let's argue about at which point in the course of an hour long ceremony a man is considered a priest.  What possible impact could this have? 

The matter of faith involved in the priesthood is those pwers conferred on a man by ordination, that is, the power to confect the Eucahrist (ie, change bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ), and the power to absolve sins.  The rubrics of ordination (ie, anointing with chrism, laying on of hands, presentation of instruments) have all been observed in ordination rites (although you are correct that there was disagreement as to which action conferred the Sacrament).  It has since been defined by Pius XII in an Apostolic Constitution, "Sacramentum Ordinis" as the laying on of hands.  Bear in mind that this Apostolic Constitution is a juridical decision only and has no retroactive power.

First, it's necessary to distinguish between two types of slavery.  Slavery in title is that form of slavery imposed by states upon persons such as criminals and prisoners of war.  This form of slavery is justifiable, but does not excuse the state from the requirement for the humane treatment of such persons.

It is the second form of slavery, that is chattel slavery, the outright ownership of one person by another that primarily concerns the Church.  The Catechism of the Catholic Church states,";">2414 The seventh commandment forbids acts or enterprises that for any reason - selfish or ideological, commercial, or totalitarian - lead to the enslavement of human beings, to their being bought, sold and exchanged like merchandise, in disregard for their personal dignity. It is a sin against the dignity of persons and their fundamental rights to reduce them by violence to their productive value or to a source of profit. St. Paul directed a Christian master to treat his Christian slave 'no longer as a slave but more than a slave, as a beloved brother, . . . both in the flesh and in the Lord.'"

Paul wrote regarding the humane treatment of slaves, and implied that Christian brotherhood was incompatible with chattel slavery, writing in Gal 3:27-28 "there is neither slave nor free . . . you are all one in Christ Jesus".

In the Early Church, writers such as Gregory of Nyssa and John Chrysostom strongly denounced chattel slavery, many Christians liberated slaves, Christain congregations redeemed slaves with Church funds.  Where salvery was not outright repudiated, slaves were given equal access to the ministrations of the Chruch.  Many clerics, including two popes, had slave backgrounds.

The Church attempted to ameliorate the suffering of slaves in the Empire by laws until its virtual disappearance from the Imperial scheme and the rise of serfdom.

Slavery did re-emerge onto the European scene as Europe interacted with Islam (and its slave traders) and the discovery of the Americas.  It was, in fact, the colonization of th Canary Islands and the enslavement of the inhabitants there which led Pope Eugene IV ti issue the Papal Bull Sicut Dudum in 1435, in which he directed "all and each of the faithful of each sex, within the space of fifteen days of the publication of these letters in the place where they live, that they restore to their earlier liberty all and each person of either sex who were once residents of [the] Canary Islands . . . who have been made subject to slavery. These people are to be totally and perpetually free and are to be let go without the exaction or reception of any money."

A century later, Pope Paul III applied the same principle to the newly encountered inhabitants of the West and South Indies in the bull Sublimis Deus (1537). Therein he described the enslavers as allies of the devil and declared attempts to justify such slavery "null and void." Accompanying the bull was another document, Pastorale Officium, which attached an automatic excommunication remittable only by the pope himself for those who attempted to enslave the Indians or steal their goods.

The Response to the Holy Office, 230, March 20, 1686 rejected the enslavement of blacks.  This teaching was reiterated by Pope Gregory XVI in 1839, and by Pope Leo XIII in 1888 and 1890.

To be continued....

Totus tuus:

I've thought about how to respond to your post for a couple of days, and I'm not going to B.S. you: this is going to be a bit more difficult for me than it should, as I have literally thrown away much of the information which would help me here.

That doesn't mean that I'm backing off of my position.  It does, however, mean that I will be slow to respond to you.  So...please bear with me.

As a kind of first response--admittedly inadequate--I will say these things:

1.  *I* seem to remember (...and I will have to find the reference for this...) Pope John Paul II asserting that the matrimony of a couple is in a sense "earned" for them by the celibacy of the priest.  So...no priest...no marriage.  In fact, no *celibate* priest...no marriage.  Not only does this flatly contradict the Western Christian idea of the couple making the marriage, with the priest only as a witness, but it also flatly contradicts the Eastern Christian teaching that the priest *does* *indeed* confect the sacrament of Crowning (i.e., the Eastern term for "marriage.&quot  Oh...I wasn't saying that marriage wasn't a sacrament...the issue was whether Christ could be said in any theologically meaningful way to have "instituted" it.  Think about it: if we say that Christ "instituted" marriage in the sense of creating a specific ceremony with which to bless it...then Christians simply ignored the teachings of their Master for centuries on end, even after the establishment of Christianity in the Roman Empire.  If we say that Christ established marriage in a general way, with Adam and Eve, then he equally established *all* *human* marriage, and thus there is no difference, in Catholic theology, between the marriage of two Catholics on the one hand, and, say, the marriage of two Hindus on the other. 

There is also a horrendous misuse of the Bible to support the idea of Christ "instituting" marriage.  Your own reference to Matthew 19 is a case in point; Jesus there did not command a ceremony, or appoint anyone to "witness" anything with regard to marriage.  He did, however, express disapproval of divorce, by appealing to the Genesis account of Adam and Eve.  Other such abuses (which, for the record, I do *not* say came from you) are references to John 2 (where Jesus could certainly be said to approve of celebrations and probably also marriage, in a general way, but still no "institution" of anything,) and John 19:25-27 (which was always a WTF moment for me: how does establishing a mother/son bond constitute a "marriage," in any meaningful sense?)

2. Sorry...but the ordination point is categorically *not* "minor." In this, you are simply wrong.  Perhaps you do not understand what I am getting at.  I will review the idea more completely, even parts that I think you do understand, so as to bring everyone up to speed.

Catholicism believes in what could be (...and has been...) called a "chain theory of apostolic succession."  The obvious question is: what does this phrase mean?  Well...the "apostolic succession" part basically means that once the Apostles knew that the Church was going to have to continue without them, they gave their position of teaching authority, and the "sacred power" from ordination by Jesus, over to others, so that the teachings would be preserved in the Church for as long as human history continued.  The "chain theory" part of this is that, in order for someone to really have this authority and power, they *must* be ordained validly.  This raises a huge question: how do we know that someone has been ordained validly?  For an answer, I'll simplify matters by dealing only with Catholic persons ordained by Catholic rites.  (In other words, I'm ignoring issues about the validity of, say, Eastern Orthodox and Anglican orders.)  If, say, the ordination ceremony is done properly, there is in theory no problem: the man who was not a priest before the ceremony is a priest afterwards.  But what if the ceremony should be interrupted?  This is not as farfetched as it may seem; our relatively tranquil society is an utterly modern creature.  In, say, the Middle Ages it was entirely possible for such an interruption to occur, and be quite violent.  Thus, there is a huge question: at what point, exactly, does a man stop being, say, a deacon, and start being a priest?  (Or, for that matter, stop being merely a priest, and start being a bishop.)  An Ecumenical Council of the Church answered: the point is when the chalice and paten are handed over to the candidate for ordination.  (Again, I will have to do more research for exact references.)  An excommunication formula ("anathema sit," in Latin) was appended for anyone who denied that this was true.  Such excommunication formulae have, for many years, been seen as an unfailing sign of an *infallible* teaching from a Council.  So, what's the problem, you say?  Simple: in the early twentieth century, Catholic historians of the sacraments found ordination ceremonies which predated the Council in question...which did not even have such a "handing over of paten and chalice"...at all.  Which, by the lights of conciliar teaching...would logically render all such ordinations invalid...meaning that men ordained in this manner were *not* actually deacons, priests, or bishops...at all.  And since in matters like this, "you can't give, what you don't have" well...all subsequent ordinations would likewise be invalidated.  Meaning: there is no such thing as a validly ordained Catholic deacon, priest or bishop.  So as you can see, totus tuus...this is *extremely* far from being a "minor" point.  The resolution of this difficulty occured during the reign of Pope Pius XII (who, roughly speaking, reigned during World War II.  That doesn't do justice to the length of his reign, but it will do to have some idea of when he was Pope.)  Pius simply declared that what had been "lawfully arranged" in the past...no longer need be followed.  Henceforth, Catholics were to understand "the moment of ordination" as being the moment when the ordaining bishop put his hands on the candidate, and prayed for the reception of the Holy Spirit.  (So much for infallible pronouncements!)  Calling this a "juridical pronouncement" is what is known as a "fast shuffle."  One cannot appeal to the infallibility of the Pope to remove the infallibility of the Council...as the one Holy Spirit is supposed to be responsible for protecting *both* from teaching error.  Obviously in this instance, either the Pope taught error, or the Council did, or both did, but in no event is it possible for both to be right.  And error in *either* instance disproves the infallibility of the Church.

3. As for slavery, most of what I would say has already been posted.  At this time, I will add only that theologians of the Church used to believe in "four just titles" to slavery.  In other words, there were, according to Catholic theologians, four reasons that one might legitimately own slaves.  Two of them you allude to under the rubric of "slavery in title:" a response by the State to criminal activity, and the capturing of prisoners of war.  But one you left off was...birth.  That's right...if you had the rotten luck to be born to a slave....*you* were a slave.  (I forget the fourth; again, I have to re-do my research.)  One of the less proud moments of the American episcopacy was when Pope Gregory XVI objected to the African slave trade, (which he did, much to his credit, as you noted,) and the response of the American bishops was to say that Gregory's teaching "didn't apply" to the American situation.  (A note to the uninitiated: that's a bit like saying that the Constitution "doesn't apply to" the federal government of the United States of America.)  One bishop added another remark to the effect that slavery in America was a political issue...and thus, the bishops couldn't get involved.

I do apologize about not having all of my shit in one sock on this matter.  Had I not thrown so much stuff away, I would have referenced this material much better.  Ah, well...live and learn.  I'll try to get as much info on this in the near future as I can.

Conor

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"Faith does not fear reason."--Pope Pius XII]

"But it should!"--Me