Poor Judas.....

That's right. Judas experienced the worst evil that anyone could suffer. He was not warmly welcomed!

No one embraced him after he betrayed the Savior. No one had pity on him. He was treated harshly and…without knowing what to do, he sought the gibbet.

This is the great evil of our times: the lack of welcome offered to sinners. And Francis has made this clear regarding the supreme sinner. The “poor man”, Judas, hung himself because he was not welcomed, for he was truly repentant, according to Francis.

Once more Francis condemns those who, according to his peculiar concept, “clutch only at the truth of the Law, taking it by ‘the letter’”. These would be the High Priests, guilty of the death of Judas due to their laws: “they did not care about Judas’ repentance”. Poor Judas!

Once more, Francis surprises us with a new exegesis: the poor repentant Judas, victim of hard hearted inexorable followers of the law.....

Curious repentance is this, which fails to bring about true conversion but rather despair and suicide…and corresponds entirely to what the former Cardinal Bergoglio had declared: practically no one who commits suicide is to blame for his fault.

This doesn’t surprise us, since it is not the first time that the current Bishop of Rome corrects Jesus Christ himself…his genius is up to this. A round of applause from the audience (ever more empty…)!

The problem with Judas’s repentance is that it was introverted. He was concerned about what it meant for him personally and could not imagine God would be able to forgive him. This led to despair and thus to suicide and thus to hell. His repentance was an external act only with no internal conversion and no Love of God.In one paragraph it is claimed that Judas' repentance was introverted and then it is claimed that his repentance was external only. Matthew is very clear, Judas was seized by remorse. As to his suicide, the penalty proscribed in Torah for kidnapping a Jew is death (Deut 24:7). Since Judas was heavily involved in depriving an innocent man of his freedom and this man was a member of Israel, the proscribed penalty is death.

I got to thinking a little more after I wrote what I did. Generally, I stand by what I said. However, from what I've read about demons, they hide and try to avoid detection until an exorcist confronts them which is almost never.

There really aren't any rules we can be certain about, agreed, and there is nothing to say a completely possessed person doesn't have periods where they seem more or less like themselves. But the demoniac who hung around the graveyard (Douay-Rheims which I chanced upon translates it way differently, monuments which I assume would be burying grounds), it sounds like from the way he lived and behaved, he was never free and very, very strong. Manic depressives or bi-polar people males mostly can display extraordinary strength when in the manic state. Makes you wonder, doesn't it? But then people in emergencies sometimes seem to be able to summon extraordinary strength to save a life (rarely but happens). The latter I wouldn't consider possessed by a devil but perhaps God or an angel grants them the strength or it has a totally "this-world" biological explanation.

Anyway, that one was possessed by Legion which meant countless (or one, they can lie but not to God/Jesus, a duly commissioned exorcist, or other in the name of Jesus Christ when commanded to tell the truth) and living the way he did, he may have never had any peace until Jesus came upon him, cast them all out, and the man was seen sitting and in his right mind.

Also the king in what is now Iraq (I'm not sure the ancient country) was condemned to live and eat as an animal for about seven years as a judgement.

My understanding is that demons have to obey perhaps a hierarchy with Satan at the top, may exercise some free will in the narrow confines of their "assignment" or state of being, but God has the ultimate control, and He allowed it then and allows it now.

“And yet Jesus chose to share the last supper with Judas” - while also saying that it would be better for him not to be born...
-How com you want to imitate some of Jesus’ gestures but not all?
-Just think of it: suggest to a priest to tell someone publicly today that it would be better that they had never been born... Oh my goodness! what a racket would be stirred up.
-The number of hipocrites is infinite.

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