Da Vinci Code: Historical or Historical Fiction?

[franko]

toronthab said:

In this particular incident, you happen to have picked an article written by the guy who wrote the book.

By the way, I know that -- at the beginning of the article he says "I my book I wrote" . . .

Now, as Rome says . . . Out

[Doc Holliday]

Forget about the Truth of this and the Truth of that, it's just silly... Dan Brown fiction seems likely because it hinges on obvious Catholic Church wrong doings. You don't need to read 3 thousands books on theology to figure out that for centuries, Catholic Church draped themselves in secrecy and yes they took misogyny to incredible heights. Many Priests and Bishops have lied to and abused entire population in order to maintain their political power and draw to them every bit of possible richness. Born and raised in the province of Quebec our very recent history is full of examples of these things. As a population we just recently came out of the dark the Church was keeping us in.

As for Jesus, did HE waited in golden palace, draped in silk, ordering this and condemning that? Nope. From all we've been taught, he was a men of his time, dressed in poor men's clothes, walking his country to meet his fellow men, give them hope and tell them that God loves them and that they should love each other just the same. A simple guy that gave us simple rules towards happiness and simple guidelines to live in harmony.

TorontoHAB claims that those who enjoyed Brown's fiction are gullible. I feel the gullible ones are those who proxy their own good judgment to the Church people that are trying to organize a modern day witch hunt.

I have Faith, I am Catholic, I make sure my 2 sons are raised in my religion and I still go to Church (not as often as I could mind you) and I look for them to provide spiritual guidance. That being said, my ancestors went through great sacrifices to open my eyes and make sure we no longer blindly believe in Church rhetoric or smoke screens in some medieval fear of divine retribution. I feel I owe it to them not to fall back in that trap and in some way feel that I would even be unfair to Church to once again expect them to tell me how to think, feel and reason right down to the novels I chose to read.

[Toronthab]

toronthab said:

docholliday said:

Forget about the Truth of this and the Truth of that, it's just silly... Dan Brown fiction seems likely because it hinges on obvious Catholic Church wrong doings. You don't need to read 3 thousands books on theology to figure out that for centuries, Catholic Church draped themselves in secrecy and yes they took misogyny to incredible heights. Many Priests and Bishops have lied to and abused entire population in order to maintain their political power and draw to them every bit of possible richness. Born and raised in the province of Quebec our very recent history is full of examples of these things. As a population we just recently came out of the dark the Church was keeping us in.

As for Jesus, did HE waited in golden palace, draped in silk, ordering this and condemning that? Nope. From all we've been taught, he was a men of his time, dressed in poor men's clothes, walking his country to meet his fellow men, give them hope and tell them that God loves them and that they should love each other just the same. A simple guy that gave us simple rules towards happiness and simple guidelines to live in harmony.

TorontoHAB claims that those who enjoyed Brown's fiction are gullible. I feel the gullible ones are those who proxy their own good judgment to the Church people that are trying to organize a modern day witch hunt.

I have Faith, I am Catholic, I make sure my 2 sons are raised in my religion and I still go to Church (not as often as I could mind you) and I look for them to provide spiritual guidance. That being said, my ancestors went through great sacrifices to open my eyes and make sure we no longer blindly believe in Church rhetoric or smoke screens in some medieval fear of divine retribution. I feel I owe it to them not to fall back in that trap and in some way feel that I would even be unfair to Church to once again expect them to tell me how to think, feel and reason right down to the novels I chose to read.

I think that you have provided a textbook sample or setpiece example of a common perspective on the church, and you'll be happy to hear that I consider it on balance to be horsepucky. I say that with a grin incidentally. At the end of the day, I honest to God believe that I am, for the most part mostly interested in what is true. I really don't or certainly don't believe that I fear truth. (Except perhaps truths about me.)

I'm really glad you came out with this. Seriously. I think the Catholic church, not long ago described as "the new blacks." is amongst trhe most unfairly considered group on the planet. A good sign, incidentally.

I think your comments Doc, are a great takeoff point for a consideration of history.

Me take, which I hope will be a fairly nuanced one is that such views are off by about a hundred and forty degrees, and reflect a lot more about us as a culture than they do about reality. And that is the proverbial question , what really is the nature of reality, as it is and was lived.

Take for instance the contemporary church. Exactly what is this thing all about? I think it is an execellent vehicle for the authentic voice of God as it is given to me through study and a too feeble spiritual life permit me to understand.

With the exception of quite a few jerks like myself, I see a church of profound and committed good contributing to the world as is no other body on the planet.

What "truth of this and truth of that is so silly" for you. If the reference is to super Dan, then I can tell you that I'm bored shipless with this dumbo nonsense, this sound and fury signifiying nothing. As was well observed, it has a singular statement to make about whence such junk comes. His garbage would, on the surface seem to sit well with you, and I must confess, that if your assessment of the ways and means and truth and value of catholicism were in fact accurate and true, I don't think his bullship and lies would be so serious an issue. But I think your evaluation, very unjust, or out of sync with the real world I inhabit.

I think your notion of Jesus as you've expressed it has very little foundation in reality, a popular but simplistic view, and I don't mean that to insult , but to characterize the view.

The church draping themselves in secrecy for centuries? I have no idea what you are talking about here, and I read history, critical and otherwise. What do you mean?

Incredble heights of mysogyny? Shirley you jest. I think that Catholicism has been singular and very clearly in the vanguard of affirming and even exalting the feminine. The church understands her very self as feminine, the bride of christ, and has throughout her existence accepted the immanent, the relational the spiritual pole of the feminine and the human temporal reality as created by God and good in itself.

And they affirm the transcendent and the moral dimension polarity, that of the 'father', lawgiver as well. I think your accusation , just not really connected to human history and the practices of mankind.

Women shone and shine within catholicism, from conception do a natural death.

The leadership of the Catholic church is, once again, a singularity within human history. While abuses occur througout human history and in particular during the late medieval period as spirituall and temporal power were intertwined and subject to all the potential conflicts of such odd ideas as "kings' and "queens" in static societies. It as been observed that for all the human weakness of the churchj, her survival as the most successful institution and entity in all of human life thusfar testifies to her divine origins.

You, like Marx, have difficulty with the idea of transformation of society it seems. I, as a non expert, look around me and see the socio-political organizatin of the West as being very unlikely to reflect modern democratic principles right from the resurrection and the feudal course as unavoidable. The church since Constantine had to learn to live with power. Always a tough thing. But, blanket condemnations strike me as not shedding much light on the matter at all.

So Jesu gave us simple rules? Like what? "I tell you no divorce." It is better that a man lose his eyesight than be cast into hell -paraphrase. Get behind me Satan..to Peter who wondered if Christ had to be crucified. Those who seek to keep their lives shall lose them. Be not afraid of him who can take your mortal life, but rather fear He who can condemn your eternal soul.

My ways are not your ways. Wide and easy is the path to death , but narrow and difficult is the path to eternal life. Better a man not be born than cause scandal to a kid. Fornicators will not see the kingdom of heaven..Franko can provide the actual quotes. I can go on and so did the people he authorized and the ones they authorized till today.

Christs conception of love, and his witness and teaching was and is exactly as the church proclaims it and affirming the commandments, the basics of a moral life. It wasn't LUV as written on the side of a VW bus. He did say that the church would be hated.

Love means not screwing some kid because you want to, but trying to contain and order sexuality towards responsible living where kids don't get sliced up in the womb, and torn rectal canals don't invite terrible infections and an inexhaustible history of suffering and death.

Jesus wasn't stupid and simplistic. Neither is his church.

The church is made up of people who sin. "Sin" a Greek word, means to fall short, like an arrow missing its target, and we all do, individually and institutionally, but the bleak characterization you present is I believe missing almost the whole course of history.

I too grew up in Quebec; in Montreal. I too went to a school, a Catholic school where I was given a not perfect certainly, but overwhelmingly life-affirming, UN-bigotted and for its years, thorough eduaction. As a kid I was profoundly affected, oddly enough, at St Ignatius by the Stations of the Cross. In particular I remeber the incredibly powerful image of a Roman soldier beating and whipping a Christ fallen under the wieght of the cross. That was only one, but to that point in my life the clearest and I suspect most formative impetus to knowing exactly what injustice and innocence were. That image is burned in me.

We had a school in NDG. I had friends. We were well fed by parents most of us. I got the strap because corporal punishment was still universally seen as having a positive effect. They were dead wrong, but honestly so. We learned better and changed this.

My father and his brothers and those of my mother mostly went off to offer their lives to stop Hitler, while my country and the US turned desperate Jews away,

Pius XII is credited with having been instrumental in saving the lives of some 700,000 jewish lives, consistent with the bishps of Rome undertaking to live a special concern for the jewish people. He was ...out of nowhere...accused by a former Hitler youth, later marxist homsexual playright of having abandonned the jews. Lots of people liked this idea and ignored the testimony of the community leaders who experienced his concern. A little industry started in tinsel town. Hollywood and the entertainment industry HATE catholicism as much as they support realistic and honest teen romance portrayals. They of course mostly strongly support killing the offspring.

When I personally screwed up, and I really thank the church for having given me excellent values and the hope of at least occasionally or one day achieving a little of them, I screwed up in opposition to the church, not in concert with her.

I guess you don't live in Toronto Doc. I'd take Montreal any day.

Enough of this from me for now. You raise a commonplace opinion that is heavy on the accusations and MIA on the incredible and ongoing achievements and good of this divinely inspired and guided work of man and God, quite often in concert.

I will marshall some counterarguments to your points.

This is old, but for what it's worth, the difference between Machiavelli and Dante was that while they could both see hell, Dante could alsos see heaven.

I'm glad you posted your opinion.

[Toronthab]

Franko mentionned a penchant for a quick cut and paste which I resisted as unwarranted. I left Montreal in '65 and can hardly speak with authority on the Quiet Revolution, but I googled this Phd research bit from the university of Manitoba. It read to me as pretty well balanced canonizing or damning no one, church or state.

It doesn't at all suggest to me the church as some terrible historical anachronism of no concern of influence, but rather an immensely signigicant and benevolent institution itself transforming and being transformed with both ultramontane and street level inspirations. It shows a church itself taking a deep new breath in the Vatican II Council.

Doc's reference encouraged me to learn a little bit about the Quebec I lived in, loved and love today. All or certainly most of the material I have read over the years has not been wildly critical of either the church or the state.

I cannot vouch for the observatons and claims herein, but most historical claims can be quite thoroughly investigated. I found the following highly informative and helpful.



Why the Quiet Revolution was “Quiet”:

The Catholic Church’s Reaction
to the Secularization of Nationalism
in Quebec after 1960

David SELJAK


Writing about the rapid secularization of Quebec society in the 1960s
and 1970s, Hubert Guindon remarks, “In every respect except calendar time,
centuries – not decades – separate the Quebec of the 1980s from the Quebec
of the 1950s.”2 A similar observation might be made about the Church of
Quebec and its development between 1960 and 1980.

www.umanitoba.ca/colleges/st_pauls/ccha/Back%20Issues/CCHA1996/Seljak.pdf

Before 1960, the
Church exercised a virtual monopoly over education, health care, and the
social services offered to French Quebeckers who formed the majority of the
population. During his years as premier from 1944 to 1959, Maurice
Duplessis had declared Quebec a Catholic province and actively promoted
the Church’s welfare. In 1958, more than eighty-five percent of the population
identified themselves as Catholic and more than eighty-eight percent of
those Catholics attended mass every Sunday.3 A virtual army of nuns, priests,
and brothers, which by 1962 numbered more than 50,000, oversaw the
Church’s massive bureaucracy.4 This semi-established status and public

[franko]

an interesting take . . .

"My dear Wormwood, ... I shall today croak a paean of praise to a particular work of middlebrow non-fiction. ... Now, Wormwood, before you object to my calling [The Da Vinci Code] 'non-fiction'—since it is technically classified as 'fiction'—let me say that it is essentially non-fiction, at least as far as our purposes are concerned. That's because its principal delight for our side is that in the tacky plastic shell of some below-average 'fiction,' the book parades as 'fact' a veritable phalanx of practical propaganda. ... Souls by the boatload are blithely believing almost all the deliciously corrosive non-facts that are congealed everywhere in it." Screwtape On 'The DaVinci Code'

C. S. Lewis' book The Screwtape Letters (wikipedia's take) is classic! Brilliant! A must read! Etc.

Actually, just about anything written by the man is worth the read, though The Pilgrim's Regress tends to bog one down. His Space Trilogy was great (warning: religious overtones).

[franko]

docholliday said:

As for Jesus, did HE waited in golden palace, draped in silk, ordering this and condemning that? Nope. From all we've been taught, he was a men of his time, dressed in poor men's clothes, walking his country to meet his fellow men, give them hope and tell them that God loves them and that they should love each other just the same. A simple guy that gave us simple rules towards happiness and simple guidelines to live in harmony.

I think you've caught His essence . . . though I'd add that he came to show us God.

[Toronthab]

franko said:

an interesting take . . .

"My dear Wormwood, ... I shall today croak a paean of praise to a particular work of middlebrow non-fiction. ... Now, Wormwood, before you object to my calling [The Da Vinci Code] 'non-fiction'—since it is technically classified as 'fiction'—let me say that it is essentially non-fiction, at least as far as our purposes are concerned. That's because its principal delight for our side is that in the tacky plastic shell of some below-average 'fiction,' the book parades as 'fact' a veritable phalanx of practical propaganda. ... Souls by the boatload are blithely believing almost all the deliciously corrosive non-facts that are congealed everywhere in it." Screwtape On 'The DaVinci Code'

C. S. Lewis' book The Screwtape Letters (wikipedia's take) is classic! Brilliant! A must read! Etc.

Actually, just about anything written by the man is worth the read, though The Pilgrim's Regress tends to bog one down. His Space Trilogy was great (warning: religious overtones).

I'm with you there. C.S. Lewis who was so influenced by Plato, and wasn't it Tolkein who in their long conversations over years who helped him see lfe in a new light? Lewis was absolutely remarkable in his insights and what a pleasure to read such an agile miind.

I was just discussing the Chronicles of Narnia with my daughter the other day, and his Mere Christianity is a wonder. One of my favourite philosophers, Peter Kreeft holds him in very high regard....like who doesn't.

Good post Franko

[Habs_fan_in_LA]

toronthab said:

ropoflu said:

toronthab said:

Thanks for your well-worded, well thought out and respectful post.

I wish I could put down words as elegantly as you do.

As I said, I'll follow the debate at a distance. I'm not religious, but I'm not an atheist either. I acknowledge the real benefits of religion for many people and recognized Jesus' message of love as a positive one, a message certainly richer that the crap we regularly found on TV (as an ex-marketeer I recognized that a lot of this crap come under the form of advertsing, but that's the main reason I quit the profession... my own personal redemption here). So, all in all, while I'm really interested in that debate, I don't feel right taking a strong stance for or against religion.

Thank you for your well-worded, thught out and respectful post..I have resigned from a couple of high paying jobs and once started a union out of a sense of injustice. Everything I've read says to me, that the kind of personal integrity your actions describe...which takes one helluva lot of courage, is exactly the kind of thing that religion, authentic religion seeks to instantiate. While liberation theology is upon close analysis a Marxist utopian phenomenon, an awful lot of priests and nuns have been hunted and killed for aiding and mobilizing the poor. And Che, the communist leader, was very likely motivated by the injustice he saw everywhere. He may well, fo all I know, have been following his conscience to the best of his ability, even with wrong turns, We all make wrong turns.

The matter of religion is central to life. One bets one's life. It's very serious stuff. The major impediment to learning something is the belief that we already know it.

One should be, not cynical, which is a spiritual malaise, but very skeptical of all claims made for we only do this thing once. It took me a hell of a long time to remove all doubts and questions concerning Catholicism, and I must admit, that there are of course a billion things I don't know, but I am fully satisfied intellectually, and in fact find her to be the only fully consistent entity on earth.

They tell anyone who is interested in the church, which often happens when someone marries a catholic. (Catholic girls are much sexier than all others on the planet) that they should take a course of study to deal with every single aspect of the faith.

True story. My mother took some classes when she wanted to marry my dad. They were pretty good classes. She decided tshe wanted to become a nun. My dad was always a smooth talker however.

One guy I really like in approaching these questions is Peter Kreeft, a professor of philosophy at Boston College, which is a Jesuit college. He converted to catholicism and has been teaching university philosophy for about thirty years.

Philosophy incidentally is a discipline that seeks a wisdom, of knowledge about all things insofar as they are knowable by human reasining alone. It is not religion. It asks if one can prove by reason alone, what can be known about what causes the universe and all the other really interesting questions. It does not admit theological presuppositions or assumptions.

Good luck in coming to terms with these most essential questions.

When do the descendants of Jesus file a defamation of character suit against the descendants of Davinci?

[Toronthab]

habsfaninla said:

toronthab said:

ropoflu said:

Thank you for your well-worded, thught out and respectful post..I have resigned from a couple of high paying jobs and once started a union out of a sense of injustice. Everything I've read says to me, that the kind of personal integrity your actions describe...which takes one helluva lot of courage, is exactly the kind of thing that religion, authentic religion seeks to instantiate. While liberation theology is upon close analysis a Marxist utopian phenomenon, an awful lot of priests and nuns have been hunted and killed for aiding and mobilizing the poor. And Che, the communist leader, was very likely motivated by the injustice he saw everywhere. He may well, fo all I know, have been following his conscience to the best of his ability, even with wrong turns, We all make wrong turns.

The matter of religion is central to life. One bets one's life. It's very serious stuff. The major impediment to learning something is the belief that we already know it.

One should be, not cynical, which is a spiritual malaise, but very skeptical of all claims made for we only do this thing once. It took me a hell of a long time to remove all doubts and questions concerning Catholicism, and I must admit, that there are of course a billion things I don't know, but I am fully satisfied intellectually, and in fact find her to be the only fully consistent entity on earth.

They tell anyone who is interested in the church, which often happens when someone marries a catholic. (Catholic girls are much sexier than all others on the planet) that they should take a course of study to deal with every single aspect of the faith.

True story. My mother took some classes when she wanted to marry my dad. They were pretty good classes. She decided tshe wanted to become a nun. My dad was always a smooth talker however.

One guy I really like in approaching these questions is Peter Kreeft, a professor of philosophy at Boston College, which is a Jesuit college. He converted to catholicism and has been teaching university philosophy for about thirty years.

Philosophy incidentally is a discipline that seeks a wisdom, of knowledge about all things insofar as they are knowable by human reasining alone. It is not religion. It asks if one can prove by reason alone, what can be known about what causes the universe and all the other really interesting questions. It does not admit theological presuppositions or assumptions.

Good luck in coming to terms with these most essential questions.

When do the descendants of Jesus file a defamation of character suit against the descendants of Davinci?

Apparently they did, but their representative at the bar had appparently forged his papers and the court judge turned out to be a lines caller from a local tennis court. Minni Mary XII the mother of the little Jeeslings was apparently misled as well. Her hearing condition caused her to confuse the phrase "sue in court " with the phrase "sewing course" which had them all in stitches. Doubleday has the bookish rights, and while the movie rights are of paramount interest, there are some techincal concerns anticipated in shhooting the kids. apparently they randomly levitate and require restraining straps. They show up on film and make the whole thing seem a little unreal. Book sales are very brisk however.

The lines caller/judge swears that there really is a tennis court.

[Cranky]

docholliday said:

As for Jesus, did HE waited in golden palace, draped in silk, ordering this and condemning that? Nope. From all we've been taught, he was a men of his time, dressed in poor men's clothes, walking his country to meet his fellow men, give them hope and tell them that God loves them and that they should love each other just the same. A simple guy that gave us simple rules towards happiness and simple guidelines to live in harmony.

Good stuff Doc, straight forward as it gets. While I am no follower of Jesus, or God, the "idea or ideals" is greater then either. Which brings me the question, did we create entities to reinforce our ideals? An argument can be made that it ingrained in our genes to be pack animals and we merely tried ot codefy a set of rule (ideals) to survive with each other in the pack. "Love your fellow man" can be broken down to it's very basic root (dare I say genetic?) as "co-operate with your fellow pack mammal".

As for those draped in silk, how convenient it was for Maurice to marry church and state for his reign of corruption and moral disgust. "Les années noire" curtesy of the church AND state. Of all the things THEY did, none worse worse then creating an industry by declaring THOUSANDS of normal children as "mentally handicapped" to get more federal aid. Of course, if you ask the church TODAY, they did nothing wrong.

[Toronthab]

habsaddict said:

docholliday said:

As for Jesus, did HE waited in golden palace, draped in silk, ordering this and condemning that? Nope. From all we've been taught, he was a men of his time, dressed in poor men's clothes, walking his country to meet his fellow men, give them hope and tell them that God loves them and that they should love each other just the same. A simple guy that gave us simple rules towards happiness and simple guidelines to live in harmony.

Good stuff Doc, straight forward as it gets. While I am no follower of Jesus, or God, the "idea or ideals" is greater then either. Which brings me the question, did we create entities to reinforce our ideals? An argument can be made that it ingrained in our genes to be pack animals and we merely tried ot codefy a set of rule (ideals) to survive with each other in the pack. "Love your fellow man" can be broken down to it's very basic root (dare I say genetic?) as "co-operate with your fellow pack mammal".

As for those draped in silk, how convenient it was for Maurice to marry church and state for his reign of corruption and moral disgust. "Les années noire" curtesy of the church AND state. Of all the things THEY did, none worse worse then creating an industry by declaring THOUSANDS of normal children as "mentally handicapped" to get more federal aid. Of course, if you ask the church TODAY, they did nothing wrong.

Interesting that in 500 years of Church history you select a short span wherein a corrupt right wing conservative government with immense and corrupt backing form the English and usually protestant segment of the population. That this corrupt consrvative govenment found it expedient to cozy up to the clergy is hardly shocking, and it was in fact the church including key bishops who took very unusual steps to oppose him, particularly in the famous Johns Manville strike where the church lined up with the working man to defeat big business and the establishimient.

The church was also central in opposing the corruptions of Duplessis, and was instrumental in his downfall. The plight of the Duplessis Orphans was a great sadness indeed, and the only people in Quebec who would do anything for orphans or children of unmarried mothers who could not raise their children on their own, was the church. It was the province who started the practice of getting doctors to classify up to three thousand kids as having mental or psychiatric problems.

Entire orders of nuns and religious (the church)have througout the history of Quebec devoted their entire lives to the service of the poorest and powerless, just as they continue today.

In fact, while there is little doubt that some orphans were indeed not served well, and even harmed, the office of the Ombudsman in Quebec also could not find evidence of specific responsibility for this with the church, as you assert.

More particularly though and what I personally resent a bit is that in a topic of the influence fof good and bad of the church in Quebec, you only reference one instance and use it to render judgement and condemnation upon the church as a whole and its history.

You may indeed have a broader base of knowledge or balance, I don't know, but this kind of selective and unnuanced indictment, it resembles the common tactic of advancing bigotry. This may not be your intent, but it could readily be understood as the effect.

As for "silk" vestements and the like, it is quite true that the local priest on sundays, a day of clelbration have special clothes to reflect the seasons of the church and their symbolic colours.

Catholics when they marry, often dress up to with fancy white gowns and fancy tuxedos as well. It's become very excessive in my opinion in this whole Canadian culture of consumption but there's not a whole lot of merit behind the gratutitous sartorial critique.

The church of course when all of human society did not draw distinctions between the organizing beliefs of a people and their social organization...the same thing is done today in a less focussed moral manner. (e. g. there is no law. as in Sparta protecting humans in their mother's womb and can be killed for no reason whatever. Most are carefully silent about this crime against humanity). But as the church was ascendent and the most important and influential reality in European history, it is not news that corruption and temporal -spiritual problems would emerge.

That people sometimes fail to do what they should, even in positions of authority is not in the least news. This does not mean that 2000 years of teaching authority and the sacraments and promises of Christ suddenly disappear. There's no sound reaoning in this .

Unlike the view of much of protestant thought, the church looks upon all of creation and it's goods of beauty, sexual expression and all good things as just that, good things firm God to be enjoyed and shared accoding to our human natures. Nice garments at mass are just fine and fitting for the celebration.

The charitable and works of service to the poor and the poorest of the poor undertaken by the church are without equal in the world, consistent with the teachng of Christ, who said he would judge each of us on our treatment of the weak be it in the womb or at the side of the road.

In my ordinary, or in fact favored childhood in the schools of the institution, fevered imaginations love to portray as evil, monstrous and anti-human (cartoonists) eveything was done to encourage the development of a compassionate, intelligent and effective
human being with a sense of justice and meaning.

[Toronthab]

It would seem that an attempt to simplistically state that the corrupt right wing conservative government of Duplessis and the church has to ignore a lot of history.



Signs of change had been cropping up, especially in the postwar years. But to friend
as well as foe, the Duplessis victory in 1948 seemed a guarantee that change would
be arrested, that Quebec would remain as it had been -- if necessary, go back to what
it had been. Mr. Duplessis may well have shared this view himself. At any rate he
could hardly have expected the startling change that took place within less than a
year, as exemplified by these events:


A Catholic Syndicate went through a five-month strike, militantly led by a parish priest
-- this in spite of the fact that the strike was illegal under Quebec's labor law, and had
been violently denounced by the Duplessis Government.
By unanimous decision of the Quebec bishops, church-door collections in support of
the strike were taken each Sunday for the last two months of the fight. In cash it
brought the strikers $167,558, about one-third their total expenditure. In moral support
it was invaluable.
Archbishop Charbonneau of Montreal, announcing the strike collection from the pulpit

A Catholic Syndicate went through a five-month strike, militantly led by a parish priest
-- this in spite of the fact that the strike was illegal under Quebec's labor law, and had
been violently denounced by the Duplessis Government.

By unanimous decision of the Quebec bishops, church-door collections in support of
the strike were taken each Sunday for the last two months of the fight.

In cash it
brought the strikers $167,558, about one-third their total expenditure. In moral support
it was invaluable.

Archbishop Charbonneau of Montreal, announcing the strike collection from the pulpit
of Notre Dame Church, said "There is a conspiracy to destroy the working class, and it
is the Church's duty to intervene."


That was unusual enough, from a reigning archbishop, but Monseigneur Charbonneau
had always been known for liberal views.

Far more remarkable was the Labor Daysermon of Bishop Desranleau of Sherbrooke, in whose diocese the strike had taken place. Bishop Desranleau had been regarded as a spokesman of the Right. He had last gained notoriety by forbidding his flock to join "neutral" service clubs like Rotary and Kiwanis, lest they be contaminated by outside influences. He above all, one would have supposed, saw the Syndicate movement as a conservative and not a radical force.

On the Sunday before Labor Day, Bishop Desranleau spoke to a Syndicate rally, with the strike padre, Father Louis Philippe Camirand, sitting on the platform beside him.

The Bishop said:

Capitalism is the cause of all our miseries. We must work against it -- not to
transform it, for it cannot be transformed; not to correct it, for it is incorrigible; but
to replace it.
The reform of our socio-economic structure will be made through
Catholic syndicalism, or through revolution, blood and death . . .

When they tell you our Syndicates are as ill-inspired as the neutral or socialist
unions, it's not true. Workers must have a blind confidence in their Syndicates . . .

Men over 60 have seen two world wars and will perhaps see a third, even more
unjust, more destructive, between two totalitarian camps -- that of the
concentration camp, and that of the American dollar.

It is our task to change this
situation by implanting the doctrines of the Church . . .

The basic cause is not new -- Pius XI and Pius XII have proclaimed it for all to
hear.

It is greed. Everyone wants what he has not got.

That is why the Popes
recommend the virtues of moderation.

But we cannot succeed by the practice of virtue alone, for this is no longer a
personal but a social evil.

We must have reforms of the socio-economic structure,
and no one has the right to dissociate himself from these reforms.

It was the culmination of a movement that has been going on for some years in
Quebec. In Bishop Desranleau's personal case the decisive factor was probably the
aforementioned strike in his own diocese, but the real causes of the change -- and of
the strike itself -- go back a long way.

www2.marianopolis.edu/quebechistory/docs/asbestos/4Ae.pdf


On the lay side, the character of the Syndicate movement altered very materially
about five years ago. The 376 Syndicates in Quebec and their 82,000 members are
organized into the Canadian Confederation of Catholic Labor, and until 1945 the
presidency of the Confederation was held by an ardent Duplessis man, a very docile
unionist. That year his own secretary, Gérard Picard, led a successful revolt and
defeated him with a platform of militant action. The Syndicates have functioned as
real, aggressive trade unions ever since.

Instead of regarding C.I.O. and A.F.L. unions as enemies to be hated, the Syndicates
now treat them as allies. There is close and often successful cooperation between the
Catholic and the international federations. Syndicate ranks have been opened to
workers of all faiths. The accent has shifted from the word "Catholic" to the word
"labor."


This change on the lay side was a major victory for a kindred faction within the ranks
of the clergy. A small but growing minority of Catholic priests had long felt that the
Church in Quebec interested itself too little and too late in social questions. They
recalled the words of Pius XI: "The great scandal of the nineteenth century was that
the Church lost the working class." They believed the Church must regain that support
by taking its place at the workingman's side.
Beside him, not in front of him. These clerics are anticlericals of a kind; they oppose

[Cranky]

toronthab said:

habsaddict said:

Good stuff Doc, straight forward as it gets. While I am no follower of Jesus, or God, the "idea or ideals" is greater then either. Which brings me the question, did we create entities to reinforce our ideals? An argument can be made that it ingrained in our genes to be pack animals and we merely tried ot codefy a set of rule (ideals) to survive with each other in the pack. "Love your fellow man" can be broken down to it's very basic root (dare I say genetic?) as "co-operate with your fellow pack mammal".

As for those draped in silk, how convenient it was for Maurice to marry church and state for his reign of corruption and moral disgust. "Les années noire" curtesy of the church AND state. Of all the things THEY did, none worse worse then creating an industry by declaring THOUSANDS of normal children as "mentally handicapped" to get more federal aid. Of course, if you ask the church TODAY, they did nothing wrong.

Interesting that in 500 years of Church history you select a short span wherein a corrupt right wing conservative government with immense and corrupt backing form the English and usually protestant segment of the population. That this corrupt consrvative govenment found it expedient to cozy up to the clergy is hardly shocking, and it was in fact the church including key bishops who took very unusual steps to oppose him, particularly in the famous Johns Manville strike where the church lined up with the working man to defeat big business and the establishimient.

The church was also central in opposing the corruptions of Duplessis, and was instrumental in his downfall. The plight of the Duplessis Orphans was a great sadness indeed, and the only people in Quebec who would do anything for orphans or children of unmarried mothers who could not raise their children on their own, was the church. It was the province who started the practice of getting doctors to classify up to three thousand kids as having mental or psychiatric problems.

Entire orders of nuns and religious (the church)have througout the history of Quebec devoted their entire lives to the service of the poorest and powerless, just as they continue today.

In fact, while there is little doubt that some orphans were indeed not served well, and even harmed, the office of the Ombudsman in Quebec also could not find evidence of specific responsibility for this with the church, as you assert.

More particularly though and what I personally resent a bit is that in a topic of the influence fof good and bad of the church in Quebec, you only reference one instance and use it to render judgement and condemnation upon the church as a whole and its history.

You may indeed have a broader base of knowledge or balance, I don't know, but this kind of selective and unnuanced indictment, it resembles the common tactic of advancing bigotry. This may not be your intent, but it could readily be understood as the effect.

As for "silk" vestements and the like, it is quite true that the local priest on sundays, a day of clelbration have special clothes to reflect the seasons of the church and their symbolic colours.

Catholics when they marry, often dress up to with fancy white gowns and fancy tuxedos as well. It's become very excessive in my opinion in this whole Canadian culture of consumption but there's not a whole lot of merit behind the gratutitous sartorial critique.

The church of course when all of human society did not draw distinctions between the organizing beliefs of a people and their social organization...the same thing is done today in a less focussed moral manner. (e. g. there is no law. as in Sparta protecting humans in their mother's womb and can be killed for no reason whatever. Most are carefully silent about this crime against humanity). But as the church was ascendent and the most important and influential reality in European history, it is not news that corruption and temporal -spiritual problems would emerge.

That people sometimes fail to do what they should, even in positions of authority is not in the least news. This does not mean that 2000 years of teaching authority and the sacraments and promises of Christ suddenly disappear. There's no sound reaoning in this .

Unlike the view of much of protestant thought, the church looks upon all of creation and it's goods of beauty, sexual expression and all good things as just that, good things firm God to be enjoyed and shared accoding to our human natures. Nice garments at mass are just fine and fitting for the celebration.

The charitable and works of service to the poor and the poorest of the poor undertaken by the church are without equal in the world, consistent with the teachng of Christ, who said he would judge each of us on our treatment of the weak be it in the womb or at the side of the road.

In my ordinary, or in fact favored childhood in the schools of the institution, fevered imaginations love to portray as evil, monstrous and anti-human (cartoonists) eveything was done to encourage the development of a compassionate, intelligent and effective
human being with a sense of justice and meaning.

Condemntaition? Why not? There were THOUSANDS of children affected by this travesty merely a generation ago. All they asked for was for an apology and the church REFUSED even a simple apology on the fear that it might lead to court cases and MONEY. If the church wants to be forgiven for it's past, then it has to do what it asks from it's followers. Admit guilt and ask for forgivness from the people it terrorized.

The church builds itself as the owner of the high road. How can one fail to notice when it fails so dramatically and them compounds it by failing to do right to those affected.

And just for the record....

And as for the "work with the poor", it goes hand in hand with the indocrination. There is no such thing as "anonymous donation" or "ananymous help" from the church.



~~~~~~~~~~~~


P.S. Notice that I did not have to resort to judging YOUR character or YOUR intent when I responded. It seems that you need to resort to that every time you don't agree with a poster. When are you going to "get it" that we don't make it personal in this forum?

[Toronthab]

You repeat the accusation of gross indictment, uniting the very, very corrupt Duplessis regime with Catholicism, when it was catholicism through Catholic papers like Le Devoir, cattholic leaders like Claude Ryan, Trudeau and bishops who resisted his conservative, big business agenda, particularly during the asbestos strike that brought Duplessis down.

And you, like the Duplessi Orphans who continue to be supported and aided by the church did not show that it was the church, who admittedly and throughout the 2000 years of her history has always had a commitment to the poor, one they passed on to me and virtually evey Catholic I know, fail to demonstrate the actual culpability.

To repeat myself, neither could or at least certainly did the office of the ombudsman find the church responisble. And still later Bernard Landry also, in the face of a media thirst for victims affirm the innocence of the church.


Your indictment of all of the church's efforts on behalf of her fellow man, as "indoctrination' and claim that there is no such thing as anonymous givimg is ...what can a rational person say in the face of such ...sorry I can't think of a single word that describes such merciless, accusatory calumny and slander of entire civilizations over 500 years as ...what ?

Do you imagine that Quebecers don't have families who they knew a little bit not to be monsters of indifference? Do you think that when my Dad as he raised me to regularly not forget those less fortunate than ourselves, and that when he reached out to them, that I and millions of other kids couldn't see living compassion and loving concern living in them.

Your suggestioins and portrayals are just monstrous in their injustice and disregard for others, entire civilizations. It is most common that such portrayals have little to do with the victems of the slander, and that they really say more about those given to making such irresponsible statements.

In most instances, and I'm sure if you replaced the object of your loathing form catholic to Jew or perhaps black, it would not be at all difficult to determine the nature of the attitude.

I am reminded of conversation of a man I briefly in a Florida bar. For ten minutes regaled me with stories of how dirty, lazy, slovenly and worthless blacks were, and all the while assuring me that he was no racist bigot, just the voice of truth.

I don't mind legitimate criticisms of attitudes, acts and insitutions, including the Catholic church. She has suffered periods of corruption, has had her legitimate authoruty usurped and abused at times for lesser goals.

I am only interested in a balanced truth and am far from totally condemning western history and civilization and its incredible dynamism relative to all other cultures, and her acheivements which so much the fruit of the catholic church. To hear the empty bombast and hate-filled indictments and perjorative indictments of a significant portion of mankind, whose acheivements, institutions and principles we inherit is more frankly, pathetic, tedious land boring in the extreme.

Hate literature is rightly considered a crime, so I'll ask you to temper your rhetoric and indictments of my history, affilliations , religion and cultural inheritance. I have no problem rebutting the empty arguments, but the hatred is more than a little repellent.

[Cranky]

toronthab said:

You repeat the accusation of gross indictment, uniting the very, very corrupt Duplessis regime with Catholicism, when it was catholicism through Catholic papers like Le Devoir, cattholic leaders like Claude Ryan, Trudeau and bishops who resisted his conservative, big business agenda, particularly during the asbestos strike that brought Duplessis down.

And you, like the Duplessi Orphans who continue to be supported and aided by the church did not show that it was the church, who admittedly and throughout the 2000 years of her history has always had a commitment to the poor, one they passed on to me and virtually evey Catholic I know, fail to demonstrate the actual culpability.

To repeat myself, neither could or at least certainly did the office of the ombudsman find the church responisble. And still later Bernard Landry also, in the face of a media thirst for victims affirm the innocence of the church.


Your indictment of all of the church's efforts on behalf of her fellow man, as "indoctrination' and claim that there is no such thing as anonymous givimg is ...what can a rational person say in the face of such ...sorry I can't think of a single word that describes such merciless, accusatory calumny and slander of entire civilizations over 500 years as ...what ?

Do you imagine that Quebecers don't have families who they knew a little bit not to be monsters of indifference? Do you think that when my Dad as he raised me to regularly not forget those less fortunate than ourselves, and that when he reached out to them, that I and millions of other kids couldn't see living compassion and loving concern living in them.

Your suggestioins and portrayals are just monstrous in their injustice and disregard for others, entire civilizations. It is most common that such portrayals have little to do with the victems of the slander, and that they really say more about those given to making such irresponsible statements.

In most instances, and I'm sure if you replaced the object of your loathing form catholic to Jew or perhaps black, it would not be at all difficult to determine the nature of the attitude.

I am reminded of conversation of a man I briefly in a Florida bar. For ten minutes regaled me with stories of how dirty, lazy, slovenly and worthless blacks were, and all the while assuring me that he was no racist bigot, just the voice of truth.

I don't mind legitimate criticisms of attitudes, acts and insitutions, including the Catholic church. She has suffered periods of corruption, has had her legitimate authoruty usurped and abused at times for lesser goals.

I am only interested in a balanced truth and am far from totally condemning western history and civilization and its incredible dynamism relative to all other cultures, and her acheivements which so much the fruit of the catholic church. To hear the empty bombast and hate-filled indictments and perjorative indictments of a significant portion of mankind, whose acheivements, institutions and principles we inherit is more frankly, pathetic, tedious land boring in the extreme.

Hate literature is rightly considered a crime, so I'll ask you to temper your rhetoric and indictments of my history, affilliations , religion and cultural inheritance. I have no problem rebutting the empty arguments, but the hatred is more than a little repellent.

Are you done with the personal attacks. It's interesting how easily you take the path of "righteous indignation" while spewing against anyone who does not agree with your view.

Here is a couple of article on the subject. Tell me how I "misunderstood" what happened.

So....

Do you want to argue that this was a isolated incident? The I could buy that to a certain point but I doubt that the victims would hear any of it.

As for "indoctrination", the inherit position of all religions is of self sustainment. Besides the accusatory rhetoric, can you give any example where the church gave help without the "message" to go along with it? Throughout Africa, the "Christian" groups help comes directly with the message. There is no special indictment of the the Christian churches, it's no different when it comes from the Muslim community.

~~~~~~~~~~

www.answers.com/topic/duplessis-orphans

~~~~~~~~~~~

Duplessis Orphans

The Duplessis Orphans (French: les Orphelins de Duplessis) refers to a scandal where several thousand orphaned children were falsely certified as mentally ill by the government of the province of Quebec, Canada and confined to psychiatric institutions. It is widely regarded as the largest case of institution-based child abuse in Canadian history.

Orphanages and schools were the financial responsibility of the provincial government but funding for mental institutions was also provided by the government of Canada. Beginning in the 1940s and continuing into the 1960s, Quebec Premier Maurice Duplessis in cooperation with the Roman Catholic Church who ran the orphanages, developed a scheme to obtain Federal funding for thousands of children, most of whom had been orphaned through their abandonment by an unwed mother. In some cases the Catholic orphanages were relabelled as health-care facilities and in other cases the children were shipped from orphanages to existing mental asylums. Years later, long after these institutions were closed, the adult children who had survived them began to speak out about the harsh treatment and sexual abuse they were forced to endure at the hands of the Roman Catholic Church priests, nuns, and administrators. Reminiscent of the abuses by the Catholic-run Magdalen Asylums, members of the Duplessis Orphans claim that they were used as slave labour and subjected to extreme physical abuse for misbehaviour.

By the 1990s, there remained about 3000 survivors and a large group formed to start a campaign for justice. They called themselves the Duplessis Orphans after Maurice Duplessis, the premier of the province during that time whose government was responsible for their plight. In addition to government and Church responsibility, the College of Physicians of Quebec came under fire after some of the orphans found copies of their medical records that had been falsified. Labelled as mentally deficient, many of these children were subjected to a variety of drug testing and used in other medical experiments. Released upon reaching the legal age of maturity, they were uneducated and ill-equipped to cope with life as an adult. Suicides were not uncommon and tormented as a result of their treatment, crime and other dysfunctional conduct permeated this disabled group of innocents.

At first, the government of Quebec stonewalled their request for justice but after they started gaining widespread publicity, in March of 1999, the Parti Québécois government made a token offer of approximately $1,000 as full compensation to each of the victims. The offer was rejected and the government was harshly criticized by the public and even the provincial Ombudsman, Daniel Jacoby, came out saying that the government's handling of the situation had trivialized the abuse the victims alleged. Nevertheless, the Quebec government of Lucien Bouchard still refused to hold an enquiry and get to the bottom of the scandal. In 2001, the claimants received an increased offer from the Quebec government for a flat payment of $10,000 per person, plus an additional $1,000 for each year of wrongful confinement to a mental institution. The offer amounted to approximately $25,000 per orphan, however it was limited to each of the surviving 1,100 orphans the government had labelled as mentally deficient, but did not include any compensation for victims of sexual or other abuse. Faced with few choices, the offer was accepted by those applicable while the remainder received nothing. Many believe that justice was not done and criminal wrongdoing was allowed to go unpunished.

In 1942, the Legislative Assembly of Quebec passed into law an Act that allowed the Roman Catholic Church to sell the unclaimed body of any orphan to medical schools. This practise of selling orphans' remains continued into the 1960s. In 2004, members of the "Duplessis Orphans" asked the Quebec government to unearth an abandoned cemetery in the east end of Montreal which they believe holds the remains of orphans who may have been the subject of medical experiments. According to testimony by individuals who were at the Cite de St. Jean de Dieu insane asylum, now named Louis-Hyppolite Lafontaine Hospital, the orphans were routinely experimented upon and many died. The group wants the government to exhume the bodies in order that autopsies can be done.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

2nd article.

query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?sec=health&res=9B0CE2DD143CF935A2575AC0A96F958260

No Apology to Orphans, Quebec Church Says
Print Save

Published: September 16, 1999
Roman Catholic Church officials here said today that there would be no apology or compensation for the aging Quebec orphans who say they suffered years of abuse decades ago while under the care of the church.

From the 1930's to the 1950's, the church declared the children mentally ill in the hope of getting more funds from the Canadian Government, which paid more for the care of mentally handicapped children than for orphans.

The orphans, numbering more than 3,000, have said many of them were physically and sexually abused.

Bishop Pierre Morissette, president of the Quebec Assembly of Archbishops, said today that the matter was delicate because of legal considerations. He said the church recognized that some orphans had gone through ''difficult situations.''

But a full apology would not be forthcoming, he said. ''Such excuses would betray the works of those who dedicated all their lives to the service of the most destitute,'' he said at a news conference in Cap de la Madeleine, west of Quebec City.

He said no direct financial compensation would be provided by the church, but he stressed that it was open to cooperating with the Quebec government, which has already offered aid to the orphans as well as a $3 million compensation package. That offer was refused by the orphans, who want a $100 million compensation fund and a public inquiry.

A spokesman for the ''Duplessis Orphans'' association voiced outrage at today's announcement. ''This is total hypocrisy,'' said Bruno Roy, the spokesman. ''This is a campaign of disinformation. It is horrible and contemptuous.''

The group is named after Maurice Duplessis, the autocratic Premier of the province of Quebec at the time. The Catholic Church has denied that it abused orphans and demanded proof from the accusers.

Many of the children were not actually orphans but born out of wedlock to parents who abandoned them on the steps of church-run orphanages out of fear of being ostracized.

''We estimate that the church is already giving a lot and that it will continue to give more,'' said Jean-Claude Cardinal Turcotte of Quebec, who noted that the religious communities were the only ones providing institutional care for orphans in Quebec at the time


~~~~~~~~~~

BTW, even though parts of the CofC is trampled on, since I am directly involved in this part of this "discussion", I will set aside my mods responsibility in this thread. One can not be "judge, jury and executioner" with good concious. The other mods will deal with any issues as they see fit.

[Toronthab]

Again. If a person wants to discuss the role and immens impact on Quebec of the faith of its people and institutions throughout its entire history, that's one thing. If one wants to consider the clericalism of early modern history and the movements within the church and without to deal with real problems arising from this, or any number of real issues, also fair game.

But when one reduces all of history to focus on a real, but hardly ubiquitous instance of undoubted real sufferings under the Duplessis regime, the regime which the church itself ultimately fought and resisted as the American and English corporate puppet Duplessis was is disingenuous and artificial.

I read the article you provided, and others as well as seeing the actual interview when the Cardinal did indeed reject the accusations of particular culpability for the specific problems.

Last I heard, the Church was not funded by the Canadian government, but was funded indirectly through the extremely corrupt and embarasssing Duplessis govenment. That the church effected the changes is therefore likey iimpossible.

I repeat that the Ombudsman charged with investigating what I'm certain were real and signifciant abuses within this system, could NOT find the church or individuals responsible.

The Cardinal in his refusal to accept for the church responsibility for the mess, which was most likely a Duplessis con job also involiving the medical establishment, was as he stated, defending the centuries of selfless devotion to the poor of religiouis orders who follow Christ to find him in the poor.

Bernard Landry, himself as far as I know, not a huge proponent of the church declared them as substantially innocent in the matter.

The ONLY people who cared about orphans and children conceived out of marriage was the church, and orders of committed religious (who you would characterize as indocctrinated and removed from the idea of selfless giving) devoted their entire lives to the service of the unwanted.

Today, of course, most are killed before they get to draw their first breath, and agoin, over the protest of the same church who continues to participate massively in works of support for the poor.

I believe it would be impossible that the church would not at least indirectly be associated and some individuals culpably, in the Duplessis Orphan suffering. As the only institution taking up the burden, it would be ineviable and I would be naive not to expect this as even a statistical ineveitability.


But that is a far thing from what you project onto these mostly extraordinarliy dedicated nuns and religious who offer up thier very lives. To paint the church whose favour Duplessis of course curried in pursuit of his right wing selfish conservative and corrupt corporate agenda as his close ally is a gross distortion of the history of the church.

I don't insist upon some stupid, ahistorical pollyannism of total purity and innocence in all things at all times vis-a-vis Roman Catholicism.

There is no significant act of the church from the betrayal of Judas, the denials of the first pope, Peter after Christ was taken away, or the adoption of a world view which took a truth, and it is a truth that it is better to die a moral and honest person than to squander a life on a temporal acquisition agenda and misapplied this truth to allow the burning of heretics. All peoples of the world, especially modern secular states perpetrate murders on a scale unimagined by Dutch Calvinists, or Queen Elizabeth I, or even the carefully regulated civil procedings of Torquemada's Spain.

Heresy is of course a terrible thing that leads inexorably to human misery and as a human limb must sometimes be severed to save the body, so the state was obliged to protect society from the eternal consequences of heresy. It was a natural human tendancy and an easy error to make in a feudal static environment. But this was the excess and error, not the whole story of the rescuing of our ancestors from the dark ages by the self-same church and the enkindling of a new world unlike anything seen on earth.

I know, that the Medieval mind which most certainly saw the final end and purpose of mandkind in God thought the civil order and very existence of a people or kingdom depended foremost upon their relationship with God. They were right of course, but the civil penalty for heresy was misguided.

Where I take exception to your comments is your damning condemnations of all things.

As Bad Company pointed out the relentless and grossly misrepresentative portrayal of an entire people, or whole western culture as monstrous, has a common descriptive term associated with other similar treatements of Jews and Blacks.

Portraying the church as the accomplce of a corrupt conservative govenment in Quebec is largely a gross historical misrepresentation. He was a manipulative dishonest creep in the pocket of English and American business interests, as is so often the case with conservative govenments.

The Bishops and Archbishops opf the church fought him vigorously and helped defeat him.
My own father, an intelligent Catholic competent man was a part of the liberal forces within the church that opposed him, so you bet I personally resent false accusations and dirtortions whether they are the result of simple ignorance or worse, bigotry.

Your implicit depiction of the religious who dedicated their lives as "indoctrinated" and insincere and fraudulent, is insulting of all that is good in mankind, , and shows you to be an indoctrinated and agressive dogmatic agnostic that must, perhaps out of an insecure philosophical base, lash out at others who don't share what I clearly view as your philosophical confusion.

You probably are unaware of this, but you are but another victim of Kantian subjectivism, forever cut off from acknowleding reality by their own premises.

You offer the Pinkeresque and cute notion that an argument can be made that human "altruism" is but the pack animal genetic coding.

This could of course offer explain why moral principles don't carry much weight. Ethics with no God, is just self-serving noise, but your philosophical challenge, though self-contradictory and self-refuting can indeed be adressed.

At the end of this investigation it will be apparent that nuns and religous (who unlike almost all of the the rest of the culture usually have a very solid grounding in philosophy) are much less likely to be "iondoctrinated" than say, your modern dogmatic agnostic.

Much of agnosticism is attractive incidentally as precisely a means of seeking avoidance of a moral world designed by God. Materialism, the philosophy you advance here, has its major support in this flight form reality.

I for one am willing, and even able to adress these somewhat passe challenges to the integrity of human agency and aspiration in a universe that is not an absurd exercise in futility. And I am prepared to do it with some civility. I hope you can defend whatever it is you want to defend with civility as well.

[Cranky]

Thank you! This is the kind of erudite response that promotes discussion and is so sought after in this forum.

Give me some time and I will respond in full to your post. Right now I am mired in production reports.

And are you ready for this? While working, I am listening to Aretha Franlklin singing Gospel. Happy Days to be precise. There may still be hope for me! LOL!

[Toronthab]

habsaddict said:

toronthab said:

Again. If a person wants to discuss the role and immens impact on Quebec of the faith of its people and institutions throughout its entire history, that's one thing. If one wants to consider the clericalism of early modern history and the movements within the church and without to deal with real problems arising from this, or any number of real issues, also fair game.

But when one reduces all of history to focus on a real, but hardly ubiquitous instance of undoubted real sufferings under the Duplessis regime, the regime which the church itself ultimately fought and resisted as the American and English corporate puppet Duplessis was is disingenuous and artificial.

I read the article you provided, and others as well as seeing the actual interview when the Cardinal did indeed reject the accusations of particular culpability for the specific problems.

Last I heard, the Church was not funded by the Canadian government, but was funded indirectly through the extremely corrupt and embarasssing Duplessis govenment. That the church effected the changes is therefore likey iimpossible.

I repeat that the Ombudsman charged with investigating what I'm certain were real and signifciant abuses within this system, could NOT find the church or individuals responsible.

The Cardinal in his refusal to accept for the church responsibility for the mess, which was most likely a Duplessis con job also involiving the medical establishment, was as he stated, defending the centuries of selfless devotion to the poor of religiouis orders who follow Christ to find him in the poor.

Bernard Landry, himself as far as I know, not a huge proponent of the church declared them as substantially innocent in the matter.

The ONLY people who cared about orphans and children conceived out of marriage was the church, and orders of committed religious (who you would characterize as indocctrinated and removed from the idea of selfless giving) devoted their entire lives to the service of the unwanted.

Today, of course, most are killed before they get to draw their first breath, and agoin, over the protest of the same church who continues to participate massively in works of support for the poor.

I believe it would be impossible that the church would not at least indirectly be associated and some individuals culpably, in the Duplessis Orphan suffering. As the only institution taking up the burden, it would be ineviable and I would be naive not to expect this as even a statistical ineveitability.


But that is a far thing from what you project onto these mostly extraordinarliy dedicated nuns and religious who offer up thier very lives. To paint the church whose favour Duplessis of course curried in pursuit of his right wing selfish conservative and corrupt corporate agenda as his close ally is a gross distortion of the history of the church.

I don't insist upon some stupid, ahistorical pollyannism of total purity and innocence in all things at all times vis-a-vis Roman Catholicism.

There is no significant act of the church from the betrayal of Judas, the denials of the first pope, Peter after Christ was taken away, or the adoption of a world view which took a truth, and it is a truth that it is better to die a moral and honest person than to squander a life on a temporal acquisition agenda and misapplied this truth to allow the burning of heretics. All peoples of the world, especially modern secular states perpetrate murders on a scale unimagined by Dutch Calvinists, or Queen Elizabeth I, or even the carefully regulated civil procedings of Torquemada's Spain.

Heresy is of course a terrible thing that leads inexorably to human misery and as a human limb must sometimes be severed to save the body, so the state was obliged to protect society from the eternal consequences of heresy. It was a natural human tendancy and an easy error to make in a feudal static environment. But this was the excess and error, not the whole story of the rescuing of our ancestors from the dark ages by the self-same church and the enkindling of a new world unlike anything seen on earth.

I know, that the Medieval mind which most certainly saw the final end and purpose of mandkind in God thought the civil order and very existence of a people or kingdom depended foremost upon their relationship with God. They were right of course, but the civil penalty for heresy was misguided.

Where I take exception to your comments is your damning condemnations of all things.

As Bad Company pointed out the relentless and grossly misrepresentative portrayal of an entire people, or whole western culture as monstrous, has a common descriptive term associated with other similar treatements of Jews and Blacks.

Portraying the church as the accomplce of a corrupt conservative govenment in Quebec is largely a gross historical misrepresentation. He was a manipulative dishonest creep in the pocket of English and American business interests, as is so often the case with conservative govenments.

The Bishops and Archbishops opf the church fought him vigorously and helped defeat him.
My own father, an intelligent Catholic competent man was a part of the liberal forces within the church that opposed him, so you bet I personally resent false accusations and dirtortions whether they are the result of simple ignorance or worse, bigotry.

Your implicit depiction of the religious who dedicated their lives as "indoctrinated" and insincere and fraudulent, is insulting of all that is good in mankind, , and shows you to be an indoctrinated and agressive dogmatic agnostic that must, perhaps out of an insecure philosophical base, lash out at others who don't share what I clearly view as your philosophical confusion.

You probably are unaware of this, but you are but another victim of Kantian subjectivism, forever cut off from acknowleding reality by their own premises.

You offer the Pinkeresque and cute notion that an argument can be made that human "altruism" is but the pack animal genetic coding.

This could of course offer explain why moral principles don't carry much weight. Ethics with no God, is just self-serving noise, but your philosophical challenge, though self-contradictory and self-refuting can indeed be adressed.

At the end of this investigation it will be apparent that nuns and religous (who unlike almost all of the the rest of the culture usually have a very solid grounding in philosophy) are much less likely to be "iondoctrinated" than say, your modern dogmatic agnostic.

Much of agnosticism is attractive incidentally as precisely a means of seeking avoidance of a moral world designed by God. Materialism, the philosophy you advance here, has its major support in this flight form reality.

I for one am willing, and even able to adress these somewhat passe challenges to the integrity of human agency and aspiration in a universe that is not an absurd exercise in futility. And I am prepared to do it with some civility. I hope you can defend whatever it is you want to defend with civility as well.

Thank you! This is the kind of erudite response that promotes discussion and is so sought after in this forum.

Give me some time and I will respond in full to your post. Right now I am mired in production reports.

And are you ready for this? While working, I am listening to Aretha Franlklin singing Gospel. Happy Days to be precises. There may still be hope for me! LOL!

In reading your fair and balanced (even forgiving of my excess) reply I want to apologize for imputing bigotry, which I find, regrettably a cultural staple supported by an entertainment industry bent upon selling more "good life" as if there were no AIDS and social disintegration or moral crtitque beyond relativism, (which I find really dumb and utterly graoundless and self-contradictory).

So forgive me for jumping to conclusions. I should know by now that you are susceptible to the odd (may I say) "crank" that may discolour more extensive thought and considered opinion.

Assuming the worst of others is a common fault of mankind. Catholics do it too, even popes at times which is why infallibility is held to be based upon a promise of Christ and not human perfections!!!

Peace brother ...and now to respond to all that horship you wrote... ;D

[Toronthab]

This will be preliminary and off the top of my head, so not exhaustive or rigorous and these subjects are absolutely requiring of deepest honesty and rigour, but these points are an opener.

Our culture is drowning in a sea of crap. I am not herein referring to a lack of "religion" specifically, but much more, competing truisms that I consider to be simply false and misleading of most of western civilization. And on the most essential issues.

Some typical expressions of the madness include

"That's true for you." Subjectivism.Sheer madness.

Materialism. The 17th century idea related to subjectivism that all can be explained by the physical sciences, a completely unscientific idea incidentally, that includes the "altruism as genetic phenomena notion."

Moral relativism as an acceptable or balanced and moral worldview. Complete crock. Exact opposite. It's a tool of oppression and injustice.

The idea that one cannot come to a reasonable conclusion rerading the existence of God

The idea that all religions teach the same thing.

The idea that porn is harmless or even healthy.

The idea that random mutation in evolutionary theory must mean atheistic materialism is a reasonable and necessary conclusion about the universe and the mystery of being itself.

Gnostic ahistorical nonsense and its victims.

That the supernatural is not the ordering principle and purpose of the natural but somehow subnatural (A subset of subjectivism and its child materialism)

That the trotted out "Gallileo" incident shows the church "antiscientific" instead of the necessary supporter and necessary cause of the development of science.

That homosexuality is just a normal and good sexual identity, good individually and for the human community, and that persons are "just born that way." and that if this is true, opposing the behaviours is just bigotry and unjust criticism.


I believe that all of the above ideas are simply false and can be shown to be either false, or far from the most plausible explanations, and not worth the time of day or the adherence of any rational creature.

So there you go. I'll start with the goofy idea that we can't know reality as it is but are necessarily stuck in subjectivism or left saying "That's true for you."

All of these undercurrents of inadequately examined core beliefs underlie nonsense like the DaVinci stuff and are the ground of most controversy on such issues.

[franko]

Hmmm . . . interesting . . .

Pakistan bans 'Da Vinci Code'; says movie blasphemes against Jesus Christ

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) - Pakistan on Saturday banned cinemas from showing The Da Vinci Code because it contained what officials called blasphemous material about Jesus.

Although the film has not been screened in any theatre in mostly Muslim Pakistan, authorities decided to ban it out of respect for the feelings of the country's minority Christians.

Earlier this week, Christians staged protests in two Pakistani cities against the movie, demanding a global ban. Christians make up about three per cent of Pakistan's 150 million people.

The film version of Dan Brown's murder mystery novel is based around the premise that Jesus Christ and one of his followers, Mary Magdalene, had children whose descendants are still alive.

"Islam teaches us to respect all prophets of Allah mighty, and degradation of any prophet is tantamount to defamation of the rest," Minister for Culture Ghulam Jamal was quoted as saying by the Associated Press of Pakistan.

Shahbaz Bhatti, a prominent Christian leader, thanked the country's leadership and said the ban will go a long way to ensuring sectarian harmony.

"The Da Vinci Code is a sacrilegious act in the guise of freedom of expression and fiction," Bhatti said Saturday. "It has hurt the religious sentiments of Christians and Muslims throughout the world."

He also criticized Brown, saying the author had "evil intentions" and wanted "to undermine the historical as well as theological truth about Jesus Christ."

link

[Toronthab]

franko said:

Hmmm . . . interesting . . .

Pakistan bans 'Da Vinci Code'; says movie blasphemes against Jesus Christ

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) - Pakistan on Saturday banned cinemas from showing The Da Vinci Code because it contained what officials called blasphemous material about Jesus.

Although the film has not been screened in any theatre in mostly Muslim Pakistan, authorities decided to ban it out of respect for the feelings of the country's minority Christians.

Earlier this week, Christians staged protests in two Pakistani cities against the movie, demanding a global ban. Christians make up about three per cent of Pakistan's 150 million people.

The film version of Dan Brown's murder mystery novel is based around the premise that Jesus Christ and one of his followers, Mary Magdalene, had children whose descendants are still alive.

"Islam teaches us to respect all prophets of Allah mighty, and degradation of any prophet is tantamount to defamation of the rest," Minister for Culture Ghulam Jamal was quoted as saying by the Associated Press of Pakistan.

Shahbaz Bhatti, a prominent Christian leader, thanked the country's leadership and said the ban will go a long way to ensuring sectarian harmony.

"The Da Vinci Code is a sacrilegious act in the guise of freedom of expression and fiction," Bhatti said Saturday. "It has hurt the religious sentiments of Christians and Muslims throughout the world."

He also criticized Brown, saying the author had "evil intentions" and wanted "to undermine the historical as well as theological truth about Jesus Christ."

link

Neat post Franko.

Interesting thoughts. I think that Brown is for sure a liar and bigot who intends harm in addition to his overriding greed, and it would be sacrelige for sure if you or I perpetrated such a fraudulent portrayal and declared it to be fact and fact based, but I don't know if Brown is formally capable of sacrelege. I think this is the extent of his failures as a human being in this instance.

As to whether or not he could be successfully sued by the church and real people whose identitiies he stole and abused in the service of his greed ironically the sin Christ condemned most often, I don't know. I have heard that some have considered suing him based upon his earlier statements declaring his "work" as factual and then painting them as monsters. He is certainly sociopathic.

Good that Pakistan is sensitive to Christian sensibilities...isn't Bin Laden in Pakistan?...but mayn't it be an easy sop to neo-cons and Bushies? Who knows.

I'd like to think that, given an awareness of the false calims and content, people who own studios and theatres wouldn't want to be a part of supporting it.

As a "fiction" I don't know if I would sue to have it not distributed or not. There are grounds upon which I might, but it would take more consideration.

I do of course support censorship in principle (as does eveyone if they get past the cliche and kneejerk automatic response bandied by the press), but am not sure if I would exercise such a restraint in this issue.

What's your take on the Pakistan move? As presented, or more politically oriented, or both? Funnily enough I don't know if I support the move though I would like the intention as presented if true.

[Cranky]

toronthab said:

Again. If a person wants to discuss the role and immens impact on Quebec of the faith of its people and institutions throughout its entire history, that's one thing. If one wants to consider the clericalism of early modern history and the movements within the church and without to deal with real problems arising from this, or any number of real issues, also fair game.

But when one reduces all of history to focus on a real, but hardly ubiquitous instance of undoubted real sufferings under the Duplessis regime, the regime which the church itself ultimately fought and resisted as the American and English corporate puppet Duplessis was is disingenuous and artificial.

I read the article you provided, and others as well as seeing the actual interview when the Cardinal did indeed reject the accusations of particular culpability for the specific problems.

Last I heard, the Church was not funded by the Canadian government, but was funded indirectly through the extremely corrupt and embarasssing Duplessis govenment. That the church effected the changes is therefore likey iimpossible.

I repeat that the Ombudsman charged with investigating what I'm certain were real and signifciant abuses within this system, could NOT find the church or individuals responsible.

The Cardinal in his refusal to accept for the church responsibility for the mess, which was most likely a Duplessis con job also involiving the medical establishment, was as he stated, defending the centuries of selfless devotion to the poor of religiouis orders who follow Christ to find him in the poor.

Bernard Landry, himself as far as I know, not a huge proponent of the church declared them as substantially innocent in the matter.

The ONLY people who cared about orphans and children conceived out of marriage was the church, and orders of committed religious (who you would characterize as indocctrinated and removed from the idea of selfless giving) devoted their entire lives to the service of the unwanted.

Today, of course, most are killed before they get to draw their first breath, and agoin, over the protest of the same church who continues to participate massively in works of support for the poor.

I believe it would be impossible that the church would not at least indirectly be associated and some individuals culpably, in the Duplessis Orphan suffering. As the only institution taking up the burden, it would be ineviable and I would be naive not to expect this as even a statistical ineveitability.


But that is a far thing from what you project onto these mostly extraordinarliy dedicated nuns and religious who offer up thier very lives. To paint the church whose favour Duplessis of course curried in pursuit of his right wing selfish conservative and corrupt corporate agenda as his close ally is a gross distortion of the history of the church.

I don't insist upon some stupid, ahistorical pollyannism of total purity and innocence in all things at all times vis-a-vis Roman Catholicism.

There is no significant act of the church from the betrayal of Judas, the denials of the first pope, Peter after Christ was taken away, or the adoption of a world view which took a truth, and it is a truth that it is better to die a moral and honest person than to squander a life on a temporal acquisition agenda and misapplied this truth to allow the burning of heretics. All peoples of the world, especially modern secular states perpetrate murders on a scale unimagined by Dutch Calvinists, or Queen Elizabeth I, or even the carefully regulated civil procedings of Torquemada's Spain.

Heresy is of course a terrible thing that leads inexorably to human misery and as a human limb must sometimes be severed to save the body, so the state was obliged to protect society from the eternal consequences of heresy. It was a natural human tendancy and an easy error to make in a feudal static environment. But this was the excess and error, not the whole story of the rescuing of our ancestors from the dark ages by the self-same church and the enkindling of a new world unlike anything seen on earth.

I know, that the Medieval mind which most certainly saw the final end and purpose of mandkind in God thought the civil order and very existence of a people or kingdom depended foremost upon their relationship with God. They were right of course, but the civil penalty for heresy was misguided.

Where I take exception to your comments is your damning condemnations of all things.

As Bad Company pointed out the relentless and grossly misrepresentative portrayal of an entire people, or whole western culture as monstrous, has a common descriptive term associated with other similar treatements of Jews and Blacks.

Portraying the church as the accomplce of a corrupt conservative govenment in Quebec is largely a gross historical misrepresentation. He was a manipulative dishonest creep in the pocket of English and American business interests, as is so often the case with conservative govenments.

The Bishops and Archbishops opf the church fought him vigorously and helped defeat him.
My own father, an intelligent Catholic competent man was a part of the liberal forces within the church that opposed him, so you bet I personally resent false accusations and dirtortions whether they are the result of simple ignorance or worse, bigotry.

Your implicit depiction of the religious who dedicated their lives as "indoctrinated" and insincere and fraudulent, is insulting of all that is good in mankind, , and shows you to be an indoctrinated and agressive dogmatic agnostic that must, perhaps out of an insecure philosophical base, lash out at others who don't share what I clearly view as your philosophical confusion.

You probably are unaware of this, but you are but another victim of Kantian subjectivism, forever cut off from acknowledging reality by their own premises.

You offer the Pinkeresque and cute notion that an argument can be made that human "altruism" is but the pack animal genetic coding.

This could of course offer explain why moral principles don't carry much weight. Ethics with no God, is just self-serving noise, but your philosophical challenge, though self-contradictory and self-refuting can indeed be adressed.

At the end of this investigation it will be apparent that nuns and religous (who unlike almost all of the the rest of the culture usually have a very solid grounding in philosophy) are much less likely to be "iondoctrinated" than say, your modern dogmatic agnostic.

Much of agnosticism is attractive incidentally as precisely a means of seeking avoidance of a moral world designed by God. Materialism, the philosophy you advance here, has its major support in this flight form reality.

I for one am willing, and even able to adress these somewhat passe challenges to the integrity of human agency and aspiration in a universe that is not an absurd exercise in futility. And I am prepared to do it with some civility. I hope you can defend whatever it is you want to defend with civility as well.

Okay...hmmm.....where to begin.

Religion…..

I really believe that religion is good for most people. It gives grounding, moral center and comfort to those in need. It is by no means a question of weakness to believe in God, Gods or a particular religion, but rather a question of fulfillment and meaning.

With that in mind.....

I can not justify and will not stand for human corruption of the moral fiber by religious authority. Human frailty or not, those who are looked upon to take the high moral ground can not be excused when they abuse the path. Condemnation to any and all abuses by religious leaders, whether it is deliberate misdirection to justify horror, or just plain old power greed. No moral deviations can be justified by those entrusted with the moral compass.

In the case of Duplessis regime, it is an indictment of a man who led his people to darkness with complicity by "some" of those who were responsible for the moral fiber. Here is what I know and what my parents told me while living IN Montreal back in the early sixties. These children were raised in orphanages run by nuns. These kids were not orphans per say, they were kids that were born out of wedlock and as it was the social demand of that time, no "bastard" could be raised outside marriage. While this went on for decades before Duplessis, during his reign, it became an industry to declare these kids as mentally incompetent in order to collect federal money for their keep. When Doc brought it up, it brought back long forgotten memories. This is what I know and by no means is there any “falseness” intended. Here is an article that pretty much coincides with what I know of that time. And for the record, my parents and I emigrated to Montreal in 1956.

query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A05E1DC173FF936A35750C0A96F958260&sec=health&pagewanted=print

Having said that.....

There is no disputing that the church for centuries took the responsibility to raise the orphaned. There is no disputing that "unwanted" is a sad description for orphans of that age and indeed throughout the ages. Even to this day, "unwanted" is an apt description for black, sick and handicapped orphans.

It is not a question of whether it was the Roman Catholic, Muslim or Jewish faith. This is by no means a blanket condemnation of the Catholic religion in particular or religions in general. It is not the first time nor the last time that those few with the moral compass direct and use people for their own benefit. Even to this day, far too many religious leaders teach children that to kill is doing God's work. Even to this day, they who hold the moral compass and the veneer of civility are willing to strip it for hate.

A true story…..

I was twelve years old and in Sparta Greece. It was late in the afternoon and as usual, I took up my favorite pastime of hunting for crows near the ruins of ancient Sparta. Eventually, I tired and sat down to eat a stolen orange (original sin?). An old man waddled towards me and sat down besides me. He asked me what I was doing and I told him that I was hunting for crows. "But you can't eat crow meat" he said. I knew that but I still enjoyed the challenge of hunting down a fairly intelligent prey. If anyone has ever hunted crows with a slingshot, you know what I mean. Anyhow, what he said had profound influence to me, being twelve and all. He said, "how far have we evolved from the trees when we still have genuine pleasure in killing prey".

There is no doubt that we are impressionable when we are young because from that day on, I took the view that civility was a veneer that hid the ape in us. To this day, I fear that as much as we want to claim that we are "superior" to the animals, we will easily resort and indeed surpass their beastliness.

Will we ever rise beyond a level of simple "veneer" of civility to true enlightenment? I am afraid not for a looooong time. The instincts ingrained over a million years of evolution will not wash off easily. It's easy to claim that one has the moral fiber not to steal but can just as easily justify it when his children go hungry. One can easily lay claim to civility and moral fortitude, but will just as quickly pick up a gun to kill a robber of his property. And even if person A can keep his moral center intact, person B and C will not.

In my opinion, on scale measuring the evils of the Inquisitions, Crusades, sanctified car bombings and jihads and assorted evils in the name of all religions, one would still have to tip the balance in favor of the overall good religion has brought to humanity. I shudder to think of how much more beastliness humanity has in it and how it could be unleashed without the lines in the sand religions brings.

As for morality tied to God...

Morality is not the sole proprietorship of those who believe in a particular God. It's an insult to everyone who is agnostic and atheist to define them as amoral. It speaks of intolerance to define others by ones personal beliefs. Further to this, is there a particular God that one can hang his moral shingle too? Are Hindus immoral? What about Muslims? Jews? One can not draw away the blanket of morality from others and wrap their heads in it without exposing ones rear end of intolerance.

As for indoctrination.......

Calling religious upbringing indoctrination or enlightenment is an issue of perspective. While there is a desire to believe that people become enlightened when they "find religion", more often then not, they are started from the cradle to believe in a certain religion. I don’t need any better example the Greek Orthodox church. There was no shortage of pounding into my somewhat thick head that my obligation and sole reason for existence was to give my life to God, country and church. Further, while the word associates a certain harshness, how else would you describe people taught that mass murder is good? Or they and only they are the chosen ones? Reasoned enlightenment?

Please don’t confuse me with those fence straddling agnostic Newfies like Skilly. *looks over at Skilly and laughs* I am an atheist with all the amoral and soulless attributes the churches heave upon the “unbelievers”. Funny thing though, an atheist can see the need for religion in others. Can a religious person understand that an atheist does not need religion? Better yet, can the religious one believe that atheist can be as moral as themselves?

[Cranky]

franko said:

Hmmm . . . interesting . . .

Pakistan bans 'Da Vinci Code'; says movie blasphemes against Jesus Christ

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) - Pakistan on Saturday banned cinemas from showing The Da Vinci Code because it contained what officials called blasphemous material about Jesus.

Although the film has not been screened in any theatre in mostly Muslim Pakistan, authorities decided to ban it out of respect for the feelings of the country's minority Christians.

Earlier this week, Christians staged protests in two Pakistani cities against the movie, demanding a global ban. Christians make up about three per cent of Pakistan's 150 million people.

The film version of Dan Brown's murder mystery novel is based around the premise that Jesus Christ and one of his followers, Mary Magdalene, had children whose descendants are still alive.

"Islam teaches us to respect all prophets of Allah mighty, and degradation of any prophet is tantamount to defamation of the rest," Minister for Culture Ghulam Jamal was quoted as saying by the Associated Press of Pakistan.

Shahbaz Bhatti, a prominent Christian leader, thanked the country's leadership and said the ban will go a long way to ensuring sectarian harmony.

"The Da Vinci Code is a sacrilegious act in the guise of freedom of expression and fiction," Bhatti said Saturday. "It has hurt the religious sentiments of Christians and Muslims throughout the world."

He also criticized Brown, saying the author had "evil intentions" and wanted "to undermine the historical as well as theological truth about Jesus Christ."

link

Pakistan banned the movie? It's nice to know that they are a free and democratic society. It's also nice to know that they are so concerned about a Western symbol and Western sensibilities while letting their madrases teach the evil of Western civilization and the need to destroy it.

Main Entry: to·ken·ism
Pronunciation: 'tO-k&-"ni-z&m
Function: noun
: the policy or practice of making only a symbolic effort (as to desegregate)

[Toronthab]

habsaddict said:

toronthab said:

Again. If a person wants to discuss the role and immens impact on Quebec of the faith of its people and institutions throughout its entire history, that's one thing. If one wants to consider the clericalism of early modern history and the movements within the church and without to deal with real problems arising from this, or any number of real issues, also fair game.

But when one reduces all of history to focus on a real, but hardly ubiquitous instance of undoubted real sufferings under the Duplessis regime, the regime which the church itself ultimately fought and resisted as the American and English corporate puppet Duplessis was is disingenuous and artificial.

I read the article you provided, and others as well as seeing the actual interview when the Cardinal did indeed reject the accusations of particular culpability for the specific problems.

Last I heard, the Church was not funded by the Canadian government, but was funded indirectly through the extremely corrupt and embarasssing Duplessis govenment. That the church effected the changes is therefore likey iimpossible.

I repeat that the Ombudsman charged with investigating what I'm certain were real and signifciant abuses within this system, could NOT find the church or individuals responsible.

The Cardinal in his refusal to accept for the church responsibility for the mess, which was most likely a Duplessis con job also involiving the medical establishment, was as he stated, defending the centuries of selfless devotion to the poor of religiouis orders who follow Christ to find him in the poor.

Bernard Landry, himself as far as I know, not a huge proponent of the church declared them as substantially innocent in the matter.

The ONLY people who cared about orphans and children conceived out of marriage was the church, and orders of committed religious (who you would characterize as indocctrinated and removed from the idea of selfless giving) devoted their entire lives to the service of the unwanted.

Today, of course, most are killed before they get to draw their first breath, and agoin, over the protest of the same church who continues to participate massively in works of support for the poor.

I believe it would be impossible that the church would not at least indirectly be associated and some individuals culpably, in the Duplessis Orphan suffering. As the only institution taking up the burden, it would be ineviable and I would be naive not to expect this as even a statistical ineveitability.


But that is a far thing from what you project onto these mostly extraordinarliy dedicated nuns and religious who offer up thier very lives. To paint the church whose favour Duplessis of course curried in pursuit of his right wing selfish conservative and corrupt corporate agenda as his close ally is a gross distortion of the history of the church.

I don't insist upon some stupid, ahistorical pollyannism of total purity and innocence in all things at all times vis-a-vis Roman Catholicism.

There is no significant act of the church from the betrayal of Judas, the denials of the first pope, Peter after Christ was taken away, or the adoption of a world view which took a truth, and it is a truth that it is better to die a moral and honest person than to squander a life on a temporal acquisition agenda and misapplied this truth to allow the burning of heretics. All peoples of the world, especially modern secular states perpetrate murders on a scale unimagined by Dutch Calvinists, or Queen Elizabeth I, or even the carefully regulated civil procedings of Torquemada's Spain.

Heresy is of course a terrible thing that leads inexorably to human misery and as a human limb must sometimes be severed to save the body, so the state was obliged to protect society from the eternal consequences of heresy. It was a natural human tendancy and an easy error to make in a feudal static environment. But this was the excess and error, not the whole story of the rescuing of our ancestors from the dark ages by the self-same church and the enkindling of a new world unlike anything seen on earth.

I know, that the Medieval mind which most certainly saw the final end and purpose of mandkind in God thought the civil order and very existence of a people or kingdom depended foremost upon their relationship with God. They were right of course, but the civil penalty for heresy was misguided.

Where I take exception to your comments is your damning condemnations of all things.

As Bad Company pointed out the relentless and grossly misrepresentative portrayal of an entire people, or whole western culture as monstrous, has a common descriptive term associated with other similar treatements of Jews and Blacks.

Portraying the church as the accomplce of a corrupt conservative govenment in Quebec is largely a gross historical misrepresentation. He was a manipulative dishonest creep in the pocket of English and American business interests, as is so often the case with conservative govenments.

The Bishops and Archbishops opf the church fought him vigorously and helped defeat him.
My own father, an intelligent Catholic competent man was a part of the liberal forces within the church that opposed him, so you bet I personally resent false accusations and dirtortions whether they are the result of simple ignorance or worse, bigotry.

Your implicit depiction of the religious who dedicated their lives as "indoctrinated" and insincere and fraudulent, is insulting of all that is good in mankind, , and shows you to be an indoctrinated and agressive dogmatic agnostic that must, perhaps out of an insecure philosophical base, lash out at others who don't share what I clearly view as your philosophical confusion.

You probably are unaware of this, but you are but another victim of Kantian subjectivism, forever cut off from acknowledging reality by their own premises.

You offer the Pinkeresque and cute notion that an argument can be made that human "altruism" is but the pack animal genetic coding.

This could of course offer explain why moral principles don't carry much weight. Ethics with no God, is just self-serving noise, but your philosophical challenge, though self-contradictory and self-refuting can indeed be adressed.

At the end of this investigation it will be apparent that nuns and religous (who unlike almost all of the the rest of the culture usually have a very solid grounding in philosophy) are much less likely to be "iondoctrinated" than say, your modern dogmatic agnostic.

Much of agnosticism is attractive incidentally as precisely a means of seeking avoidance of a moral world designed by God. Materialism, the philosophy you advance here, has its major support in this flight form reality.

I for one am willing, and even able to adress these somewhat passe challenges to the integrity of human agency and aspiration in a universe that is not an absurd exercise in futility. And I am prepared to do it with some civility. I hope you can defend whatever it is you want to defend with civility as well.

Okay...hmmm.....where to begin.

Religion…..

I really believe that religion is good for most people. It gives grounding, moral center and comfort to those in need. It is by no means a question of weakness to believe in God, Gods or a particular religion, but rather a question of fulfillment and meaning.

With that in mind.....

I can not justify and will not stand for human corruption of the moral fiber by religious authority. Human frailty or not, those who are looked upon to take the high moral ground can not be excused when they abuse the path. Condemnation to any and all abuses by religious leaders, whether it is deliberate misdirection to justify horror, or just plain old power greed. No moral deviations can be justified by those entrusted with the moral compass.

In the case of Duplessis regime, it is an indictment of a man who led his people to darkness with complicity by "some" of those who were responsible for the moral fiber. Here is what I know and what my parents told me while living IN Montreal back in the early sixties. These children were raised in orphanages run by nuns. These kids were not orphans per say, they were kids that were born out of wedlock and as it was the social demand of that time, no "bastard" could be raised outside marriage. While this went on for decades before Duplessis, during his reign, it became an industry to declare these kids as mentally incompetent in order to collect federal money for their keep. When Doc brought it up, it brought back long forgotten memories. This is what I know and by no means is there any “falseness” intended. Here is an article that pretty much coincides with what I know of that time. And for the record, my parents and I emigrated to Montreal in 1956.

query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A05E1DC173FF936A35750C0A96F958260&sec=health&pagewanted=print

Having said that.....

There is no disputing that the church for centuries took the responsibility to raise the orphaned. There is no disputing that "unwanted" is a sad description for orphans of that age and indeed throughout the ages. Even to this day, "unwanted" is an apt description for black, sick and handicapped orphans.

It is not a question of whether it was the Roman Catholic, Muslim or Jewish faith. This is by no means a blanket condemnation of the Catholic religion in particular or religions in general. It is not the first time nor the last time that those few with the moral compass direct and use people for their own benefit. Even to this day, far too many religious leaders teach children that to kill is doing God's work. Even to this day, they who hold the moral compass and the veneer of civility are willing to strip it for hate.

A true story…..

I was twelve years old and in Sparta Greece. It was late in the afternoon and as usual, I took up my favorite pastime of hunting for crows near the ruins of ancient Sparta. Eventually, I tired and sat down to eat a stolen orange (original sin?). An old man waddled towards me and sat down besides me. He asked me what I was doing and I told him that I was hunting for crows. "But you can't eat crow meat" he said. I knew that but I still enjoyed the challenge of hunting down a fairly intelligent prey. If anyone has ever hunted crows with a slingshot, you know what I mean. Anyhow, what he said had profound influence to me, being twelve and all. He said, "how far have we evolved from the trees when we still have genuine pleasure in killing prey".

There is no doubt that we are impressionable when we are young because from that day on, I took the view that civility was a veneer that hid the ape in us. To this day, I fear that as much as we want to claim that we are "superior" to the animals, we will easily resort and indeed surpass their beastliness.

Will we ever rise beyond a level of simple "veneer" of civility to true enlightenment? I am afraid not for a looooong time. The instincts ingrained over a million years of evolution will not wash off easily. It's easy to claim that one has the moral fiber not to steal but can just as easily justify it when his children go hungry. One can easily lay claim to civility and moral fortitude, but will just as quickly pick up a gun to kill a robber of his property. And even if person A can keep his moral center intact, person B and C will not.

In my opinion, on scale measuring the evils of the Inquisitions, Crusades, sanctified car bombings and jihads and assorted evils in the name of all religions, one would still have to tip the balance in favor of the overall good religion has brought to humanity. I shudder to think of how much more beastliness humanity has in it and how it could be unleashed without the lines in the sand religions brings.

As for morality tied to God...

Morality is not the sole proprietorship of those who believe in a particular God. It's an insult to everyone who is agnostic and atheist to define them as amoral. It speaks of intolerance to define others by ones personal beliefs. Further to this, is there a particular God that one can hang his moral shingle too? Are Hindus immoral? What about Muslims? Jews? One can not draw away the blanket of morality from others and wrap their heads in it without exposing ones rear end of intolerance.

As for indoctrination.......

Calling religious upbringing indoctrination or enlightenment is an issue of perspective. While there is a desire to believe that people become enlightened when they "find religion", more often then not, they are started from the cradle to believe in a certain religion. I don’t need any better example the Greek Orthodox church. There was no shortage of pounding into my somewhat thick head that my obligation and sole reason for existence was to give my life to God, country and church. Further, while the word associates a certain harshness, how else would you describe people taught that mass murder is good? Or they and only they are the chosen ones? Reasoned enlightenment?

Please don’t confuse me with those fence straddling agnostic Newfies like Skilly. *looks over at Skilly and laughs* I am an atheist with all the amoral and soulless attributes the churches heave upon the “unbelievers”. Funny thing though, an atheist can see the need for religion in others. Can a religious person understand that an atheist does not need religion? Better yet, can the religious one believe that atheist can be as moral as themselves?

Priests and the church will tell you and me that doing religious things can mean absolutely nothing or be absolutely everything, but not isolated from a true concern for your fellow man. All of Catholic dogma ( dogma is the considered and clarified statements of what is held to be true about reality) is predicated upon love of God, which is inseparable from love of man..

If there were no God, then religion, all religion is a ridiculous delusion that every human being should make bloody sure is soon rendered an historical footnote and embarassing legacy of the past.

Theism is however much more easily defended by reasonable arguments than atheism is a true theory explaining being itself. Atheistic aterialism or scientism is what lacks a foundation in reality. It is mostly just a bad intellectual error, often in the serviice of other common human pursuits. I will adress this later.

There is no fulfiillment or good to mankind if the religious impulse is false. Error has no rights. Error is a misrpresentation of reality. In the face of universal belief throughout history in a supreme entity or entitiies of some description, not to mention the powerful and logically sound arguments of Saint Thomas Aquinas and others and facts of human nature, the evidence is powerfully on the side of God or theism.

My beef with your mentionning the Duplessis regime, that of course courted the church's support and did for sure effect changes in the care of orphanages is that this is all you mention on the subject of the role of the chuirch in Quebec, and while I agree that there were necessarily sone abuses, and no doubt some degree of complicity with at least some in the institutions, this attempt to get more funding for the province was essentially an act of a notorioulsly corrupt govenment, and the church powerfully opposed Duplessis and his big business corrupt allies in labor and the Asbestos strike and other areas, top to bottom.

If I did a review of your life and said, oh him...watch out..he's a sociopath. He enjoyed killing defenceless animals a lot smaller than him, regardless of the pain and intense agonies he occasionned for them, then I'd be doing what you are doing as the only incident you mention in a 500 year history. Would you consider my treatment of you to be moral, fair, even-handed and just, or selective and misrepresentative and intended to harm.

You again think that religious discussion must focus on the Inquisition and Crusades and portray these as huge atrocieties beyond the pale of human understanding and of a particularly religious flavour and intent. This is a favourite and particular device of the media and the entertainment industry which really hates Christianity in general and Roman Catholicism in particular. They share the usual tendancies to the particular corruptions of the easy life and self-indulgence, while giving the phrase "opiate of the people" a whole new dimension.

It's no accident that this thread starts as a critique of the DaVinci horseship and for me at least has been a refutation and rebuttal an endless stream of negative critique including the crusades and inquisition comment.

It's as if the Roman Catholic church did not salvage the remnants of civilizaton after the collapse of the Roman empire ( a lot like our culture) , preserve and teach the heights of Greco-Roman culture and begin around the monasteries the schools and later world-famous universities that brought us scientific enquiry and the ordering of western civilization. Oh no....just the Spanish Inquisiton, which was almost exclusively a political action of the state after the reconquest to preserve the newly united Spain, and which had a brief period of intense activity centred around a Moorish area , Granada, and which the church and pope who received pleas for help demanded changes and respect for the stringent rules and very limited use of physical pain, which was in fact very seldom used and could not cause permanent harm to life or limb.

This...this...is what people want to talk about in this culture, or the consequences of the church lowering its guard and in an accepting and honest way allowing homsexually oriented individuals into the seminaries in the 60's and 70's. Big mistake, but not an intended evil.

So I really do question the spirit that motivates comment upon my church, an institution I haver known all of my life, and which has sought only to make me an intelligent competent , just and compassionate, or in other words to quote Origen the early church theologian, "God has no greater glory than man fully human and fully alive." I fall far short of such a description, but the fault is not with the sacraments of Christ's church or those who surrender their entire lives to God in following Christ. The integrity of their witness is a brilliant light shining through the ages.

You also mention other religions as if in affirming the truth and fulness of Christ and Roman Catholicism of which I am after long study, utterly and completely convinced, (feel free to counter argue) I am therefore necessarily dismissive or disrespectful of other religions.

It's not me who stresses (unreasonably) the negative aspects of other religions. I have often and again state just the opposite. Atheism makes no sense. It has no grounds in reality. It's a dimension of lack of insight in my opinion. Eastern religions tend to be pantheistic, limiting and identifying God with only what is. The church affirms this immanence of God in the world, particulary visible in women incidentally, but also affirms the transcendence and "otherness" of God. The east in its definitions or concepts of truth also implicitly denies the logical principle of non-contradiction as a consequence of the theological limitation stated. That is why in part scientific study flourished in Catholic universities in the Europe and nowhere else on earth.

So while I find the Catholic church's teaching and faith to be the only completely rational and fully logically consistent teaching and practice on earth, this does not mean that I am closed or blind to the goods that exist in Protestantism , or Islam or other world faiths. Athiests can teach about the weather or math which are also from God. The church can teach them about an integrated universe that embraces all phenomena like human free will and other spiritual realities.

Lastly, you bring uo the worst fallacy of our age, subjectivism. It will kill us all as it leaves us blind. You say that whether a religious upbringing is enlightening or indoctrination is a matter of perspective. Don't be offended at this but how silly is this as a statement.

It is what it is no matter what you or I think of it. (Imagine Greek Orthodox monks of immense learnig and deep study reushing throught the heavens to your rescue.)

Your theory of subjectivism, which is based upon the massive mistake of Descarte as exaggerated by the overblown cant of Kant, is where you fall off the deep end of unreason.

He and you have lost the idea of objective truth, imagining it to be in an emotional attitude of the investigator or scientist. It is not.

Objective truth means that TRUTH RESIDES IN THE OBJECT. Truth is conformity of the mind to the object.

This contemporary madness concerning truth in particular is one of the fundamental reasons why I consider most core beliefs and fundamental secular dogmas about reality and what we can know about it to be a form of ......madness. Being completely lost with no ground for one's ideas or principles or ....anythng.

So truth, that great transcendental is synonymous with being or what is, what really exists and errors are in false statements of what is, either giving existence to what isn't in fact there, or attmpting to deny what is. Truth is in the object.

Catholic religious thought affirms what is and seeks conformity with it.

So either the religious enterprise is either a flight INTO being, or a flight FROM being. It is not a matter of perspective, but a matter of being or non-being that can be investigated profitably by our capacity which the church also affirms to reason from first prinicples.

That on a related note for those who in serious error think that faith is not about reason, is why Acquinas stated accurately that what is contrary to reason is sinful.

What is contrary to reason is contrary to what actually is or in other words is a choice of unreality, and therefore can never satisfy or deliver happiness.

One of us at least has to go golfing. May the ghost of Ben Hogan and his Canadian emulator and nice guy George Knudsen be with me....

[Skilly]

habsaddict said:

As for morality tied to God...

Morality is not the sole proprietorship of those who believe in a particular God.

Please don’t confuse me with those fence straddling agnostic Newfies like Skilly. *looks over at Skilly and laughs*

Or as Nietzsche would say: "Morality does not put us in contact with the truth" or "Morality is a lie".

And just for general information purposes some Newfoundlanders wear the "newfie" tag with pride, as a badge of honour .... and others hate the word because it implies stupidity and ignorance. It has many the same implications as the other ugly "n" word for African Americans. I don't mind the word per se .... but all in context. That and well I have probably called you worse while using pins on my voodoo doll ... ;D

[Toronthab]

The point I make about the possibility of ethics or morality without God does not mean that I think religious people are necessarily more moral or better in any way than anyone else.

The point I am makling is that if there were in fact no God, then anything and everything would be permissible. The force of law is lexis or reason, and the weight of reason is predicated on doing good and avoiding evil.

Jacques Maritain a renowned philosopher helped to set up the United Nations charter of human rights based upon the practical or ethical mind of man. Kant attempted and failed to prove the existence of God based upon the universality of conscience, but consciences vary.

Klaus Barbie the nazi monster only regretted that his incredible monstrosities had not been more thorough. His conscience bothered him.

THe Judeo-Christian concept of responsibility and judgement on the basis of our response to moral law is based upon the acknowledgement of human will and the capacity for moral judgements or conscience.

So. it is incorrect to imagine or believe that religions view mankind as immoral, though it is also emminently clear sociologically that people with sound religious lives have happier and more problem-free lives, better sex lives, and fewer of the signs of social breakdown. Families that pray together really do stay together.

My point on ethics without God is to show that the exercise has no logically commanding structure. If there were no God, there would be no logical foundation beyond expediency for the notion of human rights. Human rights are defended by Author's rights.

That's why Jean Jacques Rousseau's contrat social, the product of the so-called enlightenment, is so baseless. It has led to the dumb idea of the state as absolute, and reduces truth to a vote. If 6 out of ten say its ok to kill brown-eye people, or kids in the womb, then its ok. Dumb.

Moral law requires a lawgiver, and fortunately has one to have actual force. The moral law comes from God and is universal and primary. That is the flaw and dishonesty of moral relativism which is actually an attempt to confuse and impose on the rights of others.

I hope that clarifies the issue somewhat.

"God is dead" - Nietzsche

"Nietzsche is dead" - God

It is interesting how variations on Neithche's super race theories and moral relativism along with the German scientific community's seventy year exposure to Darwin led to the adoption of eugenics, which of course is now practiced in Canada today. The "defective" are killed off in our own variation on the theme of racial purity.

[Cranky]

skilly said:

habsaddict said:

As for morality tied to God...

Morality is not the sole proprietorship of those who believe in a particular God.

Please don’t confuse me with those fence straddling agnostic Newfies like Skilly. *looks over at Skilly and laughs*

Or as Nietzsche would say: "Morality does not put us in contact with the truth" or "Morality is a lie".

And just for general information purposes some Newfoundlanders wear the "newfie" tag with pride, as a badge of honour .... and others hate the word because it implies stupidity and ignorance. It has many the same implications as the other ugly "n" word for African Americans. I don't mind the word per se .... but all in context. That and well I have probably called you worse while using pins on my voodoo doll ... ;D

ouch....feels good...ouch...ohh...ouch....just a little higher...ouch.....ahhhh

I met a LOT of Newfoundlanders in my working enviroment and I don't think that any of them got upset over the word, as long as it was used in jest. Certainly not to the "n" word degree. Tell you what, I don't know of other Newfoundlanders but the ones I hired certainly know/knew how to spin a tale! Late for work? My kitchen caught on fire but I put it out with my wifes wet panties. But man, they work/worked hard.......and partied even harder! At one point I even considered moving a plant to St.Johns, but the freight.....OUCH!

ouch...ohhhh.....ouch

[Cranky]

toronthab said:

The point I make about the possibility of ethics or morality without God does not mean that I think religious people are necessarily more moral or better in any way than anyone else.

AGREED!

toronthab said:

The point I am makling is that if there were in fact no God, then anything and everything would be permissible..........The force of law is lexis or reason, and the weight of reason is predicated on doing good and avoiding evil.

If you split the two statements above, you are creating two fundamental different points of views. First statement presents God as supreme. Without him, there is darkness", ie, everything permissible.

Second statement is saying that man is capable of reason and knows what is good and what is evil. One step further to that would be that he is reasoned enough to created his God/Gods and religions to define and codify his good and evil.

So to the heart of the question....

Does not the second statement negate the absoluteness (supreme being) of the first statement?

I would say it does. Proof is in the variations of religions and God/Gods throughout the ages and in our current society. Different enviroments have made man use different reasoning to create different belief systems.


Franko, if you are reading this, I am interested in your opinion too.



~~~~~~~~~~~~

Franko, TH, I am interested to know if there is a "neutral" book/books on the evolution of religions.

[Toronthab]

habsaddict said:

toronthab said:

The point I make about the possibility of ethics or morality without God does not mean that I think religious people are necessarily more moral or better in any way than anyone else.

AGREED!

toronthab said:

The point I am makling is that if there were in fact no God, then anything and everything would be permissible..........The force of law is lexis or reason, and the weight of reason is predicated on doing good and avoiding evil.

If you split the two statements above, you are creating two fundamental different points of views. First statement presents God as supreme. Without him, there is darkness", ie, everything permissible.

Second statement is saying that man is capable of reason and knows what is good and what is evil. One step further to that would be that he is reasoned enough to created his God/Gods and religions to define and codify his good and evil.

So to the heart of the question....

Does not the second statement negate the absoluteness (supreme being) of the first statement?

I would say it does. Proof is in the variations of religions and God/Gods throughout the ages and in our current society. Different enviroments have made man use different reasoning to create different belief systems.


Franko, if you are reading this, I am interested in your opinion too.



~~~~~~~~~~~~

Franko, TH, I am interested to know if there is a "neutral" book/books on the evolution of religions.

The issues are indeed related, but not mutually exclusive.

To "let your conscience be your guide" is to court disaster. We can be blinded by any number of passions. The human practical or ethical endeavor must be predicated upon the principle that good is to be done and evil avoided. The decalogue or ten commandments flow. are secondary and flow fromthe first principle.

Klaus Barbie's conscience bothered him because he wasn't a more efficient genocidal monster. Conscience is not a sufficient guide. One has a duty to develop one's conscience. Much of so called "growing up" entails just this.

The Christian idea of jusdgement or certainly that of churches in the apostolic tradition e.g. Catholics and Orthodox, generally view judgement as something we know, and that God confirms. We choose our destiny, and if human free will indicates a power that is not reducible to the merely physical, and is therefore spiritual, then there is no a priori basis to belive that we do not survive death. Most people actually believe we do , especially after "losing" a loved one. It is primary and natural, and very reasonable to believe this.

Accordingly the idea of judgement is also consistent with the data of being human based upon the phenomenon of conscience.

To argue in the public forum however that moral laws have authority, one must prove the existence of God as cause of the moral principles. This view of ethics is called deontological and is the only form that logically provides a foundation for moral principles.

That is why the police commisioner in Doestoievski's "Crime and Punishment" stated that "If there is no God everything is permissible."

Moral relativists reject moral absolutism, and most people do not consider themselves to be like me, a moral absolutist, but of course they are. They can't avoid it in the same way that they cannot avoid being dogmatic. The real question is whether the moral absolutism is just in the service of selfish obsession and whether the dogma, say like atheism, or theism is demonstrably true or false.

Is that clearer? With all of my usual digressions it often isnt.

P.S: There is no such things as a neutral book. All you should seek is a reflection in word of what existed and exists in reality, the objective truth I mentionned earlier.

[franko]

habsaddict said:

I would say it does. Proof is in the variations of religions and God/Gods throughout the ages and in our current society. Different enviroments have made man use different reasoning to create different belief systems.


Franko, if you are reading this, I am interested in your opinion too.

Right now I am just enjoying a role as observer. In the midst of year-end so not much time for anything but a quick comment here and there (though get me riled up and . . . ;D )