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Guardian Angel; Bernhard Plockhorst (1825–1907) Licensed under Public domain via Wikimedia Commons. |
Good news for angels!
Pope Francis has decreed that they now exist again and, according to Catholic dogma, because the Pope once infallibly declared himself to be infallible, this means that, even if they didn't exist before, they do now, just as we know that barnacle geese (Branta leucopsis) became fish that hatch out of barnacles in the Middle Ages and have now turned back into perfectly respectable geese, because the Pope said so.
Likewise, limbo existed as somewhere for the souls of dead babies to go to until it was abolished by papal decree by Pope Benedict XVI in April 2007. Apparently, the souls of dead babies can now go straight to heaven despite being sinners who have never been saved by 'accepting Jesus'. Before the 12th-Century dead babies when straight to Hell to teach them a lesson for being born sinners, according to Augustine of Hippo. After that, because that didn't seem very fair, the Pope had decreed limbo into existence as a sort of half-way house.
Now, despite his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI having come out against the existence of angels, declaring in 2012 that "angels did not sing at the birth of Christ", thus effectively abolishing them, Pope Francis has resurrected them. Yesterday, in what may be the first admission by a Pope that he hears voices, he told a small gathering in the Vatican:
The doctrine on angels is not fantasist. No, it’s reality. According to church tradition we all have an angel with us, who protects us and helps us understand things. How often have we heard ‘I should do this, I should not do this, that’s not right, be careful ...’. So often! It is the voice of our travelling companion.
There had been hopes that the appointment of Pope Francis marked a turning point in the history of the Catholic Church and that we could look forward to a reformed, modernised church more suited to the 21st-century than his predecessor's pre-Enlightenment Masonic brotherhood which depended on selling magic spells and miracles to ignorant and superstitious people backed up by threats of violence. But it seems this was not to be. Pope Francis is as firmly wedded to woo-woo magic and invisible spirits as were the rest of his cabal.
Faced with the made-up 'problem' of explaining human morality and ethics, which Christian and Islamic apologists pretend can only be explained by a god, and despite the fact that modern sociology and memetic evolution are fully capable of explaining them as an evolutionary process which is not even confined to humans, Pope Francis has waved all that aside and is going with invisible magic beings putting voices in our heads, just as his predecessors explained mental illness as caused by evil spirits with punishment being appropriate for the crime of moral weakness in allowing the evil spirits in in the first place.One way or another the Church needs to insert magic and mystery into every aspect of life in order to claim the illusion of moral authority upon which their claim to power and privilege depends and to give their superstition the semblance of explanatory power.
We can almost certainly now look forward to Catholic priests in remote corners of the Earth discovering a small bunch of shepherds or better still, impressionable children, who have seen angels in a woodland grove or hillside cave to which devout Catholics should now come to give thanks and money, and buy all the plastic souvenirs and bottles of magic water.
But what we can be sure we will never have, not even from the reforming Pope Francis with his official expressions of regret for the behaviour of the Church's clerics, is an explanation of just where their guardian angels were when children and vulnerable adults were being systematically abused by Catholic priests and nuns. Maybe that's why Pope Benedict XVI, former enforcer to Pope John-Paul II and in charge of organising the cover-up as Cardinal Ratzinger, abolished the guardian angels that would have been expected to have done something to protect their charges.
Perhaps it was just a moral failure on the part of the victims for not listening to the voices in their heads that told them not to obey the predatory clerics. There is always a theological 'answer' to every problem for a sufficiently creative theologian.
'via Blog this'
> because the Pope once infallibly declared himself to be infallible
ReplyDeleteTo be fair, one pope did that for one or two claims and the rest have avoided it like a bad stink. However the rest is best summed up as: "Christianity: 2,000 years of everyone making it up as they go".
> Sorry but the spammers are back so I've had to restrict who can post again.
They must be made of sterner stuff than me. It's almost impossible to post comments here thanks to the very buggy software.
And adding a captcha system here makes it much much worse.
I must be blessed by God Almighty, for I've never encounted any problems at all to write and be published here on Rosa's blog.
ReplyDeleteBut now to the point: Did Pope Benedict really abolish all the angels? Or just some of them? What about, for example, the four archangels (Gabriel, Michael, Raphael, and Uriel)? At least those angels must Pope Benedict XVI believe in - or? Otherwise he's a heretic in my eyes.
Especially Gabriel is mentioned many times in the Bible, both the OT and NT. See for example: http://mb-soft.com/believe/txn/gabriel.htm . According to that article, Gabriel is the one who soon will blow the trumpet to announce the second coming of Jesus (to the great delight, I guess, for all Jehovah's Witnesses all over the world). So if Gabriel doesn't exist, then I doubt there will be any earthly come back for Jesus (to the great despair of all Jehovah's Witnesses).
In this article - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrosomatoglyph&Archangel_Gabriel - we can read: [T]he Foundation Stone [in the floor of the Dome of the Rock mosque in Jerusalem) is where Muhammad ascended to heaven, and during this ascension, the rock itself started to rise at the southern end but was held down by the Archangel Gabriel, and some marks on the western side of the rock are said to be the fingerprints of Gabriel. (The Foundation stone can be seen here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundation_Stone .)
To be continued in the next comment.
And here is the part of my comment:
ReplyDeleteBTW, here we can read about what happened before this thrilling, and partly equestrian, ascension to Heaven: http://www.templemount.org/allah.html .
A quote: The prophet of God [= Muhammad] said: 'While I was sleeping within the wall of the Kaaba, came to see me Gabriel and kicked me with his foot, so I sat up, but not seeing anything, I lay again on my bed. He kicked me then once more, and I sat up and did not see a thing, so I lay back on my bed. He then kicked me a third time and I sat up, whereupon he pulled me by the arm and I rose, and went to the door of the temple. There was standing a white beast, between a mule and an ass in size, with two wings on its thighs, digging its hind legs in and placing its forelegs as far as it can see. Gabriel carried me on the beast, and we went together at the same speed.' So the Prophet of God journeyed, and with him also Gabriel, until they reached the temple in Jerusalem. He found there Abraham, Moses and Jesus, among other prophets, and he led them in prayers.
And here we can read what happened during and after the ascension: http://www.cist.org.uk/pv/lm/lr5521.htm . I quote: Muhammad told his followers about a strange experience that he once had. 'One night, the angel Gabriel came to me, bringing a white horse. On this horse, I travelled first to Jerusalem, from where I ascended to the Heavens. At each level, Gabriel introduced me to all the other Prophets, including Adam, Isa (Jesus), Yusuf (Joseph) and Musa (Moses). [...] When I reached the seventh Heaven, I was made to climb an enormous tree. [...] Then I saw four rivers [and] a giant house [...] Then [a] voice said, "Your followers must pray fifty times a day." I made my way back to Earth.
But on the way I met Musa. When I told Musa what Allah had commanded, Musa said, "I tried to make my followers pray fifty times a day, but they failed. Return to Allah and ask for the number of prayers to be reduced." So I returned back to the seventh heaven and the number of prayers was reduced to forty. On my way back down to Earth, I met Musa again. "Forty is too many! Return again to Allah and plead for the number of prayers to be reduced."
So I returned and Allah, the Merciful, reduced the number of prayer to thirty. This happened several more times, until the number of prayers was reduced to five. But five prayers still seemed too many to Musa, who urged me to return again. But I refused. "My Lord has shown me so much mercy that I shall not return." Then I descended to Earth.'
And me, Helmer, wants to add this remark: May he who disbelieves this account be stoned to death.
p.s. Rosa mentions the barnacle goose in her blog here above. Read more about that "fish" and other papal infallabilities by clicking this link: http://rosarubicondior.blogspot.se/2013/01/understanding-papal-infallibility.html .