Apple CEO Tpm Cook come outs

[MOON Ki]

Putting aside a discussion so that you could accuse Christians and your discussion partner of hypocrisy (itself a slander) is nothing short of resorting to ad hominem when you have no more to say, so you attack the person instead of the arguments they are making.

Oh, I do have a lot to say, but, as I pointed out, it seemed to me that we are at the point where I was dealing with an impervious religious wall and that I would simply get the standard line regardless of what I wrote.   It was, however, not my attention to launch a personal attack ... unless you want to include yourself in my target of hypocritical Christians.   And them I attack on the basis of hard, historical facts.

The "facts" about clergy abuse are irrelevant,

We'll have to disagree on that one.    To repeat my view: here's a thread on some fellow announcing that he's a homosexual; somehow it is claimed that the point of the announcement is to let the world know that he's supposedly doing it with another guy; and before one can say "what the!", the Christian and Catholic churches have been thrown in.    In such circumstances, it seems to me quite appropriate to say "wow, wow, wow!   wait a minute!   you mean those allegedly holy types that have been sticking it to little boys?   those are the ones upset about two guys doing it?"   

Moonki, this is where I got that "weird" remark about what you said about

A more serious problem, especially for those of us who have left the Christian church or who would not think of joining it, is that a great deal of what is said and done seems to have forgotten the "Christ" in "Christian".   Hardly anyone seems to reflect on the essence of Christ's message ...

Don't know why you felt the need to share that, but like I said, in the context of the discussion we were having, it was indeed strange.

Please go back and carefully read what I wrote:

"What makes you so sure that (a) I am not a Christian and (b), if not,  that I would not want to be one?"

and before it, the bit that you quote:

"a great deal of what is said and done seems to have forgotten the 'Christ' in 'Christian'.   Hardly anyone seems to reflect on the essence of Christ's message"

As for the need to "share it", that one's simple: to indicate that my observations on the hypocrisy of holy-holy "Christians" are "first-hand".   

[vooke]

MooonKi,
How has child abuse in the Catholic Church got anything to do with Catholic stand on homosexuality?
It is not a rule, it is a deviation and they speak against it. They may have erred in the last and they will continue erring, but that don't mean they can't take a stand against a practice.

Same case with adultery. It is rampant but it is still condemned. Catholicism and by extension Christianity does not derive authority from what they keep without fail. All of the 10 commandments are ever so often broken by Christians. May be we should discard them

There are no religious walls anywhere near what kadame said. And she has rightfully called out your personal attacks. There is everything wrong with homosexuality just as there is with beastiality and I will not cease preaching this.

Putting aside a discussion so that you could accuse Christians and your discussion partner of hypocrisy (itself a slander) is nothing short of resorting to ad hominem when you have no more to say, so you attack the person instead of the arguments they are making.

Oh, I do have a lot to say, but, as I pointed out, it seemed to me that we are at the point where I was dealing with an impervious religious wall and that I would simply get the standard line regardless of what I wrote.   It was, however, not my attention to launch a personal attack ... unless you want to include yourself in my target of hypocritical Christians.   And them I attack on the basis of hard, historical facts.

The "facts" about clergy abuse are irrelevant,

We'll have to disagree on that one.    To repeat my view: here's a thread on some fellow announcing that he's a homosexual; somehow it is claimed that the point of the announcement is to let the world know that he's supposedly doing it with another guy; and before one can say "what the!", the Christian and Catholic churches have been thrown in.    In such circumstances, it seems to me quite appropriate to say "wow, wow, wow!   wait a minute!   you mean those allegedly holy types that have been sticking it to little boys?   those are the ones upset about two guys doing it?"   

Moonki, this is where I got that "weird" remark about what you said about

A more serious problem, especially for those of us who have left the Christian church or who would not think of joining it, is that a great deal of what is said and done seems to have forgotten the "Christ" in "Christian".   Hardly anyone seems to reflect on the essence of Christ's message ...

Don't know why you felt the need to share that, but like I said, in the context of the discussion we were having, it was indeed strange.

Please go back and carefully read what I wrote:

"What makes you so sure that (a) I am not a Christian and (b), if not,  that I would not want to be one?"

and before it, the bit that you quote:

"a great deal of what is said and done seems to have forgotten the 'Christ' in 'Christian'.   Hardly anyone seems to reflect on the essence of Christ's message"

As for the need to "share it", that one's simple: to indicate that my observations on the hypocrisy of holy-holy "Christians" are "first-hand".   

[Kim Jong-Un's Pajama Pants]

I think as long as the law protects him, that should be enough.  I get the impression that a lot of gays not only want protection of the law, but that we also appreciate the lifestyle.  That for me is where I draw the line. 

I dont think its as much "appreciate the lifestyle" as it is to accept them as equals..... The law has always been there but so is the intolerance. We do not have to like or appreciate that lifestyle but thier rights we must defend , as well as accept them as whole individials with all the complexities that come with it.

Whether one accepts them as equals, whatever that means, seems like a question left up to the individual.  The most one can ask is that their rights be protected and I agree with that.

I know plenty of people that will have nothing to do with married people, especially those with kids.  They ostracize them and do not invite them to events.  And vice versa.  And life goes on.

[Kim Jong-Un's Pajama Pants]

This is a very unfortunate comment from somebody like you. FYI being gay does not neccesarily equate to having sex with a person of same gender.

We live in a very judgmental world when rumor mills go overdrive of persons sexuality. Especially prominent people. most gay people would like to keep it private but the rumor mills and pressure from within and without forces them to declare it in the open.

That is the one problem I have with gays.  The in your-face reminders.  I barely think of what my presumedly straight colleagues sleep with.  But a gay wants you to know he is getting jiggly with another man.

Some people are just not interested.  It's not the same as hate.

Jakoyo,

Passing judgment on a question like this is futile.  People can barely agree on what constitutes good weather, let alone whether two men should be going at it.

When someone comes out, they expose themselves to the repurcursions depending on the culture of their societies.  I think I have the right to tell Cook, now that he came out, that I don't care for his lifestyle, without infringing on his rights.

We have different capacities to deal with differences.  You don't have to like or tolerate everything about everyone. 

In the US we can ask that gays be granted the same rights as everyone else.  In Kenya, they are happy to get away without a lynching.

My real beef is that there are far more serious issues deserving urgent attention than how Mr. Cook feels the straight should treat gays. I am assuming the man is somewhere in San Francisco or its whereabouts.

[veritas]

I don't think what he did was a wise business move. Some conservative factions might boycott Apple products...

[MOON Ki]

MooonKi,
How has child abuse in the Catholic Church got anything to do with Catholic stand on homosexuality?
It is not a rule, it is a deviation and they speak against it. They may have erred in the last and they will continue erring, but that don't mean they can't take a stand against a practice.

I have already tried to explain that, in particular the holy-holy ranting against male-male sex when their own religious leaders are at it like there is no tomorrow.    I can't do any more by way of explaining if people simply refuse to accept well-known facts.  Of course, Catholics are free to take a stand.   And we are free to point out the hypocrisy; so people should not get so worked up when we do.

[kadame]

MooonKi,
How has child abuse in the Catholic Church got anything to do with Catholic stand on homosexuality?
It is not a rule, it is a deviation and they speak against it. They may have erred in the last and they will continue erring, but that don't mean they can't take a stand against a practice.

I have already tried to explain that, in particular the holy-holy ranting against male-male sex when their own religious leaders are at it like there is no tomorrow.    I can't do any more by way of explaining if people simply refuse to accept well-known facts.  Of course, Catholics are free to take a stand.   And we are free to point out the hypocrisy; so people should not get so worked up when we do.

So it was me you were calling a hypocrite, after all. How dare I say I am against male-male sex when there are pedophile, homosexual priests in this world? Don't I know ""my place" as a Catholic?

Male-male sex is disgusting, whether both or either is adult or child, but outrageous when one is a child and the other an adult, whether either participant is catholic or atheist, whether they are a lay man or clergy and pedophilia knows no niche, it's there in every religious and secular institution involving children.

Your claim about hypocrisy is amazing. Call me a hypocrite when you catch me getting it on with some chick in a dark alley. Otherwise, what you are doing is transferring someone else's sins to me and other Catholics and using these "sins by proxy" to assign this fake label of hypocrisy, which is just ad hominems, a ruse to launch personal attacks.

FYI, No catholic is a catholic because of some priest, I certainly am not Catholic because I am under some delusion that priests are sinless. My being catholic has zero to do with any priest in this world, but my belief in Jesus Christ; no catholic rejects homosexual practices because they think their priest is holy, but because God says its evil, so your claim of hypocrisy makes no sense.

By all means, feel free to call those pedophile priests hypocrites to your heart's content, I will gladly join in that they are, like Judas Iscariot. The rest of us you are calling hypocrites, including the 98% of our clergy who are innocent, are victims of your slander and your anti-Christian and anti-Catholic animus. A man that holds 1.2 billion Catholics responsible for the sins of 2% of clergy. Prejudice and bigotry masquerading as righteous indignation in a protest about bigotry---Now that is hypocrisy!

[MOON Ki]

Kadame:

What slander are you on about?   The facts I pointed out are well known.  What's more, they are just a continuation of the depravity that has always existed in the leadership of the Catholic Church (and at the highest levels).   What are your thoughts on the debauchery of people like Pope Alexander VI (aka Rodrigo Borgia)?  And he was far from alone in papal depravity. 

[kadame]

Kadame:

What slander are you on about?   The facts I pointed out are well known.  What's more, they are just a continuation of the depravity that has always existed in the leadership of the Catholic Church (and at the highest levels).   What are your thoughts on the debauchery of people like Pope Alexander VI (aka Rodrigo Borgia)?  And he was far from alone in papal depravity.

You accused us of hypocrisy for believing that homosexual sex is sinful and daring to state so, now are you calling every catholic who is against gay sex a pedophile? If not, then lets see you explain why you feel entitled to insult 1.2 billion people or anyone who disagrees with you on homosexuality, labelling them hypoctrites.

About that dead pope you mention; Of the 266 popes who have graced the church in 2 millenia, do you know of any others apart from the 8 infamous "bad popes" everyone talks about? More to the point, am I somehow "guilty" of his sins by proxy?  If not, feel free to explain to me what his sins have to do with my belief that homosexuality is a sin. Interesting how you have felt free to shout "irrelevant" while engaging in it without batting an eyelid. 

[MOON Ki]

You accused us of hypocrisy for believing that homosexual sex is sinful and daring to state so, now are you calling every catholic who is against gay sex a pedophile? If not, then lets see you explain why you feel entitled to insult 1.2 billion people or anyone who disagrees with you on homosexuality, labelling them hypoctrites.

"calling every catholic who is against gay sex a pedophile"?  That sort of emotional hyperbole is unhelpful and makes it near-impossible for us to have a reasonable discussion.   What I have indicated is that the Catholic church has a long history as a den of sin, led by the thoroughly immoral popes.   I have then suggested that some internal "house-cleaning" would be in order before those folks rush to condemn this and that.      What is so unreasonable about that?

[kadame]

You accused us of hypocrisy for believing that homosexual sex is sinful and daring to state so, now are you calling every catholic who is against gay sex a pedophile? If not, then lets see you explain why you feel entitled to insult 1.2 billion people or anyone who disagrees with you on homosexuality, labelling them hypoctrites.

"calling every catholic who is against gay sex a pedophile"?  That sort of emotional hyperbole is unhelpful and makes it near-impossible for us to have a reasonable discussion.   What I have indicated is that the Catholic church has a long history as a den of sin, led by the thoroughly immoral popes.   I have then suggested that some internal "house-cleaning" would be in order before those folks rush to condemn this and that.      What is so unreasonable about that?

Actually, emotional hyperbole is exactly what you have resorted all over the place once you had no more to say with regards to the actual topics in discussion. Now, the catholic church has never claimed to be free of sinners, and no catholic has made that claim on any topic in which you have rushed in with your arsenal of "catholic priests are pedophiles! let catholics shut up!" and similar weapons of "debate".

You have repeatedly expressed here your annoyance at catholics who express their stance against homosexuality because "their priests" are pedophiles, and you just admitted to vooke that you think these catholics are hypocrites for daring to have an opinion when there are pedophile priests in existence. I am simply asking you to defend your insinuations that I and every catholic who shares my opinion is a "hypocrite". Is it that we state that homosexuality is ok if it is done by a priest? Is it that we ourselves are pedophiles or practicing homosexuals? I just want to know your basis for this sweeping generalization of yours.

You have even sought to continue with that strange line of argument by digging up some medieval pope as if that somehow supports your remarks about catholics like me who think gay sex is sinful. You then call this "emotional hyperbole", like you called my arguments yesterday "an impervious religious wall". Asi!!! Wacha tu!

[MOON Ki]

Actually, emotional hyperbole is exactly what you have resorted all over the place once you had no more to say with regards to the actual topics in discussion. Now, the catholic church has never claimed to be free of sinners, and no catholic has made that claim on any topic in which you have rushed in with your arsenal of "catholic priests are pedophiles! let catholics shut up!" and similar weapons of "debate".

What emotional hyperbole?   Some guy told the world that he is gay, and some people jumped in with Christianity, Catholics, etc.    I have responded by simply noting  well-known historical facts and connecting those to current hypocrisy.     Do I expect those who dragged in religion to cheerfully accept the hard  facts I have presented?   Of course not; they are not the most pleasant of facts.   But I do hope that my detractors will at least acknowledge the significance of some of my comments:

(a) An immoral pope is not just some regular" member of the church who happens to sin.   One must keep in mind that he is the leader and, especially for Catholics, is in a very powerful position: stuff about infallibility and so on.

(b) The priests who have recently been unearthed as pedophiles were always protected by the church leadership, which simply bribed the victims to be silent and then moved the priests elsewhere to continue their nasty activities. The leadership is as guilty as those who used the "confession box" to rape little boys. 

(c) The rot is actually very deeply rooted in the history of the church and its leadership, and it is this history---right up to today---that Catholics need to first deal with before they run around looking for folks to stone.

Continuing with the historical connection ... RE: "some medieval pope"

I mentioned Alexander only because he seems to have been an "outstanding papal example", with his uncontrolled fucking, murders, and greed for money.  An "all-rounder" in iniquity, one might say. 

But there are other popes who similarly "distinguished" themselves.   For example, in the matter of just fucking, I think it would be hard to beat the record of Pope John XII, who had them coming and going at such a rate that it is said the Vatican resembled a brothel.  I don't know if James Brown was a Catholic, but this pope very much fits his "Sex Machine" song.   He seems to have operated on the principle that if anyone  could be still for long enough, he'd plug them.  Who or what didn't matter; any and all most welcome.    A real "equal-opportunity" kind of guy.

Not surprisingly, his death was at the end of a knife wielded by a fellow who caught the "celibate" Holy Father in the act of blessing his wife with the papal tarimbo.  Still, perhaps the pope had been dealt a bad hand right from the start: his father also happened to be his grandfather, and one of the women he regularly fucked was his own mother.    He could well be pope who established papal incest as "acceptable".

Since we are here discussing homosexuality and the alleged upright & historical attitudes of the Catholic church, it is worth noting that there is the official attitude and there is the hidden attitude.    The latter generally starts with  Pope Benedict IX who fucked large numbers of both men and women, and, for good measure and a change of pace, sometimes threw in the odd animal.   His own successor (to whom he sold the papacy) accused him of numerous rapes and murders.

Pope Sixtus IV too "distinguished" himself in ways that are relevant to this thread, i.e. fucking men in addition to women.   As regards the latter, even his own sister was fair game.   

People know of the recent Pope John XXIII, but the 15th Century one with the same name wins on "colourful style".  The Vatican Council----his fellow shepherds of the flock!---threw him out of office, on charges that included heresy, simony, schism and immorality; the last of these consisted of  piracy, rape, sodomy, murder and incest. He was found guilty on all charges.   And people think there's too much depravity in today's world!

On such men, referred to as the Vicars of Christ--and supposedly infallible!---is founded the Roman Catholic Church.    True, times have changed, and it is no longer acceptable for the leadership to show a cavalier attitude and lead-from-the-front in indulging in  rape, murder, incest, sodomy, bestiality, etc.   But the roots remain, which is why, until they were caught, the church leadership went to such lengths to protect priests raping little boys.   

[vooke]

Catholicism is not hypocritical by taking a stand against a practice that is 'rampant' in its rank and file. Your condition for hypocrisy is there be no faggotry in the church, only then can they talk.

 Digging history don't help your cause. America recently practiced slavery and after that racial discrimination. Do they NOW have a voice on matters racism or modern slavery?

Jesus walked with a thief as part of his twelve and had he not betrayed his master, he'd have been an apostle just like others. Was he hypocritical?

You are confusing prefection with hypocrisy...that's a strawman. Catholics would be hypocritical if they CONDONED faggotry in ANY way but went ahead and crucified Cook, and you would be a hypocrite if outside this place you spew venom against booty warriors. In short hypocrisy is INCONSISTENCY in speech or conduct over a specific matter

Shining examples of hypocrisy is US blackmailing Uganda to shoot down its sex bill that criminalizes homosexuality but doing NOTHING about Muslim countries where the same is done. We all know Psama is busy fighting extremism fires by masking all appearances of hostility towards Islam hence his stance.  Another one is UNSC. They referred Butcher Bashir over Darfur but have done nothing over Syria's atrocities which are of a higher magnitude

MooonKi,
How has child abuse in the Catholic Church got anything to do with Catholic stand on homosexuality?
It is not a rule, it is a deviation and they speak against it. They may have erred in the last and they will continue erring, but that don't mean they can't take a stand against a practice.

I have already tried to explain that, in particular the holy-holy ranting against male-male sex when their own religious leaders are at it like there is no tomorrow.    I can't do any more by way of explaining if people simply refuse to accept well-known facts.  Of course, Catholics are free to take a stand.   And we are free to point out the hypocrisy; so people should not get so worked up when we do.

[MOON Ki]

Catholicism is not hypocritical by taking a stand against a practice that is 'rampant' in its rank and file. Your condition for hypocrisy is there be no faggotry in the church, only then can they talk.

 Digging history don't help your cause. America recently practiced slavery and after that racial discrimination. Do they NOW have a voice on matters racism or modern slavery?

Jesus walked with a thief as part of his twelve and had he not betrayed his master, he'd have been an apostle just like others. Was he hypocritical?

You are confusing prefection with hypocrisy...that's a strawman. Catholics would be hypocritical if they CONDONED faggotry in ANY way but went ahead and crucified Cook, and you would be a hypocrite if outside this place you spew venom against booty warriors. In short hypocrisy is INCONSISTENCY

Vooke:

I have no "cause".   I am simply trying to point out that those who wish to make objections on the basis of "Christianity" and "Catholicism" do not exactly have a leg to stand on. 

Regarding your comment on "rank and file": my point about the popes is precisely that they are hardly the "rank and file"---take a look at the church dogma, even of today---nor is today's church leadership that for long went out of its way to protect the "rank and file" who, for years and years, raped little boys.   And taking a stand only when they get caught at it is the sort of thing I consider hypocritical.   In other words, Catholics need to look deeply at the historical roots that have led to the current situation and, before they run around condemning others, first clean up their own house.

It is interesting that you should mention Jesus.  It seems, and you do indicate, that he accepted all sorts.   There's a lesson there for today's holy-holy types, w.r.t to those whose behavior they don't like; perhaps the lives of their own infallible Vicars of Christ, especially those who fucked anything and everything,  could provide a useful lesson.   Jesus also said something about specks and logs in the eye.   Perhaps they could first deal with their own logs and then get worked up about specks elsewhere.   

[vooke]

My grouse with Catholicism is not existence of child abuse inside its heirachies but the shameless protection afforded these guys even after they had been reported. That's what needs to change. I have dealt with spiritual abuse even among evangelicals where the laity is taught to protect the Man of God even in crime. That needs to change.

Again my broda you are implying that Catholicism can only speak after they have looked at their historical roots. That's simply blackmailing the institution using its sordid history to silence it. May be Germany should never speak against antisemitism seeing Hitler was German.  There is NOTHING the Catholic Church can do about its past except pick lessons and run. The child abuse scandal am sure has been a wake up call, protecting sex pests is VERY expensive

About Jesus, before you label me liberal, I merely meant to suggest that shortcomings on church leadership don't make them acceptable. If homosexuals and beastiality masters want Christ, they must be told that those are an abomination before God. This is not a guilt trip to tempt them to change, it is the Truth

Catholicism is not hypocritical by taking a stand against a practice that is 'rampant' in its rank and file. Your condition for hypocrisy is there be no faggotry in the church, only then can they talk.

 Digging history don't help your cause. America recently practiced slavery and after that racial discrimination. Do they NOW have a voice on matters racism or modern slavery?

Jesus walked with a thief as part of his twelve and had he not betrayed his master, he'd have been an apostle just like others. Was he hypocritical?

You are confusing prefection with hypocrisy...that's a strawman. Catholics would be hypocritical if they CONDONED faggotry in ANY way but went ahead and crucified Cook, and you would be a hypocrite if outside this place you spew venom against booty warriors. In short hypocrisy is INCONSISTENCY

Vooke:

I have no "cause".   I am simply trying to point out that those who wish to make objections on the basis of "Christianity" and "Catholicism" do not exactly have a leg to stand on. 

Regarding your comment on "rank and file": my point about the popes is precisely that they are hardly the "rank and file"---take a look at the church dogma, even of today---nor is today's church leadership that for long went out of its way to protect the "rank and file" who, for years and years, raped little boys.   And taking a stand only when they get caught at it is the sort of thing I consider hypocritical.   In other words, Catholics need to look deeply at the historical roots that have led to the current situation and, before they run around condemning others, first clean up their own house.

It is interesting that you should mention Jesus.  It seems, and you do indicate, that he accepted all sorts.   There's a lesson there for today's holy-holy types, w.r.t to those whose behavior they don't like; perhaps the lives of their own infallible Vicars of Christ, especially those who fucked anything and everything,  could provide a useful lesson.   Jesus also said something about specks and logs in the eye.   Perhaps they could first deal with their own logs and then get worked up about specks elsewhere.   

[kadame]

Actually, emotional hyperbole is exactly what you have resorted all over the place once you had no more to say with regards to the actual topics in discussion. Now, the catholic church has never claimed to be free of sinners, and no catholic has made that claim on any topic in which you have rushed in with your arsenal of "catholic priests are pedophiles! let catholics shut up!" and similar weapons of "debate".

What emotional hyperbole?   Some guy told the world that he is gay, and some people jumped in with Christianity, Catholics, etc.   

vooke introduced the catholic church on a very small point and I responded to him on it and moved on about religions in general. That you latched on to that to fire away shows how disproportionate and biased you are. Yu see "catholic" and all your mind sees is "Pedophile" no matter what the point is in discussion.

I have responded by simply noting  well-known historical facts and connecting those to current hypocrisy.     Do I expect those who dragged in religion to cheerfully accept the hard  facts I have presented?   Of course not; they are not the most pleasant of facts.   But I do hope that my detractors will at least acknowledge the significance of some of my comments:

You made an accusation that we are hypocrites and up till now you are dancing around the topic because you realize your mistake but are too proud to admit it. Explain to me how I am a hypocrite? Do I condone sins in myself or our clergy that I disdain in others? I hope you finally get around to answering it.

(a) An immoral pope is not just some regular" member of the church who happens to sin.   One must keep in mind that he is the leader and, especially for Catholics, is in a very powerful position: stuff about infallibility and so on.

Your posts keep getting more and more interesting. Are you saying that catholic faith teaches/believes that popes are exempt from sin? What do you think infallibility has to do with how holy or rotten a pope is?

(b) The priests who have recently been unearthed as pedophiles were always protected by the church leadership, which simply bribed the victims to be silent and then moved the priests elsewhere to continue their nasty activities. The leadership is as guilty as those who used the "confession box" to rape little boys.

Again with your generalizations. Those priests were not protected by "church leadership". There were bishops who actually did their jobs without any problems, mind you. Those who protected those priests, like the pedophiles themselves, are a minority in the episcopacy. But who expects you to care, if your sole purpose is to paint all catholic clergy with the same broad brush so that you can use it as a ruse to engage your bigotry while pretending to be above it?

(c) The rot is actually very deeply rooted in the history of the church and its leadership, and it is this history---right up to today---that Catholics need to first deal with before they run around looking for folks to stone.

I have news for you; Rot is deeply rooted in any organization with the membership of earthly humans. You are trying to show rot is ALL there is in the catholic church, though, a simple thing called demonization. We have seen it precede all forms of group hate in History, some of which lead to persecution, civil wars, even genocide. The church has housed sinners as well as incredibly good and decent human beings, who by far have been the majority--big deal. Do you perhaps know of any institution of a few centuries that has been miraculously exempted from evil membership?

Continuing with the historical connection ... RE: "some medieval pope"

I asked you if you know of any popes among the 266, apart from the 8 "worst", that you have strangely pinpointed as representative of both that office and the church in general. There have been incredibly holy popes in our history, many many of them, but noooo. The 8 worst are the ones you will pick on to malign all the rest. Proof that your interest here is an anti-Catholic animus, with no interest at all in truth or fairness.

[kadame]

vooke, thanks! I agree with you that the protection and shuffling around of criminal clergy is an outrage and should not be condoned. When a clergy-man does something sinful, his guilt is not diminished because he's clergy; in God's eyes, it is compounded, because apart from that particular sin, he has also betrayed the trust of his flock that God has entrusted to him.

MOONKi is calling us hypcrites and when asked to show in what way, all he can do is find a bad catholic to point at and say "Look! A horrible catholic!" or "Look! A horrible catholic clergy-man!", in effect, he is holding us responsible for their sins and then using them to claim we are hypcrites. Hypocrisy, as you rightly pointed out is inconsistency. So if MOONKi caught me performing sexual acts on my female friends, he could legitimately throw that label at me. Instead, he is trying to say that catholics have no right to their own faith until the day all catholic clergymen are saints. In the other thread he did the same about pastors. I wonder which other group he holds up to that standard? Is it just Christians?

[kadame]

It is interesting that you should mention Jesus.  It seems, and you do indicate, that he accepted all sorts.   There's a lesson there for today's holy-holy types, w.r.t to those whose behavior they don't like

The idea is that Jesus accepted sinners therefore he condoned their sins. Christians should therefore forget there is such a thing as sin. People need to actually pick up the Gospels and read them before they impute their favorite modern causes and attitudes to Jesus. Jesus loved everyone, indeed. Yet he was absolutely intolerant to their sins. He would've gladly embraced any homosexual, but the idea he would have said "go ahead and get jiggy wit your boyfriend, that's cool with me" is pure fantasy; something someone is projecting onto the man.

Likely he would've told him "Leave everything behind and follow me" or as he said to the adulterous woman "Go and sin no more", or if the person was already converted in his heart, he might have said of him as he said of the prostitute who washed his feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair, "Because she has loved much, her sins though many, are forgiven her". Nowhere does he suggest that adultery, prostitution or anything else has ceased to be sin.

Yes, Jesus very lovingly dealt with all sorts of sinners, but he always led them to conversion, to turning away from their sinful lifestyles. So people who bring him up in this discussion usually surprise me as to the point they are making. We are to love sinners and hate the sin, that is the rule. When we hate sinners, we go against Christ; When we love sin, we go against Christ. Moreover, when we ourselves sin, we go against Christ and we seek mercy in Christ; the very same place we are to lead that fellow sinner whom Christ has commanded us to love.

You are telling us to love the sin of gay sex in the name of Jesus. That is very weird.

[Kim Jong-Un's Pajama Pants]

The way I understand MOON Ki, who I happen to believe is a Christian.  That some institutions among the biggest stone throwers against gays have no credibility to moralize about the subject.

He is not saying to anyone to quit the church.  But rather calling for introspection in those institutions.  I believe credibility goes a long way on moral questions. 

I am shocked by some of the revelations about some of the popes.

[Omollo]

vooke and Kadame

I have this problem and let me try to be as simple as possible (for a Luo!):

1. Christianity, Islam, The Legal Fraternity etc are "institutions" or entities with an identity composed of values, limitations, idiosyncrasies, etc that clearly separate them from other entities. For example there are certain preconditions a person seeking to be called "Lawyer" or "Advocate" is expected to fulfill and maintain. If one fails to meet those preconditions there is no expectation of becoming a Lawyer or Advocate!

2. Similarly Christianity has an identity. Like Judaism that came before it, it has clear limits stating who can be a member and who cannot. These preconditions are the sine qua non for appropriate worship. In other words, a member cannot be said to have worshipped if he does not meet the basic preconditions for membership. Be it the confession of sins, baptism, renunciation of former beliefs etc.

That said, upon what basis would an "outsider" seek to have the Law Society bend its rules to accommodate him? Can one ask the Church to water down its requirements for proper worship to accommodate him?

I came over this discussion sometime in Europe where Gays disagreed when it came to prescribing to the Church how it should conduct its business.

I may ask Moon Ki whether Gays could consider setting up their own Churches where they can freely worship as they see fit, rather than forcing others to change they way they should worship.

I don't consider my views homophobic since this remains a very tough debate within the gay community as well. It falls in line with my previous views on freedom and free choice, where I do not believe in imposing one's will on a free people.