How difficult is it to be a Catholic now?

Yes - I do have friends in the catholic church! - they mostly resent their strict upbringing in fact; and they reject many of the teachings of the church in which they were brought up.

I am not "condemning entire institutions" but pointing out the dangers inherent therein as evidenced by the seriously bad history that exists.

As I have pointed out before, having those concerns about religious institutions does not mean that others that are non-religious have not also failed. My view is that those failures are more potent when they are made i the name of god, hence my fear.

I do think though that an institution controlled by celibate men should have no say with respect to what the rules are regarding sex or married life.

Would young couples have chosen the wrong reasons to marry because it was regarded as a sin by their church to have sex out of wedlock? Be banned by their church to use any contraceptive measures, have too many children they could not afford, stay in what might have been a miserable marriage because divorce was yet another sin

Also, why only the girl who had a child out of wedlock be the one to take on the mantle of shame, discarded by her family and church, locked up in an institution then have her baby taken away. The boy? Well, he went on with life as normal.

Yes quite Agus. I resent the accusation of prejudice. I am not anti-catholic - my DH had a catholic upbringing and my dear MIL is a catholic. Anti catholic prejudice is when you make prejudiced judgements about individuals on the basis of their religion.
I am however a feminist and having thought about it a great deal i am of the opinion that the catholic church has a scandalous and misogynistic past, as Agus points out, and an inglorious present. I cite their continued stance that even the poorest and most desperate people should not use contraceptions or have an abortion.
Not to mention the knock on effect of this on discouraging the use of condoms to restrict the spread of HIV and their disgraceful behaviour in regard to priests abusing children and women.
I understand that there are local parish committees but I think I am right in saying there is no way that members can influence the organisation beyond their parish.
I said to my MIL "Why doesn't anyone complain about your priest?" (long story)
She said "If you do complain to the Bishop, he just sends the letter straight back to your priest"
I have no idea why any intelligent and educated person continues to put money in their collecting plates. Completely mystified.

Of course I cannot comment on your mother in law's circumstance but it is a basic principle of law that if an accusation or complaint is made about a person, they have the right to know what that is. It applies in the criminal justice system, in schools if a teacher is complained about and in social work if a social worker is complained about. That doesn't mean that the complaint will not be investigated or that nothing will be done about it if it is proved.

As for your final sentence, clearly I, and thousands of others, are, in your view, ill educated and profoundly unintelligent. I can live with that.

CoE not RCC but I think I have some relevant experience. I'm pretty fed up with the way some posts concentrate on the evils of Christianity, especially the RCC. Yes, it is shocking when people who profess to follow Christ, in one denomination or another, fall so short in reality. It may even be more shocking than it would be if it were an atheist who was behaving badly since atheists, as we know, have no morals (sarcasm). But by blaming the Church(es) you kind of relieve everybody else of any responsibility. I've spent too much of my life explaining to adolescents that, yes, someone else started it, yes, everyone else was doing it, yes, other people were much worse than them but that none of this relieves them of responsibility for their own actions. What other people do or have done is irrelevant. Concentrating on how awful the church is distracts us from the main issues. It is too late to do anything for those poor dead babies in Tuam, however they died. It's possible to do something about what is happening to children now.

We cannot ignore the fact that religion (especially catholicism) has had a huge influence on undeduated populations, condemning them to poverty and endless reproduction.

This does not mean that MiceElf is "ill educated and profoundly unintelligent" - the one fact does not lead to the other.

People's response to religious teaching will vary in sophistication, depending on their life experiences, intelligence, education and lack of power (or otherwise).

There must not be an assumption that because someone finds fault with the evils perpetrated in the name of religion that....
1. They think all religious people are equally to blame.
2. They do not know that non-religious organisations also perpetrate evils.
3. They assume that those who have a faith are unintelligent.

None of those statements are true of where I stand, and I do not understand why those assumptions are made.

Religion is a subject for intelligent debate as I see it. I do realise that for some there is no debate - but I do not think that is healthy.

Lily you missed out! 'lessons have been learned'!

Your comment about atheists having no morals was insulting, albeit under the cloak of sarcasm!

As I mention in an earlier post I was born into an Irish Catholic Family, albeit that they had lived in the UK for a few generations. I was steered into an early marriage 18, because we had been "courting" for a couple of years.
It turned out that my husband was a secret drinker, I was so naive at the time. I was told by my family that it was gods choice that I had to suffer.
After 20 years of violence I divorced him, that to them was a sin of the same magnitude as murder. The point I am trying (not so well) to make is My family were telling me this , not the church, it was their twisted interpretation of the Catholic faith

I think catholics worldwide generally ignore the churches teaching on contraception.

JessM I excuse nothing but without a doubt the peace treaty forced on the Germans after WW1 was a major contributor to the rise of Hitler and this is widely acknowledged. To understand the context of a crime is not to condone it.

I have made it absolutely clear in all my mailings on this subject that I am not excusing anything, nor am I justifying anything yet contributors keep suggesting I am.

I do believe we need in any case like this to understand the context within which events occur - and this will apply as much to the Holocaust as anything else.

At the risk of offending Catholic contributors on here, and certainly I do not wish to do so, but the more I read about religion, be it Catholic, Fundamentalist Christians, Islam or any of the numerous faiths, I have concluded that there is no place in my life for them. I cant work out whether the misogynist behaviour comes from within the institutions or whether they attract people who would behave that way wherever they were. The one item that turned me away from the Catholic Church was when i found out, quite young, that a child who died before it was baptised would be condemned to purgatory, even as a child I questioned this. And as for 'Saint' Theresa of Calcutta, she was helping the poor in India to struggle and raise children in families that they were not able to limit being unable to access contraception, I realise that I have not put this very eloquently, and I apologise, this is a controversial subject, but I get angry with apologists for a religion that has perpetuated so many inequalities and cruelties.

But by blaming the Church(es) you kind of relieve everybody else of any responsibility. I've spent too much of my life explaining to adolescents that, yes, someone else started it, yes, everyone else was doing it, yes, other people were much worse than them but that none of this relieves them of responsibility for their own actions. What other people do or have done is irrelevant. Concentrating on how awful the church is distracts us from the main issues.

Lily - the individuals commtitted the crimes, but the Church either condoned- or just as bad ignored- and as such it carries a huge responsibility in those crimes. Abuser priests were moved around as often as was necessary to hide their crimes- and the Church was very aware of how single mothers were treated, and how their children were forced to take on the sins of their mother (fathers, as said before, just got away with it. Of course the Catholic Church has re-written the scriptures again and again to demonize women and make them carry the sins of the world- and other scriptures were destroyed to hide the importance of women around Jesus). The Church approved the punishment of those children- and as said, they lived in the terror of purgatory and burning hell- for no other reasons that they had been born out of wedlock.

GillT57, I was brought up a Catholic and Mother Theresa of Calcutta was a very lauded and celebrated individual when I was at school her picture hung in our school hall, along with Pope John XXIII, the late John F Kennedy, ha! they didn't know about all his indiscretions then. It was a foregone conclusion among the barmy nuns that taught us that this holy trinity, in their opinion, could all possibly end up being canonized one day.

I don't think anything too awful has been dug up about that particular Pope, but I think some of Mother Theresa's so called "good works" were as questionable as JFK's morals. I also gather that she was in the habit of baptising dying Indians into the Catholic church, quite ignoring the fact that they would have possibly been Hindu.

In the original Hebrew- the Adam and Eve story had nothing to do with a man and a woman- at all. This was all distorted via translation to put the original sin on a woman,, and women in general. Same with Mary magdalen later.

This kind of thing crops up in all the main religions, though I think the Catholics have had more than their share. Probably because of the ridiculous demand for clergy to be "célibataire". Where did this come from?
I know of cases of other Christian and Jewish clerics who have gone off the rails and their adherents say if they do wrong, why should we behave correctly? To say nothing of the Muslims.
But for those of us who do try to follow the set of beliefs and behavioural expectations of a recognised religion, if we are sincere in our beliefs we will continue to follow our own consciences. It's an individual thing, leaders are often fallible.

Churches are only blamed when they are to blame. Other institutions are blamed for their actions when they are to blame. Makes sense to me.

MiceElf you are twisting what I said, which is that I can't understand why someone with an education and intelligence continue to support the RCC I think there is an implicit assumption in this that I do recognise that intelligent and educated people are actively involved in catholicism. But I can't understand it.
Re complaints, it was not a case of law, but of concern amongst the parishioners that the priest was mismanaging church finances and driving his congregation away, thus running a struggling church into the ground. If someone raised a grievance or acted as a whistleblower in work, your would inform the "accused" of the accusations but you would certainly not send them a copy of a letter without the permission of the complainant. The point was that others had complained to the bishop and he was well known to wash his hands of such issues and just forward the letter the priest. MIL is certainly not someone to go around criticising bishops unless she was well informed! Hardly ever says a bad word about anyone. But not impressed with the bishop.

granjura would be interested in your evidence for your statement about Adam & Eve. There are different versions of the Creation story, is that what you mean? And I'm not sure what you mean by 'distorted in translation'.

Oh lilygran I think you do know what distorted in translation means - I cannot believe that you do not. All ancient holy books have the same problem. Camels and eyes of needles spring to mind.

It means that in Hebrew there were 2 words for man and mankind- and that both were used in the initial story- and woman was never mentioned. Translators all the way down the line have deliberately changed the Bible, and perhaps sometimes by mistake too (I was a translator, so know that we can make mistakes too). In this case it seems it was very deliberate. Translating from language to language does slowly turn into Chinese whispers anyhoe- but it is clear that the Catholic Church did do so very deliberately- as well as get rid of what did match up to their needs and expectation.

I went to a lecture a few years ago, given by a Jesuit expert in Hebrew, here in Switzerland. Sadly I never got his notes, or made notes myself- which I truly regret. I will speak to the Catholic friend who invited me and see if she can get anything for me.

Being brought up as a Catholic [though I always questioned it] as lots of things seemed barmy to me, but amazingly, I was an adult before I realised that Jesus had brothers and sisters.A normal family! They kept that quiet, it was taught to us that he was an only child. I think that JessM and Granjura and TriciaF and TerriBull's posts are spot on.
We are not Catholic bashing by the way, and I still know and like very much, various Catholic friends just as I like Jewish friends and Hindu friends, while not particularly admiring their religions.What we need to see is where there is wrong doing, particularly against children , the church coming out strongly against those priests and getting rid of them [after they have been prosecuted by the police of course] and not sending them for a spell in the naughty cell in the Vatican before sending them to a new parish.In short, no more cover ups.The Catholic Church has been very arrogant in this respect.

Granjura - I can read Hebrew and we have Hebrew texts with commentaries, including Genesis. But the main thing about the creation story is that it's very poetic, allegorical almost, so interpretations vary a lot. And as Lilygran said there are 2 versions.
I've had another look and there are in fact 3 words for man, and 3 for woman, if you include one phrase "ezer negdo" which means sort of helpmeet with complementary abilities.
The interesting bit, to me, is when Adam is accused by God of eating from the forbidden tree, Adam blames Eve, and Eve blames the serpent - typical!
Genesis 3/ verses 11 to 13.

I do not intend to comment further on this thread but this article by a libertarian atheist sheds light rather than hysteria.

www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/the-tuam-tank-another-myth-about-evil-ireland/15140#.U5aqUGt5mSP

No hysteria on this thread that I have seen. People relating their experiences and expressing their concerns.

I regard myself as an agnostic and try to look at all sides. But I cannot pretend that things are right when they are wrong.

Surely the true scandal is the deaths of so many children in the 'care' of the church, not the disposal of their remains.