Pretend catholics, what do you think of them?

orestes

I've been wondering about something recently and was wondering if the posters in this forum could help me out.

We are supposedly a catholic country, but the vast majority of people in this country are not catholic as far as I can tell. Some of them go to church every Sunday, but a lot of them just do it because it is what they have always done, most of them have never read the bible, people break the "rules" of catholicism on a regular basis (contraception, divorce, etc.) and never give a thought to religion or god in their daily lives. And yet these same people will put down Catholic as their religion on a census or claim they are catholic if you ask them their religion. I'm not going to go into the whole thing, I imagine you get the kind of person I am talking about.

I was just wondering what the people on this forum think about these pseudo-catholics generally? And from the point of view of a genuine practicing catholic, are these people damned as much as us athiest folks, or is the pretense of catholocism enough to get them off the hook?

Rev Hellfire

Gawd those pretend Catholics really get my wick up, they're nearly as bad as those pretend Christians who feel the need to judge others.
In the end of the day a persons relationship with god is a private thing, you have no way of telling what someone believes by their outward appearance. I guess it’s like those atheists who in times of hardship and sufferance might throw a request skywards just as an insurance policy. Are they no longer atheists because of a human failing ?

BrianCalgary

The Christian life is about emulating Christ, by allowing God to work through you.

If you have God working through you, you will produce a pretty decent environment around you of love and compassion that will attract others.

To sit in church Sunday after Sunday and claim to be one with that denomination yet not to practice the teachings of it founder, Christ, is sad.

This does not apply to Catholicism alone.

Nevyn

orestes wrote: »

I was just wondering what the people on this forum think about these pseudo-catholics generally? And from the point of view of a genuine practicing catholic, are these people damned as much as us athiest folks, or is the pretense of catholocism enough to get them off the hook?

Burn them at the stake ?
Hang them ?
Drown them ?

They are after all bearing false witness and are heretical.

BrianCalgary

Thaedydal wrote: »

Burn them at the stake ?
Hang them ?
Drown them ?

They are after all bearing false witness and are heretical.

I am always amazed at how the solution to heresy was to kill. Something that Jesus never taught and in fact stopped happening.

Just musings Thaed, not directed at you. as I know that your stance is not to kill heretics.

v300

I like Pretend Catholics about as much as I like Pretend Priests and Bishops.

I hope this answers your question.

Nevyn

BrianCalgary wrote: »

I am always amazed at how the solution to heresy was to kill. Something that Jesus never taught and in fact stopped happening.

Just musings Thaed, not directed at you. as I know that your stance is not to kill heretics.

Thats ok, I prefer the old ways of capturing them and making them slaves/bonds people, hmmm could do with a heretic to scrub my floors for me.

I think that ala cart anything is disrespectful when it comes to religions.

Zombrex

Rev Hellfire wrote: »

really get my wick up

Excuse me?

robindch

orestes wrote: »

I was just wondering what the people on this forum think about these pseudo-catholics generally?

Personally, I think that these people should leap down from the fence they're sitting on and into the lush grass and pleasant weather on our side. If nothing else, they can start to enjoy their Sunday mornings again

The church's general claim is that you can only live forever if you accept the truth of the church's role in gaining this gift for you, and who's to say that people who don't go along to the church every week, or who don't accept the church's position on contraception, don't actually believe this claim? The various beliefs here are not related, except by confusion.

Ultimately, it comes down to whether or not people happen to believe whatever it is that they are supposed to believe in order to gain reward, and god has made few formal, or definitive, public statements about that recently, so it's really impossible to know.

Annatar

orestes wrote: »

I was just wondering what the people on this forum think about these pseudo-catholics generally?

If I had to say, I recon there is no one person in the world (Pope included) that follows every aspect of Catholism in every day life. Not one.
Does that make us all pseudo-catholics?

No, just human.

As said before, how can anyone judge whats in someone heart at anytime? How CAN we judge others?
We Cant. Anyone who does is a hypocrite and well.....

The time spent at Mass checking who is there, who looks bored etc, can be better spent praying!

Annatar

Thaedydal wrote: »

I think that ala cart anything is disrespectful when it comes to religions.

Yet we are sposed to follow our conscience in all things. If the Church says one thing, my Conscience another....

Im still obeying the Church by following my conscience, cos, well, the Pope said I should.



Lovely circular reasoning

PDN

robindch wrote: »

Personally, I think that these people should leap down from the fence they're sitting on and into the lush grass and pleasant weather on our side. If nothing else, they can start to enjoy their Sunday mornings again

Then again, it might screw up one of your favourite sets of statistics - the one about how few atheists get sent to prison.

The beauty of pretend Catholics, or indeed pretend Christians, is that every time they do something immoral, atheists can point out how hypocritical and wicked Christians are. Then, if a real practicing Christian tries to point out the obvious, you can accuse us of using the 'one true Scotsman' argument.

Zombrex

PDN wrote: »

Then again, it might screw up one of your favourite sets of statistics - the one about how few atheists get sent to prison.

The beauty of pretend Catholics, or indeed pretend Christians, is that every time they do something immoral, atheists can point out how hypocritical and wicked Christians are. Then, if a real practicing Christian tries to point out the obvious, you can accuse us of using the 'one true Scotsman' argument.

Yes but all of you are in essence pretend Christians, so if we did that we would have no statistics left.

[EDIT]

I thought this was perfectly clear, but obviously not, so let me clarify.

All Christians are "pretend" Christians to at least some Christians of other denominations and interpretations and to non-Christians. I can find "Christians" who think all of you are pretend Christians and who you no doubt think are themselves "pretend" Christians (Fred Phelps springs to mind)

Talking about pretend Catholics is a bit easier because being a Catholic is better defined than being a Christian. In fact "being a Christian" is not really defined at all, beyond these loose definition of following Jesus Christ which is such a subjective concept that pretty much anyone who thinks they are following Jesus has as much of a valid claim to that as anyone else. You may all claim they are wrong but with no real authority to decide what is or is not a proper Christian so that is really rather meaningless.