Help Me Refute This Bs Article

[PhuturePriest]

I'm arguing with a friend about this article and why it's wrong. Please give me historical citations for why it is BS.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/22/books/review/22STEINFE.html?pagewanted=all

[PhuturePriest]

I find your lack of responses disappointing.

[Benedictus]

I've heard for years from clergy that the creeds and certain set dogma are the only 'set' things. All else can be open to change or expansion of a 'greater truth' or light.. So this article doesn't surprise me. Some of the things he outlines are prime reasons why many don't take the church seriously anymore. I think it's a valid observation and criticism in many respects. It sure matches up with many of the reasons for those I know who left the church. Now happy Evangelicals, Muslims or on a 'spiritual break'. The question is: Why follow a church which will change its tone and tracks in 20 or 30 years? The only answer is to trust in Jesus. My view is to only do things through that prism because the structures are unreliable. But to many they can do that in more stable groups outside the current Catholic structures. If some things are up for question, then why not others? It's clear many people see changes as a matter of time rather than anything. Look where we are now -  jumping through hoops on how to get around divorce and remarriage, raising the tones with the synod on the family, questions of allowing married priests. Will the church take more pastoral approaches on homosexuality, contraception, those who have assisted suicides, female deacons, more ecumenical communion (or whatever term they invent) in future years? Where does this leave the people who have followed the disciplines, letter and spirit of the church for years when the tide turns? Will their trust in the church be turned on it's head. I'm not sure I can say it won't. It's not like it has not happened before. I'm kind of just dumping my initial reactions, and that's how it rolls at the moment.

[RC Patriot]

I wish I had more time to spend on this...

 

It's a sloppy piece of "journalism," at best, there are no citations. His unsupported premises abound. So far, it doesn't look like it's worth engaging.

 

But this should help:
http://www.cfpeople.org/Apologetics/page51a003.html

 

January 13, 1435, Pope Eugene IV issued "Sicut Dudum" against slavery, not 1888, as Noonan reports. Several other examples in the link... Good luck.

[Didacus]

 

Historically, Catholicism solved the problem of change simply by denying it. Understandings of the Trinity, the priesthood, the papacy, the Mass and the sacraments that emerged over a long time were projected back into New Testament texts.

 

Oh for crying out loud...  You will never see the end of this stuff.

Change does not equal change in Truth or moral, but an evolution of undertanding, often on the depth of undertanding.

 

The example I really like is abortion (as an example, not abortion itself).

In the early centuries, abortion was regarded as a sexual sin only - since it was treated as contraception.  At one point, it was also regarded as  murder since it killed an innocent life.  Now did the teaching change?  Yes....  however, is abortion still regarded as a sexual sin... of course it is!  It is not taught that way anymore, since murder is a far more grievous sin than contraception, so its kinda moot to teach the sexual portion.  However, the sin of sexual sin as it relates to abortion remains unchanged, but a new and additonal understanding of aboriton as a sexual sin arose.

 

Unfortunately, i would have to do some digging to find documented support of that...  and i may be corrected in some details but don't use me as a source.

 

 

On the other hand you could just resolve the whole thing altogether by becoming a muslim since islam is correct in all ways even on matters which occured over 600 years prior to their founder's birth, such as the Trinity which is of course the God the Father, God the Son and Mother Mary.

[Seven77]

1. A lot of the references to slavery in the NT is not the kind of dehumanizing slavery that we're thinking about. That goes for the unnamed references from the Fathers of the Church that the author mentioned.

 

2. The Pope (Eugene IV) has condemned slavery, the dehumanizing and intrinsically evil kind that you would see in 12 Years a Slave, before the time of Columbus' “discovery”:

 

Sicut Dudum

Pope Eugene IV Against the Enslaving of Black Natives from the Canary Islands
January 13, 1435

 

http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Eugene04/eugene04sicut.htm

Edited May 1, 2014 by Seven77

[Didacus]

Isn't willful enslavement still acceptable for the Catholic faith?  Taht is, under very stringent conditions such as, for example, the slave must willingly submit to the arrangement of being a slave?

[ClemensBruno]

I find your lack of responses disappointing.

Your request is rather daunting, especially when one has not read the book. I'll put it on my 'to read" list and let you know. Does January 2015 work for ya?

[PhuturePriest]

Your request is rather daunting, especially when one has not read the book. I'll put it on my 'to read" list and let you know. Does January 2015 work for ya?

 

Sure. But it's thankfully no longer needed. It seemed the link people gave me above did the trick.

[RC Patriot]

It's a little unfair to be placed on the defensive until evidence is presented to prove the contrary. This is not the first time Noonan has been shown to be flat out wrong.

[mortify ii]

According to Aristotle slavery is an expression of natural law as some are simply born fit to be slaves. Even though chattel and racial slavery no longer exists, it is wrong to assume all forms of slavery have been abolished, after all, what is the difference between a serf toiling his lord's fief and a man burdened by overwhelming debt? Serfs also had minor possessions of their own, but maybe owning property is the difference? Funny thing is that in my state we have something called property tax, if you miss paying a couple months on it the state can seize your "property," so who really owns the land? Debt is slavery and most of us are wage slaves in this system.

 

As for the fellow's comments, Popes have been condemning slavery much earlier than than the 19th century. Take Sicut Dudum by Pope Eugene or Sublimus Dei by Pope Paul III as examples. 

Edited May 1, 2014 by mortify ii

[4588686]

I wish I had more time to spend on this...

It's a sloppy piece of "journalism," at best, there are no citations. His unsupported premises abound. So far, it doesn't look like it's worth engaging.

But this should help:
http://www.cfpeople.org/Apologetics/page51a003.html

January 13, 1435, Pope Eugene IV issued "Sicut Dudum" against slavery, not 1888, as Noonan reports. Several other examples in the link... Good luck.

What an intellectually dishonest rebuttal.

[4588686]

Slavery is owning another human being. The links given are Papal condemnations of certain practices within the institution of slavery, not slavery an an morally illegitimate category in itself. From reading the text and the authors deliberate attempt to shift focus it's pretty clear that this dishonesty is intentional.

[PhuturePriest]

Slavery is owning another human being. The links given are Papal condemnations of certain practices within the institution of slavery, not slavery an an morally illegitimate category in itself. From reading the text and the authors deliberate attempt to shift focus it's pretty clear that this dishonesty is intentional.

 

It's amazing you claim dishonesty is intention when Noonan didn't even get the dates right. He made a book claiming the Church never addressed slavery before 1888, and he was incredibly wrong.

[4588686]

It's amazing you claim dishonesty is intention when Noonan didn't even get the dates right. He made a book claiming the Church never addressed slavery before 1888, and he was incredibly wrong.

I don't know anything about him. However my reading of the article was not that the Church did not address the topic of slavery before the 19th century but that the Church did not categorically denounce slavery as such as inherently wrong until the 19th century. Edited May 1, 2014 by Hasan