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Notre Dame on Fire


matty40s

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9 minutes ago, Jen-in-Wellies said:

Twice! Was lucky to visit it a couple of months before the first fire and saw the library in its original state. Very sad to see any great building lost like this. Even rebuilt they are never the same. Hope Notre Dame isn't as bad as it looks, but it does look very bad right now.

 

 

Yes dammit, I meant to put it on the list twice!!

 

 

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Thank the Lord that the fire started after the cathedral had been closed to the public for the day, otherwise there could have been lives lost.

I have been in that building several times and have always been moved by its dignity and beauty. I hope it can be fully restored, but I suspect that many priceless parts of it have been  lost for ever.

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9 hours ago, system 4-50 said:

On the one hand it is sad to see the loss of a great work of architecture, on the other hand it is the disappearance of a structure built by the sweat of lots of poor people who should never have been duped into paying for it, and occupied by men of dubious character.

Now, where is that bunker?

 

9 hours ago, system 4-50 said:

On the one hand it is sad to see the loss of a great work of architecture, on the other hand it is the disappearance of a structure built by the sweat of lots of poor people who should never have been duped into paying for it, and occupied by men of dubious character.

Now, where is that bunker?

Completely unnecessary remark and as for the latter comment, you're in no place and have no right to insinuate like that.

Edited by Philip
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23 minutes ago, Philip said:

 

Completely unnecessary remark and as for the latter comment, you're in no place and have no right to insinuate like that.

On a discussion forum remarks don't have to be necessary, and on the second point, you are right, it should have been "run by an organisation that contains men of dubious character". Did you mean something particular with "you're in no place" ?

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48 minutes ago, Philip said:

 

Completely unnecessary remark and as for the latter comment, you're in no place and have no right to insinuate like that.

How many remarks made on CWDF are "necessary"?

Mr. System has every right to express his views, just as other members have every right to agree or to disagree with them.

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36 minutes ago, system 4-50 said:

On a discussion forum remarks don't have to be necessary, and on the second point, you are right, it should have been "run by an organisation that contains men of dubious character". Did you mean something particular with "you're in no place" ?

I suspect most organisations contain people of dubious character if you dig deep enough.

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33 minutes ago, Athy said:

How many remarks made on CWDF are "necessary"?

Mr. System has every right to express his views, just as other members have every right to agree or to disagree with them.

 

33 minutes ago, Athy said:

How many remarks made on CWDF are "necessary"?

Mr. System has every right to express his views, just as other members have every right to agree or to disagree with them.

Well I feel he is completely wrong to generalise the way he is doing, based on a minority of clergy who unfortunately tarnish the name of other priests because of their actions (as this comment proves). There is enough of this malicious stuff in the media in general without needing to drag this thread down by putting it in here. And unless he actually knows what goes on in this parish then he is in no place to make this kind of comment.

Edited by Philip
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8 minutes ago, Philip said:

 

Well I feel he is completely wrong to generalise the way he is doing, based on a minority of clergy who unfortunately tarnish the name of other priests because of their actions (as this comment proves). There is enough of this malicious stuff in the media in general without needing to drag this thread down by putting it in here. And unless he actually knows what goes on in this parish then he is in no place to make this kind of comment.

I rest my case.

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4 minutes ago, Philip said:

 

Well I feel he is completely wrong to generalise the way he is doing, based on a minority of clergy who unfortunately tarnish the name of other priests because of their actions (as this comment proves). There is enough of this malicious stuff in the media in general without needing to drag this thread down by putting it in here. H

Forgetting all of the 'historical stuff' - lets just look at the last century :

 

20th Century Church Atrocities

 

Catholic extermination camps
Surpisingly few know that Nazi extermination camps in World War II were by no means the only ones in Europe at the time. In the years 1942-1943 also in Croatia existed numerous extermination camps, run by Catholic Ustasha under their dictator Ante Paveli, a practising Catholic and regular visitor to the then pope. There were even concentration camps exclusively for children!

In these camps - the most notorious was Jasenovac, headed by a Franciscan friar - orthodox-Christian Serbians (and a substantial number of Jews) were murdered. Like the Nazis the Catholic Ustasha burned their victims in kilns, alive (the Nazis were decent enough to have their victims gassed first). But most of the victims were simply stabbed, slain or shot to death, the number of them being estimated between 300,000 and 600,000, in a rather tiny country. Many of the killers were Franciscan friars. The atrocities were appalling enough to induce bystanders of the Nazi "Sicherheitsdient der SS", watching, to complain about them to Hitler (who did not listen). The pope knew about these events and did nothing to prevent them. [MV]

 

Catholic terror in Vietnam
In 1954 Vietnamese freedom fighters - the Viet Minh - had finally defeated the French colonial government in North Vietnam, which by then had been supported by U.S. funds amounting to more than $2 billion. Although the victorious assured religious freedom to all (most non-Buddhist Vietnamese were Catholics), due to huge anti-communist propaganda campaigns many Catholics fled to the South. With the help of Catholic lobbies in Washington and Cardinal Spellman, the Vatican's spokesman in U.S. politics, who later on would call the U.S. forces in Vietnam "Soldiers of Christ", a scheme was concocted to prevent democratic elections which could have brought the communist Viet Minh to power in the South as well, and the fanatic Catholic Ngo Dinh Diem was made president of South Vietnam. [MW16ff]

Diem saw to it that U.S. aid, food, technical and general assistance was given to Catholics alone, Buddhist individuals and villages were ignored or had to pay for the food aids which were given to Catholics for free. The only religious denomination to be supported was Roman Catholicism.

The Vietnamese McCarthyism turned even more vicious than its American counterpart. By 1956 Diem promulgated a presidential order which read:

"Individuals considered dangerous to the national defence and common security may be confined by executive order, to a concentration camp."

Supposedly to fight communism, thousands of Buddhist protesters and monks were imprisoned in "detention camps." Out of protest dozens of Buddhist teachers - male and female - and monks poured gasoline over themselves and burned themselves. (Note that Buddhists burned themselves: in comparison Christians tend to burn others). Meanwhile some of the prison camps, which in the meantime were filled with Protestant and even Catholic protesters as well, had turned into no-nonsense death camps. It is estimated that during this period of terror (1955-1960) at least 24,000 were wounded - mostly in street riots - 80,000 people were executed, 275,000 had been detained or tortured, and about 500,000 were sent to concentration or detention camps. [MW76-89].

To support this kind of government in the next decade thousands of American GI's lost their life....

 

Rwanda Massacres
In 1994 in the small African country of Rwanda in just a few months several hundred thousand civilians were butchered, apparently a conflict of the Hutu and Tutsi ethnic groups.

For quite some time I heard only rumours about Catholic clergy actively involved in the 1994 Rwanda massacres. Odd denials of involvement were printed in Catholic church journals, before even anybody had openly accused members of the church.

Then, 10/10/96, in the newscast of S2 Aktuell, Germany - a station not at all critical to Christianity - the following was stated:

"Anglican as well as Catholic priests and nuns are suspect of having actively participated in murders. Especially the conduct of a certain Catholic priest has been occupying the public mind in Rwanda's capital Kigali for months. He was minister of the church of the Holy Family and allegedly murdered Tutsis in the most brutal manner. He is reported to have accompanied marauding Hutu militia with a gun in his cowl. In fact there has been a bloody slaughter of Tutsis seeking shelter in his parish. Even two years after the massacres many Catholics refuse to set foot on the threshold of their church, because to them the participation of a certain part of the clergy in the slaughter is well established. There is almost no church in Rwanda that has not seen refugees - women, children, old - being brutally butchered facing the crucifix.

According to eyewitnesses clergymen gave away hiding Tutsis and turned them over to the machetes of the Hutu militia.

In connection with these events again and again two Benedictine nuns are mentioned, both of whom have fled into a Belgian monastery in the meantime to avoid prosecution. According to survivors one of them called the Hutu killers and led them to several thousand people who had sought shelter in her monastery. By force the doomed were driven out of the churchyard and were murdered in the presence of the nun right in front of the gate. The other one is also reported to have directly cooperated with the murderers of the Hutu militia. In her case again witnesses report that she watched the slaughtering of people in cold blood and without showing response. She is even accused of having procured some petrol used by the killers to set on fire and burn their victims alive..." [S2]

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2 minutes ago, Philip said:

 

Well I feel he is completely wrong to generalise the way he is doing, based on a minority of clergy who unfortunately tarnish the name of other priests because of their actions

Pretty much all Catholic priests believe that I will be suffering eternal torment in the fiery pits of hell because I don't believe in their particular imaginary friend. 

That, to me, suggests "dubious character". 

The fact that paedophiles are attracted to the priesthood and then protected by the church is, in my opinion, a whole different level. 

That said the concert held by the Kings College Choir in Notre Dame in the early 90s was one of the loveliest things I have ever experienced. 

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3 minutes ago, Alan de Enfield said:

Forgetting all of the 'historical stuff' - lets just look at the last century :

 

 

Huge snip (sorry) 

All religious or ideological atrocities combined pale into insignificance when compared to the death and suffering caused by the two sentences uttered by Catholic missionaries... 

 

"Here is medicine so your children won't die." 

"Contraception is a sin." 

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Alan, is this your own research or have you copied it from somewhere else?

2 minutes ago, carlt said:

Huge snip (sorry) 

All religious or ideological atrocities combined pale into insignificance when compared to the death and suffering caused by the two sentences uttered by Catholic missionaries... 

 

"Here is medicine so your children won't die." 

"Contraception is a sin." 

To quote N. Molesworth, "Sir, I don't quite see".

Bringing medicine to those who lack it seems a laudable and humanitarian act.

Surely, lack of contraception causes new life, not death.

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3 minutes ago, Athy said:

 

Surely, lack of contraception causes new life, not death.

Not when the huge child mortality rate meant that folk were having a dozen or more babies to produce a couple of surviving children. 

When all those kids suddenly survive due to modern medicine and, because of Catholic doctrine, the birth rate doesn't fall poverty and famine follow. 

That, combined with the ongoing Aids epidemic is due to Catholic missionaries insisting that the condom is the work of Satan. 

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27 minutes ago, carlt said:

Pretty much all Catholic priests believe that I will be suffering eternal torment in the fiery pits of hell because I don't believe in their particular imaginary friend. 

That, to me, suggests "dubious character". 

The fact that paedophiles are attracted to the priesthood and then protected by the church is, in my opinion, a whole different level. 

That said the concert held by the Kings College Choir in Notre Dame in the early 90s was one of the loveliest things I have ever experienced. 

17 minutes ago, carlt said:

Huge snip (sorry) 

All religious or ideological atrocities combined pale into insignificance when compared to the death and suffering caused by the two sentences uttered by Catholic missionaries... 

 

"Here is medicine so your children won't die." 

"Contraception is a sin." 

 

Said what I needed to in defending the name of priests which I feel is necessary considering the malice directed towards them in the world's media. I haven't denied or defended past or even current atrocities in the Catholic Church, but generalising is nasty.

Edited by Philip
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3 minutes ago, carlt said:

Not when the huge child mortality rate meant that folk were having a dozen or more babies to produce a couple of surviving children. 

When all those kids suddenly survive due to modern medicine and, because of Catholic doctrine, the birth rate doesn't fall poverty and famine follow. 

 

Damned if do, damned if don't, eh?

Of course, if modern medicine had not reached these backward countries, the inhabitants would all be happy and prosperous. Er, wouldn't they?

 

The damage to this mighty, imposing and historic building would be just as much a tragedy whether it was staffed by Catholics, Jains or Seventh-Day Adventists - let's not lose sight of that.

 

 

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