Posted on 11/24/2009 4:10:44 PM PST by NYer
Statistics released Nov. 24 by the FBI show hate crimes against religious groups increased by 9% from 2007 to 2008.
USA Today reported that in 2008, there 1,519 incidents against people based on their religion, the statistics show.
The figures reveal that while anti-Jewish attacks made up the highest percentage of the attacks (17%), there was an increase in hate crimes against Catholics — 75, up from 61 in 2007.
Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, said the increase may be due to the Church becoming more vocal on life issues such as abortion and homosexual unions.
As the Catholic bishops take a stronger stance, he said, it filters down to the laity, and as more traditional Catholics become more vocal, they become targets for those who disagree with them.
“Unfortunately, it spills over into violence,” he said, adding that it’s just going to get worse before it gets better.
“I’ve never seen our country so culturally divided and so polarized,” he said. “These issues are not going away.”
You are never an ex-Catholic unless you have gone in front of a judgment board and denounced the Catholic Church is writing and then had a hearing.
Once baptized a Catholic, you are always a Catholic.
May I ask why you are an inactive Catholic at this time?
We always invite you back......all you need to do is sit down with a priest and get your questions answered and your hurts resolved.
Because then it would have been even more obvious Roman Catholics have nothing to complain about, especially when compared to the actual discrimination that makes up anti-semitism.
lol. Yep. And see post 61. Even when some want to be called "ex-Catholic," Rome won't "permit" it.
Can you imagine the terror a child or even young adult must face when confronted by the abusive demands of “another Christ?”
I thank you for your reply. I could counter all your thoughts and judgments (false in my eyes) about the Catholic Church with threads that have stated the truth about Catholicism and been posted on FR.
I’m sure if you wanted to do a search on any of them, you would find those threads.
Perhaps the way I look at it is the two sides of a coin. On one side we have the love of God for us, on the other side we have the righteous judgment of God. Yet the one coin is fully representative of God.
Something to ponder for all of us.
I don’t quite understand what you are expressing in this post—some clarification would be helpful.
What I do know is that as a convert to Catholicisim I have personally experienced very unpleasant hostility towards the Church I came into by choice.
Also, as a Catholic I have experienced verbal abuse outside of my church by anti-Catholic groups who were often lining the sidewalks outside the church doors, yelling hateful things to the parishoners as they either went in or came out from Mass. Some of this same group actually came into the church to create a disturbance.
I also experienced, at my workplace, discrimatory speech directed to me personally from anti-Catholic people of Protestant denominations.
When our son-in-law entered into the Catholic church after being married to our daughter for several years, he told us that one thing that impressed him was that neither my family nor my church community ever made slurs against him as a Protestant, though he had grown up hearing all sorts of untrue things about Catholicism from his parents.
Yes, this is personal and anecdotal experience I am speaking of here, and I know that it’s value is diminished simply because it is personal and anecdotal; however, I knew what our son-in-law had expereinced because it had also been my own experience growing up as a child in a mix of Calvinist and Wesleyan professions.
I have always had a profound regret and discomfort and sometimes pain with any virulent expression of disdain for another Christian denomination. It has proven counter-productive for me every time, and is not the kind of “witness” that has authentic value.
I don't quite get your analogy. Is salvation according to the flip of a coin?
"For the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth" -- Romans 9:11
None of which describes the Catholic Church.
..."global authority" Roman Catholics.
What a strange statement. It seems to belie the fact that it was stiff-necked Presbyterian Calvinist Woodrow Wilson--America's first fascist President--who invented the League of Nations.
Global authority is the creation of the 20th century's Calvinist "great mind."
The truth is often "off-putting" to those smothered by so many false traditions of men (sola fide chief among them).
You ought to focus on what the Catholic Church actually teaches.
Anyone who so steadfastly clings to lies about the Catholic Church, whose posting career is devoted to repeating those lies in the face of countless corrections, who hates the Catholic Church so much as to be even unwilling to refer to her by name...this is not a person who just needs to run a few searches to find the correct information.
Is is most disappointing to see the number of so called "christians" in this forum who have joined in on these attacks...
Name one Freeper who has been involved in a criminal assault on a Catholic.
Name one Freeper (who isn't an atheist or a CINO) who "attacks" RCs on Free Republic because RCs are "becoming more vocal on life issues such as abortion and homosexual unions."
Their religious leaders have remained silent on these matters.
Name one conservative Protestant or Orthodox religious leader from the US who supports criminal assaults on Roman Catholics.
Their silence is debatable; to the degree that they are silent, perhaps it is because that they have little influence by which to persuade the sodomites and pro-aborts who are committing these acts of violence.
Good point. 50 Reported cases a year is OK. < /sarc>
There are some here that are so blinded by their hatred of the Catholic Church that they are totally unaware of it. They believe that they alone can see the truth, they believe that they can discern what others cannot, but in reality all they see is the bitter reflection of their own empty lives; rather than examine the emptiness of their own hearts, they accuse others of being empty.
In fact, some are so blind that they will accept as fact ANYTHING they believe fits their agenda. Some will actually attribute what they read on personal websites of non-Catholics as actual Church teaching. It is exactly the same thing that Dan Rather did when he tried to put forward a fraud and say that it is "fake but accurate". Some on here will actually fabricate quotes and then become indignant when asked for verification.
You think fifty reported cases of sexual abuse is okay? That's a sick attitude.
My point is that enemies of the Catholic Church like to smear all one-million priests with the charges of pedophilia and/or pederast, but the actual number of offenders among that population of priests is miniscule.
Further, your original post is wrong. Seventy-six anti-Catholic hate crimes v. fewer than fifty reported cases last year means "More children have been abused by Catholic priests" is false.
What about the execrable practice of smearing Pope Benedict’s late father?
Satan is the father of all lies.
Really? What did they teach? Karate? Taekwondo? Basic hand-to-hand combat?
If the uninformed were to read the posts of some on here they would think that the Holy Father was an active participant in the Holocaust.
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