Catholics are making it up.

By tradition I assume you mean that it's something they made up - then yes, of course - they made everything up.As for biblical they make those arguments (and others) here:Celibacy and the Priesthood | Catholic AnswersBut I'm not remotely interested in a quotation battle, that get everyone nowhere, but I do love this final rationalisation...

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In fact, it is precisely the holiness of marriage that makes celibacy precious; for only what is good and holy in itself can be given up for God as a sacrifice. Just as fasting presupposes the goodness of food, celibacy presupposes the goodness of marriage. To despise celibacy, therefore, is to undermine marriage itselfas the early Fathers pointed out.

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Gotta love them cartwheeling Catholics.The change is neither scriptural nor dogmatic, it's just pragmatic.

The Catholic church claimed that it was a sin to eat meat on Friday - particularly Good Friday.

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In Catholicism, specific regulations are passed by individual episcopates. In the United States in 1966, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops passed Norms II and IV that bound all persons from age fourteen to abstain from meat on Fridays of Lent and through the year.

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I see that they're had another shot at it in 1983

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Current practice of fast and abstinence is regulated by Canons 1250—1253 of the 1983 code. They specify that all Fridays throughout the year, and the time of Lent are penitential times throughout the entire Church. All adults (those who have attained the 'age of majority', which is 18 years in canon law) are bound by law to fast on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday until the beginning of their sixtieth year.

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'Fast' apparently means eating no more than one meal in the day. I've never heard of this one - just another way of controlling their sheep I guess.But I don't think it got any traction - this from 2011

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Trying to re-establish the practice of abstaining from meat on a Friday may prove difficult for the Church. Many Catholics have already shown that in many areas of life, they are not always willing to follow rules laid down by the clergy.

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Catholics asked to abstain from meat for Friday penance - BBC News

Despite my better judgement I watched the film the Two Popes on Netflix. It's pretty good though obviously it fudges a lot of issues, Ratzinger gets away with a big muffled section on his part in covering up child abuse.Still, worth a watch.

It's just a good film - well written, well filmed and brilliantly acted. Up for an oscar. It isn't a whitewash either - there's some tough stuff in it.

They say it's ok to eat fish 'cos they're cold blooded. Don't ask me why that's a thing for them or the bible.

The full quote is:

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But, it's an indictment of religions that their 'truths' are abandonned when they become inconvenient. It's very clear that the Catholic church simply made up all sorts of nonsense, probably as a means of control over their customers. Why should anyone believe anything they say?

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My position is that religious dogma is pure human invention. Some of it's modern like the Mormon's but most of it is ancient, born in times when no-one knew the causes of anything and the church used its power to control its sheep by creating it's rituals and rules of life within it.If you want evidence of this you only have to look at the invention of the Protestant church in England, created by Henry VIII so he could divorce and re-marry. And, of course, all the subsequent about-faces the Catholic church has made and are continuing to make. These things were once 'truth' but are now not.'Data and physical evidence' plus the scientific method used to evaluate them is the most reliable method humankind has found for establishing 'truth'. Belief has been proven to be bollox, that's why it's disappearing and the institutions that promote it are having to back-peddle like crazy to remain even remotely relevant.

You know that religions are made up because you know that everyone that has a belief other than your own is made up. You know Muslims are wrong, they know Christians are wrong. it's not a question of who's right, they're both obviously all made up.The fact that some people would rather believe in something that's imaginary than not is a pretty obvious fact and the motivation for why they do so is also obvious.But it's not universal Phat, most of Northern Europe does not have the US's hang up with religion. You live in a bubble of church, religious forums and people that go to church and write religious blogs. All you hear are the silly platitudes that they spout and you copy without actually thinking about them. When you're asked to explain, you can't, so you avoid.A rational person would ask themselves why they can't answer the questions that are asked, but religous people can't properly question themselves because they need to cling on to the belief that there's something better after this - otherwise what's the point? The point is life Phat, life here and now. Don't waste it.

Lots of fundies from all religions say that. But it's not a fluke that your 'undeniable experience' was a Christian one in a Christian country nor that non-Christians in non-Christian countries that have never heard of Christianity ever get that experience.Instead they get their own culture-related 'undeniable experience' - people in Islamic cultures get Muslim experiences. That really should tell you something. It's a powerful, cultural and need-related delusion. It's not real and I suspect you know it.

Things that people call miracles 'happen' in all cultures. Yes they are, they do not and can not exist outside their culture. There is no known incident of any religion of culture X spontaneously forming in culture Y. Pure drivel. You would claim? There are no miracles, if they existed we'd know about them - this discussion would be redundant.

You can contend all you like but you have absolutely no reason to contend it.You know no more about your god than the iron age men that first invented him. All that is 'known' about your god is written in those books that you hold so dear. Everything since is invention on top of that original invention.

They are evidence that some unknown people wrote some stories and that some politicians several centuries later chose some of them and redacted others to form a book and create a useful power structure. That's all. According to the stories they also believed that it was the beginning of the end of times. That the second coming was imminent. It wasn't. They were superstitious primitive people that believed all sorts of nonsense.However you asserted more than that, you were claiming some sort of progressive revelation -

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As I have said before, I contend that there has been a progressive understanding amongst humans and our understanding evolves, and that continues to this day and will in the future as well.

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I say that you have no evidence to support that claim.Edited by Tangle, : No reason given.

They're a collection of anonymous folk tales. The only difference between these and all the rest is that a powerful emperor adopted them and used them to further his political ambitions. There is extremely scant evidence that Jesus actually exists; there is absolutely no evidence of a resurrection. Nope, it's a direct reading of what's written. Your hero CS Lewis describes it as the 'most embarrassing verse in the bible'. Of course you bend over backwards to make it say something that it doesn't but it's clear what it means and it's clear that those in the story thought that the second coming was imminent. That is what the words say, so that is what they mean. Of course it is. Well that's because the old testament was written by a bunch of people who believed all that primitive vengeful stuff because that was how their lives where. And the new testament was written by different bunch of people that didn't like the story of that god so invented a story of a nicer god. All societies make gods to whatever model their culture requires at that time. You can see it everywhere and everywhen.This 'progressive' understanding is new; even though the nicer NT has been around for 2,000 years, the idea of a vengeful, retributive god full of fire and brimstone existed until a couple of generations ago. Your nice liberal views would have got you burnt as a heretic in the middle ages.But in any case, the only 'data' you have - though it's not data at all - is what's written in that book; there can be no 'progressive understanding' based on actual knowledge of god since that work.

Being 2,000 year old folk tales means that they can't possibly be accurate. You have an 2,000 year old opinion about the nature of your god. You're kidding! Anglicanism is the liberal arm of Christianity. But all they have to study is what's in a single book. There is no other data available to be studied and 'scholarship' can't agree even on that.You have a belief. That's all it is. The rest is waffle.

Well as an atheist catholic, I beg to differ, I know a lot more that I wish I did, having been indoctrinated into the cult literally since birth.Now why don't you calm down and provide some evidence that my general claim that 'Catholics are making it up' is wrong?Edited by Tangle, : No reason given.

So what did I get wrong in my OP? SummaryPriests can now forgive women who have had abortions
Priests can be married
Limbo is abolished
Divorced catholics can remarry
You can eat meat on Friday
Contraception is a matter of conscience not sin (unless you're African)