Please shut the fuck up. Nothing you are saying makes a lick of fucking sense.

Domo.

Thanks,

Shannon Miller

Civility: Excuse me, dear sir, but would you be so kind as to go fuck yourself? And take your etiquette lesson and firmly lodge it all up in your ass? Thank you so much!

Hmm, I see a problem there. The rhythm method is also subverting God’s will for married couples to have children. So the teachers in certain Catholic schools have been teaching that a moral sin is OK because the church says so.

Many American Catholics I know have to hold their noses to stay in their churches. They know half the church doctrine is bullshit but they don’t want to jump ship, hoping the church will make the great leap out of the Middle Ages. Hasn’t happened yet but you never know.

The point is that anything that can be expressed with mockery can be better expressed without mockery. You may be able to get your point across including, but you would better serve yourself leaving it out and acting civil.

…most liberals do not favor *abortion*. Most liberals favor the *legality* of abortion.

Okay, I’ll give you that.

Putting aside this “restriction� business, as if there is a dearth of birth control in American, what’s this “force� line? Don’t you believe that women have free will to be chaste? And if they don’t, how can you claim that the Church has the free will to accept birth control (and she technically doesn’t). Now I know your going to say, “Well, what about rape?� Well, that has nothing to do with birth control. And abortion involves two human bodies, not just one. Why doesn’t the fetus have the right to his (or her) body?

Certainly, women have the choice to avoid sex (though please note that “abstain� is the word you are looking for; a woman who has sex with her husband is “chaste� in so doing).

I prefer the word “chaste” in this context. Chastity, in the way I mean it, refers to the virtue of sexual morality, both within marriage and outside it. Of course, in my view, chastity necessary translates to abstinence from sexual acts outside marriage. But “abstinence” itself is a broader term and can refer to meat, drink, etc. I think conservatives began to use “abstinence” to refer to extramarital chastity, because “chastity” sounded to religious and “old-fashioned”.

They also have the choice to engage in sex, with the full knowledge of the methods of preventing pregnancy and the spread of disease. If it had its way, the Catholic Church would prevent the spread and/or the use of that knowledge. It would seek to control others; it does not have any faith that its message is sufficient to convince people, despite claiming to believe it is ultimate truth.

The Catholic Church is only preaching its doctrines to the world. What control does it have over secular legal matters? Of course, a secular state with Catholic rulers may choose to illegalize things considered dangerous to the social morality as a whole. But this matter, at heart, has to do with individualism versus communalism. We humans are social beings and have always passed laws according to our society’s vision of morality as a whole. We still do: witness anti-drug laws, anti-smoking laws, environmental regulation, anti-discrimination laws, age of majority, age of consent, no public nudity, don’t fish in this river, don’t grow you hedges more than x number of feet, etc. It’s no different. It’s modern values expressed by the secular State.

When you’ve got God and ultimate truth on your side, and you still need to pull in changes to law and policy to fight your battles, I don’t think you’ve really got any faith. Faith is supposed to be pretty powerful stuff on its own, don’t you know.

What becomes of Christ’s command to the apostles to preach the Word to all nations? It is not the survival of our Faith we worry about (or, at least, we shouldn’t worry about that) but the wellbeing of the world and the people in it.

Argumentum ad hominem. A person who engages in mockery may be able to debate the point without doing so.

What? You defend mockery in the same breath that you condemn a supposed ad hominem? To you not see how both of these proceed from a desire to disparage one’s opponent, possibly in lieu of a convincing argument?

Critical thought is important if you want to learn to debate and learn more about the truth.

School me, O sage! (That’s not an ad hominem; I’m only engaging in mockery)

… you’re defending your religion? From what? Is it going to be damaged Amanda Marcotte’s mockery?…You were personally offended by what Amanda said, and out of that personal offense, you want to do something for yourself…Now maybe you have pride in being Catholic and seek to impress us with your thoughtfulness and piety. It won’t work on me, because I know how Jesus felt about folks who chose to show off their piety.

And you sure as heck won’t come across as thoughtful if you feel you have to defend a religion that believes it is the true path to the Almighty from one mouthy woman who runs a blog.

Perhaps you’re right, John. Perhaps I am simply wasting my time trying to flash my pious peacock feathers before the rabble. The truth is, I originally stopped at Pandagon because I was curious after hearing the brouhaha about Edwards. What really compelled to post my first post here was the implication in the original blog post that the majority or even a large minority of Christians are like the idiots quoted in the post. So I banged out a short response, hoping that people otherwise fooled might see this. Since then I’ve just been debating with various other commenters, not about Marcotte, but about Christianity in general. Maybe it’s folly on my part, but it is difficult for me to read such misconceptions and stereotypes written by apparently otherwise intelligent and well-educated people and simply not address them. I shouldn’t say I’m protecting my religion, but I am trying to show people another side to it than the side that they are getting from Amanda Marcotte’s post and from each other. But maybe I should give up.

I don’t try to promote my own views about religion….I do try to spread my ideas about sound policy, like protecting the health of those who have sex, whether or not I approve of their choices (so long as the sex is between consenting adults)….when one starts trying to condemn those who do not hold to religious teachings, one is showing a great deal of pride in one’s view of righteousness.

Why are religious views any different from political, social, cultural, moral, or philosophical views? I don’t accept this modernist desire to stick religion in its own separate, little cubbyhole, outside public discourse, outside debate. This is the argument of those secularists who tell us, “Cling to your silly little superstition if you want, but keep it behind closed doors.” Thus, civilization becomes secularized. Do you accept the conservative argument that gays can have relationships but shouldn’t express their affection in public and shouldn’t lobby for “gay rights” in the public square?

Yes, I’m inferring you are quite willing to hurt Amanda Marcotte. You admit, right here, that you were perfectly willing to watch people attack her….You want to convince me you love her, as Jesus commanded? You’ll have to do a better job than that.

So what do you want me to do? I can’t stop her attackers. I can condemn them and I do. These buffoons she’s quoting are more harmful to those on my side than on hers or yours, for obvious reasons. Or do you mean Donahue? I’ve already said I think he’s an embarrasment too and any modicum of respect I might have had for him was lost with “secular Jews control Hollywood”. But I can’t stop him. But, still, public speech has consequences and spoken publicly by posting what she posted non-anonymously on this blog. Well, that public speech made her too much of a lightening rod for the Edwards campaign. If I publicly posted some of my more radically counter-revolutionary religious/political beliefs on the Internet, under my real name, and was then hired for some minor position by, say, the Romney campaign, and my postings were then discovered and spread around by the Huffington Post and Keith Olbermann (M.J.: Worst Person in the Woooooorld!), I’d probably be kicked off that campaign too. I can’t have sympathy for her for facing such realities and I don’t think that’s synonymous with hurting her and wanting to hurt her.

The only time that I *do* care is when the RCC decides to enlist the gov’t’s guns in order to make that flock — and the rest of us non-Catholics — comply with those rules.

Having said that, I see a whole bunch of wrongs from all sides here. While ridicule and mockery has its place, Amanda goes *way* too heavy on that. A little mockery can spice up any debate, but, like salt, a pinch will improve a good meal, but a shovelful will ruin anything. How about more light, and less heat when discussing all that’s wrong with RC doctrine, Amanda?

You have these idgits with their rape-her-beat-her-send-her-to-Iraq nonsense from Bill Donahue’s drones, and other assorted morons doing their part to make Catholicism in particular, and Christianity in general, look really bad. I swear America is getting stupider by the day.

Folks: the only place where two wrongs make a right is algebra.

Next, we have the Edwards campaign. No, Amanda didn’t do anything to “sink” his campaign. All that happened is that Edwards, the weasely little ambulance chaser, proved himself to be as spineless as a worm. Instead of all his lawyerly equivocation, he should have stood up for the bloggers that he, himself, hired. He should have come out and said that Donahue’s Catholic League, as a tax-exempt foundation, was interfering with a political campaign in violation of the IRS rules governing the conduct of tax-exempt foundations, and then demanded Donahue to either drop that exemption, or to STFU. If he did not, Edwards should have stated that he was going to the IRS to file a complaint. He should have pulled every skeleton from the closets of Donahue and O’Reilly and dispalyed them for all to see. I don’t agree with Edwards’ politics, and would never vote for him, but I could certainly respect him for having the courage of his convictions. Instead, he took the coward’s way out. If he can not stand up to the whacko right, then how can we trust him to do the right thing when the lobbyists of Corporate America come a-callin’?

For once, I would like to see either the Republican’ts or the Demo-Rats run a candidate that wasn’t an unprincipled coward, a moron, or a lunatic.

Just for a change.