Good will to all men? Not from the grumpy atheists! (Thank God not all atheists are grumpy but there sure seems to be a lot of them)
Why is it that so many in the atheist community cannot bring themselves to get past their anger whenever they engage in discussions? The language of many of their contributions in public debate is laced with invective and dripping with sarcasm and bile. There are exceptions of course, but they tend to fall more into the category of being the 'exception that proves the rule' when compared to the hostility of many of today's atheist posters. Comment offered by the theists in the public square is often depicted as being 'malicious' or 'venomous' and intended to enslave the 'feeble minded and weak' by those who post. Nothing could be further from the truth. Venom is something that is oriented to death. Christians are oriented in a 180 degree different direction. We speak not to the culture of death that grips our world but rather for the culture of life and light which ends with the gift of eternal life. For example, the Catholic Church in its hum...
There is an excellent observation by commenter Rob Misek:
ReplyDelete"Nobody can prove nor disprove the existence of God. Anyone claiming to know the truth about God is lying. If truth were defined by belief, conflicting beliefs would render truth meaningless."
Vancouver is trying out a new form of entertainment: extreme fighting, aka mixed martial arts. It mostly consists of full-contact, somewhat-padded-with-body-armor street fighting with "rules." I suggest an added alternative -- extreme debate.
Picture two opponents seated (tied down for safety, actually) in a big ring, flinging debate points and full-contact invective at one another. We can start with de Souza and Hutchens. Score it like a physical bout, and have the betting and attending ticket sales windows open well in advance.
Can you imagine the boost to the economy?
Jonathan is right. The rhetoric in the Post pages is not just about Cold War-era sex abuse. And even though I disagree with some of his conclusions, I think his reflection is a good analysis of what is on the mind of a lot of people.
ReplyDeleteAs he says, the attitudes our grandparents held towards sex abuse of any type in their day and age were much different from those we hold today. Why then are we digging up old cases and trying to judge the way these were handled way back then by the standards of today?
And why can the media not get all the facts straight, so errors are not perpetuated over and over and over?
For example, take the Kiesle case. It was not about the Pope protecting a predator, but about giving this priest a dispensation from celibacy at his own request. When Ratzinger spoke about the “good of the universal church”, he did not mean its mere “preservation”, but the “good” of giving in easily to allowing dispensations.
This is thoroughly explained here:
http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/1001517.htm
"During the entire course of the proceeding the priest remained under the control, authority and care of the local bishop who was responsible to make sure he did no harm, as the canon law provides….The abuse case wasn't transferred to the Vatican at all."
Jon says there are 2 christian camps. While I cannot speak for non-Catholics, I can assure you that true Catholics (what you might call conservatives) do not look the other way at “history’s grim dossiers”. We are aware of the sinfulness of men (both within and outside the Church) within the hierarchy or amongst the lay members.
Although this may be true of non-believers, the Church for us is not a powerful, secretive institution whose clergy we bow down to.
The Church for us is more like a Mother, a Mother who suffers because some of her children have behaved abhorrently while others have been abused by them. We view her as the boat of Peter that shall never sink. We view her as a guide in moral clarity and purity of doctrine in a world where relativism reigns supreme.