Letters to the Editor
mandolin
Published Letters: 31
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Teresa WAS a fraud
[Read the article: Naughty nuns excommunicated]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Christopher Hitchins has a good summary of the case here: http://www.slate.com/id/2090083/.
Additionally, Lloyd's characterization of official RC attitudes towards women is pretty accurate.
But as one earlier poster put it, it's their club; they get to make the rules.
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Doctrine, Science, and Doubt
[Read the article: Naughty nuns excommunicated]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]scorpio69er wrote
Your writing reveals you to be woefully ignorant of Catholic theology. To attack it as you have done is tantamount to you attacking Einstien's[sic] Theory - something else about which I am quite sure you have zero knowledge.
scorpio69er, can you give a summary of Thomas Aquinas's views on abortion? Do you know when the Immaculate Conception was declared doctrine, or whose conception is referred to in that doctrine? Can you describe the difference between Special and General Relativity? Do you not know that Einstein himself was very unhappy with the implications of his own 1905 paper on the photo-electric effect, one of the foundations of early work in quantum mechanics, or that a good deal of work in contemporary physics calls into question various parts of his theoretical work?
And do you really not understand the difference between superstitious doctrine and scientific work? The value of the scientific method is precisely that it invites and welcomes well-reasoned, evidence-based attacks on accepted theory at ALL levels. That doctrine does not invite such attack renders it worthless as a guide either to human understanding and behavior or to the nature of the world. What is claimed without evidence may be dismissed without evidence.
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What's with all the woman-bashing?
[Read the article: Naughty nuns excommunicated]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I mean, really!
It's my first time (blush) diving into Salon comments, but WTF? I personally don't think it's a Good Thing for anyone, male or female, in or out of any religious hierarchy, to believe themselves a Vessel for Revealed Truth, but for non-Catholics there's nothing remotely controversial in Lloyd's squib except her cut at MT. By post-Vatican II but pre-JPII standards, even that would be unremarkable.
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Lynx: a qualification of my earlier post
[Read the article: Naughty nuns excommunicated]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Lynx wrote:
Actually, very little in contemporary physics calls into question any parts of Einsteins theoretical work.
The irreconcilability of QM with RT is part of the motivation for the work of, for instance, string theorists, but "much" was no doubt too strong a word. Einstein looks unlikely to be proven "wrong" about General Relativity except in the way that GR proved Newton was "wrong" -- that there is a more general theory which includes it and limits it. And most physicists appear to think he was flat wrong about quantum theory.
Disclaimer: I am not a physicist, nor a believer. I'm a poet with technical training who makes his living writing software, and who once seriously intended to be an Episcopal priest.
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Misquoting Myself
[Read the article: Naughty nuns excommunicated]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"Much" would indeed have been wrong, but I didn't write it (and Lynx didn't say I did). I did write "a good deal," and I'll stand by that at least until I talk with a Real Physicist. There are some where I work.
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Mr Anon:
[Read the article: Naughty nuns excommunicated]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The claim was made here (http://letters.salon.com/mwt/broadsheet/2007/09/27/heretical_nuns/permalink/8c267fa5a3cf36a2b4584e4a5df202a4.html) that attacking Catholic Doctrine was like attacking Einstein, and I replied here (http://letters.salon.com/mwt/broadsheet/2007/09/27/heretical_nuns/permalink/dcbc2cafee32093750fbece9ab70eded.html) that unlike the Church, Einstein and other scientists welcome attacks on their theories (and that that was made science more valuable than religion), and then I answered objections to certain points in my post, just as I am answering you.
Is that off-topic? Only if one believes the topic is "Carol Lloyds idiocy." I don't.
BTW, just what is the "Holy of Holies" in physics? What a strange thing that would be -- and in any case, I already said that Einstein's 1905 paper on the photo-electric effect was one of the foundations of early QM. But almost no one any more looks for the "hidden variables" Einstein believed would explain away the probabilistic aspects of QM, and the experiment he proposed (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPR_paradox) would demonstrate the inconsistency of QM instead spectacularly confirmed it. He was wrong.
And Carol Lloyd isn't wrong when she describes the RC Church as "that most patriarchal of institutions" (there is no institution equivalent to the RC hierarchy in Islam, though no doubt Salafist Islam is more anti-woman than the church), and she is not wrong when she says it "has often spawned its opposite from deep within the fold."
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Sexism vs Dogma
[Read the article: Naughty nuns excommunicated]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]You're probably right, namegoeshere, that there's nothing especially sexist about this particular decision.
It's perhaps ironic that the last time, the arguably actual monotheists (the Arians) lost.
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Scorpio69er ....
[Read the article: Naughty nuns excommunicated]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Then please make the point in terms simple enough for me to understand.
But don't tell me it's that there exist smart, educated, happy nuns who don't feel the Church's positions on the status of women to be sexist. There also exist smart, educated, happy men of real power and influence who believe in magic underwear. Neither the non-sexism of the church nor magic underwear are in any way supported by the existence of such people.
And don't tell me the Church isn't sexist because the Church is the way God wants it to be. G W Bush thinks God wanted him to be president.
And please, while you make your real point in suitable terms for my simple mind, give me some reason to believe your understanding of Catholic Theology and "Einstein's Theory" is any deeper than mine or Ms Lloyd's. In my humble experience, anyone who says "Einstein's Theory" didn't pass high school physics. Just which theory is it that's "Einstein's Theory"?