A reader sent me links to a couple of stories.
Rome, Dec. 06, 2005 (CNA) – Dissident theologians opposing the beatification of Pope John Paul II have issued an appeal urging Catholics critical of the late pope to tell the Vatican if they also think he should not be made a saint.
The Rome diocese has opened a beatification cause for the Pope. Church officials have asked all Catholics to come forward with personal experiences or evidence of possible miracles that could support a reputation for holiness.
The Group of dissident theologians presented their views in a press conference hosted by the Italian agency ADISTA, in order to foster public backing against the beatification process of Karol Woytila.
One of the best-known signatories was Jose Maria Castillo, a Jesuit professor who has taught theology at the University of Granada. Another was Italian theologian Giovanni Franzoni.
"We invite such persons (critical of the late pope) to overcome their shyness and timidity and formally express, with gospel freedom, facts which according to their consciences and convictions should be an obstacle to beatification," they wrote. [Source]
That’s a laugh, especially the shy and timid critics of the pope part. An answer to prayer would be shy and timid dissidents.
Los Angeles, December 5, 2005 — Beyond Belief Media has formally
declared war on Christmas, the December 25 holiday in which
Christians celebrate the birth of the mythical figure Jesus Christ,
the company announced today.
“Christian conservatives complain nonstop about the ‘War on Christmas,’ but there really isn’t any such war,” said Beyond Belief Media president Brian Flemming, a former undamentalist
Christian who is now an atheist activist. “So we have decided to
wage one, to demonstrate what it would look like if Jesus’ birthday
were truly attacked.”
As its opening salvo, Beyond Belief Media has purchased
advertisements this week in the New York Times, USA Today and the New
Yorker magazine. The company’s 300-member volunteer “street
team” is also descending on Christmas-themed public events with
random “guerilla giveaways” of Beyond Belief’s acclaimed
documentary THE GOD WHO WASN’T THERE.
“No Christmas pageant or Nativity display is safe from our troops,” said Flemming. “Wherever the mythical figure Jesus is
celebrated as if he were real, we will be there with an information
barrage. We will undercut the idea that there is any point at all to
celebrating the ‘birth’ of a character in a fairy tale.”
No surprise that this mockumentary includes Richard Dawkins who seems to spend his whole life explaining why God does not exist. If you believe something is only a fairy tale and then devote most of your short human life to debunking a fairly tale. Even James Toranto who is not exactly part of the religious right calls such people "Atheist Jerks" For example he referenced another group that was asking students to exchange bibles for porn magazines at the University of Texas at San Antonio.
Carl Olson in response to the Taranto story posted:
Occasionally, but not often, you do hear about (or even meet) an atheist who really does seem comfortable in his unbelieving skin. Which is, I think, how a real atheist would be: completely unflappable in the face of passionate and proselytizing Christians. After all, if theism is complete nonsense and theists are irrational fools, why be bothered by their mere comments? Perhaps because, as Chesteron noted, if there was no God, there would be no atheist
19 comments
Three essential hallmarks of sainthood:
1. Living an exemplary Christian life;
2. Having miracles attributed to your intercession;
3. Being criticized by dissident theologians.
“…as Chesterton noted, if there was no God, there would be no atheist.”
That’s a good point. Recently, I finally understood that life is absolutely pointless without God, because no matter how good or bad your life was, if it all amounts to nothing in the end, what’s the point? You could be rich, who would care, but then it wouldn’t matter if you used your wealth for good or bad, or if you were even rich at all. There has to be a God, otherwise, what would the point of us being here be? To live a tough life then die, never to be remembered by anyone, and if you are, who cares? No, there has to be a God, or life would be meaningless.
Also, if there is absolute bad, then there must be an absolute good. I can’t stand TV for this reason. They portray evil as absolutely evil, but then the good guy is about as equally messed up but apparently on “the right side”. If there is no distinction between good and evil, then there is no point in doing good or bad. And if God was bad, then wouldn’t the devil be good? The devil is often portrayed as good and God as bad, but none can deny that if they say they’re “friends with Satan” then they are definitely doing something wrong, so then God would be right and righteous as the devil’s opposite, and He would conquer the devil, because people believe that good triumphs over evil. Perhaps this is why people has such reserved theology: they think that the devil is good, when he actually isn’t, and they will learn in displeasure that God was the good one. If there is no good or evil, then nothing makes sense. Why are people so divided on things like morality if there IS none? Why do people just, then, know if something is wrong, if they say they believe that nothing is wrong and is truly up to one’s choice of beliefs? There just HAS to be good and evil.
Wthout a God, there is no meaning in our lives at all, no incentive to live or die or to do good or evil. There MUST be a God, and a good one. There is no other way to put it. In order for life here to make sense, a righteous God must exist.
I have to say, “Bring it on!” with regard to the cause of JPII.
As I understand it, there isn’t an official ‘devil’s advocate’ position anymore.
So it would be for the best if any issues people have are addressed openly and, I’m confident, ultimately dismissed.
Actually, I have met some atheists who seemed perfectly O.K. with other people’s religious beliefs. One was a member of AA and told me she had gone to a meeting of whatever the atheist version of AA is called and couldn’t stand it. She said the entire meeting revolved around “We don’t need a ‘Higher Power’ to stay on the wagon and to hell with those AA types who say we do!” She said they were the angriest, unhappiest group of ex-drunks she ever saw.
I was an atheist for all practical purposes for many years (if you would have asked me “Does God exist?” I would have said “Uh,…,I think so.” However, I saw no reason to change my way of life, pray or go to Mass, i.e., I lived like an atheist). Jeff, you were once an atheist. Were you ever an obnoxious one?
I wasn’t, maybe because deep, deep down, I knew the Christians were right.
The criterias for a Pope for sainthood:
1. Defending of the faith and the flock and not participating in countless interfaith gatherings and basically blurring the lines between what the One true faith is and false religions-FAILED
2. Consecrating good, holy Catholic and Apostolic Bishops over 26 years-FAILED
3.Knew what was going on among his own clergy-The largest and most damaging abuse crisis in history-FAILED
4.Loved by the world or despised as Our Lord, his Apostles and the saints and martyrs because they refused to compromise the teachings of Christ-FAILED
5.Grew the flock and clergy-continued downward spiral of churchgoing Catholics as well as priests entering the seminary
So by all accounts, JPII was a monumental failure and should go down as one of the worst Popes in history, pray for his soul that he is not in purgatory or even worse with a track record like that
I will pray that the late pope John Paul II is in purgatory. Whatever flaws, faults and failings that he had (in the humanity that we all share) will be purged from him. Presence in Purgatory (as Mother Angelica often said) is cause for rejoicing!
Remember that the structural “Body of Christ” is even slower to turn than the QE2!
I pray also that Pope Benedict 16th also continues to lovingly and firmly correct dissidents of all stripes.
Where are the atheists to tell us that we don’t need the crutch of mythical superior alien overlords (as Ralians believe) to bring us salvation? That we don’t need to kowtow to these otherworldly masters, always obeying them out of fear they will imprison us on their prison planet, or hoping to be rewarded with being let into their utopian intergalactic society, with eternal life through everlasting clones, or uploading your brain to a computer?
If God is just make believe, why don’t they react the same against other make believe systems that are gaining followers?
To John (above):
To infer that Pope John Paul 2 is probably in Hell “with a track record like that” shows you are clearly very bitter.
If all you said were true or relevant then there would be no such thing as a “JP2 generation” of priests, young people, families and individuals who were inspired by his fidelity and holiness, and who are now coming to the fore to sweep all the bulldust away.
You wanted someone to wave a magic wand, to go in boots-n-all. To slash and burn. And you lay blame for every sin of every Bishop and every wayward priest on his doorstep.
But the wonderful fruits of his approach are beginning to emerge, and that will be his legacy.
If he was a “saint” and this applies to his role as the Vicar of Christ, should he not have taken the Oath of office, or was he afraid that he was not going to defend the faith and did not want to be bound?
Papal Coronation Oath
This sacred oath is taken by the pope upon is elevation to the Chair of St. Peter. Every pope since Pope Saint Agatho on June 27, 678 has taken it. Many believe it was even taken by several predecessors of St. Agatho. At least 185 Supreme Pontiffs took this solemn oath over the past 1300 years. In this oath, the Vicar of Christ vows to never contradict the Deposit of Faith, or change/innovate anything that has been handed down to him. This sacred oath was taken religiously up until October 1978. Thus meaning that John XXIII, Paul VI and John Paul I all took this oath. The oath states that should the pope break the oath, they would excommunicate themselves from the Church, and therefore, cease being pope. John Paul II is the first since the 7th century or before to not take it. Why? What is he afraid of?
Here is the oath in its entirty. The items in bold the most important parts of it.
“I vow to change nothing of the received Tradition, and nothing thereof I have found before me guarded by my God-pleasing predecessors, to encroach upon, to alter, or to permit any innovation therein;
To the contrary: with glowing affection as her truly faithful student and successor, to safeguard reverently the passed-on good, with my whole strength and utmost effort;
To cleanse all that is in contradiction to the canonical order, should such appear; to guard the Holy Canons and Decrees of our Popes as if they were the divine ordinance of Heaven, because I am conscious of Thee, whose place I take through the Grace of God, whose Vicarship I possess with Thy support, being subject to severest accounting before Thy Divine Tribunal over all that I shall confess;
I swear to God Almighty and the Savior Jesus Christ that I will keep whatever has been revealed through Christ and His Successors and whatever the first councils and my predecessors have defined and declared.
I will keep without sacrifice to itself the discipline and the rite of the Church. I will put outside the Church whoever dares to go against this oath, may it be somebody else or I.
If I should undertake to act in anything of contrary sense, or should permit that it will be executed, Thou willst not be merciful to me on the dreadful Day of Divine Justice.
Accordingly, without exclusion, We subject to severest excommunication anyone — be it Ourselves or be it another — who would dare to undertake anything new in contradiction to this constituted evangelic Tradition and the purity of the orthodox Faith and the Christian religion, or would seek to change anything by his opposing efforts, or would agree with those who undertake such a blasphemous venture.”
Some hold that the papal elections were invalid based on the Bull of Pope Paul IV in 1559, Cum ex apostolatus:
�If ever at any time it appears that… the Roman Pontiff has deviated from the Catholic Faith or fallen into some heresy before assuming the papacy, the assumption, done even with the unanimous consent of all the Cardinals, stands null, invalid and void; nor can it be said to become valid, or be held in any way legitimate, or be thought to give to such ones any power of administering either spiritual or temporal matters; but everything said, done and administered by them lacks all force and confers absolutely no authority or right on anyone; and let such ones by that very fact (eo ipso) and without any declaration required to be deprived of all dignity, place, honor, title, authority, office, and power.�
About the validity of a Pope :
http://www.catholic.com/thisrock/2001/0103fea1.asp
No one is questioning validity-Just does this man qualify for sainthood, and was he a good Pope at all and by his actions, which by many accounts were heretical in nature, fall into the category of Popes in midevil times who were selling indulgences, and it so happens that the FIRST Pope John XXIII was found to be hereticial and deposed at an Ecumenical council and replaced with Pope Martin V.
A Pope is flesh and blood, and not infallible except in very rare circumstances. I am not speaking sede here, just that God should always be followed and not man
The question that was posed to me was:
IF Pope ___ told you tomorrow to worship Pagan idols and that Buddah and false faiths should be loved (which the church of Ecumenism is tinkering already with) and other directives that you know as a Catholic is clearly wrong-would you follow him?
That is the dilemna of many Traditional Catholics who have either left the faith all together and do not attend as attested by the drop off in mass attendance from 75% in 1962 to 15% as it is today, or find a trad chapel
Those numbers are misleading. I’ve met ex-Catholics in the last few years who have cited “The Changes” as their reason for leaving. The oddest one started her own Christian church, and she is an interesting contradiction of decrying the loss of tradition and wanting women’s ordination. The one I pray for the most is a neighbour who said he decided to leave the Church in 1976 because he took his girlfriend to church and “old J.C. was off the cross” – translation of his quote: there was a resurrected Christ statue near the altar. Yes, THAT’s a good reason – and such a respectful way to refer to Our Lord, too. I looked up the place and time of Latin Masses in our archdiocese, but I don’t know if he’ll go. I pray he does, but he’s not ready to give up his lifestyle – kind of like an early-day Augustine.
And frankly, a whole lot of the faithful church-goers in ’62 are dead. My grandparents’ generation, the second generation to know religious freedom in this country, are gone. They were the ones who went to daily Mass and prayed the Angelus – even when the Mass was switched from Latin to English. My parents are of the Silent Generation, and their attendance is every Sunday, but about half of their siblings don’t attend Mass except at funerals. I won’t even get into the Baby Boomers, except to say that many of them are the carry’em-marry’em-bury’em Catholics who attended long enough to get married and have the children baptized, but won’t set foot inside again until the pallbearers carry them in on our shoulders.
I don’t think that “The Changes” are the real reason that people stopped attending Mass. It’s an excuse. When your lifestyle is incompatible with the Church, it’s easier to stop going than to repent. I write this as someone who lived that way. Fortunately, I repented and came back. However, I spent time saying “The church has changed” and blaming stupid things for my own sinfulness. Some of my childhood friends who were in the same position haven’t come back. A few joined churches that say being saved means never having to say “I’m sorry I’m having pre-marital relations and I’ll stop now” or to give up their favourite sins. I don’t think a return to tradition would cause their return.
Oh, I left off the key point! John Paul II was instrumental in teaching me to pray the Rosary and renewing in me a love for Our Lady. Even as a kid in Catholic school, I viewed the Rosary as a type of torture device. In my twenties, I ended up with a (Lord forgive me) rather Protestant view of Mary. (See “Seed of a Woman” for an idea of what a stupid view I had.)
But John Paul II talked a lot about the wonderful love and humility of Mary. It wasn’t any particular address he gave about Our Lady that intrigued me; it was cumulative. Gradually my rosary stopped being a momento of childhood and started being an everyday tool.
If Beyond Belief Media has a credo, it is this:
There is no God, and Brian Flemming is His Prophet.
I briefly interacted with him and some of his amen corner last year. About the only thing I learned was that atheism has its own fundamentalist wing floating in a logic bubble impervious to history.
Atheists exchanging bibles for porn magazines? There’s an interesting choice. Not Darwin? Not Marx? Heck, what about a book on different seashells around the world? They go straight for the porn. What’s that about?
I think they’ll lose.
I question with statistics as such, whether JPII should even be considered for sainthood, or is the church looking for a modern popularity contest to win
The myth that is popular among Catholics is that things have gotten better in the last decade or so, coinciding primarily with the pontificate of John Paul II. Actually statistics don’t bear this out � in fact, the rate of decline has accelerated in some cases. Look at the number of priests. In 1975, three years before JPII was elected, there were 58,909 priests. In 1980, two years after his election, there were 58,621, a one percent decrease from five years previously. But the pace of the decline has picked up since then � 57,317 in 1985; 53,111 in 1990; 49,947 in 1995; 45,713 in 2000; 44,874 predicted for 2005; 37,624 in 2010; and 30,992 in 2020.
� Seminarians: 17,802 in 1975; 13,226 in 1980; 11,028 in 1985; 6,233 in 1990; 5,083 in 1995; 4,719 in 2002.
� Sisters: 135,225 in 1975; 126,517 in 1980; 115,386 in 1985; 103,269 in 1990; 92,107 in 1995; 75,500 in 2002. . . .
. . . the one piece of advice I can give is � do something. And don’t be afraid to be confrontational. The more I observe and experience the behavior of our shepherds, the more I’ve come to believe that they will make no concession unless they are forced to. They will act in the area of true reform as they acted in connection with the priest sex abuse crisis � they will ignore it until they are exposed. I have to agree with Pat Buchanan, who advocates what he calls the politics of conflict. . . .
That doesn’t mean we have to be rude, obnoxious or boorish. It means we have to know our principles and be willing and able to defend them, and to bring the battle to our enemies. Too often we are on the defensive. We have 2,000 years of tradition behind us, we have nothing to apologize for. . . .
Yes John/Jack, Pope John Paul is responsible for all those wacky orders of nuns not getting any vocations! And all those priests trained in the spirit of Charlie Curran et al – and then deserting the presbytery for some like-minded ex-nun – yeah that was JP2’s fault too!
And I’ve heard too that Woodstock was his idea, and that he secretly funded contraceptive research so that his flock, already smitten with the culture of modernity, could become even more in tune with agnostic and John and Jane Doe next door.
**Caution – the above was satire**
John/Jack, go and take your frustrations out on some boxing speed bag. The rest of us will continue JP2’s mission of re-evangelizing the culture and reinvigorating the Church.
Please note that I love and am or was obedient to JPII but I am also an educated catholic who spent time in formation and experienced firsthand what anticatholic theology and teachings were being forced down my throat by liberal seminary teachers and formation directors who for the most part were woman lib nuns
Should I blame the Holy Father? Well we blame Bush for all of the ills of the world, why not blame JPII-and all I am saying is that JPII beautified over 1000 saints in his 26 years-more than all of the Popes COMBINED over the past 500 years! Is sainthood that easy to obtain now?
God bless his soul and discussion as such is good for the church, but I would rather leave his judgement up to God and get off of this topic
I’m part of the JPII generation (I’m 16).
Pope JPII was so cool. About a year ago, I read an article explaining the theology of the body, and I felt it was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever read.
This guy has GOT to be canonized.
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