Lisbon's Cardinal says remarried catholic couples shouldn't have sex.

[afleitch]

The context of this passage is an instruction on forgiveness. Notice it doesn't explicitly forbid defending yourself in court, it merely instructs you to settle before you get there.

Something the Church has taken to heart

Not the most graceful way to concede a point.

I'm not conceding it, because it demonstrates that the Church is  sekective; as selective as every other denomination. It chooses to take a position on divorce. Other denominations yake different positions.

It's to be expected that a Church composed of unmarried men doesn't take a nuanced position on marriage and divorce. There's isn't exactly a wealth of experience in the matter. Though the same is also true of rausubg children or women's reproductive health.

What a remarkably silly argument.

Afleitch, if you ever consider doing heroin I hope you take my advice to avoid it, despite my lacking "a wealth of experience in the matter".

Sit me down in front of a minister or reverend or pastor who has a wife (or a husband) has had kids, has had marital difficulties, family difficulties etc I'll listen. But the Church simply reinforces it's own ignorance on the matter.

You aren't addressing my point. By your logic my advice to avoid heroin is invalid because I have no experience with narcotics.

Because 'heroin has x effects' is universal. It's like saying 'don't gargle arsenic' and me saying 'oh you've never gargled arsenic so how do you know?' It's chemistry. Don't be deliberately obtuse.

I'm talking about and quite clearly talking about socialisation and what flows from that, on which, when it comes to marriage and sex the Church does not participate in and has actively withdrawn from. On what basis can someone who is not married give authoritative advice on marriage? Now you can if you want; I could write articles on fishing, but I've never been fishing. You can take my advice or ignore it. But I would never call my advice 'the truth', and if I did I should be easily and readily ignored. The Church doesn't say; 'what we say about marriage, sex, children, reproductive health is some advice, take it or leave it'; it says it is the truth; 'extra ecclesiam nulla salus', and if not for the world, then certainly for it's adherents.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

I not only agree with afleitch's point, this has actually been one of the many things that annoyed me about Catholicism and made me think that I could never under any circumstances be Catholic. A priest is basically the last person I'd ever see marriage or relationship advice from, and yet it's apparently mandatory to take such classes to be married in the Catholic Church.

Although I'm pretty confident clerical celibacy will be going away in the next 20 years or so anyway (although almost certainly more in the "open up a ton of more loopholes that permit not having it the point where it becomes de facto no longer mandatory" than the "formally abolished" sense.)

[Small L]

The context of this passage is an instruction on forgiveness. Notice it doesn't explicitly forbid defending yourself in court, it merely instructs you to settle before you get there.

Something the Church has taken to heart

Not the most graceful way to concede a point.

I'm not conceding it, because it demonstrates that the Church is  sekective; as selective as every other denomination. It chooses to take a position on divorce. Other denominations yake different positions.

It's to be expected that a Church composed of unmarried men doesn't take a nuanced position on marriage and divorce. There's isn't exactly a wealth of experience in the matter. Though the same is also true of rausubg children or women's reproductive health.

What a remarkably silly argument.

Afleitch, if you ever consider doing heroin I hope you take my advice to avoid it, despite my lacking "a wealth of experience in the matter".

Sit me down in front of a minister or reverend or pastor who has a wife (or a husband) has had kids, has had marital difficulties, family difficulties etc I'll listen. But the Church simply reinforces it's own ignorance on the matter.

You aren't addressing my point. By your logic my advice to avoid heroin is invalid because I have no experience with narcotics.

Because 'heroin has x effects' is universal. It's like saying 'don't gargle arsenic' and me saying 'oh you've never gargled arsenic so how do you know?' It's chemistry. Don't be deliberately obtuse.

I'm talking about and quite clearly talking about socialisation and what flows from that, on which, when it comes to marriage and sex the Church does not participate in and has actively withdrawn from. On what basis can someone who is not married give authoritative advice on marriage? Now you can if you want; I could write articles on fishing, but I've never been fishing. You can take my advice or ignore it. But I would never call my advice 'the truth', and if I did I should be easily and readily ignored. The Church doesn't say; 'what we say about marriage, sex, children, reproductive health is some advice, take it or leave it'; it says it is the truth; 'extra ecclesiam nulla salus', and if not for the world, then certainly for it's adherents.

The Church can give authoritative advice on marriage because marriage pertains to faith and morals. Catholic teaching is not meant to be some kind of pragmatic advice from experts on how to have a healthy marriage or whatever. It's more akin to you writing an article about why overfishing is morally wrong, or why people shouldn't hunt whales. Anyone who rejects your right to make such claims based on a "he's never even been on a boat" type argument should be ignored.

The "you're picking and choosing" argument doesn't really hit the mark, since we think Sacred Tradition is on par with the bible. If you want to call Sacred Tradition "picking and choosing" for rhetorical effect, go ahead. But it won't be particularly convincing. Which books are even in the bible in the first place is the result of such a process.

I think the obsession with unmarried clerics is a red herring. There are already married priests, and they dissent from Catholic teaching at about the same rate as unmarried ones do. If celibacy requirements in the Latin Church were rescinded, I doubt there would be a revolutionary change in doctrine on divorce.

This will probably be the only substantial post I make in this thread, because I'm not sure if you're being an honest interlocutor here. TJ corrected your misinterpretation of a scripture passage and you responded with a snarky joke about sexual abuse cases and then refused to admit you had mischaracterized the verse even a little bit. Later you accused DC of being "deliberately obtuse." Ever heard of the principle of charity?

[afleitch]

The context of this passage is an instruction on forgiveness. Notice it doesn't explicitly forbid defending yourself in court, it merely instructs you to settle before you get there.

Something the Church has taken to heart

Not the most graceful way to concede a point.

I'm not conceding it, because it demonstrates that the Church is  sekective; as selective as every other denomination. It chooses to take a position on divorce. Other denominations yake different positions.

It's to be expected that a Church composed of unmarried men doesn't take a nuanced position on marriage and divorce. There's isn't exactly a wealth of experience in the matter. Though the same is also true of rausubg children or women's reproductive health.

What a remarkably silly argument.

Afleitch, if you ever consider doing heroin I hope you take my advice to avoid it, despite my lacking "a wealth of experience in the matter".

Sit me down in front of a minister or reverend or pastor who has a wife (or a husband) has had kids, has had marital difficulties, family difficulties etc I'll listen. But the Church simply reinforces it's own ignorance on the matter.

You aren't addressing my point. By your logic my advice to avoid heroin is invalid because I have no experience with narcotics.

Because 'heroin has x effects' is universal. It's like saying 'don't gargle arsenic' and me saying 'oh you've never gargled arsenic so how do you know?' It's chemistry. Don't be deliberately obtuse.

I'm talking about and quite clearly talking about socialisation and what flows from that, on which, when it comes to marriage and sex the Church does not participate in and has actively withdrawn from. On what basis can someone who is not married give authoritative advice on marriage? Now you can if you want; I could write articles on fishing, but I've never been fishing. You can take my advice or ignore it. But I would never call my advice 'the truth', and if I did I should be easily and readily ignored. The Church doesn't say; 'what we say about marriage, sex, children, reproductive health is some advice, take it or leave it'; it says it is the truth; 'extra ecclesiam nulla salus', and if not for the world, then certainly for it's adherents.

The Church can give authoritative advice on marriage because marriage pertains to faith and morals. Catholic teaching is not meant to be some kind of pragmatic advice from experts on how to have a healthy marriage or whatever. It's more akin to you writing an article about why overfishing is morally wrong, or why people shouldn't hunt whales. Anyone who rejects your right to make such claims based on a "he's never even been on a boat" type argument should be ignored.

The "you're picking and choosing" argument doesn't really hit the mark, since we think Sacred Tradition is on par with the bible. If you want to call Sacred Tradition "picking and choosing" for rhetorical effect, go ahead. But it won't be particularly convincing. Which books are even in the bible in the first place is the result of such a process.

I think the obsession with unmarried clerics is a red herring. There are already married priests, and they dissent from Catholic teaching at about the same rate as unmarried ones do. If celibacy requirements in the Latin Church were rescinded, I doubt there would be a revolutionary change in doctrine on divorce.

This will probably be the only substantial post I make in this thread, because I'm not sure if you're being an honest interlocutor here. TJ corrected your misinterpretation of a scripture passage and you responded with a snarky joke about sexual abuse cases and then refused to admit you had mischaracterized the verse even a little bit. Later you accused DC of being "deliberately obtuse." Ever heard of the principle of charity?

No. Marriage relates to interpersonal relationships and trust. Anyone (well almost anyone) can get married in accordance to pre-prescribed articles of 'faith' or a moral or ethical construct in which it is framed, but staying in it and living it is another matter. On a matter personal to me, the Catholic Church says 'no' to my marriage based not on the quality of the marriage or any of the issues of trust, support, faithfulness to each other or worth, even if it's worthy in my eyes and the eyes of those to whom we set an example in our communities and families, but on the basis of our sex. Nothing that we say or do can validate it.

Secondly, you raise an interesting point on Sacred Tradition and you chastise me for saying the Church 'picks and chooses', saying that even which books in the Bible are part of that Sacred Tradition.

Was that not also an example of just that? Is the process of compiling, determining and validating not part of the Sacred Tradition? In order to establish the orthodoxy. Even the malicious ones? The declarations of heresy, the destruction of peoples and texts. The Bishop of Lyon, St Augustine's promotion of violence to enforce orthodoxy, the Montanists, the Marcionites, the Manichaens?

On the matter of my 'quip' on child abuse scandals, it's not wrong. That's why it cut perhaps. It's something I take very seriously. I worked for 10 years in UK government department dealing with child abuse and sexual abuse cases. The sheer raw numbers of private (not public) case files involving the Church could not, with any good conscience had allowed me to remain a practicing Catholic had I not lost faith through other ways.