Posted on 10/20/2010 12:25:13 PM PDT by Brian Kopp DPM
They do not speak for the Pope, they do not know the mind of the Pope, and the Church is not in on some grand conspiracy to reveal a UFO agenda.
Outstanding! Bless you ,Dear Brother!
And frankly, I will not take spiritual advice online from otherwise well-meaning folks who think the Hindu Kundalini spirit is the same as the Christian Holy Spirit.
marked for later.
Yet where is God in all this? With all these devils, demons and extra-dimensional ne´r-do-wellers about - which He would have to have created - it would seem to make the universe a rather crowded and unruly place. It seems to me that having made Man in His image there´s plenty of depravity to deal with without invoking all sorts of bogeymen, which, by the way, there isn´t a shred of physical evidence to support at all.
The UFOlogists who obsess over these things will "see" evidence of such anywhere their anti-Catholic bias takes them, so I refuse to accept any of their claims at face value. They have an agenda that is not holy, and many of them are already deeply immersed in the occult themselves, whether they know it or not.
Thanks for the links.
Have you been saving them for some time, or do you have a way of compiling them quickly?
Well, Quix recently claimed that L'Osservatore Romano and the Vatican observatory speaks for the Pope, and I have written for L'Osservatore Romano, ergo by Quix' reasoning, yes, yes indeed, I do speak for the Pope, thanks. (Only by Quix' reasoning, mind you. Even my "pomposity, arrogance, and sheer bloviating self-importance" wouldn't lead me to make the mistake of thinking I speak for the Pope.)
Thanks. Will check it out.
EXCELLENT.
I need to save those to my home page.
That Holy Office had an international group of consultants (experienced scholars of theology and canon law) who advised it on specific questions, one of which was heliocentrism.
In 1616 these consultants gave their assessment of the propositions that the Sun is immobile and at the center of the universe and that the Earth moves around it (Heliocentric) judging both to be “foolish and absurd in philosophy,” and the first to be “formally heretical” and the second “at least erroneous in faith” in theology.
Copernicus's De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium was placed on the Index of Forbidden Books. Galileo Galilei was admonished about his heliocentrism and in 1633 he was tried and condemned for a “grave suspicion of heresy”. All his works were banned.
Among the subjects of this Inquisition were Francesco Patrizi, Fra Giordano Bruno, Tommaso Campanella, Girolamo Cardano, Cesare Cremonini, and Galileo Galilei. Of these, only Fra Bruno was executed, burned at the stake; Galileo died under house arrest, and Campanella was imprisoned for twenty-seven years.
I appreciate your providing recommended reading but I assure you I agree whole heartedly with the title of the second, for if the Roman Catholic Church had never existed there would be no Western Civilization as we know it today.
That does not mean the Church's past behavior never occurred and I need deprogramming! Doctor, really, that was an insulting thing to say.
That's an odd statement.
An infinite God could live in a realm of infinite universes or in an infinite universe (or both for that matter).
And because you (as a human being) do not see evidence of all that God has created you presume it doesn't exist?
The Bible tells us of angels, both holy and fallen. And the backstories to the Bible including the Pseudepigrapha (Enoch specifically, which part of the Essense's Sacred texts) and a massive amount of ancient Hebrew literature all speak of fallen angels and their role in the Fall of Man.
While the evidence for God is everywhere, there is no evidence whatsoever for ¨the devil¨ or demons or spacemen before the human mind abstracts these fantasies within itself. I believe scriptural references to these ¨beings¨ refer to God Himself as confusing as that may be to our species.
Read the book of I Enoch and you'll get quite a different picture. The link I provided is to the R.H. Charles interpretation of the Ethiopian Enoch discovered in the 1700's by James Bruce. It is interesting to note that I Enoch was also among the Dead Sea Scrolls and was thought to be highly regarded at the time of Christ and before.
To another issue (that of the existence of aliens), there is a significant body of personal accounts as to what is reported to be alien abduction (see John Mack, Harvard psychiatrist now deceased). While one may wonder what exactly is going on in these accounts, there is no doubt in the psychiatric community familiar with them that something is going on.
Also, there is plenty of information on exorcisms which while conducted by priests almost always include the participation of psychologists and psychiatrists.
Just remember Jung admitted to consorting with demonic spirits. Not the best consultant for veracity.
but the Church has persecuted and executed scientists in the past
To which I took exception, and asked for names, dates and links. This is the subject on which you needed deprogramming. Fra Bruno was condemned, but not because he was a scientist or because of his support or defense of science, but because of his panteism:
Thus, his system of thought is an incoherent materialistic pantheism. God and the world are one; matter and spirit, body and soul, are two phases of the same substance; the universe is infinite; beyond the visible world there is an infinity of other worlds, each of which is inhabited; this terrestrial globe has a soul; in fact, each and every part of it, mineral as well as plant and animal, is animated; all matter is made up of the same elements (no distinction between terrestrial and celestial matter); all souls are akin (transmigration is, therefore, not impossible). This unitary point of view is Bruno's justification of "natural magic." No doubt, the attempt to establish a scientific continuity among all the phenomena of nature is an important manifestation of the modern spirit, and interesting, especially on account of its appearance at the moment when the medieval point of view was being abandoned. And one can readily understand how Bruno's effort to establish a unitary concept of nature commanded the admiration of such men as Spinoza, Jacobi, and Hegel. On the other hand, the exaggerations, the limitations, and the positive errors of his scientific system; his intolerance of even those who were working for the reforms to which he was devoted; the false analogies, fantastic allegories, and sophistical reasonings into which his emotional fervour often betrayed him have justified, in the eyes of many, Bayle's characterization of him as "the knight-errant of philosophy." His attitude of mind towards religious truth was that of a rationalist. Personally, he failed to feel any of the vital significance of Christianity as a religious system. It was not a Roman Inquisitor, but a Protestant divine, who said of him that he was "a man of great capacity, with infinite knowledge, but not a trace of religion."The inquisition is the subject of another day, but to claim the Church has executed scientists simply because they were acting in their capacity as scientists is beyond ridiculous.
Frankly, in this day and age, a Christian conservative would fare much better under a Roman Inquisition than under the Holder Justice Department.
And in its day, the Roman Inquisition was head and shoulders above the secular courts in actually demanding proof and meeting out justice. You didn't want to be tried in secular courts back then.
Oh yeah, one last thought: I'd much rather the Roman Inquisition be restored than Sharia law make any further advances in western culture.
What proof, from scripture (my only valid standard), is there that Marian apparitions are valid. I do realize RCC tradition says they are, and some Pentecostals say they are not. I am not Catholic or Pentecostal.
Since all Marian apparitions occurred after the writing of scripture was over, I doubt there is any scriptural proof text proving Marian apparitions.
Our belief in them is based on the Church's pronouncement that they are authentic. The authority to make such pronouncement by the Church comes from scripture.
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