Aboriginal Civil Disobedience

[Derec]

I have already traced my land to the people who originally inhabited it, yes.

I very much doubt that, unless you somehow managed to trace things to the last ice age.
What you traced is back to first contact with Europeans or maybe a little before then, which leaves a gap of many thousands of years. The people who originally inhabited that land have most likely been exterminated a long time ago.

I live on Haudenosaunee land.

The Iroquois (which is a confederacy, not a tribe proper) stole it from somebody. So it's not their land either by those standards. And the people they stole it from stole it from somebody else. And so on, through the centuries. North American history does not start in 1492 and neither have Indian tribes lived in the areas where Europeans encountered them since the beginning of time.

There are definitely no mass graves of hundreds of children here.

How do you know for sure?

 

[Bomb#20]

You want me to tell you what I think should be done by the church. I want you to stop misrepresenting other people. Is that a bargain you're willing to make?

Misrepresentations or misunderstandings of posts happen all the time here. Everyone does it now and then - even you.

You say that as though she wrote an "oops", as opposed to trying to shove her words back into my mouth after I corrected her.

Mistakes happen but they are not intentional.

Fair enough. Agreeing to put some actual effort into avoiding misrepresenting others, and agreeing to accept correction when she does it by mistake, would be fine.

For example, your “This thread is an extended exercise in arson apologetics.” is an obvious misrepresentation of the contents of this thread.

Huh? How do you figure that? I obviously wasn't saying every single individual post in it was arson apologetics; for instance, some posts after all were counterarguments against arson apologetics. But arson apologetics was the purpose of the thread. It's right there in the title: "Aboriginal Civil Disobedience". If I recall correctly, Thoreau went to jail for declining to pay a tax that would support slavery and war on Mexico. He didn't go to jail for getting revenge on somebody by burning down a church. I don't recall anything in Civil Disobedience to suggest what the arsonist did is covered by Thoreau's concept. Do you? Mislabeling the arson "civil disobedience" is apologetics.

Then, the very first sentences from the OP were "So, First Nations are burning down churches in Canada, and I can't find a reason to not condone the violence." and "In general, violence begets violence, but the near silence from the Vatican regarding the open secret about what happened at Aboriginal schools run by the Catholic Church, in light of the discovery of unmarked graves and mass graves really makes one think that a pound of metaphorical flesh is called for." If that isn't apologetics, what would you call it?

Subsequently, we've had post after post endorsing that sort of reasoning. What do you think most of the posts in the thread have been about, if it wasn't agreeing with or opposing the OP's contention? It certainly wasn't Catholic apologetics. Can you point out any post that implied it was okay for the RCC to hold kidnapped children prisoner and let them die from neglect?

Why not at least try to stay on topic and say what you think the proper course of action for the RCC instead of undeserved bombastic moral indignation?

I have been staying on topic; you seem to have forgotten what the topic is. And I can't help but notice that everybody here who's expressed an interest in hearing my useless two cents' worth on that other topic can't seem to get through a two line request for the information without finding a way to be a dick about it. Makes me suspect the reasonable people here don't care what I think the proper course of action for the RCC is. Why should they? Who would change his mind based on my opinion? Certainly no one in the RCC hierarchy.

 

[Jarhyn]

Bomb, I will ask you straight up. Where is it that you imagine any of us might have even mistakenly perceived as a statement of any shape or size in acknowledgement that church and government owe apology and action?

Because when put point blank with such a question, a lack of an answer is an answer.

Like I said, I don't believe in rewarding bad behavior. You are a worse offender even than Rhea.

"I don't believe in answering the pertinent issues of the OP because you are the one asking me to do it!"

Just a reminder that Bomb has still continued to fail to answer the only actual pertinent question of the thread:

Whether the government and church hold an obligation to action or apology for what happened or not.

 

[Angra Mainyu]

The Iroquois (which is a confederacy, not a tribe proper) stole it from somebody. So it's not their land either by those standards. And the people they stole it from stole it from somebody else. And so on, through the centuries. North American history does not start in 1492 and neither have Indian tribes lived in the areas where Europeans encountered them since the beginning of time.

Much more likely, the people from whom some of the Iroquois stole the land from did not steal it from anyone. It was their land, since they were born there, in a society that lived there, and lived their lives there, which is more than sufficient for the land to be theirs, so they did not engage in any land theft (some of their ancestors probably stole the land from someone else, and so on).

 

[Angra Mainyu]

Makes me suspect the reasonable people here don't care what I think the proper course of action for the RCC is.

For my part, it's not that, but that I'm not inclined to try to give you more work when you have a good number of unreasonable claims and arguments being thrown at you. But if you have the time, please go ahead.

Why should they? Who would change his mind based on my opinion? Certainly no one in the RCC hierarchy.

Certainly none of them. And almost certainly none of the people throwing unreasonable claims or arguments at you, either. But I do consider reasonable arguments as part of the input when assessing the matter myself, so I might or might not change my mind about something depending on your opinion and arguments (I do not know whether we disagree about something, though I do not have a stance on what the RCC should do, so there is room for upgrading the picture there in any case).

 

[Gospel]

All the "unmarked graves all over the world dating back to forever in the past" arguments are flat-out stupid and don't account for the fact that some victims of these schools are STILL ALIVE. This is not one of those "Golly gee, Wally, it happened long ago" moments kiddo.

Edit: And just as someone pointed out earlier, it's not just the Catholic Church, it is also the Canadian Government that needs to be held accountable. What that looks like is beyond me, but let's hope it's not the nothing-burger African Salves got for their troubles.

Edit: And for those thinking "Herpity Derpity, why are you bringing African Slaves into this?!." I'm talking about the Canadian ones ya big dummy.

 

[laughing dog]

You say that as though she wrote an "oops", as opposed to trying to shove her words back into my mouth after I corrected her.

I think a more charitable interpretation is that she was explaining her viewpoint.

Fair enough. Agreeing to put some actual effort into avoiding misrepresenting others, and agreeing to accept correction when she does it by mistake, would be fine.

But even with actual effort, mistakes, misunderstanding and miscommunication occur. IMO, some posters are much more conscientious about putting in that effort and correcting mistakes, and that in my experience, Rhea is one of the best of those.

Huh? How do you figure that? I obviously wasn't saying every single individual post in it was arson apologetics; for instance, some posts after all were counterarguments against arson apologetics. But arson apologetics was the purpose of the thread. It's right there in the title: "Aboriginal Civil Disobedience". If I recall correctly, Thoreau went to jail for declining to pay a tax that would support slavery and war on Mexico. He didn't go to jail for getting revenge on somebody by burning down a church. I don't recall anything in Civil Disobedience to suggest what the arsonist did is covered by Thoreau's concept. Do you? Mislabeling the arson "civil disobedience" is apologetics.

Then, the very first sentences from the OP were "So, First Nations are burning down churches in Canada, and I can't find a reason to not condone the violence." and "In general, violence begets violence, but the near silence from the Vatican regarding the open secret about what happened at Aboriginal schools run by the Catholic Church, in light of the discovery of unmarked graves and mass graves really makes one think that a pound of metaphorical flesh is called for." If that isn't apologetics, what would you call it?

Subsequently, we've had post after post endorsing that sort of reasoning. What do you think most of the posts in the thread have been about, if it wasn't agreeing with or opposing the OP's contention?

Civil disobedience is usually thought of as non-violent, and the actors accept their punishment in the open, so these arsons are not civil disobedience. I don't know if this was carelessness or not in the OP's case to use the term.

But, while there have been some posts defending the arsons, in my view, most of the posts that address the OP directly and the OP, are saying the arsons are wrong but they are not outraged by them. In my view that is not arson apologetics.

But clearly, most posts in this thread have nothing directly to do with OP topic. So, in my view, it is misleading to term this thread an extended arson apologetics.

It certainly wasn't Catholic apologetics. Can you point out any post that implied it was okay for the RCC to hold kidnapped children prisoner and let them die from neglect?

No, but straw man accusation in this thread about Catholic hating is a form of Catholic apologetics.

I have been staying on topic; you seem to have forgotten what the topic is. And I can't help but notice that everybody here who's expressed an interest in hearing my useless two cents' worth on that other topic can't seem to get through a two line request for the information without finding a way to be a dick about it. Makes me suspect the reasonable people here don't care what I think the proper course of action for the RCC is. Why should they? Who would change his mind based on my opinion? Certainly no one in the RCC hierarchy.

I find your response baffling. If one is not posting an opinion because one does not think it will change minds, why bother posting in any thread. After all, there is no reason to expect the "changing minds" to occur at all in any thread.

And, in this instance, why bother with the RCC's view at all? In most threads in Politics, the opinions or views are not going to change the views of the actual actors in the OP.

I find opinions in threads range from the vile through the incredibly inane or stupid or ridiculous, to the humane, insightful or to the unexpectedly innovative. Perhaps you have a unique view or a particular way of expressing a more pedestrian view that might stimulate/change thinking by some posters.

 

[Bomb#20]

Makes me suspect the reasonable people here don't care what I think the proper course of action for the RCC is.

For my part, it's not that, but that I'm not inclined to try to give you more work when you have a good number of unreasonable claims and arguments being thrown at you. But if you have the time, please go ahead.

Okeydoke.

Not having seen any evidence for the existence of hive minds, it seems to me that to talk about "the proper course of action for the RCC" is technically a category error; but never mind that. As it happens, theoretically the RCC is an absolute monarchy. So theoretically we can just equate that question with the perfectly sensible question "What's the proper course of action for the Pope?".

(Of course, in theory there's no difference between theory and practice, but in practice there's a great deal of difference. I'm not privy to the internal workings of the RCC; I don't know how much control the Pope really has. The RCC has had two thousand years to evolve defense mechanisms to protect itself against a Pope who goes, let us say, off the reservation. So I'm assuming here that any such mechanisms can be worked around. If they can't be, a whole different analysis is required. Ought implies can.)

So, in my view, the first thing the Pope ought to do is hire a team of really good lawyers -- non-Christian lawyers he pays to be loyal to him rather than loyal to the RCC -- and take their advice on how to put his reform project into effect. The rest of what follows is my overview of how he should proceed; I'm sure smart lawyers would spot my naive mistakes in five seconds and find a better route to the overall objective.

The next step is to do a grand survey of the church's legal assets and moral liabilities. The first moral liability is that the RCC has put itself in the position of having a lot of the world's poor people depending on it for survival. These people's lives have to come ahead of redressing past wrongs. So the Pope should order a grand re-org. The church-funded charities should be taken out of the authority of local dioceses, combined, and spun off as an independent non-profit organization, with enough of the RCC's assets and ongoing legitimate businesses devolved to it to make it actuarially sound going forward.

Then he should announce that the church is done with protecting child molesters and hand over the church's internal files on its priests to local law enforcement. The church was protecting them partly because there's an extreme shortage of priests, which is partly because of the celibacy requirement. It doesn't just reduce the applicant pool; it also decreases the proportion of priests with commonplace sexual tastes, which mathematically must increase the proportion with atypical tastes of all varieties -- child molesters among them. The Pope should rule that that's also over and done with, and priests can now marry, have sex, and have children. By the same token, he should rule that women are now eligible to be priests.

If there are any assets left over after the ensuing lawsuits, he should set up a truth and reconciliation commission, hire investigators to find out who the church victimized in living memory, and set up a fund to pay compensation to survivors and their families. Scanning for dead children in unmarked graves would be part of that; but I'm sure there have been all manner of other victims, and they'll all be competing for the same limited asset pool. Not knowing the details of everyone the RCC hurt, I can't guess how close to the front of the line those Canadian so-called "schools" would be.

If there are any assets left over after all that, the Pope should then remind people of Jesus's words about giving away your wealth, hand over legal ownership of all the Catholic churches in the world to their own congregations, and then donate the bulk of the remaining assets to the above mentioned independent charity so they can increase their services to the poor.

Then the Pope should go on a goodwill tour to some place in the Far East where Catholics are rare. Mongolia would be good.

The RCC should retain for itself only enough assets to cleanly wrap up its bureaucratic apparatus. The Pope should then go on Mongolian television and announce ex cathedra the abolition of episcopal polity, declare the RCC to henceforth be Congregationalist, demote all the Cardinals, Archbishops, and Bishops to the rank of parish priest, turn sovereignty of Vatican City over to Italy, and invite every parish where the local priest has been arrested to send a job offer to the ex-Cardinal of its choice.

Then the Pope should invite the parishioners of the world to elect delegates to a convention to write a new Constitution for the church. They can retain the office of Pope or not; it's up to the faithful to choose.

After a new Constitution has been written and adopted by one-Catholic-one-vote, the Pope should go on Mongolian television again and announce ex cathedra that everything the RCC has told people about God for the last two thousand years has just been somebody's guess that got repeated over and over, that neither the Church nor he personally has a privileged line to God, that the RCC is not a moral authority of any sort, and that each Catholic must decide for himself what is right and what his relationship with God is.

Finally, the Pope should go on Mongolian television one last time and announce ex cathedra that neither any past Pope, nor any future Pope, nor he himself, is infallible.

Sound good? Anybody disagree? Anybody persuaded of anything he didn't already think?

 

[Rhea]

Sound good? Anybody disagree? Anybody persuaded of anything he didn't already think?

Well done. This is hilarious in its breadth, and fundamental wisdom and its inclusion of a little unreasonable hyperbole that we’d actually all be quite happy with.
I enjoy your style. (Genuine interest and amusement)

Will come back later to discuss the particulars seriously. Some I support, some i do not support, even if my heart of hearts agrees with the premise.

 

[Jarhyn]

Anybody persuaded of anything he didn't already think?

Yes, in fact. Because right up until this moment, I had every reason to believe that you did not believe an ethical course of any kind was in the prescription.

Something you seem to forget altogether too conveniently: conversations about issues start most appropriately with a statement of things often we already believe, and which we assume others already know we believe, because discussion can only be had fruitfully in the intersections of those agreements on premises. Especially basic premises as here.

I came out of your post with a belief that a conversation may be possible with you on the topic. I didn't already think that. In fact, if you continued to ignore such a basic responsibility to establish your own position, I was going to just put you on ignore. I know you probably don't care much, but it matters to me more than you might think that things didn't go that way.

So, let's imagine I have a serial killer living next to me. This serial killer enjoys, and has a history of, killing whoever his most recent neighbor happens to be. For whatever reason, perhaps assume small town and the sheriff is his psychotic serial-killer friend, he has not been charged with anything. So unfortunate that the other five neighbors who moved in and suddenly have "gone missing", having "moved out in the middle of the night, via bus ticket, no, we won't ask for bus station security footage it is not available. In fact, here's a coupon for a bus ticket."

To me, the appropriate course is clear: kill them both and go to jail/die for it. Better that I have a bad future in prison than anyone else, or myself, be murdered. Perhaps it would be judged "time served" or "self defense". But it is right in the context even though it is hard and hurts almost as much as just letting myself be murdered. Probably more given the dynamics of prison for those who do not bend the knee. But I would almost certainly not see the light of day after; There would be premeditation. Really, my only hope to not see such a fate is to hope that I don't actually get put in a position where I become the "victim of necessity".

This whole situation is a pressure cooker, filled with the pressure of unrest, boiled up out of the water by the heat of injustice and prevented from venting by the intractability of anyone to just apologize and move towards open and full disclosure and continued talks of actions to move towards some kind of peace. These church burnings are a symptom of a problem, much like jets of steam bursting erratically out of the seam of the lid. They are bad, but there is also no other outlet; it is plugged up by the intractability of pride and shame via the route you describe. Your course is "turn off the heat, take it off the oven, take out the plug, service the valves, and maybe reevaluate if pressure cookers are a good idea given this cock-up." I LIKE that solution and I like you more for saying it. But in the mean time, the most important step anyone can take, including the RCC, is the next one. Like turning over whatever records remain, being honest about which records were never made and which were lost, and uncovering the bodies. This leads to the next step. Which leads to the next. The journey starts with insisting this happen. This is a discussion about how we may insist that happen.

The arsons are a side effect, and one most of us recognize as bad, including myself. But like the pressure cooker, those little escapes of pressure from of activity are much better than other forms of escape.

You have accused us of speaking others' stories. But if these churches were burned down by first peoples, as I assume they must have been; that first peoples are shielding and hiding the people who did it... Then the story was told, and by them first and foremost, with the shape of a burned church.

My response to that may not even be to the extent wanted by first peoples, but I have my own line in the sand: the land is not mine and cannot be and cannot be anyone's in truth, and so to claim now that it is "theirs" is an insult to both of us, and their ancestors, though it is I am sure the reason my ancestors will be in hell, if there is such a place, though there oughtn't be.

At some point, if you got tired of reading my prattle, maybe take away this: I accept as you accept that the church is doing a bad here, that the arsons are bad. My prescribed course of action is to do nothing on behalf of the interests of the RCC until they stop doing bad. And to do nothing in the interests of the arsonists until they stop doing a bad. As these interests are conflicting, this means that the church will probably have to apologize before the arsons stop, at which point it will probably be too late to catch the arsonists, and I will get yet more schadenfreude to mildly mourn my laughing at.

 

[Angra Mainyu]

Okeydoke.

Not having seen any evidence for the existence of hive minds, it seems to me that to talk about "the proper course of action for the RCC" is technically a category error; but never mind that. As it happens, theoretically the RCC is an absolute monarchy. So theoretically we can just equate that question with the perfectly sensible question "What's the proper course of action for the Pope?".

That's a far more clear way of asking the question, yes. I've been asking people in this thread who the RCC is in the context of their posts, to no avail.

(Of course, in theory there's no difference between theory and practice, but in practice there's a great deal of difference. I'm not privy to the internal workings of the RCC; I don't know how much control the Pope really has.
The RCC has had two thousand years to evolve defense mechanisms to protect itself against a Pope who goes, let us say, off the reservation. So I'm assuming here that any such mechanisms can be worked around. If they can't be, a whole different analysis is required. Ought implies can.)

I'm not privy to that, either. However, based on the info I do have, I reckon that it's very improbable that he could work around them. Purely for example:

https://catholicismpure.wordpress.c...ipope-or-heretical-pope-and-what-can-be-done/

Now I do believe that ordaining women would be enough to get him fired as an 'anti-pope', but even if that's not the case, I'm pretty sure that some of the things you listed would result in that - assuming of course that he doesn't die before, due to some 'accident', 'illness', 'miracle', or less probably just open assassination.

In short, I do not know how much control he does have, but I'm pretty convinced not enough to do what you proposed, and in any case he should reckon he can't do all of the above - though he can probably do some of the stuff you say. I do not know how much, or generally what other things he can do, so I do not know what he should do.

That said, under the assumption he can actually do that, I think your points are very good as usual.

As for the specifics, I believe there would be a number of proper courses of action to get more or less similar results, but that is compatible with what you say, given your comment about the lawyers.

 

[Angry Floof]

It's fun to oppress and abuse people for generation after generation and then turn them into non-human abstractions for the supposed purpose of "logic," as if human nature has no relevance and atrocity can only affect human beings inside a very short time span.

 

[Rhea]

Makes me suspect the reasonable people here don't care what I think the proper course of action for the RCC is.

You probably don’t consider me reasonable, but I do actually care, and that’s why I was drilling for an answer.

Okeydoke.

Not having seen any evidence for the existence of hive minds, it seems to me that to talk about "the proper course of action for the RCC" is technically a category error; but never mind that. As it happens, theoretically the RCC is an absolute monarchy. So theoretically we can just equate that question with the perfectly sensible question "What's the proper course of action for the Pope?".

In a way I agree, but a part of me also asks (wonders, expects) that all of the others in the heirarchy would care about the reputattion of their organization. And indeed that the individual parishioners would care.

I know many RCs who will “church shop” when they move into a new place because it does matter to them what the reputation of the parish is (traditional versus folk-singing hippies, for example. Indeed, in my small town there was great hue and cry when the diminishing population of Catholics necessitated the merger of two churches (the horror! It’s not *us*!), and then subsequently merged again between the remaining two and even had to merge the schools. It mattered to them that they were now associating with people who didn’t “live the values” the same way.

And so, I look a that posturing, and I find it absurd that the parishioners, and the priests, and the Bishops and the Cardinals and the Pope would rather protect murderers than hippies, you know? The difference is that they are protecting them from *us*, not from each other, and I guess that is different to them. They condemned the hippies louder to each other than they will condemn the murderers to the rest of the world.

So, is it a categoy error? Do the people involved today really consider themselves separate? I feel their actions suggest not - they are merely defensive against outsiders.

 

[Rhea]

Finally, the Pope should go on Mongolian television one last time and announce ex cathedra that neither any past Pope, nor any future Pope, nor he himself, is infallible.

Bringing this up to the top because I feel like this one sort of has to come first. But maybe not. Maybe he needs the infallibility thing to get all the rest done. But admitting fallibility is really a necessary first step to apology. And perhaps it is what’s getting in the way of the apology right now.

So, in my view, the first thing the Pope ought to do is hire a team of really good lawyers -- non-Christian lawyers he pays to be loyal to him rather than loyal to the RCC -- and take their advice on how to put his reform project into effect.

This makes me wonder if the Pope trusts anyone to be as morally correct as he thinks he is supposed to be. This is a good thought bite. I do wonder if a Pope could convince himslef to hire lawyers and trust their advice. Can he even do it?

The next step is to do a grand survey of the church's legal assets and moral liabilities. The first moral liability is that the RCC has put itself in the position of having a lot of the world's poor people depending on it for survival. These people's lives have to come ahead of redressing past wrongs. So the Pope should order a grand re-org. The church-funded charities should be taken out of the authority of local dioceses, combined, and spun off as an independent non-profit organization, with enough of the RCC's assets and ongoing legitimate businesses devolved to it to make it actuarially sound going forward.

This should not be too hard, snce they have been separating these for tax purposes already, for the mostt part. There is a SHITLOAD of money in the RCC. They could afford to send him to space.

Then he should announce that the church is done with protecting child molesters and hand over the church's internal files on its priests to local law enforcement.

Honestly, I do not know why it has not been legally required already. The attorney/client privilege is broken when the privilege is used tto commit a crime, inclusing collusion to hide a crime, and the same should be true for any church records. We know they hid rapists that they knew wre rapists. We know this.

The church was protecting them partly because there's an extreme shortage of priests, which is partly because of the celibacy requirement. It doesn't just reduce the applicant pool; it also decreases the proportion of priests with commonplace sexual tastes, which mathematically must increase the proportion with atypical tastes of all varieties -- child molesters among them. The Pope should rule that that's also over and done with, and priests can now marry, have sex, and have children. By the same token, he should rule that women are now eligible to be priests.

This is a good and useful reform, although it is not related to the school murders. But it’s related to a lot of rapes, so it is a good idea for the sake of the church. Yet, the shortage of priests is harming the size of the church, so from a humanitarian standpoint, as long as we can freely prosecute the rapists and enforce discovery, I think it would be better to let them have their self flagellation and continue to lose priests and parishioners.

If there are any assets left over after the ensuing lawsuits, he should set up a truth and reconciliation commission, hire investigators to find out who the church victimized in living memory, and set up a fund to pay compensation to survivors and their families. Scanning for dead children in unmarked graves would be part of that; but I'm sure there have been all manner of other victims, and they'll all be competing for the same limited asset pool. Not knowing the details of everyone the RCC hurt, I can't guess how close to the front of the line those Canadian so-called "schools" would be.

The school truth would be one of the less costly. The price of a scanning team is pretty low, and a lot of reconciliation can be had just by finding the bodies and letting the Nations take them home. I’d put this one earlier on the list.

If there are any assets left over after all that, the Pope should then remind people of Jesus's words about giving away your wealth, hand over legal ownership of all the Catholic churches in the world to their own congregations, and then donate the bulk of the remaining assets to the above mentioned independent charity so they can increase their services to the poor.

Indeed. Another one of those things that baffles me mightily about their protestations of holiness. Lot of golden fripperies in that organization that claims to believe the words, “give all you have…”. They definitiely aren’t giving the first calf.

Then the Pope should go on a goodwill tour to some place in the Far East where Catholics are rare. Mongolia would be good.

THis made me laugh. But whatt did the Mongolians do to deserve this?

The RCC should retain for itself only enough assets to cleanly wrap up its bureaucratic apparatus. The Pope should then go on Mongolian television and announce ex cathedra the abolition of episcopal polity, declare the RCC to henceforth be Congregationalist, demote all the Cardinals, Archbishops, and Bishops to the rank of parish priest, turn sovereignty of Vatican City over to Italy, and invite every parish where the local priest has been arrested to send a job offer to the ex-Cardinal of its choice

LOL, I wold so love to see some of those “holy servants” in a Louisiana bayou.

Then the Pope should invite the parishioners of the world to elect delegates to a convention to write a new Constitution for the church. They can retain the office of Pope or not; it's up to the faithful to choose.

Why re-create it? You were doing so well and now this?

After a new Constitution has been written and adopted by one-Catholic-one-vote, the Pope should go on Mongolian television again and announce ex cathedra that everything the RCC has told people about God for the last two thousand years has just been somebody's guess that got repeated over and over, that neither the Church nor he personally has a privileged line to God, that the RCC is not a moral authority of any sort, and that each Catholic must decide for himself what is right and what his relationship with God is.

But their new constitution may just set them up to worship someone new.



…thanks for this reply, it was interesting to read and think about.

 

[Angra Mainyu]

So, is it a categoy error? Do the people involved today really consider themselves separate? I feel their actions suggest not - they are merely defensive against outsiders.

B20 did not say it is technically a category error because of what "the people involved" believed, but because he sees no evidence of hive minds - and it looks like it would be a category error if someone talks like that without believing in hive minds.

I suppose in that it would not be a category error to talk about the proper course of action for the RCC if the person talking believes that there are hive minds and the RCC is one of them. In that case, their talk would be ordinary talk about the proper course of action for a mind. However, the problem is that that would still involve a big confusion on the part of the person talking like that - namely, the belief in hive minds.

 

[Bomb#20]

I live on Haudenosaunee land.

The Iroquois (which is a confederacy, not a tribe proper) stole it from somebody. So it's not their land either by those standards. And the people they stole it from stole it from somebody else. And so on, through the centuries. North American history does not start in 1492 and neither have Indian tribes lived in the areas where Europeans encountered them since the beginning of time.

I grew up in Iroquois country. (Are we supposed to say Haudenosaunee now?) Pretty much the first history lesson I remember from elementary school was being told how terrified of the Iroquois all the surrounding tribes were.

There are definitely no mass graves of hundreds of children here.

How do you know for sure?

There are definitely mass graves of hundreds of Huron children somewhere on "Haudenosaunee land".

 

[Jarhyn]

All I'm hearing from you is "violence of the past forgives violence in the present".

Which is Bullshit; It doesn't.

Then, it should be noted these arsons are pointedly and even carefully nonviolent.

 

[Bomb#20]

Anybody persuaded of anything he didn't already think?

Yes, in fact. Because right up until this moment, I had every reason to believe that you did not believe an ethical course of any kind was in the prescription.

I meant, has anybody been persuaded of anything I said in post #488 that he didn't already think? I post to try to convince people of the things I say, not to virtue signal.

And no, right up until that moment, you had no reason to believe that I did not believe an ethical course of any kind was in the prescription. Right up until that moment, you had every prejudice to believe that I did not believe an ethical course of any kind was in the prescription. You believed that about me because I'm in your outgroup and you think tribally about your outgroup members instead of rationally.

So let's find out whether post #488 did any good. Let's find out whether I persuaded you about anything that matters.

Earlier you wrote:

Angra, andd Bomb - I will ask you straight up. (And anyone else who argues that the church and governments do not owe any apology or action) <rest snipped>

Rhea, I will ask you straight up. Where is it that you imagine you saw me argue that the church and governments do not owe any apology or action?

Bomb, I will ask you straight up. Where is it that you imagine any of us might have even mistakenly perceived as a statement of any shape or size in acknowledgement that church and government owe apology and action?

Because when put point blank with such a question, a lack of an answer is an answer.

Now that you've changed your mind about whether I believe an ethical course of any kind is in the prescription -- now that you've seen the error you made -- has this induced you to change your mind about whether "when put point blank with such a question, a lack of an answer is an answer" is an inference procedure you should be relying on?

And earlier you wrote:

Because when put point blank with such a question, a lack of an answer is an answer.

Like I said, I don't believe in rewarding bad behavior. You are a worse offender even than Rhea.

"I don't believe in answering the pertinent issues of the OP because you are the one asking me to do it!"

That's a strawman. As has been painfully obvious from my posts in this thread, I judge different issues to be "the pertinent issues of the OP" from the issues you think are pertinent. When you put those words in my mouth, you were painting me as agreeing with you that what the church ought to do is the pertinent issue of the OP, even though you had zero reason to think I agreed with you about that. You did this, to all appearances, as a way not to take responsibility for your own role in disinclining me to talk about what you thought I should be talking about. If you really wanted my opinion about what the RCC should do you could have gotten it at any time just by being civil about how you asked for it.

So now that you've changed your mind about whether I believe an ethical course of any kind is in the prescription -- now that you've seen the error you made -- has this induced you to change your mind about whether strawmanning your outgroup and then judging them according to whether that gets you what you want from them is an inference procedure you should be relying on?

 

[Bomb#20]

While I was writing:

So let's find out whether post #488 did any good. Let's find out whether I persuaded you about anything that matters. ...

Jarhyn was writing:

All I'm hearing from you is "violence of the past forgives violence in the present".

Which is <expletive deleted>; It doesn't.

Then, it should be noted these arsons are pointedly and even carefully nonviolent.

Well, I guess that answers that question.

 

[Rhea]

I grew up in Iroquois country. (Are we supposed to say Haudenosaunee now?)

I’d say we should have always been saying it…

The word Iroquois is really a derogatory term, derived from the French version of the Huron name for the Haudenosaunee, meaning "Black Snake".

Pretty much the first history lesson I remember from elementary school was being told how terrified of the Iroquois all the surrounding tribes were.

So one would look where their villages and historical town sites were located.
Also - our public school history in elemetary probably needs some fact checking.

But while the Haudenosaunee were known for fierce fighting, it does not mean that either my land was the site of a massacre or that it’s a good reason to end the conversationn about the catholic church and turn to something else.

There are definitely no mass graves of hundreds of children here.

How do you know for sure?

There are definitely mass graves of hundreds of Huron children somewhere on "Haudenosaunee land".

Not mine. The Huron were residents of Southern Ontario Canada, north of Lake Ontario. That is not where I live.
The reason why I feel confident in my general answer is based on the depth of the soil, the wooded nature of the landscape prior to European settlers, and the slope of the land. Add all of that to the rural nature of the area throughout history, it so unlikely as to be near impossible to contain a mass grave.

And since we are talking about the repsonsibility of people and groups who KNOW that many people died on their site, this satisfies me that I have met my moral responsibility for checking. There were no schools here that my family ran. There were no towns or villages in this spot. ANy congregation of people would have been in the river valleys, and that is where I would feel responsible to look.

So we can discard this distraction of asking if I am equally culpable as the current owners of the Indigenous school lands. It’s a clever attempt to halt the conversation about the responsibility of the Catholic church, but it is nothing more than a dodge.