It’s become tradition in my house to play tiled words with my wife just before bed. It’s the last thing we do together before falling asleep each night! Thanks for bringing us together with a bit of joy!
Glad you’re doing better! I learned about the Bortle scale from your comment. I’d love to live in a place that allowed all the celestial light to arrive.
I have looked online a little bit, but apart from some cultural centers around embassies not that I can see. They have an official cultural center, but only 80 worldwide vs 1000+ of Alliance Francaise.
Maybe just language centers or local people offering classes might be your best bet. Maybe an Italian aficionado can chip in on this one.
I'm an atheist, but this is an honest question: does it?
My understanding of catholic doctrine is that Jesus was part of the holy Trinity and knew it before he sacrificed himself.
Therefore when he sacrificed himself for humanity he wasn't in the sort of personal danger or at risk of eternal damnation that a mere mortal in his shoes would be.
I've always understood that as God making a grand gesture of some sort, not that Jesus was in personal danger comparable to that of a mortal in his shoes.
Of course being tortured for days before being guaranteed a seat by God's side in heaven upon death would royally suck in the short term.
But I'd think an internally cotsisconsistent interpretation of doctrine would call for a personal sacrifice short of that of Jesus in his last days from a mere mortal, the odds being stacked in the deity's favor. No?
Catholics don't really take the bible as literal as many protestant religions do. Some fundamentalist Catholics do but the Catholic Church (capital 'C') does not and has not for a very long time. Pope Benedict XVI in 1993 when he was a Cardinal:
“Fundamentalist interpretation starts from the principle that the Bible, being the word of God, inspired and free from error, should be read and interpreted literally in all its details. But by "literal interpretation" it understands a naively literalist interpretation, one, that is to say, which excludes every effort at understanding the Bible that takes account of its historical origins and development… The fundamentalist approach is dangerous, for it is attractive to people who look to the Bible for ready answers to the problems of life. It can deceive these people, offering them interpretations that are pious but illusory, instead of telling them that the Bible does not necessarily contain an immediate answer to each and every problem… Fundamentalism actually invites people to a kind of intellectual suicide. It injects into life a false certitude, for it unwittingly confuses the divine substance of the biblical message with what are in fact its human limitations.”
So because of that it isn't really necessary to logically evaluate it unless you want to poke holes in a Protestant and Fundamentalists cheery picked parts. I want to be careful to not run into a "No true Scottsman" thing here, but Catholics by and large have tried to adapt the Bible to modern problems, not dissimilar to Reform Judaism.
Unfortunately, Benedict is conflating fundamentalism with literalism here. It's a common mistake (and "fundamentalist" has become essentially an epithet) although one that I am surprised to hear from someone as otherwise erudite and thoughtful as Benedict. Theological fundamentalism came out of the fundamentalist-modernist controversy of the early 1900s (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamentalist%E2%80%93moderni...) and none of its earliest and strongest proponents (Machen, Van Til, etc.) were literalists. In fact, they were quite the opposite.
While certain strains of fundamentalism have literalist tendencies, there is nothing implicit literalist in fundamentalism. Some might look at the Five Fundamentals [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamentalist%E2%80%93moderni...] and consider them implicitly literalist, but most of them are contained in the creeds and confessions that Catholicism and Protestantism hold together and so denying any of them would place one outside of either Catholic or Protestant doctrine.
That's very interesting, thank you for the color there. Especially clarifying the literalist and fundamentalist part. I'd always just sort of assumed that they are one and the same.
I'm not particularly religious but over time I've come to respect the erudite and philosophical side of it. It's so easy to just dismiss the entire thing when looking at the worst of it which IMO tends towards protestant church's that are more a political organization than a spirituality center. Or of course the scandalous and criminal history of the Catholic church covering up so many bad things.
>Therefore when he sacrificed himself for humanity he wasn't in the sort of personal danger or at risk of eternal damnation that a mere mortal in his shoes would be.
A Christian would say the same of themselves, because through Jesus, they have eternal life in Heaven.
Am an atheist that grew up Catholic and studied at a Catholic school for 10+ years; Jesus was more like someone who knew he had a deep connection to God but didn't know he was a part of the holy trinity until his resurrection. He experienced serious moments of doubt exemplified on the cross when he shouted, "Father why have you forsaken me?" He was intwined with local hookers and is thought to have had a relationship with Mary Magdalene.
That would make his moment of sacrifice an entirely human experience. imo, that but was designed intentionally because Catholics believe that everyone is a somewhat lesser version of Jesus in that way. Everyone has "original sin" and conflicts and doubt, but can be saved by the intent which they live their lives, not mere acts.
Catholics, in fact, are not a monoculture just because they follow the pope. If you travel the coasts, through the South and Midwest you'll see very stark delineations of Catholicism and their beliefs.
The only relevant part of the article is the quote from the Council of Chalcedon:
> Following the holy Fathers, we unanimously teach and confess one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ: the same perfect in divinity and perfect in humanity, the same truly God and truly man, composed of rational soul and body; consubstantial with the Father as to his divinity and consubstantial with us as to his humanity; "like us in all things but sin". He was begotten from the Father before all ages as to his divinity and in these last days, for us and for our salvation, was born as to his humanity of the virgin Mary, the Mother of God.
This is one such stark delineation. All Catholics are required to be inside it.
Sure, I agree that it's dogma within the church, that's why I mentioned the Holy Trinity.
The holy trinity wasn't known to Jesus at the time of his life or death. It became apparent that he, the holy spirit, and god were the same post resurrection. That's what separates Jesus from other canonical characters like saints and disciples - he was destined to become one because it was God's manifestation of himself. The others are just humans with extraordinary presence whom God chooses to act on the world through. It was pretty clear Jesus perceived himself as the latter.
Anyway, I could be wrong. I learned all this nearly 20 years ago and only remember it because it was beat into me.
> The holy trinity wasn't known to Jesus at the time of his life or death. …
If this was beaten into you the school you went to was not Catholic or even Chalcedonian, which is a low, low bar. This appears to be some form of the heresy of kenoticism and your parents deserve a refund.
A monseigneur was in charge of the school and it was registered with the diocese as a parochial school with a church attached. I assure you that it was Roman Catholic. You can stop questioning that now.
Catholic history, canon, etc were all part of our education. Beatings (corporal punishment) were part of Catholic education going back decades in the states. If you don't recognize this as part of Catholic history you're fooling yourself. What we had was less than corporal punishment, but having erasers tossed at you and being hit with rulers were expectations year over year.
As I said, I may have some details wrong but I'm 90% positive this is what we were taught.
I’m sorry, it never occurred to me that you’d think I was questioning the beating part. I was entirely addressing the teaching. If they were teaching you heresy, they were outside the Catholic Church by definition.
Uh. Catholicism calls for you to love everyone to the point of torture and death. It is weird that you missed this message.
The Catholic line would be something like "God created marriage as a kind of metaphor for your relationship with all people, as a kind of easy arena where you can play out the kind of love that you should extend to the entire world."
Jesus, after all, did not die for a wife except in this very metaphorical sense. He died for sinners, lazy shits, prostitutes, tax collectors, etc, etc, etc. That is what the calling in Catholicism is.
So? That isn't even a necessary condition for being a good Catholic. It certainly isn't a sufficient one. The message is clear: a good person, from the point of view of Catholicism, is one willing to sacrifice everything, even in a gruesome fashion, for the lowliest person.
I listed one of many beliefs of the faith, whereas you claimed to boil the entire faith down to a single phrase—I'm having trouble understanding the supposed contradiction.
There isn't any contradiction, per se, its just that observing that Catholicism says something about holy orders or marriage doesn't actually say anything about what Catholicism also says about relations outside of these sacraments, which is the question at hand here.
While it certainly is a gross summary, saying that Catholicism calls on people to sacrifice (everything, if necessary) for any person, is accurate and pertinent to the idea that it only suggests this for one's spouse. Being willing to sacrifice for your spouse is necessary but not sufficient to be an optimal catholic.
Religion has many positive benefits on society. We minister to those within our own congregation and are aware of individuals needs. A sense of community is fostered and people are concerned about more than themselves. Perhaps the pendulum will swing back to people discovering religion?
It also has many negative impacts. A sense of community does not need to be associated with any religion. When these two things are seen as one this provides a very exploitable relationship.
This is absolutely not true for every case - many religious organisations of all types do incredible work for communities. This does not imply the religion is the cause for that good though, it's normally just genuinely good people behind that org.
The strength of the religious congregations is that they have a built-in forcing function that drives a regular attendance and brings families and individuals together. You must go to avoid hell, drives more attendance than going to avoid possible, future loneliness.
I am an ardent atheist, but this aspect of religion makes me wish I too was delusional.
I completely understand your point. But you also have to realize that belief is also a choice, not just a factual agreement on reality. It may surprise you to learn that many of those church attendees are not 100% in agreement. They too have doubts. They choose to believe it for the community. Or the alternative is just too bleak for them.
> But you also have to realize that belief is also a choice
Depends on what you mean by "belief."
I don't think "belief" as "perceived model / understood facts about the universe" is a choice any more than you decide what you see or hear or otherwise perceive. Maybe at margins where things are unclear.
"Belief" in a way-of-being / life path like "I believe that if I live this way, I'll see these results" probably involves a fair bit of choice. This is probably why the word "faith" exists and where it's most useful and may even be why it's associated with religious communities.
(There may be also be a middle ground where one decides reading only religious worldview-affirming material and avoid worldview-eroding discussion is likely to produce best outcomes and has the epistemic boundaries of all the material they take in set accordingly, and I guess that's a 2nd-to-nth order choice about belief)
I'm not sure I understand what you are saying, but would like to. Is there a more long-form text on the topic you'd recommend? I think I can understand it for a simple question like "is there a god?", but cannot see how this arrived at believing everything in a particular passed-down book.
Religion looks around at everything and asks ‘is this all meaningful or not?’
Religion says ‘yes’ and the doubt is bridged by faith (as is all doubt, since most of human life has necessary doubt that can’t be proven one way or the other).
Some people say that having meaning/doubt is delusional.
Or a volunteer. The issue with communities based on a religion is that they often tend to be exclusionary towards those who might live in the same area but not share the same beliefs. There are better ways and those don't require religion.
I see where you're coming from, but I hope that we'll find many and better ways of building such communities, without the need for religion. Religion can be used as a tool of inclusion or exclusion.
Don't get me wrong, I'm glad that works for you. We need to see, feel something bigger than us.
Why can people only imagine building communities around religion and family? There are other options available that don't tend to be so hateful towards people they don't understand. For example, Epicurus proposed living in communes with friends and that seemed to work well.
I'm part of a religious community, and while I agree that community and a sense of mutual care can arise from religious beliefs... the idea that it's the answer seems pretty iffy to me, especially considering that religious communities appear to have their own isolating failure modes. It's a bit like saying "capitalism is good at taking care of people's needs"; it's actually true in many cases, not super helpful in others. And religion isn't exactly hidden as a solution.
Society-wide I think revitalization of all kinds of half-forgotten communal institutions in the image of the bowling league or the fraternal organization could have some benefits. Churches too, but if the one I belong to is any indication, they could stand to help most by "first wash[ing] the inside of the cup and the dish" -- spend less time trying to remind people of church-relevance and affirming the worldview, and more time making their own community glow more brightly with the warmth/fruits the faith is supposed to produce.
If only we could do it in a way that doesn't involve make-believe sky deities and cult leadership going mad with power, like the average mass religion does.
They play this in Nauvoo Illinois at the summer vacation spot for members of the Christ of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Sister missionaries taught me a song to solve this and leave the last leg in the middle.
