Catholics vs. Hitler

[BCPVP]

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Even the lowly janitors can be considered part of the team. if they did not clean the stadium or field there is a possiblility that there would be no game.

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So at best, there's a very indirect benefit that the janitor provides. But when we talk about the "Cowboys losing last week," we are usually talking about just certain members of that organization. Would you fault the janitor for Romo not holding onto the ball during the field goal? Would you fault Steve from accounting if T.O. drops a pass? No, you trace back actions that help and those that don't to winning the game. The actions of the janitor merely play a small role in keeping the organization operating. To extrapolate to the Catholic Church, they might be like a parishoner or maybe a priest in a small town. The actions committed by "the Catholic Church" can and should be traced to those who took those actions. So it would be right to say Pope Urban II deserves at least some part of the blame/responsibility for the Crusades. And we can begin to assign blame to individuals who followed through on Urban's edicts and so on. I think to just leave all the blame at the organization level obscures the issue and those who deserve more blame than others get off easy while those who don't deserve much or any blame are probably not receiving fair treatment. Would you agree with that?

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if you see someone commiting a crime and you look the other way arent you wrong for not stepping forward and preventing it from happening. if you knew that a bomb was going to go off and did nothing your just as guilty as the person who set the bomb.

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This presumes that you know of the crime and that you have some reasonable option for intervening. Obviously if you are unaware of the crime happening, it would be unfair to blame you for not stopping it. And if the only way you could prevent the crime was to have Superman-like speed, it would also be unreasonable to blame you for not interfering. My contention is that you cannot blame everyone who belonged to the Catholic Church at the time of these atrocities for their occurance and that it is certain individuals are responsible and should receive the brunt of your anger.