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anghraine · 19 days

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dontstandmedown replied to this post:

re:tags could you share the playwright you're talking about? :0

No problem! For others, the tags in question are this:

#thinking about this partly because the softer & gentler versions of fanfic discourse keep crossing my dash #and partly because i've written like 30 pages about a playwright i adore who was just not very good at 'original fiction' as we'd define it #both his major works are ... glorified rpf in our context but splendid tragedies in his #and the idea of categorizing /anything/ in that era by originality of conception rather than comedy/tragedy/etc would be buckwild

I am always delighted to share the good news of John Webster! If you're not familiar with him, he was an early seventeenth-century English playwright known for being a slow, painstaking, but reliable writer. He did various collaborations with other playwrights (and acknowledges a bunch of his peers in an author's note to The White Devil, including Jonson and Shakespeare) and wrote some middling plays in various genres that could be more or less termed "original fiction," but he's remembered for two brilliant, bloody tragedies.

The basic premises/plots of both of these were essentially ripped from the headlines of the previous century, and Webster makes zero attempt to conceal that fact.

I couldn't shut up about my guy so more under a cut!

The White Devil is based on the actual murder of Vittoria Accoramboni in the late sixteenth century and the characters in the play are generally given the same or similar names as the real life people in the story as known at the time, so there's no attempt to conceal the play's origins (the anti-heroine/villain???[debatable] is named Vittoria Corombona in the play, for instance).

The original production of The White Devil largely failed, which Webster blamed mainly on bad weather and an audience who just didn't get his ~vision and what he was trying to do. It would not be unsurprising for a contemporary audience to struggle with it given that it's a complicated play in which, among other things, Vittoria is put on trial and rhetorically shreds the underlying misogyny of the entire legal process.

The Duchess of Malfi, generally considered a still greater achievement, is based directly on the murder of Giovanna d'Aragona, Duchess of Amalfi by her brothers (it was presumed, likely correctly). Lope de Vega also wrote a play about this tragedy not long before Webster did, though the plays are very different and it's unlikely that Webster would have had the time or linguistic knowledge necessary to read Lope's version. Probably part of the reason for the differences between Lope's and Webster's takes is that Lope had to be careful about the reception by the Catholic Church given that one of the murderers was a cardinal, while obviously an English Protestant like Webster could say whatever he wanted about eeeeevil cardinals.

Webster takes a lot of artistic license, a normal approach at the time to adapting previously-established narratives, but the source material is very recognizable. One of the commendatory verses at the beginning of the play (blurbs in poetic form from other playwrights) is like "I'm sure the real duchess was cool but she couldn't be as cool as Webster's heroine, wow <3". (One of the other commendations is by another fave of mine, John Ford.)

Bosola, the historically mysterious minion of the Duchess's murderous brothers (=Bozolo in the historical narrative) gets an elaborate quasi-redemption arc in the play. And the play is extremely critical of various characters' obsession with and attempts to control the Duchess's sexual behavior (a fixation that is often extremely normalized in early modern British drama, but which comes off really badly here).

Ultimately this obsessiveness leads to her brothers, the Cardinal (=the historical Cardinal Luigi d'Aragona) and Ferdinand (=Carlo d'Aragona) orchestrating her torment and murder in which she emerges with her sanity and integrity intact and dies with dignity. Meanwhile, the Cardinal is exposed as a remorseless villain (he proceeds to murder his mistress with a Bible) and Ferdinand's already-shaky sanity snaps under the realization of what he's done.

Webster's Duchess is often considered the first real female tragic hero in British drama—the tragic is especially significant because tragedy was typically considered a higher art form than comedy and the truly great female characters from that era of drama are often restricted to comedies or secondary roles in tragedy (a marked trend in Shakespeare, for instance). The Duchess in the play is virtuous, strong-willed, witty, and fairly unabashedly sexual in the context of the time, a concept that several hundred years of critics have struggled with. (My favorite OTT complaint is from Martin Sampson, an early 20th century critic who lamented the conspicuous absence of a "strong active man, following righteous things" in Webster's work, to which I say l m a o.)

Anyway, among scholars of early modern British drama, Webster is often considered second only to Shakespeare as a tragedian, on the basis of those two plays. And the modern obsession w/ originality and novelty makes this kind of fascinating, given that his "original" work (in our sense—again, the original vs fanfic dichotomy was not a thing in that cultural context) is sort of meh but his work with pre-existing sources turns them into these staggering dramatic achievements.

#dontstandmedown #respuestas #renaissance blogging #john webster #the white devil #the duchess of malfi #anghraine's meta #ivory tower blogging #gender blogging #long post #i love vittoria and the duchess and also how pissy he is about people complaining about his slow writing #'yeah well that's what mediocre rapid content generators said to EURIPIDES and who do people remember now? THINK ABOUT IT'#okay okay i'll stop with My Guy but. he's pretty cool.

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homomenhommes · 16 days

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THIS DAY IN GAY HISTORY

based on: The White Crane Institute's 'Gay Wisdom', Gay Birthdays, Gay For Today, Famous GLBT, glbt-Gay Encylopedia, Today in Gay History, Wikipedia, and more … April 20

1188 – Died: St Hildegonde of Neuss (Also spelt Hildegund), German saint, biologically female, who dressed as a boy as a child, and lived as a man as an adult, before entering a male monastery. She was born at Neuss, near Cologne. After the death of her mother, at age 12, she went with her father, a knight, on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. For her safety, during the trip, she was dressed as a boy and called "Joseph" for her protection.

While returning from the Holy Land Hildegund's father died, but she was able to make her own way home and maintained her disguise first as a boy and then as a man. Later, she made a pilgrimage to Rome, during which she had several adventures.

On one of them, she was condemned to be hanged as a robber and escaped only when a friend of the real robber cut her down from the gallows.

After that, she returned to Germany and was accepted into the Cistercian monastery at Shönau, near Heidelberg, concealing her gender, and to her death she was believed to be a man. Her true sex went undiscovered until her death in 1188.

A few years later, abbot Engelhartof Langheim wrote her biography. She is considered a saint, even though her cult is not approved by the Roman Catholic Church.

Aretino by Titian

1492 – The Renaissance writer and dramatist Pietro Aretino was born on this date (d.1556). Aretino was an Italian author, playwright, poet and satirist who wielded immense influence on contemporary art and politics and invented modern literate pornography, notably in La Cazzaria ("The Book of the Prick"). This colorful writer and dramatist, described as the first professional writer of his century, was probably the son of a cobbler, although he preferred to claim he was illegitimate and of noble origin. His patrons included Popes (Leo X, Clement VII), Cardinals, kings (Francois I and Emperor Charles V) and other connoisseurs of the porn of the age. He had a flair for self-dramatization, a fertile dirty mind, and an uncanny knack for profiting from the politics of his age. He first achieved notoriety for a series of pornographic sonnets, each describing a different position of sexual intercourse, and each illustrated by Giulio Romano and in which he declares himself to have been a sodomite from birth.

Aretino prospered, living from hand to mouth as a hanger-on in the literate circle of his patron, sharpening his satirical talents on the gossip of politics and the Papal Curia, and turning the coarse Roman pasquinade into a rapier weapon of satire, until his sixteen ribald Sonetti Lussuriosi (Lust Sonnets) written to accompany Giulio Romano's exquisitely beautiful but utterly pornographic series drawings engraved by Marcantonio Raimondi under the title I Modi finally caused such outrage that he had to temporarily flee Rome. In 2007, Michael Nyman set eight of the poems to music. They proved no less controversial in the twenty first century: at a 2008 performance at Cadogan Hall, the programs were withdrawn on allegations of obscenity.

In a letter to Giovanni de Medici written in 1524 Aretino encloses a satirical poem saying that due to a sudden aberration he has fallen in love with a female cook and "temporarily switched from boys to girls..." Later he was known and admired for his ragionamenti dialogues, often audaciously filthy, on contemporary Roman life. Public figures so feared his clever and vicious pen that Aretino became rich from promising not to write on certain subjects. He is said to have died from a stroke while laughing at a dirty joke.

Aretino was a close friend of Titian, who painted his portrait at least three times. The early portrait above is a psychological study of alarming modernity.

1857 – Herman Bang (d.1912) was a Danish writer and one of the men of the Modern Break-Through - the late 19th century literary movement in Scandinavia that replaced Romanticism. Bang was born of a noble family on the small Danish island of Als.

When he was twenty he published two volumes of critical essays on the realistic movement. In 1880 he published his novel Haabløse Slægter (Families without hope), which at once aroused attention. The main character was a young man who had a relationship with an older woman in Danish fin de siècle society. The book was considered pornographic and immoral at the time and was banned. After some time spent travelling and a successful lecture tour in Norway and Sweden, he settled in Copenhagen, and produced a series of novels and collections of short stories, which placed him in the front rank of Scandinavian novelists. Among his more famous stories are Faedra (1883) and Tine (1889).

Bang was a homosexual, a fact which partly isolated him in Danish cultural life and made him the victim of smear campaigns. He lived most of his life with his sister but found happiness for a few years with the Hungarian actor Max Eisfeld with whom he lived in Prague 1885-86.

Failed as an actor, Bang earned fame as a theatre producer in Paris and in Copenhagen. He was a very productive journalist, writing for Danish, Nordic and German newspapers, developing modern reporting. His article on the fire of Christiansborg Palace is a landmark in Danish journalism. Some of his books, including Tine and Katinka (English titles), were translated into many languages and filmed.

Of especial interest is Michael. Michael (also known as Mikaël, Chained: The Story of the Third Sex, and Heart's Desire) was a movie released in 1924 directed by fellow Dane Carl Theodor Dreyer (director of other notable silents such as The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928)). Along with Different From the Others (1919) and Sex in Chains (1928), Michael is widely considered a landmark in gay silent cinema.

The film is based on Herman Bang's 1902 novel Mikaël. It is the second screen adaptation of the book, the first being The Wings, made eight years prior by gay director Mauritz Stiller. Michael, however, follows Bang's storyline much more closely than the earlier film version had done.

Herman Bang's last years were embittered by persecutions and a declining health. He travelled widely in Europe and died during a recitation tour in the USA.

1895 – Henry de Montherlant was a French writer of essays and novels (d.1972), as well as one of the leading French playwrights of the twentieth century.

Descended from an old noble family, he was educated at private schools at Jeanson-de-Sailly, then at the Sainte-Croix academy at Neuilly-sur-Seine, where his family lived.

Conscripted in 1916, he was wounded and decorated. Marked by his experience of war, he wrote Songe (Dream), an autobiographic novel, as well as his Chant funèbre pour les morts de Verdun (Funeral Chant for the Dead at Verdun), both exaltations of heroism during the Great War.

His early successes were works such as the tetralogy Les jeunes filles (The Young Girls) (1936-1939) and Les célibataires (The Bachelors) (1934). At this time he did a lot of travelling, mainly to Spain, Italy, and Algeria.

From 1929 he began to write for the theatre, plays such as La reine morte (1934), Pasiphaé (1936), Le Maître de Santiago (1947), Port-Royal (1954), Le Cardinal d'Espagne (1960). He is particularly remembered as a playwright. In his plays, as well as in his novels, he frequently portrayed heroic characters displaying the moral standards he professed.

In Le solstice de Juin (1941) he expressed his admiration for the German army and claimed that France had been justly defeated and conquered in 1940.

Montherlant concealed his pederastic tendencies from the public during his lifetime. In 1912, he had been expelled from the Sainte-Croix de Neuilly academy for a relationship with a fellow student. Although not openly gay, Montherlant treated homosexual themes in his work, including his play La Ville dont le prince est un enfant (1952) and novel Les Garçons (The Boys), published in 1969 but written four or five decades earlier. Les garçons and his correspondence with Roger Peyrefitte, (author of Les amitiés particulières (1943), also about sexual relationships between boys at a Roman Catholic boarding school), are the main testaments to this side of his character.

In 1960 Montherlant was elected a member of the Académie française. His presentation speech dwelt mercilessly on the geography of New Zealand.

According to Peyrefitte, some time in 1970 he was beaten up by some youths, which caused a serious injury to his eye, as a consequence of which he became progressively blind.

He committed suicide in 1972, swallowing a cyanide capsule and shooting himself in the head.

Isherwood and Neddermeyer

1914 – Heinz Neddermeyer was a German citizen considered to be the first great love of writer Christopher Isherwood.

Heinz and Christopher met in Berlin on March 13, 1932 when Heinz was 17. Christopher would often describe their relationship as an adoption, since Heinz was so much younger and not entirely mature. The couple lived together in Berlin until May 1933 when, because of the rise of Hitler, they were forced to flee the country. They traveled Europe and North Africa until May 12, 1937 when Heinz was expelled from Luxembourg and forced to return to Germany. The next day he was arrested by the Gestapo and sentenced to three and half years of forced labor and military service. He survived the forced labor which was brief. Being conditionally freed if he would take a wife, he married a woman named Gerda in 1938 and had a son named Christian, his only child, in 1940. It was not uncommon for gay men to take this drastic turn in their lives after being arrested and sentenced to prison for homosexuality by the Nazi party.

Although Heinz and Christopher continued to correspond, Heinz would not see Christopher again until November of 1952 while Christopher was visiting England and Germany for productions of his "Berlin Stories".

In November 1956 Christopher received a note from Heinz stating that he had been in a political argument at the factory where he worked in East Berlin. Fearing arrest, he fled to Hamburg. Christopher sent him some money. Nothing else is mentioned of Heinz in Christopher's diaries other than fond memories of their past in various cities around Europe and a kind note from Heinz when Christopher's mother passed away in August of 1960.

Heinz died in 1984.

1935 – Warren Casey (d.1988) was an American theatre composer, lyricist, writer, and actor. He is best known for being the writer and composer, with Jim Jacobs of the stage and film musical Grease.

In the mid-1960s, Casey met Jim Jacobs while acting with the Chicago Stage Guild, and the two began collaborating on a play with music about high school life during the golden age of rock 'n' roll in the 1950s. Entitled Grease, it premiered in 1971 at the Kingston Mines Theater, one of the pioneering companies of Chicago's off-Loop theater movement, in the Lincoln Park section of Chicago. Producers Ken Waissman and Maxine Fox saw the show and suggested to the playwrights that it might work better as a musical, and told them if the creative partners were willing to rework it and they liked the end result, they would produce it off-Broadway.

Casey quit his day job as a department store lingerie buyer and the team headed to New York City to collaborate on what would become Grease, which opened at the Eden Theatre in downtown Manhattan, moved to Broadway, and earned him a Tony Award nomination for Best Book of a Musical. The show went on to become a West End hit, a hugely successful film (for which he and Jacobs wrote additional songs), and a staple of regional theatre, summer stock, community theatre, and high school drama groups.

Casey was gay and he died of AIDS-related complications in Chicago at the age of 53. At the time of his death he was writing a musical with the Brazilian performer Valucha deCastro.

1943 – Jamie Gillis (d.2010) was an American pornographic actor, director and member of the AVN Hall of Fame.

Gillis was born James Ira Gurman in New York City into a Jewish family and graduated from Columbia University. His parents named him Jamie after the Tyrone Power character in the film The Black Swan (1942), and he took the name Gillis from the girlfriend he was living with when he made his first films.

He appeared in more than 470 movies as an actor. He also directed several adult movies. Openly bisexual, he appeared in many gay porn films, including a sex scene with Zebedy Colt in the 1975 BDSM-themed film The Story Of Joanna. Gillis also appeared in the mainstream Hollywood film Nighthawks (1981) as the boss of Lindsay Wagner's character.

He was a pioneer in the pornographic style known as Gonzo. In addition to starring in the first Buttman film, he also created the influential On The Prowl series. Featuring a porn star who rides in a limo looking for regular guys to have sex with, the video series was very popular and inspired a scene in the movie Boogie Nights. He also co-produced the popular Dirty Debutante series with fellow director and performer Ed Powers, as well as the Walking Toilet Bowl series of films that focused on golden showers and coprophilia.

Gillis died on February 19, 2010 in New York City from melanoma, which was diagnosed four or five months earlier. In an audio interview given to The Rialto Report shortly before his death, Gillis stated that in the 1970s he'd wanted his ashes to be scattered in Times Square, but years later he changed his mind as "clean Times Square would contaminate them".

1951 – The American R&B singer Luther Vandross was born on this date (d. 2005).

Initially content to remain in the background as a backing singer and producer - he toured with David Bowie in 1974 and sang backing vocals on the Young Americans (1975) album - Vandross was encouraged to take centre stage by Roberta Flack, who thought he had a unique talent. His breakthrough to major chart success came as lead singer with Change, and he went on to have a string of million selling hit solo albums, and successful collaborations with other artists, throughout the 80s and 90s.

During Vandross' entire career he was 'dogged' by questions regarding his sexuality. He never married, his name was never romantically linked in the media with women. Although Vandross never explicitly denied being gay, he never publicly acknowledged it either. He generally fielded questions by saying that his 'busy lifestyle' made marriage difficult and indicated that, in any case, 'it was not what he wanted.' Many gay publications have stated that Vandross' gayness was an 'open secret' in the music business, but even now it is rarely spoken of.

He died of a heart attack in Edison, NJ at 54. Some of his songs are: Endless Love, Always and Forever, Dance with My Father and Your Secret Love.

His unusual middle name "Ronzoni" was given him by his mother in thanks for the comfort that Ronzoni brand pasta products gave her during her pregnancy.

1959 – Douglas Sadownick is a gay American writer, activist, professor and psychotherapist. He co-created The Buddy Systems (1985) with Tim Miller, with whom Sadownick was involved in a 14-year relationship.

Born in the Bronx, Douglas Sadownick attended Columbia College for his B.A., New York University for his graduate work in English, and the graduate program in clinical psychology at Antioch University for a Master's of Arts in Clinical Psychology. He received his Ph.D. from Pacifica Graduate Institute in Clinical Psychology in 2006. His dissertation was entitled, Homosexual Enlightenment: A Gay Science Perspective on 19th Century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra.

He is the founding director of the nation's first LGBT Specialization in Clinical Psychology, at Antioch University, and he is also the Founder of Colors LGBTQ Youth Counseling Center, founded in 2011, with Philip Lance, an LGBT affirmative psychologist and community organizer. He is also a co-founding member of the Institute for Uranian Psychoanalysis , which is the first Institute in the world dedicated to deepening homosexual self-realization. He was also a principal co-founder of Highways Performance Art Space in 1989.

His work Sacred Lips of the Bronx (1994) was nominated for a Lambda Literary Award. His second book, Sex Between Men: An Intimate History of the Sex Lives of Gay Men, Postwar to Present, was published in 1996 and 1997. His articles have appeared in the Advocate, the Los Angeles Times, Genre, High Performance, the New York Native, and the L.A. Weekly. He received a GLAAD award for excellence in reporting in 1991. He works as a private practice psychotherapist in Hollywood, California.

McGehee (L) with working partner Siegel

1981 – Matus Valent is a European male fitness model born in Bratislava, Slovak Republic living in California.

As a youth, he played indoor volleyball and became the Junior Slovakian champion with his team ASK Inter. He was also on the Slovakian National volleyball team at age 19.

During his college years, he turned to beach volleyball, and in 2004 he became the California A-Category champion. After earning a University Masters Degree in Physical Education and Sports with Management in his hometown, he moved to California where he now lives.

Matus Valent has appeared in numerous magazines (over 200 in the past 8 years) including Muscle & Fitness, Fitness RX, Flex, Muscle & Performance, Iron Man and many others with over 46 covers in the USA and internationally. He also has several catalog, romance novels & fitness book covers under his belt. (Not to mention his ample goodies)

His modeling career has lead to many other opportunities for Matus, including appearing in the music video for Kristine W's hit " Walk Away," modeling for the movie poster for "Pathfinder", being featured in national advertising for Otomix fitness clothing and active wear, national TV commercial for Shake Weight, TCORE, and ORECK XL vacuums and co-starring in the third season of Janice Dickinson Modeling Agency TV series. In 2009, Matus also appeared in ad campaigns for Prosource.net and Nutrition Express supplements superstores and made appearances in the films "Night at the Museum II" and "Baggage Claim."

1990 – On this date Queer Nation members showed up en masse at Macy's department store where Olympic gold medalist Greg Louganis was promoting a new swimsuit line. Queers arrived with WHEATIES cereal boxes with the swimmer's picture pasted on front, to recall the time the cereal maker rejected Louganis as a spokesperson, ostensibly because he is Gay.

How to say gay in Chinese

2001 – China removes homosexuality from their list of mental disorders.

Bōlī (玻璃)

The English translation of the Chinese word bōlī (玻璃) is crystal, glass, etc., and since the mid-90s it has been used as a slang term for homosexual men by the LGBT community in China and Taiwan. This slang word comes from the English acronym B.L., which has several versions, like Boy Lover, Boy’s Love, Boys Love. All of them serve to refer to the love between boys, men, etc.

T-shirt with the bōlī (玻璃) drawing.

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lingshanhermit · 7 months

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Lingshan Hermit: Why are you hypocritical?

In Western society, Catholicism has been regarded as one of the most sacred religions for hundreds of years. According to the latest data, about one sixth of the people on Earth are Catholics. Historically, Catholicism has given birth to many great figures like Joan of Arc. However, as a great denomination, the stains of Catholicism should not be ignored either.

Since the 1980s, a series of scandals about Catholic child abuse began to be sporadically reported by the Western press. People in Western society began to be horrified to realize that the priests they revered were not as holy as they thought. Because of the huge influence of Catholicism in the West, those Catholic clergymen accused of child abuse were mostly dealt with discreetly, and most of them were transferred to other areas to continue their pastoral duties. In 2019, Australian Cardinal George Pell was sentenced to six years in prison by an Australian court for sexually abusing two boys in a choir decades ago, probably the highest sentence a Catholic priest has ever received so far. Even today, people have long been numb to such incidents. Such things have even been made into movies by Hollywood. I've seen one of the movies called Doubt. In fact, the history of Catholic child abuse can be traced back to the 11th century book Liber Gomorrhianus, but this is only traceable history. Many things happened but were not recorded.

I did not mention Catholicism here to accuse them. In fact, such things exist in almost all religions (of course, not just religions, but also in many secular groups.) Catholicism is exposed simply because it is in the West, in a society where news reporting is relatively free. In fact, this is a universal human problem, not a problem unique to any particular religion.

Such things always provoke our thinking. People will ask, why do they do this? Aren't they people of faith? Do they still believe in their God? In my opinion, the Catholic case is not an isolated one. In the East, Confucianism faces similar problems. I am certainly not saying that Confucianism abuses children. What I am saying is that Confucianism has long been accused of producing hypocrites in Chinese society - this is a fact. As a Buddhist, I must point out that Buddhism also produces hypocrites, and for reasons similar to Confucianism. So this is not a problem for Catholicism as a religion alone, it is a problem faced by all religions.

I have pondered this issue before. In my opinion, the plight faced by Catholicism is similar to that of Confucianism. They have these problems largely because they lack practical self-cultivation systems. Historically, the great founders of those religions, be it Jesus or Confucius, all had genuine practical self-cultivation and enlightenment experiences. It is said by many researchers that Jesus went to India when he was young to learn the Dharma, but clearly, what he learned in India was not passed down to later generations. He only gave them some basic theoretical teachings. The same thing happened in Confucianism. Confucius was a quite enlightened person, but he obviously did not pass down those practical methods to his students either. He only taught a lot of theoretical things. The result is that the descendants of Confucius and Jesus only got theories, but could not experience the enlightenment that the founders of religions once experienced. They only knew that such a state was good, but did not know how to arrive at such a state. It should be known that the realms advocated by those saints were just naturally manifested after they reached a certain level of enlightenment, not something they deliberately did. And an ordinary person without such experience, if they naturally manifest their own nature, they would only do the opposite of saints. If such a person unfortunately holds a position like a priest, in an environment that requires them to exhibit certain sacred qualities, they can only pretend that they possess such qualities. But I don't know how long such pretense can last.

Imagine that something like this happened in Buddhism. If one day, all the practical methods of Buddhism were lost. But Buddhists are still told not to cling, to be like the Buddha and not have emotions about anything. But there is no method at all, no place to start. What would that look like? You may continue to stay in Buddhism, but doubt everything described in the Buddhist scriptures. Or simply not believe them. There is no one around you who can experience the state described in the Buddhist scriptures. Slowly you will feel that they are all myths, but you are still in Buddhism, you cannot say those are false. Over time, you will become very hypocritical. This is the plight faced by Catholicism and Confucianism. In religions without practical systems, the emergence of hypocrites is almost inevitable. Without real practical systems, real religious experiences cannot be produced. Without real religious experiences, true faith cannot be generated. And without true faith, your faith cannot withstand any test, and corruption is only a matter of time. If you cannot experience the state once experienced by Shakyamuni Buddha, the Sixth Patriarch, and Vimalakirti, you certainly won't believe what the Buddhist scriptures say. You won't believe what your guru says either. You won't believe in reincarnation, karma. You won't believe Milarepa can pass through stones, nor will you believe you can become a Buddha. You will only treat these as myths. But you will pretend to believe, while in fact not believing. Things like this happen every day in Catholicism and Confucianism, and of course, in Buddhism as well.

I have been to Catholic cathedrals. In those beautifully magnificent cathedrals, on those colorful stained glass windows, are painted miracles of saints from the past. When I look at those beautiful paintings, look at those magical stories from those distant eras depicted in the paintings, look at the saints floating in the air in the paintings, I wonder how many priests would believe those are true historical events. Most priests without real religious experiences would only see them as a distant myth. They would not believe at all that those things really happened.

Imagine if a person is placed in a position where he can dominate others, if he has no real practical experience, if he does not really believe in what he professes, if he only pretends to believe, and such a person is also required to be celibate, what would happen? Unfortunately, this is the reality for many religious people.

There are many demons wandering in our world. What they love to do most is to sabotage your practice. They love to drag others down. They will seduce you, provoke you, whisper in your ears. And those who are close to God and Buddha are their prime targets. If someone without true faith becomes a priest, if he runs a Catholic orphanage, if there are many children in the orphanage, if those children revere him unconditionally, if he has the power over life and death over them - he can make a child clean toilets for half a year with one word. What would happen in such a situation? One should know, demons are prowling around him, whispering in his ears. Even someone like me who has been immersed in Buddhism for over 20 years and has no doubts sometimes gets influenced by them, let alone those with no true faith at all. Those without true faith, when placed in such positions, you cannot expect them to control their desires. This is like putting a beauty-loving woman in a room full of beautiful clothes. Do you think she won't touch those clothes? Once he opens the door of desire, he can no longer close it. He can only cover up sins with more sins.

Many years ago, I said that if there is no faith, laws alone are not enough. Humans are very smart. They can think of many ways to circumvent laws. 200 years ago, America's founding fathers spent 127 days constructing the US Constitution. They envisioned all kinds of possibilities to contain potential evils. But in today's world 200 years later, the legal system they painstakingly built is obviously overwhelmed. The things happening on Earth these days are proving my point. I have always believed that morality without faith cannot withstand impacts. And those superficial faiths are also far from enough to withstand the temptation of demons. They cannot withstand any test and are easily defeated. These days, you can see what those people you once thought were fair, objective and faithful are doing. You can see many seemingly faithful people brazenly doing many jaw-dropping things. In fact, this is no surprise at all, just the inevitable result of not having true faith. Such things have actually been happening all along, it just so happens that you saw it this time.

Finally, it should be noted that although Buddhism has practical systems, this does not mean Buddhist practitioners all understand practice well. - So, what has happened in Catholicism can also happen to Buddhists. - In fact, most Buddhists do not understand what practice really means. Those who think they are practicing, their so-called practice is usually not practice at all. Many people's understanding of practice is just spending a lot of time reciting mantras or going into retreat. But this is not necessarily practice. I have seen many people who make efforts reciting every day, for over a decade, but their ego and afflictions show no signs of wear and tear at all. The way they think about issues is exactly the same after a decade as it was a decade ago. This is because the self is much smarter than them. They think they are smart and can fight the self, thinking the self won't steal their practice right under their nose. But the self is much smarter than them. It will very covertly turn all their efforts to its own use. They won't notice at all that their practice has long been corrupted, transformed and tamed by the self, without damaging the self one bit. Such people are usually very superstitious about rituals. They emphasize a lot the function of rituals. They think that by getting a very powerful ritual or secret instruction, they can attain liberation - this kind of thinking is as ridiculous as those who think getting the Dragon Slaying Saber will allow them to command the realm. They spend a lot of time seeking and practicing rituals, but never observe and change their own values. This kind of practice is really no different from having no practical system at all, and is even more misleading. You will become even more unclear about your own state. You will think you have been practicing all along. This will make you hypocritical, because you have practiced for a long time without results. You practice without results for a long time, but you don't want others to know you have gotten no results from long-term practice, hence hypocrisy arises.

This article was first published on Lingshan Hermit's Sina Weibo, Google Blogger and other social media on November 22, 2020. Copyright owned by the author. Reproduction without permission is prohibited.

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灵山居士：你为什么会虚伪？

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john-langley-bristol-blogger · 1 month

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It's Easter Weekend and I'm Stuck on a Crossword Clue. 2 Across - Q. Where Was Jesus Nailed?

It's a Jesus Weekend, and in my role as the ‘Almighty Gob’ I preach comments in typical form from the pulpit of satire. Amen.

Does anyone know what was actually good about Friday? Severe hailstones, perhaps? Our NHS still in dire straits, people continuing to use food banks, and migration sorted?

Never mind, it's all good on Good Friday because Jesus died for us, apparently, and this alone makes all the hardship and misery we now face in the world worthwhile. Knowing what we all know now it should come as no great surprise he was nailed to a cross at that time for what would become arguably some of the greatest crimes against humanity by humanity.

As someone who was brought up as a Roman Catholic, you may well be surprised to read such a bold statement from me. No doubt there will be those who deem me as blasphemous, even a heretic committing the most egregious of cardinal sins, and for this, I should be cast into the fires of hell forever.

To this very day, I still struggle to get my head around the fact that some people in the world choose to believe what's probably one of the best human-control fairy stories ever written. Let alone places called heaven and hell.

Anyway, here we are. It's Easter weekend and I'm stuck on a crossword clue. 2 across - Q. Where was Jesus nailed? This might take a while as it's several years since I last attended church and nearly all memories of religion have since faded. I may well have to put it down to another of the remaining unanswered anomalies. Such as how an ethereal being managed to have a son in real life; so the story goes, through a virgin woman. As stated (among a great many other things) in my book 'The Sexual Philanthropist' such an event nowadays would be a complete sellout at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.

Better still, it would take one heck of an illusionist to put on a show where he was nailed to a cross, died, and then emerged within a few days full of life and firing on all cylinders as if nothing happened. Pretty damn impressive even by Netflix programme audience popularity. Beat that, Harry and Meghan.

So, what's changed since the Romans vacated Jesus’ territory back in the day? Not a lot really, as two-thousand years or so later quite a few issues related to religion lead the way where conflict is concerned. Such as the location of holy sites and acrimonious divorce-worthy narratives which totally screw the potential for any peace between Islam and Judaism. On one side of the religious divorce battle, extreme Zionists make protestations regarding how the Jewish state should be, while their Islamist co-respondents have their own version of liberating all that's holy to the Zionists, and preach hatred and violence as a means of winning the divorce battle by use of terrorism - and for which they are now proscribed as a terrorist organisation.

All of which brings me on to a growing bunch of airheads who deserve to have their colons cleansed using bleach and wire wool, as it's entirely pointless going any further up their bodies to their heads because compared to the more sane and rational of people in the world, these airheads have spaces in their brains that any alleged signs of previous rationality and commonsense appear to have vacated long ago - if ever there in the first place.

These are the pro-Palestine gormless idiots who espouse the boycott of Israeli goods and services and make two short planks look like the most sophisticated computer technology in the world while using their Apple and Android phones to touch base with other idiots of the same ilk and do their best to influence more normal people into not buying Israeli goods and services, they do so completely oblivious to the fact that the phones they are using include technology developed by Israeli companies. Will these pillocks give up their phones in protest though? Somehow I think not. Oh, and don't use Windows apps either folks. Guess why?

Any chance these lunatics may have a firewall installed on their computers? Take a guess at this too. If your mental capacity has provided you with the means to follow so far and you are not a boycott numpty, it shouldn't take long.

I bet many of them also drive cars, provided they could afford one in the first place. Well, it's more bad news, I'm afraid. It looks like webuyanycar.com and auction sites will be busy in future when the idiots put their cars up for sale because the navigation system was more than likely based on Israeli tech. Oh, and speaking of transport, I wonder how many will cancel their holiday flights abroad this year, since our airport security systems are packed with Israeli technology.

And before I forget. Should any of them, their relatives and friends have cancer they may as well go home, take shit loads of morphine and die in bed. Why? Because it's more than likely cancer treatments offered by the NHS will have been invented in Israel. Equally, anyone who has a stent implanted should get it removed with immediate effect as a boycott protest against Israel, which, by a strange coincidence also invented it.

Ever heard of a 'SniffPhone'? Probably not, but it's a piece of medical equipment that can actually 'sniff out' diseases. It works like a breathalyser and detects cancer of the gastric and lung varieties, as well as Parkinsons, dementia, MS and many other illnesses. What about the 'Pillcam', heard of this? Who'd have guessed it was an Israeli invention in the shape of a minicam that takes photos of the intestinal tract?

Still, as long as the boycott idiots remain all self-satisfied and happily virtue-signalling in blissful ignorance, why should they let facts get in the way of personal feelings and emotional incontinence, huh? Anyway, whatever else these lunatics do, they should not take my sardonic and non-medically trained advice. While remembering at all times that any such attempt at shortening their lives should not be conducted without first seeking the advice of a medically qualified practitioner, and preferably one outside the jurisdiction of Geneva.

With all that said, I now find myself back where I began, whenever that was two thousand or so years ago, and what was good about Friday, again?

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religion-is-a-mental-illness · 3 years

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Today i discussed homophobia with my colleagues. I said a lot of it is rooted in religion and how you have been raised, because imho if you nobody teaches you being gay or lesbian is wrong, you wouldnt see it like this, you would probably simply decline an offer from your same sex. Maybe you wonder about it because its statistically much more rare than hetersoexuality but anyways, I dont think you'd become homophobic. However, my colleague stated i was wrong. Because he was raised catholic and he didnt turn out homophobic, and whatever I said, he said it has nothing to do with religion, i honestly cant name the fallacy rn. What would be a good argument against this or am I maybe wrong?

The problem is that he's a sample size of one. We are apparently to take his singular experience as the truth of Xian, or at least Catholic, teachings.

https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/anecdotal

Furthermore, it appears he resorted to Argument by Repetition, aka Proof by Assertion, by simply insisting that "it has nothing to do with religion".

https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/cgi-bin/uy/webpages.cgi?/logicalfallacies/Argument-by-Repetition

He has an anecdote and denial. That's not a solid argument.

I mean, it's nice that he lucked out and got one of the "nice" Catholic environments, but I bet if he looked back, even only a decade or two, at policies of the church, schools, community organizations, etc, he would find that this was a relatively recent phenomenon.

For that matter, I would bet if he dug around at what was going on that he didn't personally witness, there will be stuff there to discover.

On the other hand, if we look further afield than a single sheltered individual:

https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2020/06/25/global-divide-on-homosexuality-persists/

That's a really weird coincidence that the column on the left is never higher than the column on the right, isn't it? It sure is a wild coincidence that the increase of irreligion in western countries (rise of "nones") correlates with the increase in acceptance of LGBT people.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Societal_attitudes_toward_homosexuality

Since the 1970s, much of the world has become more accepting of homosexual acts and relationships. Cross-national differences in acceptance can be explained by three factors: the strength of democratic institutions, the level of economic development, and the religious context of the places where people live.[4] The Pew Research Center's 2013 Global Attitudes Survey "finds broad acceptance of homosexuality in North America, the European Union, and much of Latin America, but equally widespread rejection in predominantly Muslim nations and in Africa, as well as in parts of Asia and in Russia". The survey also finds "acceptance of homosexuality is particularly widespread in countries where religion is less central in people's lives. These are also among the richest countries in the world. In contrast, in poorer countries with high levels of religiosity, few believe homosexuality should be accepted by society.

Indeed plenty in the Catholic Church have tried to blame homosexuality for the child sexual assault scandal problem that is pervasive through the church:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-47302817

https://www.ncronline.org/news/accountability/bishop-morlino-others-charge-homosexual-subculture-clergy-abuse-crisis

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/01/04/homosexuality-blame-sexual-abuse-not-catholic-church-claims/

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-02-21/cardinals-link-clerical-child-sex-abuse-to-homosexual-agenda/10831922

Apparently it's not that the Catholic Church is a closed system which governs itself, secretly and opaquely with no accountability, commands undue deference, reverence and influence over its parishioners, and has a long history of burying its scandals. No, the problem is the gays. /s

There are plenty of cases of people using religion to foster hatred or limit the rights of LGBT people They can, and do, cite the bible to justify this.

https://religionnews.com/2021/05/10/german-catholics-to-bless-gay-unions-despite-vatican-ban/

The blessings at open worship services are the latest pushback from German Catholics against a document released in March by the Vatican’s orthodoxy office, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which said Catholic clergy cannot bless same-sex unions because God “cannot bless sin.”

https://onemillionmoms.com/current-campaigns/now-lego-is-loud-and-proud/

We must remain diligent and stand up for biblical values and truth. Scripture says multiple times that homosexuality is wrong, and God will not tolerate this sinful nature.

https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-moody-bible-institute-lgbtq-discrimination-lawsuit-0602-20210603-tze36w3wvbhkve76iw54rxgyq4-story.html

Moody’s [Bible Institute] website says, “Based on Scripture, nonmarital sex, homosexual sex, same-sex romantic relationships, and gender identification incongruent with one’s birth-sex all violate God’s generous intention for human relationships. Such practices misrepresent the nature of God Himself, and therefore are sinful under any circumstance.”

These are just a few examples I found trivially where the religion, scripture and "god's" opinion are cited specifically, without reservation, as justification.

And that’s without going anywhere near the shit-show that is Islam.

Compared to the fire-and-brimstone wings of Protestantism, the Catholic Church has in recent years sometimes been relatively gay.... uh... "tolerant"... -ish. Although, this is usually couched in policies best described as separate-but-not-equal, such as opposing same-sex marriage, but letting them have that "civil union" stuff.

From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortal_sin#Actions_constituting_grave_matter

That source refers here:

https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P88.HTM#:~:text=2396%20

IN BRIEF

2392 "Love is the fundamental and innate vocation of every human being" (FC 11).

2393 By creating the human being man and woman, God gives personal dignity equally to the one and the other. Each of them, man and woman, should acknowledge and accept his sexual identity.

[..]

2396 Among the sins gravely contrary to chastity are masturbation, fornication, pornography, and homosexual practices.

This is literally from the Vatican's own website.

Notice how it's phrased. It's okay to be gay as long as you don't act on it. As long as you don't find love, as long as you don't live a happy, long life having bangin' gay sex in a committed relationship. It's okay to be gay as long as you foster a sense of guilt and inferiority because your natural desires are "mortal sin."

Let it not escape anyone that "Homosexual actions" is on the same list as "Incest."

More: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_and_homosexuality#Church_teaching

According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, "homosexual acts" are "acts of grave depravity" that are "intrinsically disordered." It continues, "They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved. Regarding homosexuality as an orientation, the Catechism describes it as "objectively disordered."

The Catholic Church teaches that, as a person does not choose to be either homosexual or heterosexual, being gay is not inherently sinful. According to the Catholic theology of sexuality, all sexual acts must be open to procreation and express the symbolism of male-female complementarity. Sexual acts between two members of the same gender cannot meet these standards. Homosexuality thus constitutes a tendency towards this sin. The church teaches that gay people are called to practice chastity.

This is how they justify their claims of being more tolerant; the sanctimony of "love the sinner, hate the sin," which is still hating homosexuality, denying gay Catholics the full human experience.

Because apparently the organization that thinks a virgin can give birth, and a cracker can turn into flesh has strong opinions about what is or is not "natural."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_and_homosexuality

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_and_homosexuality

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Christian_denominational_positions_on_homosexuality

As usual it appears it's up to the non-believers to teach the believers about their own religions and beliefs. It appears your colleague is astonishingly naive and sheltered, never having engaged with Catholicism outside of his "nice" environment.

You know, like what the Pope or the Vatican might have to say. Obscure shit like that.

#ask #catholic church #roman catholic #christianity #LGBT #gay #homosexuality #religion #catholicism #roman catholicism #catholic #religion is a mental illness

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puppyluver256 · 3 years

Photo

[Image Description: Three fan-made Pokemon made to resemble the northern cardinal bird, one of which is presented as two sexually dimorphic individuals.

The first Pokemon is a young bird with yellow feathers, tipped red-orange at the wings and on the tail. It has a small rounded blue beak, blue legs, and big dark blue eyes. It has its wings tucked against its body and is looking to the left of the image as it faces the right. The feathers on its head stick up to imply the beginning of a crest. Light blue text to the right of the image reads "Cardling".

The second Pokemon is a juvenile bird with tan feathers on its body and red feathers on its wings and tail. It has a blue beak and legs and light blue markings around its dark blue eyes. Feathers on its head stick up in a crest. Its legs are pulled up against its body and its wings are outstretched in flight. Light blue text to the right of the image reads "Purdinal".

The third Pokemon are two adult birds with large three-feathered head crests, maroon beaks and legs, blue facial markings, dark blue eyes, and turquoise talons resembling icicles. The individual on the left is a little larger and has bright red plumage with blue tipped wings and tail, while the individual on the right is a little smaller and has dull tan plumage with bright red belly, wingtips, and tail. Their wings are tucked up to their bodies and they are positioned to that their bodies are facing each other, while their heads are facing away. Turquoise text outlined in light blue to the right of the image reads "Frostinal", while smaller text in the same colors reads "male" and "female", indicating the larger red individual is a male and the smaller tan individual is female.

End ID.]

-----

Cardling - Chick Pokemon | flying While Cardling are capable of flight a lot earlier in life than some bird Pokemon, they are almost incapable of dealing with the cold until maturing. They tend to become quite close to their parents while they can before they make the trip back north. / Cardling are very susceptible to frigid temperatures, and as such their parents must nest much further south than the typical location of their home. They feast upon a wide variety of berries several times a day in order to build their strength.

Purdinal - Fledgling Pokemon | flying They are capable of fluffing up their down undercoat in order to provide some better cold resistance than they previously could. They seem to be quite fond of Snover berries, but their opportunities to taste them are quite rare. / Beginning to develop some mild cold resistance, Purdinal sometimes travel further up north than they could as Cardling. They are still not fully capable of living in cold climates, merely visiting to briefly reunite with parents while they are still fairly young.

Frostinal - Cardinal Pokemon | ice/flying It lives in the northernmost parts of Cantessy, except for during breeding season when mated pairs will travel south to raise their less resilient young. Males can be seen feeding females berries plucked from Snover during courtship. / Its talons are as cold as the snowy north it calls home. A mated pair will fly south to warmer climates during breeding season as their young cannot withstand the cold very well until fully grown.

I know the tradition with Fakemon stuff is to introduce all the starters and their evos together, but I wanted to post the full evo lines for my starters pretty close to posting people who would reasonably use them, ie. the player(s) and the rival characters. So we're gonna wait a bit on Calflame's evos for now and instead focus on Cantessy's "Route 1 bird": Cardling! And of course its evolutions Purdinal and Frostinal! Compared to the origins of the starters' inspirations, the Route 1 bird was fairly simple to figure out. I knew when I was figuring things out that I wanted my Route 1 bird to be based on Kentucky's state bird, the northern cardinal. I see 'em all over the place here, and they're really not hard to spot, especially the bright red males for which the species gets its name. (fun fact, when I first learned about catholic cardinals I thought they were named after the birds, luckily I was old enough to have the critical thinking to realize it was probably the other way around pretty quick on my own hehe) So Cardling are based on a mix of the babies and fledglings, Purdinal on the juveniles, and Frostinal obviously on the adults. This is going to be the only Cantessy Pokemon to have a gender difference, as I wanted to reference how the females are closer to olive drab rather than that iconic vibrant red. Better egg camouflage, y'know?

Thanks to my buddy Tav for suggesting the final stage of this evolution line gain the ice type! This was the only major hang-up I had with this line at any point, tbh. I knew I wanted it to gain a secondary type, but I didn't want to just play into the red coloration and make it fire type, and becoming fire would also make it too similar to Talonflame with fancy colors. They suggested ice, and I was reminded of all those winter images and holiday cards that have cardinals on them, not to mention the red plumage would artistically stand out against a snowy scene in a really lovely way. (come to think of it, that's probably why cardinals are used in those images hehe) And speaking of ice-type cardinal Pokemon, please check out the Pokemon Cardinal series on YouTube! It's a really cool Fakemon series and I think y'all would liiiike it O:

Also if anyone wants to suggest other moves for these guys to learn and some physical stats (ie. height and weight, idk much about scaling hehe), feel free to throw ‘em at me :3 Links to their info pages will be provided in the replies!

💖🐶 Check out my pinned post for ways to support my artwork, among other things! 🐶💖

~If you like, please reblog to show your friends! Likes are appreciated, but reblogs let more people see my content! If you have something to say, feel free to give feedback in tags/comments/replies as well!~

Pokemon and related concepts © Nintendo/GameFreak Cardling, Purdinal, Frostinal, the Cantessy region, and artwork © PuppyLuver Studios

#pokemon #fakemon #cantessy region #cardling #purdinal #frostinal #jess drew the thing #sfw #image description #BIRB #long post

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spiritualdirections · 3 years

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Can John Paul II’s sainthood be cancelled?

The editors of the National Catholic Reporter have asked that the cult of John Paul II be suppressed for his role in the appointment of Theodore McCarrick to be Archbishop of Washington, DC. This comes in the light of the “McCarrick report” last week.

Some people think that the Church’s canonizations are infallible acts, declaring infallibly that the canonized is a saint in heaven. In which case, what the NCR editors are asking would be impossible.

But that’s not actually the Church’s teaching. It is possible to remove a canonized saint’s public cult. However, the NCR editors haven’t come close to making that case. (Deep dive below the break.)

Infallibility only applies to matters that are part of the deposit of faith or directly implied by the deposit of faith. Cardinal Avery Dulles, in his book Magisterium (p. 78), points out that whether or not such-and-such a person who lived after the death of the last apostle is in heaven--that’s not in either category. He then cites the conclusion of a Lutheran-Roman Catholic dialogue (in which he had participated):

32. The theological manuals of recent generations rather commonly hold that solemn canonizations of saints, as contained in papal decretal letters, are infallible. The tradition in favor of infallibility in the matter has been traced back at least to the time of Thomas Aquinas, but there are genuine difficulties in seeing how canonizations fall within the object of papal infallibility as taught by Vatican I or Vatican II. Certainly, the virtues of particular persons of postbiblical times, and their present situation before God, can scarcely be reckoned as part of the apostolic deposit of faith. If one looks on revelation as having become complete in Christ, holiness may reasonably be seen as a concrete way of living, in a given culture, the saving truth revealed in Christ. The Church has the power to recognize authentic Christian holiness, yet canonization would not seem of its nature to convey infallible certitude that the holiness in question was actually present in the life of this or that historical person.

Here are the relevant parts of Vatican I and II on the “object of infallibility”: Vatican I’s Dei Filius ch. 4, par.13

“For, the doctrine of faith which God revealed... has been entrusted as a divine deposit to the Spouse of Christ, to be faithfully guarded and infallibly interpreted”

and Pastor Aeternus, ch. 4, par.6

“For the Holy Spirit was not promised to the successors of Peter that by His revelation they might make known new doctrine, but that by His assistance they might inviolably keep and faithfully expound the Revelation, the Deposit of Faith, delivered through the Apostles”;

and most importantly Vatican II’s Lumen Gentium #25:

“This infallibility with which the Divine Redeemer willed His Church to be endowed in defining doctrine of faith and morals, extends as far as the deposit of Revelation extends, which must be religiously guarded and faithfully expounded.”

In an excellent article in Nova et Vetera 17:3, William Diem, after surveying the theological tradition, concludes that canonizations hold a middle position between merely disciplinary/liturgical decrees and infallible teaching. The Church infallibly declares that, based on what we know about a person’s moral life and about the miracles attributed to that person’s intercession, the canonized person is a saint deserving of a public cult. The infallibility extends to what’s publicly known--assuming that there’s nothing we don’t know that would change the answer, what we do know establishes that this person’s life is worthy of imitation and is an example of what has been handed down about holiness from the deposit of faith. For instance, you can’t point to the penitential practices of a canonized saint and say, “this guy is not holy because of his penitential practices.” Saint Bonaventure, in defending the Franciscan view of poverty, pointed out that saints in the past had been canonized while publicly taking vows of poverty, and so taking vows of poverty was infallibly declared by the Church to be compatible with holiness.

However, if there’s something not publicly known about the person (some secret sin) or if the witnesses to either the miracles or the moral life of the canonized are in some way mistaken, then the canonized person might not actually be in heaven. If the canonized is in heaven, then asking for his or her intercession makes abundant sense. If the canonized not in heaven, then our prayers for intercession are misdirected, and a public cult is not in order.

It’s that last part which (if we’re charitably assuming the NCR editors are theologically on top of the status questionis) gives their argument some purchase. So, is there anything that we learned in the McCarrick Report that 1) was not publicly known about Pope John Paul II at the time of his canonization and that 2) disqualifies him from being in heaven? I don’t think so, for more or less the reasons that George Weigel outlines here: https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2020/11/theodore-mccarrick-not-john-paul-ii-is-the-story-of-the-mccarrick-report

The report on pp. 149-192, goes into detail about what was being said about then Archbishop McCarrick before his appointment to DC. Basically, nobody had anything more than rumors about any sexual impropriety. Nothing was on the record. Cardinal John O’Connor of New York desperately didn’t want McCarrick to succeed him as Archbishop, and so his passing along the rumors to the Pope was probably discounted for the reason that he wasn’t objective about McCarrick for other reasons. The reports says (p. 179 fn 593) that it was important to the pope that the Archbishop of Washington be politically savvy, which McCarrick was, and it seems that was his major qualification for the post. Major figures in the Church investigated McCarrick’s moral life and didn’t find anything to disqualify him, and told the Pope that. The report says (p. 173 fn 580) that the pope believed that people often used rumors of sexual misconduct to discredit figures in the Church--indeed the Communists in Poland tried to discredit him by planting evidence of an affair in his apartment. In the US, Cardinal Joseph Bernadin of Chicago was falsely accused of sexual abuse--the putative victim later recanted.

Since John Paul II didn’t have anything more than rumors to discredit McCarrick, rumors that his own experience told him not to trust, he eventually decided to appoint him. Since the rumors about McCarrick had already been investigated, it was decided that they didn’t need to be investigated again. That last, procedural decision not to repeat the work already done by others, is what the NCR editors think means that John Paul II isn’t in heaven. As if not doing redundant paperwork is a mortal sin.

To be fair to their editorial, what they are insinuating is that the procedural decision reveals something that was not known at the time of the canonization: that John Paul II didn’t care about the sexual abuse of minors: “John Paul, in many ways an admirable man, was willfully blind to the abuse of children and young people.” In which case, not de-canonizing him would be an infallible declaration that the Church doesn’t care about the abuse of minors! But that’s pretty thin, for at least three reasons: 1) The report explicitly undermines their uncharitable interpretation by providing context; 2) the pope did take action against clerical abuse when he grasped the scope of the problem; and 3) John Paul II’s handling of the sex abuse crisis was something already known and discussed before his canonization.

If Thomas Aquinas is right that it’s an act of piety to trust the Church’s canonizations (pie credendum est), the NCR editorial is, simply put, impious.

#infallibility #canonization #mccarrick report #john paul II #National Catholic Reporter #st. thomas aquinas

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things2mustdo · 3 years

Link

As you probably have heard in the news, earlier in August a Pennsylvania grand jury handed down a 1,356-page account of sexual abuse which involved around 1,000 kids and 300 priests during a period of approximately 70 years. It is another pedophilia scandal within the Catholic Church that adds up to their collection of countless other ones reported in recent years.

The commie pope—while on his two-day visit to Ireland—begged for forgiveness again, just the way he did in Chile back in January of this year.

You can notice how quick and scathing the mainstream media is to denounce these recurring events, after all we know who owns the MSM and the (real) Church has a long, well-known history of “anti-semitism” and resistance against the tentacles of globalism. I wish the media had the same commitment to inform the existence of other pedophile rings full of high-ranking people as well.

Is the problem of the church’s innumerous sexual abuse allegations really pedophilia? To me there is a deeper explanation for it, and that explanation is: homosexualism. 81% of the alleged victims are male and three-fourths of them are post-pubescent. As you guys are certainly aware of, the Church has a very big issue with homosexualism among its clergymen.

I have a theory for the high presence of gay men inside priesthood: until not long ago being gay was definitely not ok, homosexuals were not accepted as they are now, so they became priests.

The developed Western world of today encourages people to become gay, it applauds individuals for their gayness, but it wasn’t always like that. Now, try to imagine a closeted homosexual man living in the 50s, for example. What a better place to go than the Catholic seminary? People wouldn’t look you down, you wouldn’t have to get married, the place was filled with other young men (potential sexual partners) and that’s how the Church got corrupted by perverts.

Pedophilia x Homosexualism

One normie could argue “how homosexualism relates to pedophilia?” Any red-pilled person who has ever wondered what causes someone to become gay will notice that there is an undeniable link between pedophilia and homosexualism.

Let’s remember the occasion of Milo Yiannopolous’ resignation from Breitbart over comments which seemed to endorse sex between “younger men” and older men. Something that is—as he pointed out—extremely common among gay men. A 2009 report revealed that 74 percent of bisexuals had been sexually abused as children, I am pretty sure homosexuals follow the same numbers.

I won’t say homosexual behavior is exclusively caused by pedophilia because human (or animal) sexuality is a very complex topic which can certainly involve many variables. I just don’t buy that “born this way” hype, until this day not a single reliable proof of the existence of a gay gene or anything like it was discovered.

The Vatican once bought a £21 million apartment block above ‘Europe’s largest gay sauna’.

Pope Francis, a champion of the left-leaning agenda inside the Church, has been accused of covering up former Cardinal McCarrick’s abuse allegations (one of the many cases in Pennsylvania). The accusations were made by Carlo Vigano, a former Vatican ambassador to the US, and if it proves to be true–I am positive it is—that should result in pope Francis’ resignation. As a traditionalist Catholic myself I would be delighted with such an event.

Francis has already been complacent with other pedos before. One good example is the 2015 ‘Synod on the Family’ when the pope invited Godfried Danneels, a Belgium Cardinal convicted of covering up pedophiles in the 90s, to attend the meeting. Danneels is a hard-left priest that tries to push the Church ” liberal reformation” and admitted that he was part of a plot against (right-leaning) Pope Benedict and in favor of the election of leftie Francis.

To affirm that the Church’s gay/pedos are exclusively part of the left-wing priesthood would be too Manichean. I am sure there are tons of sick people who lean right also. But it can’t be denied that the liberals make up the vast majority of these issues involving sexual misconduct.

“Religious progressives”

For those who don’t know, the Catholic Church, just as any other political institution, is divided in factions that tend to be more liberal or orthodox. The liberation theology, for instance, is a movement created inside the Catholic Church (and some Protestant denominations) which aims to mix Christianity and Marxism.

Even if you are an agnostic don’t underestimate the influence they played in various regions such as Europe, Latin America and even New England. Brazilian Workers’ Party attributed their success to this movement and Unions.

Be wary of any religious leader that tries to push a liberalization of dogmas and traditions. Because all religions are intrinsically conservative according to their respective contexts, they establish doctrines that dictate sets of rules that must be followed properly in order to attain their objectives (whether is Salvation in Christianity or Nirvana in Buddhism). There are no (real) religions without their traditions.

Whenever you see liberal religious men doubt their characters. There is a good chance they don’t even bother with religion or spirituality, perhaps they are closeted atheist. What they do care about is the religious platform, which can offer various benefits such as large audiences, political influence, money and even sex.

Estimates of the number of gays in the priesthood are all over the lot, from 20 percent to 60 percent, although a Los Angeles Times poll in 2002 found only 15 percent of priests saying they were homosexual or “somewhere in between but more on the homosexual side.”

Every time pedo priests’ cases pop up in the MSM, secular people are very quick to point fingers and show their moral superiority, but they “forget” the existence of secular institutions that are way more sexually perverted than the “gayish” modern Church, such as Hollywood, the political and corporate world.

Real Church x Sissy Church

It is also important to notice that the Church was emasculated, an emasculation that took place during the process of secularization and establishment of liberal democracies across the Western world (e.g. French Revolution).

The Church had to be softened, becoming an institution that barely resembles the once powerful and great Church of the Crusades or the Inquisitions. This same phenom of emasculation can also happen in other secular institutions too, the Military, mainstream Music, Politics, Sports and even Boys Scouts. And it will only get worse as liberal-democratic globalism advances, so secular people: watch out!

St. Basil the Great, a 4th century bishop and Doctor of the Church, defended that gay/pedo priests should be publicly flogged. That was the (real) Church, not this sissy catholicism created after the Second Vatican Council (a modernist reform imposed in the Church from 1962 to 1965). A lot of things got bad in the 60s.

The (real) Church has a very important and vigorous story in the construction of the West. Always being a target to the globalists and that breed who rules the world, a clear obstacle to their goals.

Examples are many: Gabriel García Moreno, Catholic Equatorian president, who made a terrific job in a Confessional Equator and was killed by the Freemasons; Saint José Sanchez del Rio, who was killed by Mexican secular, freemason and leftist government with the support of the US, for refusing to abbandon his faith.

Inconvenient truths are ignored

The media only goes after what is convenient to their narrative, don’t expect them to expose Hollywood pedos nor the obvious link between pedo priests and homosexualism. The left has already pushed the normalization of pedophilia many times and I didn’t see the indignation of the MSM.

Late Vatican’s Chief Exorcist Gabriele Amorth once said, “The Devil resides in the Vatican and you can see the consequences”.

“The floor of hell is paved with the skulls of bishops”. – St. Athanasius

Read More: The Vatican Has Disgraced True Catholic Values

I have noticed that many people have been falsely conflating what comes out of the Vatican as Catholic. Thus it is my duty to present to the esteemed readers of this fine site the true teachings of the Church which stand, ever more so today, in stark opposition to the rot of cultural Marxism and the effeminacy of the Papal pretenders in Rome.

Vicar of Christ?

Church authorities are not legitimate

It is a dogma of the Catholic faith that the Church cannot substantially change. This means that the church cannot contradict nor change her teaching from what has always been universally taught or has been solemnly defined. Any one who claims to be Catholic and knowingly professes a faith which contradicts a teaching of the Church is considered to be a heretic and is considered to have a removed himself from the Church.

As St. Thomas states: “[one] who disbelieves [even] one article of faith does not have faith, either formed or unformed.” This is known as the unity of faith which means that all Catholics profess the same faith. Likewise it means that heretics cannot hold a clerical office in the Church. Thus if a heretic were to be elected even to the Papacy they could not be considered a legitimate Pontiff because a heretic has separated himself from the Church (source).

Would a real Pope bow to a religion declared false by the Church?

Simply put, you have to be Catholic to be Pope, and the absurdity of a heretic claiming the See of Peter is where we find ourselves today. For just as the institutions in the West have been infiltrated and seized by the enemy, likewise have the institutions of the Church been usurped by apostate forces. The hierarchy currently residing in the Vatican are not legitimate authorities and do not represent the perennial teaching of the Church. Therefore I have listed for your benefit the actual Church’s positions on some current areas of contention.

The only time Francis has ever smiled at a Crucifix

On Communism

The Catholic Church is vehemently opposed to communism. Without Pius XII valiant efforts, communism would have prevailed over postwar France and Italy. The Pope went so far as to issue the Decree against Communism in 1949 which excommunicated any Christian who professed communist doctrine.

Catholicism is the enemy of Marxism as it teaches that there can be no separation of Church and state, and an atheist government is immoral. Catholicism believes private property is a natural right going so far to say that depriving workers of their wages is a sin which cries to heaven for vengeance (compare that to our socialist tax code!).

On Migration and Culture

The current Muslim invasion of Europe would be met with the utmost resistance. It has always been the Church which has sought to safeguard Catholic Culture and in ages past has gone so far as to issue a call to arms against non-Catholics who have sought to destroy it.

Pope Urban II issued the Crusades and Pope Leo the great even went so far as to personally travel into the heart of the Hun army—to Attila himself—to deliver Rome from the sack that was to come. In 1571, St. Pope Pius V formed the Holy League that would go on to defeat the great Muslim Turkish Armada that was plaguing the Mediterranean.

“Then I pointed like so and told them where to take their cultural enrichment”

The tradition of the Church has been to unite the West against external non-christian threats in order to preserve Western Christian culture.

“The natural law enjoins us to love devotedly and to defend the country in which we were born, and in which we were brought up, so that every good citizen hesitates not to face death for his native land…. We are bound, then, to love dearly the country whence we have received the means of engagement this mortal life affords.” – Sapientia Christiana Encyclical Pope Leo XIII

On Abortion and Contraception

So what is the real teaching of the Church in regards to abortion and contraception? The teaching is any member who has an abortion or supports abortion is automatically excommunicated from the Church. That’s right: every single Democrat who claims to be Catholic is actually excommunicated, including Nancy Pelosi who likes to sanctimoniously drone how she is a good Catholic grandmother.

Contraception is also considered a mortal sin because it is an unnatural stoppage of life.

“Hence, after the sin of homicide whereby a human life already in existence is destroyed, this type of sin appears to take next place, for by it the generation of human nature is impeded.” -St. Thomas Aquinas.

I know this is unpopular with the readers, but the teaching is that those who engage in contraception have already committed murder in their heart. Contraception is what allows people to engage in recreational sex, because the natural end of sex has been set aside so too then has the institution of marriage, whose end is children.

Likewise, because we have committed murder in our hearts, we have become a petulant, immature, vain, and a sterile people similar to any other people who have taken the risk from reward or the consequences from pleasure. This is the most difficult pill to swallow.

On Feminism

The Church condemns feminism in the strongest terms. There cannot exist feminism without birth control.

“…any use whatsoever of matrimony exercised in such a way that the act is deliberately frustrated in its natural power to generate life is an offense against the law of God and of nature, and those who indulge in such are branded with the guilt of a grave sin.” -Pius XI Casti Cannubi

The Church asserts that Man is the head of the household and that a woman finds her vocation from being a good mother and housewife:

“This … does not deny or take away the liberty which fully belongs to the woman both in view of her dignity as a human person, and in view of her most noble office as wife and mother and companion; nor does it bid her obey her husband’s every request if not in harmony with right reason or with the dignity due to wife; … For if the man is the head, the woman is the heart, and as he occupies the chief place in ruling, so she may and ought to claim for herself the chief place in love.” -Ibid

The Pope has even gone so far as to condemn women’s suffrage:

“Woman can never be man’s equal and cannot therefore enjoy equal rights. Few women would ever desire to legislate, and those who did would only be classed as eccentrics.” -St. Pius X

On Pacifism

The Catholic Church is not simply just a religion of love and mercy. Christianity is not a weak religion, for our God is a God of Battles. Catholic Tradition encourages us to live our lives in the manner of our Lord Jesus who spoke of the struggle that his Church would have to endure.

“Do not think that I am come to send peace upon earth: I came not to send peace, but the sword.”-Mathew 10:34

Christians are not meant to sit idly as bystanders to the great struggle of good and evil in this world.

“For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood: but against principalities and power, against the rulers of the world of this darkness: against the spirits of wickedness in the high places.” -Ephesians 6:12

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argumate · 4 years

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Cardinal George Pell knew nearly 30 years ago that notorious paedophile priest Gerard Ridsdale was being moved out of a small, Victorian country parish to protect the Catholic Church from scandal, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has found.

The finding means that Cardinal Pell was aware of allegations of sexual abuse against Ridsdale at least a decade before Ridsdale’s offending was investigated by police and possibly earlier; the commission noted it would be “surprised” if Mulkearns deceived Cardinal Pell at a 1977 College of Consultors meeting when Ridsdale’s appointment to the Edenhope parish was discussed.

The finding is damaging to Cardinal Pell and provides further evidence of the blind spot Australia’s most senior Catholic had towards Ridsdale, a prolific child sex offender who Cardinal Pell shared a home with in the 1970s and accompanied to court in 1993 and offered to provide character evidence for.

In another instance, the royal commission accepted the evidence of Timothy Green that in 1974, he tried to bring concerns about Dowlan to Cardinal Pell and was met with resistance.

Mr Green relayed to the royal commission a conversation he had with Cardinal Pell in the changerooms at Ballarat’s Eureka Pool, when he told him words to the effect: “We’ve got to do something about what’s going on at St Pat’s ... Brother Dowlan is touching little boys.” Mr Green testified that Cardinal Pell said the suggestion was ridiculous and walked out of the changerooms.

The royal commission found: “There is no evidence to suggest that Mr Green’s identification of Father Pell is mistaken.”

yeah I stand by my original assessment of Pell as probably not a serial child abuser himself, but utterly unconcerned with reining in all the priests who were.

#child abuse

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tisthenightofthewitch · 4 years

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The sexy face of Satanism. We talk to the leader of Ghost.

(translated from Polish - sorry for errors!)

Tobias Forge, the founder of the Ghost band, has only recently been talking to the press without an anonymous mask. For years, he only showed himself publicly as Papa Emeritus, a devilish priest whose purpose was to free the world from the oppression of government and religion. Now, remaining true to his intentions, he is known as Cardinal Copia.

Bartek Czartoryski: You've been playing concerts almost continuously for a year. Tired?

Tobias Forge : Oh yes, and I already feel that when I go home on December 20, I will fall dead.

You played in Spodek, and it's almost an iconic place for us. Here, for example, Metallica gave their first Polish concerts, with which you recently shared the stage.

I am very happy that we played here. Until now, we went to Warsaw Stodola, where we played probably three times and always thought that it was damn unfair for the Polish audience, because it got a smaller spectacle than everyone else. And now, finally, we could present our entire arsenal, with all the effects, pyrotechnics and so on.

Poland is, after all, a conservative and Catholic country, and Ghost has always been against organized religion. You don't feel like on hostile territory because of that?

No, we have never experienced any form of resentment, which is why I am a bit surprised at why Nergal is so often abused here. However, I explain it to myself that he comes from this country and is widely known here, which is why the attention of the press and public opinion is focused on him every day. We encounter no resistance here, and Polish institutions are not trying to censor us.

And I point this out, among other things, because I am aware of the problems Adam sometimes has. I am anonymous. People may know Ghost, but not me personally. In turn, probably every person accidentally encountered on the street although heard about Nergal. He's the walking advertisement of the devil's alliance here, whatever you call it.

It's good that you mentioned the devil because you are the sexy face of Satanism.

I hope so! But, seriously, I didn't realize it until we started touring more often, especially in America. There I noticed that more and more women come to our performances. And then I had to confront my idea of what Ghost would ever become with what was actually happening.

Already on the first album, when the audience's reactions to my songs were quite good, I thought that something really cool could be born from it. But it wasn't until we went on the road to America and saw all these girls that I started to connect the dots, that maybe there was something in it that I didn't notice, which I didn't take into account.

I will not hide that one of the inspirations behind Ghost is the "The Phantom of the Opera" that I saw as a child, which seemed to me a romantic spectacle, but not necessarily charged with sexual energy. Except that soon my mother, with whom we flew to London, took me for "Cats." And that's pure sex. The whole scene is filled with attractive people in tight cat costumes. I was thirteen then and I fell in love with all the kittens one by one.

And when, playing overseas, I felt that corporeality was part of our performance, it enlightened me: since the audience has no idea what we look like, we can be anyone they want. They could have imagined me as George Clooney. However, this was not something I had planned. At first, our image was a bit clumsy, but when I noticed what we were talking about, I even thought that everyone would wear pants and move more around the stage. I put more emphasis on corporeality.

Speaking of concepts, I am curious about how the fusion of the musical and textual part looks with graphics, for which the Polish artist, Zbyszek Bielak, is responsible.

We have known Zbigniew for many years and we have learned to work with each other. When I compose and write lyrics, I like to have a clear outline of what the album will be about. That is why I need some starting points, such as cover and title, quite quickly. I don't want to lie, but I think we've already prepared everything before the recordings. Therefore, I hope that when I finish the tour after the tour, the cover will be ready and I will hang a large print on the wall. Only then will I be sure of the course I have chosen.

And as for the whole graphic design, because we plan to draw for virtually every song, it's organic work. I have now probably more than twenty invented songs, but these can change during further work. And it happens that I rewrite the text, change the title and then it may turn out that the graphics we have are better in line with the previous concept. But sometimes the opposite happens and I compose for drawing. So I am asking Zbigniew to come up with something that is consistent with the outline of my idea, not having a ready text, and then write, looking at the graphic. We do not have a predetermined work system, as I said, a living process.

You've come a long way with Ghost, breaking through the rungs of the rock career and wondering where you would now place yourself and the band? Far to the glass ceiling?

We are evolving, we have probably not reached the ceiling yet. It seems to me that only the next step will decide where we are going. We are getting used to the concept that we are becoming a band playing on large stages and the next, fifth album, which will start the next cycle of this evolution, will show whether we really deserve it or not.

Historically, many rock bands made a huge leap forward on the fifth album, such as Metallica or Iron Maiden. We at Prequelle have not done anything like this yet, but no one is surprised that we are playing here on the Spodek stage, that we fit here. And, going to our concert, you are aware that for the price of the ticket you will get everything you expect, I can guarantee it. Once you get out of the club into the hall, you have to give the audience something more, you can't go on looking and play like a small band that is lucky and that can't cope on the big stage. Then you have to do more and not stand out from bands that have been practicing it for years.

Just like Behemoth, who booked the largest halls for the recent tour in Poland.

You still have to. Believe that you can, that you can. For years, there has been an opinion that there is no one to replace old rock scene stunts who are slowly retiring. Because it doesn't work that suddenly the little ones become big. Or, on the other hand, that those who have been on stage for thirty years deserve the best place on the festival poster just because they have a long experience. And it's not the years of playing that are a measure of whether you are good or not. I remember the outrage over Avenged Sevenfold who were supposed to play Download after well-deserved bands that have been operating for decades. But so what if they play better concerts? This is how it should look like.

Tell me, do you feel relieved that after so many years you can take off the mask and officially perform during, even our conversation, under your real name?

To be honest, I feel completely detached from my stage character, and today even more than before. Maybe I'm not an abstainer, but I won't go to the club after the concert to pour a whole bottle of something stronger, and that probably would be expected from what I do on stage. Sometimes I also feel like I'm stuck in a limbo, because people expect a set of specific behaviors from me, observed at the concert, which sometimes is a bit tiring. That is why I insist that when material about me or the band appears, that it should be accompanied by photos of the band or Cardinal or Papa, not mine.

Because you, Tobias Forge, are not a member of the band.

Exactly. I don't want myself on posters, just like George Lucas does not appear on Star Wars advertising materials. I created a world, but I'm not part of it.

You've roughly thought of the band's mythology around a decade ago, but I guess the various circumstances and realities of the music industry require you to constantly change.

I couldn't think of all this ten years ago. I cut and developed individual ideas on a regular basis. Today, our mythology is also created by fans. Ghost is not just mine anymore. Maybe I came up with this and supervises the whole undertaking, but I don't expect that everyone involved, especially the audience, will follow me blindly. That is why what I do requires due attention from me.

GWIAZDY.wp.pl

(LOVED the support for Nergal!!)

#Tobias Forge #Tobias Interview #The Band Ghost #Ghost Band

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jmsa1287 · 4 years

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Bold & Beautiful, 'The New Pope' Leans into its Soapiness

a bit disappointed with the return of one of my favorite shows from the last decade!

It's been three years since "The Young Pope" made a splash and became a surprise cultural hit. The show, created by Oscar-winning Italian auteur Paolo Sorrentino ("Youth," "The Great Beauty"), came at just the right time, shortly after Donald Trump was elected President of the United States in 2016. The surrealist program, which aired on HBO in the U.S., followed the sexy Lenny Belardo/Pope Pius XIII (played by a magnificent Jude Law), the first American pope, through a twisted journey of megalomania and power, unexpectedly echoing some of the worst fears people had about the U.S.'s new leader.

Sorrentino wrote the show while Barack Obama was still in office but with the shock of the 2016 election and the newly appointed Trump at the forefront of everyone's mind, it was hard to not fuse the reality TV star turned Commander-in-Chief with Law's Lenny, a sharp-tongued New Yorker ready to reshape the Catholic Church in his regressive vision. "The Young Pope" was only boosted by Sorrentino's intriguing sensibility of storytelling, blending bizarre images and pop music with holy images of the Vatican. (Diane Keaton, who played Sister Mary and raised Lenny, wearing a t-shirt that reads "I'm a virgin but this is an old shirt" will be forever burned in my memory.) The filmmaker also directed and wrote or co-wrote all ten episodes of "The Young Pope," making it a singular vision about Catholicism and power in the wrong hands.

The show also had a pretty resolute ending, (spoilers ahead!) where Lenny collapses and seemingly dies at the end of the final episode. But, in this current TV landscape, nothing is really over and Sorrentino is diving back into his sick, sad, world of the Catholic Church. "The New Pope," which hits HBO Monday, is a continuation of "The Young Pope" but is one of the few — if not only — shows that feels like a true sequel rather than a second season of television. We learn that Lenny did not die but is in a coma and in need of a heart transplant. The Vatican is at odds on what to do; the pontiff is not dead but is not capable of leading the Catholic Church. The conniving Cardinal Angelo Voiello (Silvio Orlando reprising his wonderful role), the pope's Secretary of State, is determined to elect a shadow pope in order to finally gain full control of the Holy See.

Sorrentino again helms his new project, directing all nine episodes of "The New Pope" as well as having writing credits. And, again, he brings along his strange filmmaking style, creating one of the best opening credit sequences in some time; most episodes begin with a giant multi-color cross that acts as a neon strobe light with sexy nuns dance provocatively around it while the band Sofi Tukker's "Good Time Girl" blasts. Unfortunately, "The New Pope" often feels like style over substance. Sorrentino either needed more time to develop this new story or didn't have enough ideas to justify nine hours. The new season also assumes that the viewer remembers the minutia of "The Young Pope" (subplots and minor characters). That's a big ask in 2020 when the average TV watcher has seen so much in the last three years and brain space for TV is at an all-time low. "The New Pope" takes a while to get where it is going, too. As the trailers suggest, the titular new pope is played by John Malkovich. But John Brannox /Pope John Paul III doesn't appear in the show until the third episode, which may be understandably frustrating for some viewers. Law, too, is mostly absent from the season except in dream sequences and surreal moments when he appears to guide certain characters during pivotal moments. Indeed, "The New Pope" is a different story that explores many of the same themes as "The Young Pope" but it's less exciting and vital this time around. The drama also leans into being a soap opera, a bad move given how cerebral the show is. Characters are constantly switching sides, backstabbing each other, and there is a possible murder plot at the center of the new show. "The Young Pope" never felt soapy, but "The New Pope" sometimes feels closer to "Empire" than its first installment.

Lenny was a ruthless tyrant who had a vision and Law indulged in the extremities of that character. Malkovich's John is harder to read and thus harder to relate to and understand his motives. We do know that the root of his faith and his actions stem from the sudden death of his twin brother, Adam. This pontiff is mostly soft-spoken, contemplative and less direct about where he wants to take the Catholic Church and deal with the institution's dilemmas. It's been a wild 12 months for the cinematic expanded universe of popes with Fernando Meirelles's "The Two Popes" recently hitting Netflix. That film, about two real-life popes (Pope Benedict XVI, played by Anthony Hopkins, and Pope Francis, played by Jonathan Pryce) came a bit under fire for avoiding examining the Catholic Church's failure to address the epidemic of sexual abuse. Sorrentino doesn't shy away in "The New Pope," often having characters discuss the abuse as well as also homosexuality and gay priests. "The New Pope" will not gain many newcomers but those who enjoyed "The Young Pope" will likely stick around for Sorrentino and his bonkers vision. The show is so visually captivating and will probably remain to be one of the strangest TV shows of 2020, but its tiresome and muddled story prevents it from being as successful as its predecessor.

#tv #the new pope #hbo #paolo Sorrentino #jude law #john malkovich #the young pope

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pamphletstoinspire · 5 years

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Hell Is Real — and It Isn’t Empty

Bishop Robert Barron, the auxiliary bishop of Los Angeles and a pioneer of online evangelism, is hardly prone to controversy. Yet the telegenic prelate stirred something of a firestorm back in June that continues to spill ink today. In fact, it isn’t a new debate at all. Commenting on the Gospel reading for June 25 (Matthew 7), Bishop Barron noted that, “from time immemorial,” people have asked who will be saved and who will be damned. In response, Barron argues:

The official answer of the Church is that we don’t know. We are clearly warned about the real possibility of damnation. We do indeed know that there are many in heaven, for the saints are formally declared to be so. But there are no anti-saints in the Church; there is no one whom the Church has formally declared to be a denizen of Hell.

Therefore, without succumbing for a moment to anything-goes presumption, we are permitted to hope that all people might be saved. Indeed, St. Paul writes to Timothy: “God wants all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.”

Bishop Barron’s meditation was widely compared to a famed (or infamous) question posed by Swiss theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar: “Dare we hope that all men be saved?” (Barron is a well-known fan of von Balthasar’s.)

Barron is also by no means the first widely respected prelate to flirt with a kind of universalism. The great Avery Cardinal Dulles also claimed that orthodox Catholics may answer von Balthasar’s question in the affirmative. Before him, St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross — widely known by her secular name, Edith Stein — postulated something similar. Her argument goes like this: if God loves everyone (which we know he does), and if everyone can open themselves up to his love (which we know they can), then it’s possible to hope that God will find ways of outsmarting human resistance to him.

Yet, if one thinks that to “hope that all men be saved” means that everyone who has ever lived will evade hell, I would argue that this position is contrary to Holy Scripture, Holy Tradition, magisterial teaching, and personal revelations to saintly Catholics through the centuries.

First, Scripture. Jesus and the authors of the New Testament mention hell more than a few times, and some of these verses certainly seem to suggest it’s populated. Jesus tells us that the way to destruction is wide and easy. (Matthew 7:13-14) Elsewhere, he speaks of sheep and goats, the latter being destined for everlasting punishment. (Matthew 25:31-46) In Luke’s Gospel, he warns: “Depart from me, all you workers of iniquity. There you will weep and gnash your teeth.” (13:27-28) The Book of Revelation teaches: “But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars—they will be consigned to the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death.” (21:8) Are we to interpret all of these warnings as empty threats — as if, in this one case, our Lord will not follow through on his word?

There is also consensus among the early Church Fathers about hell being populated. St. Ignatius of Antioch declared that “corrupters of families will not inherit the kingdom of God… A man become so foul will depart into unquenchable fire: and so will anyone who listens to him.” The second epistle of Pope St. Clement I reads: “If we neglect his commandments, nothing will rescue us from eternal punishment.” St. Justin Martyr likewise taught that “we believe that they who live wickedly and do not repent will be punished in everlasting fire.” St. Irenaeus wrote that God will “send the spiritual forces of wickedness, and the angels who transgressed and became apostates, and the impious, unjust, lawless, and blasphemous among men into everlasting fire.”

Such consensus is also found in magisterial teaching. The Councils of Lyon I (1245), Lyon II (1274), and Florence (1439), as well as Pope Benedict XII’s bull Benedictus Deus (1336), teach that everyone who dies in a state of mortal sin suffers eternal punishment in Hell. Several local medieval councils also state that some who died in a state of sin have been punished by eternal damnation. The Catechism (CCC §1022, 1035) affirms this teaching.

Finally, many saints and other Catholics have received visions of hell as populated. Among these are St. Teresa of Avila, Servant of God Lucy of Fatima, Blessed Catherine Emmerich, St. John Bosco, and St. Faustina Kowalska. Lucy of Fatima described “a vast sea of fire. Plunged in this fire, we saw the demons and the souls” of the damned. St. Faustina meanwhile wrote of the tortures suffered by all the damned together, but that is not the end of their sufferings. There are special tortures destined for particular souls. These are the torments of the senses. Each soul undergoes terrible and indescribable sufferings, related to the manner in which it has sinned.

The question “dare we hope…?” might best be classified as a useful theological exercise, but we simply lack the evidence to answer with a definite “Yes.” The famous phrase of the Fatima Prayer, “lead all souls to heaven,” should probably best be interpreted to mean all souls alive right now, who could certainly exhibit supernatural faith in Christ at any point prior to death. The challenge for every individual person, from first-century Palestine to 21st-century America remains the same: which path will you choose?

BY: CASEY CHALK

From: https://www.pamphletstoinspire.com/

#hell is real

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bountyofbeads · 5 years

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Jeffrey Epstein and When to Take Conspiracies Seriously https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/13/opinion/jeffrey-epstein-suicide.html

When you have the #POTUS pushing conspiracy theories about the former president we are in DANGEROUS territory. The #ClintonBodyCount is being pushed by Russia and bots. We can't jump to conclusions until we have the facts. BEWARE

Jeffrey Epstein and When to Take Conspiracies Seriously

Sometimes conspiracy theories point toward something worth investigating. A few point toward the truth.

By Ross Douthat | Published August 13, 2019 | New York Times | Posted August 13, 2019 |

The challenge in thinking about a case like the suspicious suicide of Jeffrey Epstein, the supposed “billionaire” who spent his life acquiring sex slaves and serving as a procurer to the ruling class, can be summed up in two sentences. Most conspiracy theories are false. But often some of the things they’re trying to explain are real.

Conspiracy theories are usually false because the people who come up with them are outsiders to power, trying to impose narrative order on a world they don’t fully understand — which leads them to imagine implausible scenarios and impossible plots, to settle on ideologically convenient villains and assume the absolute worst about their motives, and to imagine an omnicompetence among the corrupt and conniving that doesn’t actually exist.

Or they are false because the people who come up with them are insiders trying to deflect blame for their own failings, by blaming a malign enemy within or an evil-genius rival for problems that their own blunders helped create.

Or they are false because the people pushing them are cynical manipulators and attention-seekers trying to build a following who don’t care a whit about the truth.

For all these reasons serious truth-seekers are predisposed to disbelieve conspiracy theories on principle, and journalists especially are predisposed to quote Richard Hofstadter on the “paranoid style” whenever they encounter one — an instinct only sharpened by the rise of Donald Trump, the cynical conspiracist par excellence.

But this dismissiveness can itself become an intellectual mistake, a way to sneer at speculation while ignoring an underlying reality that deserves attention or investigation. Sometimes that reality is a conspiracy in full, a secret effort to pursue a shared objective or conceal something important from the public. Sometimes it’s a kind of unconscious connivance, in which institutions and actors behave in seemingly concerted ways because of shared assumptions and self-interest. But in either case, an admirable desire to reject bad or wicked theories can lead to a blindness about something important that these theories are trying to explain.

Here are some diverse examples. Start with U.F.O. theories, a reliable hotbed of the first kind of conspiracizing — implausible popular stories about hidden elite machinations.

It is simple wisdom to assume that any conspiratorial Fox Mulder-level master narrative about little gray men or lizard people is rubbish. Yet at the same time it is a simple fact that the U.F.O. era began, in Roswell, N.M., with a government lie intended to conceal secret military experiments; it is also a simple fact, lately reported in this very newspaper, that the military has been conducting secret studies of unidentified-flying-object incidents that continue to defy obvious explanations.

So the correct attitude toward U.F.O.s cannot be a simple Hofstadterian dismissiveness about the paranoia of the cranks. Instead, you have to be able to reject outlandish theories and acknowledge a pattern of government lies and secrecy around a weird, persistent, unexplained feature of human experience — which we know about in part because the U.F.O. conspiracy theorists keep banging on about their subject. The wild theories are false; even so, the secrets and mysteries are real.

Another example: The current elite anxiety about Russia’s hand in the West’s populist disturbances, which reached a particularly hysterical pitch with the pre-Mueller report collusion coverage, is a classic example of how conspiracy theories find a purchase in the supposedly sensible center — in this case, because their narrative conveniently explains a cascade of elite failures by blaming populism on Russian hackers, moneymen and bots.

And yet: Every conservative who rolls her or his eyes at the “Russia hoax” is in danger of dismissing the reality that there is a Russian plot against the West — an organized effort to use hacks, bots and rubles to sow discord in the United States and Western Europe. This effort is far weaker and less consequential than the paranoid center believes, it doesn’t involve fanciful “Trump has been a Russian asset since the ’80s” machinations … but it also isn’t something that Rachel Maddow just made up. The hysteria is overdrawn and paranoid; even so, the Russian conspiracy is real.

A third example: Marianne Williamson’s long-shot candidacy for the Democratic nomination has elevated the holistic-crunchy critique of modern medicine, which often shades into a conspiratorial view that a dark corporate alliance is actively conspiring against American health, that the medical establishment is consciously lying to patients about what might make them well or sick. Because this narrative has given anti-vaccine fervor a huge boost, there’s understandable desire among anti-conspiracists to hold the line against anything that seems like a crankish or quackish criticism of the medical consensus.

But if you aren’t somewhat paranoid about how often corporations cover up the dangers of their products, and somewhat paranoid about how drug companies in particular influence the medical consensus and encourage overprescription — well, then I have an opioid crisis you might be interested in reading about. You don’t need the centralized conspiracy to get a big medical wrong turn; all it takes is the right convergence of financial incentives with institutional groupthink. Which makes it important to keep an open mind about medical issues that are genuinely unsettled, even if the people raising questions seem prone to conspiracy-think. The medical consensus is generally a better guide than crankishness; even so, the tendency of cranks to predict medical scandals before they’re recognized is real.

Finally, a fourth example, circling back to Epstein: the conspiracy theories about networks of powerful pedophiles, which have proliferated with the internet and peaked, for now, with the QAnon fantasy among Trump supporters.

I say fantasy because the details of the QAnon narrative are plainly false: Donald Trump is not personally supervising an operation against “deep state” child sex traffickers any more than my 3-year-old is captaining a pirate ship.

But the premise of the QAnon fantasia, that certain elite networks of influence, complicity and blackmail have enabled sexual predators to exploit victims on an extraordinary scale — well, that isn’t a conspiracy theory, is it? That seems to just be true.

And not only true of Epstein and his pals. As I’ve written before, when I was starting my career as a journalist I sometimes brushed up against people peddling a story about a network of predators in the Catholic hierarchy — not just pedophile priests, but a self-protecting cabal above them — that seemed like a classic case of the paranoid style, a wild overstatement of the scandal’s scope. I dismissed them then as conspiracy theorists, and indeed they had many of conspiracism’s vices — above all, a desire to believe that the scandal they were describing could be laid entirely at the door of their theological enemies, liberal or traditional.

But on many important points and important names, they were simply right.

Likewise with the secular world’s predators. Imagine being told the scope of Harvey Weinstein’s alleged operation before it all came crashing down — not just the ex-Mossad black ops element but the possibility that his entire production company also acted as a procurement-and-protection operation for one of its founders. A conspiracy theory, surely! Imagine being told all we know about the late, unlamented Epstein — that he wasn’t just a louche billionaire (wasn’t, indeed, a proper billionaire at all) but a man mysteriously made and mysteriously protected who ran a pedophile island with a temple to an unknown god and plotted his own “Boys From Brazil” endgame in plain sight of his Harvard-D.C.-House of Windsor pals. Too wild to be believed!

And yet.

Where networks of predation and blackmail are concerned, then, the distinction I’m drawing between conspiracy theories and underlying realities weakens just a bit. No, you still don’t want to listen to QAnon, or to our disgraceful president when he retweets rants about the #ClintonBodyCount. But just as Cardinal Theodore McCarrick’s network of clerical allies and enablers hasn’t been rolled up, and the fall of Bryan Singer probably didn’t get us near the rancid depths of Hollywood’s youth-exploitation racket, we clearly haven’t gotten to the bottom of what was going on with Epstein.

So to worry too much about online paranoia outracing reality is to miss the most important journalistic task, which is the further unraveling of scandals that would have seemed, until now, too implausible to be believed.

Yes, by all means, resist the tendency toward unfounded speculation and cynical partisan manipulation. But also recognize that in the case of Jeffrey Epstein and his circle, the conspiracy was real.

Epstein Suicide Conspiracies Show How Our Information System Is Poisoned

With each news cycle, the false-information system grows more efficient.

By Charlie Warzel | Published August 11, 2019 | New York Times | Posted August 13, 2019 "|

Even on an internet bursting at the seams with conspiracy theories and hyperpartisanship, Saturday marked a new chapter in our post-truth, choose-your-own-reality crisis story.

It began Saturday morning, when news broke that the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein had apparently hanged himself in a Manhattan jail. Mr. Epstein’s death, coming just one day after court documents from one of his accusers were unsealed, prompted immediate suspicion from journalists, politicians and the usual online fringes.

Within minutes, Trump appointees, Fox Business hosts and Twitter pundits revived a decades-old conspiracy theory, linking the Clinton family to supposedly suspicious deaths. #ClintonBodyCount and #ClintonCrimeFamily trended on Twitter. Around the same time, an opposite hashtag — #TrumpBodyCount — emerged, focused on President Trump’s decades-old ties to Mr. Epstein. Each hashtag was accompanied by GIFs and memes picturing Mr. Epstein with the Clintons or with Mr. Trump to serve as a viral accusation of foul play.

The dueling hashtags and their attendant toxicity are a grim testament to our deeply poisoned information ecosystem — one that’s built for speed and designed to reward the most incendiary impulses of its worst actors. It has ushered in a parallel reality unrooted in fact and helped to push conspiratorial thinking into the cultural mainstream. And with each news cycle, the system grows more efficient, entrenching its opposing camps. The poison spreads.

Mr. Epstein’s apparent suicide is, in many ways, the post-truth nightmare scenario. The sordid story contains almost all of the hallmarks of stereotypical conspiratorial fodder: child sex-trafficking, powerful global political leaders, shadowy private jet flights, billionaires whose wealth cannot be explained. As a tale of corruption, it is so deeply intertwined with our current cultural and political rot that it feels, at times, almost too on the nose. The Epstein saga provides ammunition for everyone, leading one researcher to refer to Saturday’s news as the “Disinformation World Cup.”

At the heart of the online fiasco is Twitter, which has come to largely program the political conversation and much of the press. Twitter is magnetic during huge breaking stories; news junkies flock to it for up-to-the-second information. But early on, there’s often a vast discrepancy between the attention that is directed at the platform and the available information about the developing story. That gap is filled by speculation and, via its worst users, rumormongering and conspiracy theories.

On Saturday, Twitter’s trending algorithms hoovered up the worst of this detritus, curating, ranking and then placing it in the trending module on the right side of its website. Despite being a highly arbitrary and mostly “worthless metric,” trending topics on Twitter are often interpreted as a vague signal of the importance of a given subject.

There’s a decent chance that President Trump was using Twitter’s trending module when he retweeted a conspiratorial tweet tying the Clintons to Epstein’s death. At the time of Mr. Trump’s retweet, “Clintons” was the third trending topic in the United States. The specific tweet amplified by the president to his more than 60 million followers was prominently featured in the “Clintons” trending topic. And as Ashley Feinberg at Slate pointed out in June, the president appears to have a history of using trending to find and interact with tweets.

On Saturday afternoon, a computational propaganda researcher, Renée DiResta, noted that the media’s close relationship with Twitter creates an incentive for propagandists and partisans to artificially inflate given hashtags. Almost as soon as #ClintonBodyCount began trending on Saturday, journalists took note and began lamenting the spread of this conspiracy theory — effectively turning it into a news story, and further amplifying the trend. “Any wayward tweet … can be elevated to an opinion worth paying attention to,” Ms. DiResta wrote. “If you make it trend, you make it true.”

That our public conversation has been uploaded onto tech platforms governed by opaque algorithms adds even more fodder for the conspiratorial-minded. Anti-Trump Twitter pundits with hundreds of thousands of followers blamed “Russian bots” for the Clinton trending topic. On the far right, pro-Trump sites like the Gateway Pundit (with a long track record of amplifying conspiracy theories) suggested that Twitter was suppressing and censoring the Clinton hashtags.

Where does this leave us? Nowhere good.

It’s increasingly apparent that our information delivery systems were not built for our current moment — especially with corruption and conspiracy at the heart of our biggest national news stories (Epstein, the Mueller report, mass shootings), and the platforms themselves functioning as petri dishes for outlandish, even dangerous conspiracy theories to flourish. The collision of these two forces is so troubling that an F.B.I. field office recently identified fringe conspiracy theories as a domestic terrorist threat. In this ecosystem, the media is frequently outmatched and, despite its best intentions, often acts as an amplifier for baseless claims, even when trying its best to knock them down.

Saturday’s online toxicity may have felt novel, but it’s part of a familiar cycle: What cannot be easily explained is answered by convenient untruths. The worst voices are rewarded for growing louder and gain outsize influence directing narratives. With each cycle, the outrage and contempt for the other build. Each extreme becomes certain its enemy has manipulated public perception; each side is the victim, but each is also, inexplicably, winning. The poison spreads.

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confrontingbabble-on · 6 years

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The only god that the church listens to...is money...! They have to be hit hard...in their bank account...! Stop funding immediately...institutionally protected child abusers...!

““The Grand Jury will never be able to determine how many boys Father Francis P. Rogers raped and sexually abused in his more than 50 years as a priest,” noted the earlier report on sexual assault committed by an unholy host of priests. “Nor, probably, will we or anyone else be able to calculate the number of boys the Archdiocese could have saved from sexual abuse had it investigated potential victims rather than protecting itself from scandal and shielding this sexually abusive priest. We have learned of at least three victims who we believe would not have been abused had the Archdiocese taken decisive action when it learned of Fr. Rogers’ “familiarity” with boys.

We find that the Archdiocese received a litany of verifiable reports beginning shortly after Fr. Rogers’ 1946 ordination and continuing for decades about his serious misconduct with, and abuse of, boys. ‘The report went on,” One of his victims described waking up intoxicated in the priest’s bed, opening his eyes to see Fr. Rogers, three other priests, and a seminarian surrounding him. Two of the priests ejaculated on him while Fr. Rogers masturbated himself.

Then Fr. Rogers sucked on the victim’s penis, pinched his nipples, kissed him, and rubbed his stubbly beard all over him. The former altar boy, whom Fr. Rogers began abusing when he was about 12 years old, remains haunted by memories of the abuse more than 35 years later. “The report concluded, “Father Rogers’ file demonstrates that the Archdiocese responded to reports of his crimes with a shameful half-century of transfers, excuses, and finger-wagging threats that did nothing to deter the priest from indulging his self-acknowledged ‘weakness’ and that exposed every boy in his path to the very real and horrible possibility of sexual abuse.”

At no point did a church official notify law enforcement about crimes that should have put Rogers behind bars for years. He instead remained at liberty and spent this final days in the comfort of Villa Saint Joseph, a diocesan residence for priests who are sidelined or retired as sexual predators.

“Father Rogers was never punished or held to account for his unchecked sexual predations or the devastation they caused,” the 2005 grand jury report notes. “He was permitted to retire in 1995, his ‘good name’ intact. The message clearly communicated by the Archdiocese’s actions—to victims and abusers alike—was that it would protect the reputation of its priests at all costs.”

Thanks to a life insurance policy and perhaps some modest savings, Rogers left $14,410 to the church. The money should have gone into an Archdiocese and Catholic Human Services account. Unbeknownst to the church, it was instead diverted along with hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations and bequests into an account at the Sharon Savings Bank controlled by the rector at Villa Saint Joseph, Monsignor William Dombrow.

When the folks at Sharon Savings noticed a number of payments from what was supposedly a church account to Harrah’s Philadelphia Casino & Racetrack, they alerted the archdiocese.

The same archdiocese that never held Rogers and an unholy host of other monsters to account for “unchecked sexual predations,” was not about to let these bank checks go unchecked. A spokesman for the archdiocese described a response to stolen money such as had never been elicited by reports of raped children, including an assault in a confessional and forced oral sex followed by holy water as a mouth rinse.

“Last summer, the Archdiocese of Philadelphia was alerted to irregularities concerning a bank account connected to Villa Saint Joseph in Darby, Pennsylvania,” the spokesman said. “At that time, the matter was referred to law enforcement by the Archdiocese and Monsignor William Dombrow’s faculties as well as his administrative responsibilities were restricted.”

Compare that to what the 2005 grand jury report says the archdiocese did upon receiving complaints about priests sexually assaulting youngsters:

“Not only did Church officials not report the crimes, they went even further, by persuading parents not to involve law enforcement.”

The church files contained allegations that had been lodged against 169 priests. Not all of the hundreds of victims were boys. A priest had arranged for an abortion for an 11-year-old girl he had repeatedly raped. Another girl had been sexually assaulted while in traction in the hospital.

But those were just kids. Money was money.

In April of 2017, Dombrow was charged in federal court with multiple counts of wire fraud. The criminal complaint described the sin that had prompted the church to action:

“Defendant William A. Dombrow used these funds for his own personal use, knowing that the monies were owned by the Archdiocese and were intended for use by the Archdiocese. Dombrow did so without notifying the Archdiocese of any of his purchases or withdrawals, and without advising the Archdiocese that the Sharon Savings Bank account existed or that the funds had been deposited for the benefit of the Archdiocese as the intended recipient.”

Imagine what the judge might have said had he been sentencing the likes of Rogers for raping dozens of children. Imagine the sentence a predatory priest might have received considering that the judge gave a 78-year-old embezzling priest eight months in prison.

On February 20, Dombrow surrendered as ordered to begin serving his sentence. He remained Inmate 76001-066 at Ashland Federal Correctional Institution in Kentucky this week, as the state of Pennsylvania released a grand jury report on predatory priests in six other dioceses. The new report significantly differed from the 2005 one on Philadelphia only in the larger number of perps and victims.

“We heard the testimony of dozens of witnesses concerning clergy sex abuse," the new report says. “We subpoenaed, and reviewed, half a million pages of internal diocesan documents. They contained credible allegations against over three hundred predator priests. Over one thousand child victims were identifiable, from the church’s own records. We believe that the real number—of children whose records were lost, or who were afraid ever to come forward—is in the thousands. “

One priest had taken it upon himself to resign in 1990 after three allegations of sexual abuse were filed against him. Church officials in Allentown wrote him a recommendation for a job at Disney World, where he worked for 18 years.

“Priests were raping little boys and girls, and the men of God who were responsible for them not only did nothing: they hid it all,” the new report says. “For decades.”

The 2015 reports notes that the higher-ups have never been held accountable for their inaction.

“Monsignors, auxiliary bishops, bishops, archbishops, cardinals have mostly been protected; many, including some named in this report, have been promoted,” the grand jury found, “Until that changes, we think it is too early to close the book on the Catholic Church sex scandal.”

The senior clerics may be seeking to protect not just the predator priests, but also themselves, for they could be held criminally responsible for failing to report child abuse.

If the Pope is as much on the side of the victims as the Vatican insisted in a belated statement condemning the assaults detailed in the latest grand jury report as “criminal and morally reprehensible,” he could order church officials in Pennsylvania to cease supporting the statute of limitations....“

https://www.thedailybeast.com/catholic-church-shielded-priests-who-raped-boys-but-it-helped-lock-up-a-priest-who-swiped-bucks

#atheist #agnostic #secular humanist #skeptic #Religion #Christianity #religious insanity

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ehyeh-joshua · 5 years

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@dracorinismoi:

The reply got way too long to do as a reply...

Orginal statement:

“Well, if you look at Christians in Nazi Germany and the Roman Catholic Church history you should see that at some points in history, our ancestors had been on the same level as Islam. Catholics, Arians and Calvinists all had their share of bloody history. Just because it’s not happening now doesn’t mean we can just deny it happened. Yes, Islam has always been evil but that’s NOT my point.”

Ok, let’s start with Nazi Germany. This is going to get long, I can write volumes on the Third Reich. I will try to be concise.

First of all - the definition of Jew under Nazi law was anyone who had three or four Jewish grandparents was a Jew. Under that definition, the overwhelming majority of the other 5+ million victims of the Holocaust were Christian, and most of them being Catholic.

Which leads to the second point; Protestant Christianity had a schism with faithful Christians denouncing the “German Christians”, while Catholic Bishops were banning Catholics from joining the Nazi party in the lead-up to the 1933 elections, Catholic leadership were warning about them from the 20s onwards, Catholics were near banned from holding civil service offices and thousands of Catholics were put into concentration camps in 1933, Catholic schools were forced to take down iconography and put up pictures of Hitler, Hitler Youth events were timetabled to coincide with church services and therefore force children to stop attending church, and only signed the 1933 concordat because of Bishop’s fears for the safety of the church in Germany (Cardinal Pacelli - future Pius XII - stated that he signed the concordat with a pistol to his head) Hitler forced Bishops to swear oaths of fealty, and stated publicly in 1942 that the concordat had never meant anything and that he intended to abolish it after the war, and did absolutely nothing about the 70 violations of the concordat that Pacelli brought up. At Dachau a dedicated barracks for the internment of Catholic Priests was set up, Cardinal Faulhaber had an assassination attempt made on his life, Goebbels banned the Church from using paper in 1941, in 1936 Hitler authorised children being removed from Church schools to be forced into sun-worship rituals, Bishop Clemens August Graf von Galen declared in 1937 that Hitler was conducting a war against the Church, at the outbreak of war in Poland church meetings were banned temporarily, over three hundred monasteries, convents and church buildings were ransacked throughout Nazi government, Rosenberg - a neo-pagan, noted for his hatred of Christianity, Hitler placed as leader of culture and education envisioned the obliteration of Christianity, with the Bible and crucifixes being banned, all churches in Germany to be controlled directly by the Reich, and the cross to be replaced by the swastika.

Contrast this with the Nazi position on Islam, which is best archtyped by examining the SS (NOTE: SS, not Wermacht) formations set up specifically to be Islamic, after Himmler, who was fascinated by Islam and used some Islamic theories in SS methodology modified Nazi racial theory to include the totally non-Ayran Turkish background Muslims of former Ottoman Empire territories in the Balkans.

1st, 13 Waffen-Gebirgs-Division der SS 'Handschar' - a division-strength unit composed purely of Croatian Muslims, and 2nd, the Skanderbeg 21st Waffen SS division - another division composed of Albanian Muslims. Both of these were instrumental in prosecuting the Holocaust in the Balkans, responsible for the deaths of 90% of Yugoslavian Jews.

Next, Hitler personally invited the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem to meet him several times, and he was recognised as Fuhrer of the Islamic world, sharing in common the conviction that Jews were the most dangerous threat, and spent much time on Nazi propaganda radio broadcasts to the Arab world supporting the Nazis (the price being the liquidation of Jews in Israel) and when Adolf Eichman tried to negotiate the transfer of 5000 Jewish children with the British government in exchange for prisoners of war, the Mufti personally intervened requesting the SS kill them, and they were murdered in Poland, and he personally admonished the camp guards at Auschwitz to work more efficiently, proclaiming he wanted all the Jews killed.

I could go on. Christians were persecuted by the Nazis from 1933 onwards, with tens of thousands imprisoned in the pre-war era, churches destroyed and the Catholics blackmailed into signing a piece of paper that, just like most treaties Hitler signed, wasn’t worth the paper it was written on. By contrast, Islam had the support of the Nazis as fellow haters of Jews (and Christianity by extension) and had Nazi ideologies redefined, even up to allowing the racially pure Ayran SS to be extended to include Muslims.

This pattern holds - religious conflicts? Christian internal conflicts are small, and mostly put to agree-to-disagree and strongly worded letters, with only rare bloodshed. (mostly used by the state with the Church being caught and used as a tool) By contrast, Islam is inherently divisive, and such divisions turn almost immediately to violence, and have done so since Mohammed. On average, at least one Muslim will kill at least one Muslim every single day because of religious divisions. Most of the time the casualty rate is far higher, given the propensity to commit suicide attacks with explosives.

Slavery? Slavery is something practiced almost universally - the only groups to totally reject it have been disproportionately white, male and Christian. By contrast, the Quran supports slavery - men are told they may capture slaves, and have sex with them if women, more times than they are told to pray five times a day. (a belief found in the Hadiths) To this day, Islam uses slaves, and treats them brutally often working slaves to death. And, if you have male and female slaves, you may force them to copulate to suit goals as you see fit. By contrast, the Torah’s commands on slaves is most easily summarised as treat them as your own family; I estimate that at least a fifth of people in the Modern West would be better off as slaves to a Torah observant person than they are now.

Sex? no group within mainstream Christianity has ever endorsed polygamy, while the few non-Christian heretics who did support it quietly hide it now; on the basis of numerous references from throughout the Scriptures and biology, I maintain that the chief purposes of sex are female pleasure, uniting the couple and procreation, pretty much in that order. (I’ll grant that is a somewhat controversial view) Judaism has maintained for thousands of years that a wife is allowed to divorce her husband for not pleasuring her enough sexually, and that the right to sex belongs to the woman, not the man. By contrast, Mohammed maintained that Allah said he could have as many wives, and fuck them however he wished, while normal Muslims are limited to 4 wives, with domestic abuse commanded as a response to disobedience. Oh, and you can rape a woman in front of her husband if you beat him in battle.

It annoys me exceedingly greatly that people maintain the lie that Christianity is as bad as Islam. The greatest lament about Christianity is not enough people are like Jesus, while the thing I am most grateful for about Islam is that most Muslims are not as evil as Mohammed.

And that’s all I can be bothered to do, since my analysis indicates the probability of this being futile nears 1.

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