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Take a gander at Vatican II. Specifically the part that reads:

Those also can attain to salvation who through no fault of their own do not know the Gospel of Christ or His Church, yet sincerely seek God and moved by grace strive by their deeds to do His will as it is known to them through the dictates of conscience.(19*) Nor does Divine Providence deny the helps necessary for salvation to those who, without blame on their part, have not yet arrived at an explicit knowledge of God and with His grace strive to live a good life.

HTH.

Form to contact the police, can anyone dig up a list of real email or fax numbers for police in Italy?

pope's email

If some nice troll could come up with a nice "form letter" I'm sure more people would participate.

Form to contact the police, can anyone dig up a list of real email or fax numbers for police in Italy?

pope's email

If some nice troll could come up with a nice "form letter" I'm sure more people would participate.

Are the Italian police sure the web site was talking about the Virgin Mary and not the Material Girl?

As for thinking they are the only correct church, the Catholic Church recognizes most Protestant churches as 'good enough'. Most of their complaints seems to be with various rituals that other demoninations do not follow, or do not follow 'correctly', such as Mass and Communion. You're still Saved, you're just doing the words wrong.

And, of course, they recognize the Greek Orthodox Church as a complete equal in every way, despite their non-following of the Pope, because they do all the rituals exactly 'right'. Seriously.

Two notes: 1) I'm not Catholic, and 2) You don't have to believe what random people tell you about the Catholic Church, they have every single belief (catechism) online, which is something to point at the next time someone says their company is too old and traditional to be on the internet. And they have their entire site in five lanagues, too. The only thing they're missing is a little game where you drive the Popemobile around. I'll have to email them about that.

But no word has the power to change the reality of things: procured abortion is the deliberate and direct killing, by whatever means it is carried out, of a human being in the initial phase of his or her existence, extending from conception to birth.

Faith and science, or more appropriately, faith and reason are both required to come to a true understanding of God.

From yours truely :) ...There are also signs of a resurgence of fideism, which fails to recognize the importance of rational knowledge and philosophical discourse for the understanding of faith, indeed for the very possibility of belief in God...

Faith without reason is weak and subject to manipulation. Reason without faith is like trying to drive from Maine to California without a map. You might get there, but your chances are slim.

Why do you think "at conception" is the earliest *possible* point we could consider life to have begun? The Catholics, after all, still discourage birth control where possible; it's apparently their view that life begins at ejaculation.

The birth control issue is a complex one. At its core, the teaching stresses that we should be open to the working of God in our lives. Humanae Vitae also considers the effect of artificial birth control on our attitudes toward sex and each other. Once sex has no consequences it is very easy for us to treat it casually and hurt others in the process, either through a degradation of our views of the opposite sex or through sharing a very intimate moment that sends the strongest possible signals of total commitment when no such commitment exists in the relationship.

The relationship argument seals the deal for me as far as premarital sex in general goes. I have no desire to convey a commitment that isn't there yet. To do so causes great harm to the other person.

In the married relationship I have a much harder time with the teaching. It's true that casual sex in marriage is also detramental to the relationship, so in that sense it's important not to cheapen the act by removing all consequences. However, the "Catholic birth control" method of Natural Family Planning also takes away from the spontaneity of sex and can lead to resentment if the times for intercourse are "scheduled."

That said, once conception happens a new life has entered the world and we dare not extinguish it.

So that communion plate that gets passed around is just for show then? I mean it's not like the Catholic church has its own city or that they need to spend lots of money on hiding some of their preists misdeeds. I'm not attacking just the Catholic church here, I havent seen one religion that isnt based on controling the population and raising a "spiritual" tax of one sort or another so that a minority of the "saved" can lord it over the rest of us. To misquote Morpheus "As long as religion exists the human race will never be free".

Well your not alone. At the start of the year the Pope had this to say about Western society:

"9. The radicalization of identity which makes cultures resistant to any beneficial influence from outside is worrying enough; but no less perilous is the slavish conformity of cultures, or at least of key aspects of them, to cultural models deriving from the Western world. Detached from their Christians origins, these models are often inspired by an approach to life marked by secularism and practical atheism and by patterns of radical individualism. This is a phenomenon of vast proportions, sustained by powerful media campaigns and designed to propagate lifestyles, social and economic programmes and, in the last analysis, a comprehensive world-view which erodes from within other estimable cultures and civilizations. Western cultural models are enticing and alluring because of their remarkable scientific and technical cast, but regrettably there is growing evidence of their deepening human, spiritual and moral impoverishment. The culture which produces such models is marked by the fatal attempt to secure the good of humanity by eliminating God, the Supreme Good. Yet, as the Second Vatican Council warned, "without the Creator the creature comes to nothing!"(7) A culture which no longer has a point of reference in God loses its soul and loses its way, becoming a culture of death. This was amply demonstrated by the tragic events of the twentieth century and is now apparent in the nihilism present in some prominent circles in the Western world."

I suspect he was referring to the US and various European countries. The devil may win a few battles, but evil by its nature is destined to fail...

From the vadican:

Last Tuesday, 11 September, when the Holy Father heard the news of the two massive terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, in which thousands of persons lost their lives, he sent a telegram to President George Bush in which he expressed "his profound sorrow for the unspeakable horror of the inhuman attacks against innocent persons and his closeness in prayer to the nation in the dark and tragic moment".

On Wednesday, 12 September, the Holy Father noted that the day was a dark one in the history of mankind, but that the last word comes from Christ's victory of love over sin, hatred and death. "Christian hope allows us to pray for those who do evil and for those who have to take the path of recovery. Even if the forces of darkness appear to prevail, those who believe in God know that evil and death do not have the final say. Christian hope is based on this truth; at this time our prayerful trust draws strength from it". The Holy Father prayed that the Lord grant the American people the courage they need in their hour of trial.

On Thursday, 13 September, the Holy Father again expressed his closeness in prayer to the American people and his sense of profound sadness over the tragedy. "I pray that this inhuman act will awaken in the hearts of all the world's peoples a firm resolve to reject the ways of violence, to combat everything that sows hatred and division within the human family". He said that it should pave the way for a "new era of international cooperation".

On Sunday, 16 September, at noon, the Holy Father made one of his intentions for the Angelus a prayer for the American people as they pick up their lives after the tragedy. "May Mary welcome the dead, console the survivors, support those families who are particularly tried, help all to resist the temptation to hatred and violence, and to dedicate themselves to the service of justice and peace".

The pope spoke on Sunday 16 September: May the Blessed Virgin bring comfort and hope to those who suffer on account of the tragic attack of the terrorists, that last week seriously harmed the beloved American people. To all the children of this great Nation I direct my heartbroken and heartfelt consideration. May Mary welcome the dead, console the survivors, support those families who are particularly tried, help all to resist the temptation to hatred and violence, and to dedicate themselves to the service of justice and peace. May the Virgin Mary nourish in the hearts of all young persons, above all, high human and spiritual ideals and the necessary perseverance to achieve them. May She remind them of the primacy of eternal values, especially in these difficult moments, so that in their daily engagements and activities they may ever continue to be turned toward God and to his kingdom of solidarity and peace.

They're not allowed to do that any more. There's been a crackdown at the Vatican. Read On the Vocation of the Theologian, by Cardinal Ratzinger, the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. (One the official titles that goes with that job is Grand Inquisitor.) Teachers must follow the official line, or else. "The freedom of the act of faith cannot justify a right to dissent. In fact this freedom does not indicate at all freedom with regard to the truth but signifies the free self-determination of the person in conformity with his moral obligation to accept the truth". This reads like something Orwell might have written in 1984. But it is real, and is enforced against teachers employed by the Catholic church. Cardinal Ratzinger has signed excommunications based on this rule.

He's what Catholic's would call a Protestant, but he would never call himself that. It's a term invented by one group to describe another, and not the one they choose themselves. It's kind of like maid vs. house cleaner, or housewife vs. home maker, or mailman vs. letter-carrier, if we were talking about sex roles instead of religion.

One philosopher who studied religion made the assertion that terms only have meaning within their context (any philo. or religious study majors help me out with names/facts). In other words, you can't define these terms, only determine what the speaker means by them.

For instance, many religions that stem from Jesus Christ have a ceremony with bread and wine, that becomes (in their words) the Body and Blood of Christ. For the Catholic Church, officially, this means the bread and wine maintain the form of bread and wine (still provides nourishment, you could get slightly drunk, etc.), but it's essence is now the Body and Blood of Christ. To make a (possibly heretical) comparision, remember those Disney films where a man is transformed into a shaggy dog? The dog has all the form of a dog, but is the human in essence. Now, take away even the intellect of the man, and you are left with a dog in all things, except that it has a human soul. Try Occam's razor on that!!! (Who ever said Occam was right?)

Anyway, that's a fairly complex explaination. If you ask the average Catholic, they may believe that it is just symobolic, or that it now has a new form (my mom once told me you couldn't catch germs drinking from the common cup, which I seriously doubt). Others may not even have thought about it much. Go outside of Roman Catholicism, into other Catholic or "Christian" religions, and you'll get even more answers for what "Body and Blood" means.

Those that call themselves "Christians" usually mean "True Christians", as opposed to other groups, like Roman Catholics, that (in their opinion) don't worship Christ, but instead a corrupt, earthly organization (the Roman Catholic Church). While American Catholics identify themselves as Catholic (often dropping the "Roman" part), they will also identify themselves as Christian. Protestant is a term that only makes sense in Catholic/Protestant relationships, and is mainly used by Catholics to describe the Christians.

Fully confused? Good. Not much of it makes sense, and only a few have studied the actual theological differences. The rest are mostly fighting based on "our group is better than yours", or on "common sense" (the sum of the things you learned up to age 18).

If you want to really probe the differences, start asking about terms like being "saved", "Baptised", and start the old "Faith vs. Good Works" debate,. or the "literal vs. figurative" interpretations of the bible, or what it means to say the bible was "inspired by God/ Holy Spirit". Check out sites like Jack Chick's, for some Christian Propaganda/Ministering Aids, and search for criticism of his claims. If you are interested in what Catholics belive, go to the source: there is a copy of the Catechism on the Vatican's web site, which includes what all Catholic's should believe (not that all do). Have fun, there's a lot of info out there. Even if you are an atheist, you have to deal with religious people every day, and it's better to take the higher ground, to understand them, rather than to hate them because they are different (as the religous right does to various groups, or liberals do to the religous right).

He's what Catholic's would call a Protestant, but he would never call himself that. It's a term invented by one group to describe another, and not the one they choose themselves. It's kind of like maid vs. house cleaner, or housewife vs. home maker, or mailman vs. letter-carrier, if we were talking about sex roles instead of religion.

One philosopher who studied religion made the assertion that terms only have meaning within their context (any philo. or religious study majors help me out with names/facts). In other words, you can't define these terms, only determine what the speaker means by them.

For instance, many religions that stem from Jesus Christ have a ceremony with bread and wine, that becomes (in their words) the Body and Blood of Christ. For the Catholic Church, officially, this means the bread and wine maintain the form of bread and wine (still provides nourishment, you could get slightly drunk, etc.), but it's essence is now the Body and Blood of Christ. To make a (possibly heretical) comparision, remember those Disney films where a man is transformed into a shaggy dog? The dog has all the form of a dog, but is the human in essence. Now, take away even the intellect of the man, and you are left with a dog in all things, except that it has a human soul. Try Occam's razor on that!!! (Who ever said Occam was right?)

Anyway, that's a fairly complex explaination. If you ask the average Catholic, they may believe that it is just symobolic, or that it now has a new form (my mom once told me you couldn't catch germs drinking from the common cup, which I seriously doubt). Others may not even have thought about it much. Go outside of Roman Catholicism, into other Catholic or "Christian" religions, and you'll get even more answers for what "Body and Blood" means.

Those that call themselves "Christians" usually mean "True Christians", as opposed to other groups, like Roman Catholics, that (in their opinion) don't worship Christ, but instead a corrupt, earthly organization (the Roman Catholic Church). While American Catholics identify themselves as Catholic (often dropping the "Roman" part), they will also identify themselves as Christian. Protestant is a term that only makes sense in Catholic/Protestant relationships, and is mainly used by Catholics to describe the Christians.

Fully confused? Good. Not much of it makes sense, and only a few have studied the actual theological differences. The rest are mostly fighting based on "our group is better than yours", or on "common sense" (the sum of the things you learned up to age 18).

If you want to really probe the differences, start asking about terms like being "saved", "Baptised", and start the old "Faith vs. Good Works" debate,. or the "literal vs. figurative" interpretations of the bible, or what it means to say the bible was "inspired by God/ Holy Spirit". Check out sites like Jack Chick's, for some Christian Propaganda/Ministering Aids, and search for criticism of his claims. If you are interested in what Catholics belive, go to the source: there is a copy of the Catechism on the Vatican's web site, which includes what all Catholic's should believe (not that all do). Have fun, there's a lot of info out there. Even if you are an atheist, you have to deal with religious people every day, and it's better to take the higher ground, to understand them, rather than to hate them because they are different (as the religous right does to various groups, or liberals do to the religous right).

Basically the Vatican, the home of Catholicism, I believe it has it's own status as a principality within Rome. They even have their own domain name, .va

I'm not catholic if you're wondering, but I just know these things.

True, in America this might be considered "child porn" -- but the canonized status of "Shakespeare" (and all that falls under category "Shakespeare") would probably pass a "censorware" test, ...

This is the same censorware that blocked the Vatican for a while because it had a Latin phrase with the word ``cum'' in it on their webpage, yes? The ones that block the writings of St. Thomas of Aquinas in their original Latin because he liberally sprinkles ``cum'' throughout, yes? Censorware authors don't care about context. They probably block ``Shakespeare'' as a euphemism for masturbation.

Of course, people actually downloading the whole human genome probable wouldn't worry about this, but couldn't they use a better compression format than .zip? I bet using bzip2 or rar would shave a couple of hundred MBs off of that 753MB file. Also, the differences in compression techniques would be interesting to see on a large group of files mainly consisting of G, A, C, and T. -- demiurge You find a file that appears important and obliterate it from memory!!! Score one for the downtrodden hacker!

• G -- 00
• A -- 01
• T -- 10
• C -- 11

This would only work for the .fa files, but .fa files can contain "N"s also. If you just want to browse the Genome, look through the pieces directory. .

I've got one of those Intellimouse Explorers (the huge silver ones with the superfluous tail light and like three extra buttons; well, what the hell, here's a http://www.microsoft.com/Mouse/explorer.htm link) and sites that won't let you back out are an incredible annoyance. See, two of the buttons on there serve as Forward/Back (respectively) while browsing the web, and after about 20 minutes of using them, I was hooked. You wouldn't believe how simple (and remarkably intuitive) to navigate with your thumb. Now if I could just find a good use for those buttons in Half-Life... I mean, sure, it's easy enough to hold down the back button and select the page before the offending site, but that would require moving my cursor over six or so linear inches of desktop space. Isn't that just a little bit unreasonable? No? Ah well.

You sir, are HYPOCRITE! Your trolling is meaningless and incoherent. You don't present any facts

Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, and wrong. I am not a hypocrite: I live by the truths I speak. Nor am I a troll; I am an honest freedom-loving citizen trying to restore some measure of sanity to a world gone mad. My words are not meaningless, as you demonstrate by replying to them; it is not incoherent, as I ensured by means of extensive lexical and semantic analysis before pressing "Submit". Finally, all of my facts are quite accurate. I defy you to produce a study (in a respectable refereed journal) indicating that any less than 45% of Perl and VB programmers are chronic felons, sexual criminals, and multiple murderers.


You . . . only bash people who are honestly earning a living working in VB.

An outright absurdity. Were they honest, they would code in Scheme like decent programmers do.


I have it on record that members of CRAP are chronic masterbators!!

Again, you have released a cloud of murky gibberish for no good reason. All programmers are chronic masturbators. It comes with the territory. This is so generally known that one of the results of the Vatican II conference in the early 1960's (back in the very early days of the profession when the phenomenon was already well-understood) issued a general plenary indulgence absolving all programmers of guilt WRT the sin of Onan. This is on record at the the Vatican for all to see. Search for the bull Vos Caecusimus


We must struggle against COBOL by surrepticously converting all COBOL code we come upon to Visual Basic or Perl.

Visual Basic is the Cobol of the present decade, and Perl is the Visual Basic of the UNIX world. All are of equal value.


I remain unmoved by your sophistries.

notice that Pope John Paul has recently made a statement saying that evolution is "More than a theory", and is now accepted as fact by the Catholic Church.

Well, you could always look at Fides et Ratio, "Faith and Reason" for John Paul's opinion about science, evolution, and the Faith. But I think "accepted as fact" is a slight mischaracterization.

think I need to get me one of those Jesuit IP lawyers ....

:^)

Hello mill,

You wrote:

1.1 billion people believe in a Roman Catholic god. Why don't they believe in a Protestant god or a Jewish god? Because it is faith.

That's a wrong statement. Believe it or not, We all believe in the same God. Roman Catholics and Protestants may have different views on the finer points of theology, but we have a lot more in common than the ways we differ. We believe in the same God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, the Trinity. God is love, and He loves the world so much that despite our sinfulness He still loves us unconditionally and even sent His only begotten Son Jesus to show us the way to the truth, the life, the way. He died on the cross for us in atonement for our sins, and on the third day He rose again from the dead, conquering sin and death. This is our Christian faith. Despite our differences (RC and Prot), we are united in Christ Jesus, and that's why we are all called Christians.

The God that Jewish believes in is the same God that we Christians do. The difference is that they do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as the Messiah proclaimed in the scripture (Old Testament). Nonetheless, we enjoy the fact that we share in the worship the same merciful and loving God, and we also thank the Jews for much of our Christian traditions. Afterall, Jesus Himself is a Jew when He came to earth. :-) The Jewish scripture is very much identical to what the Christians know as the Old Testament. And many of the Christian traditions have their roots from our Jewish brothers and sisters.

It is irrational and based upon arbitrary axioms. Time and time again these axioms have been refuted and the RCC change their tune (unwillingly of course) and continue to preach the rest of the axioms until the next one is refuted.

My friend, faith and reason goes hand in hand. If the Roman Catholic Church is as irrational as you have claimed, don't you think I would have left the Church a long time ago?

I don't understand where you got the notion that the Church is based upon arbitrary axioms. On contrary, in fact, seeing that the Roman Catholic Church never budged on its stance against abortion and birth control, despite popular outcry even from some Catholics. Why? The Church could have easily bowed to public pressure and say "abortion and birth control are okay". Heck, if they did that, I am sure the Church would receive a LOT less ridicule and more people may join the Church. Why didn't they? Some may say that "Oh, the Roman Catholic Church is just an old, stubborn, oppressive patriachal hierarchy who likes to impose its view on everyone and tell everyone what to do." Are they? I mean, are there special "Bishop Squads" everywhere patrolling on the streets and coming to your doorstep and condemning people, saying "You have sinned! You are going to hell!"?

The late Archbishop Fulton Sheen once wrote: "There are not over a hundred people in the United States who hate the Roman Catholic Church; there are millions, however, who hate what they wrongly believe to be the Catholic Church."

Opportunism and a need to be in power. That is what it is. Sadly many people have a need to have complex things explained to them. When no real explanation can be provided they will take whatever is and then religion takes charge again.

Seems like you consider a religion to be nothing more than superstition and a haven from complex matter. Hmm...

Well, all I can say, is that what you have described is not the Church that I know. Instead, to me, the Church is a wonderful community, like a big family, vibrant with joy and love, where people gather to share and to seek Truth. Friendship blossoms and lasts a lifetime. True, the Church is not perfect, but the most important thing is the presence of God among us. :-) One of the songs from the 1970's goes like this: "Yes they'll know we are Christians by our love, by our love; Yes they'll know we are Christians by our love." Yeah, I know, even one of my best friend (she's Catholic) says the song is cheesy, but we all agree that it is true, for without love, we are nothing, and the Church would become nothing but an empty shell.

Since logic doesn't apply to faith it is impossible to have an argument about faith without the participants questioning the said axioms. Without the axioms faith is doomed though and without faith there is no religion.

And I challenge you to examine your own logic in your statement. Perhaps you have been so indoctrinated about the irrationality and illogicity of faith and religion, that you simply become close minded and refuse to believe or even discuss the possibility of logic and rationality in faith?

Our Holy Father John Paul II has recently written an encyclical titled Fides et Ratio, or Faith and Reason in English (the direct link isn't working because Slashdot was adding an extra space after one of the underscore. Maybe the URL was too long. Just click on the link and then click on Fides et Ratio on the encyclical index page). I haven't read it yet, but I heard that is really good. Take a look, even just a quick glance. I hope you'd like it. :-)

Let me take the liberty of quoting the first paragraph: "Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth-in a word, to know himself-so that, by knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves (cf. Ex 33:18; Ps 27:8-9; 63:2-3; Jn 14:8; 1 Jn 3:2)."

There may be a "god" or it may not. I don't know and since I don't know it would be stupid to desperately make things up. Heck, "god" might be a bum in NYC, but since that isn't "far out" enough people won't believe that.

I see. Hmm... To be honest with you, there were times in my life where I have doubted whether God exists or nor. Don't worry, I won't try to force "God" down your throat. All I can say is, keep an open mind, and don't ever stop searching for the truth. Afterall, didn't Jesus say, "Seek, and you shall find; ask, and you shall be given"? You may be surprised at what you find.

Take care, and God bless,

Anthony Fok, foka@ualberta.ca
Debian developer, and Roman Catholic :-)

Actually, all but the most reactionary people and organizations seem to think that the Internet is more trouble than it's worth. I've seen an Internet-connected computer lab at a Catholic grammar school. They certainly had posters telling the kids how to avoid getting "mugged" (never reveal your snailmail address tends to be the biggie).

To be sure, the Internet is a hazardous environment, but all but the most reactionary recognize that the rewards outweigh the risks. While I hesitate to use the analogy again, it's much like a road system. Roads are hazardous; people who don't understand how to use them have a good possibility of being run over. We accept the hazards because most of us feel that the benefits of roads outweighs the hazards, even with the huge body count roads are possibly responsible.

There are a number of data points to back this up; take the most conservative people and/or agendas you can find, and run a search engine over them. One data point stands above the crowd, especially after discussing Catholic schools; even the Pope has a Web site.