The annual selection of the top 500 lawyers in America has begun at LawDragon. You can vote for your favorite colleagues, teachers, or counsel.
While I am happy to be on the ballot, I am more happy to see others not on the ballot. Notably, John Ashcroft is no longer on the list. Nor is John Yoo or most other Bush lawyers. Also missing is Alberto Gonzales this year.
What is interesting is the absence of Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Clarence Thomas and Ruth Bader Ginsburg are also off the list, even though the rest of the Court makes it on the ballot. Judiciary Chairman John Conyers and other members of Congress are also not on the list.
To vote: click here.
I know what the Church teaches regarding salvation and morality. Do you Byron?
Wayne:
“Byron, I don’t believe you have any real or sincere interest in the Church, you are more interested in seeking the validation of Mike, Mespo and Buddha.”
I did not say I was in a CCD class, I said I took one a few years ago at my wife’s request. And yes you are right I do believe they did call it RCIA but I could not remember the name.
I go to church regularly and I am interested in the church teachings as I am interested in the teachings of Aristotle, John Locke, Thomas Hobbs, Edmund Burke and others.
I don’t know Buddha, Mike Appleton or Mespo on a personal level and I can tell you sincerely that if Mike Appleton is a believer in liberation theology we would have to agree to disagree on that principle. But in Latin America there is some merit to that point of view as there is great poverty and great wealth side by side and not much of a middle class. They have a history of dictators from the right and the left and the poor are disenfranchised because of the continual political conflicts.
If most Catholics are like you in their belief system then count me out. I wont waste my time. If you are typical of intellectual thought, the RCC has gone from Aquinas and Ockham to dogma in less than a thousand years. Some testament to your Church.
You don’t debate issues you just preach, you think you know but don’t really and wont until you are dead. What you believe is faith in the teachings of men that have interpreted the Bible and other manuscripts.
A person who miscarriages has not commited a mortal sin, only if they seek out to “procure” the abortion. Do any of you people listen or read these posts? Look, get on the internet, speak to your local canon lawyer in the diocese or archdediocese you reside in.
Mespo, please refer to the Catholic Cathechism. Page 606 2270, this should clear up the obvious ambiguity you seem to be suffering from regarding the Churches teaching on abortion.
Wayne,
A Fool is Known by the words that they utter. Where do you stand on this? would you agree that a miscarriage is an abortion? What about an Herbal Abortion?
“What Is a Miscarriage?
A miscarriage, or spontaneous abortion, is a pregnancy that ends by itself within the first 20 weeks. “Stillbirth” refers to the loss of a pregnancy with fetal death when it occurs after the first 20 weeks.
Guess you did not consider this, now did you?
A person who procures a completed abortion incurs excommunication. This is called “latae sententiae”, by the very commission of the offense, and subject to the conditions provided by canon law. Since the first century the Church has affirmed the moral evil of every procured abortion.
Mespo, you are consistenly as wrong and misguided as ever. The Church does not take the position that abortion is a venial sin, quite the contrary. The Church teaches that abortion is murder, grounds for immediate excommunication and a grave act of sacrilige! Does your deception and lies have any boundaries? As you can clearly tell Byron these two men despise the Catholic Church, they stand convicted by there posts. Byron, I don’t believe you have any real or sincere interest in the Church, you are more interested in seeking the validation of Mike, Mespo and Buddha. I don’t believe you are even in a CCD class. Also, CCD is a rather antiquated term, usually the term is RCIA. The Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults. Have been been lying as well?
Buddha:
You are certainly correct, men use religion not only as a tool of control but also as a vestment of superiority.
Speaking of which . . . off to bed. Happy troll battling, gang. I’ll be back after a brief coma.
Yes I do.
Up all night. Brain is foggy this AM.
Buddha:
dont you mean Pius XII?
Byron,
“a religion that would say they are excluded from salvation, I think, does not really understand the meaning of the crucifixion.”
To the point. Well said.
Christ as a Joiner, not a Divider, is an argument that often comes up when the religious loons come out of the wood work. Exclusionary religions are the tool of man to control other men. It’s a good argument, but often discussing it with trolls is about as productive as arguing it to a woodchuck.
Hate is a strong word. I hate PNAC. I hate Dick Cheney. The RCC? Eh, they are more in the “loathe” category. And they got there the old fashioned way – they earned it. How, you may ask, did they earn this honor? The short list is The Crusades, Galileo, The Inquisition, Pope Pius IX and the perpetual game of Hide the Pedophile. I like and indeed love many individual Catholics. I make no bones about not liking the organization. They should be taxed and taxed hard.
Wayne:
Why all of the harsh language? My grandmother always told me “you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar”. If you want to be an evangelist for the RCC I suggest you start educating and stop preaching.
And I must say that I tend to agree with this statement made by I don’t know whom:
“the world will be truly free when the last dictator is strangled by the entrails of the last priest”
No one has a right to tell another what is or is not God. There are certain human truths that should be applied to ones life, the bible is one source for those truths, but then so are secular philosophers.
The RCC has been a source for good in this world and it has been a source for evil. Christ did not die for Christians alone and that is one problem I have with Christianity in general. There are many good Hindus and Muslims and Jews and a religion that would say they are excluded from salvation, I think, does not really understand the meaning of the crucifixion.
Finally Wayne-ory to reply for Mike A which I have no right to do, I suspect that he believes that the Church, in all it’s fallibility, has no right to impose upon the women the role of breeding stock in some misogynistic attempt to subjugate them. He probably knows that Church history is unsettled on the question of abortion having gone from total condemnation to uneasy acquiescence (esp. in the cases of clergy insemination of the “faithful’–all that business about the “quickening”) in Jerome’s time to its current “take no prisoners” approach. He probably knows that today’s mortal sin is tomorrow’s venial sin, is the day after’s prescribed theology, and that all the misery and remonstrations heaped out by people like you prove nothing about the poor women who have to face this decision, but conclusively proves the arrogance and credulity that marks the staunch churchman of today. Put that in your thurible and smoke it!
“Budda(pest) and Mespuke, hate, I said HATE, the Catholic Church.”
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“What influence, in fact, have ecclesiastical establishments had on society? In some instances they have been seen to erect a spiritual tyranny on the ruins of the civil authority; on many instances they have been seen upholding the thrones of political tyranny; in no instance have they been the guardians of the liberties of the people. Rulers who wish to subvert the public liberty may have found an established clergy convenient auxiliaries. A just government, instituted to secure and perpetuate it, needs them not.” [Pres. James Madison, A Memorial and Remonstrance, addressed to the General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Virginia, 1785]
I am finding myself in better company by the moment, but once having been paired with Buddha, I could hardly have thought otherwise.
G. Drake:
You sound positively Waynian with that double post. Pretty soon Wayne will come back as Tinker Bell and spew more fairy tales. I do love an obnoxious man of god, but two alter egos–it must be heaven on Earth!
Calling you Mespuke was being charitable, we all know how virtuous and humble you are Mespuke.
And everyone knows what a flake you are, Mespo!
“Budda(pest) and Mespuke, hate, I said HATE, the Catholic Church. They believe it is an institution made up of fairy tales and superstitions and run by phonies, pedophiles and other assorted social deviants.”
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By their fruits shall you know them.
–Matthew 7:16
Sort of applies to Wayne-ory too.