As You Like It - Men Becoming Women

A cold shower usually fixes that.

You know... all the silliness is welcome at the Thread- so if anyone actually wants to get back to a real discussion, the nonsense has a home

I can agree with those traditions. It's still a statement - to each other. A ceremony is the same thing but done publically - usually enjoyable because friends and family attend. Paperwork is the legal bit that's necessary when it's required that other people accept the marriage.

I've already said in several posts that the RRC (Roman Catholic Church) has separate marriage laws and remarriage within the church and annulment, etc.

It's difficult to understand Christianity without reading the beginning of the Bible rather than about the beginning of the RRC.

And your transubstantiation statement is totally false. Lutheran's (Protestants) who are named after Martin Luther DO believe in transubstantiation the exact same way as Catholics. Other Protestants like myself hold communion less formal but we do not believe that the bread and wine are the body of Christ or a transformation of Christ, but rather a spiritual remembrance of his sacrifice for us and our spirit is moved in some way, so perhaps "transubstantiation" is a poetic type of spiritual experience not easily defined. However, Lutheran's believe in transubstantiation the exact same way Catholics do.

And all us Heathens should be grateful this day for Martin Luther and others who gave us this freedom to chose, as before Protestantism if you were excommunicated from the RCC you could not get a job nor support your family. I've chosen once saved always saved by Christ as I remember God's sacrifice this day.

In our Western civilization now we have the right to read the scriptures or not or to freely go down some other spiritual path altogether and those who are westernized would not have this freedom were it not for Martin Luther. Free at least, free at least!

At least be grateful for some western civilization because otherwise you might be a savage running around with a bone in your hair, a cannibal, ya know. Think about it.

All right, here's some more food for thought to those who believe that without consummation a marriage never took place:

I looked up the laws for annulment in my state of California. According to them, non consummation is not a valid reason for annulment by itself. The only time it would be a valid reason would be if one spouse entered into the marriage never intending to consummate it and hid this intention from their spouse. It's the hidden intent that makes it a basis for annulment, not the non consummation itself. If both spouses agree in not consummating the marriage then the marriage doesn't need to be consummated to be legal.

In California most of the annulment reasons are along these lines and have nothing to do with whether or not particular acts are performed but with whether or not all information was disclosed before the marriage. Impotency, for example, is a grounds for annulment as well but only if it was not disclosed before the marriage took place. As with intent regarding consummation or not, if the spouses knew that impotency existed before the marriage, the marriage stands. The point of the annulment is that people know what they are entering into and that their union will not be legal if certain information that's important to the marriage was never revealed. It's the non disclosure that makes it basis for annulment, not the situation (impotency) or act itself (non consummation).

There are situations in which a marriage can be annulled that have nothing to do with agreement of the parties but these have to do with incest, mental instability, bigamy, etc.

Time to break this pic out again...



Really, he should concentrate on stopping the priests from diddling children before moving on to that other stuff.

In the Old Testament there was no piece of paper. Once two people (a male and a female had sexual intercourse) they were married. The way ceremonies are conducted is a man made thing as is the ring. The ring is not biblical nor is a ceremony biblical. The ring merely has the folklore that our love had no beginning and has no end, it is eternal, let the circle not be unbroken.

And jumping in the sack together in the Old Testament didn't need witnesses either, people just married themselves though most were betrothed first.

I'm sorry to co-opt the thread. I can't seem to help myself today.

There was a point in history in which so many American protestants held prejudice against Catholics that when the Irish arrived they were turned down for jobs and treated horribly and had trouble feeding their families and one of the reasons given by those who held the prejudice was that the Irish were Catholic. And let's not forget Catholics like Mother Teresa who fed the poor, comforted the sick, etc. The truth is that you can find Catholics who live lives of love and charity as well as Protestants who do. You can also find Catholics and Protestants who treat others poorly and who use their religion not as a place from which to gather strength and love but as a convenient excuse for their hate. This has nothing to do with Catholics or Protestants being better. It has to do with the fact that, Catholic or Protestant, we are all human and humans are prone to both the good and the bad. So quit acting like Protestants are saints and Catholics are devils. It's an oversimplification and does not hold true.

Your quote about savages is incredibly annoying. Western Civilization includes good history, yes, and also bad. The same can be said about, let's see, every civilization that ever lived. And there are and have been many non western civilizations, I'll have you know, that never engaged in Cannibalism or anything of that nature. If you really think that non westerner means or ever meant cannibal then you definitely need some anthropology and history texts, pronto. Your education is lacking. You also don't find it odd that you jump to cannibalism as the (untrue) staple of non western civilization while the Eucharist, a central religious tradition of the predominant western religion, is undeniably a metaphorical act of cannibalism?

Oh my... there for the grace of god .. etc etc
thankie Sahib... but i would rather be a savage.

I have a new (yet old) fave musician.

Merry Christmas!

I've never heard that, but I'd say all immigrants have had to struggle to find their way into American culture and have their own hardship stories to tell. And I've also said Protestants had also done terrible things in the past such as mass murder (The English Queens for example) so where have I said Catholics were devils and Protestants were Angels? Misread altogether. My points have been regarding scripture that does not exist or other off the wall things that Pope's declare along with the fact that for 1300 hundred years (approx) one could not get a job if excommunicated from the RCC as the RCC dominated the western world, along with points regarding the apocrypha which if not believed in makes one anathema (excommunicated) from the RCC due to one Pope in the middle ages even though Catholic.org says the apocrypha is NOT the word of God. Raising hand, happy to be anathema! Yay! Oh and let me add that all Protest-ants were declared anathema (excommunicated) AFTER Martin Luther translated the Bible without the apocrypha. So Catholics created the schism between Protestants and Catholics whereupon we will and never can be one universal church because we are all anathema if we refuse the apocrypha which Catholic.org says is not the word of God. That makes a whole lot of sense /me says sarcastically.

My comment about the savages was a joke Ma'am. A joke is something not to be taken seriously.

No. You are not correct. The Roman Catholic Church (which in my alphabet would be RCC) believes that the wine and bread become the blood and flesh of Christ - full transubstantiation. In the U.S., the largest Lutheran denominations believe that there is a presence of Christ with the wine and bread and this element means that the flesh and blood of Christ is taken with the wine and bread and that Christ is truly present, but the wine and bread remain wine and bread. This is not consubstantiation and more closely follows transubstantiation, but it would not be the RCC definition of transubstantiation.

And by all means, don't take my word for it. The ELCA and the Missouri Synod both have web sites. Please, for once, read them and read them for understanding, not to read what you want to read.

I have. If it weren't for Christianity, millions of people wouldn't have been forced from their naturally evolved ways of life into a religion not of their making. History shows that those deluded (if well-meaning) missionaries of any stripe caused more damage than good to those civilizations. (Not going to mention Catholics - no one expects the Inquisition)

To say that people have then so generously been given freedom of religion is utter arrogance. They had that long before Christianity tried to sort itself into various parcels to appeal to various people. At best, they were given BACK some freedoms.

To say that those without the benefits of western civilization are "savages" is both arrogant and ignorant. (As is the part where you seem to think that 'savages' are cannibals - do you read anything but the bible?)

Newsflash: Western civilization ain't doing so well for itself. "The meek shall inherit the earth". This is quite evident when those of us accustomed to the comforts of western civilization have to fear financial meltdown and other evils that we brought upon ourselves. Those bone-decorated savages aren't going to miss their credit cards and mortgages.

And as someone that has read the Lao Tse and Kung Tse in the Chinese, I find this amazingly stupid and blatantly ignorant. The Bard tradition of the Celts would have done just fine without either the Roman Catholic or the Protestant influence. Do you know you are flailing or are you really not aware?

I stand corrected. However, this issue is not truly behind what is know as the "great schism".

Happy Holidays everyone!

You have no idea about the "Irish need not apply" days, how the WASP majority felt Irish immigrants were drunken monkeys,why the idea of a Catholic President was unheard of until 1960, and even then there was genuine fear that John F. Kennedy would be making decisions influenced by the Vatican? *You have heard of JFK, I hope*

Did you know that besides Blacks, that Catholics were, and still are to an extent the main target of the Ku Klux Klan?

Perhaps you need to open a few history books and put down the Good Book occasionally.

The above was a joke.

And Lao Tse and Kung Tse are Eastern, what would they have to do with Western civilization?

Irish people were in movies in moving makings infancy and all kinds of things, so your post sounds a little overblown. But that doesn't mean I disregard it's accuracy nor does it have anything to do with why Protestants and Catholics have a permanent separation, which I have explained. And I'm still happy to be anathema.

And no I've never heard of the "Irish need not apply" days.

Seriously?????? (This is all starting to seem a little surreal - maybe try a icon when you're joking so that people know your ignorance has limits)

The most dramatic history in this 'civilized' little Canadian town where I live involved a troubled time of Catholic (mainly Irish and Italian) vs Protestant (everyone else in this largely WASPy place).
This involved discrimination to the point where people lost their lives, property was taken, jobs refused (and this latter part really not all that long ago). Local plays and books have been written about this.

Stupid waste.

Utterly aside, well actually getting back to the OP, what's with the Pope haranguing folks about those evil transsexuals during his Christmas speech while Zimbabwe, a largely Christian country, is on the brink of utter annihilation because its despot (Christian) leader is an utter nutcase doesn't even get a slap on the wrist?
Who sorts out these priorities?

I can't stop laughing from that one.

they would be the savages you were talking about.

but then .. if the Romans (read pagans) hadn't invaded the British Isles.. then ppl would still be running around daubed in wode (that blue shit) going bonga bonga and eating ppl too...

happy holidays to you too


read the rest here
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/bones-provide-irrefutable-evidence-that-ancient-britons-were-cannibals-692882.html