September 16, 201014 yr Britain is a secular society, there should be no state funded religion and taxpayers money being spent to have the pope over to spread his bigotry goes against the very concept of a secular society. In terms of the Vatican I wasn't aware it is classed as a country, I stand corrected though Well there are a lot of Catholic taxpayers in this country ... so whether you like him or the Catholic faith or not (and I don't by the way) tough sh/t! Yes on a matter of principle the cost should be paid for by the taxpayer. Kath
September 16, 201014 yr Suppose I started a school tomorrow where 90% of pupils had to be white and I had a token 10% black but the school was aimed at local whites how long do you think it would be before the police were carting me off to jail ? Minutes I would say and rightly so Why should a school be allowed to discriminate on grounds of religion when they are not allowed to on the basis of skin colour ? It isn't the same thing and you know it. Kath
September 16, 201014 yr It isn't the same thing and you know it. Kath It is 100% the same thing It is allowing schools to discriminate on the basis of religion, a form of religious apartheid so IMHO it is no different to discriminating on the basis of colour.
September 16, 201014 yr It's funny some of the people saying that schools shouldn't be allowed to discriminate based on religion, discriminate against religion themselves. You can't have it both ways. However, I would like to see less disrimination based on religion. I think muslims, in particular, have a very hard time in the UK. However, it shouldn't be ONLY schools who have to stop discriminating. Everybody needs to. Edited September 16, 201014 yr by Eric_Blob
September 16, 201014 yr Disgusting, the catholic church is one of the richest organisations in the world, helped in part to the theft of jewish gold, it should be paying the bill for this visit not the taxpayer You seem to bring up this claim on a regular basis regarding the Catholic Church, so I'm curious as to which respected historian you read to gain this nugget of information.
September 16, 201014 yr You seem to bring up this claim on a regular basis regarding the Catholic Church, so I'm curious as to which respected historian you read to gain this nugget of information. I used to read military history years ago and I remember vividly reading about the fact that the vatican backed Ustashe in Croatia stole massive amounts of gold (converted to gold via the property of those they looted from) and this gold was given to the Vatican for "safe keeping" The vatican were in collusion with the nazis, the Ustache killed some 750,000 people and were backed heavily by the Vatican and Franciscan monks. Pavelic even received a papal blessing when he was dying so the catholic church and the Vatican certainly have a lot of blood on their hands :rolleyes:
September 16, 201014 yr It's funny some of the people saying that schools shouldn't be allowed to discriminate based on religion, discriminate against religion themselves. You can't have it both ways. However, I would like to see less disrimination based on religion. I think muslims, in particular, have a very hard time in the UK. However, it shouldn't be ONLY schools who have to stop discriminating. Everybody needs to. There's a bit of a difference between education-sanctioned discrimination and people objecting to having their money spent on a propaganda visit from the head of a faith.
September 16, 201014 yr Great sig ^_^ The sig makes should also include racism, attitudes to women, AIDS, theft of gold onto the list As a Catholic I am deeply offended by Scott's sig. and politely request that he removes it.
September 16, 201014 yr As a Catholic I am deeply offended by Scott's sig. and politely request that he removes it. As a catholic you should be especially ashamed that the pope is guilty of thoses things and should want more people to know.
September 16, 201014 yr Just read this comment on DS. Some people are changing their opinions of him it seems! "I wasn't too keen on the Pope, but he actually doesn't seem too bad. He just seems like a sweet frail old man, trying to do his best for humanity. He has made some mistakes in the past, but generally his heart is in the right place." Wasn't me who posted that by the way!! Edited September 16, 201014 yr by Common Sense
September 16, 201014 yr Just read this comment on DS. Some people are changing their opinions of him it seems! "I wasn't too keen on the Pope, but he actually doesn't seem too bad. He just seems like a sweet frail old man, trying to do his best for humanity. He has made some mistakes in the past, but generally his heart is in the right place." Mistakes ? :rofl::rofl: Blackmail and intimidation of child abuse victims Hundreds of thousands of deaths in Africa Colluding with fascist and nazi organisations Covering up child abuse Bigotry against homosexuals Leading an organisation that helped nazis escape justice Being part of the Hitler youth Some mistakes :rolleyes:
September 16, 201014 yr My son's school has an acceptance rate of 10% for non-Catholics. I don't see anything wrong with faith schools. It is only recently that they've been brought into question due to religious fanaticism - from all faiths! I do think though that if you've started going to church just to get your kid into school ... then you should be forced to undergo the one hour of boredom on a Sunday until your child has left school. I don't mind paying for my child to go to a Catholic school .... as long as ... I am exempt from certain taxes on the basis that the head of state of this country (I don't mean the queen by the way ... just the rule) is not allowed to marry a Catholic. It isn't actually due to the religious teachings that I want my son to attend the school he goes to ... it is just a fact that his school is consistently in the top 10 for results for the whole of Greater Manchester. It doesn't have a rapid turnover of teachers like most state schools today have. The teachers in his school on average have 20 years at that school each. Incidentally ... a lot of the teachers are non-catholic ... so it isn't just the parents of the kids that would prefer to teach in a faith school. By the way ... I am totally disgusted by the Catholic Church and this pope for the covering up of the crimes that have gone on for years. Kath Out of interest, what school is it?
September 16, 201014 yr http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_cler...the_Usta%C5%A1e Charming people the catholic church leaders are :rolleyes: Yes it is only Wiki but I have read similar in authorative books
September 16, 201014 yr Not sure if Kathy means she pays for her son to go to a Catholic school? My daughter's at St. Angela's Ursuline girls school in Forest Gate and it's one of the best schools in London and indeed the whole country. They get excellent GCSE and A-level results. We just have to pay £30 a year contribution but that's not bad. Another Catholic one in Ilford requests £254 a year so ours isn't that much at all. Edited September 16, 201014 yr by Common Sense
September 16, 201014 yr Oh Chris, DO shut up! I want to appeal to Britain’s Catholics now, in the final days before Joseph Ratzinger’s state visit begins. I know that you are overwhelmingly decent people. You are opposed to covering up the rape of children. You are opposed to telling Africans that condoms “increase the problem” of HIV/ AIDS. You are opposed to labelling gay people “evil”. The vast majority of you, if you witnessed any of these acts, would be disgusted, and speak out. Yet over the next fortnight, many of you will nonetheless turn out to cheer for a Pope who has unrepentantly done all these things. I believe you are much better people than this man. It is my conviction that if you impartially review the evidence of the suffering he has inflicted on your fellow Catholics, you will stand in solidarity with them – and join the protesters. Some people think Ratzinger’s critics are holding him responsible for acts that were carried out before he became Pope, simply because he is head of the institution involved. This is an error. For over 25 years, Ratzinger was personally in charge of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the part of the Vatican responsible for enforcing Catholic canonical law across the world, including on sexual abuse. He is a notorious micromanager who, it is said, insisted every salient document cross his desk. Hans Kung, a former friend of Ratzinger’s, says: “No-one in the whole of the Catholic Church knew as much about abuse cases as this Pope.” We know what the methods of the church were during this period. When it was discovered a child had been raped by a priest, the church swore everybody involved to secrecy, and moved the priest on to another parish. When he raped more children, they too were sworn to secrecy, and he was moved on to another parish. And on, and on. Over 10,000 people have come forward to say they were raped as part of this misery-go-round. The church insisted all cases be kept from the police and dealt with by their own ‘canon’ law – which can only ‘punish’ child-rapists to prayer or penitence or, on rare occasions, defrocking. Ratzinger was at the heart of this. He refuses to let any police officer see the Vatican’s documentation, even now, but honourable Catholics have leaked some of them anyway. We know what he did. We have the paper trail. Here are three examples. In Germany in the early 1980s, Father Peter Hullermann was moved to a diocese run by Ratzinger. He had already been accused of raping three boys. Ratzinger didn’t go to the police, but instead he was referred for “counselling”. The psychiatrist who saw him, Werner Huth, told the Church unequivocally that he was “untreatable [and]must never be allowed to work with children again.” Yet he kept being moved from parish to parish, even after a sex crime conviction in 1986. He was last accused of sexual abuse in 1998. In the US in 1985, a group of American bishops wrote to Ratzinger begging him to defrock a priest called Father Stephen Kiesle, who had tied up and molested two young boys in a rectory. Ratzinger refused for years, explaining he was thinking of the “good of the universal Church” and of the “detriment that granting the dispensation can provoke among the community of Christ’s faithful, particularly considering the young age” of the priest involved. He was 38. He went on to rape many more children. Think about what Ratzinger’s statement reveals. Ratzinger thinks the “good of the universal Church” – your church – lies not in protecting your children from being raped, but in protecting the rapists from punishment. In 1996, the Archbishop of Milwaukee appealed to Ratzinger to defrock a man called Father Lawrence C. Murphy, who had raped and tortured up to 200 deaf and mute children at a Catholic boarding school. His rapes often began in the confessional. Ratzinger never replied. Eight months later, there was a secret canonical ‘trial’ – but Murphy wrote to Ratzinger saying he was ill, so it was cancelled. Ratzinger advised him to take a “spiritual retreat.” He died years later, unpunished. These are only the cases that have leaked out. Who knows what remains in the closed files? In 2001, Ratzinger wrote to every bishop in the world, telling them allegations of abuse must be dealt with “in absolute secrecy… completely suppressed by perpetual silence.” That year, the Vatican actually lauded Bishop Pierre Pican for refusing to inform the local French police about a paedophile priest, telling him: “I congratulate you for not denouncing a priest to the civil administration.” The commendation was copied to all bishops. Some of Ratzinger’s supporters – including, extraordinarily, Ann Widdecombe – claim that, back then, there were different attitudes to paedophilia, and people didn’t know how wrong it was. In 2001? The fact they covered it up so carefully is, in fact, evidence they knew it was profoundly wrong. If they thought it was fine, why hide it? Once the evidence of an international conspiracy to cover up abuse became incontrovertible to any reasonable observer, Ratzinger’s defenders shifted tack, and said he was sorry and would change his behaviour. But this June, the Belgian police told the Catholic Church they could no longer ‘investigate’ child-rape on Belgian soil internally, and seized their documents relating to child abuse. If Ratzinger was repentant, he would surely have congratulated them. He did the opposite. He called them “deplorable”, and his spokesman said: “There is no precedent for this, not even under communist regimes.” He still thinks the law doesn’t apply to his institution. When Ratzinger issued supposedly ground-breaking new rules against paedophilia earlier this year, he put it on a par with… ordaining women as priests. There are people who will tell you that these criticisms of Ratzinger are “anti-Catholic.” What could be more anti-Catholic than to cheer the man who facilitated the rape of your children? What could be more pro-Catholic than to try to bring him to justice? This is only one of Ratzinger’s crimes. When he visited Africa in March 2009, he said that condoms “increase the problem” of HIV/AIDS. His defenders say he is simply preaching abstinence outside marriage and monogamy within it, so if people are following his advice they can’t contract HIV – but in order to reinforce the first part of his message, he spreads overt lies claiming condoms don’t work. In a church in Congo, I watched as a Catholic priest said condoms contain “tiny holes” that “help” the HIV virus – not an unusual event. Meanwhile, Ratzinger calls consensual gay sex “evil”, and has been at the forefront of trying to prevent laws that establish basic rights for gay people, especially in Latin America. I know that for many British Catholics, their faith makes them think of something warm and good and kind – a beloved grandmother, or the gentler sayings of Jesus. That is not what Ratzinger stands for. If you turn out to celebrate him, you will be understood as endorsing his crimes and his cruelties. If your faith pulls you towards him rather than his victims, shouldn’t that make you think again about your faith? Doesn’t it suggest that faith in fact distorts your moral faculties? I know it may cause you pain to acknowledge this. But it is nothing compared to the pain of a child raped by his priest, or a woman infected with HIV because Ratzinger said condoms makes AIDS worse, or a gay person stripped of basic legal protections. You have a choice during this state visit: stand with Ratzinger, or stand with his Catholic victims. Which side, do you think, would that be chosen by the Nazarene carpenter you find on your crucifixes? I suspect he would want Ratzinger to be greeted with an empty repulsed silence, broken only by cries for justice – and the low approaching wail of a police siren.
September 16, 201014 yr THE POPE I am an atheist. I ain't offended about this at all, I'd just like to highlight the sheer stupidity of him. <_< NO ONE CAN DEFEND THESE COMMENTS. NO ONE. NO ARGUMENT WHATSOEVER...
September 16, 201014 yr Oh Chris, DO shut up! Nothing can be added to that article Chris you should post that on DS and show that fukkin idiot what the real "sweet old man" is like :rolleyes:
September 16, 201014 yr THE POPE I am an atheist. I ain't offended about this at all, I'd just like to highlight the sheer stupidity of him. <_< NO ONE CAN DEFEND THESE COMMENTS. NO ONE. NO ARGUMENT WHATSOEVER... He really does deserve a bullet in him and his carcass left rotting in the street for dogs to eat
September 16, 201014 yr He really does deserve a bullet in him and his carcass left rotting in the street for dogs to eat Comparing atheists to nazis, says the pope... Not that the pope was part of any nazi movement :mellow:
September 16, 201014 yr Nothing can be added to that article Chris you should post that on DS and show that fukkin idiot what the real "sweet old man" is like :rolleyes: Okay then I will but want to know who the article was by, or a link as they'll ask for one,. always do! Edited September 16, 201014 yr by Common Sense
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