The Pope’s Denial Problem

Thank goodness (!) I have left the catholic church a few years ago because I could no longer bring myself to try and believe in a supreme being and because John Paul II was already by far too backwards with all the saints and whatnot. Even if I am no longer part of this church I'm still ashamed of what's happening there.

Ratzinger - while probably not guilty of anti-semitism - is completely guilty of completely ignoring the impact of reconciling with this ultra-orthodox, anti-semitic, idiotic pius clan. Does he really believe that splitting the proverbial hair of distinguishing between a religious act and its political impact is only remotely understood by anybody with his/her common sense not being clouded by catholic theology?

The only (christian) crowds which are even worse on the open ended delusion scale are many flavors of the evangelicals, the mormons and a few other denominations.

RELIGION IS BASED ON FAITH NOT FACT.

FACTS ERASED BY TIME PROVE VERY LITTLE.

BELIEVE OR DON'T BELIEVE -------- YOUR CHOICE !

WHAT APPEARS TO BE THE COVER SHEET OF A DEAD JESUS BEARING HIS IMAGE ?

A PETRIFIED PIECE OF WOOD THE ARK OF NOAH ?

YOUR DESIRE TO BELIEVE IS BASED ON FAITH; NEVER BELIEVE IN MAN'S WORD.

MANY RELIGIONS ONLY ONE GOD PROVES MY POINT.

I would have thought Hitchens would like Hutton Gibson. Gibson blames one religion (Judaism) for all the problems of the world; Hitchens blames three (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam). Surely a matter of degree shouldn't come between them.

If anyone wants to dispute the historical facts you are entitled to do so. One fact remains true. Christ the Lord is our Saviour. He died on the cross for mankind. This crucificion of Jesus is an event that embodies everything about Christianity. Jesus suffered. Without suffering there is no gain. He could have stopped anytime but he forged on with the heavy cross on his back to his eventual death. He taught us no fear. He taught us to be strong and to always have faith. His act of dying on the cross demonstrated his unconditional love for man. No matter what evil or hate one faces , Jesus taught us to forgive and to keep faith. He died and he rose from the dead. It's the ultimate triumph he shows that we should practise in each day of our lives. All these lessons Jesus taught us on the day he was crucified can be applied to each and everyone of us in every day and in every moment of our lives. This is a test. Jesus showed us how to pass the test. Do not fear death. With suffering comes salvation. If you do not want to suffer, if you do not want to take the test, if you do not want to believe , if you can't find the courage to forgive and if you can't love then you haven't learned those most important lessons of life and the meaning of man taught to us by Jesus on his last day on earth. This is the way to heaven. All other talk and debate has no correlation to this most important day in the history of man which is the day when Jesus died on the cross for us. The most powerful and most meaningful statement a man can utter...Jesus died on the cross for us. Think about it. Amen.

I knew it was too good to be true. To have Newsweek contain an article about a man who voted for Prop. 8 about made me keel over, I was shocked considering the mag's general stance on homosexuality. That joy all went up in smoke. This article was poorly written. Sorry to all those who think that Hitchens is a genius but it's true. The article was supposed to be about the Pope lifting excommunication from these bishops. In no way were these bishops reinstated to their powers but they are now able to receive communion. And Hitchens couldn't even stay on topic. He went from the Gibsons and the Passion of Christ movie to the accusation of deicide. Then when Hitchens was actually talking about the bishops, I think he failed to mention that only two, I believe that's the correct number, of the four bishops don't believe in the Holocaust. Sorry to disappoint ya'll but that's not grounds for excommunication. Belief in the Holocaust is personal and has nothing to do with his/her communion status in the Church. I'm sorry that some of these Bishops are unable to believe in historic fact but that's their deal. By lifting excommunication, the Pope was NOT saying that he and the Catholic Church accepts these same personal beliefs. I don't recall a statement like that ever being said. Sorry but this article was severely off topic. The focuse seemd to bash any Catholic(i.e. Gibsons, the Pope). It seems to be focused on the charge that it wasn't until 1965 that Catholics lifted the charge of deicide from the Jews. If I calculated it right, that was over 44 years ago. Look at it from a historical view. I said historical. It was the Jews and Romans who condemned Jesus. Sprititually, it was everyone and their sins who put Jesus up on the Cross. Two views there. This article was one big joke and this is coming from a Junior in high school. I especially got a kicked about the comment about the "enabler of child-molestation". Of course Catholics can't be mentioned without the charge of molestation, even when the article wasn't even about that. And there was, I quote, "One might think a responsible church would be indignantly arraigning and expelling such people rather than piously seeking reconcilitation with them." Now the Church is to be a school or military regime that expels those who don't line up with the public's opinion on mattters. Please, since when is a church to be based on public opinion? Or sorry, the opinion of those with a big mouth and a desk at Newsweek. I'm out ya'll.

Throw plenty of dirt and some of it will be sure to stick.

"But the indulgence of prejudice and paranoia under the cloak of faith is my problem as a citizen. " And are we to take this article as "truth" as opposed to "prejudice"? A quote from a writer who wrote a complete series of books titled "Prejudices" may help.

"Conrad," says Walpole, "is of the firm and resolute conviction that life is too strong, too clever and too remorseless for the sons of men." ??? "It is as though, from some high window, looking down, he were able to watch some shore, from whose security men were forever launching little cockleshell boats upon a limitless and angry sea.... From his height he can follow their fortunes, their brave struggles, their fortitude to the very end. He admires their courage, the simplicity of their faith, but his irony springs from his knowledge of the inevitable end."...
Substitute the name of Dreiser for that of Conrad, and you will have to change scarcely a word." ??? The struggle of man, as he sees it, is more than impotent; it is gratuitous and purposeless. There is, to his eye, no grand ingenuity, no skillful adaptation of means to end, no moral (or even dramatic) plan in the order of the universe. He can get out of it only a sense of profound and inexplicable disorder. The waves which batter the cockleshells change their direction at every instant. Their navigation is a vast adventure, but intolerably fortuitous and inept???a voyage without chart, compass, sun or stars....
So at bottom. But to look into the blackness steadily, of course, is almost beyond the endurance of man. In the very moment that its impenetrability is grasped the imagination begins attacking it with pale beams of false light. This is the source of all great religions, and not only all great religions but all great agnosticism's.

Readers of this should follow Rousseau's (Emile p.188) advice:
Fly, fly from those who under pretext of explaining nature, sow in the hearts of men desolating doctrines, and whose skepticism is a hundred times more positive and dogmatic than the decided tone of their adversaries. Under the haughty pretext that they alone are enlightened, true, and sincere, they subject us imperiously to their peremptory decisions, and pretend to give us, for the true principles of things, unintelligible systems, built on their own imagination. At the same time, over-turning, destroying, trampling under foot all that men respect, they remove from the afflicted the last consolation of their misery, from the rich and powerful the sole curb to their passion: they tear from the heart remorse for crime, the hope of virtue, and boast themselves benefactors of humanity! Never, say they, is the truth hurtful to man. I believe so too; and that is, in my opinion, a great proof that what they teach is not the truth.

Christopher, Christ wouldn't be considered the Son of God if the Jews didn't kill him. The Jews didn't commit deicide, they committed deification.

Pope denial, it's time history speaks for it's self, evidence, the amount of Jews that is alledge to have been living in Germany, and those born in concentration camps. Birth death records made public and population that are registered Jewish. The evidence that there was no Gassed because to get the gas to the camps would be expensive, why the soil and evidence proves there was no gassing and burning of bodies, even people who run cremation services says it would be impossible for what these people said to be true.

Why are some Jewish people saying that it is a lie, that 6 Million people was never in any camps in the first place, lets have the evidence. Let the evidence come out who wanted a Jewish state and why and why the Jewish people resfuse to leave Germany. Most had a good life money and riches, why would they want to leave?. They never wanted to leave hence why they were put in camps out of harms way, why would anyone want to create a state with no one to send there to live. You cannot have a state with no people, this was planned before the 2nd world war ever started in 1876. This was a plan by the British to get money to pay for the 2nd world war, that they would get a land a IState of Israel, why do they want to cover it up, could it be because it would prove the Bilbe to be saying the British was god they created the Land of Israel in 1948. The British wanted them to go to Africa, Uganda to be exact, they said no because they don't want to live with Blacks. They settled for Palestine, and had to be forced to go and live there.

I would like to see the History told more clearly and no one threatened for putting the facts out there, it's time this Dark ages Idea of History was told and told honestly and no one having anthing to fear whuy is it thjese people are the only ones who can have people arrested for presenting the facts with evidence.

Hmmm,,, "Shallow thinking", is this what the "religoe-zealot" calls logic? You are the problem, with you're mis-guided, beliefs, and constant call to attention. Yes, YOU, religoen, have caused more strife in our lives than was ever necessary. YOU, religeon, have corrupred the human progress, and are the one cause of our decline, and failure to progress. YOU, religeon, are a bastard belief that has run it's course, and are now abolished. Begone, foul belief.

I would like to remind all the readers of how the Pope is viewed within the church and what the Catholic Church Teaches.

Papal infallibility is the dogma in Catholic theology that, by action of the Holy Spirit, the Pope is preserved from even the possibility of error[1] when he solemnly declares or promulgates to the Church a dogmatic teaching on faith or morals as being contained in divine revelation, or at least being intimately connected to divine revelation. It is also taught that the Holy Spirit works in the body of the Church, as sensus fidei, to ensure that dogmatic teachings proclaimed to be infallible will be received by all Catholics.

Sounds like a little too much power in the hands of some guy who is completely removed from the reality of the world.

As a jewish person, who has his own favorite Rabbi, I understand a little how Catholics regard any criticism of the Pope badly as he represents such a sacrosanct authority. nevertheless, it would not be honest not to comment and lay it out for Catholics just how big a setback in Catholic-Jewish relations this move represents.
Readmitting the holocuast denier is bad enough, but wouldn't be deadly in an of itselt, though said person should never have been readmitted as a bishop.
But reinstituting the prayers, that for 2000 years helped drive anti-semitism and create hatred of jews in billions of catholic hearts, is hard for us to fathom. Those prayers calls jews faithless, whether they be relgiious jews who spent their entire lives worshipping G-d with all their might, or be they religious atheists.
Don't you understand why this is so offensive?
Why did your leader have to reintroduce this venom into your prayers?

For venom it is...

The Catholic Church, like all religious organizations is the proverbial "wolf in sheep's clothing." While they are out there praising jesus and his word they are doing exactly the opposite behind the scene: trying to consolidate their power over their worshippers and telling them if you do not hold to their faith they are bound to burn in Hell for eternity. In essence, they claim to preach the New Testament but they live in the old. Anyone with half a brain who knows the history of the Bible and Christianity knows this history is full of extremism which has led to mass killings of innocents all in the name of God. You would think after thousands of years if being on this earth that mankind could find a better way of getting along than by butchering people under the guise of one faith or another. Belief in God is not the problem. It is the belief in the manmade dogma arrogantly disguised as the word of God that causes all of the suffering.

Organized religion of all stripes equals mythology Religious fanatics are no different than atheists -- both groups think they know the answer without any pause or doubt when in fact they don't know the actual truth (nobody does). Arrogance about one's beliefs is a front for insecurity, self-loathing and doubt. Spirituality is and should be a personal journey. Once you put two or more people in a room it becomes a power struggle which ultimately only creates inane rules and convenient dogma. Arguing over the 'inside baseball' of organized religion is like arguing over the history of the tax code. Both are chock full of economically- and politically-motivated, irrelevant man-made rules. Have faith on your terms, treat others with respect, donate your time and money as you can to make the world a better place and you will be fine. Lennon had it exactly right.