@rhubroma
Basic premise: sex for kicks is sinful, because not predicated upon a more "noble" result. The ancients , though, would have certainly find such puritanical thinking odd and without sense
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To suggest that "the ancients" were monolithic in their thinking is disingenuous. Which ancients? More importantly, which class of ancients? A celibate priest class (for ex.) had it's beginnings long before the RCC adopted the practice. Some ancients, those that were initiated, were undoubtedly studying what we now call consciousness. They were obviously considering the sexual union as a powerful procreative act (with it's many consequences) and in an esoteric way, base consciousness that is to be transformed or purified (the purifying fire) into higher states of consciousness of mind. To have dominion over onself, thus the world - this concept is at the root of so much confusion to this day. That they didn't impose this morality (directly) on others is a testament to their wisdom as it's, in a sense, this ignorance that procreation (life) is based.
Bringing to conclusion a pregnancy at all costs is God's will, otherwise we interrupt Nature
(this, in itself is rather paganizing no?)
As an aside, to pretend that the RCC and wider Christianity is somehow a clean break from "paganism" is hilarious, as is also the case with Judaism before it. The RCC admits as much:
“It has often been charged… that Catholicism is overlaid with many pagan incrustations. Catholicism is ready to accept that accusation and even to make it her boast… the great god Pan is not really dead, he is baptized” — The Story of Catholicism p 37.
- even if, of course, scientific progress has intervened with "correcting" nature, for which natural selection (Divine verdict?) has often been outwitted.
Although there seems to be a gross contradiction in an Absolute Divinity that permits human ingenuity to override such an Order
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This assumes that divinity is seperate from man. Depends on how you interpret man being created in the image of God. It's been an interesting exercise in highlighting the human intellect since man started farming. Since we shifted from adapting to our enviroment and began adapting it to us. This has not come without cost and consequence obviously (that otium you long for has all but vanished in modernity). The domestication of livestock leads to communicable diseases which necessitate advances in medicine and thus starts a process yet to be resolved. Interestingly we appear to have come full circle in certain disciplines, quantum physics - the ramifications of which remain largely ignored as it goes to causation in a world infatuated with effects, while marching on in our literalist interpretation of having "dominion over the earth" in others like bio-engineering and literally pursuing "eternal life" in the transhumanist movement.
"plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose"
Conversely, many a creation arrives in an atrocious state (without functioning organs, missing extremities, grave cerebral deficiencies, incurable disease),
Continuing with playing the devil's advocate, how's the scientific record in this regard? It's easy to site what are regarded as advancements but let's not become too pollyanna in our assessment. It could be argued that this progress has caused as much suffering as it's cured.
such that it's difficult to fathom how a deity that's all loving would condone it
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That cuts to the heart of the matter (pun intended). As you correctly prescribed to me in another thread, we can only change our perception of self/other/cosmos.
To then sustain based on doctrinal postion that that child (and the parents) must stoically endure such permanent suffering, which often leads inevitably to premature death, on the belief that to do otherwise would offend the Divinity's will, is a crime against humanity on the level of Nazi torture
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Mengele was practicing science. The Nazi's were trying to create a superman to celebrate the power of the human will. Regardless the suffering continues, it only seems to get shifted from one sphere to another.
No such verdict, however, was addressed by the Savior, for which the doctrine, as a post-revelation contrivance,
merely serves in the interests of executing authority and power.
This I agree with you entirely on.
To argue that the Catholic Church merely punished Galileo for "interpreting scripture himself," on the grounds that in condoning such praxis the Protestant Reform had caused a European bloodshed, while not considering the issues of power and control which a shattered Aristotelian geocentric model had for the Roman Catholic hierarchy at the time (without even considering Giordano Bruno's criminal destiny at the hands of that same establishment a couple of decades before);
Have you ever heard of Aristarchus of Samos?
is to give into a spurious access of intellectual dishonesty and historical falsification that doesn't even bear talking about, let alone taking seriously: all the offical causitry aside. All of this to say nothing of your original captious premise on scriptural autonomy, which the Church of Rome has itself since overturned in permitting the various vulgate editions, so that even the non-Latin cognoscenti can read for themselves and "interpret" the sacred writ. Hence, by that argument Galileo still suffered a gross injustice at the hands of a clerisy that wanted to entrust to itself the exclusive right to instruct the masses at the expense of their own ignorance, a monopoly that was predicated down through the centuries purely in the interest of maintaining power and control over society.
“Only the Roman Pontiff is rightly called universal; the Pope can be judged by no one; no one can be regarded as a catholic who does not agree with the Roman church; the Roman Church has never erred and never will err till the end of time; the Roman Church was founded by Christ alone; the Pope alone can depose and restore bishops; he alone can make new laws, set up new bishoprics, and divide old ones; he alone can translate bishops to another see; he alone can call general councils and authorize canon law; he alone can revise his own judgements; his sentence cannot be repealed by anyone and he alone can review the judgements of all; he alone can use the imperial insignia; he can depose emperors; he can absolve subjects from their allegiance to impious rulers; the Pope is the only man to whom all princes bend the knee; all princes should kiss his feet; his legates, even those in inferior orders, have precedence over all bishops; an appeal to the papal court inhibits judgement by all inferior courts; a duly ordained pope is undoubtedly made a saint by the merits of St. Peter.” Pope Gregory VII (Hildebrand), the intimate disciple of Pope Leo IX, Dictatus Papae (decreed in 1074 and reiterated at the 1st Latern Council (one of twenty R.C. ‘Ecumenical Councils’); Latin text in Karl Hofmann, Der Dictatus Papae Gregors VII (Paderborn [Germany]: Ferdinand Schöningh, 1933), p. 11.
Finally on the death penalty, and death at the hands of religious doctrine in general: the Church of Rome has had a long history of executions
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I'm completely ignorant as to how they must have tortured scripture, new testament anyway, to rationalize their behaviour. It's my understanding the church never actually executed anyone, they always granted the dirty work to the state.
from the thousands of heretics, to the millions involved with reformatory movements down through the centuries Hussites, Anabaptists and so forth - to say nothing about the fate of millions of New World aboriginals by the brutality of the conquistadores effectively under papal benediction by Alexander VI’s bulls of 1493. The Church only officially banned capital punishment form its juridical code (this was written) during the last century, whereas in Rome till 1870 (that is when the secular government of Italy relieved the Papal one of its jurisdiction), executioners acting on behalf of civic decree post-clerical judgment put criminals to death in Piazza del Popolo by bludgeoning their temples with two hammers. In this the Church had always hypocritically played the Pontius Pilate of its own death verdicts.
Admittedly to claim that Pope Pacelli was "Hitler's Pope" is deliberately provocatory and without historical bearing, however, it is equally true that he never took an unequivocally firm position condemning the diabolical nature of Nazism and, in the end, was all too diplomatic. Had he been as vigorously condemning as he was against the communist atrocities, perhaps his image would be better than that of a calculating diplomat.
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