The fact remains that you could have posted the same blog without bringing in the Eucharist. We are all free to believe whatever we want to believe, but in a civilized society you should also respect the beliefs of others.

[Daphne – I respect your beliefs. Now please have the decency to respect mine and stop badgering me because I don’t agree with yours.]

I believe that the PL had a very evil past…but does that mean that I can go to their HQs and start shouting about their past? Certainly not.

[Daphne – That’s because you would be trespassing and disturbing the peace, not because you respect Labour’s beliefs. You are free to say whatever you wish about the Labour Party, and the more disrespectful the better. That’s democracy. You should worry if it doesn’t happen. You have libel laws to sort out the rest.]

Sending a Host to a laboratory doesn’t make any sense for the simple reason that this is a question of faith.

[Daphne – Exactly.]

@ Francis Saliba:

So basically, what you are saying is that our limited intellectual faculties do not show us any evidence either way (regarding the Eucharist). So you believe because you want to believe, and for no other reason. I am free to do otherwise.

And yet, you actually think you have the right to express your beliefs while I have no right to express mine, simply because you claim to take offence at the expression of beliefs one can neither prove nor disprove.

Its actually much more than Eur 400 (more than double that, actually – although I can’t remember the exact figure, in my case). I speak from personal experience.

But to be fair, the court annulment cost me ten times that amount (including lawyer fees).

But I still consider the Church annulment fees insignificant (all things considered), and see the whole issue as an issue of imposition of values, and not at all about loss of revenue.

@ GiovDeMartino:

Re-read the paragraph where the “rice paper” was originally mentioned (and not the replies, and counter-replies), and you’ll perhaps understand the context in which the phrase was actually used.

Perhaps you’ll also understand that, in its proper context, the phrase shouldn’t by any stretch of the imagination be deemed offensive.

@ Francis Saliba:

So many words, and yet, you have still not answered my question.

What was that about brevity and wit you so much like to mention in The Times?

Maybe the encyclical letter “Fides et Ratio” of the late John Paul II will enlighten you further on the topic since you seem to be very interested to delve into the matter.

I hope you can understand it. It’s really worth reading.

At least you will appreciate the rational and philosophical competence of Pope John Paul II even if you still disagree with him. The document demonstrated already that a ‘faithful’ man need not be irrational. In fact, the contrary is proven.

Of course it is offensive, cruel and heartless if school children (and everybody else for that matter) call another child a “bastard”. It is just as “offensive” to try to establish a connection between that insensate behaviour and official Christian doctrine. Insulting anybody by that or any other epithets is no part of Christian doctrine.

Patrik,

You always have the right to tell me that anything I say is false in your opinion, whether I had actually made the thing up or not. Your right to say that, does not necessarily imply that you are either correct or incorrect. As Voltaire would say, I do not contest your right to say anything even though I may actually disagree with everything you say. Your expressed opinion, and my own opinion about what you say, are both totally irrelevant to the actual truth or falsity of your opinion.

Theology is a little bit more complicated than just turning up to a convent school and going to church. First you have to put your philisophical hat on and understand what “is” means (it “is” rice-paper). Is being about the atoms, or dictated by the oussia or parabeing (call it spirit to get the general ballpark idea)? So have the wood atoms in a solid chair changed when it is carved out of a tree? No, but yet we say it “is” a chair now and not a tree. Surely if you believe in an omnipotent God, you take it as fact that he can change the parabeing of bread atoms from “breadness” to “the body of Christ”. The Catholic church does not pretend that if you put the host under an electron microspcope and a mass spectrometer that it would show anything other than bread, but it tells us it “is’ the body of Christ because its parabeing has changed.

Personally I can’t see myself studying philosopy and theology for years and praying and researching this and arguing with thousands of years of thought and prayer, but neither to I pretend I’m wise enough to chip at this thinking lazily from the sidelines with no work other than popular amateur TV groupthing of what the correct theology is.

since when is a statement of fact offensive?