In 1858 the Catholic Church seized a 6-year-old boy from his Jewish family

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“Edgardo had been secretly baptized.”

How do I find out if I was “secretly baptized”?

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In this case, the argument was that a household maid had him baptized without the knowledge of the parents. So I’d check with any household staff who may have a different religion than you. You never know what religion you really might be.

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In 1858 the Mormon Church issued it’s own currency. Just sayin’

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Dog bless you, Sir or Madam.

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In the 19th century this happened a lot. Native Americans over here, the Irish over there. Back then, we knew which culture was the right one.

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You also may be posthumously, secretly baptized.

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In the meantime , in the US, thousands upon thousands were enslaved. Just saying.

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Ok, while we’re on that subject, the Catholic Church in Canada was still kidnapping native children and sending them to residential schools well within living memory. My uncle (by marriage) went to a residential school, so it’s not like this is something from a bygone era. Similar things were happening in the US, too, though I think with less direct involvement of the Catholic Church.

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I believe I have been, and so have my ancestors on my mother’s side back at least 200 years, at the behest of my Mormon relatives. They’re right about one thing; we’re all going to the same place when we die so from that point of view they’ve achieved their objective. But I’m actually perfectly happy to know that I won’t be going to some Heaven organised like the Rand Corporation. Being freed of the burden of any belief in an afterlife is actually quite liberating, which is why the churches are so anxious to persuade people of it.

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I have a friend whose parents (now in their 80s) had precisely the opposite situation – they were secretly not baptised – the Catholic Church in their town in western Hungary started forging baptismal certificates by the bushel for any Jewish kid they could get away with, requiring nothing in return. Allowed a lot of kids to be fostered safely through the war – though their own parents were lost to the Holocaust.

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In Ireland as late as the 20th century “fallen women” were enslaved by the Catholic Church. Joining the EU was possibly the best thing ever to happen to Ireland.

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Well, duh, omnipotent… omnipresent… God! :wink:

They did this a lot. Its one of the typical and well established examples of European antisemitism in this period (and before, and after). I get that its interesting to have detail for a particular case. But (having not listened to the pod cast) why present it as a singular event?

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Good point. Ask him. He’ll know, after all.
And let us know how you get on.

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In the podcast they talk a bit about the context within European and Italian history, but unfortunately not as much about the long tradition of anti-Semitic laws and practices there.

Weird. Even forgoing such context, seizing Jewish children and raising them Christian isn’t something that happened once. Or even a few times. Nor was it limited geographically or to a brief time frame.

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Well, how much time have you got? A twenty-part documentary would just scratch the surface.

Someone help me out with the name of the above fallacy? I’m drawing a blank.

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Fallacy of relative privation?

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