[nige1]

Vampyr, on 2015-January-05, 14:08, said:

Nigel, I think you will get more poll responses if you make the poll private.

I poll publicly, whenever I remember. What people think is interesting. Equally interesting is who thinks what. You don't need to admit to your real name on BBO

[Vampyr]

Winstonm, on 2015-January-06, 14:13, said:

What difference does it make if an organization proclaims someone a saint or that someone else has infallible knowledge of occult supernatural will? Either idea is a duping of a trusting group of people. To paraphrase Clint Eastwood in Unforgiven, "Reproach's got nutthin' to do with it".

The sainthood thing doesn't actually hurt or help anyone, so I think that duping the thousands or millions of people who thought that their donations were helping the " poorest of the poor" or healing the sick.

Trinidad and others, people without families or homes may have had no choice but to die in squalid conditions at MT's facilities, but she had the choice and the funds to provide them with medical care, and did not.

At the very least she could have purchased painkillers, but that would have reduced people's suffering, and she did not believe in that.

cherdano, on 2015-January-06, 14:24, said:

So what? The force of his arguments against Mother Teresa is (IMO) much stronger than of those again religion in general.

I thought so too.

[Vampyr]

nige1, on 2015-January-06, 15:42, said:

I poll publicly, whenever I remember. What people think is interesting. Equally interesting is who thinks what. You don't need to admit to your real name on BBO

LOL for many of us, that ship has sailed!

[mike777]

Vampyr, on 2015-January-06, 15:57, said:

The sainthood thing doesn't actually hurt or help anyone, so I think that duping the thousands or millions of people who thought that their donations were helping the " poorest of the poor" or healing the sick.

Trinidad and others, people without families or homes may have had no choice but to die in squalid conditions at MT's facilities, but she had the choice and the funds to provide them with medical care, and did not.

At the very least she could have purchased painkillers, but that would have reduced people's suffering, and she did not believe in that.



I thought so too.

In India getting painkillers was a real problem. A very serious problem with the law and culture. I think this is one issue that may be unfair to her.

In 2014 it is a bit better but still a big issue.


I certainly agree that the big main point raised in this thread is shocking. We, I, certainly thought MT was a saint when it came to helping the poorest of the poor and the sick and lame and that our donations helped in some small way.

[Vampyr]

mike777, on 2015-January-06, 16:46, said:

In India getting painkillers was a real problem. A very serious problem with the law and culture. I think this is one issue that may be unfair to her.

MT wih her international connections (including, allegedly, with drug lords) and vast funds could have managed it.

[mikeh]

billw55, on 2015-January-06, 08:22, said:

Certainly the Catholic church has had many failings over the years. This much, cannot be argued.

This does not negate the good that is also done. Several months ago, I did some work at a Catholic church in my town. While I was there, they set out a spread of food for the homeless. I gather they do this twice a week, year round.

It is the nature of our media that bad things get much more publicity than good things. This is unfortunate. From my own experience, I suspect that for every molesting priest, there are hundreds, maybe thousands, of good Catholics out doing good things. The good things don't just make the news.

From what I read above, it does sound like Teresa of Calcutta was involved in some actions that I consider wrong. That is unfortunate, but will not cause me to change my judgement of those Catholics that I saw feed the homeless. (No, I do not think you said such a thing, or mikeh either. Just making my own statement.)

I don't think that there is any atheist or anti-religious person, if at all rational, who would deny that many religious believers do many very good and morally admirable acts.

I suspect that most of these people would continue to be morally good people and look for opportunities to do very good and morally admirable acts even if they lost their religious faith. My experience is that most people are innately good, even tho most people are also imperfect..I'd say 'all' but I only know a tiny fraction of the set of 'all'. However, altho I personally dislike the notion, I am prepared to accept that there are those who do 'good things' only due to the pressure to conform exerted on them by fellow members of a religious belief. Sort of like Fluffy saying that without his belief in god he'd be a murderer....I don't for a moment believe it but maybe there are people for whom that is true.

Whether a religious or secular 'organization' is 'good' or worthy of praise is not based on whether that organization does 'some good'.

The US and many western nations class Hamas as a terrorist organization. Even giving money to Hamas is a serious criminal offence in many countries....any US citizen doing so would probably face 25 years or so in prison, a term they would be lucky to survive. Yet Hamas wins elections by providing basics of human existence to many thousands of oppressed Palestinians. They provide medical care, housing, food, education to people deprived of access to such necessities by the acts of a country strongly supported by the West.

Is Hamas a 'good' organization? Or does their continued and deliberate provocation of Israel, and their advice to residents of the Gaza Strip not to seek shelter from Israeli retaliation (because Hamas calculates that dead Palestinian civilians make for good propaganda) make them a 'bad' organization?

Does the fact that many Catholics, and many Catholic clergy, do good things offset the systemic coverup and enabling of the sexual abuse of thousands of children? Does it excuse the treatment of aboriginal children in several countries, or the treatment of unwed mothers and their children, most notably in Ireland? Does it offset the prohibition on the use of contraception, adding to the death count from AIDS in the third world?

So MT's knowing infliction of physical suffering (if only in the passive sense of withholding aid that was in her power to give), in the name of the catholic god and the catholic organization, and the zeal with which that organization has co-opted her as an emblem of all that is good in their religion, cannot be offset by the fact that some comfortably-off 1st World church-goers occasionally (or even frequently) hand out a little food to the homeless in their communities.


Finally, and at the risk of godwinning the thread and thereby automatically losing it, a well-known mid-20th century mega-villain, loved dogs. I don't think that admirable trait made him a good person. The evil he did and the evil done in his name are what we remember. The evil done by the Catholic Church in the two millennia of its existence, and that it continues to do to this day, are what counts for me. What is it that many Xians love to say as a shield for their bigotry? Hate the sin, love the sinner?

I admire many religious people: I hate religious organizations.

[billw55]

Vampyr, on 2015-January-06, 13:23, said:

This is really good, but is not the indirect result of money going to the Vatican Bank. Leaving aside that the latter is a corrupt and opaque financial organisation, I am pretty sure that local Catholic Churches (via their diocese) give money to the Vatican, not vice versa.

Interesting. So, do you think that each and every Catholic church is financially independent of the Vatican - basically, that they operate at a profit? I wonder, but I doubt it. Then again, they are exempt from many/most/all taxes, which must be a big help.

The church I mentioned was building a large expansion to their facility. Construction is expensive. Did no money come from the Vatican? I always assumed this was the kind of thing the Vatican did with their money (well, mostly), but maybe I am wrong. What do they actually do with their money?

[barmar]

Winstonm, on 2015-January-06, 14:13, said:

What difference does it make if an organization proclaims someone a saint or that someone else has infallible knowledge of occult supernatural will? Either idea is a duping of a trusting group of people. To paraphrase Clint Eastwood in Unforgiven, "Reproach's got nutthin' to do with it".

I'm not a Catholic, so maybe I'm totally misinformed, but I just found these requirements for sainthood:

• Two verifiable postmortem miracles
  
• Evidence of having led an exemplary life of goodness and virtue worthy of imitation, having died a heroic death (martyrdom), or having undergone a major conversion of heart where a previous immoral life is abandoned and replaced by one of outstanding holiness

"an exemplary life" is where my "above reproach" ideal comes from. They don't have to be perfect -- they're just human, and have failings and lapses (and in the "conversion" case, they probably committed many sins before it) -- but they should be among the best of the best at the time they died.

All the disclosures about MT seem to argue against her having led "an exemplary life of goodness and virtue". Maybe she was well-intentioned, but was it exemplary?

[Winstonm]

barmar, on 2015-January-07, 12:07, said:

I'm not a Catholic, so maybe I'm totally misinformed, but I just found these requirements for sainthood:

• Two verifiable postmortem miracles
  
• Evidence of having led an exemplary life of goodness and virtue worthy of imitation, having died a heroic death (martyrdom), or having undergone a major conversion of heart where a previous immoral life is abandoned and replaced by one of outstanding holiness

"an exemplary life" is where my "above reproach" ideal comes from. They don't have to be perfect -- they're just human, and have failings and lapses (and in the "conversion" case, they probably committed many sins before it) -- but they should be among the best of the best at the time they died.

All the disclosures about MT seem to argue against her having led "an exemplary life of goodness and virtue". Maybe she was well-intentioned, but was it exemplary?

All I'm saying is you have to be incredibly naïve to believe in miracles, and thus the ones who promote the idea that miracles occur or a person can be infallible in matters of faith cannot be above reproach themselves.

[ArtK78]

Winstonm, on 2015-January-07, 13:16, said:

All I'm saying is you have to be incredibly naïve to believe in miracles, and thus the ones who promote the idea that miracles occur or a person can be infallible in matters of faith cannot be above reproach themselves.

There are 12 basic tenets of the faith of Christianity. Most of them involve miracles of one sort or another. So, you might as well be saying that you have to be incredibly naive to be a Christian (oh, I guess that is what you are saying).

[mikeh]

billw55, on 2015-January-07, 08:19, said:

Interesting. So, do you think that each and every Catholic church is financially independent of the Vatican - basically, that they operate at a profit? I wonder, but I doubt it. Then again, they are exempt from many/most/all taxes, which must be a big help.

The church I mentioned was building a large expansion to their facility. Construction is expensive. Did no money come from the Vatican? I always assumed this was the kind of thing the Vatican did with their money (well, mostly), but maybe I am wrong. What do they actually do with their money?

I am astounded that in this day and age anyone can ask this question without at least a cursory google search. Input the term 'Vatican finance scandal' and amongst the first hits are stories from 2013 about a priest arrested for trying to smuggle 20 million euros into Switzerland. The suggestion was that this was money from organized crime, and was from the Vatican Bank.

Indeed, if you start to type in the term 'Vatican finances', you don't get to finish before google offers you the term 'Vatican finance scandal' in multiple iterations!

My first memory of hearing about the Vatican bank was in connection with the never-solved case of a Vatican bank employee found hanging from a bridge in Rome.

There is even some suggestion that the last pope's resignation may have been occasioned by an internal coup relating to potentially damaging bank information, tho I stress that I've never seen nor heard of any substance to this. Then again, the main problem with the bank is its utter impenetrability and lack of disclosure, which may in itself generate such rumours.

Suffice it to say that there is clear evidence that whatever else the church does with 'its money', it also aids and abets some of the worst criminals in the world.

No surprise there, of course. The church has ever since its foundation made bargains with the current devils, be they power-hungry kings or emperors or corrupt politicians. The problem is that the church, as an organization, is more concerned with its expansion and acquisition/preservation of worldly power and wealth than it is with solving pressing problems. I know that is not how many members of the faith see it, but history makes it clear, including current history.

BTW, anyone who seriously thinks the Church has 'good' at its heart should take a tour of the Vatican. It is crammed with incredible works of art and other antiquities. Our guide told us, for example, that the Vatican owns a very high percentage of all works created out of a form of pink marble.....the biggest is a giant bathtub created for one of the Roman Emperors. The value of these works must be in the many hundreds of millions, probably billions (altho if all were marketed at one time I suspect it might lead to the collapse of the market, they have so much loot), and surely this could and should be put to proper use, if only by transmuting it into income earning investments, the income to be used for good works. Seeing an organization that extolls the virtues of poverty hoarding these assets is a sickening experience, and serves to highlight the hypocrisy of the organization.

[Vampyr]

billw55, on 2015-January-07, 08:19, said:

Interesting. So, do you think that each and every Catholic church is financially independent of the Vatican - basically, that they operate at a profit? I wonder, but I doubt it. Then again, they are exempt from many/most/all taxes, which must be a big help.

The church I mentioned was building a large expansion to their facility. Construction is expensive. Did no money come from the Vatican? I always assumed this was the kind of thing the Vatican did with their money (well, mostly), but maybe I am wrong. What do they actually do with their money?

The Catholic Church's finances are very secretive, but according to this article (from The Economist) it is the churches that give money to the Vatican. Probably not every local church is independent; the diocese would share out some money.

As to what the Vatican do with their money... well, I doubt that they touch the capital. They maintain a very large number of clergy, other staff, Swiss Guards, etc as well as over 100 foreign diplomatic missions.

[billw55]

Yes mikeh, I have heard of a couple of scandals. What I meant was, what do they do with most of their money? 20 million euros is surely a drop in their well.

And if the entire structure really is for nothing more than enriching the cardinals? Well, perhaps Francis is working on that. His publicity at least, gives the impression of greater sincerity regarding wealth and poverty than some of his predecessors. Will it ultimately change anything? Probably not. But we can hope.

[mikeh]

billw55, on 2015-January-07, 15:06, said:

Yes mikeh, I have heard of a couple of scandals. What I meant was, what do they do with most of their money? 20 million euros is surely a drop in their well.

And if the entire structure really is for nothing more than enriching the cardinals? Well, perhaps Francis is working on that. His publicity at least, gives the impression of greater sincerity regarding wealth and poverty than some of his predecessors. Will it ultimately change anything? Probably not. But we can hope.

Maintaining the Vatican is undoubtedly expensive, including, as it does, not only many (old) buildings, but roads, utilities, public spaces, a paramilitary Swiss Guard, and many bureaucrats. I expect, but do not know, that funding is doled out to various off-site organizations, and maybe dioceses. Although, on that point, my understanding is that those US dioceses that made settlements in child abuse cases had to come up with their own money, and the palaces built by some bishops and archbishops have been funded by their parishoners....google the bishop of bling for maybe the most notorious case.

I suspect there is an element of being a miser in the habits, and I wouldn't blame any organization for being paranoid about losing its money. Even if the church were what most of its followers seem to think it is, a force for good, it wouldn't be in keeping with that mission to spend all of its money and not lay aside funds for the future.

Btw, I agree that 20MM euros is probably a drop in the bucket, but do you for a moment think that this was an isolated transaction? That the police happened to catch the guy the first and only time he tried it? Once a week would be 1 billion a year, as one example, and this was just a single individual, as far as being a bank employee/official was concerned.

If they are laundering mob money, what are they doing with their own? We have no idea.

By the way, many years ago I learned of a situation in which a priest had died. Now, priests aren't sworn to poverty, but they don't get huge salaries either. So it was surprising to learn of the Italian villa he owned, in addition to the properties he owned in Canada, and the substantial net worth of the estate. I don't doubt that most priests and lesser clergy are far from wealthy, but I'd really be interested in learning the net worth of the typical bishop or higher, especially in NA or Western Europe, or South America. And where they have their money stashed.

As for the new pope, the adulation heaped on him by western media seems a bit over the top. Yes, he preaches more poverty for individual leaders within the church, tho it remains to be seen how much that catches on. But on matters of doctrine, he is as conservative as they come. He believes, for example, in exorcism...which means he believes, literally, that there are demons amongst us that can possess the mind and body of humans, and can be cast out by proper ritual. I mean...really? Yes...unfortunately, really.

And has he done anything to address the role of gays in the church, or the rights of women to be wholly (not holy) equal to men? He's made some vague comments about more tolerance, but tolerance is not acceptance...it is a softer discrimination than an outright condemnation, but it isn't acceptance. Btw, I am not good at embedding links, but on the exorcism issue, google Pope Francis and exorcism and it will take you right to the evidence: I am not making this stuff up

[Vampyr]

See above where I found a reference that churches pay the Vatican and that the latter maintain over 100 foreign diplomatic missions, which obviously cost millions each every year.

[billw55]

About the exorcism thing. It is interesting you call this out. Yes, I think it is weird too. But, is it inherently any stranger than believing that a virgin conceived a child, that a man walked on water, or turned water into wine, or died and came back to life, or that all people live on after death? It certainly sounds stranger to us, because we are embedded in a judeo christian society, where the latter beliefs are well entrenched. But strictly objectively - is really any weirder?

[onoway]

The thing I find confusing is that supposedly people went to see what she was doing and it was pretty much only after she died that all this stuff came out. There were often photo ops of MT with various people and some of them were supposedly after taking a tour of some of her hospices....why didn't anyone say anything at the time? Supposedly security people check out these places before any of the hotshot bigwigs wander through on their publicity tours..again, how come nobody ever said anything about handicapped kids tied to beds and people screaming in pain with no relief? All the people who went to her, why did they go to her or take their family members there?

It's not that I am an advocate for her, like most people I accepted what information was put out there, but it always makes me wonder where all these people were when she was still alive. Perhaps then something positive could have been done about the situation rather than only after the fact when really all that can be done is diminish the faith that somewhere somebody is a good person doing good things.

[mikeh]

billw55, on 2015-January-08, 07:46, said:

About the exorcism thing. It is interesting you call this out. Yes, I think it is weird too. But, is it inherently any stranger than believing that a virgin conceived a child, that a man walked on water, or turned water into wine, or died and came back to life, or that all people live on after death? It certainly sounds stranger to us, because we are embedded in a judeo christian society, where the latter beliefs are well entrenched. But strictly objectively - is really any weirder?

I think it is 'weirder' because we have an ability to compartmentalize and, indeed, to hold in our minds mutually contradictory beliefs, and my own take on that is that it is easier to do this when the beliefs can be separated in some fashion.

A belief that 2000 years ago an invisible but omnipotent entity inseminated a young woman with a divine embryo that became the son of god and died for our sins (say what? How did his dying do anything for anybody???), and that this happened precisely once in all of human existence (well, the greeks thought that their gods could literally f**k humans and that such unions could be fertile, so maybe this wasn't unique after all), hardly intrudes upon our daily lives.

it is entirely possible to hold that sort of belief and still, for example, accept that mental illness is usually, if not always, caused by or gives rise to chemical imbalances within the brain and that treating these imbalances, perhaps combined with psychotherapy, can lead to improvement or control of the mental illness (accepting that psychotropic medication and our understanding of brain chemistry issues is incomplete but improving).

However, exorcism isn't about a possibly unique event in the distant past, whether that event be resurrection or insemination or turning water into wine, etc. Exorcism is the at least partial rejection of modern medicine and a recourse to entirely discredited notions of demonic possession and the ability of praying (preying?) priests, by ritualistic means, to cast out these demons.

It is not only a rejection of science and the scientific method, it is also the promotion of irrationality, and the taking advantage of the ignorance and gullibility of the victims and relatives of the victims.

For a 'world leader' in this day and age to profess a belief in this sort of magic mumbo-jumbo is incredibly dangerous. Humanity has a lot of problems, that will only become worse as population densities increase, and climate change takes greater and greater hold.

I don't think it to be an exaggeration to argue that the best and maybe the only hope of preserving a world remotely as hospitable to humans and most other non-microbial life as is the current world is science. I know: this will cue the idiots who point out that science is or can be 'bad'. They are idiots because science is about understanding. Technology is about how science is applied, and it is technology, not science, that can have deleterious effects.

Science, properly applied, can lead to behavioural changes (more solar energy, less fossil fuels) and to technological changes (means of carbon recapture, cheaper and more efficient solar power, etc).

But implementation of science in the form of useful technology will require political will, and thus popular support. Promotion of non-scientific views of reality constitute a barrier to progress and are, coming from a supposedly educated, intelligent individual, a form of crime against humanity, imo.

[mike777]

Some of these objections to MT seem to be the fact that she is a Catholic, a Catholic Nun whose entire life was based on God, Jesus and the supernatural first and the immortal soul, not nature.

The big main points are valid points to discuss and to be critical.

[Winstonm]

I find it intriguing that the promoters of supply-side, aka "voodoo economics" also accept "voodoo" as a valid explanation for other events.