I was a practicing catholic until 1991. I went to a Catholic Grade School, a Catholic High School, A Catholic College. I was an altar boy, and I have sisters who are nuns. I WAS a faithful Catholic till recently.

It is clear to me by the official pronouncements of the church regarding American foreign policy that at the very least, the church leadership is either stupid, or corrupt....or both.

It is unconscionable when the Vatican foreign minister equates The Abu Grabie prison scandal to 9/11.

It is interesting to note that prior to the start of this war, the Iraqi foreign minister visited the Vatican with a suitcase of goodies. After that meeting the church couldn't wait to side with Sadam. Should American Catholics assume that the leadership of the church is being BOUGHT by this terrorist, just as the papacy was bought by Hitler during the Second World War.

The church is destroying itself from the inside. I hope that you finally get your act together before you have alienated every American Catholic.

Right now the church is viewed as hypocritical. Saying one thing, but doing another.

I haven't been to Church for several years, and I don't intend to return till the Church gets its HEAD on straight.

-- Don Willis (Pool_Shark@hotmail.com), May 14, 2004

Answers

I don't really have an answer for what you asked but if it is true that "some" Catholics equate the prisoner attacks to 9/11 then that is ABSOLUTLEY RIDICULOUS!!!!!

Did the prisoner attacks stop people from going on planes, to resturaunts, to the movies or the mall, or lead them back to the church, or wake them up to maturity to actualy think about life, and put fear and depression in every American like 9/11 did REGARDLESS OF WHAT ANYONE WOULD SAY? NO!!

I don't justify the attacks on Iraqi prisoners, but that was NOTHING compared to 9/11 or the beheading of Nick Berg!

And if SOME of the church is corrupt, not all of it is. Jesus spoke about terrible events for the end times that would deceive if possible even the elect! But he also said the gates of hades shall not prevail against the church and they won't.

There has been bad popes, bishops, and priest alike, but there are a magority of good hearted ones too who faithfully are serving the Lord.

I used to be Protestant but now am Catholic. The church is wonderful and I praise the Lord for brining her to me.

God Bless!

-- Jason (Enchanted fire5@aol.com), May 15, 2004.

Should American Catholics assume that the leadership of the church is being BOUGHT by this terrorist, just as the papacy was bought by Hitler during the Second World War.

don,

simply put, you need to get your history straight. this is a ludicrous slander (ie lie = broken commandment = possible sin) against a man who holds a commendation from the leaders of the jewish church for his actions during world war two. in fact, it is very debatable that the pope was responsible for single handedly saving the most jewish lives, without even fighting.

even todays pope, then karol wajtyla (sp?) was very effective by hiding jews in his cathedrals dome until he could get them out of the country. you either are ignorant of facts and hand fed by the protestant propaganda machine, or are adamantely ignorant of the truth and need to take a lesson in history and a contrition before making such rash judgements.

-- paul h (dontsendmemail@notanaddress.com), May 15, 2004.

The foreign minister did no such thing. He merely said that the prisoner abuse scandal was worse for the US because 9/11 built world sympathy for the US while the prisoner abuse destroyed it. Which is completely true.

The vatican was never pleased with Bush's war. Neither was most of the world. But the Chaldean Catholics enjoyed more freedoms under Saddam since he wasn't a raving Islamic fundamentalist but a secular despot. The Vatican is worried that if the US messes up now then Islamic fundametalism will return to power in Iraq and the church will be doomed.

Saddam was evil and sadistic but he kept the three muslim ethnic groups from anihilating each other. The only thing stopping them now is the US but they're pulling out soon. What do you think will happen to the Christian population when they leave? Nothing good most likely.

The Vatican has the responsibility to look after all its flock, not just her american one. Especially in such an anti christian atmosphere like the mideast.

-- Jim W (Jwastr@hotmail.com), May 15, 2004.

Hey Paul h, aren’t you going to “request that the red herring logical fallacy of this title be changed to something more appropriate for this forum. The title remains MOST innappropriate in this environment. first, this is a highly political thread with an insulting title. The sick level of sarcasm used here is not only not creative, but not constructive to any means of debate either... all it is is couple different people POSING to be believing in one thing, spouting absolute fallacy in regards to that position, and then doing it again under a different screen name.”

After all this question is surely a joke by some sicko.

-- Joker (joker@cybernet.com), May 15, 2004.

He merely said that the prisoner abuse scandal was worse for the US because 9/11 built world sympathy for the US while the prisoner abuse destroyed it. Which is completely true.

And then the murderers cut off the head of an innocent kid!

William Donohue, president of the Catholic League, said the archbishop's statements show anti-American sentiment within the Vatican. "This man is an absolute embarrassment to the Catholic Church. I read that and I was just boiling over," Donohue said. Donohue said he disagreed with Catholic congressman Peter King's contention that the church should not speak out about abuse issues, but called the archbishop's comparison of the abuse scandal to Sept. 11 "singularly irresponsible, insulting, and anti-American."

The head of an international policy committee for U.S. Roman Catholic bishops said Friday that the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by American soldiers raised concerns about the "moral risks" in responding to terrorism. Bishop John H. Ricard, the panel's chairman, said the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States should not exempt the nation from its "moral obligation to uphold the basic rights even of our worst enemies." In the same statement, he condemned the beheading of American civilian Nicholas Berg, saying it "surpassed" the cruelty evident in the photos of U.S. soldiers humiliating and abusing Iraqis.

-- Bill Nelson (bnelson45-nospam@hotmail.com), May 15, 2004.

Moderator, the post above is a violation of the rules of this forum. if the poster has sincere questions for catholics then he should ask them, if not then this is not the place for him. either way, the above post should get the boot

-- paul h (dontsendmemail@notanaddress.com), June 06, 2004.

Paul h. I agree, Marshall is proselytizing which is clearly against our rules.

Marshall, I've deleted your last post. I suggest you read our rules found at the top of the "Rule of the Forum" thread. Honest questions to learn more about our faith are welcome. However, lectures about your perceived errors of Catholicism are not.

Moderator

-- Ed (catholic4444@yahoo.ca), June 06, 2004.

Rush Limbaugh couldn't have said it any better himself.

-- mark a (stillasking@middle.age), June 06, 2004.

Don, I urge you to come back to the faith. If you need personal feedback, I urge you to email me privately.

There is a massive difference between individuals in the Church who do or say something wrong and their having moral authority to preach the Gospel.

Look, Our Holy Father has the commission from Christ to preach the Gospel and strengthen the faith of all Christians. In this task he is guided by the Holy Spirit and has done a phenomenal job. But this doesn't make him an expert in economics, sports-trivia, and the intentions and latest capabilities of the American military.

The Vatican has 1400 years of experience dealing with Muslim armies and invasions. On the defensive for 400 years before preaching the crusades, the Holy See lived through the rise and fall of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, the loss of the Holy Land, the fall of Constantinople, the Balkans and finally the near loss of Europe at the gates of Vienna, Austria in the late 1400's! So while Americans don't have a cultural fear of Muslim navies and armies...most European Catholics DO! So when some European cardinal goes on and on about American imprudence we should be careful to not jump to conclusions about his intention or question his moral authority in other issues.

And truth be told our faith is more practical on a daily basis than our political opinions. Most of us live our lives DAILY aware of the vital need for fidelity to the Gospel of Christ and the life-style needed to "remain in his love", regardless of who is in power and what they're doing. So the Pope and all those bishops, priests, and lay people who are in union with him, give us daily inspiration and leadership.

But when OCCASIONLY a bishop, priest, or diplomat says something bone- headedly wrong this shouldn't undermine your faith! Just because someone is wrong about a contingent matter like foreign policy doesn't mean he's wrong when it comes to Biblical interpretation!

I'm the first one to challenge the stupidity of someone - anyone - to suggest that giving Saddam Hussein a dental exam is akin to denigrating his humanity or treating him like a cow. But we have to see things in the right perspective. Cardinals who sound off on Iraq have a right to their OPINION. As such they can be challenged by fellow Catholics with OUR OPINION. But if a cardinal teaches (as Cardinal Arize did recently in Georgetown) that what has been constantly held by Catholics since Christ should be believed in and preserved...then we "faithful" Catholics don't have a right to challenge him and STILL consider ourselves "faithful".

When the question is one of Catholic faith and morals...we must follow our religious leaders. But when the question is how best to apply these teaching to a give circumstance...for example, foreign policy...then the issue isn't one of principles but their application in a given, perhaps very fluid and contingent set of situations.

So for example: Catholics must work to alieviate the plight of the poor. But what's the best way to accomplish this? Some cry for socialist centralized economies, massive taxation and welfare programs as the "only" way to "help the poor". Others take the opposite track of de-centralized economies, open markets, liberty etc. and education so that poverty is reduced NOT by better distribuition of a limited pie but by increasing the amount of pie to be shared! If a cardinal claims to know economics and condemns as immoral those who promote a different economic theory, then he has stepped out of his area of expertise and opens himself to ridicule and rebuttal.

In recent world history, many bishops and cardinals preached marxism- lite...thinking that only centralized socialism could possibly "save the poor". They were speaking NOT as Churchmen, but as men who thought they understood economics! And they were woefully WRONG. But that didn't mean they lost all moral authority.

Pope John XXIII called for the Second Vatican Council. He had the authority to do so. But was it the right time? That is a question about prudence. Maybe, maybe not. It's debatable.

Pope Paul VI reiterated 1900 years of Catholic teaching in his condemnation of artificial contraception in 1968. He had the authority to do so. People may argue about the wisdom of timing, how it was taught, the follow up, etc. but his authority to teach on matters of sexual morality cannot be questioned. Pope's absolutely have such authority given them by Christ.

Now we come to foreign policy questions.... political questions on prudential decisions, not principled ones. For example: the Church recognizes a nation's right to self-defense. The Pope praises the Polish soldiers who fought and died in ITALY during World War II. Now...Polish soldiers fighting Nazis in ITALY were only tangentally "fighting for their country". Their presence on that battlefield then was a prudential decision. In his mind, they chose honorably because their intentions were right.

They were NOT there at the behest of some "international" legal authority like the UN(but they were there thanks to the Anglo- American war machine.) Fast forward to 2003. Polish troops are in Iraq, under the Anglo- American coalition of 30 countries (pretty "international") who just finished off a dictatorship which had defied "the international legal authority" for 12 years. The presence of these forces in that place was again a prudential decision.

The Pope didn't think that the timing was right. He thought that it would have been better to have full UN support (although no one explains how France, Russia and China, all siting on the Security Council and who ALL had illegal arms and business contracts with the Saddam regime thus violating the UN's own embargo could claim "moral authority"), He based much of his opposition to an American invasion by warning about possible catastrophies, and encouraged everyone to behave themselves.

As far as it goes, I can't see how this position of his invokes categorical, PRINCIPLED opposition. It's not as though he taught ex cathedra that nations have NO right to armed intervention. He just didn't think the timing and manner was right - but he didn't roll out his reasons either or alternative courses of action.

So what we have here is a disagreement over contingent matters, requiring someone who has the authority of the common good (i.e. political leaders) to make a prudential decision.

They have the authority to make those decisions. Maybe the choice was wrong. Maybe it wasn't. But precisely because the situation is contingent and calls for a prudential decision it's not an automatic USA vs. Catholic Church matter.

When Bill Clinton tried to foist Abortion onto the world via the UN in 1994 at Cairo, the Pope interviened and fought against us. In that case, the United States WAS wrong and any American that sided with country over Church would be morally wrong too - because Abortion is categorically, de principi, immoral: in every case and circumstance.

But Iraq's liberation in 2003 wasn't a case of categorical evil: It's not categorically evil to liberate a nation from tyranny, to fight international terrorists who have there in training and who have received help from that regime. It wasn't a categorically evil war in timing, nor in execution: no INDISCRIMINATE slaughter, no use of atomic, biological, chemical or indiscriminate conventional weapons. NONE OF THE PREDICTED CATASTROPHIES happened.

So in matters of faith and morals these cardinals and bishops in union with the Pope are our legitimate superiors and as such must be obeyed. But if they tell us that the New York Mets are superior to the Yankees or that there is no essential difference between an atomic bomb and a 500 lb. laser-guided bomb filled with concrete instead of explosive... then we have to respectifully beg to differ.

Look at it this way: the charism of infallibility doesn't mean the Pope is clairvoyant (knowing the future) or that he is "inspired". It's a negative gift: it keeps him from speaking error when it comes to speaking about the Faith and morals we believe in. But it doesn't give him special insight that the rest of us don't have.

So when he warned both Saddam and Bush that war in 2003 could conceivably lead to World War III, millions of casualties, eco-system wide environmental disaster, famine, plague, etc. etc. he was basing himself on a set of presuppositions and scenarios which in the event didn't actually happen.

If you are going to operate on a turmor and one doctor says "if you operate I think you will certainly die" then at least at that moment you have to either get a second opinion or morally chose not to proceed with the operation. But if second and third surgeons tell you "based on everything we know, you'll survive the operation", then you have a truly prudential decision and it's not immoral to either go ahead or not.

In matters of politics and geo-politics - eminently prudential and always changing situations... mistakes of fact and judgment abound. No one gets it right 100% of the time. Even great victories for humanity are filled with unfortunate side-effects. Thus, there were grave deficiencies even in the Christian MILITARY victories at Lepanto and Vienna -both of which were positively promoted by Popes.

So Don, please don't jepordize your soul's immortal health and relationship with God and his Church because some Church officials are tone deaf or simply ignorant of questions of fact (there is a difference between "modern weaponry" and Atomic weapons).

a cardinal saying something wrong on matters of economics, politics, and military engagements and having

-- Joe (joestong@yahoo.com), June 07, 2004.