Catholic Church has lost all credibility, making me a pagan in Ireland

I haven’t dropped into this debate in a while, beg’n yr pard’n, but MAGHNUS declares that it has “been proved in Ireland that Catholics (at least the clergy, at any rate) are just a bunch of child molesting fags in robes”. I ask MAGHNUS to offer proof of this assertion. At least deenaww speaks a truth. Before MAGHNUS writes again, I invite Magnus Dei to be in his/her mind. Pat52rk asks John Spain for an answer. Pat won’t get one. John believes he’s unanswerable to anyone. He’s a fake pagan, ye see and... (worse!)... he’s a meed’ja fella! - may his God help him. Temerity need not worry about MAGHNUS. Thru’ postings the Mad MAG has already exposed him/her self to ridicule. But we don’t want ridicule on IC, do we?? *Respect all*

MAGHNUS it seems to me your small minded bigotry reaches everyone.All over the world people associate Irish Culture with the Catholic Church( and Irish Catholic immigrants have been great ambassadors for Ireland) just where are you going to start may I ask?

Christmas is Christian in name only. Most of the rituals the tree, presents, lights, are pagan. The Christian missionaries adapted already established holidays to make the transition to Christianity easier.

The Catholic Church is serving and protecting no one other than themselves...they should be thrown out with the rest of the garbage.

I disagree, jacer...considering that it has just been proved in Ireland that Catholics (at least the clergy, at any rate) are just a bunch of child molesting fags in robes, then it may very well be the best thing that the Catholics are removed from Ireland, and allow the people to decide what they want. People, meaning the original natives...not the illegal immigrant garbage that washed up on the beach and decided to invade the Island and its' people of their economy and culture.

So John, if your a pagen why do you celebrate christmas ?

RthrBHistCorr is right on. Here’s another bit of a rant, backing up RthrBHistCorr's thoughts, by a Vice Chancellor of a Catholic University in Australia: “From time immemorial, this world has been troubled by plagues. Just now, we are facing one of our largest and least appealing infestations - we are beset by atheists. Worse, they are not traditional atheists; no, the new hobby atheist is as brash, noisy and confident as a cheap electric kettle. They want everyone to know that they have not found God, and that no one else should. Their particular target seems to be Catholics. On the surface, this is odd, as there are plenty of other religious targets just waiting to be saved from a vengeful, non-existent deity. But the Catholic Church has two incomparable advantages as an object of the wrath of proselytising atheists. First, it is the ‘biggie’. Taking out the Catholics is the equivalent of nuking the Pentagon. Guerrilla bands of non-Catholic churches can be liquidated at leisure. Second, the Catholics have the undeniable advantage that they do still demonstrably believe in something. Attacking some of the more swinging Christian denominations might mean upsetting people who believe a good deal less than the average atheist.”

Also have to ask, why do Aethists have to continually justify themselve? There are a lot of things I don't believe in, my reaction is to just ignore it as I have enough on my plate. At the same time people who believe something that I don't well, God bless them, it's their right. I alway have a suspicion that these smug rants are done more to justify the writer to themselves than convince the reader.

What a self important, bigoted, self serving arrogant piece of writing. More confirmation that most Atheists are that way as they can't conceive of anything in the Universe more important than them.

I listened to this Turin story told by a religious tour guide standing on the steps of a church door during a visit to the city in 1999. The guide finished the story by saying that it was outside these very steps and church door that the donkey fell down and the whole incident took place. You can imagine the gasps of our tour crowd as we realised we were standing in the same piazza as the witnesses of the 14thC AD event were standing in... I forget the name of the church now but I’m sure someone knows it and has heard the same story. From that time, our guide said, Turin has been known as the City of the Holy Eucharist. The point in me relating these stories is to show why we Catholics believe we REALLY ARE eating the Flesh of Jesus and drinking His Blood when we receive Holy Communion under the appearance of bread and wine... just as He asked us to. We are blessed in humility to do so. Any non-believer can be blessed if they would bother their barmy to check out on religious miracles and see the light.

Near Turin itself, in the 14th century AD, two thieves broke into a village church and stole pieces of silverware, one of which contained the Holy Eucharist. The thieves loaded the stolen silverware into saddlebags on a donkey and set off. Arriving in Turin, the donkey suddenly fell down outside the door of another church, one of the saddlebags burst open and the Holy Host fell out on the ground. It immediately raised itself into the air above the houses and remained suspended in the air there (some reports say it was blazing rays of light). The donkey and two thieves were stunned into immovability during this time, lasting for several hours. The event was witnessed by people in the nearby church square (piazza) and because it was lasting a long time, and more people came to see for themselves as word spread around, the local Bishop was called for. When the Bishop arrived, he picked a chalice off the ground beside the burst saddlebag and in front of all the witnesses the Host lowered itself into the chalice. He brought it into the church then. An unexplainable event.

To John Spain and all other doubters’, may I point to one known miracle of Transubstantiation: In the year 700AD, during the Act of Consecration by a doubting priest during Mass (I think it was in Liniano or Lanciano, Italy) the Holy Host turned into a piece of a human heart and the wine into human blood. The sudden appearance of the piece of human heart and the blood were declared a miracle by the Church and retained in clear vessels for public display and adoration. In the 1970’s scientific tests showed that, 1300 years after the event, the piece of heart was a sliver of a real human heart, as fresh as if cut by a surgeon’s scalpel. The blood was found to be in five equally weighted globules of Type AB human blood, the same human blood type found in the Shroud of Turin. There is similar story told about another doubting priest in Sth America (I forget which country) who, after raising the circular Host, placing it on the altar, genuflecting below the altar table and bowing his head, and upon lifting himself up found a whole human bleeding heart in its place. As I remember that story told, the priest collapsed in total shock, the congregation rushed to his aid and saw the bleeding human heart for themselves. Two unexplainable events. One more... ok? (In fact there are some 150 known and unexplained miracles of the Holy Eucharist – thousands more claimed).

THAT’S THE POINT plasticpaddy, THERE IS NO EXPLANATION. I have to admit that there is nothing logical about my faith in Jesus or my practice of belief in Him through Roman Catholicism. All I do know is that there is something extra-ordinary about Jesus (raised some people, including Himself from the dead, for example.) Now, I hafta say straight off, I’m very much into scientific developments, physics and chemistry etc., so it’s no easy thing for me to say I’ve surrendered to the power of an Almighty and that I believe in what plasticpaddy and other non-believers disrespectfully call mumbo jumbo. Hopefully p’paddy and others will see, THERE IS NO EXPLANATION! I would go so far as to say that if it were not for the multitude of UNEXPLAINED miracles happening through the Roman Catholic Church that I could also have discarded such faith as I have. In my next posts, at risk of boredom for some, I’ll elaborate a little...

Plasticpaddy! Well I'm thrilled to read that you actually know what the word logic means? Anyway since you by your own admittance are a lost soul, I challenge you with two questions.How many prophecies in the Bible have come true? And since so many have, what are the mathematical possibilities of so many of them coming true? The answers to these two questions should amaze even you. When you find out, which you can by studying books wrote by people who have spent over forty years of their lives studying the Bible, it will be easy for you to see by your acclaimed love of reasoning that it is the altar of God your life should be dedicated to, not the bloody altar of communism. Merry Christmas Paddy. Prepare for the coming worldwide warning from God at Garabandal.

Can you explain them Vincent, and don't give me any mumbo jumbo explanations, something logical and reasoned please.