World Youth Day 08 (3 Viewers)

[bearpaw]

Someone told me that at the last WYD [which was in Germany] the national supply of condoms ran out.

Someone told me this after I signed up.

yeah.
it's gonna be awesome having young teenage foreigners around this fair city

 

[kaz1]

i get enough catholicism at school

 

[bearpaw]

i get enough catholicism at school

awesome. dont go then.

 

[bigneh]

I think that if Christianity is to have any continued relevance in the 21st century, then Christians need to at least be comfortable around eachother (let alone other people of faith).

Lets hope it doesnt have any continuing relevance.

There are far far greater evils in the world that only religious people have the will and conviction to recognise and fight

Thats bs and insulting ( if i took offence, which i dont), name one thing a non-religious person wont recognise as 'evil' and fight? What, the devil in their toddlers which require an exorcism?
Countries with high Atheist and agnostic rates have the LOWEST crime rates. And atheist/Agnostics have some of the lowest divorce rates.
Studies have shown the higher a persons education or intelligence, the less likely they are to be religious and the lower it is the higher the chance of being religious.
'Bad people do bad things, but for good people to do bad things, that takes religion.'

Back to the WYD, It is a scandalous waste of tax payers money, $93 million right from our pockets. WYD is purely to get more dumb kids into their (Catholics) doors.

I find it funny that the Christians are bringing all the varients back together, through Benedict, the former Nazi Youth member who stated 'You are not Christian unless you are Catholic.'

Not to mention the damage this is having towads the racing industry in that particular area. The government should not support this crap, cut the funding and cut the special privilages.

BTW theres supposably a World Truth Day being organised by the The Secular Party of Australia (SPA), apparently a concert around the same time, sounds intresting and exciting... not that reading a plagiarised, illiterate and mind numbing book isnt

Thought of anything yet Iron? You havent because it was a terrible statement, and dont pull the 'Theres alot of Christian organisations doing alot of good' because one of the largest Charities in Australia is Oxfam.. and its completely Secular. If you need the fear from some celestial bully to do good then you really are a bad person.

Fkn religion.

 

[bigneh]

Oh had to add this before i forgot, only 15% of Church tariffs go towards charity, the rest goes to personal jets right?

There are billionaire preachers (literally) and they have the nerf to bring out the new sin about obscene wealth?

 

[withoutaface]

If the government thinks I'm staying out of the city because people want to have a religious circlejerk, they can get fucked.

 

[Slidey]

What i do strongly resent however is the use of taxpayer funds to help pay for such an event. Last time i checked the Catholic Church was not exactly poor, and in any case government should not be subsidising religion.

Yeah because nothing says come host it in Australia like "oh, but you have to pay for it".

Dude, do you realise how important economically an event like this is? It's similar to having the Olympics, but it happens 4 times as often. It's well worth the taxpayer dollars, if we're ignoring idealogical worth.

I'm apathetic about it. It means more power to Australia's economy, so yay! Anyway, if there was a Church I had to support it would be the Catholic one. At least it acknowledges and supports evolution and the big bang rather than creationism.

 

[aileenli]

Countries with high Atheist and agnostic rates have the LOWEST crime rates. And atheist/Agnostics have some of the lowest divorce rates.
Studies have shown the higher a persons education or intelligence, the less likely they are to be religious and the lower it is the higher the chance of being religious.

Name your sources man.

 

[Enteebee]

if there was a Church I had to support it would be the Catholic one.

by far agreed.

 

[Iron]

The most superior article in the Australian today
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23523965-7583,00.html

I've hacked away at it here. From Professor Rowland's truely awesome new book on the Pope. Expands on all the things I have admired about the man already.
I cant wait to see how he'll approach WYD, which will inevitably be a lot of what he rightly hates.

Ratzinger [&] Nietzsche, the father of postmodernism... both reject outright Kant's notion of pure reason.

His attitude to many contemporary forms of worship - which he calls "parish tea party liturgies" - is that they are forms of apostasy that trivialise the sacred and that he directly likens to the Hebrews' worship of the golden calf.

"Ratzinger has focused on practices (that) diminish the possibilities of the soul or the self, for its own transcendence. The marketing of vulgar art, music and literature and the generation of a very low, even barbaric, mass culture is seen by Ratzinger to be one of the serious pathologies of contemporary Western culture. By this reading, clerics who think that they will win young people to the church by adopting the marketing strategies of public relations firms and attempting a transposition of the church's cultural patrimony into the idioms of contemporary mass culture are only further diminishing the opportunities of youth for genuine self-transcendence."

"utility music" derived from 1960s youth culture. He says: "A church which only makes use of utility music has fallen for what is, in fact, useless. She too becomes ineffectual... The church must not settle down with what is merely comfortable and serviceable at the parish level; she must arouse the voice of the cosmos and, by glorifying the creator, elicit the glory of the cosmos itself, making it also glorious, beautiful, habitable and beloved... The church is to transform, improve, humanise the world, but how can she do that if at the same time she turns her back on beauty, which is so closely allied to love? For together beauty and love form the true consolation in this world, bringing it as near as possible to the world of the resurrection."

"It is perhaps on this point more than any other that Ratzinger is at the greatest distance from the Protestant traditions and also from those in his own church who have accepted the Protestant belief that beauty is the concern of the Pharisee or the liberation theologian's belief that a love of beauty is somehow tied up with a bourgeois indifference to the plight of the poor. He has no empathy with the Protestant hostility to beauty."

..."Anyone enamoured of beauty will shiver in the barn of the Reformation and feel the pull of Rome."... "One of the problems of the moment, however, is that the average poor soul shivering in the barn of the Reformation will find it just as cold in the barn of many Catholic parishes."

Those who make a habit of complaining about that chill are often dismissed as elitists, people who live in the past, old-world romantics, aesthetes and snobs. However, according to Rowland, Ratzinger's view is that they simply have a Catholic sensibility, which is not the exclusive property of any particular social class or rank. He says: "The richness of the liturgy is not the richness of some priestly caste: it is the wealth of all, including the poor, who in fact long for it and do not at all find it a stumbling block."

Rowland sees the Pope's campaign as purging contemporary liturgy of its self-preoccupation (mass considered primarily as people sharing in a community meal) and emphasising the vertical dimension (mass as the eucharistic sacrifice and a close, embodied encounter with the triune God).

Along with ugliness and banality in worship, Benedict takes a stern line on exotic imports such as dancing and clapping. Rowland notes that the Pope has said "dancing is not a form of expression for the Christian liturgy" and "he describes as absurd the practice of introducing dance pantomimes, which frequently end with applause. He suggests that 'wherever applause breaks out in the liturgy because of some human achievement, it is a sure sign that the essence of the liturgy has totally disappeared and been replaced by a kind of religious entertainment'."

Previous World Youth Days have often involved dancing, clapping, jazz, pop and utility music, along with a variety of other exotic cultural imports. It will be interesting to see how attentively the organisers of the Sydney event have followed the Pope's liturgical example and precepts. Will the people planning the ceremonies be judged as part of the problem or part of the solution?

 

[boris]

I watched a documentary called God's Rottweiler today.

That's it really, I don't have a lot to comment on. It was basically just a documentary on what a psycho Ratzinger is/was.

EDIT: No dancing?!

 

[Kwayera]

Anyway, if there was a Church I had to support it would be the Catholic one. At least it acknowledges and supports evolution and the big bang rather than creationism.

It may do that, but this is the same church that regards birth control as a sin.

A SIN.

 

[KFunk]

Ratzinger [&] Nietzsche, the father of postmodernism... both reject outright Kant's notion of pure reason.

They align him with postmodernism and yet he clearly accepts what are, more or less, Platonic ideals of Beauty (capital 'B', etc...), Truth and, of course, God. Ratzinger <--> Nietzsche = a silly comparison? (though, as per usual, this depends on your reading of Nietzsche... Ratzinger's views certainly don't accord with the so called 'postmodern' version of Nietzsche)

 

[bigneh]

Divorce rates by religion (U.S.)

Religion​

[SIZE=-1]% have been divorced[/SIZE]​

Jews

30%​

Born-again Christians

27%​

Other Christians

24%​

Atheists, Agnostics

21%
The Associated Press computed divorce statistics from data supplied by the U.S. Census Bureau and the National Center for Health. They showed that the highest divorce rates were found in the 'Bible Belt'. "Tennessee, Arkansas, Alabama and Oklahoma round out the Top Five in frequency of divorce...the divorce rates in these conservative states are roughly 50 percent above the national average" of 4.2/1000 people.​

The Smartest US States
Average IQ scores (estimated from SAT and ACT) ​

"Out of convicted rapists, 57% admitted to reading
pornography. 95% admitted to reading the Bible."
​

^ SOURCE- http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_dira.htm ^
​

'If the US Prison Population statistics are accurate then there are far less nonbelievers in the prison system. This can be interpreted in many ways. Note that religious conversion is very active in prisons.' This came from the same source.
​

It is also intresting to know that [SIZE=+1]Secular/Nonreligious/Agnostic/Atheist
[/SIZE]​

[SIZE=+1]is the fourth largest category in the world ( couldnt change front some reason)
[/SIZE]​

[SIZE=+1]
[/SIZE]​

[SIZE=+1]just watch http://nz.youtube.com/watch?v=T27kB4BjbEg
[/SIZE]​

 

[JaredR]

Maybe more religious people divorce because more religious people marry?

 

[bigneh]

Its percentage.

 

[Kwayera]

I believe they correct for scale.

Regardless, the taxpayer money spent on this sickens me, and the "don't like it? Stay out of the entire city" attitude. Fuck you, Youth Day.

 

[Slidey]

It may do that, but this is the same church that regards birth control as a sin.

A SIN.

Yeah, true.

 

[alex1905]

What does world youth day actually do, and celebrate?

 

[Iron]

What does world youth day actually do, and celebrate?

Through the WYD08 experience, young people from throughout the world will make a pilgrimage in faith, meet, and experience the love of God.

World Youth Day is an invitation from the Pope to the youth of the world to celebrate their faith around a particular theme. Everyone is welcome to attend.

I think that it's significant because questions of faith are never as important as they are in your youth, when youre figuring everything out (I mean, what loser converts at 30+?) Youth is also when you can start to critically and honestly accept the intellectual validity of Christianity. It's an excellent festival to celebrate the journey, the pilgrimage, to faith. I see it as almost a coming of age ritual, when you first fly your colours up your mast