Dissenters: Why do you call yourself a Catholic?

[Contarini]

Taken on board. I have looked in the mirror and although I’m a mere sinner, neo Gnosticism is certainly something that I’m not guilty of

I never said you were. I was responding to Mizer, who wrote as if orthodox priests and parishes were rather hard to find and only these priests and parishes were really Catholic.

Edwin

 

[drpmjhess]

Yes, Genesis was before Christianity-but Paul’s writings were not. They’ve also been used to support the “be fruitful and multiply” command. My point remains the same-context matters, both historical and current.

“Be fruitful and multiply” was quite important three thousand years ago. It becomes dangerous when insisted upon in a literal way in a world that is fast approaching the limits of carrying capacity. Already many children starve to death annually, and billions more will begin to starve in a decade or so when fossil fuels – upon which our agriculture depends – reach exhaustion. That is a serious moral issue, compared to which non-abortifacient so-called “artifical” contraception is trivial. I care about children!

 

[iamrefreshed]

You think that you can identify who the “real Catholics” are and just hang out with them, ignoring the bulk of your fellow-Catholics whom you consider insufficiently pure.

Edwin

Father Corapi has a nice saying…

“I’m not going to hell for anybody”.

Hang with people who don’t believe what the church CLEARLY states as doctrine and it may begin to rub off on people.

Being charitable is exactly what I do when I confront those like spiritmeadow and new ulm who preach heresy (yeah the big, bad H word)!

Main Entry: her·e·tic [merriam-webster.com/images/audio.gif](javascriptopWin(’/cgi-bin/audio.pl?hereti01.wav=heretic’)) Pronunciation: \ˈher-ə-ˌtik, ˈhe-rə-\ Function: noun Date: 14th century 1**:** a dissenter from established religious dogma; especially : a baptized member of the Roman Catholic Church who disavows a revealed truth

Imagine these ‘good catholics’ teaching my 1st grade CCD class?!?!?! Over my dead body!

 

[iamrefreshed]

I care about children!

What great love you must have for them…You don’t want them to be born!

 

[Contarini]

What great love you must have for them…You don’t want them to be born!

I don’t think that’s a valid argument. A person who has not yet been conceived is, well, not a person (obviously an unborn child is in a very different category). We are called to love actual persons, not possible persons. It would follow from your logic that one must conceive every possible child–which would definitely require polygamy, as well as marriage at the moment of puberty, and other absurd and inconvenient things!

Edwin

 

[drpmjhess]

What great love you must have for them…You don’t want them to be born!

That’s a very silly statement. I love my own children and those I teach. I just don’t like to see the population growing well past sustainability, condemning hundreds of millions to starvation down the line.

 

[drpmjhess]

I don’t think that’s a valid argument. A person who has not yet been conceived is, well, not a person (obviously an unborn child is in a very different category). We are called to love actual persons, not possible persons. It would follow from your logic that one must conceive every possible child–which would definitely require polygamy, as well as marriage at the moment of puberty, and other absurd and inconvenient things!

Edwin

True. One could argue that if God had wanted infinite population growth he would have created Earth to be forever expanding. Instead, what we have is bounded sphere with finite resources. Imagine a cruise ship able to support 1,000 people for a one month cruise. It could support 500 for a two month cruise, but we now have 6,000 people on board, six times the sustainable number before fossil fuels were put to use in agriculture.

 

[Neil_Anthony]

we now have 6,000 people on board, six times the sustainable number before fossil fuels were put to use in agriculture.

Do you have a link to back up your claim that without fossil fuels, we can only grow enough food for 1 billion people?

 

[Contarini]

True. One could argue that if God had wanted infinite population growth he would have created Earth to be forever expanding. Instead, what we have is bounded sphere with finite resources. Imagine a cruise ship able to support 1,000 people for a one month cruise. It could support 500 for a two month cruise, but we now have 6,000 people on board, six times the sustainable number before fossil fuels were put to use in agriculture.

I do not think that arguments about what God would have done if He had wanted this or that are very sound. For instance, there is no evidence that God disapproves of the exploration and colonization of space, which is one possible response to population growth. (Perhaps I have read too much science fiction!)

Furthermore, it does not follow from the Catholic Church’s condemnation of artificial birth control that one is morally obligated to have as many children as possible. That is what many folks on this forum seem to think, of course, but are they right?

Edwin

 

[iamrefreshed]

That’s a very silly statement. I love my own children and those I teach. I just don’t like to see the population growing well past sustainability, condemning hundreds of millions to starvation down the line.

That’s an old and oft cited excuse for birth control. Feed that to someone who will buy into.

 

[iamrefreshed]

I don’t think that’s a valid argument. A person who has not yet been conceived is, well, not a person (obviously an unborn child is in a very different category). We are called to love actual persons, not possible persons. It would follow from your logic that one must conceive every possible child–which would definitely require polygamy, as well as marriage at the moment of puberty, and other absurd and inconvenient things!

Edwin

When you claim to love children and then turn around and tell people not to have them I think you are being disengenuious.

BTW, you can’t love your spouse when using BC so how in your statement above about loving actual persons is that being accomplished.

 

[drpmjhess]

I do not think that arguments about what God would have done if He had wanted this or that are very sound. For instance, there is no evidence that God disapproves of the exploration and colonization of space, which is one possible response to population growth. (Perhaps I have read too much science fiction!)

Edwin, space colonies are not a solution to our terrestrial population explosion. Considering the difficulties we have in temporarily supporting seven or eight scientists in the International Space Station, and considering the we make a net addition of million people every four days, and considering that at known speeds it would take 140 years to reach the nearest star even if that star had an unpopulated, inhabitable planet, and considering that strict birth control would have to be practiced on the spaceship, and considering that we have no known energy to get there, I think you can understand why the idea of exporting surplus humans to space colonies is plainly absurd as a solution!

Petrus

 

[drpmjhess]

BTW, you can’t love your spouse when using BC so how in your statement above about loving actual persons is that being accomplished.

Maybe you are incapable of that, but my wife and I love each other and our children very much!

 

[Contarini]

When you claim to love children and then turn around and tell people not to have them I think you are being disengenuious.

BTW, you can’t love your spouse when using BC so how in your statement above about loving actual persons is that being accomplished.

That’s a separate argument. I am not defending ABC. I am on the fence on that subject. I’m simply pointing out that your first argument is a bad one. I don’t think anyone here is saying that people should not have children at all. That would indeed be disingenuous coming from someone who claimed to love children. But there is nothing unloving about having one rather than two, or two rather than three, or three rather than four, or fifteen rather than sixteen, or twenty-four rather than twenty-five. . . . There isn’t even anything unloving (to children) about choosing not to have any at all oneself, as for instance celibates do. (Again, I’m not saying that it’s OK for married couples to choose not to have children.)

You can’t have infinite numbers of children. That does not mean that you “don’t love” all those potential children you don’t have. Or rather, not loving all those nonexistent beings is morally irrelevant.

Edwin

 

[Contarini]

Edwin, space colonies are not a solution to our terrestrial population explosion. Considering the difficulties we have in temporarily supporting seven or eight scientists in the International Space Station, and considering the we make a net addition of million people every four days, and considering that at known speeds it would take 140 years to reach the nearest star even if that star had an unpopulated, inhabitable planet, and considering that strict birth control would have to be practiced on the spaceship, and considering that we have no known energy to get there, I think you can understand why the idea of exporting surplus humans to space colonies is plainly absurd as a solution!

Petrus

Absurd under current technological and social circumstances, yes. But I think you are a little deficient in imagination. If one has a priori reasons to think birth control wrong, then there are good reasons to spend a lot of time and resources on finding alternative solutions.

Edwin

 

[drpmjhess]

Absurd under current technological and social circumstances, yes. But I think you are a little deficient in imagination. If one has a priori reasons to think birth control wrong, then there are good reasons to spend a lot of time and resources on finding alternative solutions. Edwin

People are already starving, and will start starving by the hundreds of millions as oil and gas become scarce in the next decade. Unless you have the materials and program and destination in place right now to begin transporting 250,000 per day off the Earth, my argument stands unrefuted.

Petrus.

 

[MIZER]

originally posted by Contarini:
I was responding to Mizer, who wrote as if orthodox priests and parishes were rather hard to find and only these priests and parishes were really Catholic.

I did say, essentially, that orthodox priests and thus parishes are hard to find (in some areas of the country, more so than others) but** I did not say that only these priests and parishes were really Catholic.**

I did say that if orthodox catholics wished to practice with other orthodox catholics that they need to seek and find orthodox priests, saying mass for a parish full of orthodox catholics. My parish priest and thus my fellow parishoners tend to be a bit liberal (not orthodox). They are not as liberal as some catholic churches I have attended on the west coast or in the pacific north west, but they are not orthodox either. Our lines to confession on Saturday night are very short but our communion lines include everyone in attendance. Yet, not everyone attends every week. You get the idea if you know the churches teaching on missing mass on Sunday. As an individual, I am more orthodox than either my priest or most of my fellow parishoners, as the really orthodox people in my city, who have a desire to practice and raise their families surrounded by orthodoxy, travel 30-50 miles away to another parish. All are a part of the one universal church.

I have admitted that I fear the dissension in the ranks will ultimately result in a split in the Latin Rite Church, the Roman Catholic Church as we are disdainfully referred to by non-catholics, as the “dissenters” wish to persist in their denial of the truth (sin?) and yet remain “catholic.” This situation, the situation which gave rise to the OP starting this thread with the original question, may ultimately result in a split in the church where we will have a very defined distinction among parishes or, more likely dioceses, some which follow a more liberal system of faith and not “Rome” and those who are more orthodox and follow “Rome” to the letter.

This is just my personal opinion, so no one should take offense or get too overheated by this.

 

[Neil_Anthony]

People are already starving, and will start starving by the hundreds of millions as oil and gas become scarce in the next decade. Unless you have the materials and program and destination in place right now to begin transporting 250,000 per day off the Earth, my argument stands unrefuted.

Petrus.

Some people have no capacity for original thought. It’s pretty simple: If we run out of fuel for transporting food and for tractors, we’ll eat locally produced food and farm using manual labor. Are you going to starve to death because there are no bananas at the grocery store, or will you just switch to eating locally grown pears?

 

[iamrefreshed]

Maybe you are incapable of that, but my wife and I love each other and our children very much!

You may think you are but you’re wrong.

I would try to use catholic teaching to convince you otherwise but we both know that is pointless because you don’t believe in all catholic teachings.

 

[iamrefreshed]

That’s a separate argument. I am not defending ABC. I am on the fence on that subject. I’m simply pointing out that your first argument is a bad one. I don’t think anyone here is saying that people should not have children at all. That would indeed be disingenuous coming from someone who claimed to love children. But there is nothing unloving about having one rather than two, or two rather than three, or three rather than four, or fifteen rather than sixteen, or twenty-four rather than twenty-five. . . . There isn’t even anything unloving (to children) about choosing not to have any at all oneself, as for instance celibates do. (Again, I’m not saying that it’s OK for married couples to choose not to have children.)

You can’t have infinite numbers of children. That does not mean that you “don’t love” all those potential children you don’t have. Or rather, not loving all those nonexistent beings is morally irrelevant.

Edwin

I’d wager that because you are sitting on the fence you can’t see it is a valid argument.