As I have said before, the fact that this organization is still actually taken as other than a complete and utter joke by millions of people should be regarded as an intellectual emergency.

...For real? You actually don't see what's unreasonable about suggesting that the doctor and parent of a 9 year old rape victim should burn forever for performing an abortion?

If that's the case... well, that's pretty scary.

Excommunication always seemed to be one of the more ridiculous practices in my view. How can you justify it when a simple prayer to god can absolve all sin? ALL SIN?!?!?!

Fucking idiots....

 The Catholic Doctrine as a whole disappoints me time and time again.

Um... I mentioned that explicitly, did I not?

 Hmm.. I guess I'm more confused than I was before.  I said explicitly that technically, excommunication is not a "sentence to hell."  I appreciate the clarity on official Catholic Doctrine here, but are we suggesting that the doctrine is true?  Nobody's going to hell, and nobody's going to purgatory over this.  They're all going to die and be gone forever.   The point isn't what the official book of Vatican Law says.  It's what people believe.

If people believe excommunication means going to hell, then excommunication means going to hell.  This decision has absolutely nothing to do with where somebody's going to end up after they die.  It has to do with the political and religious significance of billions of Catholics' interpretation of this particular act of excommunication.

I'd suggest that there's also the possibility that sloppy understanding and poor articulation are not always unintentional.  I wonder what would happen if the Church stood by their own dogma and excommunicated all Catholics who use birth control.

As you say, the practice of birth control by a large number of Catholics is pragmatic rejection of doctrine.  (There's probably a study someone could do on this phenomenon, don't you think?)  Many Catholics, especially in poorer countries, would starve to death if they followed their religion to the letter.  This is actually a good addendum to my original point -- that the utilitarian argument for religion is dead.  In fact, when people act based on utilitarianism, they tend to drop religious dogma and opt instead for that which works in the real world.

looks like they changed their mind.

"looks like they changed their mind."

Me: What a shocker.  The old seminary joke asks, "How do you know when the Pope is about to announce a change in doctrine?  When he begins by saying, "In union with the teachings of all my august Predecessors..."

Next, we'll see numerous Catholic apologists trying to square this with Traditional teaching on abortion.  (You know...a woman who's life is endangered by a pregnancy is supposed to be willing to die to give her babies a chance at life.  Oh, and this holds true even in cases when there is no practical chance that the babies, if born, will actually live for any appreciable length of time.)  Once it--very quickly--becomes obvious that this can't be done, the conservatives in the Church will, of course, begin to demand a retraction from Archbishop Fisichella, for his "heresy."  And then the doctrine will be promulgated anew.

What a sideshow the Papacy of Benedict XVI is shaping up to be, eh?

Conor

You. Nail. Head.

Yup. That's the whole reason. And I wouldn't dare call it "legitimate." But I suppose that's what we get when there's the head of a church who was the head of it's most conservative (ok, spade is a spade- "insane&quot sub-offices. Basically, this pope has been head of the modern Inquisition (not even making this up- the Church changed the office's name to something like "Office of Truth in Doctrines" in the 17th century, I think- maybe a bit earlier, and *mostly* stopped torturning people) for years. So it's not surprising that we're getting the most bold-faced of the traditional Christian dogma- belief structure over people, at any cost (because we're all just scummy sinners anyway, riiiiiiiiiiiiight?!?) has come out again. 

I say: Let it all hang out, Catholic Church. You're hurting your own case. Which means, to lots of us here: One denomination down, about six thousand to go. The next step is to stem this "True Christianity" bullshit, that backlash against the recent 'strong atheism' movement and the gradual cooling of the recent upswing in religious fundamentalism (it's still going strong, but to hear them talk, you'd think there were roving gangs of gay folks having sex orgies in front of families and firebombing churches).

Oh, and to get people to realize that we don't give a flying fuck about how 'true to Christ' you want to live your life, nor, generally, about the history of your religion (pick any religion, any one that's major, and you'll find some really nasty history about how it stayed on or near the top). No, we only care that you've got an invisible friend that you believe tells you to do things- whether via a book (crazy) or another person (really crazy) or through 'personal experience' (REALLY fucking crazy), and that, if you talked to someone who believed they talked to Marie Antoinette nightly through "Les Miserables," you'd have them in a nice set of restraints faster than it takes for you to read this sentence.

Welcome to our world- where people tell us they talk to a 2000-year-old Jewish zombie who somehow was god and yet talked to god, sacrificed himself to himself for the work *he* fucked up, and who you all claim to know, in a dialogic fashion. And with this, you expect to take you seriously. Puh-leaze.