If you're tuning in late, please read part 1 and part 2.
Part 3 today deals with "Australia's False Religious Systems".
I'm sure that most people are aware that by "False Religious Systems" the WBC really means "religions and denominations that don't follow our specific interpretation of the Bible".
70.28% of Australians are considered Christians, with the majority of that number being Catholics…which brings us to World Youth Day 2008!
We'll start with the obvious. Since a majority of Australian Christians are Catholics they have given a majority of the page to Catholic-bashing.
On the statistics as far as I can tell this number is wrong.
According to this pdf from the Australia Bureau of Statistics, according to the 2006 census the number of people who followed a Christian denomination was 63.8%.
They did actually get the majority religion right though. 25.8% of the population are Catholic. But if you followed a more traditional "Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox" breakdown of denominations, you would get 25.8%, 35.3% and 2.7% respectively, so there are more non-Catholics then there are Catholics but Catholics are the largest united denomination in Australia (5 126 900 Catholics of 12 685 800 people calling themselves Christians).
A point that I noticed that they didn't bring up was that there was actually an increase of 0.8% of Christians in general between 1996 to 2006, of which there was a 6.8% increase in Catholics but a -4.7%, -14.9% and -11.7% difference in that decade among the Anglicans, Uniting and "Presbyterian and Reformed" churches respectively.
You goofy Catholics think that if you go to an outside fair worshiping an old man that you will get to heaven. Stay away from idols! Stop worshiping the creature more than the Creator!
This is a common opinion of certain Protestant denominations of Catholics. In this case however the "idol" isn't actually Mary, it's the Pope.
Catholics don't worship the Pope, the belief is that he is the head of the organisation that was created by Jesus and that the Pope is the legitimate successor of St. Peter, who is considered the first Pope.
Quite a few denominations claim such apostolic succession some of whom are closer to the"truth" then others while others use it to give themselves an air of legitimacy.
Catholics do believe that they are worshipping the Creator, as they put it, but so does every other religion that claims that they are "the one true religion".
It is quite possible to claim that the WBC itself is guilty of the exact same thing, the difference being that their idol is none other then Phelps himself. As far as I can tell it appears that the members of the Church are strongly required to blindly follow and not argue with the interpretation and dogma that is created by Phelps. In esscence it seems that he sees himself as some sort of "Jesus" figure a view that technically contradicts his own interpretation.
Hello, can you say biggest pedophile machine in the world? Anyone with an ounce of sense would see that World Youth Day is an easy way for those old, ugly men to hook up with those young kids. Priests Rape Boys, people; the only reason you put your children in the hands of pedophiles is because you hate them. It doesn’t take a genius; keep your kids away from Catholic Priests!
I don't know whether it's the biggest paedophile machine in the world. I have been around priests before, I know quite a few people who have, and I do not know of a single person that has been abused by a member of the clergy.
Incidentally the logic from the page doesn't seem to follow. You give children to a paedophile because you don't like paedophiles?
But as pointed out before the WBC seems to be of the opinion that homosexuality leads to paedophilia, an opinion that has no basis at all but is not uncommon among the anti-gay community.
Don’t worry, for the other part of the Australian population (16.48%) they are considered to be non-religious or agnostic. These are some high-quality people in the great Down Under! WTF mate?!?
See, again, if they had bothered to do their research they would have been able to use the latest statistics then they would have made a better argument. It's actually 18.7% now. And that is an increase of 25.7% between 1996 to 2006.
But they are right, us non-religious or agnostic people are actually very nice and high-quality people unlike say Michael Guglielmucci a Pentecostal minister who pretended to have cancer and tricked people out of thousands of dollars.
The last thing that I don' t understand is why they didn't mention non-Christian denominations? Between 1996 to 2006 they had a whopping 79.3% change. Which Buddhism, Islam, and Hinduism having a 109.6%, 69.4% and 120.2% increase over that period.
I honestly don't know why I'm mentioning this, but I guess it has to do with their intellectual laziness, or perhaps a lack of creativity, in trying to explain how Australia is evil religiously.
Lastly, the city that I am from, Adelaide, is known as the "City of Churches". About 24% of us have no religious affiliation. I think that says it all.
I'm skipping the Bible quotes because there is actually very little to say about them.
Stay tuned for Part 4, where we'll talk about their page on the Government. Which you can find here.
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