Someone with whom I once did teacher training is now a fervent Catholic and blogger at his site. We have had many a strong argument on facebook, and recently he alerted me to this blog post to see what I thought. I am now going to critique his piece on abortion and Dawkins.
Tag Catholicism
I came across a Catholic poster on facebook recently who posted an article celebrating the present Pope in combatting the Mafia. The Pope was brave in doing so, so it was claimed on this thread.
I have recently had a conversation on facebook that left me truly flabbergasted. I think it qualifies as the most jaw-dropping conversation I have had. It was with someone whom I did teacher-training with (though who chose not to finish the course). Now I wouldn’t normally go into detail about personal matters when evaluating somebody’s claims and positions, but I think it explains so much in terms of cognitive dissonance, and is so relevant to the topic, that it does need mentioning. The person in question has certain tendencies which are deemed sinful to the Catholic Church. He lives in Brighton, ironically a city in Britain known for its diversity and sense of equality.
This, from the Telegraph: Headmaster sacked from Catholic school over marriage split A top Catholic school retracted its job…
The Vatican has suspended a senior German Church leader dubbed the “bishop of bling” by the media over his alleged lavish spending.
Bishop of Limburg Franz-Peter Tebartz-van Elst is accused of spending more than 31m euros (£26m; $42m) on renovating his official residence.
Many liberal Catholics have been encouraged by Pope Francis’s comments about sexual ethics in a recent interview. His general point was that these are lesser matters, not to be emphasized at the expense of the church’s essential message of healing and salvation.
Tour comes amid division over how to stem flow of believers, particularly from poor communities, towards evangelism
When Pope Francis returns to his home continent on Monday as the first Latin American pontiff, the world’s attention is likely to focus on the adoration of more than a million worshippers expected at a giant open-air mass on Copacobana beach.
But it is during a lower-key visit to a small favela community on Thursday in the north of Rio de Janeiro that he will address the biggest threat to the pre-eminence of the Catholic church in the region: the exodus of believers to US-style evangelical preachers.
As I am on holiday, I have scheduled a number of easy news repost for your delectation. From the Guardian:
Court-ordered release of documents reveal what Catholic orders knew of sexual abuse by priests, brothers and nuns
In therapy sessions, the priest confessed to shocking details he’d kept hidden for years: he had molested more than 100 boys, including his 5-year-old brother, had sex with male prostitutes, and frequented gay strip clubs.
Well, the Pope is shaking those old cloisters up! The BBC: Pope Francis: Who am I to judge gay people?…
George Pell says, “I have always been on the side of the victims.” But the archbishop of Sydney has a funny way of expressing his support.
During an inquiry this week into what the Herald Sun describes as “rampant” child sexual abuse by priests going back decades, Pell admitted, “We’ve been slow to address the anguish of the victims and dealt with it very imperfectly.” He acknowledged that his predecessor, Sir Frank Little, “did cover up” sex abuse and that former Ballarat Bishop Ronald Mulkearns knew of accusations and destroyed documents and moved suspects to other parishes, actions that were“followed by disastrous consequences.”
The new leader of the Catholic Church, Pope Francis, has been making plenty of news since taking over in March. Not only is it the case that he may have exorcised demons in public very recently (very old school), but now he seems to have blessed the infidels (not-so old school).
In his Wednesday sermon, he stated the following:
The article below is from the UK Human Rights Blog. There is an interesting development in allowing subgroups of a society to exempt themselves from national laws or requirements. Then again, is there a sense that there is an analogy here between this and the rights of someone with dietary requirements (eg Halal) to have certain school meal or job-provided provision for their needs?
Didn’t take her long (Guardian):
Cristina Fernández de Kirchner says she requested pontiff’s intervention in dispute with UK over South Atlantic islands
Well, I was just about to produce a big post on how the explosive, moving, powerful, revealing documentary, Mea Maxima Culpa, was behind the resignation of the Pope, as many have said. Well, the Guardian (reporting La Rupubblica) think otherwise. It’s not “the paedophiles”, it’s “the gays”!
One shitstorm to another.
Earlier this month, Pope Benedict XVI joined Twitter in an effort to galvanize the faithful and modernize the Catholic Church for a younger, increasingly secular generation, making him the last person after your grandpa to join the social networking site. The Vatican also hired a former Fox News correspondent to bring their communications strategy into the 21st century, since that network did such an impressive job during the 2012 US presidential election.
Perhaps few people know that Pietro Beretta arms factory Ltd. (the largest arms industry in the world) and is controlled by the Holding SpA Beretta and the majority shareholder of theBeretta Holding SpA after Gussalli Ugo Beretta, is the IOR(Institute for Works of Religion [commonly known as the Vatican Bank]) private institutionfounded in 1942 by Pope Pius XII and headquartered in Vatican City.
There has been a fair bit of press about the newest publication from the current head of the Catholic Church, Joseph Ratzinger, better known now as Pope Benedict XVI (don’t you just hate sequels?). There was even a humorous take on some of the aspects of the new book from the colossus of comedy Stephen Colbert.