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I agree with you, Fireball, but I think the FFI got treated unjustly. Did anyone mean to treat them that way? That's not for me to know.I don't see the FFI as being persecuted in any way.
The key phrase is "appear to be." I'd expect CWR to defend the Vatican crowd.Not surprising, the actual facts regarding the FFI appears to be very different than what is presented here:
Hype and Hope for the FFI | Catholic World Report - Global Church news and views
I agree with you, Fireball, but I think the FFI got treated unjustly. Did anyone mean to treat them that way? That's not for me to know.
Too often, I need to ignore what Vatican prelates do, because it depresses me. The Holy Trinity chose my birth and death dates. Sometimes I still wish I'd been born decades before I was born.
For me, it's very sad to know that Francis seemingly doesn't want to do what his predecessors did. From my perspective, the most painful, most offensive thing about his pontificate is that he seems to want it to be revolutionary. Heaven knows what he thinks of my heroes: St. Pius X, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, Antonio Salazar, and Garcia Moreno.
Yes, I am thinking of him, and I believe I posted an article to explain a lot about why I admire him. But that hardly means that I condone everything he did. So if he does evil things, maybe I'll stop admiring him, too. Sadly, I don't admire any pope who ruled the Catholic Church after 1958. Although Paul VI, John Paul II, and Francis disappoint me thoroughly, I used to look up to JPII and Benedict XVI, John Paul for the way he coped with his Parkinson's Disease and Benedict for making the Traditional Latin Mass more available despite how much other prelates hated what he did for that kind of liturgy. Whatever I may believe about Pius XII's successors, I'm still happy to acknowledge their virtues and to applaud wonderful things they've done. Though the good thief was a criminal, we can still be proud of him for his repentance and for the brave way he defended Christ.Surely you're not talking about the Portuguese dictator? Who unleashed PIDE on his populace?
If 60% of your population are adult males you've got a massive problem.Bill McEnaney said:Say I'm the lifelong dictator in Oceana, where 60% of the citizens are sociopathic unrepentant male rapists and everybody else is a defenseless woman.
Sorry, I should have said "Episcopalian."Correction: no it doesn't. The episcopal church of the United States does not represent the Communion.
I don't know why Oceana got a bad rap if it did. Maybe the blog post author wrote about a fictional place with the same name. He did the thought experiment to argue for the natural moral law because he believes that God legitimates governments. I used the experiment to show that dictatorship can serve a good purpose.If 60% of your population are adult males you've got a massive problem.
(BTW, why did Oceana get the bad rap?)
The normal birth rate for humans is very slightly more women than men. In most places the life expectancy of women is also slightly greater, though war or lack of medical facilities or other factors can change that.Bill McEnaney said:I don't know why Oceana got a bad rap if it did. Maybe the blog post author wrote about a fictional place with the same name. He did the thought experiment to argue for the natural moral law because he believes that God legitimates governments. I used the experiment to show that dictatorship can serve a good purpose. Here in the US, I hear, women outnumber men, but I don't know what percentage they do that by if they do it.
Ebia, the thought experiment is implausible, partly because the other 40% are women and do children. But in Derek Parfit's book Reasons and Persons, you would read about an even less likely one with which he makes a point I forgot long ago. In that book about personal identity, he describes an imaginary man on a Star-Trek-style spaceship. The man walks into a transporter, presses the "transport" button to travel to the planet below, hears a sound, and stays in the machine. He asks the transporter technician what went wrong. "I'm sorry," the technician replies. "That one broke." In a few weeks you'll die here, but on the planet, you'll survive 40 more years."The normal birth rate for humans is very slightly more women than men. In most places the life expectancy of women is also slightly greater, though war or lack of medical facilities or other factors can change that.
But if 60% are male rapists that leaves only 40% for males who aren't rapists! children and women. In other words to set up the thought experiment he's create an absurdly unbalanced and ill worded situation that does little to make one think the thing is thought though properly.
Why pick up on Oceania? Because set in Oceania the immediate country that springs to mind with endemic rape and other violence is PNG. but democracy in PNG has definitely been a force for the better, albeit an imperfect one.
I don't think anybody seriously thinks democracy is perfect or solves every situation. You don't need half baked "thought experiments" for that - there are real world examples out there.Bill McEnaney said:Ebia, the thought experiment is implausible, partly because the other 40% are women and do children. But in Derek Parfit's book Reasons and Persons, you would read about an even less likely one with which he makes a point I forgot long ago. In that book about personal identity, he describes an imaginary man on a Star-Trek-style spaceship. The man walks into a transporter, presses the "transport" button to travel to the planet below, hears a sound, and stays in the machine. He asks the transporter technician what went wrong. "I'm sorry," the technician replies. "That one broke." In a few weeks you'll die here, but on the planet, you'll survive 40 more years." The two wander to a closed-circut television, where the passenger talks with the transporter's copy of him. Parfit believes that the transporter helped the man when it lengthened his life. The point of the story is that a person consists in a collection of beliefs, thoughts, memories, attitudes, and so forth who can live in another brain, in a computer, or in any other container suitable for that collection. I know of no one who believe that thought experiment is very plausible. But real-world plausibility is inessential, since he's writing about something that could happen in some probably merely possible circumstance. To me, the blogger's thought experiment is about a scenario where democracy and majority rule would allow something immoral. Sure, the thought experiment has some flaws. I still believe my point about dictatorship, though. During a lecture Sir Charles Coulombe and a teacher gave together, the teacher told the audience about a time when he convinced his students that sometimes majority opinion is false. To do that, he asked them to vote for what were, in their opinions, the right answers. Sadly, most usually voted for wrong ones. You guessed it. I don't care for liberal democracy.Although deliberative democracy may be impractical during a national election, I suppose, there's something good about it, too. Since voters talk about and debate what they'll vote, reasoning and evidence may help some voters vote for, say, the best candidate on the ballot.
Ebia, please correct me if I'm wrong about what I'm going to tell you in a paragraph or two to follow, because I haven't thought deeply about what about to say. Even I had reflected that way on it, I would still need your help.I don't think anybody seriously thinks democracy is perfect or solves every situation. You don't need half baked "thought experiments" for that - there are real world examples out there.
"Democracy is the worst form of government - except for all the rest".
Representative democracies, of course, are not mob-rule.
But even if they were, generally the opinion of the mass is less bad than the opinion of a self-appointed individual or military-appointed individual.
Monarchs and other dictators are just as capable as not caring for the common good and more interested in feathering their own nest or acquiring as much power as possible.Bill McEnaney said:Ebia, please correct me if I'm wrong about what I'm going to tell you in a paragraph or two to follow, because I haven't thought deeply about what about to say. Even I had reflected that way on it, I would still need your help. Although I would prefer to live in Monaco partly because it's a Catholic principality, the US and state governments are the only ones I may already know well. Naturally, here in the States, we aren't living under mob rule. But we are, in my opinion, putting up with a federal government where congresspeople, our president, and others care too, too little about the common good.
I'm British, but I live in Australia (and have spent 18 months living in Nauru)You live in the United Kingdom, right?
The queen has no practical power. And her successors very likely won't share your values.If you do, please consider yourself blessed because Her Majesty reigns as a nonpartisan sovereign who does care deeply about tradition, national unity, the common good, and the Holy Trinity's rights. England and the rest of the UK may be a largely secular place. The Queen may have much less power than I would want her to possess.
Here in Australia the prime minister is supposedly a Roman Catholic, but you wouldn't know it from the way he got into power by demonising defenceless people and selling the idea that locking them up and denying them their human rights was a good idea.
I know about hypocritical Catholics, ebia. I think I've met some nominal Catholics, too. For me, it's very hard to respect a so-called pro-choice one who still has the nerve to receive Holy Communion when he'll say publicly, "I'm personally against abortion, but I'll still support a woman's right to choose one." Those politicians seem to value their careers more than they value their religion. How much do they care about the unborn babies who die in Planned Parenthood clinics, in secular hospitals, and in even in unsanitary places that could harm the mothers, too? Does it matter to a Catholic "pro-choice" politician that with that position, he has already earned automatic excommunication? Maybe he still needs to learn that his Church teaches that any Catholic who receives Holy Communion knowingly, willingly,freely, and culpably when he's under excommunication commits a mortal sin?Monarchs and other dictators are just as capable as not caring for the common good and more interested in feathering their own nest or acquiring as much power as possible.
I'm British, but I live in Australia (and have spent 18 months living in Nauru)
The queen has no practical power. And her successors very likely won't share your values.
Not that it matters much because she has no power.
Here in Australia the prime minister is supposedly a Roman Catholic, but you wouldn't know it from the way he got into power by demonising defenceless people and selling the idea that locking them up and denying them their human rights was a good idea.
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