Beyond belief
I'm not what you'd call a religious person.
I was brainwashed educated into the Roman Catholic setup but as soon as I reached an age where I could think for myself, I decided I had too many problems with their beliefs so I went my own way.
Back in those days life was sort of tricky for Catholics as there were so many damn rules.
It was apparently a mortal sin to eat meat of a Friday. It was a mortal sin to partake in manual work on a Sunday [though that did come in handy for avoiding household chores]. There were regular "fast days" where we couldn't eat or drink anything except bread and water. Homosexuals, contraceptives and women were the Spawn of Satan and were to be avoided at all costs, on pain of eternal damnation in the Fires of Hell.
Many's the retreat I went on in my school days where we would be lectured at length about the evils of sex in all its forms and if they weren't waffling about sex they were giving us great graphic descriptions of the souls in torment, burning in everlasting fires in the pit of hell. Women apparently were the cause of virtually every evil to befall man and time and time again we were warned about them. This of course made women all the more interesting to us young lads, but that's beside the point.
The latest Head Honcho in the Catholic Church seems to be creating a few waves though.
There is no Hell, apparently. It has gone the way of Purgatory and Limbo which were abolished a while ago. I never discovered what happened to the souls in Purgatory or Limbo. Were they given a retrial or was there some kind of Papal Pardon?
The Bible is not to be taken as gospel too. This is really going to piss a lot of people off but what the hell. Ooops! Can't say "what the hell" any more?
To add to the confusion, heterosexuals and homosexuals are now classed as equal and good people as far as the church is concerned. The gang in Westboro won't be too pleased with that?
Adam and Eve never existed either which must come as a shock to all of us as we are supposed to be their descendants? Presumably if they never existed then by default we're all abolished too?
A strange pronouncement is that all religions are equal. This is a bit like Ford saying that all cars are equal and they are happy no matter what model you drive? Il Papa says that even atheists are good people and somehow by default are deeply religious. That's nice of him?
The biggest upset of the apple cart as far as the cardinals and bishops are concerned though is that women apparently aren't the Root of all Evil after all. Not only are they not evil, His Popishness reckons they should be made into priests, bishops and cardinals. This of course is the ultimate heresy. He even reckons that one day a woman will be pope.
It won't happen in his lifetime.
And why do I have a feeling that the latter won't be very long?
"A strange pronouncement is that all religions are equal"
The Devil certainly doesn't think so…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_hcO4N7hM0
Hah! One of my favourite sketches!
Saint Malachi said that this would be the last Pope. Perhaps he will be proved to be correct.
From now on they will all be Popesses? Or Popettes?
and there's more… I think…possibly.
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/francesco/motu_proprio/documents/papa-francesco-motu-proprio_20130711_organi-giudiziari_en.html
I don't know what to make of that. More Papal Bull?
Me neither.
Does this bit mean all public officials are deemed to be criminals or just those in the Vatican?
3. For the purposes of Vatican criminal law, the following persons are deemed “public officials”:
Women apparently were the cause of virtually every evil to befall man and time and time again we were warned about them.
Well, they might have been onto something there… 🙂
My dear departed mother was brought up as a Catholic, and married my father who was C of E. All her married life, and up to her death, she fretted (it really did bother her) about the fact that having married outside the faith, and not having her children baptised into the (Catholic) faith would condemn her to Purgatory. And it was a real fear that she took with her to her grave.
That really pissed me off, that a bunch of zealots should have given her so much grief over her lifetime, just because she transgressed one of their petty, arbitrary rules. The Neo-Puritans of today are following a similar template, and are of a similar outlook. If you don't follow their diktats, then you're in for a hard time.
And that's what I dislike most about religion. The mental coercion to conform to the orthodoxy (whatever that might be, depending on the sect [Public Health?]), on pain of eternal damnation.
Once again, it's all about controlling the great unwashed.
I was the other way around – a mother who converted to RC from C of E, and a nominally RC father who held distinctly non-RC views! Naturally my mother, being a convert was more RC than anyone else so it led to an interesting childhood!
An interesting debate – is it true that only Catholics are in Heaven?
So I was taught. But now that there's no hell, where does everyone else go?
Heaven would be heaven if only for the fact that not a single politician would qualify for entry.
People who have lived really nasty lives will be sent to a place crowded with cutehoorish politicians eternally repeating platitudes and making promises they can't keep. L'enfer c'est les autre gens, as some French existentialist wrote somewhere, Hell is other people. And it'll be Turkish cigarettes for serious pipe smokers; bangers and mash with oxo sauce for fans of aromatic Indian curry; Mills & Boon romances for admirers of Banville, Toibin and Kafka; and nonstop Daniel O'Donnell songs for the Elvis generation. Zay haff methods off punishing sinners, ja?
I would have said that Daniel O'Donnell would be hell for any generation? Throw in Jedward and the mix is complete.
Heaven on the other hand is all dogs and pipe tobacco [with a few pints thrown in].
As a child I was brought up in the Russian Orthodox Faith in central London, all of the congregation were survivors of Lenin, Stalin and Hitler to name a few and that included the Clergy, my understanding of the persecution they had suffered was limited but even as a young child I knew it was unimaginable in 60ies Britain, their comprehension of Christianity was/is vastly different than that of the Church of Rome, I was taught about compassion, tolerance and selflessness, however underneath that was the stoic Russian temprament of not crossing the line, e.g. calling out b*llshit whenever you came across it; not all factions of Christianity are about mind control.
Welcome John! I can only speak from the RC perspective [we were taught in school that anyone else would go straight to hell and that as far as they were concerned, there were no other religions]. One of the many reasons I quit was that I couldn't go along with their dogmatic intolerance. You did things their way and there was no exceptions. The RC church of my time was firmly rooted in the fifteenth century and they haven't improved much since. That's really what startled me about the latest pronouncements – they finally seem to be catching up even if it's only lip service so far.
I also well remember the BBC broadcasting from the Church the Easter Vigil, it was illegal to listen to it in Russia during the height of the cold war and if caught the punishments were always very severe, exile to Siberian Detention camps were the favourite under Kruschev and Breschnev . There is a very long history of bad feeling between the Church of Rome and the Orthodox Patriarchates, I have to say having spoken to many Roman Catholics I am truly grateful I was not bludgeoned under there tyranical total misrepresentation of the Gospels.
Well I'm proud to say I was born in Norn Iron and a good Presbyterian! Don't believe in any of it of course.
I thought I detected a touch of an accent there all right. 😉
Knox lost his socks?
Well spotted wee man!