I'm not suggesting the Catholic Church is alone in these sins, but it would be a good start and a stern warning to others.

Here is a recent example of its anti-people activities:

Boycott Clinton speech, Catholic bishop says

quote:

---

A southern Ontario bishop is urging Catholics to boycott an upcoming fundraiser featuring former U.S. president Bill Clinton, saying his views don't reflect the church's beliefs.

Clinton is set to deliver a speech Nov. 8 during a $500-per-seat fundraising lunch for the Catholic Family Counselling Centre in Kitchener.

But Rev. Gerard Bergie, the auxiliary bishop of the Roman Catholic diocese of Hamilton, says Clinton is an inappropriate guest speaker, the Waterloo Region Record reported.

Clinton's support for abortion, his marital infidelity and promotion of condom use to prevent the spread of AIDS go against Catholic Church doctrine, said Bergie.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Proaxiom:
Can you provide an example in recent history in which the Catholic Church advocated or practiced violence on moral issues?

---

Sure, as long as you understand that I'm accusing them of terrorism (threatening or practising violence, through terror or intimidation, to induce or deter some course of action):

Canada's Push to Legalize Gay Marriages Draws Bishops' Ire

quote:

---

Bishop Fred Henry of Calgary last week said that Jean Chrétien, the head of the Liberal government, could burn in hell for his stance on the issue. "I pray for the prime minister because I think his eternal salvation is in jeopardy," he said.

---

quote:

---

Can you provide an example in recent history in which the Catholic Church advocated or practiced violence on moral issues?

---

Ireland? Any Catholics over there? Or are we now justing blaming the Protestants for all that terror. Tsk tsk.

[ 24 August 2006: Message edited by: Scout ]

Vatican: Condoms Don't Stop AIDS

quote:

---

The Catholic Church is telling people in countries stricken by Aids not to use condoms because they have tiny holes in them through which HIV can pass - potentially exposing thousands of people to risk.

The church is making the claims across four continents despite a widespread scientific consensus that condoms are impermeable to HIV.

A senior Vatican spokesman backs the claims about permeable condoms, despite assurances by the World Health Organisation that they are untrue...

Sex and the Holy City includes a Catholic nun advising her HIV-infected choirmaster against using condoms with his wife because "the virus can pass through".

In Lwak, near Lake Victoria, the director of an Aids testing centre says he cannot distribute condoms because of church opposition. Gordon Wambi told the programme: "Some priests have even been saying that condoms are laced with HIV/Aids."

Panorama found the claims about permeable condoms repeated by Catholics as far apart as Asia and Latin America.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Scout:

Ireland? Any Catholics over there? Or are we now justing blaming the Protestants for all that terror. Tsk tsk.

[ 24 August 2006: Message edited by: Scout ]

---

WTF? I wasn't aware that the IRA received its mandate from the Vatican.

quote:

---

Originally posted by timmah:

WTF? I wasn't aware that the IRA received its mandate from the Vatican.

This thread is a joke.

---

I agree that blaming "Catholics" (or "Protestants") for violence in Ireland is historically inaccurate.

quote:

---

Originally posted by timmah:
This thread is a joke.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by unionist:

I agree that blaming "Catholics" (or "Protestants") for violence in Ireland is historically inaccurate.

But why would you call this thread a joke? You don't think the Church terrorizes people and causes death and misery on a massive scale?

---

There are a lot of things the Catholic Church and I disagree on. But calling the Church a terrorist organization is such a hyperbolic piece of rhetoric, that it is difficult to discuss seriously.

Despite the fact that you've given us the definition of terrorism, you then go on to equate the church's belief of going to hell with advocating violence.

It's not the same at all. It's suggesting a cause and effect relationship. It's not suggesting that it is personally going to be sending people to Hell.

If someone suggests that having unprotected sex will lead to AIDS - they aren't advocating violence either - they are suggesting a cause and effect relationsip.

The Catholic church does not condone violence, nor the taking of any life, as it regards all life as sacred.

It hasn't condoned violence since the Crusades.

quote:

---

Originally posted by Pearson:
The Catholic church does not condone violence, nor the taking of any life, as it regards all life as sacred.

---

For the Bishop Henry thing, that's a pretty screwed up stretch of logic, to say that stating one's beliefs about the afterlife constitutes terrorism.

Objecting to organized religion is one thing, but this is nonsense.

quote:

---

Originally posted by greenie:

Even the life of a woman whose pregnancy causes grave health complications?

---

I asked a Catholic theologist about this some time ago, and you'd find the answer he gave surprising.

He told me that abortion is actually acceptable to the Church if the alternative is the death of the mother. The Church has some kind of 'lesser harm' doctrine that can be invoked in this case as a justification.

He pointed out the same is true of birth control pills. It is acceptable for a woman to take them if a doctor prescribes them for health reasons, even if she averts pregnancy by doing so. It's just that, from the Church's point of view, averting pregnancy should not be the purpose for her taking them.

I read about this doctrine again recently. The faction within the Church that is attempting to change the position on condoms in Africa are citing it to back their case.

quote:

---

Originally posted by Pearson:
Closed-minded bigots such as yourself, are the reason that the left wing parties will never be able to attract the religous left in great numbers.

---

Did I touch a nerve, or what?

Weren't you the poster who warned about throwing the "bigot" word around?

Pearson on bigotry

quote:

---

Bigotry seems to be a term that is thrown out whenever someone disagrees with anything various groups are trying to advance. It's overused so much that it's really starting to dilute the seriousness.

---

Of course, Pearson went on to say that people who want to ban 14-year-olds from having sex, or ban equal marriage, or ban abortion on demand, should not be called "bigots".

Well, under those terms, I guess I can wear Pearson's "bigot" charge with some measure of pride.

quote:

---

Originally posted by Proaxiom:

He told me that abortion is actually acceptable to the Church if the alternative is the death of the mother.

---

And there were many prominent priests, Bishops and Cardinals who renounced liberation theology in Latin America. One cardinal has been accused of collaborating with Argentina's Videla regime in the abduction of jesuit priests. And some padres pledged their allegiance to the anti-communists with some actually participating in the dirty war. Socialists, human rights activists and union leaders were flown out to sea in cargo planes that came back to port empty except for pilots, torturers and priests who went along for the ride to comfort abductors in case they had second thoughts about doing God's work.Videla's death squad government was funded well by WACL and U.S. shadow government and drug mafia laundering money through Chiang Kai-shek's legacy groups under WACL. And the Argentines trained contras for a dirty war on poor people in Nicaragua where priests and nuns sympathetic to the poor were abducted, raped and tortured to death.

Survivors of Argetina's dirty war say the torture rooms contained swastikas and pictures of Hitler, Mussolini and Franco. And this was the 1980's. Pregnant socialists who survived the torture tables were paraded infront of navy families for adoption.

quote:

---

Originally posted by unionist:

That is so profoundly comforting. I may have to re-evaluate my view of Catholic doctrine.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by unionist:
That is so profoundly comforting. I may have to re-evaluate my view of Catholic doctrine.

---

Before you re-evaluate your position, the church dogma.

quote:

---

Originally posted by Boom Boom:
There are progressive people in the Roman Catholic Church, but why in heaven's name they remain in such an anti-progressive organization thoroughly vexes me.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Boom Boom:
There are progressive people in the Roman Catholic Church, but why in heaven's name they remain in such an anti-progressive organization thoroughly vexes me.

---

Change is hard, especially in the face of upbringing, superstition, and nostalgia. But don't underestimate the number of people that have abandoned this horrendous backward cult after understanding its crimes against women, children, minorities, liberation movements, it doesn't stop. One of the keys is to speak out boldly and ignore the blackmail about "respecting people's religious feelings". That's why I started this thread.

[ 24 August 2006: Message edited by: Ken Burch ]

quote:

---

In the midst of debate about Hezbollah and Hamas, an obvious candidate for banning is the Roman Catholic Church. It advocates and practices violence against people's rights, notably women, queers, and children, by its broad and menacing ("you'll burn in hell!") opposition to most birth control, abortion, divorce, homosexuality, the list goes on. The preaching of such violence against civilians in peacetime should be banned; recruitment and fundraising should be punishable by law.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Proaxiom:
He told me that abortion is actually acceptable to the Church if the alternative is the death of the mother. The Church has some kind of 'lesser harm' doctrine that can be invoked in this case as a justification.

---

I think that this is not quite accurate. Rather than a 'lesser harm' doctrine, the Church has a 'doctrine of double effect'. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy's
article on this subject cites the New Catholic Encyclopedia as providing four conditions for the application of the principle of double effect:

1. The act itself must be morally good or at least indifferent.

2. The agent may not positively will the bad effect but may permit it. If he could attain the good effect without the bad effect he should do so. The bad effect is sometimes said to be indirectly voluntary.

3. The good effect must flow from the action at least as immediately (in the order of causality, though not necessarily in the order of time) as the bad effect. In other words the good effect must be produced directly by the action, not by the bad effect. Otherwise the agent would be using a bad means to a good end, which is never allowed.

4. The good effect must be sufficiently desirable to compensate for the allowing of the bad effect” (p. 1021).

The Stanford article gives the following example of an application of this doctrine: "A doctor who believed that abortion was wrong, even in order to save the mother's life, might nevertheless consistently believe that it would be permissible to perform a hysterectomy on a pregnant woman with cancer. In carrying out the hysterectomy, the doctor would aim to save the woman's life while merely foreseeing the death of the fetus. Performing an abortion, by contrast, would involve intending to kill the fetus as a means to saving the mother."

I believe that the standard Catholic line is as follows: if the performer of an abortion intends to kill the foetus, or to save the mother's life by means of killing the foetus, then the abortion is impermissible; if some other operation, e.g. a hysterectomy, is performed with some other intention, but with the death of the foetus as foreseeable collateral damage, then the operation might be permissible.

The Stanford article has other examples as well criticism of the doctrine.

Edited to add: I noticed after posting this that greenie has already posted a link that discusses, among other things, the doctrine of double effect.

[ 24 August 2006: Message edited by: Martha (but not Stewart) ]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Boom Boom:
There are progressive people in the Roman Catholic Church, but why in heaven's name they remain in such an anti-progressive organization thoroughly vexes me.

---

He joined the Hitler Youth because it was required by law. He did so, even though one of his cousins who had Down Syndrome was murdered by the Nazi regime.

Later in life, he carried on his obedience to "the law", only this time it was the "law" of the Church:

quote:

---

In office, Ratzinger fulfilled his institutional role, defending and reaffirming official Catholic doctrine, including teaching on topics such as birth control, homosexuality, and inter-religious dialogue. During his period in office, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith took disciplinary measures against some outspoken liberation theologians in Latin America in the 1980s.

---

In 2002, replying to widespread revelations of child molestation by his fellow militants, he protested that: "less than one percent of priests are guilty of acts of this type."

[Source: Wikipedia]

While considering whether the Church qualifies for the terrorist list, I would propose that based on the existing evidence, at the very least the head of this "organization" be prohibited from visiting Canada and spreading his poison.

quote:

---

Originally posted by Martha (but not Stewart):

I think that this is not quite accurate. Rather than a 'lesser harm' doctrine, the Church has a 'doctrine of double effect'...

---

Thank you, yes. I was going from memory, and was mistaken.

Actually Greenie's link has some interesting discussion at the bottom. It seems that there is some dispute about the legitimacy of the termination of ectopic pregnancies in the eyes of the Church, and the same with a hysterectomy on a pregnant woman.

It seems that it may depend on who you ask, for those situations.

[ 24 August 2006: Message edited by: Proaxiom ]

Organized religions like the Roman Catholics use the threat of "hell" as their favoured threat to instill fear and intimidation in their own congregations and any others that challenge their authority.

Political parties use legislative instruments to marginalize and terrorize those they look down. Laws such as anti-panhandling and the forcible removal of squatter camps and the trashing of the few meager possessions of these destitute citizens.

quote:

---

Originally posted by Boom Boom:
There are progressive people in the Roman Catholic Church, but why in heaven's name they remain in such an anti-progressive organization thoroughly vexes me.

---

There are several answers to this question. One, many of them believe that they are representing the TRUE Catholic tradition that the "traditionalists" have been shamefully betraying, and they want to fight for that.

Two, it is the faith they were raised in and it is part of their identity. This is particularly true for people of an Irish Catholic heritage, since the Church was the one institution that preserved an Irish national identity throughout the long years of British domination of the whole island.

Three, they see things in it that can be loved and respected in spite of the reactionary aspects.

Also, I think most of them feel that, if they left, they would be conceding the Church to the forces of darkness without a fight and would be giving aid and comfort to the right-wing Catholic arguement that "you can't be progressive and still be a REAL Catholic".
(to which Mel Gibson would slur "Ahlll drunnnkk to thaaatttt...")

quote:

---

Originally posted by otter:
I would suggest that any group that attempts to impose its own narrowly defined beliefs on a population is a terrorist organization. And, in that regard i place all organized religions squarely beside all political parties in this category as potential terrorist organizations.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Ken Burch:

So, just leaving is not as simple as it may sound to an outsider.

---

I agree.

That's why it's crucial to keep hammering away at the anti-human essence of this organization which maintains a façade of being spiritual and pacifist, and most cynically of all, caring about "life". It reminds me of organizations that run both hospitals and civilian bombing missions.

quote:

---

Few health experts dispute the fact that condom use prevents, to a large degree, the spread of AIDS. But when the epidemic currently destroying entire generations of Africans first hit, the Catholic Church stepped forward to say the exact opposite. In 1988, the late pope wrote that any use of condoms was, "intrinsically illicit. ... No personal or social circumstances could ever, can now or will ever render such an act lawful in itself." Kenya's Cardinal Maurice Otunga publicly burned condoms, while Raphael Ndingi Mwana'a Nzeki, the archbishop of Nairobi, suggested that condom use actually spread AIDS. And despite the World Health Organization's statements to the contrary, the president of the Vatican's Pontifical Council for the Family said that HIV could pass through tiny holes in condoms, rendering them worthless for preventing the disease. Source

---

[ 24 August 2006: Message edited by: Khimia ]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Khimia:
Did the Pope Spread AIDS in Africa....

---

The fact is that using condoms is one of the best ways to prevent the spread of AIDS. To suggest that campaigns against condom use by church leaders likely have no effect on the spread of AIDS is the height of apologetics.

Many people don't follow what the church tells them to do, but then again many others do. If only one person contracts the disease as a result of the church's discouragement of condom use, it is an unforgivable crime.

The article tries to lay liberal guilt-trips on us by suggesting that we are racists to assume that Africans will do what their religious leaders tell them to do rather than what is scientifically correct. In reality, Africans are no more or less easily fooled by the purveyors of religious myth and dogma than anyone else. And to see how successful those purveyors are, we need look no further than our (mostly white) neighbours to the south.

Africa has been the hardest hit of all continents by HIV/AIDS. Condom use could have prevented it from becoming so. African men may choose of their own free will (whatever that means) not to use condoms (as the article suggests), but the myths and lies about condoms spread by religious and other leaders can only help to provide a rationalization for the exercise of free will in that fashion.

quote:

---

Many people don't follow what the church tells them to do, but then again many others do. If only one person contracts the disease as a result of the church's discouragement of condom use, it is an unforgivable crime.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by uyak:
i actually think you have a good point, but to be fair, the church isnt saying: "dont use condoms when you have sex."

---

very very bad grammar ... is there a spell-check function i just havent found? [ 24 August 2006: Message edited by: uyak ]

[ 24 August 2006: Message edited by: uyak ]

(1) No sex between unmarried people
(2) No contraception, including condoms, during sex

If everybody followed (1) (which is, admittedly, unrealistic) then AIDS wouldn't be much of a problem. That is, if everybody followed the Church's full teaching, then AIDS wouldn't be much a problem.

quote:

---

Originally posted by Martha (but not Stewart):

(1) No sex between unmarried people
(2) No contraception, including condoms, during sex

If everybody followed (1) (which is, admittedly, unrealistic) then AIDS wouldn't be much of a problem. "

---

Tanzania: Anglican Church Opposes Condoms, Sex Education

quote:

---

DAR ES SALAAM, 1 June (PLUSNEWS) - Tanzania's Anglican Church is still vehemently opposed to condom use, despite its ambitious HIV/AIDS prevention campaign, and has called for a total ban on condom advertising to protect children from early exposure to sex.

Reverend James Dominic of the Tanga Diocese said the church would continue resisting condom use because it promoted underage sex and immorality. "The advertisements [of condoms] encourage young girls and boys to engage in sex because they are told to use condoms."

The Anglican Church has been at the forefront of efforts to curb the spread of HIV. In an effort to lead by example, it launched an HIV/AIDS control project in 2004 that compels the church leadership to take an HIV test before taking on religious responsibilities. In the Tanga Diocese 45 priests were tested recently, three of whom were found positive...

However, the church's continued resistance to condom use is likely to set back a government plan to educate children in primary schools about HIV/AIDS.

---

quote:

---

Did I touch a nerve, or what?

---

Congratulations. Don't get tennis elbow from patting yourself on the back too much.

Outright racism, and bigotry bother me.
Congratulations. Perhaps you can make some tasteless jokes about Muslims, Jews or Buddhists next?

quote:

---

Weren't you the poster who warned about throwing the "bigot" word around?

---

Right. Well, if you can't beat 'em join 'em.

quote:

---

My biggest beef with the Church is that they were ferociously anti-communist but not a peep out of them on the Holocaust as it happened. War criminals were given sanctuary and safe passage to the west. All they had to do was claim they were fleeing communism

---

Well, the church tries to be politically neutral.
But obviously, if communism plans to deny people the choice to worship, thus attacking the very existence of the church, then the church will be opposed to that. I don't think that's overly complicated.

Sure, they could have been more outspoken against the Nazis - but then we all could. Not many were.

quote:

---

Wait till I go after the other cults...

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Pearson:

Apparently, bigotry against Catholics, such as you are displaying is tolerated and encouraged.

---

[ 24 August 2006: Message edited by: Cueball ]

quote:

---

How dare you? I have said not one word against Catholics. I'm sick of your accusations of racism and bigotry. Message sent to moderator.
Message sent to moderator.

---

You're one of the biggest whiners on these boards.
Learn how to fight your own battles.

If you attack the Catholic church, you attack Catholics. Bigotry, pure and simple.

It's like saying, I have no problem with gay people, but I think anal sex should be made illegal.

Another example of bigotry, pure and simple.

And please indicate to me where I have referred to you as a racist? Or are you just making that up?

Please show me where I accused you of being a racist, or retract that statement.

Then again, I suppose you'll need some fanciful fabrications to get the moderator to listen to your pathetic plea.

[ 25 August 2006: Message edited by: Pearson ]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Cueball:
It is interesting to note that Islam is the growing religion in Rwanda. I don't know why that is interesting, but it is.

---