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

Below, please find my opponent's claims in quotes. My rebuttals will follow the # sign "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"." # Originally in round one, my opponent defined "good" as "good" (look for yourself). "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. " #Again, I would assert that, as an atheist, my opponent is unable to say that there is a "wrong" way of looking at something. If there is no universal law giver, then there are no universal laws. Society may agree to act a certain way, but anyway would be just as "good" as another as long as the majority agreed. So, as I said in round one, he can't really prove the Catholic Church is wrong. He may personally not like something, but he has no authority to say it's wrong. Therefore, I cannot be wrong either. "The correct way of looking at the matter is to look at 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." #More claims without evidence. This argument is dismissed because it is without warrant. "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!"T he 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. " #Pope Benedict was right! But don't take my word for it; take the word of Edward C. Green, director of the AIDS Prevention Research Project at the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies, In an article he wrote for the Washington Post right after Pope Benedict made those comments, he said: "Most non-Catholic commentary has been highly critical of the pope. A cartoon in the Philadelphia Inquirer, reprinted in The Post, showed the pope somewhat ghoulishly praising a throng of sick and dying Africans: "Blessed are the sick, for they have not used condoms.Yet, in truth, current empirical evidence supports him." Mr Green went on to say: "In 2003, Norman Hearst and Sanny Chen of the University of California conducted a condom effectiveness study for the United Nations' AIDS program and found no evidence of condoms working as a primary HIV-prevention measure in Africa. UNAIDS quietly disowned the study. (The authors eventually managed to publish their findings in the quarterly Studies in Family Planning.) Since then, major articles in other peer-reviewed journals such as the Lancet, Science and BMJ have confirmed that condoms have not worked as a primary intervention in the population-wide epidemics of Africa. In a 2008 article in Science called "Reassessing HIV Prevention" 10 AIDS experts concluded that "consistent condom use has not reached a sufficiently high level, even after many years of widespread and often aggressive promotion, to produce a measurable slowing of new infections in the generalized epidemics of Sub-Saharan Africa." [11] #So much for being counter to what the scientific community believes. Back to my opponent's comments: "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." # This is not accurate. Notice my opponent didn't even offer a source for this claim. Here are the facts: "After the invention of the printing press, prior to Luther's Bible being published in German, there had been over 20 versions of the whole Bible translated into the various German dialects (High and Low) by Catholics. Similarly, there were several vernacular versions of the Bible published in other languages both before and after the Reformation. The Church did condemn certain vernacular translations because of what it felt were bad translations and anti-Catholic notes (vernacular means native to a region or country). The Catholic Douay-Rheims version of the whole Bible in English was translated from the Latin Vulgate. It was completed in 1610, one year before the King James Version was published. The New Testament had been published in 1582 and was one of the sources used by the KJV translators. The Old Testament was completed in 1610. The Latin Vulgate was always available to anyone who wanted to read it without restriction. Some Evangelicals have said that it would only have been usable by people who read Latin. But in the 16th Century there were no public schools and literacy was not that common, especially among the peasants. Those people who could read had been well educated and could read Latin.left the reading and the interpretation of the bible to the priests."[12 ] My opponent went on to say: "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." # Again, not true. Catholics believe in that too. [ 13] "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? " # First, I ask the voters to notice the source my opponent offered DOESN'T EVEN MENTION THE INQUISITION. Second, remember I said that I recognized that sins were committed BY INDIVIDUALS during the Inqusitions. Remember, those who committed those evils were VIOLATING Church teachings and as such, the Church was not at fault. Lastly, the Inquisition was instituted in Spain, for example, for the preservation of the state. (A noble concept) We have to remember that there was n separation of church and state in those times. Only Christians were allowed to have political power. Therefore, if someone in power was pretending to be Christian, they were seen as an infiltrating influence that threatened society. [ 14] "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. # Again, any evils committed BY INDIVIDUALS violated Church teachings, so the Church cannot be seen as evil here. "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. " #Regardless of how long it had been, it's a historical FACT that Muslim forces had stolen the land they occupied from Christian families. Therefore, the Crusades can easily be seen as an attempt to reclaim stolen land. [ 15] "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. " # Notice, I asked my opponent to show me evidence of a doctrine that denounced Jews in any way, and he gives us a document that did THE EXACT OPPOSITE! This should be all anyone needs to know that my opponent's claims were false. THE REBUTTALS MY OPPONENT DID NOT ADDRESS. My opponent did not address the following rebuttals of mine from the previous round. Therefore, they have been "dropped" and presumed true for the remainder of the debate. My opponent need not waste any time nor space trying to refute them now. He already had his chance. " An argument is normally considered dropped if it is not answered in the speech in which the opposing team has the first opportunity to answer it. " [ 16] ___________________________________________________________ the fact that Vatican officials allegedly helped Nazis escape facing trial for what they had done by helping them escape Europe. (1)" # I would like to see evidence of such a claim (besides a Google blog). "And it doesn't end there. There are other albeit less significant admissions of bad conscience. One such admission is of the very fact that rape and torture of orphans have been going on in church-run schools in almost every country on earth. These are serious matters that cannot be brushed aside by referencing to occasional works of Catholic charities or other philanthropically oriented Catholic endeavors." # Remember what I said above about those who violate Church teachings. It actually supports MY claims. The Vatican must be exposed for what it is: a criminal body under international law. In fact, it has been declared as a transnational criminal organization by a verdict of the International Common Law Court of Justice. It declared the Catholic Church and its governing body, the Vatican, is to be considered as a criminal body under international law. It found that the Catholic Church along with its highest officials were guilty of aiding and abetting child trafficking worldwide. "The laws passed in Rome criminalized disclosure of information regarding child abuse (or I should say child rape) and molestation. The new internal church policy threatens members with excommunication were any clergy or employee to utter a single word of any sex abuse in the church to the authorities. The internal policy is called 'Crimine solicitationies' from 1962 that the Vatican sent to every bishop in the world." # This document has nothing to do with the sex scandal. It's about a priest not being allowed to solicit a sinful person to confess their sins. You can see for yourself here [10] "The Catholic Church has over the course of history managed to establish itself as a powerful institution. The church has managed to ingratiate itself in many areas of society in order to consolidate its monetary wealth and power. Not only has it done so in the past long gone but also at times still remembered today." # What's wrong with that? My opponent's claim is without warrant. "The power at the Catholic Church"s disposal has often been abused and deployed in ways that has grossly violated human rights and the freedom of men and women alike, but particularly for women. The Baby Scoop Era was period that lasted somewhere between the end of World War II and approximately between 1970 and 1980s. During this period, religious organizations - primarily the Catholic Church " ran mother care clinics. The most well-known of the religious run institutions was The Magdalene Laundries run by the Catholic Church. What essentially characterized this period was that many women had little to no control over their reproductive lives. Roe vs Wade had not been implemented so abortions were prohibited until 1973 in US, and abortions were not regularly available in most countries until the early-mid 1970"s. This was also the case for birth control which was not readily available until the 1960"s, albeit these were only granted to married couples in the 1960s and was only available for single mother in the 1970s. The situation for unwed single mothers at this time was, thus, that they had few successful ways to prevent pregnancies and/or to end pregnancies. Since the care of pregnant women out of wedlock were handled primarily the Magdalene asylums (a Catholic institution) not only in the US but across Europe, Australia and Canada, these were subject to the care of Catholics, and, in extension, the Catholic Church itself because it supervised these institutions. The Magdalene Laundries operated for more than 200 years. It started like a shelter for prostitutes (hence, referring to the prostitute Magdalene in the bible) seemingly as a place where they could come and go. It started off as a penitential asylums but eventually became a closed off detention facility where these "fallen women" were doing laundry and other types of hard labor works to perhaps your parents and grandparents. However, for some women these were closed communities, essentially detaining centers where women could completely disappear from society. From 1765 until the late 1990, it is estimated that in Ireland alone about 30,000 women were incarcerated in these facilities due to their loss of chastity and, thus, they had fallen from the grace of God. (http://www.the-archer.co.uk.........). This was a mischief that was associated with prostitution and was not morally and socially acceptable during these times because of the view that a woman"s sexuality were to be constricted to the status of marriage, under the supervision of an authoritative man. The women were, thus, seen as "fallen", and it was the goal of these institutions to rehabilitate the women to society. However, few women ever returned to society but were instead imprisoned in these facilities in order to work in these facilities and remunerate God, essentially. This included hard labor work such as doing laundry work before the advent of more modern washing machines, boiling coppers and hand wringing devices. (5) In the 1940s and 1950s, the term "illegitimacy" started to be used as a psychological characterization on the part of the mother as essentially an unfit mother. During this time, two diametrically conflicting paradigms faced each other: a more open view on women"s sexuality as contrasted to the traditional view that chastity was a moral virtue and that everything else was regarded as sin. Because of the liberalization of women"s sexual mores coincided with the traditionalists deliberate attempts to thwart this sexual emancipation through restrictions on access to birth control. This, however, lead to an increase in premarital pregnancies. (3)" # Remember what I said about not blaming an entire government just because some of its members did what some would consider evil. My opponent has offered no evidence that the Vatican even knew of this alleged abuse. Also remember what I said about those who violate official Church teachings. The violation supports my claim that the Church is a force for good. "In US alone, from approximately 1940 to 1970 an estimated 4 million mothers in the United States had to relinquish their newborn children for adoption; 2 million of the infants were surrendered in 1960 alone. In contrast, the U.S Department of Health and Human Services estimated that about 14000 of these were "voluntarily" given up for adoption in 2003. (4)" # The source provided for this data doesn't even mention the Catholic Church, so I don't see how it's relevant to this discussion. "In Spain alone it is estimated that over 300,000 babies were trafficked by institution run by the Catholic Church. This lasted from the reign of Franco until early nineties, over a period of five decades. The babies were essentially stolen from their parents (but most often it was single and unwed mothers that were effected) by a secret network of nurses and doctors. The nurses and doctors basically lied and said that the baby had died during or after birth and that the seeing the baby. They then put these infants up for adoption to devout parents that were financially stable, hence seen as "better" parents. Thus, the Catholic Church has made a fortune upon the misery of millions of women and children. (6)" # Again, no evidence is offered claiming the Vatican knew about this. Also again, those who violate Church teachings..... I have addressed/ rebutted all my opponent's claims. I am curios to see how he attempts to claim my contentions aren't evidence for.the Catholic Church being a force for good. Sources: 11. http://www.washingtonpost.com... 12. http://catholicbridge.com... 13. http://ccc.scborromeo.org.master.com... w.scborromeo.org/ccc/para/1546.htm 14.http://www.catholic.com... 15. http://en.m.wikipedia.org... 16. http://en.m.wikipedia.org...(policy_debate)