And I don’t agree that Fry is a “poseur” for using “nation-state”, I said in an earlier comment that I thought it was fairly common colloquially to use “nation”, “state”, and “nation-state” interchangeably, no big deal.

Catgrin has said in as many words that he/she takes Fry’s poseurs’ usage of ‘nation-state’ being perfectly correct as a premise, and is arguing from there. This pretty much precludes any compromises – which he/she has singularly failed to make, while insisting that it is you and I who have been cowardly, dishonest, vacillating, or intransigent in failing to ‘concede points’ to him/her. This is really underscored by his/her persisting in this (and unfairly accusing you of stridency, which couldn’t be further from the truth) in spite of the fact that you’re going out of your way to meet him/her half way in suggesting that the status of the Vatican City as a nation-state is really a matter of serious debate among political scientists and historians (there may conceivably be some, but in the past ten years in the field I’ve not come across any who’d consider the VC’s tiny transient multiethnic population defined on limited terms by jus officii to really have anything much to do with the modern concept of nationhood – any more, as you say, than the US Military or the IMF or what have you). Some people just don’t want convincing! Why then should we persist in trying to subvert a true believer’s blind faith? And what good is casting pearls, as the Pontiff might put it, before swine?

Thanks again for your measured and thoughtful contributions, though – whether you decide to take my advice and call it a day or not! Cheerio!

OK, I definitely think it’s going too far to definitively state he made a mistake, colloquially “nation state” is used in a looser way than in poli sci I imagine, and even in poli sci terms it’s considered an ambiguous case. But if you are arguing in definitive terms that it is wrong to say the Vatican City isn’t a nation state, then I would say you’re not acknowledging the ambiguity in this case.

I do know where the term came from, and the history attached to it. The reason that I believe Vatican City is a nation state is in part due to the nature of the Catholic Church. Think about it. In democracies you have a government that hears the words of the people, and (sometimes) takes them into consideration when making law. The Holy See is a sovereign entity, which decides rule separate from the majority of its members. Not just that, the Pope is a a sovereign leader who can claim to be infallible. Other sovereign rulers aren’t the leader of a church which, until recently, claimed it was your one way into heaven.

If you know the history, why are you arguing in such broad term like sovereignty and imposing a religion on its members? What about my point that historians and political scientists often don’t define it in such broad terms, as evidenced by the fact that they generally wouldn’t say pre 19th century kingdoms like Henry VIII’s qualified as “nation states”? That was a sovereign country, and Henry VIII tried to impose his own new Anglican Church (with him as the head) on the kingdom, with a fair amount of success.  If you think Henry VIII’s kingdom does qualify as a nation-state, then if you know the history and use of the term I think you have to at least acknowledge that you are using it differently than a lot of scholars (perhaps most of them). And if you want to agree with the commonplace notion that this kingdom would not qualify as a nation-state, can you pinpoint what crucial quality it lacks that Vatican City has?

Here are two “poli-sci appropriate” definitions of the base terms.

Max Weber’s definition of “state”: a compulsory political organization with a centralized government that maintains a monopoly of the legitimate use of of force within a certain territory
…
Anthony Smith’s version of “nation”: named human population sharing an historic territory, common myths, and historical memories, a mass public culture, a common economy and common legal rights and duties for all members
If you understand that it’s a distinct term with a distinct history, you should understand you can’t just take short definitions of the individual words and expect them to be enough to provide a good understanding of the accepted meaning of the composite term “nation state”. Wouldn’t Henry VIII’s kingdom satisfy both the above definitions individually?

You say you want a “high level” definition of “nation state”. I already provided one from your chosen author in my last comment. The only definition he gives for a nation state in his text is, ”The nation state is intended to guarantee the existence of a nation, to preserve its distinct identity, and to provide a territory where the national culture and ethos are dominant.”

He never says anything about that being a “definition”, it’s just a description of what he thinks are the main functions of a nation state. Also note that on the previous page he gives some other suggestions about what the most commonly understood features of a “nation” would be.

You now say you want no solid answer, but you sounded earlier as though you did believe this was a “black and white issue.” To quote: “In common parlance maybe, but I was talking about the more narrow definition that seems to be used by political scientists…” It certainly sounds as though you believe that political scientists, such as the one quoted above, (who is, in fact, an expert on the international criminal system, law terminology, and calculus as well) have an agreed-upon idea of what a “nation state” is, and so should not disagree about definition.

I think you’re reading too much into my use of the word “definition” but you’re right that it could be read this way so it was a bad choice of words, I should have said something like “more narrow meaning” which just implies a sort of shared intuition about how the term should be used rather than a totally clear-cut definition. Again, think of the fact that many if not most would understand the “nation-state” to be a fairly recent innovation which wouldn’t apply to things like Medieval and Renaissance kingdoms.

Everyone should just speak spanish and you wouldn’t have to argue! ;-)

I do know where the term came from, and the history attached to it. The reason that I believe Vatican City is a nation state is in part due to the nature of the Catholic Church. Think about it. In democracies you have a government that hears the words of the people, and (sometimes) takes them into consideration when making law. The Holy See is a sovereign entity, which decides rule separate from the majority of its members. Not just that, the Pope is a a sovereign leader who can claim to be infallible. Other sovereign rulers aren’t the leader of a church which, until recently, claimed it was your one way into heaven. (Well, most aren’t.) The difference between the Church and other nation states is that it doesn’t make people behave through military force. It makes them behave through indoctrination and ritual combined with faith. Why should you worry about a bullet to the head, when you can worry about your eternal soul? It should be noted that only people within the Catholic Church are allowed to live in Vatican City. They do control and promote their culture, and it is a homogenous one.

The About.com link I provided gives a set of criteria to meet for an entity to be defined as a state. They include acceptance of sovereignty by other nations and a transportation system. It may seem silly, but this set of “rules” is a basic guideline used to help freshmen college students determine between state and non-state entities. In providing it, I simply gave an active link to assist in coming to agreement about definition of the base terms “nation” and “state.” The information is available elsewhere, but I really was just trying to be considerate. Here are two “poli-sci appropriate” definitions of the base terms.

Max Weber’s definition of “state”: a compulsory political organization with a centralized government that maintains a monopoly of the legitimate use of of force within a certain territory

(By only allowing Catholic residency, Vatican City ensures compulsory adherence to its laws. By employing the Swiss Guard, Vatican City maintains use of military force. Vatican City itself is ruled by a sovereignty, the Holy See which is an internationally recognized political power.)

Anthony Smith’s version of “nation”: named human population sharing an historic territory, common myths, and historical memories, a mass public culture, a common economy and common legal rights and duties for all members 

(I’m sure in reading this you will agree that Vatican City meets the definition.)

You say you want a “high level” definition of “nation state”. I already provided one from your chosen author in my last comment. The only definition he gives for a nation state in his text is, ”The nation state is intended to guarantee the existence of a nation, to preserve its distinct identity, and to provide a territory where the national culture and ethos are dominant.” 

(I feel Vatican City meets these criteria.)

You now say you want no solid answer, but you sounded earlier as though you did believe this was a “black and white issue.” To quote: “In common parlance maybe, but I was talking about the more narrow definition that seems to be used by political scientists…” It certainly sounds as though you believe that political scientists, such as the one quoted above, (who is, in fact, an expert on the international criminal system, law terminology, and calculus as well) have an agreed-upon idea of what a “nation state” is, and so should not disagree about definition. I’m certainly not trying to shorthand arguments, or jump to conclusions. In fact, I’m pretty familiar with this discussion. You’re absolutely right that we can just agree to disagree, but I have even volunteered to argue my point based on your terms, and I feel that I have defended it well.

But all this stuff is just part of the Church hierarchy everywhere, you could say that any institution (say, the US military, or the offices of some major corporation) imposes “cultural homogenization” in this way, but no one would treat them as non-sovereign nations. As discussed here a lot of historians and poli sci people would consider the “nation-state” to be a fairly recent invention (like, 19th century or perhaps just slightly older), in which a government tries to homogenize a preexisting population that was more heterogeneous in order to give them a sense of national identity, like how historically “French” people from geographically separated locations would have spoken such different dialects (perhaps enough to qualify as different languages) as to see one another as foreigners, but then the state tried to enforce widespread use of what we would now call the French language (and probably also tried to culturally homogenize them in other ways). So for example, Tudor England would not be called a nation-state in this way of speaking, in spite of the fact that the Monarchy wanted adherence to the laws from the people, and under Henry VIII also wanted to impose adherence to a new Church. I don’t think you can just look at a short definition and say that technically some of the things that Vatican City does qualify as “homogenization”, in a field like poli sci or international relations you have to understand some of the background of where the term came from and why it’s considered conceptually useful, what they mean by the term which goes beyond a two-line definition, in order to decide whether an expert in this field would see the term as applicable in a given context.

For Hubbard’s yacht to be recognized as a nation state, it would first have to be recognized by other nations as a nation. Through participation in the U.N., this has already happened for the sovereign power, Holy See, that rules the Vatican City.

Huh? The U.N. doesn’t use the term “nation” to refer to the Vatican City, only “state”.

Also, your yacht wouldn’t “have a transportation system” it would BE a transportation system. It fails the test of definition there outright.

Which definition says a nation state must “have a transportation system”? Does Vatican City have its own special transportation system, or do people just use their own cars or feet to get around?

I’ll provide a link here, which gives all the requirements that must be fulfilled for a place to be defined as a “state” and also has a general definition of “nation.”

You’re using an about.com link to try to settle this? I said I was interested in the meanings used by poli sci/international relations types, that’s why I’ve been focusing on high-level texts aimed at academics and others with expertise. Do you really think there’s some precise definition that all academics agrees on that about.com is just transcribing faithfully? That may be how things work in physical sciences where terms have precise technical definitions, but not in the humanities.

In your example that discusses the global Caliphate, but does not correlate it with Vatican City (the link is above in a past post)

The quote says “Nationalists recognise that non-national states exist” and then follows it with two examples of what the author considers non-national states: “The Vatican City exists to provide a sovereign state for the leadership of the Catholic Church, not for a nation. The global Caliphate sought by some Islamists is another example of a non-national state.” So it “correlates” them in the sense of putting them together as non-national states, and it’s reasonably that if they put two religious states next to each other, the implicit suggestion is that they are rejected as nations for related reasons.

My strident argument comes from the fact that the place in question has met the definition. Your argument against is just as strident, and so I don’t think my will should be dismissed as undue.

“The” definition? Which one, the one from about.com? There isn’t a One True definition in some holy text of political science which all other sources just reproduce faithfully, the definitions you can find in various places are just people’s attempts to encapsulate the general sense of how the term is normally used by people who have expertise in the subject. In my experience it’s never a good sign when people try to confidently settle arguments about nuanced issues by appealing to short definitions in a dictionary or wikipedia or some other site (like someone trying to prove Obama is a socialist by pointing to some short definition of “socialism”); for some reason you I across this behavior a lot on the internet, maybe something about having texts handy that makes people impatient with the idea that things might be a little more ambiguous then they’d like them to be (the need for cognitive closure is a dangerous mental trap in discussions of intellectual issues).

And I am only being “strident” about the fact that this is not the black-and-white issue that you see it as, I certainly am not stridently arguing that Vatican City is not a nation-state, I said before that “it certainly may be a question on which reasonable people (educated in poli-sci) can disagree”.

I’ve also gone and re-read, at your insistence, your comment which you claim says the same things hypnosifl later wrote. It really doesn’t – so far as I can make sense of it. Either you have not understood what he/she later wrote, or your earlier attempt at conveying the same idea has gone badly awry somehow. If I had understood you to have said what he/she said, who on earth wouldn’t I agree with you when I did with him/her?I’m fairly confident I never made any blanket attacks on your character, and am rather surprised that you don’t feel that you haven’t been rude, nor launched ad hominems. Again, I’m happy to understand that you didn’t mean to be come across as over-bearing, but finding one’s voice in text can be a tricky thing, as I understand only to well!  I’m not at all sure what you’ve been reading into my posts, for a start (clearly not the prolier-than-thou humour in my attempt at inner city London speech patterns – I had thought it was pretty clear that my objection to your not speaking like that was an ironic comment on your repeated objection to my using perfectly ordinary words to which you have for some reason taken a dislike)…If you honestly feel like an innocent and unjustly wronged party, whose unassailable informedness, clear communication, and ineluctable logic has been met with irrational baying and personal attacks, then I really don’t know what to say to you. mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa, perhaps?

Speaking on responding —You enjoy attacking your opponent rather than their argument. The first of the two statements (now made 23 hours ago by me, and one of several points you chose not to respond to, perhaps you just knew you were in the wrong?) was indeed made in response to a statement made by you, and was a point you first argued with me, and then later conceded to another poster.

Rather than reply to any of my statements directly and politely – which would force you to concede the points, you opted to make a blanket attack against me and call me names. That was after you attacked the character of Stephen Fry and Brad Shur. Neither of whom I am attempting to defend. I simply think it’s inappropriate to behave as you have. Do you read what you write? “Law’ tha’ bruv. Gwaan!” I wasn’t rude to you. Not once.

You sir, are debating the debater rather than the topic. I have no more time for you.

But think for a moment about the full effect of his blockade: The Pope told believers, including infected husbands in some countries where it’s legal to rape your wife, that they should never use condoms. Also, the organization that runs “26% of the health institutions in the world directly involved with the treatment of HIV and AIDS” adopted a stance that condoms were not appropriate as a measure for the prevention of the spread of HIV. Female condoms were already expensive and hard to get. Add to cost the trauma of feeling that you are committing a sin by protecting yourself, and you’ve left women with no defense. We cannot know how many additional people were infected directly as a result of his statement, and as death is the outcome, isn’t even one too many?

“Imposition” does not necessarily mean “whips and chains.” In the Vatican, “cultural homogenization” exists in dress, moral codes, standards of practice and ethical beliefs. These are imposed by the Holy See, even if the members of Vatican City live there and practice them voluntarily. Don’t believe me? Run a google search for “Vatican City people.” Without even knowing who they are, you’ll be able to identify people who live there full time, maybe even know what it is they do, and exclude some tourists. You’ll have visitors who share common dress, but a girl in shorts and a tank top won’t confuse you.

For Hubbard’s yacht to be recognized as a nation state, it would first have to be recognized by other nations as a nation. Through participation in the U.N., this has already happened for the sovereign power, Holy See, that rules the Vatican City. Would they do that? Also, your yacht wouldn’t “have a transportation system” it would BE a transportation system. It fails the test of definition there outright.

I’ll provide a link here, which gives all the requirements that must be fulfilled for a place to be defined as a “state” and also has a general definition of “nation.”

http://geography.about.com/cs/politicalgeog/a/statenation.htm

In your example that discusses the global Caliphate, but does not correlate it with Vatican City (the link is above in a past post), the author states that Vatican City is, in fact, a sovereign state for leadership of the Catholic Church. This discounts any political action taken on behalf of the Vatican itself. It should be noted, that even indirect political actions taken by the Holy See are representative of its national culture. As Vatican City is the stronghold of the Church, acting in the Church’s interest generally means acting in the interest of the perpetuation of the Vatican. For example, if you represent the Holy See and try to sway law in favor of abstinence rather than condom use as a method of birth control, you are representing the will of those living within the walls of Vatican City. The same author on the same page also says, “The nation state is intended to guarantee the existence of a nation, to preserve its distinct identity, and to provide a territory where the national culture and ethos are dominant.” 
 
My strident argument comes from the fact that the place in question has met the definition. Your argument against is just as strident, and so I don’t think my will should be dismissed as undue. The one link I provided in this comment gives a clear, easy to use method for determining if a place meets the definitions of both “nation” (the social bit) and “state” (the political bit). Vatican City has done so, and is only questioned as the political power it is because its sovereignty lies with the Church.

Yeah, it’s not. It’s not about religion at all. It’s about how the Catholic Church is the worst enemy of what it’s supposed to be for. Fry doesn’t attack Christianity at all. He attacks how the Catholic Church corrupts it.

Fry’s really strong point was that he didn’t focus on the religion or its believers, but the very explicit damage that the organisation of the church and its leaders do, and especially that they do it by twisting and corrupting the religious ideas on which it was originally based. He focuses entirely on painting the Catholic Church as the enemy of what it is supposed to accomplish, even based on its own teachings.

That’s the genius of Fry’s arguments. He doesn’t say: “Well, non-Catholics give money too.” That’s irrelevant. He points out that the Church goes out of its way to damage people, Christ, Christianity and the world. It accomplishes the exact opposite of what it claims to be for.

In the interest of full disclosure: I’m protestant, and I think that not just the Catholic Chruch, but also many protestants corrupt and damage Christianity in a wide variety of ways.

I think you’ve phrased it far more clearly than he did, though, and his speech would’ve been much more forceful if he’d had you proof-read it for him! I can’t help but feel he’s sort of playing into their hands by saying ‘oh, you call all critical or independant thought moral relativism’ (which is neither strictly true nor at all likely to convince anyone), rather than something more along the lines you’ve suggested: that senior clerics often use the label of moral relativism indiscriminately to cudgel their opponents (rather as American rightists seem to label everyone left of them as ‘socialists’, or what have you). Thanks again for clarifying!

I think you’re not paying enough attention to his wording–he is talking about what “they” (i.e. the See) call moral relativism when they “try to accuse” people like Fry of this, not his own notion of the term. From the transcript, here’s Fry’s actual quote:

“although they try to accuse people like me, who believe in empiricism and the Enlightenment, of somehow what they call moral relativism, as if it’s some appalling sin, where what it actually means is thought, they for example thought that slavery was perfectly fine, absolutely okay, and then they didn’t.”

Also, earlier in the debate he says that he personally believes in an ongoing search for moral truth:

“I have my own beliefs. They are a belief in the Enlightenment, a belief in the eternal adventure of trying to discover moral truth in the world, and there is nothing, sadly, that the Catholic Church and its hierarchs likes to do more than to attack the Enlightenment.”

So I really don’t think he would conceive of himself as a moral relativist, but of course he does approve of “thought” about morality, so I think his point is that when people like him try to engage in independent thought about morality in order to try to “discover moral truth in the world”, the Church tries (unfairly) to accuse them of moral relativism.

But they aren’t attempting to impose that cultural homogenization on the state of Vatican City, but on Catholics everywhere. Burning of heretics is a good example for my case, since historically that happened all over Europe, not in Vatican City. If L. Ron Hubbard managed to get one of his Sea Org yachts declared a sovereign state, and used it as a base to give orders concerning the promulgation of Scientology throughout the world while also demanding adherence of 50 high-ranking Scientologists on the yacht (including some armed guards), would you thereby declare the yacht to be a nation-state? (and if you object to the fact that a yacht doesn’t have a fixed position, suppose he bought a tiny island and did the same thing)

I also provided in a much, much earlier post, a list of ways in which the Vatican meets qualifications to be defined both as a nation and as a state. Meeting both those definitions is what makes a nation-state. A global Caliphate may have a central leader, but would actually act as a super-state of smaller nations. They’re not the same thing at all.

How do you define whether something is a nation-state or “super-state of smaller nations”? Is this an accepted distinction in political science? The author of “Political Governance: Political Theory, volume 2″, who I would imagine is probably a poli-sci person given the subject, specifically used the notion of a global Caliphate as an analogy to explain why Vatican City should not be considered a nation-state. I can show you some other examples of poli-sci sources that question whether Vatican City is a nation-state, like Governing: An Introduction to Political Science which says on p. 34 “Systems like the United States, the Soviet Union, and India are universally acknowledged to be nations, while systems like California, Oxfordshire, and the Auvergne are recognized as cities, counties, and regions respectively. But there is dispute over the proper labels for marginal systems like the Vatican City and Tibet.” So while it certainly may be a question on which reasonable people (educated in poli-sci) can disagree, I think your strident argument that it is a nation-state, and any denial of this is plainly wrong, is going a bit too far.

It’s clear that your understanding of debates within the Church is somewhat sketchy – that’s fine, and I can’t claim to be any authority either. People do devote lives of study to these things, for which half an hour’s browsing the internet cannot adequately substitute. But I find it most odd that you maintain so very vigorously both that the Church is apparently riven by foundational debates, and at the same time that it is a body which functions through ‘blind adherence to dogma’. That you do so while accusing others (and at this stage it’s unclear whom you’re addressing yourself to) of trying to have their cake and eat it, too, is really a bit rich.

As for your repeated ‘gotchas’ over the phrasing of a joke about Fry I’ve heard at least a dozen times (shame one can’t google conversations)… well… I’m not sure what you think you’re proving, but you’re in danger of making yourself look a little bit petty. If you’re really trying to draw an analogy between my correct use of the words ‘impression’, ‘conflate’, and ‘tendentious’ (which I hear every day – in case you hadn’t guessed, I work at a university) with Fry’s incorrect use of ‘nation-state’, then I don’t really see where you’re going… If it’s just that you feel the lexis itself is inappropriate to this context (that is, too unfamiliar to you personally), then I really have to ask you who or what sets the rhetorical frame of reference here. I’m not in your house, so you needn’t tell me which words are kosher and which are not. If there is a FAQ for this site saying ‘don’t type like an academic’, please do point me in its direction. If not, then I shall have to say that I’m offended by your own indefensibly elitist and wilfully obfuscatory adopting of a writing style so distant from the vernacular of inner city London. Law’ tha’ bruv. Gwaan!

I’m not insisting that a word means what “I” think it means. I have only ever stated that Vatican City is a “sovereign state,” a particular form of “nation state” (one that is overseen by a sovereign entity, like the Pope or the Queen), and that this information is readily available in multiple locations. Your sole choice for source definition of the term (which I did explain does not exclude the Vatican as a nation state) does nothing to undermine the variety of others (provided by sources other than me) available to the average reader on the internet.

Although you chose not to respond to my comment about it, and jump directly to a backwards attack, I’ll provide a link here to show that the U.N. does indeed only conduct business with the Holy See, not Vatican City, as you erroneously stated. http://www.un.org/en/members/nonmembers.shtml

If you’ll go back and reread what I actually wrote about Fry’s comments on extra ecclesiam, you’ll find that you’ve completely misstated what I said. Shortest version possible for those with short attention spans: The Church itself has conflict over its sometimes fallible nature. The Church’s interpretation of extra ecclesiam being changed in 2000 caused one such conflict as traditionalists within the Church (who believe in the Church’s infallible nature) refused to accept any fallacy from the Church. You cannot have it both ways. The article I provided (including the related subheads) discussed extra ecclesiam and the effects of the schism within the Church.

The reason that Fry brought up this conflict is the insistence by the Church that its members adhere to its rules without question (basically telling them ‘consider us infallible until we decide we aren’t'). That directly relates to the question, “Is the Catholic Church a force for good in the world?” in that blind adherence to dogma without logic or common sense can be a dangerous thing.

My references were not randomly or casually chosen. I provided them because I believe if I quote something or make a claim, I should provide the source.

P.S. It’s surprising the phrase is considered “common currency” when a google search of your version returned only one direct response, and that corrected the term “impression” with “idea.” Performing a correct search only gets five responses related to Fry, including  a Wikipedia article and two in defense of him, one of which I provided in my response to show that even at the time of the original article’s printing, not everyone felt he was “living up to his [negative] reputation (in the UK)”. I searched it originally in an effort to try to find your (in quotes but unnamed) source, and then I tried to read the original Times article, but the link is dead. 

You may want to reread what you interpreted as a jibe. It was no such thing. I’m not cross that you wrote “impression,” and I only repeated my statement for one reason. I was pointing out the glass house you live in. I mean, you made the statement, ”You don’t have to care to recognise that Fry’s throwing around impressive sounding terms in inappropriate ways for the sake of sounding more authoritative than he is” and then here you choose words like “erroneously conflate” and “tendentiously”? Please, be serious. 

Catgrin: You’re welcome to keep insisting, like Lewis Carroll’s Hunmpty Dumpty, that words mean what you choose them to mean, neither more nor less. But your discussion of extra ecclesiam… continues to erroneously conflate (as Fry does in his speech) the claim that the Church _as a community_ has a special claim to salvation with the claim that this or that view held by members of the Church at a given point in time has an absolute, static and unchanging, truth value. This point has already been addressed above, by me and at least one other. For what it’s worth, Catholic ecumenism also has a longer history than Ratzinger’s writing of 2000 – which you’ll see even from the pages you yourself have linked. I would also respectfully suggest to you (you’ve obviously gone to some effort here!) that if you are going to use weblinks to support your thesis, you might be more selective about the sources you choose, and not muddy the waters by suggesting they say things they don’t  (but which you’ve, perhaps tendentiously, inferred from them). You make many good points but posting random freshly googled sites with tangential relevance doesn’t really do your arguments justice.
P.S. The jibe about Fry which you traced to the times I produced from memory, not mentioning the Times (where I hadn’t realised it originated – I don’t take the Murdoch press) – it’s entered pretty widely into common currency at this stage. I’m not sure why you’re so cross that I wrote ‘impression’ rather than ‘idea’, though – perhaps you’re taking this all a bit too personally?

Antinous: I’m slightly disappointed that you didn’t reply to my questioning of your earlier post on wealth transfer – which does rather look like you’re casting about for reasons to hate the Church… I agree wholeheartedly, however, with your condemnation of the Vatican’s ruinous opposition to contraception. The comparison with the Jonestown massacre’s unhelpful, though – that was a different case in all kinds of pretty obvious ways… though on the other hand it arguably led to fewer deaths! Cardinal Martini, among other senior Church figures (he was a front runner for the Papalcy last time) have more sensible views on contraception, which I hope will gain ground in the coming years.

“…26% of the health institutions in the world directly involved with the treatment of HIV and AIDS are run by the Catholic church. And please note, that it is a well-known policy of our church, whenever we are engaged in social welfare work, it is always given to all without any discrimination, whether you believe or not, irrespective of creed. Indeed, it is an integral part of our faith that our church is made up of saints and sinners.”

According to the Archbishop, to receive care, whether or not the people of Africa choose to follow Catholic doctrine, or even live a good life, is a non-issue. What only should be considered is their welfare, and with 68% of the infected world’s population living Africa, this is no time to wait for a cultural shift.

The Catholic Church as a body does not disagree. In fact, when the Pope spoke against all condom use, he was speaking independent of the Church where pre-2009 “Catholic theologians and a special Vatican commission” had already found condom use acceptable for the prevention of illness, but not contraception. He was also speaking directly against the evidence provided by doctors in the region. In fact, Africa is where the development of the female condom has been successfully used to protect rape victims from HIV transmission – both from strangers and infected husbands.

If you really think one year with no (or even decreased) condom use is no big deal, here’s how many people were (reported) infected with HIV in Africa in 2009: 1.8 million.

http://www.amindatplay.eu/2009/12/02/intelligence²-catholic-church-debate-transcript/

http://www.avert.org/worldstats.htm

http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2010/11/20/pope-says-condoms-may-be-ok-in-some-circumstances/

I provided the documentation from your own source that shows that an agreed upon language is used for matters of state (recording law). I won’t repeat myself.

I also provided in a much, much earlier post, a list of ways in which the Vatican meets qualifications to be defined both as a nation and as a state. Meeting both those definitions is what makes a nation-state. A global Caliphate may have a central leader, but would actually act as a super-state of smaller nations. They’re not the same thing at all.

The U.N. represents countries, not religions. Since the Holy See is considered to have sovereign power over Vatican City (the unifying culture is defined by religion), the U.N. cannot give voting rights to the Holy See.