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Christians complaining again. Surprise, surprise!

The symbol of the cross simply does not command the respect it once did because people are more aware of the inequities committed in the name of religion and by clerics. We know that many innocent people were mutilated and executed by the Church and that in the Catholic Church paedophile priests were shielded from the authorities - just moved on to an unsuspecting parish elsewhere.

Do we really want children to have their heads stuffed full of supernatural guff surrounding some agitator who was nailed to a couple of planks of wood thousands of years ago?

As we say in the States, I hate to open a "can of worms", but I'd personally be interested to know more about the article concerning anti-Catholic bigotry in Scotland.
I'm a Catholic of Scottish & Scots Irish descent (on my daddy's side of the family) & know that there's still quite a bit of misunderstanding regarding Catholicism in our family.This is probably why my daddy never informed his family he'd converted & married a Catholic.
I've been once to visit Scotland & was deeply impressed with the beauty of the country & the hospitality of the Scots.But I did get the impression that as a practising Catholic I was outside the mainstream & wonder what the experience might be for Scottish Catholics who have to live & function within a mostly Protestant society?
If it's anything like my experience living in the Southern United States, it has made me a better & more educated Catholic because I have had to learn about my Faith in order to explain it to Baptists & others.In turn, the Baptists,Pentecostal Christians & such share the same values we have & tend to make our part of America a better, more family-centered place to live. Despite our differences in doctrine, I think we benefit from each other's contributions.

A big science story just came out of NASA. Researchers have found a bacterial life form that can substitute arsenic for phosphorous. So far *all* life observed had contained C, H, O, N, P and S. But a bacterial life form found in a strongly base lake in California thrives on As in the absence of P.





Also in science news today, correction of previous insights thanks to new
telescope readings. There are three times more stars in the universe than
previously thought. The ball park estimate stands at a 1 with 23 zeros.

So what do these things add up to? The chances of extra terrestial life just became quite a bit bigger. Life is less strictly dependent on the presence of chemical elements. And there would be three times more stars to have habitable planets. So keep alive a bit longer and you might live to see the day that ET life if detected.

This story is further proof that progress & the passage of time don't always go hand in hand

True...many equities have been committed in the name of religion. But the man that died on the cross didn't promote or want anything to do with religion. People might commit horrible acts in the name of Christ but that doesn't mean anything about who Christ really was or is. The cross stood for something different...freedom, hope, healing, love. People and religion get in the way of that and dirty the story of what Christ came to do. He came to challenge man's way of thinking...he came to set our minds to think outside of the box.

picklesandcheese -

"The cross stood for something different...freedom, hope, healing, love. People and religion get in the way of that and dirty the story of what Christ came to do. He came to challenge man's way of thinking...he came to set our minds to think outside of the box."

I second that!

Dear William, why do you only ever seem to pick out news items relating to the Catholic Church that are negative or hostile to the Catholic Church? One expects a ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ religious/ethical blog to open-minded and fair, your blog appears to highlight only controversial/negative Catholic news items. Your salary is paid by taxpayers, and the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ is apparently committed to objective journalism and reporting, so you should be very careful to ensure that your own biases, whatever your own views of the Catholic Church, do not come out in your choice of news links. For objective news on the Catholic Church, you should check out the website of the Catholic Herald. Best wishes, Jim

If only more felt like that pickleandcheese. Too many people are only interested in perpetuating the power & control of their little *clubs* rather than articulating "freedom , hope, healing, love". Let's hope more people start thinking outside of the box and leave the narrow confines of their religious denominations

Jim Arnauld,

So to find objective views on the catholic church check out the catholic herald, would that not be like asking the free presbyterians for an objective view of the orange order.

pickleandcheese,
If that was Jesus's plan he must be gutted by the way things turned out.

LSV,
A reading of the gospels would support your view in many ways (not existence of god but from a more socially positive stance), unfortunately the best thing he could have taught would be to throw the OT in the bin and never refer to it again. Some of the things ascribed to Jesus are not bad, its just the baggage it comes with.

"The cross stood for something different...freedom, hope, healing, love. People and religion get in the way of that and dirty the story of what Christ came to do. He came to challenge man's way of thinking...he came to set our minds to think outside of the box."

I second that!

Some might say that he came to challenge man's way of thinking at the time and he came to put our minds into a new box.

If you were so full of freethought, you'd consider the possibily that god didn't exist. Or he's not the only one, or he was wrong, or crazy, or many, many other more plausible outcomes.

Natman (@ 10) -

Ha ha!

I think the idea of a Christian publicly agreeing with another Christian must keep some atheists awake at night! Hence the need to have to write a fairly pointless rejoinder to a post which was nothing more than an agreement with what someone else had written.

Very amusing (and psychologically highly revealing too).

Natman -

"If you were so full of freethought, you'd consider the possibily that god didn't exist."

How do you know that I haven't?

In fact I have, and the conclusion I have come to is that such a possibility is incoherent, illogical and without any evidential foundation. Therefore I have used my freedom of thought to consider that possibility and then reject it.

Mr. Crawley,

One for your 'In The News This Week' thread.

...the conclusion I have come to is that such a possibility is incoherent, illogical and without any evidential foundation.

Whereas the existance of an invisible, undetectable, all-powerful, singular, eternal, consistent, benevolent, omniscient being is entirely coherent, logical and has evidential foundation?

I'd love to hear how you justify that.