The Catholic Church was the greatest invention of the pagan world.
Cute line, but hardly defensible, given that (a) the Catholic Church wasn't a pagan invention, and (b) even if it had been, I can think of far better inventions of the pagan world.
... and this is your argument about why Protestantism makes more sense? If anything, this demonstrates why Sola scriptura is self-defeating: it's impossible to discover the truth when your only method of finding the truth is your subjective intuition.
Logic favors the Catholic position on the grounds that Sola scriptura is by its nature illogical, in that it presents a source for theology that is subjective, when one of the fundamental premises of Christianity is that truth is objective.
I've noticed that whenever you talk about Protestantism you seem to assume that Protestants are committed to the
sola scriptura principle, and since this principle is false, Protestantism must be false. But Protestants are not committed to that principle. Sometimes it seems like your knowledge of Protestantism begins with Martin Luther, ends with Billy Graham, and completely skips everything in between. Do you really think that this objection touches, say, Karl Barth? Does it have even the slightest relevance to Schleiermacher or Tillich? Or, indeed, Rowan Williams? The whole point of liberal Protestantism, in all the many sense in which that term has been applied, is that scripture is
not taken as the sole authority. That is precisely why Protestant fundamentalists oppose liberal Protestantism just as vehemently as they do Roman Catholicism.
It used to be the societal standard to preserve virginity until marriage, and sociological data overwhelming projects this as making people happier and more successful.
I can't speak regarding the sociological data, but your historical claim is at best partial: yes, it used to be the societal standard to preserve virginity until marriage, but only in relatively recent modern times. In the Middle Ages that wasn't the case at all and I don't thing it was the case even in early modernity, at least for most people. In the Middle Ages most people would just shack up together and get a blessing from the bishop the next time he came around.
On Roman Catholicism in general, I've come to the view that there is a tremendous gulf between what the Catholic Church is supposed to be (and presents itself as) and what it actually is. I love the idea of the Catholic Church as presenting a rational religion, in accordance with naturally discovered principles of metaphysics and morality, with a body of teaching that has organically developed but never actually changed, in continuity with the teachings of Jesus and the first disciples. I'd quite happily join that church. Unfortunately it doesn't exist. The fact is, as far as I can tell, the Catholic Church's claims to rationality aren't matched by the actual arguments it gives for its teachings, which vary from weak (exemplified by its arguments for God's existence) to absolutely woeful or outright inconsistent (exemplified by its arguments for its teaching on sexual morality). Its claims not to change its teaching don't stand up to history. Obvious examples are the doctrine of the immaculate conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, a doctrine unknown before the Middle Ages; the doctrine of the bodily assumption of the same Blessed Virgin Mary, a doctrine unknown to the church fathers and which became Catholic doctrine only half a century ago; and the doctrine of papal infallibility, which was highly controversial and contested among Catholics throughout early modern times until it became Catholic doctrine less than a century and a half ago. Even the very notion that Catholic doctrine develops
at all was anathema to most Catholic thinkers until modern times - witness Bossuet's furious denunciations of the idea. The Catholic notion of doctrinal development, and the attempt to distinguish this notion from doctrinal
change, emerged only in the nineteenth century in the face of increasing evidence that people like Bossuet had been completely wrong and it quite manifestly does change, one way or another.
This is perhaps doubly ironic given that Bossuet, that indefatigable opponent of the notion that Catholic teaching has ever changed, and doughty attacker of Protestantism in every form and defender of the Catholic Church and its infallibility, was also an outspoken critic of the doctrine of papal infallibility, which a century and a half after his death became infallible Catholic doctrine itself. But there you go - try to pick your way through that.
Now I have spent - perhaps I should say "wasted" - much time and energy trying to defend Catholic teaching in general against those who attack it. This is on the grounds of my understanding of Catholicism gleaned from having spent much of life studying the writings of Catholicism's greatest thinkers. Unfortunately it is increasingly clear that the Catholicism described in those writings bears little if no relation to the Catholicism that actually exists and that is actually taught to those brought up in it. My fiancee, who long ago abandoned the Catholicism in which she was brought up as nothing other than a massive system of guilt-induction, was astonished when I explained to her the orthodox Catholic doctrine of grace, something of which she had never heard. What she was brought up to believe was nothing short of full Pelagianism. That seems to be the experience of most people I know with Catholic backgrounds. The church may rattle on about the rationality of its teaching, but the fact is it doesn't even teach that teaching. One sometimes gets the impression that the core doctrines of Catholicism are almost treated as esoteric teachings that only graduate theology students and seminarians get to find out, and even then only fairly near the end of the course. Anthony Kenny describes that very well in his autobiography, and he was describing the period before the Second Vatican Council, and the course he followed in Rome. So one can hardly say that this is a passing, current thing or that it's only at the fringes of the church.
Similarly, the idea of a church that acts as humanity's conscience and presents a rationally sound system of morality is a fine one, but it's not the church we've actually got. It's all very well to say that the moral failings of church leaders doesn't invalidate their teachings, and that's true enough, but a problem arises when the moral failings are so systemic, because it undermines the whole claim of the church to have access to any kind of superior morality. Even secular people understand the principle that, if someone in your organisation has broken the law, you don't conduct an internal investigation and deal with it in your own way; you report them to the civil authorities. They particularly understand that this is so with exceptionally serious allegations such as child abuse. That the Catholic Church failed to do this, in a systematic way, utterly undermines its claim to any kind of moral high ground, because it shows not simply that church leaders have failed to behave appropriately but that their whole conception of morality and correct behaviour is inferior by the standards even of secular society. They didn't just do wrong, they had no idea what it was to do right. When secular society needs to tell the Catholic Church this, over something so important, what credibility does that leave the church?
It's not enough the Pope saying sorry about the child abuse or making cryptic and subtle allowances that there might be unusual cases where using a condom is marginally less bad than not doing so. Every so often the Catholic Church has a serious sort out and rethink of what it's really about. I'd say the time is well overdue: it requires a new John XXIII, or indeed a new Gregory VII, to take steps to make the reality match the rhetoric. Not only the church's teaching on key, though secondary, issues such as sexuality needs to be completely rethought, but also the way in which it engages with the world, and the way in which it presents its own doctrines to its own people. As far as I can tell, this latter is an abysmal failure at the moment, and needs to be completely thrown out and rebooted from scratch. When teachers explaining the doctrines of the church of St Thomas Aquinas tell pupils off for asking questions, something has gone very seriously and fundamentally wrong.
can this thread be moved to OT or something
Moderator Action: Yes. 
![[offtopic]](/images/smilies/offtopic.gif "Offtopic [offtopic]")
