Diabolical wrote:
There is no charity in communism.
oceanhawk wrote:
Yes Religious people are very charitable, like the Indulgences? Damn all that went to a good cause...There is more Charity in Capitalism, because people are better off, not because of Religion. People starve in Cuba, and they are a very Religious nation. But socialist, if they were Capitalist, the poor wouldnt be better off cos of chairty, they would be better off cos of free enterprise..
As I said in the first quote, there is no charity in communism. Since communism makes everyone equally poor, there is nothing to share. So, no matter how many Christians there are in a communist society, even if they give all they have, it will not amount to a hill of beans. Cuba is a perfect example. The Castro's robbed the island of any wealth they could plunder under the guise of communism. The people -- operating in the communist system -- have had their ability to generate wealth virtually destroyed by oppression. Sure, there are some devout Catholics there. But they have other problems that hinder everything about them, so -- as I said -- there's too little to share. To be fair, the Christians there probably are willing to share what meager amounts they have.
As for indulgences, those are/were an abomination conducted by [occasionally well-meaning] rote priests that barely understood even their own faith. The papacy of that time (when indulgences became common) was so corrupt that they drove thoughtful and honest priests to seek to put the Word of God into the hands of the masses. Martin Luther was one such man who opposed many of the practices of the Church. He and others like him basically founded the whole protestant movement to break away from a corrupt, centralized and bloated, and wrongly-dogmatic religious order.
Fortunately, the Catholic Church is not the only part of the Church of Christ...even in that time, there were large remnants of faithful Christians -- many of whom too ignorant to understand the errors in their religious practices -- who would scarcely be able to be called Catholic. Their hearts were with God and that was all they could understand.
As with the religious teachers of Jesus' day, the Catholic Church leadership was rife with corruption when it called for indulgences and the Inquisition. At least, though, with the Inquisition, many who were a part of it were only seeking to purify the faithful to weed out disbelief. Unfortunately, this included slaughtering people and torturing them to get them to "confess" to false religion. Even the Jews were treated miserably due to the long history of wanton ignorance in the Church.
In the history of the Church, the inquisition is probably our darkest historical wrong. Other wrongs are debatable. I know that the crusades are not considered good by many people, today. I for one do not agree with that assessment. Indeed, there were errors committed during the crusades. But the Crusades were a noble event in and of themselves, and many of the people participating were good Christian soldiers fighting for God and King against the "heathens".
Also, the Crusades were a series of national wars between nations, not individual and interpersonal interactions. So the commands of Jesus to the Church to spread the Gospel and minister to others was not fully applicable. With the Inquisition, individuals violated this teaching with the persecution of others. But, with the Crusades, whole nations acted according to the attributes that God gives to political leaders. Thus, as soldiers acting on behalf of their nations, the Christians participating were justified in their fight against others. This is a distinction that I make between individuals and societies. I'm not certain of this, but I believe that some of the Crusaders were good and kind people (probably priests) who did attempt to spread the Gospel when they could. That is something I would do in the situation.
If some of what I'm writing in this post seems not too coherent, know that I'm up way past my bedtime and am very tired. Probably, I'll re-read this post tomorrow and wind up editing out chunks and fixing chunks. But overall, it is fairly true to what I believe and teach. The fact, though, that I'm typing this paragraph (and will leave it in for now) is testament to my lack of complete clarity of mind. I wonder what I would be like if I were a drinking man. lol, the posts would get funny then. And pot, well, then I'd probably be typing stupid stuff like Wacka wacka wacka and then laughing at my own words until I peed in the chair.
Yeah, I'm pretty tired now. God help me if I ever get drunk or stoned.
It seemed like such a waste to destroy an entire battle station just to eliminate one man. But Charlie knew that it was the only way to ensure the absolute and total destruction of Quasi-duck, once and for all.
