Hooray for the Pope! (Page 2)

satangel: Because he and his church destroyed half my life.

taxilon: It's not his church .. it's His church

taxilon: If it was only his church and not His church, I would be the first one to ignore it.

hewhay: what's the diff between his and His ? please clarify

Geoff: Capitalisation of a pronoun obviously indicates a deity.

Whereas the stressing of the difference means that it is of a human.

Something which Spirit_One and I can (I feel) agree on: all organised religions are churches of man and not of any divine being.

Lex_Hard0n: god..............i dun goofed!

Geoff: Hmm, I don't see where, Lex. I'll have to backtrace to determine exactly where that occurred.

satangel: @ Taxilon: If Him (with a capital H) means Jesus, you are wrong.

Firstly, there was no "church" while he was alive. Even if the Greek expression "ecclesia" existed then, it was not associated with Christian congregations until later.

Secondly, Jesus never even remotely believed in the later Christian doctrines. He was a progressive, Hellenistic Jew with a theological base in the teaching of the Essenes and the Nazareans. For him and his contemporaries to believe that a man could be God or the Son of God in the Christian meaning of the word would have been utterly blasphemous and punishable by stoning to death, according to the strict religious Jewish laws.

Thirdly, Christianity as we know it - with the deified Jesus as its main focus point - was originally created by Paul and later legalised in the Roman Empire by Constantine 1st. That Paul's religious project was deliberately constructed - and contradicted everything that Jesus stood for - is obvious when we see how Jesus' brothers and cousins reacted. Paul fought a decade long battle with James, while the latter's successors called Paul "apostate", "renegade" and "false apostle". They knew who and what Jesus had been and that was surely nothing like the Christian God!

Therefore, Christianity cannot be called "His Church", as long as it is the masterpiece of somebody else, who only used Jesus as a means to achieve their goals: Paul to found a religion that could outshine the mystical cults and Constantine to promote unity in his realm.

Dowager Empress: I am not a Christian myself (nor a follower of any other organised belief system) - however, a Catholic priest once taught me that the good Lord gave us the ability to reason, because he expects us to use our heads and to never be blind followers of faith. I consider it one of the best lessons I ever learned.

Why is it so difficult for the Pope to believe that what God actually wants is best for us not necessarily agrees with the Pope's own ideas? In my opinion, the Pope has no moral authority left. His statements remind us of the irrelevance of the Catholic Church in today's real world.

The Great Ww~xw of Babylon (aka the Vatican) no longer commands the loyalty from either hierarchy or laity. In fact, the laity has an obligation to seek other spiritual leaders for moral guidance.

"The Pope is a dope with a big mouth and a lot of arrogance."
- Steve Denver

Napkin: Unless a pope of John 23's caliber steps up and grabs the helm as soon as Benny kicks the bucket, I'm afraid that his successors will play an increasingly less role on the global religious scene.

hewhay: GOOD

mongrel_pup: I'm afraid that the Pope has already outplayed his intended role. This process started in John Paul 2's papacy. Benedict is simply cast in the role of trying to run the ship aground with the minimum of damage to the fuselage.

iMalice: The old barge has been taking in water for a long time now...

hewhay: are you one of these ? or maybe a child of one ?
.Some of the joy began to go out of the LSD cult in the late 1960s .Bad trips , suicides ,news of children being born with birth defects as a result of women taking LSD while pregnant were some of the factors that contributed to its decline . As LSD lost its hold on the hippie population ,many of the former Acid-Freaks found a new "high": JESUS!

The "Jesus Freaks" are supposed to have first appeared on Sunset Strip in Los Angeles in 1967 . Since then , the movement has swept the United States and other Western countries ,attracting young followers from all segments of society , to the astonishment and occasional dismay of the orthodox . The movement now includes several subgroups , from flamboyant hippies who view Jesus as an "outlaw" and promote the Gospel with earsplitting rock music , to the neatly dressed students whose evangelism is an outgrowth of conservative Protestantism . There's even a Catholic wing , the "Catholic Pentecostals," who combine a rigidly orthodox form of Catholic doctrine with the spontaneous enthusiasm of Pentecostal religion and a strong distrust of the hierarchy of their own Church .
Those who like Irony will relish the spectacle of the former Acid-Heads sparking off a Christian revival ,preaching the Gospel to a nominally "straight" society that regarded these same rebels as bearers of virulent disease.

satangel: The Vatican has criticised a decision to award the Nobel Prize for Medicine to IVF pioneer Robert Edwards, who has brought the joy of parenthood to millions of infertile couples.

"I find the choice of Robert Edwards completely out of order," said Ignacio Carrasco de Paula, head of the Pontifical Academy for Life, which speaks for the Vatican on medical ethics issues.

"Without Edwards, there would not be a market on which millions of ovocytes are sold ... and there would not be a large number of freezers filled with embryos in the world," he told the ANSA news agency.

"In the best of cases they are transferred into a uterus, but most probably they will end up abandoned or dead, which is a problem for which the new Nobel Prize winner is responsible."

The Vatican considers in vitro fertilisation immoral because of the wastage of a large number of embryos during the procedure.

(from heraldsun.com.au)

Amanda: Does the world need test-tube technology? Yes.

Does the world need the pope and his church? No.

SPIRIT-ONE: why ? and why not?

Amanda: Simple:

The test-tube tehnology has helped countless of otherwise infertile couples conceive children of their own, which must be viewed as a major achievement in the history of human fertilisation. Robert Edwards really deserves the award for his groundbreaking discovery.

On the other hand, the last thing our modern humankind needs are people and organisations that live so hopelessly far away in a remote past that they have lost touch with reality and not only demand that everybody else live by their outdated theological interpretations, but also actively criticise and try to hinder a constructive progress.

Fair enough?

pioneer: I think that the Popemobile is driving with the hand brake on...

satangel: Recently, Italian police uncovered that a priest in Rome has served as a straw man of the Sicilian Mafia and that he has helped Cosa Nostra to launder money through the Vatican Bank. The police has seized 23 million euros from the bank, suspected of money laundering...

Magicspell: I suggest that the Pope should be sacked and the Catholic Church dissolved. Then, whoever wants to continue this charade should start from scratch and construct a religion that reflects our modern times, with clergy of both genders; and no doctrines about an evil enemy and eternal punishment.

SPIRIT-ONE: Don't worry ,the Vatican and all of it's childmolesting cronies days are numbered ,they will soon pass away with the Old Order

NWDan: So why did they pick a nazi for pope?

SPIRIT-ONE: why a Nazi Pope ,it's always been that way ,the Popes during the wars turned jews over to the Nazis so maybe it is their reward God is Satan ,the Pope claims to be God Himself In the Flesh so that would make him Satan ,Yahweh is the Creator of the Universe ,He cast Satan down to earth an Eon ago to redeem himself .
The Vatican recently finished their new 'telescope' in Arizona on 'sacred Indian burial ground' ,they named their new telescope 'LUCIFER' ,could it be ,that Lucifer the Satan is worried that his Maker is coming ?
I think so