Ella:
Hence the necessity of the Magiserium of the Catholic Church. A doctor of the church isn’t infallible, Pro. Nor do the writings of doctors of the church possess infallibility. I figured you’d know that seeing as you are Catholic.
Here is the crux of the argument. Yes, I agree the Church is infallible…however:
Councils of the Church have been wrong and barbaric
Popes have been wrong and taught barbaric things
Doctors of the Church have been wrong and taught barbaric things.
So, while the whole Church will prevail, it is most certainly the case that all the extensions of the Church are subject to human fallibility in one way or another. The only way to have a comprehensive teaching that deals with life is to admit the possibility that such teaching may, in significant ways, be in error.
In light of this, did you consider that you, Ella, might be wrong about capital punishment? I certainly don’t think we are…but then again, for most of the history of the Church, people who were as Catholic and as learned as we thought otherwise.
That possibility, that you are wrong and didn’t grasp the eternal truth at issue here, is why you should not be so quick to condemn other faiths for beliefs that have long histories in our own Church.
Ella:
You’re forgetting the pesky fact that Sharia law clearly dictates capitol punishment and hand amputations as just things. If there is a point of view, school, or what ever the term is, in Islam about these things, that says that beheadings, hand amputations, firing squads, and other creative ways to publicly mutiliate or kill criminals are all wrong, then I’m willing to listen to it.
I don’t know of any that will claim it is outright wrong to execute criminals, but certainly it is not required. There is no reason why Muslims cannot live and participate in a modern secular state that chooses not to execute people. Sheikh Abdul Hadi Palazzi, head of the Italian Muslim Association, has a good explanation of this. See:
www.amislam.com.
Ella:
I believe the Church has eternal truth entrusted to it by Christ and administered through the Sacraments. I believe the Church has been used as the justification of many sins over the centuries. The Church is made up of human beings, and we sin. But the barque of Peter is still floating because Jesus said the gates of Hell will not prevail against it. I believe these things. Don’t you?
Yes, I do, but certainly, believing that hell will not prevail against it does not require me to believe that it could never be the case that almost every single individual member of the Church has the eternal truth wrong in some significant way. If I were required to believe that, I’d have to make sense of a long series of councils banishing Jews, anathematizing heretics, and prescribing otherwise barbaric things by modern standards.
Ella:
Barbarians, Pro. People who chop off the hands of thieves and behead people in public are definitely on the barbarian side of that sliding scale.
Then certainly, most of our illustrious scholars of the Church are barbarians, as are most Popes, the participants in most Councils, and generally every last government that embraced the Catholic church throughout history.
If you’re prepared to admit we’re the product of 2000 years of barbarism, please feel free to label any religion today barbaric. Otherwise, the more humble and appropriate position is to recognize that we are fallible and make mistakes too, and to spend your time contending with our own small but vocal violence-prone members, including Priests and other “Christians” who advocate using nuclear weapons.
