njlauren
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quote:
ORIGINAL: BenevolentM
At least someone is willing to fill the vacuum.
quote:
ORIGINAL: njlauren
Not necessarily, the problem with church teachings is that they often lie on a foundation that basically boils down to 'this is the way it always has been, so it should be".
The reason for this assertion is as I explained the teachings of the Church are orthodox and so you are right when you say that it boils down to. You are, however, putting a slant or as Bill O'Reilly would say spin on it. As I pointed out when it boils down to it Christianity does not condone radical anti-discrimination and so it could be said to be in a sense a hypocrite. But as I pointed out in my post on the Wolf of Wall Street. It is good to be a hypocrite when you are in the service of that which is good. It is better to be a hypocrite in the service of that which is right and good than one who exhibits a total absence of hypocrisy in the service of evil.
For example, it is one thing to be unable to fathom the position of the Church and another to stand against the Church and to encourage others to stand against it. If you are unable to fathom the position of the Church have you spent much time studying the teachings of the Church or have you simply assumed that your righteousness was self-evident?
quote:
ORIGINAL: njlauren
The problem is that church teachings at their root often are not based in scripture ...
This is an argument that was put forth by the Protestants which has weakened the moral authority of Christianity. The Protestants felt they did not need to prepare for the final battle. The Church is an intellectual due to the prophecy. Man is to bruise the head of Satan and establish His intellectual superority, a thing many Protestants have all but abandoned. They have made peace with Satan.
The Church is vulnerable to attacks that it finds things in its Holy scrolls that are not plain to see much like the U.S. Supreme Court finds things written in the U.S. Constitution, but it remains to be seen if the U.S. Supreme Court has been as diligent as the Church. The U.S. Supreme Court is a professional, but so is the Church.
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ORIGINAL: njlauren
yet in practical reality they know damn well few Catholics, at least in the industrial west, pay attention to it, yet they don't ask people if they use contraception, they don't shun a family that has no or 1 or 2 kids.
Like I said it is better to be a hypocrite in the service of God, than one who is not a hypocrite in the service of Satan. Your analysis, however, is worldly. It assumes there is no other reality. The Church draws a distinction as I've already pointed out between its teachings and the ability to uphold them. The Church is in the business of making Saints. It is not in the business of showing you how to be Sinful and how to lead a Sinful life. Christianity as a whole nor the Church in particular is a hypocrite in that we fully acknowledge that man is a Sinner. What the Church is interested in is your desire not to be a Sinner. Goodness is priceless. Sinners on the other hand argue, what does a little more Sin matter?
quote:
ORIGINAL: njlauren
making annulments almost trivial
The Church is doing the best it can under the circumstances. What do you do when society has made divorce trivial? You did use the word almost. The asymmetry as I pointed out is significant.
If church teaching is an absolute, then their enforcement of it should be. One of the biggest problems the church has is its willingness to bend rules where they see fit while trumping the rest as 'absolute'. A good example is the priest abuse scandal, their own teaching makes what happened an abomination, yet in the name of keeping priests in the saddle, they allowed kids to come to harm, and those who allowed it faced no penalty from the church.
You see it in the political sphere, the church has turned Catholicism into being anti abortion and anti gay, while ignoring other issues, quite deliberately. Paul Ryan, a practicing, orthodox Catholic, just proposed a federal budget that would gut programs for the poor and old, while increasing military spending significantly while giving huge tax cuts to the rich, and worse, in defending it, he pretty much came out outright and said that the poor and unemployed are lazy and 'handouts' from the government stops them for looking for work and so forth. This is directly against church teaching and the position papers the US Bishops have put out there in recent years, yet you can hear the crickets with what the Bishops have publicly said..meanwhile, same Bishops put a full court press over contraception coverage and also have threatened politicians for being pro choice and pro same sex marriage if they are Catholic...tell me, how come no Bishops has threatened Ryan or other Catholic politicians preaching the gospel of Ayn Rand that they are in violation of church teaching?
It is interesting you mention hypocrisy, the current Pope has states quite clearly that the church leaders turning Catholicism into being about abortion and gays are themselves violating church teaching, and that their hypocrisy is blatently political, criticizing what their opponents do while not criticizing the faults of those who support them on those two issues.
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RE: What good is morality anyway? - 
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