Original Sin?

Quote: Evenbob

The biggest reason the Church is still
around today is, the forceful way it
dealt with heretics. If you have
a message, and you force people to
believe it, like the Church did, it really
doesn't matter what the message is.

This is not true historically, in regards to the Catholicism or any religion or idea. Using force is a sign of weakness and signals the downfall of such a faith or ideology. Once force must be used it is only a matter of time, usually not longer than a decade until it all crumbles usually in a violent and fantastic manner. I'm not saying there were not abuses, because there were, but Christianity was not spread by the sword. Also the incidents you often exaggerate and point to are close to 500 years old, I wonder how you explain the Church's growth since then?

Quote:

You act like the Church trudged along
in it's first thousand years, preaching
the peaceful carpenters message far and
wide, slowly building the base of it's
wonderful, kind and loving leader, Jesus.

At least the first three hundred years and then things got all wacky with the Edict of Milan.

Quote:

Here is just a small example of how the
loving Church dealt with so called heretics:

YOUR QUOTE IS A BOLDFACED LIE!

Quote: FrGamble

YOUR QUOTE IS A BOLDFACED LIE!

Nope. Dealing with heretics was the life
blood of the Church.

"In 1252, Pope Innocent IV officially authorized the creation of the horrifying Inquisition torture chambers. It also included anew perpetual imprisonment or death at the stake without the bishops consent. Acquittal of the accused was now virtually impossible. Thus, with a license granted by the pope himself, Inquisitors were free to explore the depths of horror and cruelty. Dressed as black-robed fiends with black cowls over their heads, Inquisitors could extract confessions from just about anyone. The Inquisition invented every conceivable devise to inflict pain by slowly dismembering and dislocating the body."

This is why the Church flourished, people were
terrified at disobeying.

Quote:

Also the incidents you often exaggerate and point to are close to 500 years old, I wonder how you explain the Church's growth since then?

I look at the Church as a whole entity. You
claim the holy spirit has always guided
what the Church does. For hundreds of
years, then, it guided them to torture and
kill people. Obviously.

The truth is, there is no holy spirit guiding
anything. It's greedy selfish men who are
in charge, then and now. Obviously.

Quote: FrGamble

Also the incidents you often exaggerate and point to are close to 500 years old, I wonder how you explain the Church's growth since then?

It's... it's almost as if "morals", or the things that we accept as right and wrong, have shifted over time. Evolved, if you will.

=D

Quote: Face

It's... it's almost as if "morals", or the things that we accept as right and wrong, have shifted over time. Evolved, if you will.

YEs.

But 500 years ago coincides with that very obscure, little-known era known as the European takeover of the Americas. The bulk of the continent, and the people, fell under Catholic domination and there were many forcible conversions. Those who were not killed by disease or in conquest war, or later in slave plantation run by the Christian empires of Portugal and Spain.

That might have had a little bit to do with the "growth" of the church over the past 500 years.

Of course, the decline of Christianity in the last 150 years is more interesting.

Quote: Evenbob

This is why the Church flourished, people were
terrified at disobeying.

You are lying and quoting things without sources and that are just filthy untruths. I am so utterly disappointed in you.

Here is a quote from the actual document you are referencing referring to Innocent's desire for the State to handle heretics in the same way they would treat robbers and thieves because the Pope argues they are stealing people's faith.

"The head of state or ruler must force all the heretics whom he has in custody, provided he does so without killing them or breaking their arms or legs, as actual robbers and murderers of souls and thieves of the sacraments of God and Christian faith, to confess their errors and accuse other heretics whom they know, and specify their motives, and those whom they have seduced, and those who have lodged them and defended them, as thieves and robbers of material goods are made to accuse their accomplices and confess the crimes they have committed."

Quote: Face

It's... it's almost as if "morals", or the things that we accept as right and wrong, have shifted over time. Evolved, if you will.

=D

Of course they did not; torture and killing of innocents is as wrong then as it is today. Don't get the acceptance or even the possible necessity of something in the past as compared to today as if something evolved ever from being immoral to moral or vice-versa.

Quote: FrGamble

"The head of state or ruler must force all the heretics whom he has in custody to confess their errors and accuse other heretics whom they know.."

Force is the key word here. "provided he does so
without killing them or breaking their arms or legs".
So they can be forced with beatings, torture, the
rack, just so they aren't killed or their bones broken.
They are coerced into ratting out others, "accuse other
heretics whom they know". Where do you think
they did all the dirty work, in the town square? They
built dungeons and torture chambers to get the
forced confessions.

They are to be treated as common criminals, treated
like robbers of actual material goods, and be made to
accuse their accomplices. The 'crime' they committed
was not an actual crime, it was theological crime. They
went against the sacrament of the Church, they were
heretics, they committed a crime against god, and
the Pope was giving his permission to treat them
as real criminals are treated, by forcing confessions
out of them by any means possible, short of death
or breaking bones.

How is this any different from the quote I posted.

I know I've read that they were very careful not to
break bones. That's why stretching people on the
rack was so popular, it pulled your joints apart and
was excruciating painful. Another popular torture
was tying a mans hands together behind him with
the end of a rope, and throwing the other end over
a roof beam, and pushing the man off a platform so
his arms would be jerked over his head from behind,
dislocating both arms from the his shoulder joints.
No bones broken, all within the Popes guidelines.



and specify their motives, and those whom they have seduced, and those who have lodged them and defended them, as thieves and robbers of material goods are made to accuse their accomplices and confess the crimes they have committed."

Quote: Face

It's... it's almost as if "morals", or the things that we accept as right and wrong, have shifted over time. Evolved, if you will.

=D

What I find the most interesting part of this, is that the various Christian churches as they exist today, largely embrace a different kind of morality than they did before due mostly to the secular humanist influence of the Renaissance and Enlightenment eras.

Things like liberty, freedom of religion, equality under the law, primacy of civil law, etc. grew slowly out of these eras and also from bitter experience. Things like the 30 Years War discredited the idea of religious warfare in the West, not solely because of the blood spilled in the name of God, but also because of the tremendous, useless waste of human lives, human potential, and wealth sacrificed for otherworldly ideals.

Christianity is at heart an intolerant, exclusionary ideology. It behaved and acted that way for most of its history. I find this ironic, as it was born hand-in-hand as a power with Constantine I's Edict of Milan, which made religious toleration the official policy of the Roman Empire. But then Rome fell and Christianity rose, and let its through colors blacken Europe for 1500 years.

What the rediscovery of Greek and Roman philosophers brought about were radical new ideas, like maybe it's not a good thing to kill people over their opinions on the Eucharist, or even their rejection of the Jesus.

But one must not get too carried away and praise Christianity for bowing to the inevitable. Many of them don't mean it. If I may draw an analogy, they're like Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette during the French Revolution. They go along with the changes the people demand, but in the dark corners they plot against them. This is evident in many US Christians who demand the right to oppress people they dislike, purely on religious grounds. But even if not evident, you run across it with seemingly agreeable Christians who argue that atrocities committed by the church in the past are in the past, and then defend them anyway.

It's far from a given, but Louis and his wife might have lived a full, long life as Constitutional Monarchs of the French for a few decades, and died peacefully in their beds. Likewise Christianity can exist for millennia yet as a secondary but personally important part of the lives of millions of people, or it can be cast out in disgust. I see no other choices.

Quote: FrGamble

Of course they did not; torture and killing of innocents is as wrong then as it is today. Don't get the acceptance or even the possible necessity of something in the past as compared to today as if something evolved ever from being immoral to moral or vice-versa.

I sort of know what you're saying, and I know what I think. I'm interested in what you think.

See, I think there's sort of two versions of right and wrong. I suppose we'll call them "universal" and "societal". When you say there's a specific and unmoving right and wrong, I would agree when concerning these "universal" morals. It is never ok to murder, it is never ok to rape, things like that. But as we can see, universal and societal don't always line up. We're over in the desert murdering people right now, and societally, we're to "support our troops". Sometimes people's nature and nurture mixes and makes a monster. In some states, we murder these people and it is seen as "good". It's not ok to kidnap and imprison folks, yet sometimes we do just that in the name of "justice".

History shows these societal morals do indeed change. Doesn't really matter if we're talking church or English towns or Persian monarchs or whatever. What society deems as right and wrong certainly changes and evolves.

This is inarguable fact, proven all through history. My question is how you, personally, handle this divide. It would seem to me that the answer is obvious - you follow the church. But we know the church doesn't have it right, either. Because, as we've seen, the church does follow a societal version of right and wrong. It was always universally wrong to kill, but when it was socially ok, the church did so. Heretics, blasphemers, whatever, they partook up to a certain point. Same thing with imprisonment. It's never OK to imprison someone because they hold a different worldview than you, but at one time, the church did just that.

Doesn't that have any effect on you at all? Or do you find the church's societal view to directly mirror the universal?

People as property
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bible_and_slavery

Universally wrong, or OK as long as society says so?