Freedom Of Religion?

[Jim_ov_Cov]

Monarchy:

Do you want to do away with your freedom of religion? Because you certainly sound like you do. In the interest of all peoples rights the Government should be religiously neutral. What if catholisim is banned because the Evangelical Christians are in charge?

So you Claim. Please provide proof.

(Bold, Italic, and underline by me)
So you Claim. Please provide proof.

Quas Pimus, the Papal encyclical of Pope Pius XI written in 1926, codified what had always been believed and practiced by the Church. It is on the social reign of Christ the King and spells out the position of the Church. It’s not that I don’t believe in religious freedom, I do, but in the context of the confessional state i.e. in a Catholic country where non-Catholics can practice their beliefs, but not to the detriment of the True Faith. So this entails certain restrictions on public buildings for non-Catholic worship and public manifestations of those erroneous beliefs. "Error has no rights." I think this was stated by Blessed Pius IX in the Syllabus of Errors. By the way this ***Beati ***also took away a Jewish child from his parents because he had been baptised by some Catholic servants, and the law in the Papal states was that no baptised Catholic child could be raised by non-Catholic parents. This boy eventually became a priest, but I mention this to show that the supremacy of the Faith extends to all aspects of human existence. It is unthinking nonsense to claim that governments can or should be ‘religiously neutral’.

 

[foolintherain]

JKirkLVNV:

We don’t have prayer as such and I’m glad. I wouldn’t want my children, if I had them, exposed to non-Christian prayer and there are some Protestant “prayers” that I think are a little iffy. I’m sure Protestants and and others wouldn’t wish to hear my child say the “Hail, Mary.”

That is, I think, the problem. What we want or don’t want isn’t at issue. Ultimately we “want” to be religiously free which implies tolerance. Now don’t misunderstand me, I am not saying that secularization or religious pluralism is the final destination. A democratic government is mandated to represent the people and if the people are Christian, Muslim, atheist, what-have-you, it must represent those beliefs. But we are no longer a Christian nation. We have, IMHO, become a nation that doesn’t know what it believes except that pluralistic notion of “I’m OK-Your OK” and “Who am I to say what is right or wrong”. A nation of people paralyzed from fear of stepping on toes. A nation of people who find it necessary to preface their beliefs with “IMHO” for example. The first amendment isn’t the problem. The government is doing exactly what the framers wanted it to do… it is representing the will of the people. The problem is that WE THE PEOPLE have lost the conviction of our beliefs. The authority of our consciences. We have too many atheists masquerading as Christians who say they believe but do not bear it out in their lives or with their ballot. Truly I fear these things more than any Jihad.

Sorry this may have gotten away from answering the original questions which was if we all thought that the detriment of the first amendment outweighed it’s benefit. The answer to that is: No.

 

[GrzeszDeL]

Jim ov Cov:

Quas Pimus, the Papal encyclical of Pope Pius XI written in 1926, codified what had always been believed and practiced by the Church. It is on the social reign of Christ the King and spells out the position of the Church. It’s not that I don’t believe in religious freedom, I do, but in the context of the confessional state i.e. in a Catholic country where non-Catholics can practice their beliefs, but not to the detriment of the True Faith. So this entails certain restrictions on public buildings for non-Catholic worship and public manifestations of those erroneous beliefs. "Error has no rights."

Keep the faith, brother. Sadly, my guess is that 9/10 of our fellow Catholics here think that the claims made in Quas Primas are just Fundamentalist distortions intended to cast the Catholic Church in a bad light; just goes to show that truth is stranger than fiction sometimes…

Oportet Illum regnare!

 

[GrzeszDeL]

Cherubino:

Last week I did a Google search on the term “Catholic apologetics.” In less than a second I had a list of 165,000 websites to peruse, all of which I was able to open up in only a few seconds more. Therein I found a truly diverse array of ad hoc platforms, each declaring the webmaster’s beliefs as official Church teaching. Upon closer inspection, I found that a number of these sites had been created specifically to rebut information and opinions expressed on similar websites. Even your own favorite blog site was among them.

Pontifications (by our old comrade Fr. Kimel) came up as a result in a Google search on the words “Catholic apologetics”?

What I’m saying here is that Catholics are communicating with each other with heretofore unthinkable speed and ease, and apparently in greater numbers than ever. And thanks to the anonymity of the internet, they can state their case without fear of ecclesiastical censure.

Yes and no. I will grant that the internet’s anonymity makes it harder to burn someone at the stake, but this was never the important part of magisterial censure anyway (Arius did not have to be executed in order to put down the Arian heresy, for instance). That said, it is still very much possible for a competant Church authority to make it known that Deacon777 (to pick one quick example) is a heretic, so that folks can know to ignore Deacon777, even if he cannot trace Deacon777’s writings to any particular individual deacon in TN. (Deacon, if you are reading this, know that I pick on you because I love you. ) In other words, the internet does not make review by the magisterium harder with regard to any of its truly important functions.

I think the latent message being proclaimed in this phenom is that Catholic teaching really is unstructured and unsupervised. Any layman with a copy of the Catechism and a laptop can become a very official-looking spokesman for the Church, and no other academic credentials or Magisterial certification are required… If what we’re seeing isn’t the (at least attempted) governance of the people of the Church by the people of the Church, then what else might you call it?

Fair enough; your post reminds me of Chesterton’s quip about the scholar who treats on the subject of political economy by examining the question of whether the actual members of parliament bother to clip coupons. I suppose there is a meaningful sense in which questions about “freedom of religion” can concern whether religious blowhards are at liberty to blow as hard or as softly as they care to, but that is not really the subject with which this thread started. The question at the head of this thread was concerned with how much liberty we must accord to religions which are obviously founded on lies and exist substantially or even principally in order to make a quick buck for a man too lazy to do real work. Do you have any thoughts on that subject which you would like to share (he asks, as if he did not already know… )? How crackpot does a sect’s foundational logic have to be before we say “all right, this is just too much to be tolerated”?

 

[GrzeszDeL]

Incidentally, Cherub, I hope that the last post did not seem too brusque or pushy. I am just so pleased to see you over in these parts that I wanted to make the discussion full enough of provocation and wrassling to keep you coming back. :tiphat:

 

[JPrejean]

Sadly, my guess is that 9/10 of our fellow Catholics here think that the claims made in Quas Primas are just Fundamentalist distortions intended to cast the Catholic Church in a bad light; just goes to show that truth is stranger than fiction sometimes…

That may be true, but even accepting Quas Primas (and Quanta Cura for that matter), it is important to distinguish the civil right of religious freedom from separation of church and state (the latter of which is pernicious secular nonsense). Unless there is a threat to public order, I would surmise that the freedom to practice religion in the manner described in the first post is within “due limits,” and thus, respect for human dignity demands that such people should be allowed to practice that religion publicly or privately.

 

[Exporter]

catholicbudgie:

As we all know, the Constitution Of The Unites States has an amendment to it regarding freedom of religion. While this is a good thing, does cyberworld out there think that perhaps the bad side is the flourishing of the myriads of crackpot “religions”, all set up under the guise of religous freedom but in reality are nothing more than a con job?

Now, I don’t want to be sectarian here, and of course all the major faiths which pre-date the amendment, the Constitution or the United States itself wouldn’t qualify for my criticism. Please be nice when posting!

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The Constitution of the United States has an ammendment that PROHIBITS THE GOV’T FROM ESTABLISHING A STATE RELIGION.

A 503-C is an exemption from having to pay income tax. Churches can have a 503-C, and they do not pay income taxes. Yes, there are a few “churches” that are not truely “churches” set up by con men. Some of these “churches” exist only on paper. Some of them exist in the owner’s home, yes there are fakes.

 

[Jim_ov_Cov]

Yes and no. I will grant that the internet’s anonymity makes it harder to burn someone at the stake, …

It may be more difficult, but have we even tried? :nope: