Pope Francis And His Jubilee of Mercy.

Post Reply New Topic

Pope Francis is ready to forgive a host of women who have committed the sin of abortion, allowing priests to forgive them and welcome them back to the church. It's bound to stir controversy.

http://www.richmond.com/ap/internationa ... 3e1ad.html

Do you forgive or not?

Abortion is a terrible thing, but it should be noted that many women feel pressured against their will to save the baby by their boyfriends, or perhaps by other people or for other reasons (monetary issues, etc). And thus for the ultimate guilt session that they will receive for the rest of their lives. The least the Church can do is to forgive someone who feels badly for some past mistake. After all, God would.

A lot of times it's the opposite. The boyfriend doesn't want the baby and he ditches the mother. Sometimes the boyfriend's the one that insists on the abortion because he doesn't want to spend his money on a kid or he finds someone he likes more than the mother and he leaves her. There's not always a kind, loving father in the picture. Most the time with abortions, it's quite the opposite and it's a sad time for the mother. She is faced with the prospect of bringing a child into the world without the man she thought would help raise it and he is indifferent to both their lives.

I forgive pathetic catholics for trying to impose guilt on innocent women.

And that's not counting the underage girls impregnated by much older male partners, and those males forcing the girl to get an abortion so the guy won't go to jail. The girl simply lies to Planned Parenthood and says she's 18, and they take her word for it. The females getting abortions today are mainly the very rich (who will always be able to get anything they want due to wealth and connections) and the very poor (who are coerced or panicky). PP mainly serves the latter. Margaret Sanger was able to do what she did due to the fears of the robber barons that the fact that poor immigrants had 9 or 10 kids each would eventually lead to a revolution by millions of disenfranchised poor youths.

yes. I can forgive the catholic church for having archaic beliefs as long as they're willing to change.

Priests have been giving absolution for abortion. Sorry, but they have.

The sad part is while the Church and its apologists have been gloating about all its scientific achievements (despite Galileo being told to keep quiet after a group of Jesuit priests confirmed he was correct), it cannot be bothered to actually clarify what exactly is acceptable and punish people for things that might not have been "sins" at all.

Marriage is not about love for a Catholic couple according to the Church - it can annul a marriage if the parents are sterile and not able to conceive. Likewise, if an abortion involves removing an ovary or child-bearing capability, it is not considered a sin to them. For all the praise of Augustine of Hippo and Thomas Aquinas, these two men admitted they had doubts about conception at birth (EDIT: sorry, I meant "life begins at conception") - although Aquinas believed contraception was worse than rape and incest.

Also, limbo was never actual Catholic teaching - it was considered one plausible thing for the unbaptized. They just decided it wasn't feasible a little time ago. It is par for the course for a group which cannot explain what "inspiration" means according to the Biblical books to not explain how they found that out.

Send all these men to China. The Chinese men have a good chat up line: 'I‘ ll make a criminal of you'. Sex outside of marriage is still illegal and getting pregnant is defintely a punishable crime. The younger generation are changing this slowly.

Good answer.

Catholics impose guilt on everybody for everything. Ethnic Catholic is even worse. You can spot a Catholic when they bump into a wall and say "I'm sorry" or if you knock something out of their hand and they say "I'm sorry" or if you drop something and they say "I'm sorry". LOL, it's true.

It doesn't usually bother us though. I'm Druid now, but Catholic on paper and will always be. My kids are Athiests or Agnostics but Catholic on paper and will always be. They still cross themselves when something bad happens and the church is the first place they think of for funerals and weddings and my athiest son got his baby baptized Catholic. So, there ya go.

It really doesn't bother us. We don't think about it much. We know that if we do something really bad, we can go to confession and then feel better. I haven't been in about 12 years though.

Not every single Catholic accepts Pope Francis' mission of mercy. As a Catholic myself, I would like to see Pope Francis expand his mission of mercy by telling Catholics to be more welcoming and inclusive, especially towards LGBT people.

Now, there's an interesting question. Not to make angels dance on the head of a pin, but if a priest absolves someone for abortion some time ago but he was in error and neither party ever knows any different, was it really absolved? Does the sinner get to heaven and find out they *could* have made up for it if only they'd taken advantage of the Vatican's Year of Changed Rules?

Jubilee of Mercy seems like a good political move to me. Its obviously difficult to write off what has been called sacred for so many years, but a Year of Jubilee, why not. And once its done its done.

I don't...

Don't try and make any sense out of it...
Religion has been designed for those who desire emotional rather than intellectual satisfaction...
(N.B. Implicit in my statement is the recognition that each individual is entitled to there own belief system.)

The catholic philosophy in particular leaks like a sieve on a rational level...
Logical minds which value reason move on...

I was brought up as a catholic...
Ex-catholics make the bestest atheists, so they say...