Viewing Single Post From: All life sacred?

Viewing Single Post From: All life sacred?
Bob Crowley	Sunday, 5. July 2009, 12:23
Posts: 535 Group: Members Member #127 Joined: December 21, 2007	In ages past the church had no trouble with capital punishment, burning at the stake, torture, crusades to Jerusalem, and the like. It reflected the society in which it found itself. One generation it will make harsh dogmatic statements saying that the Catholic Church is the only way to salvation, with the Portuguese missionaries in Goa and Spanish missionaries in South America forcibly converting the natives to the church with the sword, and in another generation it will join in the modern move towards tolerating other faiths. That's why I'm cynical about the infallibility bit - the church is alway affected by the surrounding culture. I think however the enormous death toll of two world wars and the Soviet experience, combined with modern technology, have pushed the church into a position of trying to defend the value of human life in this world. At one time the church favoured ecomonic development in just about all areas, but then suddenly found itself being dragged along with the tide on climate change, environmental concerns and the like. The church by and large is not original, but adapts to the age it finds itself in. Right from the very beginning Paul had to drag a recalcitrant Peter, the first Pope, out of a Jewish mindset regarding circumcision and possibly other Jewish laws of the time, and this kind of forced editing has gone on ever since. In fact, the doctrine of Papal Infallibilility itself was a knee-jerk reaction to modernism and the accompanying revolutions, which the Church couldn't cope with in the 19th century. In the Middle Ages, the Church was against usury. That was the reason Jews became such a powerful business influence since they were prepared to charge interest for loans. Nowadays it has bank accounts of its own and has no problem with income from interest for its own investments. One more of its infallible doctrines, I suppose?


All life sacred? · General Catholic Discussion