Author Topic: Prayer and Religion in Public Life  (Read 634645 times)

Agnostic007

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Re: Prayer and Religion in Public Life
« Reply #550 on: January 15, 2019, 08:33:48 PM »
And go fuck your fake LEO self.   There's your "and".   You're like Wiggs only twice as smart.  Of course that's still dumber than a box of cat shit.

You say Fake LEO... how sure are you I am fake and what are you willing to bet?

The Scott

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Re: Prayer and Religion in Public Life
« Reply #551 on: January 16, 2019, 06:46:20 PM »
You say Fake LEO... how sure are you I am fake and what are you willing to bet?


Your words speak volumes and identify you as not being remotely LEO. 

As for making a "bet"?  Do not be a child. I've told you before that we shall never meet. I've been in Miami several times and have zero desire to shake your hand as I think we would not come close to getting along.  What would be the point?

There is no point.

When I agree with you on a subject it is simply because I agree with you on that particular matter.  When I do not, it is because I do not. 

Skeletor

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Re: Prayer and Religion in Public Life
« Reply #552 on: February 01, 2019, 06:22:16 PM »
Catholic Church in Texas Names Nearly 300 Priests Accused of Sex Abuse

The Roman Catholic Church in Texas on Thursday released the names of almost 300 priests who it said had been credibly accused of child sex abuse over nearly eight decades.

The action was the latest in a wave of disclosures by the church as it faces a series of federal and state investigations into its handling of sexual misconduct.

The names were posted online by all 15 of the state’s dioceses and followed the publication in August of a bombshell report on clerical sex abuse by the Pennsylvania attorney general that has spurred investigations of the church in more than a dozen other states.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/31/us/priests-abuse-texas.html


MAP: Here are the lists of Catholic priests in Texas 'credibly accused' of sexual abuse

https://www.click2houston.com/news/catholic-church/here-are-the-lists-of-credibly-accused-catholic-priests-in-texas

Skeletor

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Re: Prayer and Religion in Public Life
« Reply #553 on: February 03, 2019, 01:17:36 PM »

Couple and teen arrested in death of boy, 7, after punishing him over Bible verses

A Wisconsin couple and their son have been arrested in the death of a 7-year-old boy in their care, after they allegedly punished him for not memorizing Bible verses.

Timothy and Tina Hauschultz and their 15-year-old son made the 7-year-old, whose name was Ethan, hold a 44-pound log for two hours every day for a week, Newsweek reports. While being monitored during his punishment, a medical examiner believes that the teen hit and kicked the younger boy 100 times, rolled the heavy log over his chest and stood on his head and body while Ethan was face-down in a puddle. He then allegedly buried him in "his own little coffin of snow." Ethan died in April 2018 of hypothermia and blunt force trauma.

The Hauschultz's son has been charged with first-degree reckless homicide, while his father Timothy, 48, is charged with felony murder and felony contributing to the delinquency of a child. Both the father and son face an additional number of charges. Tina, 35, is charged with failing to prevent bodily harm and intentionally contributing to the delinquency of a child.

It's not known how the Hauschultz's are related to Ethan, but Timothy and Tina are listed as his court-appointed guardians, along with two of his siblings, including his twin.

The 15-year-old told police that he was put in charge of supervising Ethan and his twin, who were both undergoing the punishment of carrying logs for not knowing 13 Bible verses of Timothy's choosing. Ethan's birth mother, Andrea Everett, spoke out after the boy's death in April.

https://www.foxnews.com/us/couple-and-teen-arrested-for-death-of-boy-7-after-punishing-him-over-memorizing-bible-verses

AbrahamG

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Re: Prayer and Religion in Public Life
« Reply #554 on: February 04, 2019, 08:51:54 PM »
Couple and teen arrested in death of boy, 7, after punishing him over Bible verses

A Wisconsin couple and their son have been arrested in the death of a 7-year-old boy in their care, after they allegedly punished him for not memorizing Bible verses.

Timothy and Tina Hauschultz and their 15-year-old son made the 7-year-old, whose name was Ethan, hold a 44-pound log for two hours every day for a week, Newsweek reports. While being monitored during his punishment, a medical examiner believes that the teen hit and kicked the younger boy 100 times, rolled the heavy log over his chest and stood on his head and body while Ethan was face-down in a puddle. He then allegedly buried him in "his own little coffin of snow." Ethan died in April 2018 of hypothermia and blunt force trauma.

The Hauschultz's son has been charged with first-degree reckless homicide, while his father Timothy, 48, is charged with felony murder and felony contributing to the delinquency of a child. Both the father and son face an additional number of charges. Tina, 35, is charged with failing to prevent bodily harm and intentionally contributing to the delinquency of a child.

It's not known how the Hauschultz's are related to Ethan, but Timothy and Tina are listed as his court-appointed guardians, along with two of his siblings, including his twin.

The 15-year-old told police that he was put in charge of supervising Ethan and his twin, who were both undergoing the punishment of carrying logs for not knowing 13 Bible verses of Timothy's choosing. Ethan's birth mother, Andrea Everett, spoke out after the boy's death in April.

https://www.foxnews.com/us/couple-and-teen-arrested-for-death-of-boy-7-after-punishing-him-over-memorizing-bible-verses

That cun't should be charged as harsh as the man. 

Skeletor

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Re: Prayer and Religion in Public Life
« Reply #555 on: February 10, 2019, 05:04:21 PM »
Hundreds of Southern Baptist leaders, volunteers accused of sexual misconduct in bombshell investigation

Hundreds of leaders and volunteers within Southern Baptist churches across the nation have been accused of sexual misconduct against young churchgoers for decades - many of them quietly returning to church roles even after being convicted for sex crimes.

A bombshell investigation by the Houston Chronicle and the San Antonio Express-News found that over the last 20 years, about 380 Southern Baptist church leaders and volunteers have faced credible accusations of sexual misconduct. Of those, roughly 220 were convicted of sex crimes or received plea deals, in cases involving more than 700 victims in all, the report found. Many accusers were young men and women, who allegedly experienced everything from exposure to pornography to rape and impregnation at the hands of church members.

The newspapers reported that the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) largely treated the accusations as isolated issues, and took on an "out of sight, out of mind" mentality, even amid growing pressures to create a registry so the accusations wouldn't disappear as alleged perpetrators moved from city to city. The Chronicle and Express-News created a database of convicted sexual abusers with documented connections to the SBC.

The investigation took over six months and involved the cross-examination of hundreds of allegations corroborated by court documents and prison records. The results were startling and reiterated how allegations of sexual misconduct aren't limited to just the Catholic church.

https://www.foxnews.com/us/hundreds-of-southern-baptist-church-leaders-volunteers-accused-sexual-misconduct

Skeletor

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Re: Prayer and Religion in Public Life
« Reply #556 on: February 18, 2019, 12:56:01 PM »
Inside the horrifying, unspoken world of sexually abusive nuns

It’s the line from scripture that stayed with Cait Finnegan for nearly half a century as she tried to suppress the painful memories of the sexual abuse she says she suffered at the hands of her Catholic clergy educator.

“God is Love,” Sister Mary Juanita Barto told Finnegan as she repeatedly raped her in classrooms at Mater Christi High School in Queens in the late 1960s.

The abuse began when Finnegan was 15 and continued throughout her high school years — on school buses to out-of-town sporting events, at religious retreats in upstate New York, at Finnegan’s childhood home in Woodside and at a Long Island convent.

Dispenza, who spent 15 years in a habit before becoming an activist against the Catholic church, is bracing for an onslaught of cases against nuns, who typically run schools and orphanages, and spend exponentially more time with children than priests. They also far outnumber priests. There are 55,944 nuns in the US and 41,406 priests, according to statistics compiled by SNAP.

https://nypost.com/2019/02/16/inside-the-horrifying-unspoken-world-of-sexually-abusive-nuns/

Skeletor

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Re: Prayer and Religion in Public Life
« Reply #557 on: February 26, 2019, 03:49:17 PM »
A high ranking member of the Catholic church has been found guilty of child abuse. Last year, a judge handed down a legal order which prevented any reporting of Pell's trial and conviction in Australian media.

George Pell: Cardinal found guilty of sexual offences in Australia

Cardinal George Pell has been found guilty in Australia of sexual offences against children, making him the highest-ranking Catholic figure to receive such a conviction. Pell abused two choir boys in Melbourne's cathedral in 1996, a jury found. He had pleaded not guilty.

As Vatican treasurer, the 77-year-old Australian was widely seen as the Church's third most powerful official. Pell, due to face sentencing hearings from Wednesday, has lodged an appeal.

His trial was heard twice last year because a first jury failed to reach a verdict. A second jury unanimously convicted him of one charge of sexually penetrating a child under 16, and four counts of committing an indecent act on a child under 16. The verdict was handed down in December, but it could not be reported until now for legal reasons.

Who is Pell?

The Australian cleric rose in prominence as a strong supporter of traditional Catholic values, often taking conservative views and advocating for priestly celibacy. He was summoned to Rome in 2014 to clean up the Vatican's finances, and was often described as the Church's third-ranked official.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-47366113


Skeletor

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Re: Prayer and Religion in Public Life
« Reply #558 on: February 26, 2019, 03:53:33 PM »
As if all these revelations and convictions about this pedophile organization are not enough, now it turns out the Catholic church also destroyed files related to abuse.

Cardinal admits to Vatican summit that Catholic Church destroyed abuse files

A top cardinal has admitted that the global Catholic Church destroyed files to prevent documentation of decades of sexual abuse of children, telling the prelates attending Pope Francis' clergy abuse summit Feb. 23 that such maladministration led "in no small measure" to more children being harmed.

In a frank speech to the 190 cardinals, bishops and heads of religious orders taking part in the four-day summit, German Cardinal Reinhard Marx said the church's administration had left victims' rights "trampled underfoot" and "made it impossible" for the worldwide institution to fulfill its mission.

"Files that could have documented the terrible deeds and named those responsible were destroyed, or not even created," said Marx, beginning a list of a number of practices that survivors have documented for years but church officials have long kept under secret.

"Instead of the perpetrators, the victims were regulated and silence imposed on them," the cardinal continued. "The stipulated procedures and processes for the prosecution of offences were deliberately not complied with, but instead cancelled or overridden."

https://www.ncronline.org/news/accountability/cardinal-admits-vatican-summit-catholic-church-destroyed-abuse-files

Skeletor

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Re: Prayer and Religion in Public Life
« Reply #559 on: March 06, 2019, 01:41:09 PM »
But he attended the church's "child protection training program"...

Philadelphia priest charged with raping girl, recording their sex acts

A suspended Catholic priest has been charged with raping a teenage girl at his former Roxborough parish and recording their sexual encounter five years ago. Sources familiar with the investigation said the charges stemmed from Garcia’s relationship with an altar girl at Immaculate Heart Parish in Roxborough, with whom investigators believe he had sexual contact starting when she was about 16.

Garcia, now 49, allegedly offered her alcohol or marijuana during encounters over a period of years in the parish rectory, his living quarters, and other locations, said those sources, who were not authorized to discuss the case publicly.

Garcia’s arrest comes as the Catholic Church grapples with a global resurgence of the clergy sex-abuse crisis kicked off in part by last year’s grand jury report implicating hundreds of Pennsylvania priests and their superiors in decades of abuse and cover-up. Ordained in 2005, Garcia had passed a background check and had attended child protection training programs that the Archdiocese of Philadelphia requires for all priests, said archdiocesan spokesperson Kenneth Gavin in a statement Tuesday.

https://www.philly.com/news/armand-garcia-charged-arrested-priest-sex-abuse-philadelphia-archdiocese-20190305.html

Tbomzisback!

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Re: Prayer and Religion in Public Life
« Reply #560 on: March 06, 2019, 07:37:04 PM »
Unfortunately, being a Christian does not mean you will necessarily be a good person. The Bible is very clear about that. It is no surprise, then, that so many Christians are engaged in such terrible behavior.

The Scott

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Re: Prayer and Religion in Public Life
« Reply #561 on: March 06, 2019, 07:43:39 PM »
Unfortunately, being a Christian does not mean you will necessarily be a good person. The Bible is very clear about that. It is no surprise, then, that so many Christians are engaged in such terrible behavior.

Don't be pathetic. Being a Christian means you don't engage in such deviancy.  The Word is quite clear.  You however are fuzzy.

You do not follow the Nazarene. 

AbrahamG

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Re: Prayer and Religion in Public Life
« Reply #562 on: March 06, 2019, 08:17:40 PM »
Don't be pathetic. Being a Christian means you don't engage in such deviancy.  The Word is quite clear.  You however are fuzzy.

You do not follow the Nazarene. 

He takes it up the ass.  Big Mike Cox style.

The Scott

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Re: Prayer and Religion in Public Life
« Reply #563 on: March 07, 2019, 07:28:35 AM »
He takes it up the ass.  Big Mike Cox style.

If he is really  "tbomz", then yup.  He put his anus out there as a toll road.  My point being is he doesn't know the Nazarene.

Agnostic007

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Re: Prayer and Religion in Public Life
« Reply #564 on: March 07, 2019, 10:43:00 AM »
Don't be pathetic. Being a Christian means you don't engage in such deviancy.  The Word is quite clear.  You however are fuzzy.

You do not follow the Nazarene. 

Good post

Skeletor

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Re: Prayer and Religion in Public Life
« Reply #565 on: March 08, 2019, 03:01:01 PM »
Texas judge interrupts jury, says God told him defendant is not guilty

A state district judge in Comal County said God told him to intervene in jury deliberations to sway jurors to return a not guilty verdict in the trial of a Buda woman accused of trafficking a teen girl for sex.

Judge Jack Robison apologized to jurors for the interruption, but defended his actions by telling them “when God tells me I gotta do something, I gotta do it,” according to the Herald-Zeitung in New Braunfels.

The jury went against the judge’s wishes, finding Gloria Romero-Perez guilty of continuous trafficking of a person and later sentenced her to 25 years in prison. They found her not guilty of a separate charge of sale or purchase of a child.

http://www.statesman.com/news/crime--law/texas-judge-interrupts-jury-says-god-told-him-defendant-not-guilty/ZRdGbT7xPu7lc6kMMPeWKL/

As expected he got off lightly and instead of being booted off the bench or sent to prison he received a "public warning".

Judge says God told him that sex trafficking suspect was innocent

A Texas district court judge received a public warning after he told the jury to keep deliberating over a defendant they convicted because God told him she was innocent.

Comal County Judge Jack Robison reported himself to the Texas Commission on Judicial Conduct after the outburst on Jan. 12, 2018, according to the committee's disciplinary document.

https://www.wmtw.com/article/judge-says-god-told-him-that-sex-trafficking-suspect-was-innocent/26713644

Quote
The Commission concludes from the facts and evidence presented that Judge Robison engaged in improper ex parte communications with the jury in violation of Canon 3B(8) of the Texas Code of Judicial Conduct and engaged in conduct that cast public discredit upon the judiciary and the administration of justice, in violation of article V, §1-a(6)A of the Texas Constitution. The Commission concludes based on the facts and evidence presented that Judge Robison exhibited prejudice against the prosecution and bias in favor of the defense during the trial in violation of Canon 3B(5) of the Texas Code of Judicial Conduct and that the Judge's failure to timely recuse himself from the matter constitured violations of Canons 2A, 3B(1) and 3B(2) of the Texas Code of Judicial Conduct.

http://scjc.texas.gov/media/46720/robison18-0510etalpubwarn22019.pdf


Dos Equis

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Re: Prayer and Religion in Public Life
« Reply #566 on: March 11, 2019, 06:12:32 PM »
New Harvard Research Says U.S. Christianity Is Not Shrinking, But Growing Stronger
Is churchgoing and religious adherence really in ‘widespread decline’ so much so that conservative believers should suffer ‘growing anxiety’? Absolutely not.
Glenn T. Stanton By Glenn T. Stanton
JANUARY 22, 2018

“Meanwhile, a widespread decline in churchgoing and religious affiliation had contributed to a growing anxiety among conservative believers.” Statements like this are uttered with such confidence and frequency that most Americans accept them as uncontested truisms. This one emerged just this month in an exceedingly silly article in The Atlantic on Vice President Mike Pence.

Religious faith in America is going the way of the Yellow Pages and travel maps, we keep hearing. It’s just a matter of time until Christianity’s total and happy extinction, chortle our cultural elites. Is this true? Is churchgoing and religious adherence really in “widespread decline” so much so that conservative believers should suffer “growing anxiety”?

Two words: Absolutely not.

New research published late last year by scholars at Harvard University and Indiana University Bloomington is just the latest to reveal the myth. This research questioned the “secularization thesis,” which holds that the United States is following most advanced industrial nations in the death of their once vibrant faith culture. Churches becoming mere landmarks, dance halls, boutique hotels, museums, and all that.

Not only did their examination find no support for this secularization in terms of actual practice and belief, the researchers proclaim that religion continues to enjoy “persistent and exceptional intensity” in America. These researchers hold our nation “remains an exceptional outlier and potential counter example to the secularization thesis.”

What Accounts for the Difference in Perceptions?
How can their findings appear so contrary to what we have been hearing from so many seemingly informed voices? It comes down primarily to what kind of faith one is talking about. Not the belief system itself, per se, but the intensity and seriousness with which people hold and practice that faith.

Mainline churches are tanking as if they have super-sized millstones around their necks. Yes, these churches are hemorrhaging members in startling numbers, but many of those folks are not leaving Christianity. They are simply going elsewhere. Because of this shifting, other very different kinds of churches are holding strong in crowds and have been for as long as such data has been collected. In some ways, they are even growing. This is what this new research has found.

The percentage of Americans who attend church more than once a week, pray daily, and accept the Bible as wholly reliable and deeply instructive to their lives has remained absolutely, steel-bar constant for the last 50 years or more, right up to today. These authors describe this continuity as “patently persistent.”

The percentage of such people is also not small. One in three Americans prays multiple times a day, while one in 15 do so in other countries on average. Attending services more than once a week continues to be twice as high among Americans compared to the next highest-attending industrial country, and three times higher than the average comparable nation.

One-third of Americans hold that the Bible is the actual word of God. Fewer than 10 percent believe so in similar countries. The United States “clearly stands out as exceptional,” and this exceptionalism has not been decreasing over time. In fact, these scholars determine that the percentages of Americans who are the most vibrant and serious in their faith is actually increasing a bit, “which is making the United States even more exceptional over time.”

This also means, of course, that those who take their faith seriously are becoming a markedly larger proportion of all religious people. In 1989, 39 percent of those who belonged to a religion held strong beliefs and practices. Today, these are 47 percent of all the religiously affiliated. This all has important implications for politics, indicating that the voting bloc of religious conservatives is not shrinking, but actually growing among the faithful. The declining influence of liberal believers at the polls has been demonstrated in many important elections recently.

These Are Not Isolated Findings
The findings of these scholars are not outliers. There has been a growing gulf between the faithful and the dabblers for quite some time, with the first group growing more numerous. Think about the church you attend, relative to its belief system. It is extremely likely that if your church teaches the Bible with seriousness, calls its people to real discipleship, and encourages daily intimacy with God, it has multiple services to handle the coming crowds.

Most decent-size American cities have a treasure trove of such churches for believers to choose from. This shows no sign of changing. If, however, your church is theologically liberal or merely lukewarm, it’s likely laying off staff and wondering how to pay this month’s light bill. People are navigating toward substantive Christianity.

The folks at Pew have been reporting for years that while the mainline churches are in drastic free fall, the group that “shows the most significant growth is the nondenominational family.” Of course, these nondenominational churches are 99.9 percent thorough-blooded evangelical. Pew also notes that “evangelical Protestantism and the historically black Protestant tradition have been more stable” over the years, with even a slight uptick in the last decade because many congregants leaving the mainline churches are migrating to evangelical churches that hold fast to the fundamentals of the Christian faith.

When the so-called “progressive” churches question the historicity of Jesus, deny the reality of sin, support abortion, ordain clergy in same-sex relationships and perform their marriages, people desiring real Christianity head elsewhere. Fact: evangelical churches gain five new congregants exiled from the liberal churches for every one they lose for any reason. They also do a better job of retaining believers from childhood to adulthood than do mainline churches.

The Other Key Factor: Faithful People Grow More Children
There is another factor at work here beyond orthodox belief. The University of London’s Eric Kaufmann explains in his important book “Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth?” (he says yes) that the sustaining vitality, and even significant per capita growth, of serious Christian belief is as firmly rooted in fertility as it is in faithful teaching and evangelism. Globally, he says that the more robust baby-making practices of orthodox Jews and Christians, as opposed to the baby-limiting practices of liberals, create many more seriously religious people than a secular agenda can keep up with.

The growth of serious Christian belief is as firmly rooted in fertility as it is in faithful teaching and evangelism.
Fertility determines who influences the future in many important ways. He puts it bluntly, “The secular West and East Asia are aging and their share of the world population declining. This means the world is getting more religious even as people in the rich world shed their faith.”

Fertility is as important as fidelity for Christianity and Judaism’s triumph from generation to generation. Kaufmann contends, “Put high fertility and [faith] retention rates together with general population decline and you have a potent formula for change.”

It comes down to this: God laughs at the social Darwinists. Their theory is absolutely true, but just not in the way they think. Those who have the babies and raise and educate them well tend to direct the future of humanity. Serious Christians are doing this. Those redefining the faith and reality itself are not.

This why Orthodox theologian David Bentley Hart proclaimed in First Things, long before the proposal of the Benedict Option, that the most “subversive and effective strategy we might undertake [to counter the culture] would be one of militant fecundity: abundant, relentless, exuberant, and defiant childbearing.” The future rests in the hands of the fertile.

What About All the Millennial Ex-Christians?
But what about our young people? We are constantly hearing that young people are “leaving the church in droves,” followed by wildly disturbing statistics. This also requires a closer look at who is actually leaving and from where. Pew reports that of young adults who left their faith, only 11 percent said they had a strong faith in childhood while 89 percent said they came from a home that had a very weak faith in belief and practice.

It’s not a news flash that kids don’t tend to hang onto what they never had in the first place. Leading sociologist of religion Christopher Smith has found through his work that most emerging adults “report little change in how religious they have been in the previous five years.” He surprisingly also found that those who do report a change say they have been more religious, not less. This certainly does not mean there is a major revival going on among young adults, but nor does it mean the sky is falling.

Add to this Rodney Stark’s warning that we should not confuse leaving the faith with attending less often. He and other scholars report that young adults begin to attend church less often in their “independent years” and have always done so for as long back as such data has been collected. It’s part of the nature of emerging adulthood. Just as sure as these young people do other things on Sunday morning, the leading sociologists of religion find they return to church when they get married, have children, and start to live a real adult life. It’s like clockwork and always has been. However, the increasing delay among young adults in entering marriage and family is likely lengthening this gap today.

More Americans Attend Church Now Than At the Founding
What is really counter-intuitive is what Stark and his colleagues at the Baylor Institute for Studies of Religion found when looking at U.S. church attendance numbers going back to the days of our nation’s founding. They found that the percentage of church-attending Americans relative to overall population is more than four times greater today than it was in 1776. The number of attendees has continued to rise each and every decade over our nation’s history right up until the present day.

The number of church attendees has continued to rise each and every decade over our nation’s history right up until the present day.
People are making theological statements with their feet, shuffling to certain churches because they offer what people come seeking: clear, faithful, practical teaching of the scriptures, help in living intimately with and obediently to God, and making friends with people who will challenge and encourage them in their faith. To paraphrase the great Southern novelist Flannery O’Connor, if your church isn’t going to believe and practice actual Christianity, then “to hell with it.” This is what people are saying with their choices.

Or as Eric Kaufmann asserts, “Once secularism rears its head and fundamentalism responds with a clear alternative, moderate religion strikes many as redundant. Either you believe the stuff or you don’t. If you do, it makes sense to go for the real thing, which takes a firm stand against godlessness.”

If your Christianity is reconstituted to the day’s fashion, don’t be surprised if people lose interest in it. Few are seeking 2 Percent Christianity. They want the genuine deal, and the demographics on religion of the last few decades unmistakably support the fact.

http://thefederalist.com/2018/01/22/guy/?fbclid=IwAR0LFsrsT4KdHwhXfFj4uHsSC_fW_TmSKEGxD8vcpWUez9RnybegL_G49mA#.XH7kV-iIzB6.facebook

Agnostic007

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Re: Prayer and Religion in Public Life
« Reply #567 on: March 11, 2019, 08:50:20 PM »
30% of Americans believe that the Bible is the true Word of God. In other countries similar to the USA, only 10% do so.

I'm not sure this is something to crow about.


IroNat

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Re: Prayer and Religion in Public Life
« Reply #568 on: March 12, 2019, 04:06:24 AM »
I'm beginning to suspect a problem in the Cathlolic Church.

Agnostic007

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Re: Prayer and Religion in Public Life
« Reply #569 on: March 12, 2019, 02:58:23 PM »
I'm beginning to suspect a problem in the Cathlolic Church.

 :)

Dos Equis

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Re: Prayer and Religion in Public Life
« Reply #570 on: March 12, 2019, 04:25:55 PM »
30% of Americans believe that the Bible is the true Word of God. In other countries similar to the USA, only 10% do so.

I'm not sure this is something to crow about.


Who is crowing about anything?  And why do you care?

The Scott

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Re: Prayer and Religion in Public Life
« Reply #571 on: March 12, 2019, 06:15:09 PM »
30% of Americans believe that the Bible is the true Word of God. In other countries similar to the USA, only 10% do so.

I'm not sure this is something to crow about.



To believe the Bible is true means nothing.  Living that belief?  Everything.  Most people the world over have nothing to crow about.

But they sure can eat it.


Skeletor

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Re: Prayer and Religion in Public Life
« Reply #572 on: March 12, 2019, 07:00:01 PM »
A high ranking member of the Catholic church has been found guilty of child abuse. Last year, a judge handed down a legal order which prevented any reporting of Pell's trial and conviction in Australian media.

George Pell: Cardinal found guilty of sexual offences in Australia

Cardinal George Pell has been found guilty in Australia of sexual offences against children, making him the highest-ranking Catholic figure to receive such a conviction. Pell abused two choir boys in Melbourne's cathedral in 1996, a jury found. He had pleaded not guilty.

As Vatican treasurer, the 77-year-old Australian was widely seen as the Church's third most powerful official. Pell, due to face sentencing hearings from Wednesday, has lodged an appeal.

His trial was heard twice last year because a first jury failed to reach a verdict. A second jury unanimously convicted him of one charge of sexually penetrating a child under 16, and four counts of committing an indecent act on a child under 16. The verdict was handed down in December, but it could not be reported until now for legal reasons.

Who is Pell?

The Australian cleric rose in prominence as a strong supporter of traditional Catholic values, often taking conservative views and advocating for priestly celibacy. He was summoned to Rome in 2014 to clean up the Vatican's finances, and was often described as the Church's third-ranked official.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-47366113



6 years is not enough, even for a pervert of his age.

George Pell: Cardinal jailed for child sexual abuse in Australia

Cardinal George Pell has been jailed for six years after being convicted of sexually abusing two boys in Australia.

The former Vatican treasurer is the most senior Catholic figure ever to be found guilty of sexual offences against children.

Pell abused the 13-year-old choir boys in a Melbourne cathedral in 1996, a jury ruled last year.

The cardinal, 77, maintains his innocence and is appealing against his convictions.

In sentencing Pell on Wednesday, a judge said the cleric had committed "a brazen and forceful sexual attack on the two victims".

"Your conduct was permeated by staggering arrogance," said Judge Peter Kidd.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-47549297

Agnostic007

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Re: Prayer and Religion in Public Life
« Reply #573 on: March 13, 2019, 03:04:38 PM »
To believe the Bible is true means nothing.  Living that belief?  Everything.  Most people the world over have nothing to crow about.

But they sure can eat it.



My observation. If they really believed the bible to be true, not just conditioned to think they believe or say they believe it, then they WOULD live that belief. The alternative would be a hell they believed existed. So I have my doubts about many of those who claim the belief as a insurance policy so to speak, and really, gun to head, would admit they really don't

Skeletor

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Re: Prayer and Religion in Public Life
« Reply #574 on: March 16, 2019, 05:25:11 PM »
Ex-priest charged with raping New Mexico girl in 1990s

Former Roman Catholic priest Sabine Griego was arrested Tuesday at his home in Las Vegas, N.M., accused of raping an 8-year-old Albuquerque girl nearly three decades ago. Griego, 81, has been charged by the state Attorney General’s Office with one count of sexual penetration of a minor and coercion resulting in great bodily harm and mental anguish.
Documents filed by the Attorney General’s Office this week suggest the Archdiocese of Santa Fe knew of the rape allegations made by “Jane Doe A” for at least 15 years and likely much longer.

The charges against Griego are the most recent; he has been accused of sexually assaulting more than 30 children over a period of decades while in the archdiocese. He is implicated in eight closed cases filed in New Mexico between 1993, the same year he was put on leave from the church, and 1995, according to court records.

https://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/ex-priest-charged-with-raping-new-mexico-girl-in-s/article_9c40d7e7-fdc6-5ae4-bd82-2325faa88fd7.html