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[kaenneth]

The Catholic church repeatedly finds itself under pressure from its more progressive followers to do things like condone condom use to help prevent AIDS.

There are tons of Catholics who disagree with the Vatican, and it's silly to think that they don't have any influence. They might not vote, but there are other ways.

The thing about religion is, it's not a democracy.

If using condoms is wrong, it's wrong. no matter how unpopular or disease spreading the results.

Selecting a religion because they allow the behavior you like, and don't allow the ones you dislike is so ... dumb.

Truth is the Truth even if no one knows it, A religions popularity has NOTHING to do with it being correct or not.

[Leafsnail]

The Catholic church repeatedly finds itself under pressure from its more progressive followers to do things like condone condom use to help prevent AIDS.

There are tons of Catholics who disagree with the Vatican, and it's silly to think that they don't have any influence. They might not vote, but there are other ways.

I'm sure it finds itself under pressure.  What I'm not convinced of is that they feel any need to change when they still have so many apparent followers (or whether vague pressure is a suitable way of dealing with an organization prepared to sweep child abuse under the rug in order to protect its public image).  But I guess we'll have to disagree there.

[kaenneth]

Just had an idea for a crossover fanfic: Neon Pegasus Envangelipony

[penguinofhonor]

The thing about religion is, it's not a democracy.

If using condoms is wrong, it's wrong. no matter how unpopular or disease spreading the results.

Selecting a religion because they allow the behavior you like, and don't allow the ones you dislike is so ... dumb.

Truth is the Truth even if no one knows it, A religions popularity has NOTHING to do with it being correct or not.

Religion shouldn't ideally be a democracy, but that's always how it works out. If everyone in a religion decides that gay marriage is right, what's that religion going to do but change to accept it? Religions have changed with the times and they always will.

This is why Catholicism as a religion and Catholicism as an institution clash. The Vatican tries to uphold what the religion should ideally be (unchanging dogma), but the practicing Catholics all over the world show what a religion actually is. If all the Catholics think birth control is fine, the "official" rule against it is just going to get ignored until it gets changed. We're in the process of that happening now.

There are some who would argue, though, that a religion shouldn't be an unchanging dogma. I'm not a theologian so I don't really know much about this argument, but I think education in the eastern religions tends to result in this viewpoint. There's something weird about eastern religions.

The Catholic church repeatedly finds itself under pressure from its more progressive followers to do things like condone condom use to help prevent AIDS.

There are tons of Catholics who disagree with the Vatican, and it's silly to think that they don't have any influence. They might not vote, but there are other ways.

I'm sure it finds itself under pressure.  What I'm not convinced of is that they feel any need to change when they still have so many apparent followers (or whether vague pressure is a suitable way of dealing with an organization prepared to sweep child abuse under the rug in order to protect its public image).  But I guess we'll have to disagree there.

The way I see it, there are three kinds of issues:
1. Religious teachings that affect the real world, like gay marriage or birth control. The popular opinion on these gets changed, and the rules have to get changed soon afterwards or people will just start ignoring the church. It needs to change or its opinions get viewed as irrelevant.
2. Religious teachings that don't affect the real world, like transubstantiation. The popular opinion on these gets changed but nobody really cares because the truth is that it doesn't really matter what the bread and wine turn into. Nobody actually gets affected by that.
3. Church crimes, like child abuse. Catholics really see these as irrelevant to their faith because they just dismiss the perpetrators as "not real catholics". This is shitty, but it's really 100% Catholicism as an institution and not as a religion. If your priests molest little boys, that doesn't suddenly make their teachings wrong. It just means you need to get new priests.

I won't deny that there's a bit too much forgiveness towards abusive priests, as well as a bit of a persecution complex with Catholics who just think the whole thing is an attempt to smear their religion. This isn't entirely unfounded, though. Listen to some Southern Baptists talk about Catholics and you'll probably hear the dumbest arguments against a religion that anyone could make.

[Truean]

.

[Hanslanda]

To be honest, now I actually WANT to knock the $300 off the bill, because though I totally thought he wanted me to spend time on it when I did the work, it appears there was a miscommunication and he didn't really order it.... He's insisting on paying the $300 though, out of some sense of honor that he "always pays his bills." WTF? A human being with a sense of honor? I didn't know those existed! That is not the guy I wanna have paying me for a misunderstanding. Forgetting the fact that this business relationship is worth more to me than $300, I actually feel bad about what happened. While I totally did the work and thought it was what he wanted at the time, it appears he didn't want it though he complained about it and was quite worried at the time.... WTF.

Can't say this has ever happened before....

There are humans with honor out there. More than you may realize. But they are a rare beast nonetheless.

[Aklyon]

There are people who attempt to have as few debts as possible with a blazing passion. Its like how some people insist on always paying for everybody if they can, except less party-related and more general. They are nice to know, so huzzah to you for finding one, Truean.

[Truean]

To be honest, now I actually WANT to knock the $300 off the bill, because though I totally thought he wanted me to spend time on it when I did the work, it appears there was a miscommunication and he didn't really order it.... He's insisting on paying the $300 though, out of some sense of honor that he "always pays his bills." WTF? A human being with a sense of honor? I didn't know those existed! That is not the guy I wanna have paying me for a misunderstanding. Forgetting the fact that this business relationship is worth more to me than $300, I actually feel bad about what happened. While I totally did the work and thought it was what he wanted at the time, it appears he didn't want it though he complained about it and was quite worried at the time.... WTF.

Can't say this has ever happened before....

There are humans with honor out there. More than you may realize. But they are a rare beast nonetheless.

There are people who attempt to have as few debts as possible with a blazing passion. Its like how some people insist on always paying for everybody if they can, except less party-related and more general. They are nice to know, so huzzah to you for finding one, Truean.

Thanks.

I'm still somewhat worried about this. I truly want to invite him to just sit down and chill out in my office and take a soda from my fridge so this whole misunderstanding thing never happens again. Not that there's a problem; he is paying, but still.... I don't want to waste time and money on research he doesn't want, because a.) I really did mean it when I told him I wanted to be cost effective, and b.) I want to do the best job I can for him.  Just weird.

[MaximumZero]

To be honest, now I actually WANT to knock the $300 off the bill, because though I totally thought he wanted me to spend time on it when I did the work, it appears there was a miscommunication and he didn't really order it.... He's insisting on paying the $300 though, out of some sense of honor that he "always pays his bills." WTF? A human being with a sense of honor? I didn't know those existed! That is not the guy I wanna have paying me for a misunderstanding. Forgetting the fact that this business relationship is worth more to me than $300, I actually feel bad about what happened. While I totally did the work and thought it was what he wanted at the time, it appears he didn't want it though he complained about it and was quite worried at the time.... WTF.

Can't say this has ever happened before....

There are humans with honor out there. More than you may realize. But they are a rare beast nonetheless.

There are people who attempt to have as few debts as possible with a blazing passion. Its like how some people insist on always paying for everybody if they can, except less party-related and more general. They are nice to know, so huzzah to you for finding one, Truean.

Thanks.

I'm still somewhat worried about this. I truly want to invite him to just sit down and chill out in my office and take a soda from my fridge so this whole misunderstanding thing never happens again. Not that there's a problem; he is paying, but still.... I don't want to waste time and money on research he doesn't want, because a.) I really did mean it when I told him I wanted to be cost effective, and b.) I want to do the best job I can for him.  Just weird.

That last part? Yeah, you should totally do all of those things. Having solid business relationships is astounding, and word of mouth travels extremely quickly.

[Aklyon]

Also, if you ask him, you have less (unnessesary) work to do and can do more stuff. Bonus!

[Dutchling]

Got an email:

You have unread spools waiting in your list, including:

* What is Spool?

[Leafsnail]

1. Religious teachings that affect the real world, like gay marriage or birth control. The popular opinion on these gets changed, and the rules have to get changed soon afterwards or people will just start ignoring the church. It needs to change or its opinions get viewed as irrelevant.

If people don't actually, like, leave the Church when they stop agreeing with it then the Church will never be seen as irrelevant.  If you have millions of followers you can hardly be seen as irrelevant.

3. Church crimes, like child abuse. Catholics really see these as irrelevant to their faith because they just dismiss the perpetrators as "not real catholics". This is shitty, but it's really 100% Catholicism as an institution and not as a religion. If your priests molest little boys, that doesn't suddenly make their teachings wrong. It just means you need to get new priests.

And if your Pope attempts to cover up this child abuse in order to protect his public image then you get a new religion (well, at least a subset of Christianity not run by him).  I would completely buy this argument if the Catholic church moved to root out child abusers as soon as it came to light.  But they didn't - the Pope was prepared to have the Catholic church remain a haven for child abusers if that meant the public didn't know about it and pretty much the entire hierarchy moved to obstruct all attempts to investigate it.

This is not a few bad apples.  This is a tree that is rotten to the very core (of course there are plenty of decent rank and file Catholics, but the leaders are almost universally contemptible).

I won't deny that there's a bit too much forgiveness towards abusive priests, as well as a bit of a persecution complex with Catholics who just think the whole thing is an attempt to smear their religion. This isn't entirely unfounded, though. Listen to some Southern Baptists talk about Catholics and you'll probably hear the dumbest arguments against a religion that anyone could make.

There's not "too much forgiveness".  The Pope didn't want to forgive the priests - he wanted to pretend to the world that the abuse did not happen.  To me that is far worse.  If some Catholics think the whole thing is an attempt to smear their religion then they're calling thousands of abused children liars and I have no sympathy for them.

[Akura]

So, we got some dolls during a morning pickup the other days, unusual since we generally don't get toys from that source. One of the guys was ordered to throw them in the trash. He then proceeds to rip the heads off the dolls, and possibly snapped the necks so the heads couldn't be replaced. And then he said he used to do that with his sister's dolls, break the heads off and leave them on her bed.


Also ran in to a hilarious bug with my Pokemon mod, with making Voltorb use Explosion. It managed to kill most of whatever it blew up near - Raticate, eight armored speargoblins, although it took several Electrodes exploding in unision to kill Golem. It was, however, unable to kill itself, and actually rendered itself fire-proof(due to fat melting).
I fixed it, though, by removing the brain and setting its fat to be a functional tissue, which sort of makes sense. The explosions were glorius.

[GlyphGryph]

But voltorb explosions DON'T kill it - they're just supposed to leave it injured.

[kaijyuu]

I find my cat next to my art notebook, licking some drawings I had made earlier today, and gnawing on the book's binding. Then he suddenly swiped at it, knocking it off the desk.


Are you THAT bored, cat?