IT'S ALWAYS DARKEST BEFORE THE DAWN
Galileo, a good Catholic, offered "infinite thanks to God for being so kind as to make me alone the first observer of marvels kept hidden in obscurity for all previous centuries."
In the words of Chandler on Friends: Could you be any more deluded?
There is a term for someone who is a new christian: "Baby Christian." It is generally applied to converts new to the faith who enter it with all the evangelical zeal of someone who first discovered that their refrigerator makes ice. They eat up wholesale uncritically every piece of doctrine, teaching, writing, sermon and repeat them like mantras- even though great theologians have been battling the issues, schisms and splits have occurred around them and the bible directly contradicts it. I am sometimes amazed at how otherwise thinking even professional people can think that a political body of people called a church can be so perfect as to be always right when it even states in scripture that now we only see as in a glass dimly, but then shall we see face to face.
For example, few new anti-abortion polemicists realize that for the first thousand or so years of church history the rule on abortion followed more the Jewish theological thinking under the explanation offered by Saint Thomas Acquinas (the hero of Dominicans the Doctrine Police) who believed that abortion was OK until the point of "ensoulment." Ensoulment he arbitrarily pegged at different dates for a female than for a male fetus. This is easily read and codified in Acquinas writings-particularly his five volume Treatise the Summa Theologica (the "Summa" to those in the know) that is mandatory reading for the Doctrine Police. Now we understand science better and DNA provides a better explanation for the doctrine that human life begins at conception. If you hold that as truth then you have to hold as truth that the Church was wrong for about a thousand years when it permitted early abortion.
Since I don't know when, it was well established church doctrine in the Catholic Church (capital C) that if babies died before they were baptized, they automatically went to purgatory, not heaven-they were stuck in Limbo under the Doctrine of Limbo. Recently, this Pope Benedict changed that doctrine and apparently now babies do not automatically go to purgatory. They are not barred by that doctrine from the gates of heaven because the church said so (as if anyone in the Church including any Pope could possibly know for sure where they go after they leave planet earth when Jesus never said anything about it.)
Another one of these great myths is that Priests should not be allowed to be in intimate marriage relationships because they are supposed to point people to Christ and this is their higher calling- as if the two were mutually exclusive (an absurdity that insults Christ and is belied by the first thousand years of church history). As if Christ doesn't work through and in marriage- even with people consecrated to consecrating him through the Eucharist. This myth, that people eat up wholesale works pretty well for priests- who may not want to marry, for other reasons (the ones who do ignore the rule anyway). They may not really be all too into women (or that woman) but it serves their interests to string along a harem of them, especially if they are responsible for a church budget and women are the most generous supporters, they may not want the responsibility of families, they may not want any other kind of job. Don't get me wrong- there are incredibly devout priests who are so on fire with the love of Christ that they don't have room for anything else in their heart- but that isn't Christ's intent that their hearts should be so confined that they don't expand deeper into intimacy with any woman necessarily. There is massive confusion regarding the will of God and the demands of an institution called the church.
It is stunning that anyone would be so naiive (a nice way of saying street brick dumb) that they would think that a priest who was involved with them but not interested in marrying them really actually loved them the way that his Sermons went on an on about the love of God. Did it occur to you honey that he does the same thing to about a hundred women- there should be a support group. Or perhaps your Gaydar needs batteries?
Being a priest is a pretty cushy life compared to a lot of trades. Everyone wants you on their family vacation so you get to travel a lot. You get to eat the best food at all the best wedding receptions. It sure beats the stress of some higher paying professions. Generally you get free room and board and get to hear all the juciest gossip- women adulate and adore you and you don't have to pay for any dates. You get to hear spectacular choir concerts every Sunday. Where do I sign up?
Protestants believe in what is called the "Priesthood of all belivers." That means it is the duty of every Christian to not only read and know scripture and God's word spoken and read, but it is the duty of every Christian to be transformed in the likeness of Christ so that they can effectively become his hands in the world, ultimately transforming the world by acts of his compassion, grace, mercy and peace. We are to become as Christ to the World. It is not just the duty of priests- the Maitre D's and Waiters of his body and blood- it is the job description of every baptized Christian. There simply is no rule that says the Maitre D can't be married. That's why ONE THIRD of all of them have taken that route. It's a stunning figure.
This is a wake up call to not let yourself be lost in illusion. You won't find Christ in illusions. There is nothing more real in the World than Christ.
....and then there was that pesky character Galileo (who now is buried in Santa Croce church in Florence, Italy)...[do your own research on that one!]
POPE WILL NOT MAKE SCHEDULED VISIT TO ROMAN UNIVERSITY
VATICAN CITY, 16 JAN 2008 (VIS) - The Pope will not make the visit he was scheduled to make tomorrow, 17 January, to Rome's "La Sapienza" University for the inauguration of the academic year, according to a communique released yesterday evening by the Holy See Press Office.
The communique reads: "In the wake of the widely-publicised events of the last few days relating to the Holy Father's visit to Rome's 'La Sapienza' University which, at the invitation of the rector, was to have taken place on Thursday, 17 January, it was considered opportune to postpone the event. The Holy Father will, nonetheless, send the text of the speech he had been due to pronounce".
The "events" to which the note refers include a petition to the rector signed by 67 professors asking for the invitation to Benedict XVI to be withdrawn, and protests by groups of students who yesterday occupied the rector's office to demand the right to demonstrate within the university campus on the day of the Pope's visit.
The signatories of the petition take exception to a talk given by the then Cardinal Ratzinger in 1990, and in particular to a phrase he used on that occasion to the effect that "in Galileo's time the Church remained much more faithful to reason than Galileo himself. The trial against Galileo was reasonable and just". The future Pope's remarks, a quote from a work by the philosopher of science Paul Feyerabend, were made in the context of a talk on the crisis of confidence in science, in which he used the example of changing attitudes towards the case of Galileo.
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