Pope on gays : "Who am I to judge?"

[Razgovory]

The thing is that I do understand my enemy. The problem here is that you are making the argument that no "dogma" has ever been changed, while I'm making the argument that "doctrine" has.

Your problem can be summed up in your first sentence very nicely.  You view religion as an enemy, and all attempts to understand a religion are flawed due this extreme adversarial approach.

[Valmy]

Mugabe told thousands of supporters that Zimbabwe would never accept homosexuals, whom he descried as “worse than pigs, goats and birds

What the hell is wrong with goats, pigs, and birds?

[Josquius]

Makes sense. Who care  what sins people are tempted  to perform, if they sign up for the church then the point is they don't actually perform them.

[Tamas]

Salvation. I mean not being daft but people believe in that first - an after-life and then whatever religious background to it. From there they'll look to whichever church they were born into, or that their friends go to, or that's in the school's catchment area, or that they're most attracted by.

I don't think many people set out to look for an instruction manual on life based on church's proclaiming their super-secret knowledge. They're looking for something to fulfil a spiritual need, but that need comes first. It's certainly a selling point for the Catholics that 'Rome was where she now is'. Same as the via media appeals for the Church of England.

Have you answered Viking there? I am not sure. If what you describe is gained by people from the church, then they gain (what they believe to be) salvation based on what the church teaches. But what the church teaches changes over time (due to pressure of the secular part of society, mostly, but that is beside the point). So how can one be certain about their religious beliefs in any other way than willfull ignorance of common logic, when what they consider to be stories and rules of divine origin turn out to be tossed out and pulled out of a hat by the very people who claim them to be eternal and divinely true?


A common answer of course is cherry-picking of ideas and teachings, again destroying any kind of legitimacy the religious teachings and texts might have.
Eg. as much as I detest the anti-gay stance of a lot of Christians and Jews (not to mention Muslims), what is our moral high ground for denouncing them for their discriminative beliefs, when otherwise we tell them "you are free to believe in whatever religion"? Well that's hipocrisy right there. Correct me if I am wrong, but the only time the Bible mentions gays explicitly, is to condemn their "practice". Even if the book is not making a big deal out of it, how can we tell people to feel free and turn to the Bible for spiritual guidance, but then condemn them for utilizing the answer they find there?

Same goes for muslim laws like stoning adulterers (or lashing them if you go by the Quran). We do not approve that, but we do approve to have people following Islam. Well I am sorry but the lashing of adulterer parts is in the same book as the definition of their God and their most basic beliefs. Either all legit and worthy of existence in our world, or none of it.

[Viking]

It's a bit unfair against the catholics to bring up muslims here. Islam is a literalist religion. The basic dogma they have is that the koran is gods complete book of instructions. The christians do have the holy ghost as it's holy software updater. I'm not going to discard a christian argument which claims that dogma or doctrine changed or that they got it wrong the first time round. It's just that when the claim the former they need to show that their dogma or doctrine is still relevant and if they claim the latter the need to show how they know who got it right. In this way Islam is completely and totally beyond the pale because their basic dogma is that nothing ever changes and that this is the perfectly correct version.

But still, catholicism doesn't come close to meeting my objection here. It is merely flim flam and non-sequiter arguments which claim that whatever is the latest truth was always the truth and from now on the pope is infallible in doctrinal matters again.

[Valmy]

Makes sense. Who care  what sins people are tempted  to perform, if they sign up for the church then the point is they don't actually perform them.

They can perform them so long as they feel guilty about it and confess

[Viking]

Makes sense. Who care  what sins people are tempted  to perform, if they sign up for the church then the point is they don't actually perform them.

They can perform them so long as they feel guilty about it and confess

while the calvinists would assert that god made you gay just so that you would know that he planned for you to go to hell all along and the lutherans would say that as long as you keep trying and believing then god can show mercy.

To be honest I'm surprised that there are any non-catholic ghey christians out there given that their contractual approach to forgiveness...

[The Minsky Moment]

the problem is that the church, at any given time, claims to be in knowledge on how to lead one's life to have God's seal of approval. And they claim a lot of other knowledge about God (eg. Stuff in the bible)

No, they don't.  And no, they don't.

If so, what is the church for then?

The church is the ecclesia.  It is the institutional manifestation of the body of believers.

[Sheilbh]

So how can one be certain about their religious beliefs in any other way than willfull ignorance of common logic, when what they consider to be stories and rules of divine origin turn out to be tossed out and pulled out of a hat by the very people who claim them to be eternal and divinely true?

But as I've said there's very little example of that in Catholic history. I cannot think of any doctrine, which is what makes up the core of the faith, that has changed. Yes the formal aspects of the religion do change, but the beliefs haven't.

A common answer of course is cherry-picking of ideas and teachings, again destroying any kind of legitimacy the religious teachings and texts might have.

Legitimacy comes from belief and the believers.

But this is a problem I always have with the stauncher atheists: the only sort of faith that's acceptable to them is fundamentalism. They agree with the most extreme perspectives rather than the actual practitioners of a given faith. You listen to Viking talk about Catholic theological acrobatics and citing the Bible and you may as well be in Geneva, it's the same principle.

It doesn't seem like a useful way of engaging or thinking about religion, as opposed to trying to understand the religious perspective.

But also perspectives differ, I think of Anglicanism which, unlike Catholicism, believes doctrine can change. Their entire view of doctrine is that it should be dynamic and pragmatic - the via media between chaos and control. Newman, before he crossed the Tiber, actually talked about the evolution of faith. And he basically said that doctrine is clear it's in the Church fathers and the Bible. But interpretation always takes place within a context. So for example translations of the original text differ and we also lose the poetry and things like metaphor or specific cultural references in translation. In addition human understanding has expanded through philosophy, science, exploration and so on. Those principles underpin Anglican theology which is basically that the doctrine may not be changing but we are and we're going to understand it in a different which isn't necessarily wrong.

Now that's a totally different approach to doctrine than the Catholics have. But the people who believe in it still believe salvation through their Church and through its teachings.

Even if the book is not making a big deal out of it, how can we tell people to feel free and turn to the Bible for spiritual guidance, but then condemn them for utilizing the answer they find there?

I've no interest in the lunatic wings of Protestantism. The Catholic, Anglican, Orthodox and Lutheran Churches most definitely don't say to people to feel free and look to the Bible for guidance. That's the entire point of a Church.

But still, catholicism doesn't come close to meeting my objection here. It is merely flim flam and non-sequiter arguments which claim that whatever is the latest truth was always the truth and from now on the pope is infallible in doctrinal matters again.

You've still not given me a doctrine.

But think of it like common law, the forms change and in the issues that aren't settled by statute (the magisterium) though things are usually predictable there can be changes. When there's a change it's very rare the law was wrong, but the previous court's understanding of it may have been.

Also Pope's aren't infallible on doctrinal matters.

[Tamas]

But also perspectives differ, I think of Anglicanism which, unlike Catholicism, believes doctrine can change. Their entire view of doctrine is that it should be dynamic and pragmatic

Do they justify that by declaring that God keeps changing his mind?

[Sheilbh]

I explained how they justify it

[Tamas]

I explained how they justify it

Yes but surely you must see what I am trying to point out: how the clergy can act as the "managers" of eternal divine order, while constantly changing the eternal divine rules? We are not talking about a sport association, or a corporate administration, or a government agency. We are talking about people claiming divine guidance on one level or the other.

[The Brain]

God moves in mysterious ways.

[fhdz]

God moves in mysterious ways.

Ed, on the other hand, moves according to a chart numbered 1-7.

[Sheilbh]

Yes but surely you must see what I am trying to point out: how the clergy can act as the "managers" of eternal divine order, while constantly changing the eternal divine rules? We are not talking about a sport association, or a corporate administration, or a government agency. We are talking about people claiming divine guidance on one level or the other.

This is the Church of England, we're very much talking a government agency. I don't think they claim much divine guidance, I mean their worship and doctrines were legally regulated by Parliament until the early 20th century

Basically though Anglicans are pretty diverse in their traditions - they proudly state they're reformed and Catholic after all

I think Richard Hooker's probably the key his view was that you need tradition and above all reason to work out the drift of most of scripture, or to work out what to do when there's silence in the Bible. The Church doesn't get its authority direct from God (who is pretty indifferent about Church governance) but from the piety of the people and the reason of the governors. Obviously our reason and our piety change in time which shift perspectives (in the way Newman described) on the word.

Basically there's lots that's unknowable, there's lots about the Bible we don't understand because we're not first century Jews, there's lots about human knowledge that's changed since then. So the Church should assess the evidence and use its reason to try and reach a compromise position that can be okay for both reformed and Catholic Anglicans. The people meanwhile should pray and remember to stick together because, quite frankly, God doesn't really care whether your priest offers confession and enjoys incense, or leads drum circles of praise.