Sean Brady Steps Down

[Hardy]

Sorry - misread - I thought you were including the resurrection claim.

[T Fearon]

If there was evidence then its not faith,merely acceptance of fact

[Lar Naparka]

Lar Naparka exactly what is the issue with the modern Catholic Church in Ireland? Like every other organisation it has evolved and civilised.On here we have people going back in time  ( when attitudes were different and the church emphasis was more on the purging of sin rather than compassion) to find things to hammer the church with.Back in the day Governments still had the death penalty but thankfully like the church,most have modernised.

Shane the immaculate conception is as credible as the resurrection,and I believe in both.

Okay Tony, since you asked....

See if you can make sense of this.

"SPE SALVI facti sumus"—in hope we were saved, says Saint Paul to the Romans, and likewise to us (Rom 8:24). According to the Christian faith, "redemption"—salvation—is not simply a given. Redemption is offered to us in the sense that we have been given hope, trustworthy hope, by virtue of which we can face our present: the present, even if it is arduous, can be lived and accepted if it leads towards a goal, if we can be sure of this goal, and if this goal is great enough to justify the effort of the journey. Now the question immediately arises: what sort of hope could ever justify the statement that, on the basis of that hope and simply because it exists, we are redeemed? And what sort of certainty is involved here?"

That's from Spe Salvi (Saved Hope to you and I) and it was issued by Benedict in 2007.
That's what passes for spiritual guidance nowadays!
I'm  using that as an example of the Church's inability (unwillingness?) to communicate with modern society. There are plenty of other howlers out there if you want to go looking.
Your church is totally out of sync with the modern world and that includes Ireland.
I think it's fair to say that a mixture of arrogance and incompetence is the main reason that the Catholic Church is losing out in the battle for the hearts and minds of the Irish people.
Diarmuid Martin's statement that, while 95% of the population is nominally Catholic, only 17% are regular mass-goers is proof enough of this.
Clerical child abuse is one of the reasons why the "laity" is giving up on the church but it's not the only one.  On civil marriage, divorce, abortion and just about every other aspect of daily living, he church is perceived as being out of touch.
People were deserting the church in numbers before child abuse came up on the radar but it certainly hastened the exodus.
Now Tony there's enough reasons there to keep you going for a while!

[T Fearon]

The Church must stay true to its beliefs which cannot change regardless of era or to court popularity.Its secular society who have turned their back on these beliefs in favour of the pursuit of materialism,hedonism etc.

[Hardy]

I know the match wasn't great, but cripes, lads!

[T Fearon]

No doubt someone will blame the Catholic Church for the poor quality All Ireland Final,after all if it permitted abortion those who devised negative tactics might never have been born, or someone in one or the other back room teams should have screamed to all of Gaeldom when the tactics were being developed over tae and sandwiches in someone's outhouse in the wilds of Donegal and Kerry.

[Eamonnca1]

The Church must stay true to its beliefs which cannot change regardless of era or to court popularity.Its secular society who have turned their back on these beliefs in favour of the pursuit of materialism,hedonism etc.

When was Purgatory invented? Didn't that coincide with the time some Pope needed a bit of cash for a building job in Rome?

Does Limbo still exist?

How's the clergy getting on with refusing to marry couples that have cohabited and had children first?

[Eamonnca1]

But we all could have previously existed in a different format

Didn't think reincarnation was a catholic thing.

[Eamonnca1]

I believe life without faith is meaningless,and would be gutted to think that after our last breath there is nothing.Naturally therefore I want my eternal existence to be pleasant

So you believe it to be true because you want it to be true. The fact that you want something to be true has no bearing on whether or not it's true. Kids want to believe that Santa and the tooth fairy are real. Does that wish make them any more real?

[T Fearon]

http://www.catholic.com/blog/tim-staples/is-purgatory-in-the-bible

The basis of catholic belief in purgatory.

Why cannot people who don't believe not tolerate if not respect the opinions of those who do? What niggles those who react ferociously against believers? Could it be they are just not 100% convinced about their atheism?

[Hardy]

Limbo seems to have been abolished. The purgatory I was indoctrinated with and terrified by when I was a child has been watered down. In my day we were told, as an immutable truth, that in purgatory you were grilled over flames by devils for indeterminate periods of time (typically hundreds of years, they said) in a setup that was a full replica of hell and different only in that you eventually got out. Now it's suggested to be some wishy-washy "purification" in which your "works" are "tested" by fire. What can that even mean?

Isn't it a fairly simple application of logic to form a judgement on this tosh? If the version of my childhood is correct, you believe that, at this moment, generations of your family and your closest loved ones who have departed this life are being systematically tortured beyond what any being could possible bear? Can you really contemplate something like that and accept that there might even be a scintilla of truth in it? How could you stay sane believing that that was happening to anyone, never mind someone you love? I can't believe you believe that, because if you did, with all its implications, you couldn't function as a human being. How could you ever do anything or concentrate on anything? Don't you just find it so grotesque as to be absurd?

And if that version is not correct, when and why did it change? And, if it did, how can it be an eternal truth? And if it is thus incontrovertibly proven not to be true, what of all the other doctrines? Don't they all crumble on their foundation of illogicality and nonsense.

[T Fearon]

Simply none of us know if it's true or not.Back in the day,the Church placed the emphasis on fear to save souls,nowadays it's the more compassionate approach.

If you believe and live a good clean life,you have no need to fear the afterlife.

[Jeepers Creepers]

I was always taught, don't believe everything you read. Quite ironic really...

[Hardy]

Simply none of us know if it's true or not.Back in the day,the Church placed the emphasis on fear to save souls,nowadays it's the more compassionate approach.

If you believe and live a good clean life,you have no need to fear the afterlife.

Back in the day you could live a very clean life indeed, but if you committed a venial sin (say succumbing to the temptation of sausage on a Friday) you would still roast for perhaps centuries. If it was merely a question of emphasis, that means it was/is true, but we just don't talk about it now, as we have a different PR policy.

If you say you don't know whether it's true or not, you're accepting that it MIGHT be true. The question stands, then - how could you contemplate even that POSSIBILITY and stay sane?

[Hardy]

It all boils down to this.Do you believe Jesus existed,was crucified, and then rose from the dead? If you do that is surely irrefutable proof of the existence of  God, if you don't then you need to ask yourself why this myth has been perpetuated for so long effectively conning billions of people for over two thousand years.

By the way, have you ever actually done that?