Out Of Step Or Archaic

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Time is said to change everything and I have seen many changes to the Catholic Church take place in my lifetime.  The Church still has issues with abortion, divorce and gay marriage, but it should not be labeled an antiquated institution.  Pope Francis is pro-life, and there is a good chance that will never change, but he has softened his stance on divorced Catholics.  Pope Francis praised an Argentinean document stating that in some ‘irregular family situations’, people could still receive communion.  Francis thinks that through the “help of sacraments”, this could provide a broader effort to support and integrate divorced and remarried Catholics into the life of the church, and this offers direct evidence that Francis supports a significant change in the way individual priests deal with divorced Catholics.

In 2013, Pope Francis said, “If someone is gay and searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?”  There is also that incident where a survivor of clerical sexual abuse was told by Pope Francis that God had made him gay and loved him, and this is arguably the most strikingly accepting comments about homosexuality that have been uttered by the leader of the Roman Catholic church.  Pope Francis says transsexuals and gay people should be embraced by the Catholic Church after he met a woman from Spain who later had a sex change to become a man and subsequently married a woman.  He invited the couple to the Vatican, where they told him how upset they had been when a local priest had told them they would “go to hell”.  Francis responded, “Life is life, and things should be taken as they come.  Sin is sin, but tendencies or hormonal imbalances … can cause many problems and we have to be careful.  But each case must be welcomed, accompanied, studied, discerned and integrated.  When a person (who is gay) arrives before Jesus, Jesus certainly will not say, ‘Go away because you are homosexual’.”  Francis then joked saying that they should not go around repeating that the Pope wants to bless transsexuals, as he did not want to have to read that on the front pages of all the newspapers.

When I was young, most of the mass was in Latin, which made it very difficult to follow.  All women were required to cover their hair with a scarf or a hat of some kind.  No one ate meat on Fridays during Lent and now all of this has changed.  Back in the day, communion was only given by the priest and now there are helpers, maybe they are called deacons who help out with this.  I was never given wine at communion, ‘the blood of Christ’ as this was only for the priest and now it is common place to receive both the bread and wine.  Also the role of women being allowed on the altar has changed since I was young.  The church is slow at making changes, but I would not say that it is archaic.

 

18 thoughts on “Out Of Step Or Archaic”

    1. I would be inclined not to use ‘writ large’ in a sentence, as writ is an archaic form of ‘written’, but after looking this combination of words up, I found out that it means clear and obvious. That was my whole point of writing this, that it was not clear and obvious. Sure there are problems with religion, but just because you are an atheist, that does not mean that you have all of the answers.

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        1. You seem like a very intelligent person to me, someone who has looked at the evidence and concluded that it didn’t add up, but as far as I know, science has never disproved the existence of God. Science has won some major battles with Copernicus stating that the Earth is not the center of the universe and Darwin’s theory of evolution being accepted and both of these went against what was written in Scripture. Man has gotten smarter, but that does not mean that God is unnecessary or just made up. For the premedical soup to work and create life, all of these masses, charges and forces of interaction in the universe had to be in just the precisely needed amounts, so that early light atoms could form. Larger ones would then be cooked in nuclear fires inside stars, giving us carbon, iron, nitrogen, oxygen and all the other elements that are so essential for life to emerge. Eventually, the highly complicated double-helix molecule, the life-propagating DNA, was able to be formed. For me it is easier to believe in God being behind this grand plan to form life, than chalking all of this up to magic or some lucky combination that somehow all of these elementary particles required for the creation of life just happened.

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        2. You seem like a very intelligent person to me, someone who has looked at the evidence and concluded that it didn’t add up, but as far as I know, science has never disproved the existence of God. Science has won some major battles with Copernicus stating that the Earth is not the center of the universe and Darwin’s theory of evolution being accepted and both of these went against what was written in Scripture. Man has gotten smarter, but that does not mean that God is unnecessary or just made up. For the premedical soup to work and create life, all of these masses, charges and forces of interaction in the universe had to be in just the precisely needed amounts, so that early light atoms could form. Larger ones would then be cooked in nuclear fires inside stars, giving us carbon, iron, nitrogen, oxygen and all the other elements that are so essential for life to emerge. Eventually, the highly complicated double-helix molecule, the life-propagating DNA, was able to be formed. For me it is easier to believe in God being behind this grand plan to form life, than chalking all of this up to magic or some lucky combination that somehow all of these elementary particles required for the creation of life just happened.

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          1. As I said, God is the answer to unanswerable questions and to unknowable things that most humans have an unquenchable thirst to answer and to know. If that answer works for you, who am I to be critical? But while science may not have disproved the existence of God, it has cast serious doubts. And neither has science (or religion) PROVED the existence of God. And we have proved that the Bible, which is claimed to be the word of an infallible God, is wrong about so many things. So why should one believe that man was created in God’s image, rather than God having been created in man’s image? And why are we so egotistical to believe that with of all the billions of planets in the universe, God selected our little planet and our human race to be the only intelligent life that exists? So while it’s easier for you to believe that God exists, to my practical, logical, pragmatic mind, it’s easier for me to believe that God is a myth.

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            1. I agree with you mostly, as the Bible is flawed, but it does give us many stories that people can use as a guide to lead a better life. We need more good people in this world, as there are sure enough bad ones around, if not downright evil and if evil exists, then it’s counterpart is God. I wrote about the Copernican Principle eleven days ago, which puts forth the theory that our planet is not all that special, so I can see your point of view on this. There is a saying that goes “an ounce of prevention is worth is worth a pound of cure”, so since neither of us can determine who is right, I would rather believe in God.

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            2. I agree that the Bible is full of good tales and life lessons. That said, looking back through the history of humankind, how many lives have been lost in the name of God or to promote one religion over another? To me, belief in a magical, mystical, supernatural being has been more detrimental to human life and has caused more suffering than it is worth. But, hey, whatever floats your boat, right?

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            4. We argued about the new NFL rules and now we are onto something else. Arguing is a healthy form of expression and Dango and I are not your parents, so why would you even care if we argue. I don’t get enough comments on my posts and if it takes a good discussion to make that happen, then I relish it.

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            5. I remember when we argued. But you’re both grown ups and argument is only healthy when one accepts the argument should not be trivial in nature. Arguing about God is not healthy as the evidence is subjective owning to the subject limited understanding or knowledge and yet at the same time objective because that limited knowledge is from his own point of view.

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            7. Without a doubt, more people have died because of religion than any other cause, but on the other hand religion has been known to help many people. Religion can provide comfort to those that are suffering and just from the power of belief certain people have felt fewer symptoms of depression and anxiety, as well this being a better way to cope with stress. Like you said, ‘Whatever floats your boat’, or six of this and a half dozen of This That and the Other.

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            8. Granted. Religion can help people and I’m fine with both religion and with people who are religious…as long as they don’t try to impose their religion or religious dogma on others. But it seems that they can’t help but try to “save” people who don’t want or don’t need saving. And now, conservatives and Republicans in this country want to legislate their religious beliefs and practices upon everyone else, leading this country to be verging on becoming a Christian theocracy more than a secular democracy. And that, Jim, pisses the shit out of me.

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            9. I agree again as there are too many religious weirdo’s out there and Mike Pence and the Evangelical movement is making this worse. I believe that Science and Religion can co-exist peacefully together in this world, but I am a bit of an optimist and if one is proved wrong it must adjust to meet reality. Science is a very fast moving field that is based on discovery so it is always evolving, where nothing is changing in Religion. Religion lost a lot of followers when the Big Bang theory was put forth and readily accepted as that made people look at creation in a new light. I feel that it is entirely possible that God could have had a finger in the pot and that He stirred some things around. If the day comes where Science proves that God does not exist, then I will become an atheist. What would I do when I sat down to eat, as I could no longer thank God for His blessings, so I guess that I would have to say, “I hope I don’t choke on this food, but it really wouldn’t matter anyway for me, as there is life and death and nothing more, here one day and gone the next. What is the meaning of life as I no longer have any purpose to live.”

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            10. Ah yes, the old “without God, life has no meaning, no purpose” argument. And I agree that belief in God, in religion, and in the afterlife are so damn compelling, so tantalizing. It makes life, and especially death, easier to bear. If we believe that there’s more to life than the few decades we have on this planet, that there is an eternal afterlife, and that our soul, whatever that is, will persist in some other “tangible” place or way, of course that’s comforting. And that’s why man invented God and religion. And that’s why we cling to it. That’s why so many people believe.

              Religion teaches us to be nice and to be a good person. But if you don’t believe in God and you don’t love Jesus, then you aren’t, and can’t be, a nice and good person. Because you have no moral compass as a result, you can’t possibly know right from wrong, good from evil.
              And you deserve to burn in hell for an eternity.
              Be a nice and be a good person, but smite your enemies. Smite the heretics. Smite the infidels.

              Well, Jim, I don’t buy that crap. I believe we should each make the most out of our lives and the meaning comes from what we do with our lives, who we touch, what we accomplish, and the legacy we leave.

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            11. It seems like we agree on more things than we disagree on and this has been a fun debate at least for me. I never said anything against atheists and I never said anything about anyone burning in hell and in fact I never mentioned Jesus. I also totally agree with your last statement, “I believe we should each make the most out of our lives and the meaning comes from what we do with our lives, who we touch, what we accomplish, and the legacy we leave.”

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            12. It’s been a fun debate for me, as well. I didn’t mean to imply that you’re a fire and brimstone type, either. As they say, “live and let live.”

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