Nuns and babies. Ireland.
- Thread starter wacko
- Start date
I used to think Buddhists were 'less bad'. And then they attacked the Rohingya.
mykel
Perpetual Hack.
Ya, ok.
YOU CAN STILL HAVE AND PRACTICE YOUR RELIGION.
YOU CAN STILL GATHER TO PRACTICE AND DISCUSS YOUR BELIEFS.
No big power structures. You are just prevented from turning the whole thing back into a series of hegemonies.
As for the money going to those in need, do you have a problem with donations to a religious entity that were given under the assumption that it would go to those in need actually going to those in need?
Human rights - please, if the organized religions cared a whit about human rights they would not have the history they do. They are still fighting to cover up their own stink. They are putting the organization above the people they claim to serve. It is about nothing other than power and control wrapped up in an easy to swallow package.
ks.234
Half way to Infinity
Is anyone telling religious people how to live their lives? As far as I can see people are criticising religious institutions and various religions, not the religious themselves.
Had a look at the trailer. But life is depressing enough already.
-alan-
pfm Member
The changes here have been fairly dramatic in the last 20 years. My take on it is there were a number of factors that came together at the right time that helped accelerate what is probably going to happen in most civilised countries anyway.
With the country having been colonised and run in a somewhat less-than-mutually-beneficial manner for 800 years or so, there is and always has been a legacy of people being a tad sceptical about 'other people's rules'. Live in Ireland for any length of time and you quickly get a sense of how the locals tend to take most rules as advisory at best, and always with an underlying suspicion as to whether the rules are being imposed by somebody else in their own best interest.
In the early noughties, following a number of revelations about corruption throughout the political sphere, there were a series of high level Tribunals which showed pretty clearly that some of the most Senior Govt figures (including a number of Ministers and the then Taoiseach/PM) had their snouts well and truly in the trough. Despite having thrown off the Colonial shackles, there was a growing sense our own State (and Church) Institutions didn't really seem to be operating entirely in the best interests of the population as a whole. Those Tribunals opened up an extremely wide-ranging debate on power and authority - with the perhaps not entirely expected consequence that people began to question the role and bona fides of all of the various bodies that had laid claim to authority since the State took control of its own affairs back in the 1920s.
The country is a small one, with a total population less than 1/2 the size of London and perhaps 2-3 degrees of separation (at most) between any individuals living here. Once the lid had been lifted, it didn't take too long for the wide-ranging tales of abuse in all its forms to come tumbling out of the woodwork. Against the backdrop of the political classes trying to clean up their own act and distance themselves from the bad old days, there was no way the State was going to step in and continue to try to protect the Church, and so it all began to unravel.
As you rightly point out, we have a new generation of politicians in place, and they very successfully tapped into that desire for change and used it to further unseat the old lot, and create a new norm here. Throw in the fact that most of the under 25s are fairly well educated, see themselves as modern Europeans with a genuine say in how they would like to be governed as opposed to being ruled by a local cabal of seemingly self-serving politicians and similarly self-serving religious organisations, and you could say the country is finally starting to come of age.
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Darren L
Egalitarian
Not just a story, in knew an English man who moved here in the very early eighties, bit of an old hippy, at first he lived in Crumlin which was fine, he then moved to Belfast when he got a job at Zeus Audio, he had a small Buddha statue in the front window of his house. He was approached walking home from work one evening and asked if he was a Protestant or Catholic, he replied he was Buddhist and then was asked 'Aye, but are you a Protestant Buddhist or a Catholic Buddhist?'
Unfortunately @-alan- it seems we are very much behind the times at 'home' in comparison to Ireland nowadays.
-alan-
pfm Member
^ Yeah - used to be we saw ourselves as about 10 years ahead of all those Free-Staters, but that has pretty much reversed now.
My kids - born and raised here South of the Border - look across to the political leaders and debate back home with a degree of bewilderment. I have done my damnedest to try to explain it all to them, but do find myself struggling
My kids - born and raised here South of the Border - look across to the political leaders and debate back home with a degree of bewilderment. I have done my damnedest to try to explain it all to them, but do find myself struggling
vince rocker
pfm Member
OK no need to shout. I'm sure believers will thank you for giving them permission to follow their beliefs.
Universal Declaration, article 18, European Declaration, article 9, HRA 1998, article 9 all protect the rights of people of faith, and no faith. If you are going to chuck this out, maybe you would like to get rid of the right to life, or freedom from torture? As the HRA makes clear, article 9 not an absolute right. Religions are not above the law.
ks.234
Half way to Infinity
There appears to be some confusion between the right to be religious, and atrocities committed under the protection of a religious organisation by some of its members. An individual can believe they have Fairies at the bottom of their garden for all I care, but if that belief becomes an organised religion that commits atrocities in the name of Fairiesatthebottomofthengardenianity, then it becomes a problem and something to be condemned.
vince rocker
pfm Member
1. People of faith say you cannot separate the faithful from the church. I am not religious but my Christian friends say they gain comfort (or some similar idea) from being part of a worldwide community and I think other faiths would say the same. I repeat, it is not the right of non-believers to tell believers how to live their faith as long as it is within the law.
2. Yes, there are people who commit crimes and abuses in the name of religion. As I said, religions are not above the law (except in a theocracy) and in all cases the abusers are a small minority, condemned by the majority of believers for their actions and accused of perverting the faith. To argue that, for example, a few Muslims commit terrorism in the name of Allah therefore the Muslim faith should be abolished is siding with the likes of Stephen Yaxley-Racist. Similarly, to get back on topic, the priests and nuns who committed the Magdalen Laundry abuses should face the law and most Catholics are appalled by their actions.
3. You ignore all the good that is done in the name of faith.
ks.234
Half way to Infinity
This is a thread about atrocities committed in Ireland. It’s not about the sensitivities of believers
Don't worry, Boris is going to kick this bit of European meddling into the long grass come January.
1964meb
pfm Member
Thanks you for your comment Vince. I can however comment on the violent abuse that I received and the separate political and ideological damage that happened to me in my religious school.