"The Catholic Church Just Destroyed Itself with Logic"

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Taking down a 2000-year-old institution, built upon truths that countless martyrs have given their lives for rather than renounce or turn away from, I think perhaps is going to take more than a 15 minute video and a few cheap talking points.

A dishonest but surprisingly effective debating technique is to misrepresent your opponents positions, or to grossly oversimplify them, and then disprove not their actual beliefs, but your inaccurate portrayal of them.
 
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VeryBlessed said:
Taking down a 2000-year-old institution, built upon truths that countless martyrs have given their lives for rather than renounce or turn away from, I think perhaps is going to take more than a 15 minute video and a few cheap talking points.

A dishonest but surprisingly effective debating technique is to misrepresent your opponents positions, or to grossly oversimplify them, and then disprove not their actual beliefs, but your inaccurate portrayal of them.
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This is the problem with today’s society, people tend to try and justify what is known to them and ehat is comfortable/feels good to them. And when they go out searching for the “truth” they really only search for ways to justify their truth. And one of thse ways as stated, was simplifying something that is simply not that simple and requires MUCH research.
 
umamibella said:
The speaker is incorrect about quite a lot of things at the very start of this video. The speaker calls himself a friendly atheist. I doubt he has theological training.
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The archdiocese has since confirmed the basic tenets of the video:

In the late 90s, a Deacon Springer invalidly baptized the child who would become Father Hood, leading to a cascade of invalid sacraments affecting this priest and hence invalid sacraments for his parishioners.

The speaker is Hemant Mehta, who famously sold his soul on eBay.

Mehta, an atheist, once held an unusual auction on eBay: the highest bidder could send Mehta to a church of his or her choice. The winner, who paid $504, asked Mehta to attend numerous churches, and this book comprises Mehta’s responses to 15 worshipping communities, including such prominent megachurches as Houston’s Second Baptist, Ted Haggard’s New Life Church in Colorado Springs, Colo., and Willow Creek in suburban Chicago. (Mehta ranks Willow Creek as the church most likely to draw him back.) Mehta, who grew up Jain, offers some autobiographical context, then discusses nonreligious people’s approach to topics such as death and suffering. But all that is just a preamble to Mehta’s sketches of the churches he attended. He doesn’t find much community in churches; families sit far apart from other families, and people race “out the front doors to their cars” as soon as the service ends. Churches earn high marks for Mehta when they offer great speakers and focus on community outreach, but they also do many things wrong, including singing repetitive songs and alienating non-Christians by ubiquitously proclaiming them to be “lost.” Mehta’s musings will interest Christians who seek to proselytize others and who want to identify their evangelistic mistakes.
 
Juvenal said:
The archdiocese has since confirmed the basic tenets of the video:
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The archdiocese has issued a statement about this particular video and said its basic tenets are accurate? Could you link that statement please.

As a side note and demonstrating just how in error and misconstrued statements in this video are, we cannot sell our souls. They belong to God.
 
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I am glad you have family open to talk about it :)))

I think it is sometimes easier to talk about God with some Atheists than Christians. And I find some Atheist more open to truth in faith than some Catholics (including myself).
 
Nitpicking about easily explained issues that they will refuse to believe any way even if it is explained to them. If you do not believe in the Church than leave those alone who do believe. You are crusading against something that you refuse to believe in for what reason? The condescending tone of people like this drive me crazy.
 
umamibella said:
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Juvenal:
The archdiocese has since confirmed the basic tenets of the video:
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The archdiocese has issued a statement about this particular video and said its basic tenets are accurate? Could you link that statement please.

As a side note and demonstrating just how in error and misconstrued statements in this video are, we cannot sell our souls. They belong to God.
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You’re responding to that link.

By recently watching a family video taken at the time of his baptism as an infant and then reading the note issued by the Vatican, Father Matthew Hood was devastated to learn that a deacon decided to change the proper words (formula) to baptism. Father Hood immediately contacted the Archdiocese and the proper steps were taken to remedy his situation. He has now been validly baptized, confirmed and ordained.


As a side note, atheists don’t generally believe in souls, and so when speaking of souls, are speaking metaphorically.

In any case, Mehta never claimed to be selling his soul in the auction, rather he sold the right to be sent to a church of the bidder’s choosing, which was enough for a media wit to engage the metaphor. Having been given the name, Mehta took advantage of the opportunity to write up and sell the stories of the churches he visited at the request of the winning bidder.

As a further side note, he donated the winning bid to his secular student alliance.

The auction was held in 2006 and unsurprisingly had nothing to do with the Vatican’s 2020 determination that baptisms such as Father Hood’s were invalid, or the consequences of that determination which amused Hemant Mehta into creating the o/p video.

On the one hand, I appreciate the painstaking care taken by Catholics to describe and defend their doctrines. On the other, with due respect to the sensitivities of Catholics, for a nonbeliever, this is hilarious. A deacon substituted the word “we” where doctrine declares he must say “I” and it’s off to the races.

For the want of a shoe the horse was lost,
For the want of a horse the rider was lost,
For the want of a rider the battle was lost,
For the want of a battle the kingdom was lost,
And all for the want of a horseshoe-nail.

Benjamin Franklin

Father Hood’s baptism was invalid, so the rest of his initiation sacraments were invalid, so his ordination was invalid, so the confessions he received were never absolved, so the last rites he delivered were not last rites, and now they’re all going to hell!

As I understand it from reading the statement linked above, the Archdiocese has offered a limited reassurance that while God’s mercy is indeed bound by the sacraments, it is not similarly constrained, and it is within God’s power to allow the dearly departed into the kingdom, with or without their horseshoe-nails.
 
Out of all that copy and paste there is no statement from the diocese about that particular video. The diocese has not endorsed that video from an atheist then.

Regardless what any human or organisation or institution thinks
our souls belong to God. We cannot sell them.
Juvenal said:
On the one hand, I appreciate the painstaking care taken by Catholics to describe and defend their doctrines. On the other, with due respect to the sensitivities of Catholics, for a nonbeliever, this is hilarious. A deacon substituted the word “we” where doctrine declares he must say “I” and it’s off to the races.
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Is this a quote or not, before I respond. There is a clear lack of education in the person/s finding it hilarious, in the difference between I and We. It is common, in my world, to come across this level of error and ill informed education in atheists regarding Catholic doctrine. I have these discussions with my atheist friends all the time. Its the same as not understanding the wording of a secular document, or omitting it, then finding out that wording really mattered later on. Unfortunately the secular person , recipient of the secular document that he did not understand just signed away the back paddock to BHP. Thats when it stops being hilarious.
In other words…words matter.

Benji Franklin, whoever he is, for all his poetry exercised poor judgement in horse husbandry if one horse throwing one shoe lost him a kingdom. Not very good battle tactics. He should also remember many battles can be lost, kingdoms can be lost in the course of winning the war.
 
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Since the “Friendly Atheist” is struggling with the calling to formal reconciliation, in particular penance, he struggles with reconciling his faults.

As for the greater log in his eye: since he is a declared atheist, he also struggles with recognizing his faults.

You are correct in that he lacks theological knowledge.
 
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I feel sorry for all of the people directly effected by this problem. Imagine how different their lives might be if they were validly Baptized, had their sins forgiven and received sacramental grace from Confession. Many missed out on the source and summit of our faith. I’m near tears when I contemplate these poor people.

The friendly atheist misconstrues the Churches effort to assure people that they received some measure of grace and offer some consolation to those effected with a denial of the necessity of the sacraments.
 
Obviously he’s biased, but his point is interesting:

If your religion has rules, but they can be suspended so often, at what point do we say “the rules must not really matter that much”?

Examples:
  • The RC church says only a validly-ordained priest can give Last Rites (which includes a deathbed confession of mortal sins), but if the “priest” turns out not to have been validly ordained - and therefore an actual absolution could not have been given - you couldn’t definitively declare the person was free of mortal sins, and if they’re not they’d be in hell. But in this case the diocese said: “Well, we’re sure God understood; maybe that rule won’t come into play here.” But officially there’s no guarantee of that. The Catechism says what it says about mortal sins.
  • The RC church says only a validly-ordained priest can absolve mortal sins in the confessional, but if there was really no absolution because the “priest” wasn’t ordained, again the diocese claimed “We’re sure God understood; there’s an exception here also.”
 
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I don’t think the Church actually says all the things you claim that it does.
 
MtnDwellar said:
I don’t think the Church actually says all the things you claim that it does.
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I believe the Catechism is very clear about the absolution of mortal sins. A layman can’t pronounce absolution. Please correct me if I’m wrong.
 
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Oh, how much we need the intercession of Our Blessed Mother…more rosaries and meditation on the holy mysteries, the life of Our Lord Jesus Christ!

In Sacred Scripture Our Lord Jesus Christ reminds us to pray for our enemies.

And, Dear Lord, enlighten the confused!

There is a huge spiritual warfare going on…let us increase the Light! The brighter the Light of Christ the more the darkness will recede!
 
Here’s where I think you’re wrong.
  • “Well, we’re sure God understood; maybe that rule won’t come into play here.”
  • “We’re sure God understood; there’s an exception here also.”
 
Aren’t EOs the same? Or do you all believe water baptism is absolutely necessary (administered by an Orthodox person only), etc. and those who have not received it are definitively excluded?

Our take does not seem novel, being found in the Fathers. God has establish the sacraments for our good and so spurning them would exclude us from their benefits. He has not established them as barriers to salvation, so that one who is seeking them, but is impeded through no fault of his own, is therefore necessarily deprived of benefits God intended for him.

I would think an EO person would understand this even more so, given the commonly employed principle of economia.
 
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ReaderT said:
Obviously he’s biased, but his point is interesting:

If your religion has rules, but they can be suspended so often, at what point do we say “the rules must not really matter that much”?

Examples:
  • The RC church says only a validly-ordained priest can give Last Rites (which includes a deathbed confession of mortal sins), but if the “priest” turns out not to have been validly ordained - and therefore an actual absolution could not have been given - you couldn’t definitively declare the person was free of mortal sins, and if they’re not they’d be in hell. But in this case the diocese said: “Well, we’re sure God understood; maybe that rule won’t come into play here.” But officially there’s no guarantee of that. The Catechism says what it says about mortal sins.
  • The RC church says only a validly-ordained priest can absolve mortal sins in the confessional, but if there was really no absolution because the “priest” wasn’t ordained, again the diocese claimed “We’re sure God understood; there’s an exception here also.”
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Your essential point of confusion is this:
The rules don’t exist for themselves as their purpose, point, meaning, or ultimate good. The “teleos” of the rules is not… the rules. Start with that correct assumption and the issue might make more sense.

Do you know what Church disciplines, and dogmas, or doctrines, point to? What do these serve?
 
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Juvenal said:
… the Archdiocese has offered a limited reassurance that while God’s mercy is indeed bound by the sacraments …
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Rereading, the Diocese’s language was that God is bound to the sacraments, but not bound by the sacraments. So yes, the lack of an I left the dearly departed souls without a guarantee of eternal reward, but not without hope.
 
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I find an important point to consider is that the Church knows that ultimately God knows where/who the fault and genuineness is found, yet it is still good to do our best to reconcile.
 
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