Catholic Church 200 years behind - according to a Cardinal

[DrFishcake]

Italian Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini has described the Roman Catholic Church as being "200 years behind" the times.

The cardinal died on Friday, aged 85.

Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera has published his last interview, recorded in August, in which he said: "The Church is tired... our prayer rooms are empty."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-19451439

See, don't just take my word for it...

[Old Viking]

The Cardinal was referring to the modernized branch of the church.

[czechmate]

More like 1600 years behind. The richest organisation on earth which spares no cost in its chuches and regalia, yet reluctantly gives to the needy only when the media is around.

[Askold]

So even when someone high up in the catholic church admits to them making some mistakes you attack them anyway? Besides he seemed quite liberal. Also since czechmate complained about the regalia and money spend on churches:

"Our culture has grown old, our churches are big and empty and the church bureaucracy rises up, our religious rites and the vestments we wear are pompous."

Unless the Church adopted a more generous attitude towards divorced persons, it will lose the allegiance of future generations, the cardinal added. The question, he said, is not whether divorced couples can receive holy communion, but how the Church can help complex family situations.

"The child sex scandals oblige us to undertake a journey of transformation," Cardinal Martini says, referring to the child sex abuse that has rocked the Catholic Church in the past few years.

He was not afraid, our correspondent adds, to speak his mind on matters that the Vatican sometimes considered taboo, including the use of condoms to fight Aids and the role of women in the Church.

[Star Cluster]

I really don't see where this was an attack on the Catholic Church, merely an article posted that reports something different and unusual about them.  I took DrFishcake's final comment as one of dismay and as offering proof that what he was reporting was correct.

A Cardinal speaking out against some of the church's policies and saying they are behind the times.  That's pretty damn newsworthy.

[Vypernight]

The church also said that the sky is blue and the Earth is round.  Should we give them medals for those as well?

[Star Cluster]

The church also said that the sky is blue and the Earth is round.  Should we give them medals for those as well?

Not sure who your comment was directed at, but...

On the sky is blue;  No, any non-color blind moron can look at the sky and see it is blue.  Doesn't take much to admit this one to be true.

On the Earth is round:  Well at one time, this was a big deal since the church insisted the earth was flat.  So, yeah, give 'em a big ol' belated trophy for this one.

Anytime any high ranking Catholic official (or Protestant, Muslim, etc. for that matter) pulls their head out of their ass and admits their church or religion was wrong about something and/or behind the times is pretty special.

[Fpqxz]

One could make the same argument about the hierarchy of any religion.

Yes, the Church of Rome has completely mishandled the sex abuse within its ranks.  But apart from that, they really aren't that much worse than the Fundamentalist Protestants, Wahhabist Muslims, Haredi/Ultra-Orthodox Jews, Hindutva extremists, or just about any other hyper-conservative religious group.

[Vypernight]

The church also said that the sky is blue and the Earth is round.  Should we give them medals for those as well?

Not sure who your comment was directed at, but...

On the sky is blue;  No, any non-color blind moron can look at the sky and see it is blue.  Doesn't take much to admit this one to be true.

On the Earth is round:  Well at one time, this was a big deal since the church insisted the earth was flat.  So, yeah, give 'em a big ol' belated trophy for this one.

Anytime any high ranking Catholic official (or Protestant, Muslim, etc. for that matter) pulls their head out of their ass and admits their church or religion was wrong about something and/or behind the times is pretty special.

I wasn't speaking to anyone actually ,just commenting about the idea that the church tries to take the moral high ground by making a point of something that should be common knowledge and sense.

[Witchyjoshy]

The church also said that the sky is blue and the Earth is round.  Should we give them medals for those as well?

Not sure who your comment was directed at, but...

On the sky is blue;  No, any non-color blind moron can look at the sky and see it is blue.  Doesn't take much to admit this one to be true.

On the Earth is round:  Well at one time, this was a big deal since the church insisted the earth was flat.  So, yeah, give 'em a big ol' belated trophy for this one.

Anytime any high ranking Catholic official (or Protestant, Muslim, etc. for that matter) pulls their head out of their ass and admits their church or religion was wrong about something and/or behind the times is pretty special.

I wasn't speaking to anyone actually ,just commenting about the idea that the church tries to take the moral high ground by making a point of something that should be common knowledge and sense.

I sorta thought the point was that the cardinal here was saying that the church WASN'T on the moral high ground at all.

[MaybeNever]

I think that our understanding of this would be greatly improved if we could also hear from a St. Louis Cardinal.

[czechmate]

A pity that this Cardinal's observations weren't aired until after his demise. Before that his opinions were blanked out.
As for the "blue sky" issue, the sky is actually clear (all but a few gases are colourless) and what the human eye can see is the refraction of the suns rays.
This occurs on any planet or moon in the solar system that has a measureable atmosphere, as several of the Mars missions have shown. From space, Earth appears blue because of the colour of the seas, Mars appears red because of the colour of its' terrain.
THe fact that the Earth is round was established by Indian and Arab scholars several centuries before the RCC was established (and before the Greeks). This was dismissed as the European powers-that-be regarded anything that came from non-christian sources to be fatally flawed.