Religion and history

[flamingophoenix]

This is an interesting argument for the importance of history when evaluating churches. Not sure if I agree with it (I mean, the Church has thoroughly repudiated Thomas More and his actions against translated Bibles, right?) (right???), but still. Interesting

Comments

[flamingophoenix]

Per your last paragraph: Quite easily. By saying "We were wrong, and More was wrong as well, on this topic."

I do think there's a difference between "sinful" and "evil." In Catholic terms, sinful is thinking impure thoughts, or masturbating, or having premarital sex. Evil is killing six million Jews. That's the big difference - evil is something that generally, most non-sociopathic people agree on. Sinful is something that varies depending on your belief system. (And if you lack a belief in God, then generally you don't use the word "sinful" at all.) That's a pretty big generalization, but it's the basic idea, as I understand common use of those words.

According to this BBC article, the specific quote from then-Cardinal (?) Ratzinger was - "he has described homosexuality as a tendency towards an "intrinsic moral evil" ".

I think most rational Catholics consider homosexual behavior to be sinful, not evil.

I suppose it's possible that Ratzinger's paper got mis-translated, but...if he did use the equivalent word for "evil" instead of "sinful," we should ask why he did that.

[mathmuffin]

If the Roman Catholic Church says, "We were wrong about William Tyndale and other Bible translators, and Thomas More's actions based on our mistake were wrong, too," then this would explain how the church could repudiate his actions yet venerate him as a saint, as redlily asked about.

Wikiquote provides the full text of Cardinal Ratzinger's statement, "Although the particular inclination of the homosexual person is not a sin, it is a more or less strong tendency ordered to an intrinsic moral evil, and thus the inclination itself must be seen as an objective disorder." One advantage of being a Lutheran is that I have no need to defend the Pope. He was an idiot. I recognize academic jargon when I see it. Those words do not mean what us non-experts think they mean--I wonder what "ordered to" exactly means--but Ratzinger said them where people would take the words at face value.

I don't understand evil, but I do understand sin. In Lutheran theology, sin has no magnitude. Multiplying the sin of murder by three million does not make it more sinful. It is the step of turning hatred into murder that is the sin. We humans, on the other hand, like to measure the harm done to us, so that our punishment of the wrongdoer can be in proportion to the intent and damage.

This is why laws against homosexuality have me scratching my head in confusion. Homosexuality is a sin, but sin merits repentance rather than punishment. Doing harm merits punishment, but we cannot measure any harm in homosexuality, so why do we punish it?