Notice: The daily sport of posting Catholic bashing threads on FR stops today. Thanks.

July 19, 2014 | Jim Robinson

[Jim Robinson]

That's not the purpose of FR and not the purpose of our Religion forum. Trashing religion is not debate.

Those who cannot live with this are welcome to post elsewhere.

[monocle]

Is your next project to struggle with what the word “is” means?

[italianquaker]

Thank you

[AppyPappy]

It’s OK to trash Methodists. Even God does it.

[onyx]

Thank you so much!

[doorgunner69]

This might be an appropriate example, at least the sort of stuff that makes me wish for personal contact:

Typical Catholic Bashing

[onyx]

Thank you so much!!!

[Brian Kopp DPM]

Thanks mlizzy. (I’ve been doing a little bit of writing for onepeterfive.com and Creative Minority Report of late, as well as some pro-life stuff. I don’t generally have a lot of free time online these days.)

[onyx]

:)

[CGASMIA68]

He knits..what a guy so did my dear ole Maw

[FourtySeven]

Thank you this is very gracious of you. Speaking for myself only, I do share some of the blame at least for these flame wars in the past. I hope and pray we can move past all of it and I do offer my sincerest apologies for any offense I have given to any of my non-Catholic Christian brethren.

[trubolotta]

In a movie theatre, I paid to watch the movie, not hear someone preach. This site is allegedly is about discussing conservative ideas, a good many of which are formed on faith. Without God, there can be no real conservatism. I firmly believe that. When the site decrees a rule that there shall be no “bashing” but can’t even express in third grade words what that means, I challenge the intellectual credentials of that site.

We can have a discussion of religion here without animosity but clearly, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism et all are at odds with each other. Note that I did not differentiate between Protestants, Catholics, Mormons et aux because I believe in principle we are brothers in arms with common cause against forces that would deny free will. Is that not the common ground given us by one God?

That being said however, A pope that pushes a statist agenda, socialism and authoritarian rule is no friend of any Christian. If Catholics cannot accept criticism of a pope, then perhaps it is they that need to find a place where critical thinking is far more restrained. If they want to defend papal infallibility as “God’s Word” and silence me for saying otherwise, then I will criticize them, “bashing” or not.

[CGASMIA68]

Garrison Kelor does a job on them too

[Crim]

“Roman Catholics cultists”

Yeah that’s a good example.

[Chesterbelloc]

Thanks. :)

[southern rock]

Is it because there are many more religious threads posted today than when I joined?

I joined around the same time you did and for sure, there used to be a lot of more politically astute posters here. Now it seems like every other thread is a religion thread. And that isn't even counting the folks that post religious responses on totally secular threads. FR has attracted, over the years, the demographic that eats, drinks, walks and sleeps religion 24/7. Not a secular thought in their head, and thoroughly incapable of formulating an opinion or argument outside that context.

[Excellence]

Oh, thank you for that. I’ve never understood the religious pissing contests on FR.

[Crim]

When the site decrees a rule that there shall be no “bashing” but can’t even express in third grade words what that means, I challenge the intellectual credentials of that site.

This site is private property and the OWNER just said knock off the catholic bashing and you want to argue with the property owner on what he allows on his property.

Not very wise.

[Ge0ffrey]

Amen

[Jim Robinson]

I beg your pardon.

Here’s the earliest page on FR that I could find using the waybackmachine: https://web.archive.org/web/19961221165158/http://freerepublic.com/

Notice that one of my very first posts to FR is entitled, “Democracy in the Bible and History.” Unfortunately, the article has not survived, but the evidence of the importance of God and the bible to our founding and our Republic is right there on one of our first front pages.

[wolfman]

Thanks for your years of service and sacrifice in the defense of American Conservatism. You have done well fighting a losing battle. It is a losing battle, however and our problems will not be solved through political activism. If it was going to be solved it would have been through changing hearts and minds through the true Gospel of Jesus Christ, a gospel that catholicism fights as much as Islam does. I say this as a former catholic of 20 years who understands the catholic church better than most catholics do, military veteran, and as a person who’s had FR as my homepage since 1997. I love you Jim, and appreciate your life’s work on behalf of those of us who hold the Constitution as the blueprint for our nation. But you do us no favors in defending the false gospel of catholicism, which is as big an enemy to this country as corrupt politicians and terrorist nations.