The Catholic Church is definitely not to blame for this!

[Elok]

Seriously, the choice for religious people is clear - you either do things that you question morally as a testament to your faith or you're an apostate.

How fortunate that we have you irreligious around to tell us how limited our mentality is.

[Imran Siddiqui]

It was due to get quite funny about 3-4 posts later. Thanks for the spoiler fun-killers!

No, it really wasn't.

[kentonio]

If you want simple answers, you should probably just stay out of history entirely. As early as the High Middle Ages the Church had already lost control of the monster. In Spain, as Molly notes, it took on a racial character and was used by the nobles for class-warfare purposes. The pogroms during the first couple of Crusades were spontaneous mob actions the Church had to shut down. Not that they did it terribly decisively, but still. The Church was only where it started.

Also, stop being a smug ****. Yes, I can handle the truth. I have my big boy diapers and everything. Sheesh.

You're not making sense. Let me give you a scenario, say someone drops a nuke on a city. In the aftermath society breaks down, people loot, kill etc, some for food/survival but some just because they're now living in an environment where they can. Is that the responsibility of the individuals for their actions? Yes of course it is, but the ****er who dropped the bomb in the first place is also responsible for the carnage that ensues.

The church is responsible for starting AND propogating the whole anti-Semitic bangwagon. Giving them a pass because it went out of control later is obscene, especially as a large part of the time they did next to nothing to try and stop it.

People are stupid . . . does that include you? What gives you the right to deny moral responsibility to the whole human race? A church, or any other organization, is an abstraction, a conglomerate. It still comes down to individual people, individual decisions. And those ****ers don't get to dodge their guilt.

So you skipped over the part where I said 'I actually agree that you should also make people be responsible for their decisions'?

Well, the ones who were judges, bishops, policemen or politicians could have done any number of little things. As could the whole society who were doing the stigmatization. Maybe give a hand to the poor neighbor girl, give her a place to stay for a while? Refuse to join the gossip circle? Write angry letters? Vote for the politician who was just a teensy bit less judgmental than the other guy? There was always some action, no matter how small, they could have taken. The collective guilt falls on all of them--some much more heavily than others.

This is nonsense, it's the same line of reasoning that says that individual Germans should have just said no to the Nazis. When was the last time you stood up and say no to your government when you thought it was being unreasonable? How is it ok to just expect other people to put their lives and their families at risk over something they cannot change?

[kentonio]

No, it really wasn't.

I'll be sure to run each post past you in future to ensure it meets your standards of humour. Thanks for your hard work.

[MRT144]

How fortunate that we have you irreligious around to tell us how limited our mentality is.

I'm not the one who invoked choice where one weighs moral repugnance against their immortal soul.

[Elok]

Ken, you're not understanding me here, and I'm getting a little worked up. Let's start over, from the top:

The RCC is, as far as I'm concerned, a heretical sect. I have no desire to absolve them of any blame--they've done plenty of bad things, and I don't doubt that the Irish branch of this time were pretty foul. I'm sure I didn't come off that way, but seriously, I'm not Catholic. For me, this is not about their guilt per se.

I am somewhat irritated just because, in my experience, much of what people say or think about the RCC or its history tends to be ridiculously biased--all the bad stuff they (or people vaguely related to them) did is their fault, but the good stuff would've happened anyway because Human Nature--and I object to that kind of unfairness in principle. I don't know the details here in particular, but look at that ridiculous OP. It's flat-out wrong, but nobody cares because our favorite boogeyman is involved. That's one reason.

For the second, look at how you (and others in this thread) talk. "Well, obviously a religious person wouldn't show any courage in the face of religious authority." GTFO. I am not a puppet, and neither were they. No matter how constrained the circumstances, human beings, individually or in crowds, retain the power to think and act for themselves to some degree, and we do not lose that power simply because we have not been exposed to Bertrand Russell. To deny us, as a group, our moral responsibility--that is as good as declaring us subhuman. I reserve the right to be offended by that, no matter what you say.

[MRT144]

Ken, you're not understanding me here, and I'm getting a little worked up. Let's start over, from the top:

The RCC is, as far as I'm concerned, a heretical sect. I have no desire to absolve them of any blame--they've done plenty of bad things, and I don't doubt that the Irish branch of this time were pretty foul. I'm sure I didn't come off that way, but seriously, I'm not Catholic. For me, this is not about their guilt per se.

I am somewhat irritated just because, in my experience, much of what people say or think about the RCC or its history tends to be ridiculously biased--all the bad stuff they (or people vaguely related to them) did is their fault, but the good stuff would've happened anyway because Human Nature--and I object to that kind of unfairness in principle. I don't know the details here in particular, but look at that ridiculous OP. It's flat-out wrong, but nobody cares because our favorite boogeyman is involved. That's one reason.

For the second, look at how you (and others in this thread) talk. "Well, obviously a religious person wouldn't show any courage in the face of religious authority." GTFO. I am not a puppet, and neither were they. No matter how constrained the circumstances, human beings, individually or in crowds, retain the power to think and act for themselves to some degree, and we do not lose that power simply because we have not been exposed to Bertrand Russell. To deny us, as a group, our moral responsibility--that is as good as declaring us subhuman. I reserve the right to be offended by that, no matter what you say.

It's not unfair to generalize how many adherents to a religion would act in seemingly intractable moral circumstances when there are examples in the book the religion is based upon as well as those beliefs put into practice now.

It doesn't absolve people of guilt or deprive them of moral responsibility, it's an acknowledgment that morality is circumstantial and fungible for a lot of people.

[N35t0r]

For the second, look at how you (and others in this thread) talk. "Well, obviously a religious person wouldn't show any courage in the face of religious authority." GTFO. I am not a puppet, and neither were they.

So you're perfectly fine with the thousands of people who die of malnourishment every day worldwide, even as tons of food are thrown away to rot? You are perfectly fine with what the USA has done in Iraq and, Afghanistan? You are perfectly OK with the thousands of kids who are growing up without proper care and education and whose future is pretty much doomed?

[Elok]

No, but I am to some extent culpable for every way in which my life intersected with all those individual failings (and others), and I failed to act correctly. And so is everybody else. On a large scale, it adds up to a sort of aggregate map of guilt or blame. With hundreds of millions of people in the country, my individual share in most of the big problems is small, but it's there. In Ireland, there were hundreds of thousands of families who didn't stand by their daughters or sisters, millions who actively participated in the public shaming for anyone who didn't comply. Thousands of individual members of the church hierarchy, supporting staff, politicians, police and others who perpetrated, or refused to prevent, abuse. Educators who taught their kids "this is right." Ministers who cut the budget for social services just a bit thinner. I don't know all the ins and outs, but just about the whole society had to be actively involved in it, one way or another. "The Church" was merely the bureaucracy put in place to make it all happen. It takes more than a few clerics to ruin a country.

[Kidlicious]

Ken, you're not understanding me here, and I'm getting a little worked up. Let's start over, from the top:

The RCC is, as far as I'm concerned, a heretical sect. I have no desire to absolve them of any blame--they've done plenty of bad things, and I don't doubt that the Irish branch of this time were pretty foul. I'm sure I didn't come off that way, but seriously, I'm not Catholic. For me, this is not about their guilt per se.

I am somewhat irritated just because, in my experience, much of what people say or think about the RCC or its history tends to be ridiculously biased--all the bad stuff they (or people vaguely related to them) did is their fault, but the good stuff would've happened anyway because Human Nature--and I object to that kind of unfairness in principle. I don't know the details here in particular, but look at that ridiculous OP. It's flat-out wrong, but nobody cares because our favorite boogeyman is involved. That's one reason.

For the second, look at how you (and others in this thread) talk. "Well, obviously a religious person wouldn't show any courage in the face of religious authority." GTFO. I am not a puppet, and neither were they. No matter how constrained the circumstances, human beings, individually or in crowds, retain the power to think and act for themselves to some degree, and we do not lose that power simply because we have not been exposed to Bertrand Russell. To deny us, as a group, our moral responsibility--that is as good as declaring us subhuman. I reserve the right to be offended by that, no matter what you say.

You're exposed to atleast 5 Bertrand Russells everday on this website, all morons.

[N35t0r]

No, but I am to some extent culpable for every way in which my life intersected with all those individual failings (and others), and I failed to act correctly. And so is everybody else. On a large scale, it adds up to a sort of aggregate map of guilt or blame. With hundreds of millions of people in the country, my individual share in most of the big problems is small, but it's there.

Do you think some people share a larger part of the blame than others?

In Ireland, there were hundreds of thousands of families who didn't stand by their daughters or sisters, millions who actively participated in the public shaming for anyone who didn't comply. Thousands of individual members of the church hierarchy, supporting staff, politicians, police and others who perpetrated, or refused to prevent, abuse. Educators who taught their kids "this is right." Ministers who cut the budget for social services just a bit thinner. I don't know all the ins and outs, but just about the whole society had to be actively involved in it, one way or another. "The Church" was merely the bureaucracy put in place to make it all happen. It takes more than a few clerics to ruin a country.

Of course. But a lot of those involved formed part of the church (and the church isn't an immaterial being, it's a group of people who group together because they allegedly share a common belief and want to promote it) , and a large part of those who participated in this did so because they believed it was the right thing to do. IMHO, some people have a much larger burden than others, and in this case, the catholic church is, directly and indirectly, the bearer of most of the responsibility.

[N35t0r]

You're exposed to atleast 5 Bertrand Russells everday on this website, all morons.

Oh burn!

[Kidlicious]

Oh burn!

I wasn't talking about you

[N35t0r]

I wasn't talking about you

I'm still awed at your amazing debating skills

[Kidlicious]

Elok's kind of existentialist