The Hall of Fire

I'm pretty sure that abuse is the problem....

Four of the bishops in Ireland have also said they will resign. I would not characterize church politics quite the way you have put it. Certainly, there are politics, but it's not necessarily a colossal power struggle. I think in most cases pederasty is an abuse of power - an older person taking adv...

Jewel , pederasty , which is what many of the abuse cases involve, is an expression of homosexuality. Pedophilia, the sexual abuse of pre-pubescent children, is neither linked to homosexuality nor heterosexuality IIRC. For those who are interested in learning a little bit about Vatican politics, th...

I have been told that one of the slogans for Solidarnosc was that two plus two should always equal four...apparently a take off of a joke that it equaled whatever the Party told you it did. ( poster ) Truth tends to be a powerful remedy for distortions of it. There have to have been leaders in histo...

Rodia , I am so sorry this happened to the people of Poland! I realize it would be odd to say, 'sorry for your loss' over a president, but it...it feels like it should be that way. I realize it may just have been pilot's error, but it seems like when the plane was shot down in Rwanda...the one that...

Ummm...just for the record, Catholic churches (in the US, anyway) have the same rules Prim described for the boy scouts - always multiple adults present when there are kids at an event, background checks on employees (and sometimes even volunteers), etc. Now, what year such policies were implemented...

Well, the rules about blood are fairly arbitrary - most of the people who get tattoos do so at parlors that use sterile needles, but it'll still knock you off the blood donor pool for a year. The reason that men who have had sex with men were added to the list is because of HIV, and that's still mor...

Haha, maybe so, but by far the most active of the Valar is Ulmo, always influencing events in Middle Earth while the rest of them seemingly ignore what's going on there. Tolkien has some highly praiseworthy things to say about water - and some of his more famous characters are, of course, mariners. ...

I think that a Christian pastor could very easily preach about how we need to look out for each other, help our brothers and sisters, and that by loving others, we will bring about the kingdom of God. Quite likely, this Dutch pastor could give a very similar sermon. That doesn't make him Christian, ...

*tiptoes into thread* I don't know what to say, so I will offer a :hug: and just say that your words about Sam and mortality ring true. Awesome opening post, though perhaps in the tremble-in-fear sense. About Fingolfin - his body was not beaten into the dust (but yes, it was the Battle of Sudden Fl...

Hmmm..... The only quote by Shaw I can find at the moment is "Mark Twain and I are in the same position. We have put things in such a way as to make people, who would otherwise hang us, believe that we are joking." But that wasn't it. It had something to do with Joan of Arc. They both wrot...

The concept of the death of a culture (not just the nation or the language or religion alone, but everything together all at once) is an interesting thing to consider, whether historically, in Tolkien's work, or in current events. Certainly it has been of great concern to native peoples who were sub...

Well, the naturally-released carbon is on the magnitude of 300 gigatons per year. The man-made emissions are about 6 gigatons per year (2% of the total). [ NASA again ] So, if the current level of plant growth + oceans can handle 300 gigatons and maintain a balanced system...more greenery actually c...

The reason I used "desires" was to highlight that abortion is legally an elective procedure. A woman does not need to give any reason to justify having one - if she wants one, she may seek it out. In places where there are limitations on what reasons constitute a serious enough reason to h...

Well, to be fair, what Prim is suggesting is very reasonable - sex is an integral part of marriage, contributing to the intimacy and relationship of the couple in a way that could not very well be achieved without the sex. She is saying that sex and marriage are inseparable, and I agree. Some couple...

I was curious what numbers are involved...what amount of carbon are we talking about? Calculations show that the burning of fossil fuels (mainly coal, petroleum derivatives, and natural gas) add about 6 billion metric tons of carbon (as the element) to the air annually; each year also, deforestation...

Some time ago, I pointed out that more CO2 would result in more plant life, which would in turn offset the increased CO2. I believe I was promptly told I didn't know what I was talking about, and the feedback provided by the CO2 would far outweigh any possible consumption by extra vegetation. Not q...

vison and Cerin , we have had this discussion before, which is why I say that I am familiar with your views of pregnancy. I wasn't suggesting that you don't consider the fetus a baby (just as I would hardly deny that a woman is no longer pregnant after an abortion), I was saying... You are looking ...

The demographic at the March for Life in DC (in the past few years a crowd of between 100-300,000) is predominantly female. There are a lot of men there, too, of course, but there are more women than men in the group. My mother and my sister, both of whom are mothers, vote for prolife candidates whe...

Cerin, I will repeat vison 's thought experiment: Now imagine that you are the mother of 6 children. Imagine that you live in a society where birth control is not available, or that you belong to a religion that doesn't allow birth control. Imagine that you used the one method approved by your churc...