A List of Apologies from the Catholic Church - Christopher Hitchens |

Y'all need to watch this video and click on the subtitles (i.e. closed-caption) option that is available so you do not miss this extraordinary lecture by the late Christopher Hitchens. Listen, Pause, and Reflect!!! We are told that the Catholic Church is being led by men who have the supernatural wisdom of God and yet this institution is responsible for ghastly, reprehensible crimes that if committed by people today they would be placed at the Hague for war crimes.

 

I don't know much about Catholic doctrine but even I know how very narrow the scope of that 'supernatural wisdom' is.

 

Hitchens has quite the laundry list of dasderdly deeds done by the Church of Rome over 1,500 years. Why the US of A government has only been around for a little over 200 years and it has accumulated a list as well. Slavery, Native American genocide, Jim Crow, child labor, murderous union busting......does that mean the current government is bad? It doesn't mean deeds of the past should be ignored, but taught in schools along with all history.

The current Catholic Church is not a bastion of evil, but Hitchens wants to rub the church's nose in past schitty behavior, out of spite.

 

The modern Catholic Church has been involved in a world wide cover up of child sexual abuse. It is a bastion of evil.

 

FYI
There are over 1 billion catholics in the world. They ARE the Catholic Church. Don't be deceived by men in sheep's cloth....can really make a person look ignorant.

 

Do you have a problem with the men in the Catholic Church? Got a burr under your saddle? If you look at history you find a lot of things done over the course of time that would be considered wrong.

 

Christians, like any other group have good and bad people, Christians can be good, not all Christians are good

 

No, they are followers of the Catholic Church but they have no real power.

 

But if the Christian religion were true and that people were putting their lives of the One True God then you would expect that the good/bad ratio of the followers of that religion would be much higher than those that do not follow that religion. That isn't the case.

 

Bastion of evil? Can you say hyperbole? And "world wide cover up" falls under the heading of conspiracy theory. Yeah, the Catholic Church ain't perfect but I think it has done better under Pope Francis. Policies need to change like barring contraception, which Catholics ignore and forcing the clergy to be celibate which is unnatural and creates its own problems.

 

There's more bad Catholics than good? You wouldn't be biased would you?

 

That is not what I said.

The ratio of good people to bad people who identify as Christian is no different than the ratio of NON Christians.

And yet, you would think, that by dedicating their lives to the "one true god" and being exposed to his power and wisdom that more people would become "good". That the ratio would skew in favor of good people. It does not.

 

Agreed, saying you belong to a religion does not make you more good than someone who doesn't.

 

it's just a belief, no different from any other, some people trying to explain the unknown, most people in prison in the USA are Christians in fact

 

Who's telling you that?

The Catholic Church is, and always has been, made up of, and led by, sinners. Sinners that are trying to improve, but sinners nonetheless.

The supernatural wisdom of God has been communicated to us (and at this point, hopefully darn near everyone) but we lay no claim to being in anyway on the same level as God.

That includes all the way up to the Pope.

 

The Catholic Church is telling us that.

From the Catholic Church's website

Just as Christ established a visible Church, He also provided a visible person to guide the Church—the pope. Because the pope is guiding and teaching the Church in Christ’s name, His teachings must be infallible.Christ’s profound love for the Church is manifested in the doctrine of papal infallibility, which asserts that the pope is preserved by God from error when teaching on matters of faith and morals.

 

Right.

Only when the Pope is speaking "from the Chair of Peter" or "ex Cathedra" on matters of faith and morals. Which specifically happens every couple of centuries. When he's passing on the supernatural wisdom of God that has been communicated to him by God himself.

The Pope, however, remains a sinner through all this and does not possess the supernatural wisdom of God to wield independent of God.

 

For that comment to be viable can you produce proof...other than just what you think or pulled out of the hat? Gotta a link?

 

You might be referring to the term "Dogma". The last time that was done by a Pope was in 1950.

 

Yes, indeed.

And there are a whopping 2 times that a Pope has ever spoken Ex Cathedra. As you mentioned, in 1950 Pope Pius XII declared that Mary, Holy Mother of Jesus, was bodily assumed into Heaven without experiencing death. The other was in 1854 when Pope Pius IX declared Mary's Immaculate Conception (she was born without sin because she wasn't conceived through normal sexual means). Note that this is different than the common assumption that it refers to Jesus' conception. Jesus is fully man and fully God. For him to be born of Mary, she had to also be completely free of sin. So the Immaculate Conception refers to Mary's conception. Jesus, as God, was obviously free of sin.

And, again, my original point is that even Pope's (including both Pius' mentioned here) are common sinners like all the rest of us hopefully approaching our death with fear and trembling and doing our best to overcome that part of our nature.

And, no, none of us have the supernatural wisdom of God.

 

Totally agree with your post...cept for one thing. My way of thinking....If she did go to heaven the way you propose she would have ASCENDED. Similar to that of Jesus. I believe that she died and her body and soul were ASSUMED into heaven.

Significantly different in the mode that she experienced to attain heaven.

 

Not in the Catholic faith. She ascended without dying, just like Elijah.

 

Both of us misinterpreted what was posted.

 

You are totally wrong....the only person to ASCEND into heaven was Jesus. Look it up....big difference

 

I have. That's what Pope Pius XII said.

Now other different denominations may believe quite differently, but I'm only talking about the Catholic Church.