Makes me think that if this list was still published it would have a sort of Father Ted effect[1] and act as a list of books you’d definitely want to read.
1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Passion_of_Saint_Tibulus
The Wikipedia article on the Index note that a related list (the _Index Expurgatorius_, which was at the time published separately but later had its function incorporated within the _Index Librorum Prohibitum_, and listed books subject to similar restrictions as the main index but only conditionally pending correction of specified errors) was called out for something like that use -- in 1627.
Afterwards I couldn't really see what the fuss was about.
At the time I hoped he wasn't serious, sometimes it's hard to tell.
Well, it’s in the name already. The fact it’s not called “anti-harassment training” always makes me chuckle…
In addition to the books prohibited for their content, any books by "foreign agents" are prohibited too with the "foreign agent" designation assigned directly by the government, bypassing any court, to any minimally public person who disagrees with the government policies.
The new law also prohibits public demonstration (which beside movie theaters also includes websites with more than 100K users) of foreign movies not in agreement with the "traditional values of Russia" (which is whatever the government would declare as such).
You might also consider revisiting your history: "GLBT" was a thing long before the "LGBT" ordering became prevalent – since the 70s, at least. Trans people, and queers of all sorts, have always been a part of gay activism, and in many cases were at the forefront of it. "Drop the T" is a recent movement (although the sentiment isn't new).
In Norway, trans was never part of the gay and lesbian movement. Even bi -- where I fall -- have traditionally been outcasts, often jokingly (or not) described as "the fence sitters". I fall into this category, where given said "fence sitting" I was lucky in that I never felt a need to "come out" because I would just date girls and carefully approach my attraction towards guys. But for a lot of personal experiences it also meant I never quite felt I belonged because I was not gay, nor was I like the majority and completely straight. The gays didn't like "people like me" who "couldn't decide" (something I've heard often, and keep hearing).
Trans just has never been a thing culturally here. For one because we have strict laws of medical interventions on underage people, so the so-called "gender-affirming care" situation has not yet hit us. And most people don't feel this way when they reach adulthood, as it's _typically_ a part of puberty. Not to say gender dysphoria doesn't exist, but there's also no actual solution to it right now. You cannot transition from female sexual organs to functional male ones, nor vice versa. We're not there yet with medical technology, and truthfully I don't think it's likely we ever will. Until then all we can offer are cosmetic changes.
But because of internationalization and the media, trans has been lumped together with the LGB cause which is causing backlash and misunderstandings from the general population.
I realise writing this on a US-centric website is likely to get me ostracised but sometimes I think it's important for different cultures to talk about their differences. We want multiculturalism, right? This is what that means.
Trans rights is not about a specific interpretation of the experience of being trans and thus it isn't about hormones or surgery. It is about trying to encourage the world to be open to a broader set of gender expressions and more freedom for people to live out the life that they want.
There are some tough issues here, yes. But the analogy to the gay rights movement is pretty straightforward.
Self-identifying as another gender carries with it requirements of others far beyond simple acceptance.
I don't care if I placate you or not. I'm speaking from the POV of someone from a different culture. I don't require you to accept it, just as I respect your different cultural opinions.
For example: some Americans currently deny the existence of gay people (and they view homosexual behavior as purely pathological). Thus, part of the gay rights movement is the demand that the possibility of gayness existing is real and that gayness is legitimate be recognized. This is very concordant with the trans rights struggle.
You probably have heard of NAMBLA. Lots of anti-gay rhetoric focuses/focused on this extreme, frankly absurd, organization. There were elements of the gay community which defended it as well. We can repudiate NAMBLA without repudiating gay rights, but many conservative forces want us to view them as inseparable. When we allow the reactionary right to select the most absurd versions of trans rights and tell us they constitute a total repudiation of trans rights, we fall into what should be an obvious rhetorical trap. Again, if progressive people had fallen into this trap in the 70s, if gay people had allowed this rhetoric to silence them, you'd probably still be in the closet.
And also, I don't know what your talk of cultural differences is supposed to accomplish. I'm an upright liberal minded modern guy, I'm not going to show up with militarized police and force you to change your mind. But cultural differences really do not compel me to respect your opinions. I respect your right to have an opinion, I can still disagree, and vehemently.
But I do appreciate your perspective, as a source of information: many things you're saying are factually incorrect, but it's important to know that some people believe them.
Personally I think this obsession with making new categories for people who don’t strictly fit some weird resurgence of classic gender roles —- like intersex —- does more harm than good.
If you object to "medical interventions on underage people", then I'd suggest campaigning against this would be a better use of your time than railing against trans rights. Banning consensual, requested gender-affirming treatment that provides clear benefit to children, while allowing injurious cosmetic surgery on literal babies, is doing things the wrong way around. (Even if you turn around and get consensual gender-affirming treatment banned afterwards, that'd still better than the status quo.)
> There’s not that much of a focus on gender because it’s ok to be a feminine male or a woman with masculine traits.
Excellent! I approve. However, that doesn't have very much to do with transgender people.
> this obsession with making new categories
Is a compromise, because in other cultures that have much more rigid conceptions of gender, cultural factors prevent us from abolishing the gender system: drawing new categories around observed clustering and calling them "genders" is somewhat of a hack. (Though not without precedent: many cultures throughout history have taken this approach, usually with 3–5 genders and a lot of them ascribe spiritual significance to the non-binary genders. Orthodox Judaism is an outlier: they have unusually-many genders but ascribe negligible spiritual significance to them.) What you're seeing is probably a side-effect of multiculturalism: in this case, exporting your culture's gender non-conformity more intensely will alleviate it.
Wikipedia cites https://web.archive.org/web/20210425173353/https://bufdir.no..., which I cannot read easily, but which you may find interesting. (Unlike Bergamot, Firefox Translation has no Norwegian support, but the Swedish model tries really hard.)
The problem is that drawing this line isn't always simple. Make the law too strict, and you can just as easily end up barring doctors from performing surgeries that by their correct case-by-case judgement is necessary, but the law prohibits because it necessitates, say, medical consensus in general. But make the law too lax and you open the doors to purely cosmetic surgeries which I am absolutely against.
What we cannot have is the ability for children whom cannot legally make medical decisions be allowed to start things like gender-affirming care. Because if we can't trust them with other less life-altering choices, how could we trust them with that? Especially given how easily influenced children are.
The trouble I have with this reasoning, though, is it's asymmetrical. We don't allow trans kids access to exogenous sex hormones because cis kids might hypothetically be being influenced by their parents / other authority figures to make a bad decision (e.g. Munchausen syndrome by proxy), but we know there's pressure on trans kids to repress and pretend to be cis (we have statistics about it), so why do we let any children go through puberty? How can we trust them with that? (Yes, this thought experiment is somewhat ludicrous, but why is it ludicrous?)
For most people who experience it, gender dysphoria is distressing and hard to ignore. Most cis people can be put in situations where they experience it, and they report the same intense feelings of distress. I doubt you could easily influence many 12-year-olds to push through those feelings – though I'm not sure how one might test this ethically, so I'm not sure what studies to look for. Norway's current approach seems suitably-conservative to me. (And I don't see any advantage, even hypothetically, to forcing trans people into binary classifications: that seems like the "rigid gender roles" problem rearing its head again.)
P.S.: You're considerably more reasonable about this than I initially thought: thinking about the right things, for the right reasons, such that with complete information I'd expect you to come to the right decisions. I long to have people like that for political opponents.
> And most people don't feel this way when they reach adulthood, as it's _typically_ a part of puberty.
Most people don't feel this way in childhood, either – but most people who do feel that way in childhood, also feel that way in adulthood.
> Not to say gender dysphoria doesn't exist, but there's also no actual solution to it right now.
See, I can tell you haven't spoken much to trans folk, because that's not true. The only things we're missing are gonadal function, and natural erectile function in phalloplasties: everything else (including pregnancy, for trans women) is possible with current medical technology, albeit hideously expensive.
Most trans people don't opt for such interventions, because they don't care about them all that much – or because they carry risks, such as vocal surgery. The most common interventions (such as exogenous sex hormones) are extremely effective at alleviating treating gender dysphoria.
> Trans just has never been a thing culturally here.
Trans people are well attested in ancient Scandinavian cultures – way more so than in Ancient Britain, where we only have fragmentary evidence and some etymological fun facts. I know that has little bearing on your current cultural attitudes, which are as I understand quite rigid about the gender binary, but I'm a pedant.
> For one because we have strict laws of medical interventions on underage people,
Norwegian law allows puberty blockers for children in Tanner stage 2, and hormones at the age of 16, subject to medical gatekeeping (which, provided waiting lists are reasonable, isn't so bad). The laws prohibit treatment to non-binary people, which is pretty bad, but they're hardly as you've described them.
If liberal people in the 60s had the attitude you have now you'd probably still be in the closet.
I'm sympathetic to you, frankly, because the current political environment constantly makes people feel like the problem is that we want a better world and if we had just shut up the barbarians wouldn't have taken over, but that is bullshit. Our side of the "culture war" would be doing a lot better if we had some courage to our convictions.
> The Index was enforceable within the Papal States, but elsewhere only if adopted by the civil powers, as happened in several Italian states.
Wow, such a hugely important list that nobody seemed to care about.
Reading cannot be a sin. Thinking cannot be a sin. Speaking cannot be a sin.
It's a good thing that the index has been abolished in 1966.
That is a straw man. I am sure you can find some one who says that somewhere out of billions of Christians, but it is effectively something no one says.
Nothing in there about "only if they meet certain moral standards".
I do agree that celebrating people because they do things that contradict Christ teachings (most commonly for accumulating wealth) is wrong.
For that and other reasons there are plenty of things presented in the old testament as sins, which Christians don't consider to be sins. The most obvious example is probably rules around kosher food.
1 Timothy 6:20–21 – “O Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding the profane novelties of words and oppositions of knowledge falsely so called, which some professing have erred concerning the faith.”
2 Timothy 4:3–4 – Warns of people turning from truth to myths, implying leaders must protect them from such influences.
Titus 1:9–11 – Bishops must “stop the mouths” of those teaching error, which includes preventing their works from spreading.
Acts 20:28–31 – Paul warns the Ephesian elders to guard the flock from false teachers who will arise “speaking perverse things.”
2 John 1:10–11 – “If any man come to you, and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into the house nor say to him, God speed you.”
Romans 16:17 – Mark and avoid those who cause doctrinal divisions; a list of banned works is a formal way of “marking” them.
Acts 19:19 – New converts in Ephesus publicly burn their occult books after coming to the faith.
Deuteronomy 13:1–5 – False prophets and their influence must be eradicated from the midst of the people.
Etc, etc, etc.
If you are arguing that intrinsically good things (reading, thinking, speaking) can be turned to bad purpose, then so can almost anything. If done with honest intent I cannot see how reading, thinking of speaking atheism is sinful.
Is there anything in the the Catechism that says otherwise.
> There is manifestly contained in this commandment AN IMPLICIT DENIAL OF ALL ATHEISM. The command, "Thou shalt have none other gods before Me," rests on the assumption that there is one true and living God. The law therefore forbids atheism as being a denial of God. (https://biblehub.com/sermons/auth/barrett/the_first_commandm...)
Who exactly is the source you cite for the claim atheism is breaking the commandment and therefore sinful? He does not seem to be a Catholic, let alone someone with authority to define the church's teachings. Can you link to a similar statement in the Catechism, a church Council, or at least a papal encyclical?
"One protestant preacher said" is not proof of what the Catholic Church believes.
That's a far stretch. How is "keep the sabbath holy" a "general principle" in any way? How is "thou shalt have no other gods before me"?
its not obvious to me. I cannot see how an honestly held belief can be a sin. Is it evil to be an atheist because you believe there is no God? Clearly not, so how can you say its a sin?
Like to be saved, most Christians say, one must believe a litany of things about the historical figure of Christ. But that is just a history exam! It seems highly implausible that the God most people think of when they think of the Christian God would assign torture and torment based purely on a failure to come to a certain historical conclusion.
It is NOT the teaching of the Catholic church for a start:
https://uscatholic.org/articles/202212/what-does-the-church-...
https://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_coun...
Nor do they believe hell to be a place of torture, but a state of separation from God. Read CS Lewis's Great Divorce if you are interested in a better metaphor than flames and torture.
> but it means that God labors tirelessly to bring all people — Christian or not — to salvation in Christ.
That is a hilarious quote. Only believers can say that with a straight face and not see the absolute madness it implies. How could "God labor[] tirelessly" to help everyone into salvation? That's on its face absolute garbage. Is God so incredibly weak that he could only show the path to salvation to 12 dudes 2000 years ago? If so, why should we worship that god, which seems like a pitiful figure compared to many nobel prize winners. I certainly would think we owe more worship to Normal Borlaug than a god that can't get his message across because he could only intervene in a credible way once in front of 12 people, and then never again.
While its true that various pieces of Catholic "stuff" admit the possibility of salvation _without_ explicit belief in Christ, the vibes are still very much "if you know about Jesus/The Gospel then you probably need to believe in him to be saved, with some possible exceptions."
And a "state of separation" from God is expected to be a state of torture. Like maybe the idea of demons literally poking you in the eyeballs with hot pokers is out of fashion, but its clear Hell is still understood to be a deeply unpleasant place.
Different branches of Christianity are very different; you can’t assume that Catholics believe something just because most Protestants do.
Historically, religions (when there in position of power of course) have not been especially kind with atheists..
- CCC 2125
Interestingly, I believe this means, from the Church's perspective, that the mere fact of my posting this makes this sin more imputable to those who read it! Sorry about that.
But I hope the Catholic Church of the future will take the defense of its flock more serious again. Many books (and movies and TV series...) out there contain downright evil ideas, sometimes presented in dishonest ways. Perhaps some organized, ecclesiastically sanctioned system of reviews to guide readers would be feasible?
the catholic church is an ancient institution that believes it is the continuing ministry of jesus christ. and thus, it is not beholding to purely biblical rules - but also tradition.
indeed, sin is an "utterance, deed, or desire" that offends God. the concept of sin is that it is abhorrent, and caused by concupiscence.
the ccc (catcheism) indeed has a definition for sin and does not specify what is or isn't sin directly - but rather through the above criteria, both biblical and traditional. and it is defined and ruminated upon by those who are the apostles (bishops) via the magisterium, which is their upholding of this
which is to say,
reading can be a sin - if those works are abhorrent to god, the bible, or the tradition of the church
thinking can be a sin - if those thoughts are abhorrent to god, the bible, or the tradition of the church
speaking can be a sin - if those words are abhorrent to god, the bible, or the tradition of the church
and boy howdy, if those fuckin jesusmonks put together a book of read-sins and by the magisterium and the tradition of the church, then reading them is a sin. sorry about your religion
It would have to be something sinful in itself, so, for example, planning a murder is clearly a sin, although only a thought. Taking pleasure is someone else's suffering is also a sin.
Reading to learn, honest thoughts, and honest speech cannot be sins. I think those are what the post you are replying to had in mind.
With that said, doubt is part of faith, and exploration of that is just an articulation and not outright denial. I would bucket “honest confusion” the same way. To be confused in the desert is to be confused in the desert, akin to throwing a non-swimmer into water. The confusion before faith (before swimming) is okay, I believe. That’s all I can postulate from my own meditation.
Anyway, we have to always remember that Christ went toe-to-toe against his own religion. These Christian denominations must always know Christ will reject them outright if they are misinterpreting (and how could anyone think otherwise is beyond me, going up against Judaism was his first major imperative).
He was a very serious activist, beyond.
Have you drawn the correct conclusions from that? It is certainly not the conclusion the Catholic Church draws which is what we are discussing here. You may think the Catholic church wrong about this, but that is a different argument.
> going up against Judaism was his first major imperative
Everything he said and taught was in the context of the Jewish tradition. He said "Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them" - Matthew 5:17
Matthew 5:28
“But I say to you that everyone who keeps on looking at a woman so as to have a passion for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pastoral_epistles
Any attempt to justify banning books from the New Testament is indirect at best. All Christians play loosy-goosy with the Bible to some degree. There are things Jesus directly warned against like gathering wealth that most Christians have no problem doing. Paul seems kinda iffy about marriage but for many Christians that's a core religious value. Meanwhile there's a bunch of stuff like book banning or being gay that's at best ambiguously condemned in the Bible that people are up in arms over.
> St. Paul wrote "it is a shame for women to speak in the church"! Noooooo, it must be fake!
For anyone curious.
Using “has been” here makes it immediately clear that you’re a non-native English speaker, unless you’re speaking some dialect I’m not familiar with.
Usually, we use the perfect (“has been”) with time intervals that include (or asymptotically approach) the present. We use the simple past (“was”) with time intervals or points that are closed and are clearly sepatated from the present.
For example: “I went to Lebanon in 2015”. 2015 is a specific point in time. But if I don’t include a time, I’d say “I’ve been to Lebanon”. Even though this was in the past, the fact that I don’t mention a specific time in the past means it implicitly includes the present, because I’m describing my current state: I’m someone who has been to Lebanon.
And, if I were in Lebanon now, for the first time, I could say “I’ve been to Lebanon”, and then it really does concretely include the present!
To illustrate another edge case: I’d say “my father has never been to Lebanon” but “my grandfather never went to Lebanon”. Because my father is still alive, but my grandfather is dead. So any statements about his life are automatically about a closed interval lying entirely in the past.
Specifically, using the combination "has been ... in". Either "was abolished in" (simple past in the passive voice) or "has been abolished since" (present perfect in the passive voice) would work (simple past describing the event of abolition, past perfect describing the continuous state of having been abolished from the point of that event up until and continuing through the present moment) would work.
"Has been abolished in 1966" says that it was abolished in 1966 and it remains abolished today.
"Was abolished in 1966" says that it was abolished in 1966, but it provides no information about whether it might have been reinstated later and it might continue to be enforced today.
So in this case I believe that the other poster was correct in using "has been abolished in 1966".
That meaning would be expressed as "has been abolished since 1966", unless it is still 1966 when the idea is being expressed, in which case "has been abolished in 1966" works instead; "has been abolished" is a present perfect (passive voice) construction so "in <past time period>" doesn't make sense with it, while "since <past time period>" or "in <current time period>" does.
Christ specifically was impressed with a Centurion that sought his healing power (for another, not himself) without even being a Jew or follower of Christ. As in, Christ was simply amazed:
“Truly I tell you, I have not found anyone in Israel with such great faith.” (Matthew 8:10, NIV)
Descartes would haven fallen under such faith. I really need to study how the Catholic Church butchered so many interpretations.
That's me!
Copernicus was himself a priest and heliocentrism per se was never the problem. Even Galileo got into trouble for making the specific claim that it had been proved that the sun was the centre of the universe.
Turns out that just moving the coordinate system origin from the Earth to the Sun (e.g. literally just a change of perspective) replaces any complicated explanation for those complex movement patterns that are visible from Earth with a much simpler explanation (but a simpler explanation alone doesn't mean yet that it's more correct than the complicated explanation - it's at best more likely until proven). It took until Newton and Einstein to really understand why planets move predictably around the sun and not entirely erratically (AFAIK Newton still believed the movement to be preserved by intervention of God - don't quote me on that though).
So the initial stance of the Catholic Church to insist on geocentrism wasn't "unscientific" in the same sense that today's Flat Earthers, astrologists or anti-vaxxers are - compared to those, the 16th century Catholic Church was hardcore rationalist. The church finally recognized heliocentrism in the mid 18th century (so at least they only waited until Newton's death and not Einstein's death lol).
But hey, what's a few centuries in the history of the Catholic Church ;)