Secularists lay siege to Europe, Italian bishop says

[Voegelin]

Rome, May. 16, 2007 (CWNews.com) . . .Bishop Giuseppe Betori paid homage to St. Ubaldo, a 12th-century bishop who had "fortified the city against a siege." Today, the bishop said, the Christian people face a new challenge, in the form of political forces that are "attempting to storm our cities, undermine their peaceful order, and bring turbulence into their lives." Those forces, he said, are the secularists and nihilists whose efforts undermine respect for the sanctity of life and the bonds of marriage . . .


http://www.cwnews.com/news/viewstory.cfm?recnum=51176

 

[Maxwell511]

Don't forget the Protestants, Bishop. Undermining marraige with their ungodly ideas of divorce. While of course preventing the gays getting married is a short term goal, we need to look at the long term and the preventing of people from getting a divorce and completely stopping the undermining of marraige in Europe. After we are sure that we won't be forced to recognise the relationship of gay people, we need to stop recognising the relationships of the Adulterers.

 

[Voegelin]

we need to stop recognising the relationships of the Adulterers.

Who is this "we"? I don't get your point.

 

[Maxwell511]

Who is this "we"? I don't get your point.

The Church and the my former self that used to be apart of it.

Since the Bishop is a Catholic I am assuming that he does believe that divorce is:

"is immoral also because it introduces disorder into the family and into society. This disorder brings grave harm to the deserted spouse, to children traumatized by the separation of their parents and often torn between them, and because of its contagious effect which makes it truly a plague on society."

and

"Divorce is a grave offense against the natural law. It claims to break the contract, to which the spouses freely consented, to live with each other till death. Divorce does injury to the covenant of salvation, of which sacramental marriage is the sign. Contracting a new union, even if it is recognized by civil law, adds to the gravity of the rupture: the remarried spouse is then in a situation of public and permanent adultery"

Sinwise, to a right thinking Bishop, both homosexual relationships and formerly married people are no different. Both are grave i.e. cut off the relationship with God. Unless you repent you are pretty much going to hell.

Don't worry my atheistic views send me there as well apparently.

I ask why is the bishop focusing on gay people, when Adulterers are as much if not more of a "plague on society"?

 

[Voegelin]

I ask why is the bishop focusing on Sodomites, when Adulterers are as much if not more of a "plague on society"?

Because he addressed in this speech what he addressed.

If the problem of divorce is of more interest to you than what the Bishop Giuseppe Betori said, why not start a thread asking why the Bishop or the Catholic church or Catholics in general do not, in your opinion, address the issue of divorce more strongly? Perhaps Bishop Betori has made statements on divorce. Why not find them and enlighten us all?

This OP deals with secularists and nihilists who promote or accept abortion, euthansia and gay marriage.

 

[Maxwell511]

Because he addressed in this speech what he addressed.

If the problem of divorce is of more interest to you than what the Bishop Giuseppe Betori said, why not start a thread asking why the Bishop or the Catholic church or Catholics in general do not, in your opinion, address the issue of divorce more strongly? Perhaps Bishop Betori has made statements on divorce. Why not find them and enlighten us all?

This OP deals with secularists and nihilists who promote or accept abortion, euthansia and gay marriage.

Okay then.

Excluding abortion and euthansia. The article is short it didn't really explain why the Bishop believes that those that support gay marriage are "threatening the bonds of marraige" and are "enemies of Christianity" it just states they are. Do you agree with the Bishop on this? If so why or alternatively what do you believe his reasoning behind the assertion is?

 

[Robbie_James_Francis]

Apart from the obscene misrepresentation that results from treating secularists and nihilists as the same, I find the charge of, "allowing the powerful to take advantage of the defenseless," a particularly interesting one when coming from a European Catholic bishop.

I feel little sympathy. At the heart of this, in my opinion, is not a particular understanding of or care about the issues the church's leaders regularly talk about. That much is obvious from the lack of understanding people like this Bishop exhibit every time they talk about the issues.

Firstly, His Eminence will have difficulty finding people who are particularly enthusiastic about abortion itself. He will, however, find millions who reservedly accept the fact that in an imperfect world there are occasions on which abortion is the lesser of two evils. He will find people who say that it is not for ageing, wealthy celibates separate in every way from the realities of most people's lives to tell half the world's population in one fell swoop that, whether or not their very life depends on it, they cannot have an abortion. That is the powerful taking advantage of the defenceless.

Euthanasia, despite what some Catholic leaders would have us believe, is not about eugenics and does not lead to such. It is not involuntary. As someone who believes euthanasia with several conditions should be legalised, I can tell you that anyone, no matter how desperate their situation, who was not of sound mind or didn't want assisted suicide, must be given the absolute best loving palliative care possible. However, with the consent of the patient and his/her doctors, voluntary euthanasia has nothing to do with the powerful taking advantage of the defenceless. It is about them giving the weak the choice to take control of their own life and, yes, death.

Stem cell research, if it involves the killing of embryos is, in my opinion, regretable. I think it is important we try to get this research done without the need to kill embryos. However, I think a consideration far more intelligent than the bishop's will show that the life of a human being that could be saved by this research is, if it is absolutely necessary, more important than that of a being that lacks the basic features of life.

Same-sex marriage is not about destroying marriage between a man and a woman. I find the charge absurd, especially coming from a man who has never been married, and never will be.

No, this isn't about the issues themselves. It is about power. The Church can no longer use fear and stupidity to get what it wants. Even a significant proportion, if not most, of the 1 billion that call themselves Catholic, are more than willing to ignore, overlook and expressly violate Catholic teaching.*

The people of the modern world are no longer going to accept top-down power-crazed hierarchical authority interfering in their private lives. The Church can no longer control even its own priests, who being out in the world instead of locked up behind closed doors in Rome, are the everyday heroes of Catholicism. They cannot sit and shout tired old dogmas that have nothing to do with real life, because, unlike most of the higher-ups, they actually know what life is like for the common people.

The hierarchy is going to have to adapt or die, and they're just whinging about it.

*not a reference to anyone on CF.

 

[Phred]

This from a man who, up until a couple of hundred years ago, would have been all for killing heretics for their own good. A heretic being anyone who isn't Catholic. You know... most of the world's population.

 

[levi501]

may god be with the secularists...

 

[KarateCowboy]

This from a man who, up until a couple of hundred years ago, would have been all for killing heretics for their own good. A heretic being anyone who isn't Catholic. You know... most of the world's population.

That is so many fallacies wrapped in one. It could fit:

Red Herring - The introduction of a topic not related to the subject at hand.

Poisoning the well - Presenting negative information about a person before he/she speaks so as to discredit the person's argument.

Genetic Fallacy - The attempt to endorse or disqualify a claim because of the origin or irrelevant history of the claim

Ad hominim - Attacking the individual instead of the argument.

Also, two wrongs do not make a right.

 

[levi501]

lol... the irony is priceless.

 

[marblehead]

Now it's secularists and nihilists who are going to destroy Europe? I thought it was Muslims who were going to destroy Europe.

 

[Robbie_James_Francis]

Now it's secularists and nihilists who are going to destroy Europe? I thought it was Muslims who were going to destroy Europe.

I thought the Protestants, the Enlightenment, the sixties and the mass media had already done it. Go figure.

Certain factions of the Church seem to forecast doom and anarchy as they oppose human progress at every turn...strangely enough, it doesn't seem to have happened yet.

 

[Foolish_Fool]

The Protestants, Muslims, Atheists, Nihlists, Liberals, and Socialists are all in league to destroy Catholicism.

 

[woman.at.the.well]

Rome, May. 16, 2007 (CWNews.com) . . .Bishop Giuseppe Betori paid homage to St. Ubaldo, a 12th-century bishop who had "fortified the city against a siege." Today, the bishop said, the Christian people face a new challenge, in the form of political forces that are "attempting to storm our cities, undermine their peaceful order, and bring turbulence into their lives." Those forces, he said, are the secularists and nihilists whose efforts undermine respect for the sanctity of life and the bonds of marriage . . .


http://www.cwnews.com/news/viewstory.cfm?recnum=51176

I couldn't agree more with the Bishop. And not only so for Europe but right here in the good ole U.S. of A.

 

[Arnold_Philips]

Does news get to the Vatican decades late or something?

 

[Voegelin]

I couldn't agree more with the Bishop. And not only so for Europe but right here in the good ole U.S. of A.

Speaking of the EU, Pope Benedict said last March, "A community that constructs itself without respect for the authentic dignity of the human person, forgetting that every person is created in the image of God, ends up by not being good for anyone . . .This is why it appears increasingly more indispensable that Europe should guard itself against that pragmatic attitude, widespread today, which systematically justifies compromise on essential human values, as if the acceptance of a presumably lesser evil were inevitable . . ."*

The "common good" if the premise is wrong, as it currently is in the EU, becomes a "shared ill".

As you say, that applies here to. On this subforum in fact. Look at the abortion threads. How often do we hear, in effect, that a person is better off not being born? That an infant will be consigned to a life of misery, or that a woman will be forced to give up this or that? (your thread about the poll ESPN did on the rising number of college women who abort their babies to save their athletic scholarships is a good example of that mindset).

I know you and I are far apart theologically. And both of us are not Catholic. But we both agree, I think, on the position of Bishop Betori and the Pope on these issues.

Secularism detached from faith is dangerous. All Christians should be able to share that opinion. While Christianity unity is not immanent, we can come closer to unity by reviving the Christian humanism which was, until recently, a defining trait of Western Civilization. St. Thomas, Dante and the progressive, three time Democratic Party candidate for President, William Jennings Bryan, were Christian humanists. Bryan was a liberal, he fought the conservative faction in the Democratic party. Bryan's fundamentalism and Thomism are far apart theologically but socially, materially, similiar.

The president of the Italian Senate and philosopher Marcello Pera, a secularist himself, has proposed something along the line of a return to Christian humanism. He, writing with then Cardinal Ratzinger (who disagreed with him), proposed a Christian civic religion for the EU in which non-believers would find it to their benefit to participate. Ratzinger, in contrast, hopes exceptional Christian individuals will emerge who will pull the EU out of its death spiral.

Other alternatives are, in my opinion, rather grim.

*Quoted by George Neumayr: "The Parable of Prodigal Europe". The Catholic World Report. May 2007

 

[woman.at.the.well]

Speaking of the EU, Pope Benedict said last March, "A community that constructs itself without respect for the authentic dignity of the human person, forgetting that every person is created in the image of God, ends up by not being good for anyone . . .This is why it appears increasingly more indispensable that Europe should guard itself against that pragmatic attitude, widespread today, which systematically justifies compromise on essential human values, as if the acceptance of a presumably lesser evil were inevitable . . ."*

The "common good" if the premise is wrong, as it currently is in the EU, becomes a "shared ill".

As you say, that applies here to. On this subforum in fact. Look at the abortion threads. How often do we hear, in effect, that a person is better off not being born? That an infant will be consigned to a life of misery, or that a woman will be forced to give up this or that? (your thread about the poll ESPN did on the rising number of college women who abort their babies to save their athletic scholarships is a good example of that mindset).

I know you and I are far apart theologically. And both of us are not Catholic. But we both agree, I think, on the position of Bishop Betori and the Pope on these issues.

Secularism detached from faith is dangerous. All Christians should be able to share that opinion. While Christianity unity is not immanent, we can come closer to unity by reviving the Christian humanism which was, until recently, a defining trait of Western Civilization. St. Thomas, Dante and the progressive, three time Democratic Party candidate for President, William Jennings Bryan, were Christian humanists. Bryan was a liberal, he fought the conservative faction in the Democratic party. Bryan's fundamentalism and Thomism are far apart theologically but socially, materially, similiar.

The president of the Italian Senate and philosopher Marcello Pera, a secularist himself, has proposed something along the line of a return to Christian humanism. He, writing with then Cardinal Ratzinger (who disagreed with him), proposed a Christian civic religion for the EU in which non-believers would find it to their benefit to participate. Ratzinger, in contrast, hopes exceptional Christian individuals will emerge who will pull the EU out of its death spiral.

Other alternatives are, in my opinion, rather grim.

*Quoted by George Neumayr: "The Parable of Prodigal Europe". The Catholic World Report. May 2007

This is why it is necessary to take God OUT of virtually everything (gov't, educational institutions, our homes, etc). So human value CAN be devalued and serve that agenda; whatever that absurd agenda is.

 

[Bianca87]

you know it may not seem like it, but europe is actually doing better than you on the matter of laicism...of course Italy has the Church inside so is kind of sui generis but in general there are less foundies here

 

[MrGoodBytes]

This is why it is necessary to take God OUT of virtually everything (gov't, educational institutions, our homes, etc). So human value CAN be devalued and serve that agenda; whatever that absurd agenda is.

Have you ever decided what exactly this "agenda" could be?