An amusing thought I had ~ Why how right you think you are is irrelevant.

[MaxVel]

The Confucian/Taoist world view is older than Christianity, and the known Old Testament, and it is probably the oldest most moral and cohesive culture in the world concerning the family and community.

Other cultures high on the list of family and community without Christianity, are the Native Americans, Buddhist Kingdoms, and the Mongols.

What are your sources for the family values of the Mongols and Native Americans?

[MaxVel]

Ethics and morals are cultural constructs. There are plenty of things, today, right now, that people can see were allowed or condoned in the bible that is simply not cool. Ethics and morality, while occasionally bumpy, has overall improved over time even as Christianity hasn't recieved a firmware update in a couple thousand years. The decline of Christianity as a centralizing influence is going to be a long, slow process and there is plenty of time for morality systems to evolve alongside that decline.

Who knows, maybe one day stories from the bible will be told alongside the stories of Icarus and Aesop for their moral lessons, even as no one today needs Icarus or Aesops fables to be real to impart a sense of morality.

Hell, I've met people whose ideals about helping people in need come from Spiderman comics. It feels good to be the hero.

I'd like to respond just to this part, if I may.

How do you know that morality has 'improved over time'? That implies some goal, or endpoint, or ideal, that morality is either moving to or away from. What is that goal, and why is it 'the goal'?

[Bill the Cat]

If you want to reduce abortions, convince your pro-life peers to join in teaching people how to prevent pregnancy instead of pushing Abstinence only education and the rest of that stuff.

And you convince your pro-abortion peers that it is not a method of birth control, and that their parents will NOT kill them if they find out. Oh, and convince your associates that the fetus actually IS a human being deserving of the same rights as any other member of our species.

Roe v Wade isn't going anywhere anytime soon.

But it will eventually. I am confident of that.

Without the option to ban, you have the option to try to attempt to reduce.

Which is what our efforts have focused on with restrictions on second and third trimester abortions.

That can be attempted by throwing up roadblocks that will get struck down, eventually, or you can do it by reducing the need people feel for abortion.

Popular opinion is swinging our way, and people are feeling less "needful" of abortions, in part due to the efforts of the pro-life side.

Education, contraception, adoption programs, any number of things.

All parts of the whole for much of the pro-life approach. Even contraception for those over 18 among us who are not against contraception.

Abortions aren't a new thing.

Nor is theft, assault, rape, murder, or embezzlement. Just because something isn't new doesn't mean it should be given a pass.

Ancient Egyptian medical texts mention it, and even how to do it, from the third Millenium BC and 1500 BC respectively. You can change the need people feel, but you aren't going to get rid of people attempting it.

No one is suggesting that we can eradicate it. Just like we can't eradicate people doing anything else. But we identify that something is heinous (which abortion is), and criminalize it, and actually ENFORCE the punishments for a change, and we will watch the numbers free-fall.

The goal can't really zero, thats just not going to happen.

We know. Just like there will never be ZERO drunk drivers. But when we finally admit the barbarism of the practice, then we can make better progress. As long as abortion proponents treat it as harmless as having a mole removed, and obfuscate the actual consequences and results of the procedure, our work is made far more difficult.

This is a terrible analogy since I am comfortable with abortion,

Are you as comfortable with infanticide, like Starlight is?

but you were a cop at some point so I think this is a decent-ish way to say it. You knew that you were never going to reduce all crime to zero. Even knowing that, you can still do things to reduce it. Sex education, affordable contraception, adoption programs, the like. Effort spent there will, from the perspective of you and other Christians, save lots of lives.

And culture has glamorized crime. The "bad guy" isn't so much bad as misunderstood, and even the "hero" will stoop to whatever level he needs to further his goal. It is COOL to commit crimes now. The ends justify the means. The consequences are not important if the goal is achieved. Just like abortion has been sterilized (pardon the pun). It is seen as just a procedure, that the fetus isn't REALLY alive, etc.

[Leonhard]

I disagree on you that going hard and not "adapting" is a sound strategy. I'm personally all for adaptation, just not "adaptation"

Lets be have a Catholic Church in the 21st Century World, but lets not have the 21st Century World inside the Catholic Church.

I used to be different, thinking we could do a laissez faire kind of Christianity. Provide the rituals, and let people form their beliefs by them. This has several problems, most of which is that you end up with people not really respecting the rituals, wanting it different and new, and end up making it something completely unlike what it came from. I've seen the women priest churches trying to paint themselves as Catholic, who broke free from the Church. You'd be hard pressed to see a similarity except for dressed robes and incense. They tend to ditch the Bible as well as doctrines most Christians have ever agreed on.

I'm living in the world Dawkins describes. A lot of cultural Christians who are effectively atheists who does the ritual and sings the song, but only because its a good and Danish thing to do. However they'd do this even if the parishes are fairly strict. The question is what kind of parish succeeds more? And here those who "modernize" and "revitalize" and all sorts of fancy adjectives, don't actually end up growing at all. If anything they're collapsing quicker than the ones just coasting along as usual. The most liberal part of the Catholic Church is arguably the one in Germany, you'll be hard pressed to find one single sermon about the salvation of the soul, the conversion of the heart, of sin and penance, Heaven and Hell, instead its mostly turned over to Social Justice issues. Church attendance is collapsing.

More hard line parts manage far better, though its hard to compare between countries. So far though the traditional segments of the Catholic Church have become an odd and slightly ironic minority. Though natural selection still applies, if they survive and propagate themselves, and the more liberal parts don't, then they'll be the ones to survive.

As for evolution of doctrine, no such thing has ever taken place in the Catholic Church. Things can become better explained over time, and St. Augustine founded a great school of philosophy in trying to understand Christian theology, and St. Aquinas made it into a fully fledged rigorous systematic worldview. If they changed doctrine, you'd need to show it, though I don't think you claimed that they did so. Clarification can happen, change can't.

Liberals want change and not merely more clarification. They know exactly that the Catholic Church teachings that they can't have all the sex they want, and that you can't remarry. They want that, and so effectively they want the Church to change its own teachings, not to explain it to them again in a new way, or to make new specifications of disciplines that will ultimately still entail that they can't have what they want.

If you can show me that liberalising a parish has substantially positive effects on survivability and its relevance, I'd go for it. If anything it has the opposite effects, declining attendance, and leaders trying very careful to not say anything that might upset the stomach of anyone. I understand why they might attempt that, but I can't see it as something likely to succeed, or really relevant to the situation the Catholic Church is in.

[Paprika]

Depending on who they are, they might already be excommunicated. Anyone having an abortion, helps another person to get an abortion, and I think even politically supports abortion (though this might only be for politicians), is automatically excommunicated, and a priest would be fully in his right to deny that person communion.

Good to know, but we were referring to the use of contraception.

A public excommunication is a rare event, usually done with the intention of helping the person to recognise his state and bring him back. I fear these people would hardly notice it if the bishop had excommunicated them anyway.

Well sure, excommunication is going to be of little use if it's merely a proclamation that 'you wide class of people are excommunicated' and not properly executed.

[Adrift]

Refresh me on the scriptural basis for the pope raggin on condoms? Is it just the "be fruitful and multiply" thing?

Because, bro, we did that. We are most definately a huge multiple compared to when he is supposed to have said that

I don't think there is scriptural basis for it. Pretty sure it comes from their take on natural law (which I think is a useful approach to certain matters, but goes too far sometimes).

[Leonhard]

Only because the leaders are too weak and flaccid to do mass excommunications.

Depending on who they are, they might already be excommunicated. Anyone having an abortion, helps another person to get an abortion, and I think even politically supports abortion (though this might only be for politicians), is automatically excommunicated, and a priest would be fully in his right to deny that person communion.

A public excommunication is a rare event, usually done with the intention of helping the person to recognise his state and bring him back. I fear these people would hardly notice it if the bishop had excommunicated them anyway.

[Jaecp]

I don't think Onan's problem was using birth control per se but rather trying to defraud his dead brother... but that's a whole different topic.

Refresh me on the scriptural basis for the pope raggin on condoms? Is it just the "be fruitful and multiply" thing?

Because, bro, we did that. We are most definately a huge multiple compared to when he is supposed to have said that

[Jaecp]

I don't recall ever having this conversation before. This isn't a discussion I usually jump into that often.



I think being inflammatory is sorta the point.



I think for a lot of people it really is about being pro-life, and pro-baby. I know it is for me. In fact, I'm also opposed to the death penalty and euthanasia on much the same grounds. At any rate, its more than sloganeering. A lot of people on the pro-life side are thoroughly convinced that abortion is murder, and I don't think there's any way to softly break that to people who don't believe it is.



So a two-pronged approach is completely out for you? There is no compromise where we teach people how to use condoms, but also advocate for abstinence and adoption (as an alternative to abortion), and teach people that abortion is destructive.

Inflammatory can open a dialogue. It's the attention grabber. Whats phase two?

I'm not saying its sloganeering. I'm saying its sloganized. The same way that words like choker, tie, necklace are all kind of on the nose ("oh, that one chokes you" "oh, its a tie because you tie it", etc). At a certain point catchphrases lose meaning. Thats what I mean. How long has abortion been murder? Why didn't Reagan, Bush, or Bush 2 ban this when they had majorities in both houses?

I'm happy you are. Sadly, I've met a good number of people who are very much against abortion, while also being against the kind of programs that help once the things out and wobblin around.

As for the two pronged approach. Well, like I said, comprehensive already includes abstinence. It would play better in terms of news, legislation, public opinion etc if people pushing for abortion restrictions on the basis of not wanting abortion brought up as "pork" in these bills somethin to take care of the women who, presumably, would have had the abortion.

Also, if the tact is going to be changed where its not adversarial and more about helping women to reduce the need for abortions then you really just need to drop the whole lines of attack that stems from the concept "abortion is murder"

Part of that has to do with the absolutely disengenuous way some pro-life organizations have operated in the hurdles arena.

For example, earlier this year I was able to testify in front of a senate subcommittee regarding mandatory parental notification law. The group that was there in support, who had a republican senator put the bill to committee for them, was deck out in shirts that contain a phrase like "we will not rest until abortion in all of its form is eliminated"

They were there to support one of those hurdles. The argument was all about being concerned for womens safety, but it was written on the back of their shirts. This was a way to restrict abortions.

Disingenuous. Blech.

Slap me in the face, but don't piss in my cup and tell me its apple juice.

Trying to operate on the constructive, gradual side of womens health as opposed to the oppositional side focused on absolutes is going to need some goodwill built, basically.

[Jaecp]

Granted since your focus is on people's actions, and you interpret the word 'matter' here in another way again, namely respect for the official teachings. I don't mind agreeing that there's a severe problem with that in the Catholic Church, just as there's a huge group of people identifying as Christians, who basically don't believe in God or live as if they did.

The biggest enemies of Christianity are the large groups of people culturally identifying themselves as Christians, or Catholic Christians, but who don't care about whether abortion is murder, whether Christ rose from the dead, who think premarital sex and cohabitation are fine, etc... religion reduced to something you do on sunday; warm, nice and familiar, we eat the bread and sing the song and feel good. You believe yours, I believe mine, and what is right for me is true for me, and what is right for you is true for you.

This kind of relativism, is a stark enemy of Christianity. It has a weird creeping effect as well, because those people affected by it will still gladly come to Church, and pray, and participate in liturgy, but they don't care about The Church as such, and are quick to suggest ways to change it to something more suited to what they personally prefer, rather than in line with what it teaches.

In the long run I don't think they'll reform the Churches to a postmodern church, as all evidence suggests that they, or their children cease to have much if any identity with the religion of their choice. Or they'll have it on their birthcertificate, and come for baptism, confirmation, weddings and funerals mostly, and skip the sundays masses. They'll become thoroughly secularised, and the only ones who remain are the ones obstinately being traditional, all sociological evidence we have show that they retain their identity over time. Its going to be a mixture of Catholic/Eastern Orthodox and hardline Lutheran and Baptist groups. Whether these can be united I don't know, I think that some day some of them would.

But eventually even if they were united their impact on policies would be negligible for the forseeable future.

In the coming centuries Christians will become a minority. I have little doubt about it. The Catholic Church will harden its identity more and priests will likely either syncretise themselves away, schism (if they go the way of the world), or they'll go more hardline, focus more on the rituals and mysteries of the faith, their preachings would become sterner, they'd enact all the rituals that help maintain a Catholic's identity, such as public Eucharistic procession with people singing Gloria Laus et Honor tibi Sit. The Catholic Church will probably stop its ecumenical attempt to present a smiling and friendly face to the world eventually, as it doesn't seem to be helping anyone.

What comes after that I don't know, but that's my own anticipation and what I'm preparing myself for, though I doubt I'll get to see the point where the Catholic Church undergoes a renewal.

I like playing with language :)

Haven't we already seen this kind of thing happen in numerous parts of Europe? The majority of the population is, as Dawkins spoke of England, "Cultural Christians" much is the same way that half of American Jews are atheists, but still do their cultural rituals. I've been told that in Japan there are "churches" that have been built solely for weddings. Very few Christians in that country, but they like the chapels architeture nonetheless.

In this way, perhaps, we'll avoid the problem that (was it MaxVel or Adrift?) said about a lost moral compass. We'll do as we have done for centuries. Pick out the good parts of the bible and ignore the weird or violent stuff.

I wonder if it would amuse you that there was a man I knew in the Navy, now a Youth Minister, who once told me that I was a better Christian as an atheist than most of the Christians he worked with? He has, basically, the same point you'd made regarding the once a week types.

Still, between relativism, the lack of postmodernism, all that. The eventual minority doing... whatever zoroastrins did when they lost power, I suppose, will do what all shrinking groups tend to do, as you said.

Close ranks, separate themselves further, and get hard.

What better way to ensure that they don't survive than to both refuse to adapt while intentionally going backwards?

Did not Aquinas and Augustus expand on the catholic understanding of god, bringing such thought forward? Whats prevents such things today?

[Adrift]

Sex education, the comprehensive stuff, already covers abstinence as an option. The "pushing abstinence" option, ineffective as it is (lets just, like, pretend I googled the stats at 5am? I'm sure both of us have had this conversation before with a variety of people) is only an issue when its done as the "abstinence only" thing.

I don't recall ever having this conversation before. This isn't a discussion I usually jump into that often.

The whole "abortion is murder" thing you guys really need to drop. It's one of the, if not the, most inflammatory bits of rhetoric in use today by an interest group.

I think being inflammatory is sorta the point.

Maybe if being pro-life was more about being pro-baby [and life in general] than opposing abortion all the time while being sex negative I'd buy it, but the whole thing just reads to me as something sloganized.

I think for a lot of people it really is about being pro-life, and pro-baby. I know it is for me. In fact, I'm also opposed to the death penalty and euthanasia on much the same grounds. At any rate, its more than sloganeering. A lot of people on the pro-life side are thoroughly convinced that abortion is murder, and I don't think there's any way to softly break that to people who don't believe it is.

Basically, my point could be summed up as this.

Telling people "abortion is murder" prevents a negligible amount of abortions. The protesters in front of those clinics are, at best, delaying a woman by a day or two through fear. This isn't "saving a baby", but simply "making some poor women pay for a 3rd night in a hotel after she drove/flew across half of texas"

However,

Teaching teenagers what condoms are, how to use them, and having a big ole bucket of them on campus will prevent abortions because they didn't get pregnant in the first place.

So,

The focus needs to be on the goal, not the current methods. You can reduce abortion rates more effectively than the prevailing plans of pro-life organizations

So a two-pronged approach is completely out for you? There is no compromise where we teach people how to use condoms, but also advocate for abstinence and adoption (as an alternative to abortion), and teach people that abortion is destructive.

[Paprika]

And yet, Catholics use birth control.

Only because the leaders are too weak and flaccid to do mass excommunications.

[KingsGambit]

And yet, Catholics use birth control.

Poor Onan

I don't think Onan's problem was using birth control per se but rather trying to defraud his dead brother... but that's a whole different topic.

[Paprika]

The whole "abortion is murder" thing you guys really need to drop. It's one of the, if not the, most inflammatory bits of rhetoric in use today by an interest group. Maybe if being pro-life was more about being pro-baby [and life in general] than opposing abortion all the time

I'm not sure how pushing for mothers not to kill their children is not being pro-baby and pro-life, but progressives gotta progressive.

while being sex negative

Interesting. Has 'war on women and their freeedom to do whatever they want to do with their body' ceased to be effective rhetoric so that now it's back to the ol' 'sex negative', killjoy etc etc?

I'd buy it

Nonsense, you wouldn't buy it anyway, let alone if conservatives weaken their stance to make it more 'appealing'. It's just an excuse to avoid reflecting on the seriousness and meaning of killing your own child.

[Jaecp]

It's a complete non-negotiable.

And yet, Catholics use birth control.

Poor Onan