About an Atheistic Sister with many Questions and much Church History

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Jellyfish

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So…
My Sister is an Atheist and one night she opened about her views up and asked some questions.
Like why can penguins be gay and not human?
And she told me that god created all humans for his entertainment. And she told me that the Church did kill gay persons and so fort.

Even though she didn’t wait for my answers, and was disinterested in them. Please pray for her and help me out on the last question, because I cant find something on Catholic Answers.

She told me I just had to google it, and that she wasn’t interested in what I had to say. She said she had no way of life whatsoever and that humans live just to wait for death. She also said she didn’t know if god Is really right… And she laughed at me when I said that Philosophy is a science. And she said that science disapproves god. Etc.

I have to go on Zoom for a Class, and can’t stay any longer. But please help me out!
She makes fun of my mom who prays, and disturbed our rosary.

Please pray for her and help me out!
And yes, she thinks religion is opium for the masses, and I even couldn’t answer her on that, even though I heard people on Catholic answers deal with that.

So please help me out, and thank you! It is just a few of the questions, but she is longer like this.

Edit: I forgot to say that she thinks that the apostles and followers of Jesus were high on drugs so they had visions. Maybe I should rename this whole thing.

🤧 😑 😵 😱
 
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Greetings,

I’m assuming that you want help in answering her assertion that the Church killed gays. That is not for you to answer. That is for HER to provide you the Who, what , when, etc. She made the statement, let her back it up with some facts.

From what you’ve said, it doesn’t sound like she would be interested in many of your answers. Nevertheless, she should provide the details so you can do the research. If not, it looks to me to maybe something she just made up.

I will keep you both in my prayers.

Pax
 
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She refused to give her sources and told me to google it. But Thank You anyway.
😐 💛
 
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Jellyfish said:
help me out on the last question, because I cant find something on Catholic Answers.
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What’s the question? Are penguins gay - yes, some of them. Or is it did the Church ever commit unjustified crimes, like killing gay people? Yes, lots of bad things happened in history. The Church is a gigantic organization and it has been around for 2,000 years. Some bad stuff happened. Sometimes very bad. Sometimes it was the Church’s fault. Good stuff happened, too. Lots of that was very much to the Church’s credit. Neither necessarily defines the Church today.
 
I would shrug my shoulders and just say “I guess it didn’t happen then if you cannot provide any evidence.”

Pax
 
Thank You for your suggestion, still it doesn’t convince me much. Because then she would see us as dumb Christians who ignore History. Kinda like people who deny the Holocaust or so.
But I can try to react like that. Maybe she opens up. It convinces me not so much, but I can see where you‘re coming from.

You see, she doesn’t seem to know the difference between the Christian dominations or thinks that they are not important at all. I don’t want to open up too much and it would go off topic, but just this.
 
So she ‘opened up’ but she closed her ears to you, so prayers for her to listen, and also for you as I know from experience it can be hard when you want to share the faith and those who matter to us don’t want to hear, or are even anti catholic, sometimes I think we just have to pray dust of our sandles for a while and just keep working out our own salvation it may take a lifetime there’s always hope. I’m still waiting for the day one member might ask me anything about the faith we were all baptised in it took me 40 years myself to start listening.
 
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Sounds like you’re in a tight spot. Doesn’t seem like anything you do will convince her.

I will keep you in my prayers.

Pax
 
Thank You.
I too pray for her, but I am not very confident in my own prayers. I don’t understand in which relation we humans stand to God. How much can we love God?
And my inability to love everyone…
Well that’s another topic. But, really Thank You. 🙏 ❤️
I am thankful for your advice and help.

Thank You very much!
 
Yes.
After this one night I knew it. Before she always just told us that she is an atheist and doesn’t believe in Prayer, and so dort.
 
Tell her pretty much every society at one time or another killed gays. The idea that cultures like Greece and others were open to homosexuality and Abrahamic religion had to ruin that is a myth. Even societies that at first sight seem more ‘friendly’ to homosexuality turn out to be extremely complex cases.
 
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Yes… I agree that History is complex and like you said, there are often other sides to societies like the Roman Empire and so.
But I think she comes from the perspective that because Catholics do bad things too, they can’t be right.

And she asked me why would I cry if I’m a Christian? -Because in that night I was really crying-.
Because she thinks that we Christians have to be filled with the Holy Spirit and happy all the time.

Now, is just the Question: did the Church, like the clergy or pope or so command the killing of Homosexuals? Because I haven’t heard something like this before. And think I have a generally understanding of Church History, but- I never heard of it.

And I don’t think that this is very possible.
 
They didn’t go around killing people for having same sex attraction. But the identity of being ‘gay’ is more modern. There have probably always been people with exclusive same sex attraction, of course. The Church did condone the execution of those guilty of sodomy, though, yes.
 
Jellyfish said:
why can penguins be gay and not human?
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This is simply not true. In the wild (without human interference) male and female will always try to mate and reproduce. It is a fact they don’t have free will to NOT want to reproduce.
 
Jellyfish said:
And she told me that the Church did kill gay persons
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This is false.

It was popularized in modern times using two twisting of historical facts. The Church has never advocated the death of homosexuals. The twisting comes from the fact that, since the Edict of Milan in 313, Bishops were also part of secular government. The two instances which people point to were actually the Bishops of certain areas accepting the laws of the civil authority within their position within their government, not a decree of the Church.
  1. The first instance which is twisted was that the Emperor Justinian decreed the castration of priests caught in homosexual acts and that layity which were caught in these acts were to be given 100 lashes. Those who were condemned did sometimes die from these injuries. The individual bishops in their government positions in which they were able to act as judges in criminal cases, had to (under pain of imprisonment, exile, or death) were required to carry out the civil law. Since this decree, many civil governments took the same stance and required the bishops to judge in accordance with that civil law.
  2. The Sixteenth Council of Toledo was a local council which was called by an archbishop in Spain to install a king of his choosing. The council had nothing to do with ecclesial matters. Instead, it was only considered a council because the attendees were only bishops. The entirety of the council was geared to civil duties. The only element of Church authority used was to excommunicate those who had rebelled against and killed the previous king. They voted to uphold the laws of the deceased king, even when the new one was crowned. One of these laws dealt with similar penalties to the law passed by Justinian above.
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Jellyfish said:
Like why can penguins be gay and not human?
Click to expand...
Actually, this is a very apt analogy. In penguins, the ‘gay’ behavior primarily occurs in mating season within the context of courting displays. After studying these penguins, researchers have realized that it is not, in fact a homosexual tendency but rather an elevated level of testosterone in the male penguin which affects the penguin’s brain. The testosterone present in the brain causes the penguin to not be able to distinguish the slight physical differences between male and female penguins. The reason that there are mated male-male pairs of penguins is because that penguins mate for life. If there were no other females when the physiological effects of mating season take effect, then the ‘homosexual’ pair will form and remain for the rest of the penguin’s life. In this case, the penguin is not ‘homosexual’ but rather the male penguin truly believes that their partner is actually female. There are never female homosexual penguins.

In humans, homosexuality has been traced to psychological development in childhood. There are many factors, but even once it has taken hold, it is usually transient. Psychologists have examined this issue by addressing the psychological developmental issues through therapy and then evaluated their homosexuality once the sessions have ended. 85% of initially homosexual men and 60% of initially homosexual women identified as heterosexual after this course of therapy.

Like the penguin, humans are generally considered not to be naturally homosexual. It is external stimulus which skews natural perception which leads the individual to a homosexual relationship.

Hope this helps,
Ben
 
Thank You very much! This helps really and I can understand now better why Penguins do this.

But I doubt that my sister will hear me out or so. But this helps me too, so I am really thankful.

🙂 💛
 
I am really glad and thankful for all your helping words in this issue. If you have some more for me to know, I’ll gladly read it.
And I am really thankful for CRM-Brothers little defenses. They have really helped me. Because I know I can now better answer Objections of this sort. Even if I can’t reach my sister (which is still very depressing and sad).

If u can please pray for her that she may open up to the truth and please pray for me that I’ll find the courage to speak up.
Because I am still scared and I don’t know, even if I know now better, if she will try to hear me out -I don’t think so-.
So please pray for us that I will find the right times to defend my faith and will use it and I am really thankful for all your help and wise words.
I will make a new topic for these prayer requests. It will be under prayer requests, so the topics won’t mix too much.

So Thank You all for your help!
🙏 ❤️
 
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