Catholics For Harper

The big guy in the white hat and dress has put his two bits worth into the upcoming fall sitting of the Canadian Parliament.Pope scolds Canada on gay marriage, abortion

I didn't know the Pope was a card carrying Conservative. Bet you didn't either. However there is a solution to this clear cut case of the Catholic Church attempting to influence Canadian politicians; Make the bigots pay! Tax the Churches!

"In the name of tolerance, your country has had to endure the folly of the redefinition of spouse," the Pope told a group of bishops from Ontario. "In the name of freedom of choice, it is confronted with the daily destruction of unborn children."

Such laws, Benedict said, are the result of "the exclusion of God from the public sphere."

He lamented that Catholic politicians had yielded to "ephemeral social trends and the spurious demands of opinion polls."

Uh huh homosexuality and abortion are hardly 'ephemeral', sorry Benny they have been with us since the begining of human society. Historical abortion beliefs of the Christian church

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Of course there is a certain irony in his saying any of this since he was once a Nazi. nd his predecessor, to whom Benny was a close advisor, was a supporter of the extreme rightwing Catholic movements in Latin America and Eastern Europe.

It's not often you hear a paean of praise to the Spanish fascist dictator General Franco these days. And you certainly don't expect to hear it in the European Parliament."Thanks to the Spanish army and Franco the communist attack on Catholic Spain was thwarted. The presence of such people in European politics as Franco guaranteed the maintenance of traditional values in Europe and we lack such statesmen today. Christian Europe is losing against atheistic socialists today and this has to change."

And though there is dissent in the Church it is a minority who do not reflect the intoleance of this ossified institution.

The Catholic Church is historically a venal and evil political insititution, who tortured and murdered those whom opposed it or would not convert.Reminding us that people who live in glass houses should not throw stones....Practising Catholicism

Oggun
All the incoming slaves were automatically baptised as Catholics and were encouraged (forcibly, or through more indirect pressure) to practice the new religion. The result was a complex process of disguise, accommodation, and incorporation. Joseph Murphy says it well: "In the New World, the Yoruba were forced into a new religious system of pervasive power. This new tradition shaped their lives, and their native vision of the world was gradually adapted to complement and reflect the Catholic worldview. A new bilingual tradition emerged, at once a resistance to Catholic oppression and an accommodation to Catholic values. It came to be called santería, the way of the saints, because the devotions to the orishas were carried out beneath the images of the Catholic saints. What may have once begun as a subterfuge, an attempt to fool Catholic observers while preserving the ways of the orishas, became a genuine universal religious vision in which a Catholic saint and a Lucumi [Yoruba] orisha were seen as different manifestations of the same spiritual entity" (31-32).
THE INTEGRATION OF ROMAN CATHOLICISM INTO VODOU IN HAITI
Catholicism was brought to Haiti and indeed to the new world with the arrival of the colonialists. The Roman Catholic church was a strong power that had influence in every European country as well as in their colonies. With the "discovery" of the new world the Roman Catholic church set out to "civilize" and convert any pagan civilizations. The role of the church in Haiti was typical of many different colonies up to the time of the Haitian Revolution. The Vatican assigned all church positions in Haiti and ordained the Catholic priests. The vast majority of the priests were therefore white colonialists, with only very few colored priests being ordained over the years. Since the church set out to abolish paganism, vodou was a practice that in the eyes of the church had to cease to exist. The Catholic church was also aware of the power given to the vodouiants through the practice and participation in vodou rituals. The sense of belonging and the connection to their heritage empowered the enslaved people and many times drove them to revolt. This endangered the power the church held over the enslaved people. They therefore set to persecute vodou and they used every means available to them to do this.