Sunday, December 31, 2006

Common Catholic Misconseptions....

Well, it's been a while since I've blogged... But I have to blog about this... Was out with my friends here (who I believe are all Baptist) and they started up a convo about the catholic church (I'm catholic). It started up rather amusingly with my friend mel relating a fairly funny story about a catholic priest who was apparently *quite* out of it while presiding over a wedding between a Jewish person and a Catholic. But some how this lead into a discussion about the church during which some flat out comments were made about the church. So for those non Catholics, I figured I'd clear some things up

A). All or some Catholics don't believe in Jesus Christ. In fact, the Catholic church is a *Christian* church. In fact, they are the *original* Christian church founded by St. Peter (for those of you who don't know who he is he is the apostle Peter). If you don't believe in Christ then you're not catholic or even Christian. Perhaps you attend mass, but that does not make you a member of that faith. Now mel did interpit this as "You don’t always hear the name at catholic mass". If that's what you mean by this statement, well some stories are about Mary, some about Abraham etc. If you think they are more focused on the church than on god then perhaps you're attending with a priest that in my opinion needs to get their priorities straight.

Edit: Catholics must believe all of the following (The Nicene Creed) We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen. We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father. Through him all things were made. For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven: by the power of the Holy Spirit he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary, and was made man. For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate; he suffered death and was buried. On the third day he rose again in accordance with the Scriptures; he ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end. We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son. With the Father and the Son he is worshiped and glorified. He has spoken through the Prophets. We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church. We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins. We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen.


B). The Catholic church are the biggest murders in the world: Hmmm, this one was off the wall... I wasn't really upset by it, but I was definitely confused... Then the person who made this comment brought up the Jesuit order... They are in fact not killers at all, though they are some times referred to as the "Soldiers of the church" because the founder of the order was in fact a soldier before founding the order. For a good reference on the Jesuit order, please refer to Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesuit

C). Adolf Hitler killed the Jews because of the Catholic church The Catholic church, while unfortunately not speaking out against hitler (officially), did in fact in no way support hitler at all. In fact hitler very nearly decided to invade the Vatican (he already owned Rome) in order to make sure the Pope never did speak out against him (the nazi party was an atheist party because religion is very inconvinent to those who commit atrocities and rule with an iron fist). The main thing that stopped them, there is a large contingent of Catholics in Germany, and he already used the Jews as scape goats. It should be noted that while the church did not officially speak out against the holocaust, it did organize some rather valiant efforts to smuggle Jewish people out of nazi controlled territories. For those of you who want to know why the Jews? The story I know of is that in his youth hitler (who was an aspiring artist) had fallen in love with his cousin. She eventually rebuffed his affections in favor of a Jewish painter, at least some historians believe this *helped* tip the scales. It also helps that the Jewish community was already (and had for a long time been) hated and were easy scape goats. I hope the non-catholic readers of this blog found this helpful, good night all!

3 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Sure, maybe the Catholic church is responsible (be it directly or indirectly - let's face it, every faith has assholes) for deaths, but I would have to disagree with them being ranked as the number one group of murderers. Try looking up how many people died of starvation alone under the Communist regimes of Stalin and Mao. Worse than the Holocaust - FAR worse.

Also people seem to forget about how many people the Church has HELPED over the centuries.

I'm not Catholic or anything, and they may be a little weird, but I have no beef with them - except for fish being classified as a vegetable.

11:18 PM  
Blogger Carlo said...

You can denie the truth staring you in the face all you want.... but fish is a vegitable.

11:20 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I had this article bookmarked from a while ago and I saw it today; I thought I might give you a link to it: Atheism, not religion, is the real force behind the mass murders of history.

11:26 AM  

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