You are free to call it whatever you wish, but I certainly do not see it that way.
Hopefully my posts are clear in that I do not defend the Church in this scandal. I will repeat what I said: I am sick of what they have done to His Church. This is a common view among Catholics.
Right, you are correct. My mistake.
Yes, I converted to Catholicism, largely due to ID and reading the Summa Theologica. Iām glad you realize Thomism is consistent with ID.
Here is an article summarizing my view on the matter:
This is where I became a skeptical Catholic - at seven years old. Seemed like hocus pocus to me then and certainly now 53 years later. So if you bought into this nonsense at a young age well I guess that you are locked into Catholicism.
Yes, along with their ridiculous anti birth control stance, the Catholic Church is stuck in the dark ages. From my experience, letting the Government and religion control a womanās reproductive choices is contrary to human rights.
Not true any longer. Secular organizations have largely replaced Catholic hospitals and where Catholic Hospitals do dominate healthcare they must provide woman the same services that can be found at non Catholic Hospitals.
Yes and it still has exorcisms and other wacky rituals. I am proud of my decision to go from skeptical Catholic to no longer a Catholic atheist. Although they probably still count me in their roles and still send me requests for money.
Yes, the same bishops implicated in the massive cover up.
Yes, which makes their failings more egregious. There is no divine force that makes the bearer of apostolic succession more moral - such a force would be in contradiction with free will, which is part of Catholic belief.
You did but this is such a salient issue that it bears repetition. Also, this statement is ambiguous. It is not clear if by āHis Churchā you mean the victims or the institution or both. Especially with your view of the Church, it is not explicit the nature of your concern.
On another thread weāll have to go deeper on this sometime, probably with @dga471. I donāt understand the epistemological justification of Thomism. It seems like nothing more than one view among many, not a normative position. While I can accept Thomists take it as normative, Iām not sure why any of the rest of us should agree. Especially as Ive observed it function more as an appeal to authority, I sense no espismelogical draw.
In origins too, Thomistic thought seems to be resistant to questions of ontogeny. It might be a sensible ontology of how things are as we find them, but seems to disengage from questions of how things come into being.
Any how Iām sure @Philosurfer and @jongarvey can set me straight too. Maybe even @vjtorley. Maybe this will become a new threadā¦
For Catholics, His Church simply refers to the Catholic faith as a whole, which includes the traditions, the line of apostolic succession, and the Faithful: the Churches Militant, Penitent, and Triumphant. I believe that not only have these men cause harm to the victims, but also jeopardizes the Salvific mission of the Church.
No - Iāve a very sketchy attachment to scholasticism so canāt set anyone straight. Page Ed Feser (or read his book on scholastic metaphysics).
However I compared A_T metaphysics with the alternative - letās call it Cartesian - and found to my surprise it deals with most of the important issues in life, whilst the latter does not.
So it deals with causation more comprehensively, covering teleology and form, which enables it to deal with universals in a way the other doesnāt. Itās hard to talk about God in the world without a clear concept of final causation.
Its concept of ānaturesā is a lot more plausible and intuitive than the concept of ālaws of natureā, for which ther is no very satisfactory explanation, even allowing for God and still less apart from him. Cartesianism causes huge problems with the concept of mind and free-will and its relationship to the world, which A-T addresses head on. It encourages realistic notions of chance, of quantum events, of providence, of divine concurrence, of the immaterial creation (and a bunch of other stuff I canāt think of on a Saturday evening) which simply pass under the radar of the āson-of-mechanical-philosophyā we work under nowadays.
If you believe that men taking vows of celibacy and wearing robes can, by saying words of incantations over a bowl of gluten containing wheat wafers, change said gluten containing wafers into the actual remnants of the body and blood of a 2000 year old human corpse, it really makes your mathematical arguments suspect. I know this is discriminatory but I was a skeptical child when I was seven years old and my skepticism has made my BS detector really good. So I question your math and your science.
Note that the hosts in a Roman Catholic Church mass must contain gluten. The Pope ruled a few years ago that gluten free hosts are not allowed. Apparently gluten is required in the transubstantiation process preformed by the priests in magically changing the gluten contain wheat into biological human remains with ancient DNA structure with 23 chromosomes pointing to Palestine 2000 years ago.
I understand what you are saying, and most protestants back away from Catholic teachings like this. This is one of the reasons Luther left the Catholic Church.
I do not think this is reason to doubt his math. There are a whole other set of reasons for that 
.
Catholics do not believe that the wine and wafers physically turn into pieces of a 2000 year old human corpse. There will not be any ancient DNA in a consecrated host. The doctrine of transubstantiation refers to the fact that the wine and wafers metaphysically become the body and blood of Christ.
Incidentally, neither the celibacy or robes are necessary to perform the sacrament.
Then why does the hosts have to have gluten in them?
The official rule book is quite different from just a metaphysical relationship.
Tradition states that Jesus gave an example of how to perform a valid sacrament involves consecrating bread with gluten in them. The Church wants to make sure the sacrament is valid, and because there is no science that can probe whether a sacrament is valid or not, we do not know what sorts of perturbations are allowed.
In any case, the question was why the hosts need to have gluten if the transubstantiation is metaphysical. Just because the change is metaphysical does not mean that the physical conditions required for the change is arbitrary.
The wikipedia you linked state āthe change of substance or essence by which the bread and wineā¦ā The word āsubstanceā here refers to the metaphysical substance of Substance Theory, not physical substance. Note that metaphysical does not mean metaphorical.
I agree that this jeopardizes the mission of the Church.
The grammar here still leave me wondering if you are decrying the damage to the institution of the Church or the victims in the Church (and outside the Church). Iām confused.
In this quote:
I was decrying the damage to both the mission of the Church and the victims inside and outside of the Church. Note however that I have many concerns regarding this issue, and not all of them are listed in that sentence. Just because I decry some concerns in this forum and do not decry other concerns (which I do have) does not mean that I value some concerns more than others.
edit:grammar
Thanks for making that clear.
Maybe, but the victims need to hear we are for them. Too often, it does not work that way.
That is why a national investigation with subpoena power and questioning under oath is required. Nothing gets to the truth faster than a good āoleā obstruction of justice threat from an FBI agent. Recall Penn State and Michigan State investigations.
Ditto on this one. You can learn a ton about Feserās take on Thomism from simply reading his blog.
@jongarvey and perhaps @Eddie ā and perhaps potentially useful for any future conversation regarding Thomism, Neo-Thomism, Analytical Thomism, etcā¦ is a conversation about Ockham as well. Outside his razor, I donāt see his name pop-up much in conversation regarding science/religion. Iāve tried the primary sources and got discouraged (or lazy) rather quickly. Does anyone know of a really well done secondary source on Ockham that might help with situating him in the conversation?