Religion and history

[flamingophoenix]

This is an interesting argument for the importance of history when evaluating churches. Not sure if I agree with it (I mean, the Church has thoroughly repudiated Thomas More and his actions against translated Bibles, right?) (right???), but still. Interesting

Comments

[redlily]

Wait a sec, how can they repudiate More and make him a patron saint, like, a decade ago, at the same time?

[flamingophoenix]

Presumably by saying "Well, these ideas were obviously complete and total bullshit. But he said a lot of good *other* things."

Or are you asking how the Church could canonize someone who tortured (or authorized the torture of) other human beings, no matter how awesome their theological ideas? To that, I have no answer.

More's Wikipedia page does state that he denies ever torturing people (although the Middle English is difficult to read). So there's that, too. Who do you believe? That's one problem with history.

[flamingophoenix]

The WP page is not helped, either, by edit wars about unsourced statements and allegedly false statements. :-(

[mathmuffin]

You quoted Stephen Fry: "It is hard for me to be told that, to be told that I am evil, because I think of myself as someone who is filled with love

[flamingophoenix]

Per your last paragraph: Quite easily. By saying "We were wrong, and More was wrong as well, on this topic."

I do think there's a difference between "sinful" and "evil." In Catholic terms, sinful is thinking impure thoughts, or masturbating, or having premarital sex. Evil is killing six million Jews. That's the big difference - evil is something that generally, most non-sociopathic people agree on. Sinful is something that varies depending on your belief system. (And if you lack a belief in God, then generally you don't use the word "sinful" at all.) That's a pretty big generalization, but it's the basic idea, as I understand common use of those words.

According to this BBC article, the specific quote from then-Cardinal (?) Ratzinger was - "he has described homosexuality as a tendency towards an "intrinsic moral evil

[mathmuffin]

If the Roman Catholic Church says, "We were wrong about William Tyndale and other Bible translators, and Thomas More's actions based on our mistake were wrong, too," then this would explain how the church could repudiate his actions yet venerate him as a saint, as redlily asked about.

Wikiquote provides the full text of Cardinal Ratzinger's statement, "Although the particular inclination of the homosexual person is not a sin, it is a more or less strong tendency ordered to an intrinsic moral evil, and thus the inclination itself must be seen as an objective disorder." One advantage of being a Lutheran is that I have no need to defend the Pope. He was an idiot. I recognize academic jargon when I see it. Those words do not mean what us non-experts think they mean--I wonder what "ordered to" exactly means--but Ratzinger said them where people would take the words at face value

[araken]

I disagree with the premise that long-ago history should be important when choosing a faith, or lack thereof. The reason why is simple: no one's hands are clean. (There are perhaps a few exceptions, such as the Quakers, but I doubt there are many

[blue_hat_guru]

Though of course current beliefs and practices tend to be influenced by former ones....

[flamingophoenix]

And some former beliefs are still held, if in a more quiet fashion. We don't burn people anymore, but we still shun and abuse them. Which, I suspect, is *not* what any of the founders actually wanted...