Quote:
Originally Posted by mixedmedia
Until the Catholic church can find it in themselves to embrace the reality of living today then I will have to rely on the 95.3% of the Catholic church who doesn't listen to what they have they have to say anyway. Yeah, that's right - the Vatican is obsolete...even if it will take another 200 years for anyone to acknowledge it.
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Exactly. And the thing is the Vatican doesn't
have to be obsolete. Catholicism has benefited from not being strictly tied to a book the way fundamental Christianity has been. It's easy to bring up Galileo, but while the Catholic church is far from perfect it has nonetheless been the scientific leader of Christianity for pretty much all of its existence. As an atheist, I nonetheless value that the Catholic church has now supported evolution and the plausibility of the Big Bang for, quite literally, decades, even if conservative Christians - and even conservative Catholics - are unwilling to listen.
Unfortunately, the Catholic church's attachment to tradition is now becoming as much of a liability as being strictly attached to the bible has been for fundamentalist Christianity. The pope is the leader of the church, but almost nothing the pope says is ever infallible. There are very specific conditions which must be met for papal infallibility, and they have only been met on a handful of occasions. It's a stupid concept, yes, but my point is that it's irrelevant here. There is no reason why the current pope must be tied to the tradition of his predecessors when it comes to condoms, or most anything else. And there is certainly no reason why the current pope, or JPII before him, should reject even
discussing the idea of priestly marriage or female priesthood.
And that's really what's so terrible about the conservative brand of Catholicism that Ratzinger and, to a somewhat lesser degree, JPII represent. It's one thing to have a very strong bias against breaking tradition, but it's another to deny even the serious
discussion of why tradition should be rethought.
As someone who takes an interest in world religion - after all, most people are biologically predisposed for it to some degree - I find it sad to see serious potential for Catholicism as a positive force in the world only to be squandered by closed-minded assholes like Pope Benedict.