Mark's Views, Perhaps — from behind my eyeballs
I wonder what I would do if this happened to me:
The Protestants were forcibly displaced in early 2010 after village authorities destroyed their church and issued an ultimatum to the Protestants to convert to Catholicism.
I wonder what side of this story is offered by the village authorities.
I wonder what the Protestants did or didn’t do to trigger this action.
I wonder what the Pope’s stance is on this. Read it all
That’s quite the quote, eh?
The you in it was a very famous person.
And he signed his agreement with the accusation on this day: June 22.
See 1633 below…but let’s not get any further ahead of ourselves! Read it all
As a Mennonite, this was of interest to me:
What’s with this from the UK Times Online?
Father Gabriele Amorth, 85, who has been the Vatican’s chief exorcist for 25 years and says he has dealt with 70,000 cases of demonic possession, said that the consequences of satanic infiltration included power struggles at the Vatican as well as “cardinals who do not believe in Jesus, and bishops who are linked to the Demon”.
He added: “When one speaks of ‘the smoke of Satan’ [a phrase coined by Pope Paul VI in 1972] in the holy rooms, it is all true – including these latest stories of violence and paedophilia.”
Source: Chief exorcist Father Gabriele Amorth says Devil is in the Vatican
So he released his latest encyclical:
Pope Benedict on Tuesday called for a “world political authority” to manage the global economy and for more government regulation of national economies to pull the world out of the current crisis and avoid a repeat.
The pope’s call for a re-think of the way the world economy is run came in new encyclical which touched on a number of social issues but whose main connecting thread was how the current crisis has affected both rich and poor nations.
[…]
The pope said every economic decision has a moral consequence and called for “forms of redistribution” of wealth overseen by governments to help those most affected by crises.
Benedict said “there is an urgent need of a true world political authority” whose task would be “to manage the global economy; to revive economies hit by the crisis; to avoid any deterioration of the present crisis and the greater imbalances that would result.”
Such an authority would have to be “regulated by law” and “would need to be universally recognized and to be vested with the effective power to ensure security for all, regard for justice, and respect for rights.”
Global economic political authority? No, thanks!
But it’s coming anyway.
The Bible tells me so (as I recall).
Catholics, Muslims open landmark talks at Vatican
Senior Vatican and Islamic scholars launched their first Catholic-Muslim Forum on Tuesday to improve relations between the world’s two largest faiths.
The three-day meeting comes two years after Pope Benedict angered the Muslim world with a speech implying Islam was violent and irrational. In response, 138 Muslim scholars invited Christian churches to a new dialogue to foster mutual respect through a better understanding of each other’s beliefs.
In their manifesto, “A Common Word,” the Muslims argued that both faiths shared the core principles of love of God and neighbor. The talks focus on what this means for the religions and how it can foster harmony between them.
The meeting, including an audience with Pope Benedict, is the group’s third conference with Christians after talks with United States Protestants in July and Anglicans last month.
Jesus is the Word. (See 1 John 1.)
How can Muslims have a common Word with Catholics?
Or with Christians?
Something’s weird here, in my estimation:
| A student at the University of Central Florida says he’s now getting death threats after he stole and later returned a wafer representing the “Body of Christ” from a Catholic Mass in Orlando.
The student senator, Webster Cook, originally claimed he merely wanted to show the Eucharist to a friend who had questions about Catholicism before consuming the host. Cook, who was raised Catholic, said he decided to bring the wafer home June 29 after a church leader tried to physically pry it from his hand. Cook broke Church rules by failing to consume it immediately during Communion and then removing it from his mouth once seated. The wafer was kept in a Ziploc bag until Cook returned it days later along with an e-mail stating, “I am returning the Eucharist to you in response to the e-mails I have received from Catholics in the UCF community. I still want the community to understand that the use physical force is wrong, especially when based on assumptions. However, I feel it is unnecessary to cause pain for those who are not at fault in this situation.” Cook has reportedly been getting death threats, prompting his friend, who wants to remain nameless, to discuss the situation with local media. “I was kind of confused because I always thought that Jesus was a pacifist, and they’re using violence in order to get back the body of a pacifist,” he told WOFL-TV. Catholic League president Bill Donohue commented on the case, stating: “For a student to disrupt Mass by taking the Body of Christ hostage – regardless of the alleged nature of his grievance – is beyond hate speech. That is why the UCF administration needs to act swiftly and decisively in seeing that justice is done. All options should be on the table, including expulsion.” |
Is this on a par with “desecrating” the Koran?
Or cartooning Mohammed?
And does The Nameless Friend have a valid point on the violence angle?
And what about Bill Donohue — does he have a good point also?
PS: I reject the doctrine of transubstantiation.
