Roman Catholicism

One wonders what happens to the babies consigned to limbo by an infallible pope's ruling before another infallible pope abolished it. Serious contortions indeed.

Limbo has been abolished now - apparently babies who die without being baptised are allowed a passage straight into heaven.

Limbo is another interesting one. Stillborn babies are supposed to go there I think. A kind of non-punitive version of purgatory. Strange the contortions theologians can get themselves into.
My DH was an undiagnosed twin, small hospital, southern ireland, run by nuns. The other baby was stillborn, as undiagnosed twins often were, whipped away and buried in an adult's coffin, location unknown.
"Just be glad you have one healthy boy mrs S" was all that was said.
MIL still remembers I am sure. She has a name for him. I watched Whale Rider with her once, in which the opening scene is the stillbirth of a son, and she was a bit weepy.

It is a disgusting idea and kept me awake and, then when I did get to sleep, gave me nightmares as a child. In my case, it was a gentle, beautiful older cousin's death that triggered my thoughts.

Thank you absent. Yes, it might have been my sense of the terrible injustice which the nun said was being done to my beloved aunt (burning in agony in purgatory, after a lifetime of nursing service) that first made a crack in my belief.

I think the idea was to circumvent my inconvenient questions. The super-good people got the biggest cups and so the most joy, but the okay people also got cups and joy in their own measure and because those cups were also full they were joyous. I thought it was quite a sweet way for a nun to try to explain her picture of heaven to a demanding and controversial child. Of course, I don't believe, but then while still demanding and controversial, I am no longer a child. Children have a powerful sense of fair play.

No, I have no idea what that means, absent!

Thanks MiceElf. That was helpful and interesting. It must seem a bit like you have inadvertently been put at the end of a tennis court with a ping pong bat to answer questions about and, possibly, defend Catholicism against Nadal, Murray, Jokavich and Federer all serving balls at once.

I remember a nun talking to me about heaven. Her view was that everyone's cup was full of the transcendental joy of being with God but not everyone had the same size cup. In it's way, that makes sense to me.

I am with you, Bags, but then I have never become accidentally pregnant, or pregnant by rape or incest, of had a foetus with severe defects.... the fact that I have ten grandchildren shows that my daughters feel the same way. However, I wouldn't presume to tell any other woman what she can do with her own body.

Which support has nothing to do with how I might feel about having an abortion myself.

Re your previous post, lily, Hunt is supposed to 'represent' his constituents' views rather more than the rest of us. Mind you, a vote on abortion law, should there be one, is likely to be a free vote, as you say. I'm not sure I agree about pro-abortionists always putting forward personal views. I'm not even sure what my personal view on abortion is, but I support a law allowing women to have abortions in certain circumstances.

I have not been able to get anybody to explain what they feel about the issues I have mentioned, except to say vaguely that everybody is free to trust their own conscience. That is not the impression you get if you read the Catholic paper and magazines every week, as I do. Why do so many churches oppose gay relationships? Divorce? Contraception? Abortion? I mean from a purely religious point of view, not medical.
Who is god? Where is god? Will everybody have a chance of 'salvation'?
Why does an omnipotent god allow such evil things to happen? Of course, nobody needs to reply, but I wonder why I cannot get any believer to engage in this kind of discourse with me.
My own beliefs are soon summed up - I think life on earth was a randon happening, just because this planet is exactly the right distance from the sun. My morality is based on the fact that I am a member of a tribe, and if I want to be accepted by the tribe I have to conform to certain rules. Just evolution - any pack animal failing to stick to the rules would be ejected, and ejection would mean death. I am more than happy to answer any questions about my beliefs.

I think posters on Gransnet have been quite clear about what they believe, whether religious, lapsed, agnostic or atheist!

Nelliemoser - I am interested in all religions or other philosophies, but it seems to me that the undemocratic nature of the Catholic church, and the influence it has throughout the world, makes it the one that worries me most. The Anglican church is a bit wishy-washy on most moral issues so it is not as challenging as Catholicism, which claims to know all the answers. I have very unpleasant memories of the treatment meted out by some nuns when I was at school (not to me, I was a teacher's pet) and the snobbery and unfair advantages given to girls whose parents were well in at the church.
I am particularly incensed by the world-wide misery caused by the church's stance on contraception, abortion, divorce and homosexuality. Some other religions are equally culpable but are not, in general, as powerful in Europe.
The only quarrel I have with individual members of any church, is that I find it hard to get them to engage in debate about what they actually believe - they seem to become very defensive and reluctant to enunciate their beliefs.
If I were a believer, I think I would be very happy to tell everyone exactly what I believed.

If it comes to another vote on abortion, it will be made on the basis of conscience so Hunt's personal views will come into it. The pro-'choice' lobbyists never make a secret of their personal views.

Second article being the theory that I thought was current. I think the current theory is that all mankind came out of Africa but in successive waves each of which settled then interbred with later waves.
I know our DNA is partly Neanthanderal, but I think that surmises that the neathanderals and other proto humans and all the original hominids evolved in Africa.
The earliest hominids have certainly only been found in Africa, but this I suppose could be due to conditions neccessary for preservation.
I vividly remember the Leakeys and the discovery of Lucy. We thought we had the missing link. But of course since then they seem to find a new and earlier hominid every week.
Fascinating!

Is there any significance here that most of the "religion and spirituality" posts that get aired seem to end up centering on issues about Roman Catholicism.

Few other "Christian" denominations seem to feature at all. Is this down to the feelings of those with "Catholic guilt (or the very anti Catholic presbyterians of Scotland and Northern Ireland) or what?

To stake my position in this, I describe myself as a lapsed Methodist from a fairly liberal Methodist background. I never really had any "position" about the RCs or the high Anglican church, except I never have understood why ordinary mortals need anyone to intercede with God on their behalf. Methodists just go directly to the top man (or woman!)

I really enjoyed that, Bags - I remember The Ascent of Man - I think that first sparked my interest.

Whoops. The subject being the out of Africa meme, or out of Africa again and again and again, according to Templeton.

Interesting articles in Science Daily here and here. There are also links to other articles on the subject. These are not the source I was thinking of – what I last read about the subject. I can't remember what that was at the moment. "That Man's" book The Ancestor's Tale is also good on this, especially Eve's Story.

For anyone who wants to pursue it. Just saying.

For the uninitiated, who haven't come across That Man before, we refer to Richard Dawkins.

I woudn't care if the PM was a Trekkie, as long as he/she did not allow personal beliefs to influence judgement. Not sure how far Jeremy Hunt is able to keep them separate.

Hans Küng, whom Kate Connolly in the Guardian describes as "One of the world's most prominent Catholic theologians" is appealing to priests & churchgoers to confront the Catholic hierarchy, which he says is corrupt, lacking credibility and apathetic to the real concerns of the church's members. 

Also, a Jesuit friend of mine many years ago, told me that once you were persuaded that Rome had the answers, you had no excuse for hanging back. That he put off being received simply confirmed me in my opinion that Blair was a trimmer. In everything.

I don't think there would be any animosity towards a Catholic PM. Heaven knows, there are enough good reasons to feel angry about any of them without bringing religion into it.

MiceElf until you mentioned the British psyche, it had genuinely never occurred to me that a catholic prime minister might not be welcome. I don't think it exists in any significant way. We have MPs who are Catholic, Anglican, Muslim, Jewish, agnostic, atheist and believers in several other religions, and as long as they manage to sufficiently separate their personal views from government policy and consensus decisions, it makes no difference to me. If they are open about their personal beliefs, use their integrity and are democratic, then fine. It would be difficult to find any person who does not have a set of beliefs that need some level of mediation in order to govern the country.