It never ceases to amaze me the ignorant comments made by former JW's about Catholicism that were given their anti Cathoic bias by the Watchtower. Yeah, that makes a ot of sense.....
I Believe Catholicism And Its Trappings Are Silly, Strange & Weird!!!
by minimus 306 Replies latest jw friends
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james_woods
The Vatican is impressive. I thoroughly enjoyed going there... but in the end, I was amazed at how much money the Catholic church has tied up in not just Vatican City, but all it's holdings throughout Europe.
True, but what else would they spend it on?
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Nambo
I like the ones where they wheel out the preserved corpse of some dead "saint" and you get to kiss the blackened toes, nothing weird about that, just think how much more exciting JW conventions would be if they had embalmed Russell and Rutherford and you could get to meet them and shake their wiethered hands, no wonder the Catholic Church is the biggest in the world, they really know how to do religion.
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mindseye
Though not Catholic by a long shot, I dig Catholicism on an aesthetic level. The rich history, iconography and rituals are cool. And I dig the Eastern/Greek Orthodox Church even more. They have better incense, rituals, and iconography without the legalism of the Catholic church. But despite what the pope says, many Catholics don't give a $%&*. Catholicism is much more of a cultural thing among the Catholics I know. It's something most JWs don't identify with at all, because they are disconnected by the richness of ancient tradition and culture. It's all 'reasoning from the scriptures' to them.
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apostatethunder
Our culture in the west comes from the heritage of the Catholic church. The Vatican is impressive, and why shouldn’t be? It contains the history of Christianity and Europe for almost 2000 years, starting shortly after Jesus death.
They are involved in politics, yes a lot of priest and Jesuits have been assassinated for supporting social justice in Salvador and in other places.
Catholics use contraceptives and nobody bothers them with that. Not sure where that policy originates, but would be interesting to find out who is responsible for it, as they know nobody follows it.
Africa’s problems have nothing to do with Catholicism, in fact there are a lot of missions and npo helping the people there in exchange for nothing.
The church has not burned anyone in a few centuries. Protestants also killed thousands of people in the middle ages. Thankfully things have improved considerably since then.
If anything they are the ones being persecuted now, during the II WW and the Spanish civil war for example very cruelly, or nowadays by being constantly mocked and insulted by people that would do well having only a tenth of the culture and respect for others they have.
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Diest
Nothing sadder than seeing the persecuter get persecuted. Breaks my heart. What next a bully getting bullied?
The Catholics bring the scorn upon themselves just like the JWs. Ireland is ground zero for their self distruct. They had a greater preportion of sex abuse case than any other country. They have lost their religion in great numbers just since 2005. Ireland finally pulled their embassy from the Vatican last November.
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still thinking
I was raised and baptised a catholic...and yes...now that I look back on it..it is weird...although it all seemed very normal at the time.
I didn't bring my daughter up religious at all...she knew how I felt about god and stuff. But I didn't make here do anything as far as any religion is concerned.
Her first exposure to Cathoicism was a Catholic funeral about a year ago. It was her freinds mothers, and she could not get over how weird it all was...she said it actually gave her the creeps.
I guess when you are brought up within a religion, or any religion for that matter, you accept all the strangeness of it as normal. I found it interesting hearing her reaction because I never said anything in particular about anything catholic to her. And she had never been exposed to all the pomp and ceremony before.
The things she found funniest though was all the standing and sitting...she couldn't figure it out..LOL
It wasn't until she told me how she saw the catholic rituals that I saw them with different eyes. Religion is ODD, but when your mind is religionafied (is that a word?, it should be lol), it's easy to replace one with another thinking it is all normal.
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finally awake
I'm not a fan of Catholics, but it has nothing to do with being a witness. My father is Catholic and he abandoned me as a baby and couldn't have cared less whether I lived or died. So, as far as I'm concerned, being a faithful Catholic did nothing for his morals or integrity.
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Isidore
"I'm not a fan of Catholics, but it has nothing to do with being a witness. My father is Catholic and he abandoned me as a baby and couldn't have cared less whether I lived or died. So, as far as I'm concerned, being a faithful Catholic did nothing for his morals or integrity"
You can't judge a medicine by those that don't take it.
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mindseye
Diest - Sure, Catholicism throughout history has brought much scorn upon itself. But one difference I notice between individual Catholics and JWs is the intellectual freedom to criticize their organization on a number of issues. There's Gay Catholics, pro-choice Catholics, and a number of other Catholics who hold positions contrary to the church. Another telling example is sex-abuse scandals - I've heard many Catholics strongly criticize their church on this matter, whereas most JWs tend to ignore the issue in their religion.
finally awake - I can understand how you could have your view after your experience. I find that there is usually not a direct correlation between morals and religion.