Is the Catholic church a force for good in the world?

[KrazyHorse]

No wonder women don't want anything to do with Ben.

[Ming]

That's how it works for Christians. Men have the responsibility to look after their family and support them. It's a privilege and a responsibility all at the same time.

Gee... woman don't have the same responsibility? What a pig. And stop speaking for ALL Christians. Most Christians aren't sexist pigs like you. Many understand real relationships.

[Ben Kenobi]

Wait until you have to deal with a real person that you love... then you will see what following the book gets you.

You seriously think I've never been in love? Honestly? Wow.

I've been very fortunate, Ming. No complaints there.

And stop speaking for ALL Christians. Most Christians aren't sexist pigs like you. Many understand real relationships.

Most Christians I know would be offended at your comments about the Good Book so far. You want to call yourself a Christian, feel free, I'm not going to argue otherwise.

As for a man supporting his family, yeah I think that should be my responsibility. I'd love to have a wife who didn't mind staying at home, while I fight the fires at the office everyday.

[SlowwHand]

Ben, what you say can be true, provided that two conditions are met.
A) Your wife is content as a homemaker.
B) Be aware that keeping her out of the workforce "at large" will likely impede her efforts at employment, should things ultimately not work out. Just another reason why a couple should hope it fails quickly, rather than after 20.


These aren't, and likely won't be the 50's, when a man takes a job and stays there 40 years and retires. If your wife works, you can go through rough times some easier, leaning on each other.

[Ming]

You seriously think I've never been in love? Honestly? Wow.

I've been very fortunate, Ming. No complaints there.

Then why aren't you still with the person... why aren't you married?

Most Christians I know would be offended at your comments about the Good Book so far.
You want to call yourself a Christian, feel free, I'm not going to argue otherwise.

Most Christians I know would be offended by your sexist comments... and would even be more so offended by many of your past blantant bigoted posts. They wouldn't consider you a true Christian.
And anybody that really understands what the "book" is saying would know that you obviously don't since you think it's your right to judge and condem others. True Christians preach love... you preach hate.

As for a man supporting his family, yeah I think that should be my responsibility. I'd love to have a wife who didn't mind staying at home, while I fight the fires at the office everyday.

Yep... keep em barefoot and pregnant... a real sexist pig.

[aneeshm]

Yes, you have a kindred spirit in Aneeshm who has previous expressed racist sentiments of his own..mostly relating to caste structure in India.

That would be a rather difficult thing to do, given that there aren't any racial differences between castes - regional variations in human biodiversty in India are far greater than inter-caste ones within the same region. I, for instance, am more closely racially related to the people from my region than to a person from the same caste from the north or south.

But right now, I've been put into the "unreconstituted Xist" category, which corresponds in your secularised Puritan moral structure to "unsaved sinner" in Protestantism, and "unconfessed, unbaptised sinner/unbeliever" in Catholicism. And a sinner is a sinner, so......

Given what I know about him, we can safely assume he's just as sexist as you are.

It's quite interesting you say that. That's like the old reasoning that an atheist, because he did not believe in God, was a lecherous libertine who would commit a murder and steal without a second thought.

Secondly, I'd like to know how you define sexist.

[Ben Kenobi]

Ben, what you say can be true, provided that two conditions are met.
A) Your wife is content as a homemaker.

Of course. I wouldn't do this if she weren't content to be at home.

B) Be aware that keeping her out of the workforce "at large" will likely impede her efforts at employment, should things ultimately not work out. Just another reason why a couple should hope it fails quickly, rather than after 20.

I personally know couples that are doing this and are quite happy with things.

[aneeshm]

Most Christians I know would be offended by your sexist comments... and would even be more so offended by many of your past blantant bigoted posts. They wouldn't consider you a true Christian.

Their opinions are irrelevant, really. Truth is not democratic. What Ben believes may not be true, but saying that many people disagree with him isn't a valid objection to it.

And anybody that really understands what the "book" is saying would know that you obviously don't since you think it's your right to judge and condem others. True Christians preach love... you preach hate.

I haven't seen this. Maybe I missed some threads. But that doesn't seem to be the case here.

Yep... keep em barefoot and pregnant... a real sexist pig.

Why do you always assume that everything the woman does is necessarily forced? Isn't it equally a form of brainwashing (that Ben has been accused of) to constantly tell a woman that she is utterly worthless if she does not work in a specific way, and devaluing those who stay at home? I think you'd agree that that is pretty much what the popular culture has done for the last twenty-five years.

Personally, I favour people making their own choices. But I want them to be informed choices.

As I see it, women face a choice something like this:

a) A successful career,
b) A home,
c) Personal contentment, happiness, and satisfaction

Choose any two.

It is the myth that all three are simultaneously possible - that it is possible for anybody to be at the same time a successful man and a happy woman - which is responsible for the tremendous social instability and degeneration you see around you today. If this choice were made consciously and with full awareness of what it entails, we'd see far less discontent.

If women choose careers and find their contentment with that, so be it. I am not going to condemn of judge them for it. If that is what their nature inclines them to, it is better they do that, instead of being at home and discontented. But they should do this with the full awareness that the cost of this is the rhythm, regularity, and stability of the life of the home, and the home itself. This cost is borne by both the husband and the wife in psychological terms and the children in their growth - they grow up essentially without parents or a nurturing home environment.

Again, I must note here that I have no problem with women making this choice, just that it should be made consciously and with full awareness of the consequences.

[aneeshm]

Your ideas are every bit as backwards as Ben's.

I don't quite understand. I'm not a believer, nor a Christian, nor do I necessarily agree with Ben. I'm simply saying that he isn't some sort of sinful monster, the way you're making him out to me throughout this thread. I haven't seen him express a sentiment which I consider abhorrent. Your intolerance towards how he should structure his religious organisation, though, and your personal hatred towards him, shown in the way you talk, is pretty obvious.

I agree that he may sometimes make universal claims - but that's what separation of Church and State is for - so that multiple people who disagree can get along without having to worry about what the state will impose on them.

I have no doubt, though, that given enough time, you in your orgiastic pious frenzy as a crusader for modernism would have no problem outlawing male-only priesthoods. (Note that I don't mean you specifically, so please don't take this personally, just that this attitude has that as its end.)

Just because a woman voluntarily puts herself in a position, brainwashed by faith, to be a second-class member of a partnership doesn't preclude it from being sexist.

Again, that's not really what I'm talking about.

The concept of class doesn't come into it. (The idea that both bear equally the image of God precludes that in the religious case, and it is trivial to translate that into a secular equivalent - it is in its Puritan-Universalist form what you use as the basis, after all, for your own arguments.) Now, you're free to think that it is all about class and domination and a conflict of wills and whatnot, but at this point you're degenerating into a religious faith of your own, and criticising some monstrous product of your own imagination, not anything I have said.

(That product, by the way, is quite monstrous, and deserving of criticism. But it simply isn't what I'm talking about.)

[aneeshm]

And why is that... simply because you are male? Yep... a sexist pig! Thanks for proving it to all of us yet again.

Again, I think Ben is doing a very, very bad job of qualifying his statements, which is why they lead to (probably justified) misunderstandings like this.

As far as I can make out, the Christian position is that in certain matters relating to the structure of family life, more specifically relating to the relationship of the couple to God and his commandments, and the steering of that relationship in that direction, the man has decision-making authority. This is simply part of a pre-defined parcelling of responsibilities and authorities. This is most emphatically not a universal veto and controlling power over everything in the couple's life.

Another point to note here that this is not forced upon anybody. A woman knows of this before her marriage. And given that the woman have made an informed choice as I mentioned above, I see nothing wrong with what Ben is saying. It's a preference some men and women have, and they're happy with it. What, then, if your problem?


More generally, this is one example of the distribution of sovereignty within a relationship I mentioned earlier. There are many possible ways of distributing authority and responsibility within a marriage, so as to preclude marital discord by eliminating conflict before it can occur, by making the decision of one person count as final - by definition - on a given topic, and deciding on a case-by-case basis who that person should be for a given topic. The Christian way of doing so is one of them. If some woman does not agree with it, she is free to simply not enter a relationship where that is the way it is done. Again, I have to ask you, what is your problem?



Now, those "what are your problem" were rhetorical - I don't want to be confrontational, because that reduces the quality of discussion. But I'm also genuinely curious - if a woman makes an informed choice about what the husband will be sovereign in and what she will be sovereign in, and both are happy with that, what is so sexist about it? In fact, even if there is hypothetically some sexist component to the decision-making process, if both are still happy with it, I fail to see the problem.

[aneeshm]

Gee... woman don't have the same responsibility? What a pig. And stop speaking for ALL Christians. Most Christians aren't sexist pigs like you. Many understand real relationships.

As I've said previously, if the couple decided together that it's the man's responsibility, then it's the man's responsibility. I don't think you'd have a problem with an informed choice.

[Ben Kenobi]

Then why aren't you still with the person... why aren't you married?

Nosy nosy.

Most Christians I know would be offended by your sexist comments... and would even be more so offended by many of your past blantant bigoted posts. They wouldn't consider you a true Christian.
And anybody that really understands what the "book" is saying would know that you obviously don't since you think it's your right to judge and condem others. True Christians preach love... you preach hate.

Where am I preaching hate for folks who choose another way? I've explicitly said that these teachings are for Christians only. The only one who's doing any condemnation is you because I've expressed an opinion you happen to find offensive.

I seriously am not troubled if you choose a different way of doing things, it's your life, your marriage. All I ask is that you respect my opinion. I do not appreciate the ridicule and it simply tarnishes your position.

Yep... keep em barefoot and pregnant... a real sexist pig.

Don't they have shoes down there, or do they only sell them to working people?

[Ben Kenobi]

As far as I can make out, the Christian position is that in certain matters relating to the structure of family life, more specifically relating to the relationship of the couple to God and his commandments, and the steering of that relationship in that direction, the man has decision-making authority. This is simply part of a pre-defined parcelling of responsibilities and authorities. This is most emphatically not a universal veto and controlling power over everything in the couple's life.

Exactly, thank you. This is all supposed to be worked out before hand.

[KrazyHorse]

View Post Old November 19, 2009, 03:21
Remove user from ignore list
aneeshm
This message is hidden because aneeshm is on your ignore list.
View Post Old November 19, 2009, 03:28
Remove user from ignore list
Ben Kenobi
This message is hidden because Ben Kenobi is on your ignore list.
View Post Old November 19, 2009, 03:39
Remove user from ignore list
aneeshm
This message is hidden because aneeshm is on your ignore list.
View Post Old November 19, 2009, 03:41
Remove user from ignore list
aneeshm
This message is hidden because aneeshm is on your ignore list.
View Post Old November 19, 2009, 03:56
Remove user from ignore list
aneeshm
This message is hidden because aneeshm is on your ignore list.
View Post Old November 19, 2009, 04:07
Remove user from ignore list
aneeshm
This message is hidden because aneeshm is on your ignore list.
View Post Old November 19, 2009, 04:15
Remove user from ignore list
Ben Kenobi
This message is hidden because Ben Kenobi is on your ignore list.
View Post Old November 19, 2009, 04:17
Remove user from ignore list
Ben Kenobi
This message is hidden because Ben Kenobi is on your ignore list.

I disagree.

[rah]

The real amusement will be
1. If Ben ever finds someone that will put up with his sexist crap and agrees to marry him.
2. He has to go to pre-cana prior.
3. In that class they preach about that these days there is no master of the house and that both partners are really equal despite what it says in "THE BOOK" And that's what makes a truly successful marriage.

I doubt that has changed in the last 23 years since I was married.
Anybody else that had to go through pre-canna here remember this important part?

Of course this event will probably never happen for Ben so will go to his grave continuing to believe his sexist crap.