And if you want to see all that is wrong with organised religion...

[cestlavie]

Just read here from The Times today.

This in a region where 22 million people today have AIDS and where 2 million of these are children who've often caught it from their mothers. Where the average age expectancy is just 47 years old, when without AIDS it would have been over 60.

This is a region where there are almost 12 million children orphaned by AIDS. Where in some counties (like Zambia) up to 20% of children under fourteen year have lost both their parents to the disease. Where almost 2 million babies and infants under four are orphans as a result of the disease.

But whilst every major international organisation advocates the use of condoms to reduce the spread of the disease. And whilst, for example, the WHO said that "consistent and correct" condom use reduces the risk of HIV infection by 90 per cent.

The Catholic Church and Pope Benedict, however, not only continue to reiterate that not only is the use of condoms banned by the Vatican but that AIDS ?cannot be overcome by distributing condoms ? it only increases the problem?. Thereby merrily condemning potentially millions more of God fearing Catholics across the continent (and their children) to an early death, suffering, penury and orphanhood. May God in his mercy be praised.

If religion is to be taken seriously it needs to evolve just like science. That is not to say it needs to change its fundamentals but views need to be seen in context. The subservient role of women at the time of Christ for example. Christ did not speak out against this. Does that mean that this is how Christians today should live?

So for my money, being a Christian means living by the values and the ethos of the man not being constrained by the contextual viewpoints of the time.

I also don't think that a bunch of self-serving self-obsessed men should be dictating to people whose lives they know nothing about and care about even less.

Jesus: 'So a man will leave his father and mother and be united with his wife, and the two will become one body.So there are not two but one. God has joined the two together, so no one should separate them.....Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman is guilty of adultery against her. And the woman who divorces her husband and marries another man is also guilty of adultery.'New Century version Youth Bible. Tough words. Clear rules. Now, even the dreaded(according to some)Catholic Church believes in God's mercy and understanding and welcome divorced and remarried people in their churches.These people want to be Christian, seek God's understanding but find difficult or impossible to change their situation. But they don't profess to believe in divorce per se.

white coffe whats your point exatcly?

Myredcardigan,
I grew up Catholic, led an active Christian life until three years ago when I lapsed, complicated story.Obviously, I met many many priests over the years,a considerable amount on personal level, as friends, and I have to strongly object to calling them all self serving bunch. Most were the most wonderful people you may wish to ever meet, with high ideals of serving the poor, the disabled,the troubled youth, the forgotten by the society . In what way are you self serving when you sacrified your chance of having a wife, children, lots of free time to spend as you wish, to make yourself available to all these disadvantaged people.And they suffer, the innocent overwhelming majority of priests, through ignorance of people branding all priests pedophiles etc.
Priests are highly educated. All, but simple monks, have to go through six years of higher university level education. And as you can imagine it involves a lot of social sciences, psychology etc.
In their work as priests they encounter hundreds of people, couples of different backgrounds,temperaments, life stories.People confide in them, many discuss very personal problems, difficulties they experience. I dare to say often a priest will know more about married life than an ordinary married couple themselves.
And first of all they do not dictate to you how you should lead your life. They instruct the members of the voluntary Catholic Church.
Gordon Brown dictates to you, not to smoke inside a pub for example, and threatens you with fines/impisonment if you revolt, but catholic priests don't dictate anything to you myredcardigan.That's a paranoic thought really, if you think about it.

Custardo, I was just replying to someone asking me earlier why I questioned the validity of someone else's claim to christianity while rejecting valid biblical teachings.Sorry if it confused you as it digresses from the main subject.

I do not believe that Jesus taught that we should have a religion based on rules. I believe that he very specifically came to put an end to that, and to tell people that they should focus on being in a right relationship with God and with each other, and that following a set of rules which were imposed by a hierarchy would not get them right with God.

I also believe that some parts of what he taught were strongly influenced by the culture at the time - if a man divorced his wife, she was left destitute. Women had no property and few rights, a woman was either the property of her father or her husband. A woman with no husband or father or son to take care of her had nothing.

I believe that if Jesus were to come back today, issues like artificial contraception, sex outside of marriage, and loving faithful same-sex relationships would not make it onto his top 10 list of concerns about the world. I don't think they'd even make it onto the top 100.

St Paul does seem to be enweighing against homosexuality. Having said that, I saw quite an interesting argument online the other day, where the writer pointed out that St Paul cannot possibly have been speaking of the kind of consensual homosexual relationships between equals that we have today, because those did not exist in his days.

Homosexuality in antiquity was pederasty, that is an older man having sex with a young boy (or in ancient Rome with a slave); there was always an element of exploitation and inequality. Even we might look askance at say a headteacher having it off with a 12yo boy.

As for homosexual relationships between consenting adults, as we know them, they were unacceptable to non-Christians in antiquity for a different reasons: sex was very strictly divided not into hetero and homo, but into active (penetrating) and passive (penetrated), and the passive role could only be held by a socially inferior person, such as a child, a slave or a woman. It is the active partner who has control. Grown men who accepted the passive role were thought of as deviant. So for non-Christians (the ones St Paul has it in for) the only acceptable homosexuality carries an element of exploitation.

Also, homosexuality of the active kind would normally be practised by men who saw their wives as childbearing machines and went elsewhere for sexual/emotional fulfilment. There was no conception that you are either homo or hetero; but in ancient Greece at least it was taken for granted that the secluded and ignorant person that is your wife can't give you much emotional fulfilment: for that you need either a concubine or a young boy.

Christianity otoh is very strong on the idea that women have a soul and that married couples ought to share all facets of life. We take that for granted, but for your typical audience in Corinth or Athens, that would have needed spelling out.

Comparing our society with the society St Paul was criticising is difficult. What he saw around him is not what we see.

correction:

homosexuality of the active kind would normally be practised by married men who saw their wives as childbearing machines and went elsewhere for sexual/emotional fulfilment

I agree completely, Amuminscotland. I think he'd be far more concerned with issues such as child poverty, starvation and genocide. I think he's urge people to be kind and compassionate and to live their lives with respect for themselves and others.

Whitecoffee, I am RC myself actually and teach in an RC primary school. The self-serving men I was referring to are the policy makers in the Vatican who decide on rules such as celebacy in priests (a relatively new concept) and the stance on contraception.

And what Sodom did was hardly consensual sex either. It was putting pressure on a host to deliver his guests to be raped by a mob. Would we really approve of this in today's society?

Ahh Cory, but Lot did offer his virgin daughters in compensation.

Charming thought isn't it? "Don't attack my guest, but here, rape my daughters instead" And Lot is thought of as the good guy in this scenario.

True. There are some seriously strange characters in the OT. But somehow I don't think St Paul would have done that, for all his faults.

I think culturally, it's because the guest concept is so overwhelming in archaic times (Homeric, OT as opposed to NT etc). I can see some Greek from the archaic age doing something similar, because a guest is just about the most sacred thing there is.

But that would have changed by Jesus's time.

have you read the Red Tent? Quite an interesting take on the whole Rachel/Jacob etc thing. And lots of casual references to shagging goats which I found amusing but I'm sure I wasn't supposed to!

interesting posts cory.

It is, I guess, an indication of the way the status of women has changed over the centuries. There are strong female characters in the bible, but they were, in practise, little more than posessions with little or no say over their lives. It's one of the reasons reading the bible is so difficult. Filtering stone age society through modern sensibilities leads, i imagine, to an awful lot of misinterpretation. Sodom's sin was was against the scantity of the guest, not homosexuality as is the modern perception.

very interesting posts cory

Oh bling,,I love the red tent. One of my fav books ever. I just read it after having my first baby, so it was all the more stirring. I do like the idea of all the women bringing up the children together and leaving the men to bugger sheep elsewhere!!!

whitecoffee....loose sex, or whatever, is already going on...and isn't there in some cultures a believe, that sleeping with lots of virgins will cure a man's aids....or am I imagining that?
Not sure where you get the idea that people say one must use a condom with ones spouse...well...unless one partner is infected and the other, I doubt anyone is saying you need to use a condom...
condoms do protect, end off...not 100%...but by your own admission to 96% , that is a lot of lifes saved....yes, morality is, subjectively, compromised....but, not using condoms isn't gonna change that, is it...it's the attitude that needs changing...

Fleeting...it would do much more good though than the "condoms- mdo not use" stance...and tbh, cathelics trying to cenvert other cultures, well...don't let us get started on that....

Can't remember who said it...but the reason people possibly are so anti catholic religion is, because ...well...erm...how to put this...but the interpretation is a bit extreme....and the catholic are historically the religion that went everywhere to convert people, with threads of you will burn in hell...not sure about catholic religion being racist, thing it is more a matter of religousm...however other religions are guilty of that, too....of course...

personally I was raise kinda non-religious, but had an affinty to the german equivalent of the anglican church, however now I am an agnostic, because I believe there is something, a higheer devine entity, but I believe that organised religion is a matter of interpretation, and it is a cultural interpretation and considering the time it all started means that generally the roots are in a anti woman times...