The Catholic Church is and has been a force for good in the world

If my opponent took the time to read through my introduction, he would see that I have laid out a concrete definition as to what constitutes "good". To begin with, by just viewing the Catholic Church from a default point of view, you might say that the Catholic church is good on the basis of its great share in humanitarian involvement, but that is a wrong way of looking at it. The correct way of looking at the matter is to look at how the Catholic Church governs its institutions and asking if their work is done in a preferable fashion, and, if not so, if someone else could run its affairs better. While you see their big influence as something positive, I see it as their means to assert their world view on the sick and vulnerable that are ultimately dependent upon its humanitarian aid. In South Africa someone dies from aids every two minutes. In Botswana.23.4% of adults between 15 and 49 are HIV positive; In Swaziland 26% of adults have HIV; in Namibia 13,4% are; In Lesotho, 23,3% are. These are all examples of countries that are affected by Catholic aid organisations and their view on contraception. (1) In March 2009 Pope Benedict XVI said that Aids is a tragedy "that cannot be overcome through the distribution of condoms, which even aggravates the problems". In May 2009, the Congolese bishops announced "We say no to condoms!" The Pope's statement is at odds with what the scientific community believes. Condoms do help against the spread of AIDS/HIV, hence it is on account of the opinions of the Catholic Church regarding birth control - the position that it is a mortal sin to use birth control and that eternal hell awaits those who willingly use them - and the superstitious nonsense that furthers the spread of Aids/HIV and, consequently, leads to either death or shorter life spans. (2) . The Catholic Church's ban on condoms has left the people they are ostensibly helping exposed to the disease because relief organizations simply block their distribution. It was found that there was a big mismatch between what donors had sent and what was distributed, and the catholic organisations that prevented the condoms from arriving at their designated location did so because of their belief that it would undercut efforts to promote abstinence. (3) Regarding the Catholic Church's view on education, the Catholic Church has stubbornly kept the populace from gaining access to the bible themselves. It feared that people could misread scripture, and that they regarded as dangerous since that could possibly have swayed them to turn to other religious organisations that the Catholic Church viewed as heretical, such as Catharism or the Waldensians. Hence, they left the reading and the interpretation of the bible to the priests. This was a notion that was later challenged by Protestant reformers who adhered to the notion of Priesthood of All Believers. Before that, the Catholic Church had full control over the spiritual lives of their followers. The Inquisition was not a noble undertaking, nor were the crusades, and the fact that you say that patently reveals your abject ignorance on the matter. Let's start with the Inquisition. Heresy was defined as any theological concept that did not conform to the official Catholic doctrines. Heresy at that time was regarded as a worse sin than murder. The common opinion of that time was that Heresy was anarchy and rebellion against the Government (King and Queen), and the Church. It was also believed that propagating Heresy was a worse than destroying a human body because it was dangerous for the salvation of the immortal soul. Basically, the opinion held by the Catholic Church was, that if I were alive and dissented the Catholic Church's teachings, I would not only be worse than a murderer, I would have be held for trail as a heretic - not by an adversarial judicial system that we have in place today in which the court plays the role as an impartial referee and where the defendant has the right to an attorney but by an inquisitional system in which the court - in this case consisting of cardinals appointed by the pope - played an active role in the investigating of the crime for the sole purpose of unveiling cases of heresy. Since the court was determined to strike down heresy no matter, the defendant was practically forced to confess. In order to cover the expenses of the preliminary hearings, the defendant was confiscated by much of his or her property to the Vatican. You could be essentially be charged for heresy by anyone. The identity of whomever had pressed charges against you were classified for the defendant, so there was no accountability whatsoever for the person who pressed charges. Once you were gagged and, by violence, escorted to the inquisition chamber for closer examination you had no actual means to defend yourself against the overzealous court. If you denied the charges put against you during the first hearing, the defendants were imprisoned for several months. The dungeons were located underground where the inmates were bound in stocks or chains, essentially unable to move about. The prisoners were starved and often held in solitary confinement with no contact with the outside world; usually the rooms had no light or ventilation. The horrifying torture chambers that occasionally awaited the defendants were sufficient to strike terror in the bravest of men or women. Not only did they have to endure the dread of not knowing when they were going to be tortured next, they were also aware of the risk of either perpetual incarceration or death at the stake. If you had not confessed during your first hearing, the chances for your acquittal were virtually impossible. The inquisitors were sanctioned to use any means of terror and intimidation in order to extract confessions from their prisoner, this included horrifying devises used to inflict pain by, for instance, slowly dismembering and dislocating the body. Even those who managed to escape with their lives, were physically and/or mentally maimed for the rest of their lives, driven mad by the confinement and the torture they endured. Many willingly committed suicide in order to save themselves from the callousness of the inquisitors. What is so noble about this? The undemocratic court system? The blatant disregard of the dignity of the human beings put on trial? The horrifying torture methods? Can you please expand upon your belief, that the main heretics at the time, Catharism and Waldenses, and which later started to include witches (that's right, witches), diviners, blasphemers, were somehow a threat to the stability of the realm? (3) Concerning the Crusades, I suppose my opponent is only thinking about the fighting surrounding the Holy land. But has my opponent forgotten about the sacking of Constantinople in 1204? How was that justifiable and why was that something "noble"? Are you saying that the Albigensian Crusade against the Cathars - an overtly peaceful Christian movement - was a "noble" undertaking"? Are you saying that the Northern Crusades against the pagan Slavs was a "noble" undertaking? You have a lot of explaining to do, sir. Furthermore, I wouldn't say that the crusades was a defense war as much as a war of conquest and invasion. The Byzantine empire had already lost the Palestinian lands long before the First Crusade was organized. Palestine had been under Muslim rule for four centuries before the First Crusade. The purpose of the first Crusades was intended primarily to eradicate the heresy and apostasy of Islam, remove the existing Muslim rulers from power in the Levant and install Christian rulers in their place, to convert the native populations from Islam to Christianity by force of arms - not to protect the rights of Christians living under Muslim rulers. After all, the soldiers were indiscriminately killing thousands of civilians, Muslims and Jews alike. The absolving of the crusaders sins by Urban the Pope was not only irresponsible (Isn't responsibility for your actions a good thing?) but probably also led to a heightened fighting morale. After all, previous experiences of wars, for instance the Byzantine empire against the Persians, had showed that civilians constitute a great deal of the number of casualties, so if the Catholic Church had an interest in sparing the lives of civilians, they would have explicitly urged not to kill civilians. No such exhortation was ever issued by the Catholic Church. (4) Humani generis unitas, known as "The Lost Encyclical", was a draft that denounced antisemitism, racism and the persecution of the Jews commissioned by Pope Pius XI. It would have been sent to all Catholic Churches had not Pius XII kept the document secret. The encyclical was discovered in 1995 in France. Had he published the document it might have saved thousands or millions of Jews, but because antisemitism induced by centuries of teachings that the Jews were "deicides", "moral lepers" and "agents of the devil" for their refusal to accept Christianity, it would have been problematic for him to condone the promulgation of that document. (5) It was in 1964 that the Catholic Church publicly announced the absolving the Jews from any deicide associations, whether in era of Jesus or in later days. The Ecumenical Council at the Vatican voted to reaffirm the "Jewishness" of the Old Testament and to publicly condemn antisemitism. (7) To be continued in the next rounds. 1. http://www.avert.org... 2. http://www.fda.gov... 3. http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk... 4. http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk... 5. http://en.wikipedia.org... 6. http://en.wikipedia.org... 7. http://www.jta.org...