Atheist Ireland

Father Gabriele Amorth, 85, who has been the Vatican's chief exorcist for 25 years and says he has dealt with 70,000 cases of demonic possession, 70,000 cases? According to Wikipedia, he became an official exorcist in 1986 and retired in 2000 but let's allow that he actually started much earlier an...

Which religion is that? What a fantastic scam! :D Jehovah's Witnesses. They're quite proud of their "Quick Build Kingdom Halls" which are largely constructed over a single weekend by volunteers. Of course, the foundations are (of necessity) laid weeks earlier and the building is usually t...

Yes, like I said, I wasn't in any way defending their disgusting behaviour. Also, and again from memory, the alternative route for these little girls to walk to school was far from 'marginally less convenient'. Wasn't it across a field, and a muddy one at that? You may be right on that, I don't rec...

The PM below that I received censors me and denies my right of freedom of speech. It proves that this Group is bigotted; more bigotted than some of the Roman Catholic Groups I have seen. I request that you remove me from this Group forthwith. I do not wish to have anything to do with you bunch of b...

This is actually part of a common scam used by a number of hierarchical religions. Each diocese (or similar) is a semi-autonomous entity. Donations made are split between local administrative costs and the headquarters. This means that the diocese never has much money in reserve and needs to appeal ...

From memory the school girls being taunted and abused as they went to school were catholic and they had to walk past a protestant estate to get to school. No, they weren't Catholic. They were the children of Catholic parents but too young to have decided for themselves what they believed. I'm not i...

Is it just me or is there something missing in people's lives that they reacted in the way that they did to some changes to an online forum?? Yes, there's something missing. The community that until a few days ago was a significant part of their lives. To have that ripped away without warning, to h...

All parents, whatever their denominational background, have this right to have their children educated in accordance with their religious convictions. And that's what Sunday school is for. Those who want to provide their children with a Catholic education should be free to do so, but in addition to...

nozz: It seems the more vitriolic comments that Richard quoted were not made on the forum at all, but on other forums after the RDnet forum had already been locked down and moderators' messages and accounts deleted. This doesn't excuse the rudeness but on the Internet, some people will always overre...

To be fair (playing Devil's Advocate, as it were) it seems this is simply a consequence of the Vatican having adopted the Italian criminal code of 1889. The vast majority of the population of the Vatican is (nominally) celibate adults anyway, so I'm sure it rarely if ever comes up. And it's not like...