Comments (127)

I am in favor of celibate priests - men and women. To me, as a married lay person (without much religous education) and as a mom, I think the value of celibacy (the gift of one's entire self) is precious and incredibly important.

While I greatly appreciate the gifts of time and energy of married deacons, pastoral staff, and other lay individuals, being married puts demands on our time and energy.

In marrying, we took a vow to support and grow together and wife and husband. And sometimes that means putting that relationship above our work and careers. As married people, we're familiar the challenges that many of us face at sometime during our marriage: leaving a job you love to move to a new area to support your spouse's career, cutting back on time spent with family and friends to support a child in need of extra attention, etc.

A married priest (male or female) would face tremendous challenges in trying to balance her/his martial relationship with his/her primary calling as a priest. There are other Christian religous groups that allow married priests, and in some cases it works well. But it takes a very strong individual to be able to put his/her calling as a priest above her/his relationship with a spouse and children in stressful times. And I wonder how many of us are that strong: can you put the needs of your wife or husband below the needs of your parish?

When I ask individuals who have taken Holy Orders about the subject of female priests, the answers I've received vary greatly: everything from the rambling discussions that come down to "well, that's how it's always been" to more indepth dicussions with more progressive individuals who acknowledge the need for change, and who believe change will happen - some day, and perhaps in our lifetimes.

As I'm always telling my daughter, that's why God gave us brains and the gift of the Spirit. We listen and respond - and use those gifts to think through the tough issues in our lives and make worthwhile contributions to the world and its people.

Mary, priestesses in Roman/European paganism, may have had roles which are completely foreign to the understanding of God in Jewish - Christian tradition. Pagan understanding of human sexuality is after all somewhat different to the Jewish, Christian and even mainstream Hindu, Buddhist and Jain understanding. The Hindu (which Buddhism and Jainism share)understanding is that sexuality is an instinct that human beings share in common with animals. Their understanding is very rational: sex is not dirty, but as human beings we are expected to evolve beyond the level of animals in the way we deal with our sex instinct, hence sexual promiscuity is always viewed as being animal like, and not as a sign of sexual liberation.

Hi Ryan

Your theological explanation of Catholicism is a bit hard to respond to. I'm a lay person who has been interested in prayer, and feel more resonance with the contemplative tradition in the Catholic Church, but not in Church doctrines.

Paul referred to our body as a tent. The body has been referred to also as the temple of the living God. In both cases the spirit dwells in the body as a separate entity (which leaves the body at the time of death), and the spirit is not an integral part of the body. So your explanation of gender, the body-spirit connection, is not only foreign to me but is also a view I cannot accept based on my understanding of the spirit.

Dear Mary (Cunningham, London)

I'm no closer to responding to your comments now than I was when you first wrote them.

I can only repeat that I have not been particularly interested in Catholic Church doctrine. I have been deeply impressed by the spiritual treasures amassed by the Catholic Church and feel truly blessed to be a part of an Apostolic Christian denomination (Syro-Malabar Church) which is in full communion with the Roman Catholic Church. I have been blessed also to have known some really wonderful Catholic priests, whose universal understanding of the Christian faith left a deep impact on me. Most of all I was influenced by Dom Bede Griffiths, an English Benedictine monk, for nine years, whose pioneering work in the area of inter-faith dialogue has changed my outlook on how I view religions as a whole. Fr Bede was much more liberal in his thinking about other religions than I am!!!

I feel very passionately about Christian unity - I wish for all Christian denominations to work together in love based on what we share in common. I'm deeply grieved when Christians hate each other or bash each other based on hair splitting differences. How petty and meaningless it is in the ultimate scheme of things. Jesus is not going to judge us based on our hair splitting doctrines. Jesus does not withhold His grace and truth from any Christian who accepts Him as Lord and Saviour. Why do Christians quarrel and argue about trifles and hate each other for no reason at all, bringing shame on the name of Jesus? I find anti-Catholic sentiments completely unjustified and incomprehensible!

What bunk. Only the hopelessly and witlessly PC waste time pining for priestesses.

Re: Earl Doherty

Who is he? What university is he affiliated with? What is his background? What training qualifies him to make these assertions? All I can find is that he is an atheist living in Canada. His book was published by "The Humanist Press."

This doesn't seem to be a serious work, Neal. I'm sorry.

Re: Earl Doherty

Who is he? What university is he affiliated with? What is his background? What training qualifies him to make these assertions? All I can find is that he is an atheist living in Canada. His book was published by "The Humanist Press."

This doesn't seem to be a serious work, Neal. I'm sorry.

RYAN - personally I find Gnostic thinking viable even today - but is certainly more allied with the mystical systems of the East. It has it's mythological component of course, and as with all mythologies, they must be taken with a grain of salt. Gnostics maintain that one must have true knowledge of the divine through inner experience - and this is universally true of mysticism across the board. How that experience may be interpreted is usually subject to one's religious matrix, and the mythology to be found therein.

The early Church Fathers such as Irenaeus and Athanasius were intent on establishing the divinity of Jesus, and of course this was at odds with Gnostic thinking, and still is. On the other hand, the great Origin, a huge influence on the thinking of Augustine, was quite sympathetic to the Gnostic view and has even been accused of being a Gnostic himself. Comparative religionist Elaine Pagels has written quite sympathetically on behalf of Gnosticism and their fate as a result of various power struggles that afflicted the early Church.

Speaking of Greeks, and while I'm thinking of it, check out the Eastern Rite of Catholicism and the mystical traditions of the Desert Fathers (St. Anthony, et al).

It's pretty hard to deny that Constantine has been accorded the distinction of not only legitimizing Christianity, but after his conversion sponsoring Christianity as the official state religion of Rome - under pain of death, of course. Suddenly the victims have become the heros! An amazing turn of events all due to one man and his Imperial position of absolute authority. Check Wikipedia if need be for a quick reference.

Yes, the Cathars - Pope Innocent and Frater Dominic, founder of the Dominican order (and later to be canonized), managed to rid the world of most of the Cathars by burning large numbers at the stake. The Inquisition and it's Church and government sponsored legions are an ugly mark on Church history, to be sure.

One wonders how many former saints and Popes are burning in hell as we speak for the slaughter of so many innocents - merely because said innocents disagreed with the Church. Quite a surprise come Judgement Day, what with the ranks of the Communion of Saints so depleted after the great sinners have been expunged.

I can't help but recommend your acquainting yourself more thoroughly with the varied history of mysticism. One finds a great internal consistency with the inner revelations of mysticism wherever found, whether those mystics be Christian (see Meister Eckert,Jacob Boeme and Emmanual Swedenborg, for example), Islamic (Rumi, et al), and Judaic (followers of the Kaballah) in the Abrahamic tradition, or of the entire panoply of mystics to be found in the Eastern traditions. Naturally monotheists will tend toward a different interpretation of mystical experience, as contrasted with the atheist orientation of Buddhism. Mystical Judaism, surprisingly, does not view God as a person at all, but more of a process.

As to the Christian saints, consider the political positions of a St. Theresa or St. Francis as founders of religious orders - they were often in the hotseat with reigning Popes because of their mystical pre-dispositions - historical accounts that I've read indicate that both needed to carefully edit their own declared interpretations of their inner experiences so as to pass muster with official Church doctrine - one could quickly fall into disfavor with Church authorities for perceived heresy - an appointment with the stake was the next stop. Between the Church and Imperial authorities life was risky for high profile religious figures - thus the once mighty Archibishop of Canturbury Thomas a Becket came to a tragic end after defying Henry II on religious principle, while in the same era Thomas Aquinas was crowned was of the doctors of the Church....alot depends on being on the right side of things at the right time!

Nothing wrong with being an apologist for a preferred metaphysical position or religion - but we should realize that virtually nothing can be found in one religion that can't be duplicated in some way, shape, or form in many others.

This includes divine Avatars, supernatural birth, raising the dead, restoring life to the dead, living for hundreds of years, ascention into Heaven, and all the rest.

While some view these mysteries as mythical, others apparently view such religious artifacts as actual historically based occurrences. None of these things are particularly unique to Christianity. In my view, religion seen as a universal human phenomenon exhibits far more similarities than differences - choosing one over another is truly an act of faith!!

Ryan Haber:

In the gospel story of Matthew we are told that upon the death of Jesus "The earth quaked, rocks were split, tombs were opened, and the bodies of many saints who had fallen asleep were raised. And coming forth from their tombs after his resurrection, they entered the holy city and appeared to many." Mt27:51-53

To say the least, these are extraordinary events and could hardly have gone unnoticed, yet, there is apparently not a single, solitary reference to *any* them in *any* contemporary historical accounts which record many more mundane events. Do you think they were ignored by *all* of these historians just to be spiteful? While I suppose that it's possible that such references were edited out from the original records (as well as the secondary and tertiary references to those histories) by non-Christians hell-bent on denying the divinity of Jesus, that seems highly unlikely.

As a general rule, when judging the veracity of historical claims, I personally tend to side with those bodies which did not make a habit of burning books with which they didn't agree.

MaryCunningham:

Rather than attempt to restate Doherty's rather thorough examination here, I can only invite you to read "The Jesus Puzzle" and draw your own conclusions. Reviews of his book and his responses to those reviews are also available online. I don't expect that anyone who holds to Jesus's existence as a matter of faith will be convinced, but I do think that a fair reading of Doherty's work by an objective observer, at a minimum, casts significant doubt on the available historical record of that life.

Aloha

Mary Cunningham,

Precisely. Consequently, the "Jesus Event" though ambiguous in the historical record, is thoroughly recorded. In fact, no ancient event has nearly as much extent documentation as the "Jesus Event" and as far as can be told, none was so thoroughly documented at the time.

The only possible way to deny that Jesus of Nazareth really, historically existed and caused a really big, really real stir in his own time and place and ever since in an increasing sphere of influence... well, the only possible way is to deny that anything ever happened ever anywhere - at least as far as the ancient world goes.

RH: there is reference to Jewish followers of Jesus Christ and Jews fighting in and around the synagogues of Rome in Nero's time.

Additionally the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem and the banishment of the Jews from their Holy City in AD66-70 and again in AD135 (?) probably destroyed much evidence of practices of the Jewish Christians.

But as Prof Goodman wrote: his life and death were known to both the Jewish historian Josephus and the pagan historian Tacitus. In addition to the multitude of writings from Christian sources.

No...the problem then was deciphering all this evidence. What was true? What was 'inspired'? What was false? What did it all mean anyway?

Perspective,

"In fact, reincarnation was part of the early Christian orientation (Gnosticism was a far greater influence than the Church would like to admit)"

Sure, the Platonic philosophy and Eastern mystery religions were syncretized with the Gospel at a fairly early date - by the early 100s, certainly, there was mixing. But Christianity did not grow up among them as a flower grows up in soil - not if the author of Christianity was Jesus, or Paul, or Peter or whichever of them it is popular to pin the whole thing on.

"but of course this concept was eliminated when Constantine made Christianity the official state religion of Rome"

Not so. By AD 180, Irenaeus was already writing "Against the Heresies," with an eye specifically to the Gnostic-influenced deviations from what was already taken as authentic Christianity. The texts of the Scripture were selected for the Bible based on whether they carried what was already the received Gospel; and rejected especially if they contained hints of Gnosticism. This work was all being done 150 years before Constantine. As I've noted earlier, Irenaeus gives us a list of the books he considered canonical New Testament and it lacks nothing contained in our NT except Jude, and contains nothing extra. The canon of Scripture wasn't discussed during the Council of Nicaea, and nor was it of principle interest during that time period. Further discussion ensured in 381-400 or so. But as late as the late 300s Augustine was dabbling in Manichaeism, a form of Gnosticism. The Albigensian Cathars of the 1100-1200s in southern France were definitely a Gnostic group. The Heaven's Gate cultists of the 1990s were Gnostics in spacesuits - no joke. It might be called the perennial heresy and has never really been eradicated.

Moreover, Constantine did not make Christianity the state religion of Rome. He merely legalized it. As emperor and a convert-in-process, he also sponsored it and set it on a new plane, to be sure. The Church was given basilicas that it had previously rented from the government. Imperial treasuries were used to build new ones. He also turned numerous pagan shrines and temples, usually already the property of the Imperial state, over to other uses, especially to fill functions that government basilicas had previously fulfilled.

Emperor Honorius in AD 405 issued the Edict of Unity, officially outlawing the Donatist and Arian heresies, where they still existed, and expropriating the facilities that they had by and large expropriated from the Church, in order to return them to the Church. This edict is the closest thing to making Christianity the state religion (and a very close thing at that). That said though, Roman ancestral worship was never outlawed by the Imperial state, nor was Judaism, and as far as I know, non-Christians were never dismissed from the government, civil service, or military - all measures usually taken to establish one religion over another.

"thus the foundations of Christianity had a rather inauspicious start, what with Constantine being a mass murderer and all,"

Christianity was 250 years old before Constantine was born - that's older than the USA. Constantine hardly laid a stone of its foundations. Moreover, his "mass murders" are largely exaggerated in the post-Dan-Brown world. He didn't do anything that most emperors didn't - including eradicate potential opposition. The Greek Orthodox Church has considered him a saint. I cannot speak to that because the Catholic Church, my church, has never understood him to be saintly nor theologically foundational - not in the way that modern fiction writers like to.

"I know you're aware that Church/Papal leadership over the centuries has been responsible for the slaughter of untold thousands for heresy"

The proceedings of the various Inquisitions, to which are probably refering, are well-documented, torture and all. By the standards of their times they was considered so liberal that convicted criminals would claim to be members of heretical sects because they would then fall under an Inquistion's superior jurisdiction, and they had the habit of granting clemency to first-timers who recanted their heresy. Weird, and all, but actually even the dreaded Spanish Inquisition, Elizabethan British mythology aside, ordered the execution of fewer people per year on average than the state of Texas, which, despite its overuse of the punishment, has hardly murdered untold thousands.

"in the end, Buddhism is more compatible with current scientific views as regards the mechanisms involved in both our local material world and indeed, the whole field of quantum physics and cosmology."

That's because many modern scientists have been admirers of Buddhist and have gone beyond their ken, of studying observable phenomena, to the realm of metaphysical interpretation - talking about a finite or infinite universe and assuming that, because everything they observe is matter, there is only matter, and it is all essentially one very varied thing - the universe. This lends itself to Buddhism and other monistic systems, but it is hardly a scientific observation. I am not here asserting that it is false (although I believe it is) but only that I will study science from scientists, and not metaphysics. For that I turn to philosophers and sound reasoning.

"science and mathematics are mental constructs - artificial and man-made systems that utilize consciousness in particular ways to successfully predict outcomes and explain why and how things work."

True, but they couldn't successfully predict anything if they didn't at least partially reflect the reality of what they observe and predict.

"And in this regard, all living/sentient creatures share in this consciousness in their own unique way."

Sure.

Thomas Merton is great, isn't he? I haven't read enough of him yet to really discuss him thoroughly, but my sense is that you're right on the money, Perspective.

"to claim that one system of metaphysical belief is superior to another (or all others) has no basis in fact - after all, we're not talking about facts in the conventional sense anyway!"

Err, we are not talking about scientific facts, but there are other sorts of facts that can be truer and more definitively known. I KNOW my mother loves me, but that isn't scientifically demonstrable at all. Yet, no experiment or study in the world will dissuade me; nor of that I love her.

Just because a fact isn't scientific (deducible through the repeatable induction/observation of quantifiable data, roughly speaking) doesn't mean it isn't really, really, factually, objectively true. And if the fact isn't objectively true, I'm not interested in it.

My life (work, grad school, family, friends, parish life, hobbies, exercising, keeping track of finances, travelling, writing) is interesting enough without spending time daydreaming about lullabies. If a metaphysical system is just a nice theory, I haven't two seconds' time for it. Just not interested.

But if the theory might actually relate to me something of the way the real world really is, then I'm interested in it.

Perspective, more-or-less secular people often assume that more-or-less religious people are daydreamer or idealists. I am not saying that you have, but nonetheless I am not. Granted, at times, when work is a bit slow, I spend a lot of time blogging. But nice philosophies with no relation to the real world of facts, gravity, historical record, and the ins-and-outs of my life - for such things... nope, just not interested.

I believe Christianity because I have hard evidence, harder than I have about Homer or Socrates, to believe the historical events it recounts are true, and because its understanding of those events sheds more light on my life than other understandings or other facts.

"Religion has an emotional component that is unavoidable. I suspect that those emotions have a great capacity to cloud our judgement when it comes to comparing and contrasting one religious system with another."

Oh, sure. Of course we must be very prudent and discerning. But to say that emotion and religion gets tangled in no way implies that religious preference is reducible to emotion, or that our judgment cannot be de-clouded of the effects of emotion, at least momentarily. Further, secularism, despite its pretense of neutrality and scientific rigor, is every bit as prone to emotional disturbance as any religion - even fundamentalist Islam. One only has to read the rants of a Dawkins or a Jacoby to see that very quickly. It's not religion as such, but human ideas in general that get clouded or distorted by the emotions of the humans that hold them.

"With religion, it's very difficult to avoid the phenomenon of 'ingrouping and outgrouping' that has been extensively explored by social psychologists"

Ya, too true. But that phenomenon doesn't explain religious preference either. There are WAY too many lapsed Catholics running around in the world to say that people pick or reject a religion just because they were born into it; let alone to hint that therefore religions in themselves cannot be compared objectively on their merits, especially on their relation to observable truth.

Perspective, I like dialog with you because you are a very reasonable chap.

Re: the Historical Jesus

While the Gospels and ancient writers' writings certain do not scientifically prove that a Jesus of Nazareth existed, do not scientifically prove that a Jesus of Nazareth was resurrected, etc., the one thing that they DO NOT prove is that He DID NOT exist. But then, the questions aren't scientific at all, but historic.

History has a method as well, a science as it were. The historica method looks at such evidence and draws conclusions carefully. The Gospel accounts might be taken any number of ways, but to take a bunch of accounts that say, "A, B, and C happened," or "A, B, and D happened," or "A, C, and D happened," and deduce from them that neither A, B, C, nor D could possibly have happened is completely unlogical. From that evidence alone, the most solid hypothesis deducible, and the one deduced by serious Biblical scholars, is that A likely happened, and that B, C, and D quite possibly happened in something like the way they are told.

Now, the Gospels all agree that Jesus was resurrected. What is reported afterwards is garbled and jumbled, and even how the resurrection happened is confusing. But the men who selected the books for the New Testament during the second century (the list was complete by AD 180!), and the most ancient people to read the accounts, just a generation after Jesus' resurrection, when eyewitnesses were still alive weren't troubled by the discrepancies because amidst the discrepancies the fundamental things are agreed upon. None of them prove, even by historical standards, that Jesus MUST have resurrected, but by all agreeing that He resurrected they certainly do not prove the contrary.

The last thing to be considered is this: if the people compiling the texts were aware that they were a hoax, why did they so willingly die rather than retract the witness they contain? The early martyrs, James, Peter, Paul, Clement of Rome, Ignatius, Polycarp, Justin, and many, many more lived and died within 30 or 40 years of the life of Christ - some of them may even have met him briefly, and their parents were old enough to have been contemporaries. They all willingly died rather than renounce. Yet their death cannot be the result of madness because their writings and legacy are too coherent to result from insanity.

With respect to the very first Christian leaders, those earliest Christian writings, especially St. Paul's letters and the Gospels, aren't very flattering. That is what chiefly militates against the idea that they have since been heavily edited. If the Church is and was so misogynistic, then why have the accounts of Jesus speaking with foreign women of ill-repute survived? Why is the consensus that He appeared first after his resurrection to another such woman? If the Church was lying to try to win adherents, then why did its earliest writings paint its earliest leaders as such unequivocal buffoons and ninnies? Why did they paint themselves as semi-competent fishermen and neighborhood bullies? Hardly inspiring accounts.

The Christian account is that encountering the Risen Lord Jesus and receiving His Holy Spirit, those same illiterate and uninspiring ninnies were radically transformed and received a power not their own - to such an extent that in the first day of this new movement, some 3000 persons were converted and added to it (Acts 2:41).

By AD 65, just 30 years after the death of Jesus of Nazareth, there were groups of hundreds and even thousands of his adherents in major cities throughout the empire.

Despite the first and every subsequent effort to stamp them out, using techniques by which the Roman Empire had very effectively demolished a dozen other cults with rivaling claims to loyalty, the number of Christians continued to multiply. Their amazing multiplication has been documented ad nauseam, and most recently discussed by British (?) sociological historian Rodney Stark.

Whatever it was, something powerful must have happened in Jerusalem at about AD 33, because nothing else explains what followed.

RYAN HABER - I have to say, you've given other options more consideration that most Christians, and Catholics in particular.

In fact, reincarnation was part of the early Christian orientation (Gnosticism was a far greater influence than the Church would like to admit) but of course this concept was eliminated when Constantine made Christianity the official state religion of Rome - thus the foundations of Christianity had a rather inauspicious start, what with Constantine being a mass murderer and all, including members of his own family (prior to his conversion, of course).

I know you're aware that Church/Papal leadership over the centuries has been responsible for the slaughter of untold thousands for heresy - those that either opposed or were accused of opposing the Church's official doctrinal positions of the day. The Church has quite a checkered history as regards human rights and respect for human life! However, that subject is vast in itself and better left for another time.

I find myself far more sympathetic to the Buddhist metaphysics and other theories that posit Consiousness as the foundation of our material reality - in the end, Buddhism is more compatible with current scientific views as regards the mechanisms involved in both our local material world and indeed, the whole field of quantum physics and cosmology.

Obviously we see that many on these threads get by without resorting to metaphysical schemes as part of their world view, but in the end, science and mathematics are mental constructs - artificial and man-made systems that utilize consciousness in particular ways to successfully predict outcomes and explain why and how things work.

We could say that science is the most effective metaphysical system for explaining our material universe, but religion provides answers that pertain more directly to the non-material universe. For me, the mysteries of consciousness must be explored as the prime mover of all that is - and without which we have nothing. And in this regard, all living/sentient creatures share in this consciousness in their own unique way.

You may find the writings of the contemplative monk Thomas Merton interesting - he became quite expert in the history and practice of Zen Buddhism without ever losing his orientation as a Christian contemplative - and having read considerably in the area of Christian contemplation, I find great similarities between this system of meditation and other systems that do not have a Christian orientation.

In the end, we make our own choices....but if we're thoroughly honest about it, we can only say this is what suits us best - to claim that one system of metaphysical belief is superior to another (or all others) has no basis in fact - after all, we're not talking about facts in the conventional sense anyway!

Religion has an emotional component that is unavoidable. I suspect that those emotions have a great capacity to cloud our judgement when it comes to comparing and contrasting one religious system with another. With religion, it's very difficult to avoid the phenomenon of 'ingrouping and outgrouping' that has been extensively explored by social psychologists e.g. the group to which we belong tends to be the one that we perceive to be superior in any number of ways.

This is something to be remembered in all discussions pertaining to religion .... and politics!!

regards....

Perspective,

Yeah, Paul C. summarized my thoughts succinctly. I'll go a bit further to say (as is my custom, lol) that there are a number of ways of conceptualizing the same basic reality taught by the Church, ways that are not mutually exclusive or contradictory - just different perspectives.

At death, the disincarnate soul receives its judgment - that is, it is measured against Jesus Christ, and found wanting through love of sin, or found and made just through union with Him (even if, during life, that union with Him was unknown to the person).

At the end of the world, the souls of the just and the damned are reunited to their bodies, resurrected and transformed in a manner reflective of the soul. The whole person, body and soul, then enjoys the eternal beatitude or misery that directly results from the decision they made throughout their life about how to live.

Perspective, my family was churchgoing as a child, but not terribly religious in our daily life or outlook. My father is an Evangelical (of sorts) and my mom was Catholic, but no longer practices our holy Faith. I have taken comparative religion classes and started to compare views. Secularists often think that there is no evidence for one view versus another, but in my experience that is not true. Thinking about things, I came to see that some views make more sense, are more internal coherent, and fit better with my experience (and I think the experience of people in general, when carefully considered) than others.

For instance: I learn through my senses. That is, my mind (an immaterial reality closely related, but not identical, to the material reality of my brain) learns from a betrayal that a particular person is not to be trusted and I become bitter (an emotional reality closely related, but not identical, to my viscera - heart, chest, diaphragm, etc). I see words on a book and they affect the way I think. My soul - the immaterial dimension of me - needs my body to inform it with knowledge and functionality - so much so that a serious trauma to the body causes it and the soul to part ways. But on the flip side, my body needs my soul as well, because without it, the body is a corpse - no longer a human being, but a former human being, a dead human being, a human being minus life.

What does this tell me? Reflecting on it, I came to the conclusion that the soul and the body go together like puzzle pieces, or maybe parts of a sandwich. Either is incomplete somehow without the other although they are distinct and even separable. By nature they are united, but their union can be disrupted.

This conclusion doesn't strictly speaking exclude reincarnation, for instance, but it does tend to oppose it. If my soul was made for the 5'4", 140 lb male body that it's got, then it wasn't made for the body of a rabbit. If the soul I have is capable of powering, as it were, a human life, then it would probably be too much soul, as it were, to power an armadillos life. It would be a rather intelligent and frustrated armadillo.

Perhaps the soul itself is transformed in the process of reincarnation, I thought, so that it becomes a more armadillo-like soul. That's possible, only I haven't any experience of that myself, and have never met an armadillo who explained his experience of it to me. Now, I am not being facetious. If human souls and armadillo souls are more or less the same sort of thing, then oughtn't humans and armadillos be able to communicate with each other on more or less the same level? If I were stranded on a desert island with a Chinese person, we'd eventually be able to learn each other's languages, from 0 knowledge to relative fluency. Or we'd be able to invent a new language to suit our shared needs. An armadillo, on the other hand, would probably be better company than a volleyball, but it would be more like a cat or a dog than another person.

The idea that human persons and domesticated animals are more or less on the same plane gains currency, as far as I can tell, more and more as people become anonymous, lonely and isolated in their lives from genuine human intimacy. When our interaction with others is primarily as tools - the clerk who just checks me out at the grocery store, the officemate who just gets payroll done, the cop who just pulls me over and lets me off because I'm nice - in such a lifestyle, deprived of genuine human intimacy and shared life, a nice dog or cat or armadillo might make a halfway decent housemate. But only halfway, and not human, and not the same as a human. That's why wounded people might avoid, say, social life and get a cat instead.

But I cannot see how a person who has really come to know and love another human being deeply, let alone a group of persons, can honestly say that there is no difference between a human soul and a cat soul, and that their souls, at death, might easily change places.

Perspective, it is this sort of reflection that gradually, during college, to embrace that mixture of Hebrew commonsense and Greek philosophy that is the Christian view of the human person, rather than the Oriental view.

I know that most people don't go through so much reflection, perhaps, but that's OK. If you find a sensible answer, there isn't much need to go looking for others, and most people don't about most things - unless new data arises and disrupts the old view.

So far, I've encountered no data to overturn my earlier (though not first) conclusions.

The stories now found in the NT Gospels coexisted with many others...For anyone now to build a narrative of Jesus’ life out of evidence so patently composed for non-historical purposes seemed so difficult for much of the 20th c. that the search for the historical Jesus was by many scholars deemed hopeless. Such despair was premature. That Jesus lived in Judaea and was executed by Pontius Pilate was known both the the Jewish historian Josephus at the end of the 1st c. and to the pagan Roman historian Tacitus in the early 2nd century. The modern notion that the whole biography of Jesus to be found in the various Gospels was pure invention is deeply implausible—not least because a story of this type about the career of a Galilean peasant was neither characteristic of religious literature of the time nor obviously helpful in spreading to the wider world the central Christian message that Jesus was also Christ and Lord...(constructs historical truth about Jesus using Christian traditions about Jesus which Christianspreserved despite the difficulties they faced in fitting them into their nascent self-image and theology.)”

“Rome and Jerusalem”, The Growth of the Church, pp .512-514.

Re: female priests

This prohibition derives from ancient Judaism, with its very clear demarcation betw. what defines (and is permitted) male and the what defines (and is permitted) for females. In Roman times temple 'priestesses' were usually prostitutes. Hence the prohibition by the ancient Judaeans of females in holy places.

I'll try again, the earlier comment was too long.

Well, Neal you probably should tell me who Earl Doherty is/was because blithely disregarding most of the writings about Jesus by the early Christians is rather shocking. I did some work in historical research and analysis before switching to demography not because I didn’t love history—I did, I do!—but because there were jobs available in the second field and none in the first.

Anyway, I tend to put great store in Goodman because he is a known scholar, teaching at a university with one of the best departments in ancient European history in the world, and is fluent in Hebrew, Latin and Greek. His main speciality is ancient Judaism (I think he is a secular Jew, not sure) and this interested me a lot, because they were all Jews--Christ, his disciples, his brothers, mother, cousin John the Baptist—all of them. He was a Jewish preacher who preached only to the Jews: as the fulfilment of their history. Or so the earliest (and contemporary) Christians believe.

So here is Goodwin: “Jesus lived and died in Galilee and Judea in the first half of the first century CE. That this fact is one of the few which can be asserted with any certainty about the founding figure of the Christian Church is the result not of *a paucity of ancient stories about Jesus but of contradictions between the multifarious tales which abounded among his followers in the two centuries after his death, as they tried to extract religious meaning from his life and teachings. The story of a remarkable individual put to death in Jerusalem but retaining great power after resurrection was elaborated and altered by the pious over succeeding generations. Finding the historical truth is not easy."

MaryCunningham:

I'll see your Argument from Lesser Death Tolls and raise you an Argument from Moustachioed Dictators! But you're right on another point, when compared to the Catholic monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella, Torquemada looks like a proper hand-wringing pansy. Still, though, one might expect a bit more from a religion that had been intimately guided by an omnipotent and all-merciful holy spirit for fifteen hundred years--unless I've completely misunderstood that spirit's agenda.

What impressed me most about Earl Doherty's argument against a historical Jesus was just how flimsy a case the earliest *Christian* apologists had made when trying to prove his existence and deeds to doubting Pagans and Jews at that time. If you're ever suffering from low blood pressure, the works of Joseph McCabe provide another interesting historical view on the RC Church from an early 20th century, post-Vatican I, apostate's perspective.

-----

Slouching towards the topic:

I tend to agree with others here that the issue was probably settled in the Garden of Eden. While viewing that story entirely as metaphor, I subscribe to the interpretation that the symbols of the woman and the snake were likely employed to disparage competing serpent and goddess-worshiping cultures in that area, at that time. Unfortunately, many people have taken the symbols at least semi-literally; something I would regard as the real original sin. Consequently, I would expect women to attain priesthood the day after vipers replace puppies as children's favorite pets, or several centuries after Americans have a female president.

perspective:
You can and should explore the possibilities. The Catholic church believes that reason and faith coexist. Truth is truth...

Thanks for your response Paul C - I've often wondered why so many of the religiously devout accept the teachings of their faith without exploring wider possibilities - and there are many. As a former Catholic, I failed to find the answers I was looking for at an early age, and in the very Catechism that you mention.

It's always interesting to see how the Catholics are doing these days - of course I could always ask any of a number of my cousins if I really needed first-hand information. Catholics are plentiful among the Irish.......

The catholic view is very clear. Life (and therefore,the soul) begins at conception. Hence, the reason the Church is so fundamentally against abortion. Here's the catholic position on what happens at death (paragraph 1022 of the catechism): Each man receives his eternal retribution in his immortal soul at the very moment of his death, in a particular judgment that refers his life to Christ: either entrance into the blessedness of heaven-through a purification or immediately, -- or immediate and everlasting damnation

Ryan has been pointing out to you that all of this is readily available in the Catechism of the church, which is readily available for free on line. Just do a google search on "Catechism of the roman catholic church" From there you can do the searches on your quetions about the catholic faith.

RYAN HABER - now here's a simple question...an extension of your metaphysical world view, as it were - at what moment was your eternal spiritual self (soul) created, and what do you presume to be your fate at the moment of your death?

Christians are very obsure on these issues, whereas non-Christian views are more readily available. e.g. Hindu and Buddhist views and even mystical Judaism have much more refined and detailed positions on this question.

Every religion has a concept of a post-mortem existence - with great variations of course. Many secular students of psychic phenomena have their own views on survival, largely emerging from fairly recent studies in consciousnesss research, near-death experiences, out-of-body experiences, and various modern research efforts at proving life after death dating back to the British and American Psychical Research Societies - both founded in the late 19th century. Much of this early material comes from psychics specializing in seance and automatic writing as modes of communication with discarnate entities.

What about your views??

Perspective,

"as always, you're doing a fine job of documenting your beliefs, and certainly don't need any help from me."

Why, thank you.

"BTW, did you know that the one and only time Papal Infallibility... was in 1950, when Pope Pious XII declared the infallible truth of Mary's assumption into heaven...?"

Yup. I did. In 1854, Pope Pius IX also issued an encyclical in which he solemnly defined a dogma, on the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin in her mother's womb. But that was before the First Vatican Council had clarified conditions of what was and wasn't an infallible proclamation, so it only half counts, you might say.

"While this concept of the bodily assumption goes back to the writings of the
Apocrypha in the early centuries, only in 1950 was it declared by the Pope to be infallible truth - for inquiring minds that want to know."

And that's actually close to the point. The 1950 definition of the dogma wasn't a novelty, but a defense of antiquity. It was precisely because a universally accepted Catholic belief was beginning to be seriously questioned that a definition (exactly what was to be believed, and why it was fit and necessary) was needed.

"My theory in an earlier post was that Church doctrines have been fashioned, at least in part, to give internal and logical consistency to the entire body of doctrines and dogmatic declarations of truth in a more or less progressive fashion over the centuries."

Something very much like that, Perspective. The dogmas were revealed in the times of ancient Israel, and then by Christ and later his Apostles. Since then, no new dogmas have been invented, but theology's task has since been to use natural human reason to understand the dogmas revealed ultimately by God. Theology draws out new conclusions for new times from the same old dogmas. Theology connects dogmas and shows how they interrelate. Theology shows how apparently contradictory dogmas are only paradoxical but not really contrary at all. Theological systems are heavily based on philosophy because they use philosophy to understand revelation. So for the first 1000 years or so the Church's history, a more or less Platonic philosophy held sway and those ancient truths were understood in a particularly Platonic way. Around AD 1000-1200 a shift in philosophy from Platonic ideal-realism to Aristotelian realism took place. The shift in the way people thought, to a more secular, earthly understanding brought with it a theological framework that, without being changing a whit of dogma, reconceptualized the language and relationships of the faith to make the same dogmas coherent for a new generation. Right now we are in the midst of another philosophical shift, to a more subjectivist view. While subjectivism might make dependent upon the human subject things that aren't really, it needn't necessarily do so. Phenomenology is the 20th century's attempt to integrate the human subject's experienced perspective with the fact of objective reality. Right now, many Catholics, including the late John Paul II, are working diligently to take the same ancient dogmas of our ancient faith, and to frame them in terms understandable to modern men and women - terms that make sense of the way we are used to thinking, which are fairly subjective terms.

"In declaring Mary a perfect human being, both free of original sin and free of earthly sin, she was de facto made a divine being by her purity,"

Ah, not so. See, it is not essential to human nature to be sinful. A person isn't less human for being less sinful, nor more divine for being more virtuous. Even though, when we blow it, we say, "I'm only human!" Sin doesn't make us more human, but less. We see this fact most clearly in the monstrous inhumanity of serial killers, concentration camp guards, etc. We see this fact in a different, more pitiable way in a person completely wrecked by addiction.

There is nothing divine about Mary's nature. That cannot be overemphasized.

But you are right, that in view of her sinlessness she was accorded an additional grace of not having to wait, as it were, to receive the fullness of her glorification, a glorification that God wants to share with each of us.

The most recent dogmatic definition was 1950, but as I mentioned, and you mentioned before, it was not the beginning of a new dogma, but it's enshrinement as beyond question. It took that long, because that was the first that it was really questioned (by Catholics, at least).

"I believe he'd declare that there were deep human truths to be find behind the miraculous and mythical tales of the divine."

Of course there are, or there's no point in passing down the stories that convey the truths!

"While the faithful are welcome to their literal beliefs..."

Well, now some of our miracle and myth stories needn't have happened to express their point, as in Noah's Ark, or Jonah and the Really Big Fish. Those stories are stories that make a point, but the point isn't the story. The point is that God loves us, or that He has a plan for us, or whatever.

Other miracle stories are either factually correct or else they fail to express any point, because their point is that they actually happened. The Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth is the best example of this sort of story. See, the point of the Resurrection accounts, jarbled and garbled as they are, is that Jesus of Nazareth was really killed in a real time and place, and really resurrected, bodily transformed and transcending death in such a way that He who was dead as a doornail became alive again, just as he had been 3 days early, only much, much better. And there are lots of deep human implications of that Resurrection. It changes EVERYTHING about human life because, for starters, it means that death is no longer the end of human life. But if that event didn't actually happen in more or less the way reported, then the reports have no point because death is still the last word on human life.

"To imagine that you and your faith have a corner on spiritual truth is the most monumental form of pride - but you're not alone by any means."

Ah, that's not what I said. Our Holy Catholic Church alone has the fullness of what God has revealed of Himself to humanity. But I didn't say that he hasn't revealed parts of that to others, or that they hadn't used their very good brains to figure lots of true stuff out. In fact, I believe He has and they have. I didn't say that they have no hope of eternal beatitude as we Catholics understand it. I - and the Church - do believe that there is reason to hope for them even as they remain in their own religions. Fundamentalist Christians detest us for that (among other reasons). But I did say that we alone have the fullness of divine revelation - everything accurate, and nothing missing.

The Jews, we believe, have accurate but incomplete revelation that Christianity appropriates and completes.

The Muslims, we believe, have partial but distorted revelation (and they believe the same as us), but nothing that correctly adds to either Judaism or Christianity.

We might be mistaken, or prideful, but if we aren't mistaken, then it isn't prideful. I didn't say that I, or we, deserve this revelation or are somehow better than others for it. It's as though I've been given a Ferarri by my dad, and want to share it with my friends who are riding bicycles and Yugos. Those are nice enough as far as it goes, but really. Is it arrogant of me to say, "Hey, come take a look at this bad boy! Hop on in! What's mine is yours, pal!" It would be much more prideful to go off in secret, and maybe, in a weird way, more prideful to blush and say, "No really, Jack, your skateboard is as nice as my Ferarri." More prideful because more obviously condescending.

To address someone honestly, respectfully, and critically (in the best sense of the word) is one of the must humble things one can do, except to allow them to address you in like manner. That is what I have been trying, admittedly with mixed success and results, to do: be open, respectful, and fair to any and all who want to discuss the thing at hand.

But to think that I am right and someone else is wrong (or, in this case only partly or mostly wrong) isn't arrogant. It's just honest.

That said, I am an arrogant jerk, but I'm working on that. Give me time.

Struggle, struggle; flail, flail.

TJ,

The name, or label, you called the ideas was misogynistic. THAT is deflective, and evasive. Whether they are misogynistic, backwards, racist, homophobic, or whatever other labels might be applied to a Catholic or other idea should be secondary in our minds to whether they are TRUE or not. You have labeled the idea, and so dismissed it, without an attempt to engage it.

I'm not indignant, let alone surprised. I'm only trying to be clear.

"So if men and women aren't "fully interchangeable", then you are automatically correct?"

No, I am not automatically correct if men and women aren't fully interchangeable. The ideas I have proposed require a few further steps. The contrary idea to that specifically debated - that women might make just as good priests as men and thus should be ordained - assumes gender neutrality and equivalence, an interchangeability. To unravel that argument, one need only show that the sexes are not interchangeable, and that there are proper differences between the two.

RYAN HABER - as always, you're doing a fine job of documenting your beliefs, and certainly don't need any help from me. BTW, did you know that the one and only time Papal Infallibility has been exercised dogmatically was in 1950, when Pope Pious XII declared the infallible truth of Mary's assumption into heaven, body and soul - thus enunciating the final and most recent piece of Church dogma? I know you believe both of these doctrines to be literally true, because you said so!

Whether she died and was resurrected, or whether she simply vanished into heaven without intervening death has been left open to interpretation. While this concept of the bodily assumption goes back to the writings of the
Apocrypha in the early centuries, only in 1950 was it declared by the Pope to be infallible truth - for inquiring minds that want to know.

This particular doctrine is accepted as literally true throughout the various branches of Catholicism - although Dormition, so called in the Eastern Rite, is based on Mary's assumed death and resurrection prior to her bodily assumption.

My theory in an earlier post was that Church doctrines have been fashioned, at least in part, to give internal and logical consistency to the entire body of doctrines and dogmatic declarations of truth in a more or less progressive fashion over the centuries.

In declaring Mary a perfect human being, both free of original sin and free of earthly sin, she was de facto made a divine being by her purity, and by virtue of her singular role as the vessel of God. She was therefore not subject to corruption after death like ordinary humans, nor did she have to wait until Judgement Day for her bodily resurrection - the fate of the remainder of the faithful.

Now I find it curious that it took until 1950 to finalize and complete the entire doctrinal process, wherein the Mother finally achieves co-equal status with the Son - as divine beings. Of course Catholics will argue with this interpretation, but this is how mythologies are created.

Now I realize that mythos is very different from literal beliefs - and yet, what would Joseph Campbell, the acknowledged master of mythology say about all of this?? I believe he'd declare that there were deep human truths to be find behind the miraculous and mythical tales of the divine. While the faithful are welcome to their literal beliefs, I find truth in much of what thinkers and philosophers like Joseph Campbell and Carl Jung had to say about the mythology and allegorical functions of religion.

And well said Ryan - obnoxious and false are not the same. Nor is belief in the miraculous vs actual fact. To imagine that you and your faith have a corner on spiritual truth is the most monumental form of pride - but you're not alone by any means. This attitude does seem peculiar to the Abrahamic faiths - you really shouldn't leave out Islam because it emanates directly from Judaism as does Christianity, and is equally prideful - and don't we know it. You're very mistaken if you think Allah is any different from the God of Abraham - they are one in the same.

Anonymous:

Au contraire!
We do know what god’s plan is.
Just read the bible.

And, I only hit that quote of the bible because the quote does not support the statements made about it.

The bible IS the word of god, as far as it is translated correctly. And, 99% of the errors in the bible translation are simple grammatical errors. Why would anyone take it to task? You would be telling God he is WRONG!

Pure foolishness…

Mark

Ryan Harber writes: "Again, name-calling proves nothing."

What name did I call you? Quote me.

"It doesn't even prove that I am the ideological or dogmatic one."

Correct. Me not doing something doesn't prove anything.

"At least I have stated reasons."

Yes, you have. I have labeled those reasons as misogynistic. You seem to be unable to address that. You are doing lots of deflecting and, in effect, chalking the misogyny up to your invisible sky buddy. I already told you that you were going to do that. Why feign surprise and indignation?

"You've only stated that they can't be refuted."

Nor can they be within the context that you've made them. How many more times do I need to tell you this before it sinks in?

"That doesn't prove circular reasoning on my part, let alone blind ideology."

I accused you of neither. You seem to be having trouble identifying what I'm accusing you of, let alone dealing with it any adult fashion.

"Can you, for instance, demonstrate that men and women ARE in fact fully interchangeable?"

So if men and women aren't "fully interchangeable", then you are automatically correct? And you criticize my command of logic?

You've made a very poor showing in this thread Ryan Harber. I'm disappointed in you. It's not enjoyable to see an otherwise intelligent person stumble and flail around like you are doing.

Perspective,

We make our absolutely certain claims of absolute and certain truth on the authority of Jesus Christ, the Son of God and Son of Man, who proved His authority by His miracles and ultimately by His resurrection, and who continues to prove His authority by the works of His Church, especially of His beloved martyrs, who die rather than deny His authority.

It is exactly our contention that while all the other religions of the world, with the exception of Judaism, are gropings for God, man searching for Maker - our religion has been revealed and given to us by the Maker.

Kind of obnoxious, perhaps, to people who want to say that everything is the same as everything else and that nobody is wrong or right in spiritual matters - but obnoxiouos and false aren't the same.

Perspective, you're kinda funny. You wrote:

"Speaking of Church thinkers, in looking at Augustine's rationale for the divinity of Jesus, or the Thomas Aquinas apologia for the doctrine of the Trinity - perhaps you are convinced by these rationalizations, but I am not - ergo that makes me a non-believer. Further, do I believe that Mary ascended bodily into heaven?? No, I don't. Do I think that the Pope is Infallible when he speaks 'ex cathedra' on doctrinal matters? No, I don't. Do I believe that the real body and blood of Christ is contained in the host after Consecration?? No, I don't. Do I believe that priests have the conferred power to forgive sins? No, I don't. There is more ......

Don't you agree that some of these many doctrines should be brought to the light so that non-Catholics can see what we're actually talking about?"

Don't I agree that some of these many doctrines should be brought to the light so that non-Catholics can see what we're actually talking about?

Don't I agree? HA! What have I been doing on these blogs? I have been doing nothing but trying to present these doctrines, to refute their contraries, and to explain them to the curious. Lolol. Good grief? Do you think that the Church is trying to keep them secret? Honestly, you thought that Mary Cunningham lived in a different world... where have YOU been?! The Catholic Church has desperately trying to proclaim them from the rooftops for, well, for 2000 years, but with a renewed push these last 20 or 30.

Lolol! You're hilarious, Perspective! You have to be kidding, really.

I believe in One God, the Father Almighty, whose nature is inherent to His being and which He has generously revealed to us, and that those who believe He is contrary to what He has revealed are mistaken, either sincerely or not.

I believe in His Only Begotten Son, Jesus of Nazareth, who was, while fully human in every sense of the word, also fully divine in every sense of the word, the only natural Son of the Living God, and who wants eagerly to share His nature with us, mere mortal human beings.

I believe in the Holy Trinity, that is, the tri-unity of the Eternal Father with His Eternal Son and their shared Eternal Spirit, that while each is distinct, they are not a bit separate, and while united complete, not the slightest bit confused.

I believe that as a special and unique grace, God preserved His Mother, Mary of Nazareth, from any taint of the laziness, selfishness, malice that we call sinfulness - that from the first moment of her existence in her mother's womb, she had not the slightest smirch on her character or on her soul, and that, in light of her life of paramount virtue and sanctity, he brought her body and soul into her eternal rest in heaven.

I believe that Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ, in constituting the One and Only Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church to continue his work on earth constituted it with a vicar to stand in his place as chief shepherd on earth of his wandering and wayward flock, and that said vicar, when intending to do so, speaks without error on matters of faith and morals.

I believe that when those persons ordained for the purpose, in the profundity of God's plan for creation all of them men, carry out the instructions of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, to repeat his actions at the Last Supper, do repeat them, and in so doing confect His True Body and Blood, including the fullness of His Soul and Divinity, from what were formerly bread and wine, and what remain bread and wine in appearance only.

I believe that when those persons ordained for the purpose, in the profundity of God's plan for creation all of them men, exercise the authority given them by our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, the sins against God and His eternal plan for creation are in fact remitted or left unforgiven.

You're right, there is more, Perspective.

I believe that the Holy Spirit, the Great Sanctifier, who works at the heart of every man, woman and child ever to have lived in order to draw them back to the heart of the Eternal Father, dwells in the One and Only Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church in such a way as to preserve it from defect in its essence, deviation from its message, and failure in its purpose, and that the same Holy Spirit imbues the faithful with supernatural capabilities so that they may, especially trust in God, rely upon His power, and love with the incomprehensible love natural to Him alone, but also so that they may accomplish whatever else He wills.

I believe that the bathing of water and spirit, called baptism, actually cleanses the soul of the recipient from all sin and unites the recipient to Christ, and that the said bathing of water and spirit must at least implicitly be desired by a person for that person to have the hope of eternal beatitude.

I believe that at the end of time, at a time ordained from before creation, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ will return in the flesh that he bore and set the world to rights, judging the wicked and vindicating those who have relied upon his mercy to rectify their failures, and that at that time every man, woman, and child who has ever lived will be resurrected, his or her soul reunited with their body now transformed from one glory to another, and that for all of eternity they will bodily remain upon the transformed earth, washed by fire of every trace of sin and death, and renewed in the glory of its Maker.

---

So Perspective, those beliefs might be weird, but they are hardly secret. In fact, they are written and explained very beautifully in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, published in 1994/1997 and still available, easily and inexpensively from Amazon.com.

Perhaps not everyone is aware of them, Perspective, so if you would like to help us bring them "to the light," by all means, your help in evangelizing will be greatly appreciated.

Cheers, and thanks for the offer!

Perspective/Anonymous,

The Church is backwards, compared to most of the world. Hurray! Facing backwards isn't so bad when everyone else is going the wrong way!

Saying precisely what is mistaken about an idea is more useful than simply describing it as "backwards" or old-fashioned. Because something is old, or "archaic" to use your word, HARDLY shows the argument incorrect. What do I care if an idea is old, if it is sound? It is a very old idea that one will live a longer life if one doesn't suffocate oneself. I hardly plan on throwing that idea out just because it's old.

As for "Archaic" Papal Infallibility, you've got that wrong. Any number of Catholics broke precisely because the formulation is novel. While Catholics have always looked to Rome and its bishop as the first diocese and bishop among equals - even in the 100s there is documentary evidence of other churches yielding to the decisions of the church in Rome, the definition of Papal Infallibility was only set out as such and dogmatically in 1870-1871 at the First Vatican Council. Oh, that was in the old days, right? Hah, hardly - it was at the beginning of Europe as we'd recognize it: widespread democracy in fully secularized nation-states with wealthy Protestant nations in the ascedancy over poor Catholic nations. Against that backdrop the Holy Church declared, "The rest of the world might be open to a poll, picking and choosing its leaders, and divorcing its laws from the laws of God - but not us. God has given us the Church, he has given us an earthly lawgiver in the person of Peter, and the Pope is his successor."

Papal Infallibility isn't a leftover from before modernity, but a direct challenge to it.

Cheers!

Well, Neal, I'd like to say it was because of my extraordinary perception but it was mostly because of the base case: you were posting on the Jacoby blog and 91 out of 100 posters there are agnostic/atheist--of course many of them are "times" 3 posters, that is, they post and then agree with themselves under different names 2 or 3 times! Also you asked about historical proof of Christ and when I responded with Jewish and pagan sources, you failed to allow for the overwhelming number of Christian sources, which,although biased, certainly have to be admitted.

Constantine's edict allowed for religious toleration--for Christians. Pagans had always enjoyed such toleration. His goal was to align the state with Christianity and achieve conversion of pagans in that fashion, not through force and there were no forcible convervions whatsoever during his reign and for about three generations afterwards. Remember at the time Christianity was still intensely pacifist and the more finicky of the Christian leaders were not sure whether to admit soldiers into the Church.

I don't see religion, Abrahamic or otherwise, as the bogey. The atheist regimes--Nazism and Communism--of the 20th century managed to dispatch a lot more of us than the most fundamentalist religious leader. Deny the Trinity, be brought up before the Inquisition and recant and you were let off with a penance--usually a pilgrimage. Steal a sheep, be brought up before the Civil Court, recant, and you were still hung. If I were a Jew and converted, the Inquisition freed me. If I were a Jew and converted,the Nazis still burned me.

Anyway, this is about 'wimmin' priests.

TJ,

Again, name-calling proves nothing. It doesn't even prove that I am the ideological or dogmatic one. At least I have stated reasons. You've only stated that they can't be refuted. That doesn't prove circular reasoning on my part, let alone blind ideology.

Can you, for instance, demonstrate that men and women ARE in fact fully interchangeable?