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| Awaiting Pope Francis' visit to US, LGBT Catholics and supporters are hopeful | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Sep 19 2015, 06:20 PM (155 Views) | |
| Guest | Sep 19 2015, 06:20 PM Post #1 |
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Awaiting Pope Francis' visit to US, LGBT Catholics and supporters are hopeful It was supposed to be a double celebration — regular Mass at St. Agatha Catholic Church in West Adams and Rosa Manriquez's 63rd birthday. Her oldest daughter was coming, and she couldn't have been happier. Manriquez, a cradle Catholic, is a lector at the nearly century-old parish west of downtown Los Angeles, which means she stands up on Sunday and reads the Scripture. She also reads prayer requests from congregation members, petitions on behalf of, say, a sick friend or the soul of a dead loved one. As Manriquez sifted through the requests that day, one stopped her cold — that the congregation pray in support of religious liberty just as the issue was coming to a head in Kentucky, where Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis will not issue marriage licenses because she believes same-sex unions are against God's will, a matter of "heaven or hell." "I called the celebrating priest over, and I told him, 'I have a problem,'" Manriquez recounted. "He said, 'Let's change the wording.'" They did, crafting a request to pray for everyone's religious liberty. "As we were doing it," Manriquez said, "my daughter, her wife and the baby came into the church. And I saw them." It was Aug. 30, three weeks before Manriquez would head to Philadelphia to see Pope Francis, and suddenly her mission seemed all the more critical: to show the pontiff and the million people expected there that families like hers are just as blessed as anyone else's. Both of Manriquez's daughters are lesbians; both are married; both have children who were baptized in the church; both, she said, "were loved before they were even imagined." But this is a church whose official teaching says being gay is "intrinsically disordered." A church that threw its time and money into the fight against same-sex marriage. That in some parishes denies Communion — the faith's central sacrament — to non-celibate gays, lesbians and transgender people. It also is a church that many hope could be nearing a transition point, tipping toward welcome. Francis has condemned same-sex marriage, but he told reporters after his first foreign trip that, "If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has goodwill, who am I to judge?" The Roman Catholic Church, like other mainstream denominations, has softened some of its most conservative stances in recent years, and Francis has accelerated that process, enough so that many American Catholics believe that he is more socially liberal than reality. Among Catholics who favor same-sex marriage, 49 percent believe that the pope agrees with them, according to a recent study by the Public Religion Research Institute. He doesn't. In recent weeks, Francis has given all priests the authority to forgive women "the sin of abortion" when the Vatican's "Year of Mercy" begins in December. On Sept. 8, he announced a new process to make it cheaper, easier and faster for Catholics to obtain marriage annulments. But don't expect to see same-sex weddings on Catholic Church property, said Father Thomas Reese, senior analyst for the National Catholic Reporter. "That's simply not going to happen. But he's calling for a very different attitude for gays and lesbians, LGBT people. He sees them as our brothers and sisters, as part of our family. ... He wants the church to be more open and welcoming." In many ways, Francis is simply catching up to the women and men who fill the pews in U.S. Catholic churches. According to a recent study by the Pew Research Center, fewer than half of all Catholics in this country believe that "homosexual behavior" is a sin, and they are evenly split — 46 percent to 46 percent — on whether their church should recognize the marriages of lesbian and gay couples. Still, when Manriquez saw her family walk into St. Agatha that recent Sunday, she said, "every one of those mean-hearted pronouncements that my brother popes and bishops said out of ignorance and sometimes fear came back to me." "It was really hard to read from the pulpit," she said. "I started crying. It's not just the pain, it's the anger. ... The fact that my brothers and sisters in the church would rather join hands with Kim Davis than my children — that hurts." A coalition of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Catholics and their supporters wrote to the pope in June, asking him to meet with the LGBT faithful and their families while he is in the U.S. from Sept. 22 to 27. The umbrella group is called Equally Blessed, and it is sending a dozen families on a "pilgrimage" to Philadelphia for Francis' World Meeting of Families. Manriquez is among the pilgrims — so is a couple from Boston, Marianne and Becky Duddy-Burke and their daughters, Emily, 13, and Fini, 12. Marianne Duddy-Burke is executive director of DignityUSA, which advocates for LGBT Catholics. She will be in Philadelphia in her official capacity but also as a "married, lesbian, Catholic mom." Her story, she said, is one that Francis needs to hear. When she and her spouse tried to adopt a child from Latin America in late 2001, they found out that "at the time there was no country in the world where we could have adopted without one of us pretending we were a single parent," Duddy-Burke said. "The sense is that gay and lesbian people aren't morally fit to be parents." So they turned to the U.S. foster care system. The largest adoption agency in their home state of Massachusetts at the time was Catholic Charities. When she called to start the adoption process, Duddy-Burke said, she was told children could not be placed with same-sex couples. With more than 100,000 children nationwide waiting to be adopted, that posture "says to me that the church officials would rather hold on to outdated, prejudiced images of LGBT people rather than considering what's good for kids," she said. "That's tragic." Jorge Mario Bergoglio became Pope Francis on March 13, 2013. Since that time, he has worked to turn the church's focus away from hot-button issues such as abortion and homosexuality and toward matters such as poverty and climate change. His focus on the poor and marginalized makes Duddy-Burke "somewhat hopeful" that the church she loves and was raised in might someday be more openhearted. But she also knows that change in the ancient institution will be slow, if it happens at all. If she could sit down with Pope No. 266, this is what she would tell him: "What I would say is that church teaching and pastoral practice are hurting a lot of people in the church, and it's causing a real crisis. Catholic families have LGBT members. It's really hard to have to think that their faith rejects them or that it requires them to reject someone they love who is LGBT." Seattle Mayor Ed Murray also has seen both warmth and chill emanating from the church that shaped him. Murray was invited to the Vatican in July along with dozens of mayors and California Gov. Jerry Brown for a conference on climate change and human trafficking. Before accepting the invitation, Murray said, his office called Rome because "we wanted to be sure the Vatican knew who they were inviting." Murray is the first married gay man to be elected mayor of a major American city. During the conference, "I did speak about LGBT issues. One person in the Vatican turned to me and said, 'That term hasn't been used here before,'" Murray recounted. "I admire Pope Francis tremendously. I was struck by his warmth and authenticity. His challenge to the church to be a church that lives with those on the margins is very radical." The 60-year-old Irish Catholic became an altar boy in 1962, the last year Mass was celebrated in Latin. Murray calls himself "a practicing Catholic who believes in my faith." He is a regular at several parishes in his leafy, liberal city and calls priests here lifelong friends. But when it came time to marry Michael Shiosaki, his partner of 22 years, Murray turned to St. Mark's Episcopal Cathedral for a church ceremony in 2013. Priests he knew his whole life were not allowed to attend his wedding or the nuptials of any other same-sex couple. One priest friend who has since died sent him a text before the ceremony: "I want to go to your wedding, but I want to die a priest. I hope you understand." http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/awaiting-pope-francis-visit-to-us-lgbt-catholics-and-supporters-are-hopeful/ar-AAemu6C?li=AAa0dzB This is the pope who is like all the rest and still against LGBT rights and same gender marriage. |
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| Erna | Sep 20 2015, 03:19 AM Post #2 |
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She is the worst and most vile of the false Popesses since 1958. |
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| Guest | Sep 20 2015, 01:23 PM Post #3 |
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Why do you say that? |
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| Erna | Sep 20 2015, 01:30 PM Post #4 |
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http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-06-18/pope-francis-calls-new-global-political-authority-save-humanity |
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| Guest | Sep 20 2015, 01:31 PM Post #5 |
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He does get way too political for a pope, and the idea that he 'lives in poverty' as a pope is laughable. :rofl |
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| Guest | Sep 20 2015, 11:23 PM Post #6 |
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Someone on facebook wrote this as a comment on this below article.
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/some-american-catholics-really-don%E2%80%99t-like-pope-francis-here%E2%80%99s-why/ar-AAexX50?li=AAa0dzB When Steven Skojec heard that Jorge Mario Bergoglio had been elected pope, he got a queasy feeling in the pit of his stomach. He can’t say why, exactly — though he follows Vatican politics closely, he didn’t know much about Francis then. But as he watched the new Catholic leader greet the crowds from his office computer in Manassas, Va., he was filled with dread. “I felt a discontinuity,” he said. “A disruption.” At first, he didn’t want to make too big a deal of it. Though Skojec blogs regularly about Catholicism at the Web site he founded, One-PeterFive (tag line: “Rebuilding Catholic culture. Restoring Catholic tradition.”), he mostly avoided the subject. “I wanted to withhold judgment,” he said. Six months later, he was ready to judge. What really turned Skojec against Francis was the pope’s October 2013 interview in the Jesuit magazine America. Buried in the transcript was a comment, by Francis, that the world’s biggest evils are youth unemployment and loneliness. “That’s a jarring statement . . . when you’re on the front lines of the culture wars, looking at the death toll of abortion,” Skojec said. “There was definitely a sense that this could be trouble.” Among American Catholics, Francis is wildly popular, with an approval rating hovering near 90 percent. The faithful are flocking back to the pews, pollsters say, drawn by the pope’s humility and inclusive message. But a growing number in the church’s conservative wing don’t feel so welcome. Just 45 percent of conservative Catholics have a favorable opinion of Francis, down from 72 percent a year ago. They worry that Francis is loosening the church’s strict teachings on morality (he famously told a prominent Italian atheist that “everyone has his own idea of good and evil” and has said “who am I to judge” when asked about gay priests). They accuse him of deserting them on issues such as abortion and contraception (he has said he avoids those issues because the church has become too “obsessed” with them.) And they say his attacks on capitalism are ill-conceived and amount to a plea for redistribution of wealth — or worse. Those fears make sense to Julie E. Byrne, a Hofstra University professor who studies American Catholics and was raised Catholic. “The so-called bedroom issues have always been important to conservatives, and to Catholic conservatives in particular,” she said. “There’s a sense that the church is the only place holding the line on divorce [and] on adultery.” Though Francis hasn’t changed church doctrine on these issues, he has shown a willingness to loosen the rules on who should receive Communion or forgiveness for their sins. “When Francis lightens up on that,” Byrne says, “people wonder what’s next.” That, in a nutshell, is Skojec’s question. He was raised Catholic, though his parents took him to a modern church. As a young adult, however, he became curious about the more traditional components of his faith. He pored over old encyclicals, he said, and read church history. Today, he and his wife, who run a real estate business, strive to live up to these ideals. They take their seven children to Latin Mass at churches such as St. Mary Mother of God in Northwest Washington. Few parishes offer Latin services, which went out of fashion after Vatican II, the ecumenical council that modernized church doctrine. He has spent his life making hard choices — sticking with his marriage in the moments when things seemed hard and advocating for a variety of what he sees as essential Catholic teachings (particularly the fight against abortion) in his spare time. Francis, he worries, has made it seem like these priorities, the ones he has framed his life around, are no longer central to the church. “He’s giving the impression that he’s changing teachings that cannot be changed,” Skojec said. “He makes it seem like even if the rules on the books can stay the same, but if we change the practice, that’s not a problem. . . . He’s sowing confusion about what we believe.” That worries Skojec, and not just because it means some Catholics now feel free to disregard church doctrine. When people are confused, they may sin without knowing it. And that could reshape their “eternal outcome.” Skojec hears these concerns echoed by friends, by priests whose parishioners think adulterers can now receive Communion and by professors who wonder about what they’ll tell their students. He also dislikes the pope’s focus on economics. Francis’s talk of the poor, his encyclical on climate change and his criticism of capitalism make Catholicism “sound more like a social program. . . . It’s like this dropping away of focus.” That criticism has been echoed in opinion pieces by prominent Catholics in the Wall Street Journal, in free market think tanks, and by business leaders around the world. This summer, the Heartland Institute sent a delegation to Rome to “educate” the pope on climate change (the organization believes that man-made climate change is a myth). The Heritage Foundation warned that the pope has aligned himself “with the far left and has embraced an ideology that would make people poorer and less free.” Even Catholic publications have piled on, in unusually harsh language. A writer for the conservative Catholic publication First Things has called Francis “an ideologue and a meddlesome egoist.” An August church bulletin from the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary in St. Hedwig, Tex., bemoaned the pope’s encyclical Laudato Si, writing that “it’s too bad that he acquired and used phrases that are scientifically unproven and used by the segment of world leaders that strive to ‘control people’ by controlling energy issues usages.” Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke has even suggested it might be necessary to “resist” the Pope’s doctrinal shifts. One of those critics is the Rev. Robert A. Sirico, who heads the Acton Institute, a conservative think tank. Although he applauds the pope’s inclusive approach, he’s skeptical of his economic message. “Pope Francis is not an economist,” he says. “He talks about how his father would bring home work having to do with finance and the economy and he ‘had an allergy to it.’ He just doesn’t understand economics very well.” And really, Sirico says, the Vatican shouldn’t be thinking about markets at all. Its job is to guide people’s spirits, not their purchases. “The church doesn’t profess to be an economic think tank,” Sirico says. “If that’s allowed to persist, it, in effect, dilutes the church’s brand.” Sirico says he has heard echoes of Skojec’s critiques from a wide swath of conservative Catholics. Many, he says, are not anti-Francis exactly. But they are confused by his message. Francis often speaks off the cuff, without much preparation. “But as the pope, he speaks simultaneously to a wide variety of cultures and context,” he says. “In my memory, I’ve never seen the papal spokesman having to walk back as much as this in just two years.” That uncertainty puts conservative Catholics in a tough position. More so than most other lay people, they are invested in the hierarchy of the church and the infallibility of its leaders. When the pope challenges the very core of their beliefs, they don’t know how to react. “Progressives are more interested in the message, the politics,” Sirico says. “But conservatives believe the church needs the pope. So it’s hard when they don’t feel like the pope is an ally.” Skojec grapples with this, too. When he writes that Francis is wrong to suggest that we all have our own definition of good and evil, or that the pope’s position on evangelization is misguided, Skojec’s readers accuse him of leading them to sin because advising against church doctrine is forbidden. But Skojec says they’re wrong. He is simply highlighting the truth of the church. “Popes make mistakes,” he says. “There are good popes and there are bad popes.” Over the past few months, though, he has begun to wonder whether Francis might harm the church more permanently. He has even started to worry that there might be a schism — a break between some Catholics and the Vatican. Experts say that seems unlikely. “American Catholics have always felt that the pope doesn’t understand their situation,” said Kathleen Cummings, who directs the Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism at the University of Notre Dame. “It’s a recurring phenomenon.” In the 1950s, she said, some Catholic schools resisted integrating even after being ordered to do so by Rome. Beginning in the 1960s and 1970s, there was widespread disregard of the church’s teaching on contraception — a trend that continues today. “Conservative Roman Catholics who are really outraged were outraged long before Francis,” she said. “But most Roman Catholics who care, care enough about church unity not to split.” The contrast between what Francis says and how little actual doctrine has changed was on display at a recent panel on marriage, hosted by the Opus Dei-funded Catholic Information Center. About 50 people gathered in the center’s small back chapel to hear Father Antonio Lopez and Nicholas J. Healy lay out the theological reasons why Communion should not be granted to divorced or remarried Catholics. “Marriage is indissolvable,” Lopez told the audience, and they nodded in agreement. To treat it otherwise, he went on, trivializes sex, harms intimacy and fundamentally reshapes our relationship with God. After his talk, a questioner asked whether she would be allowed to disregard the Vatican if it suggested otherwise. A synod of bishops will consider this question in October. Healy brushed off the question. “It would be impossible,” he said. “The fundamentals of the church cannot be changed.”
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| Erna | Sep 21 2015, 02:10 AM Post #7 |
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Every Popess since John XXlll has been a joke and also false, since J XXlll was not elected, someone else was and there was fraud. But the Canaanites wanted JXXlll to assist in their goal of looting and destroying the RC church. BTW, she was the bishopess of Venice, whence the Canaanites originated after they had become the Venetian bankers. From there they spread like cancer to Amsterdam and then to England to start the Bank of England(after they had arranged the murder of King Charles in order to install their agent, William of Orange(who was, btw, a sister). William's first official act was to issue the charter for the Bank of ENgland. |
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| Guest | Sep 21 2015, 10:43 AM Post #8 |
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Tht Pope is still a thing these days? I'll be darn. Reminds me of a hula hoop. Silly and nostalgic. |
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| Guest | Sep 21 2015, 10:59 AM Post #9 |
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The corruption in the Vatican and popes who were horrible people started centuries before any of that. |
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| Erna | Sep 21 2015, 11:08 AM Post #10 |
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Back in the day, a Popess was a Popess!! Paul II (1464-71). Petulant, effeminate and a practising homosexual , Paul would have jumped at the chance of being placed at the head of the annual Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras. It was well-known that Paul spent vast sums of church money on Mardi Gras-like parades, spectaculars, banquets and other "diversions of the Carnival". He slept during the day and spent nights adorning himself with priceless jewellery and frolicking with his numerous boyfriends in the sumptuous rooms of the Vatican. It was said Paul loved all things that glittered and wore a huge sparkling, jewel-encrusted tiara that "outweighed a palace in its worth". Paul also was "into voyeurism and bondage" and liked nothing more than to watch naked men being racked and tortured in the papal dungeons. It was said that during a particularly vigorous "session" on July 26, 1471, Paul died of a heart attack while being sodomised by one of his favourite boys ... Alexander VI (1492-1503) has been described as one of the world's wealthiest men and "the most notorious pope in all history". In his Philosophical Dictionary, Voltaire said Alexander lived like a prince and held wild orgies involving men, women - even animals. It was said Alexander liked to watch - and sometimes participate - as groups of men masturbated while servants "kept score of each man's orgasms". "For the pope greatly admired virility," said Voltaire, "and measured a man's machismo by his ejaculative capacity." After everyone was exhausted, Voltaire said, Alexander distributed prizes of cloaks, boots, caps, and fine silken tunics to those men who produced the most semen ... Pope Julius II (1503-13) has been credited with introducing the Swiss soldiers who still guard the Vatican. To Julius, "religion was not even a hobby" - but it appeared surrounding himself with attractive young men like the virile Swiss guards was. Julius no doubt liked his guards' tights tight and their codpieces bulky. Contemporary chroniclers described Julius as "a great sodomite" who "abused two young gentlemen, besides many others". Famously, it was said Julius once committed "unnatural vice" with the gay sculptor Michelangelo, whom he had "pressured" into painting the Sistine Chapel Leo X (1513-21) was said to have invited guests to lavish banquets with up to 65 courses at which little boys jumped naked out of puddings. It was no secret Leo was "a lover of boys" who possessed also "an insatiable love of pleasure". Like Pope Paul II, Leo loved parades and his passion was to travel around Rome at the head of a long procession featuring panthers, jesters, and a white elephant called Hanno - a gift from the King of Portugal. Scholar Joseph McCabe said Leo was "a coarse, frivolous, cynical voluptuary, probably addicted to homosexual vice in the Vatican". Leo spent much of his childhood in numerous abbeys which, like many monasteries since the time of Leo III (795-816), had become homosexual haunts. Even before he became pope, Leo X allegedly had been a practising sodomite. On the day of his election, Leo suffered from chronic ulcers and had to be carried into the conclave on a stretcher. Not a few remarked that the ulcers had been caused by his "boyish predilections" . Julius III (1550-55) was said to have been a typical Renaissance pope in that, like Alexander VI, Julius II and Leo X, he loved banqueting, spectacles and other sensual pleasures. Gay and incestuous, Julius took as his lovers both his bastard son, Bertuccino, and his adopted son, Innocenzo del Monte, whom he had picked up in the streets of Palma. This caused a grave scandal especially when Julius made the 17-year-old Innocenzo first a cardinal and then head of the Secretariat of State ... It was said Benedict IX (1032-44; 1045; 1047-48), like Alexander VI, hosted lavish homosexual orgies and "manifested a precocity for all kinds of wickedness". He was described as "a demon from Hell disguised as a priest" who turned the Lateran into the "best brothel in Rome". Being the youngest pope to have ascended the throne - Benedict was 12 on his election - it appears the position went to his head. He lived like a Turkish sultan and expressed his sexual leanings by having sex with men, women and animals. The Catholic Encyclopedia described Benedict as "a disgrace to the Chair of St Peter". Such depths of degradation were reached under Benedict's rule that, at age 23, an attempt was made to strangle him at the altar during mass on the feast of the apostles ... The Catholic Encyclopedia said of Boniface VIII (1294-1303) that "his pontificate marks in history the decline of the medieval power and glory of the papacy". A cardinal once said of Boniface: "He is all tongue and eyes, and the rest of him is all rotten". The pontiff's most famous remark on the subject of homosexuality was that "it is no more a sin than to rub your hands together". Boniface should know: he had at least two gay lovers - including Giacomo de Pisis and Guglielmo de Santa Floria ... In 836, the Council of Aix-la-Chapelle openly admitted that, following the rule of Pope Leo III (795-816), homosexuality was rife in many monasteries. The situation was so bad that, before becoming a bishop, priests were asked whether they had sodomised a boy, had fornicated with an animal or had committed adultery. It was not stated whether the applicant had to answer yes or no in order to be consecrated ... The eminent German historian Leopold von Ranke dismissed Clement VII (1523-34) as "the most disastrous of all pontiffs". He was described as a "sodomite" who had a taste for the exotic. The Italian historian Gino Capponi said Clement kept as a paramour "a Moorish or mulatto slave". Another chronicler observed Clement surrounded himself with pageboys whose jackets, under his rule, went from traditional knee-length to mid-buttock, "or even worse" ... The Catholic Encyclopedia described John XXIII (1410-15) as "utterly worldly-minded, ambitious, crafty, unscrupulous, and immoral, a good soldier but no churchman". In 1414, John was summoned before the Council of Constance accused of 70 crimes including sodomy, rape, incest and the murder of his predecessor, Alexander V (1406-10). The Bishop of Salisbury, Robert Hallum, spoke for the majority of the Council when he said John "ought to be burnt at the stake" for his crimes. Instead, the convicted sodomite was deposed where, in true church tradition, he later appeared as Cardinal Bishop of Tusculum before becoming Dean of the Sacred College in Rome ... Sixtus IV (1471-84) was described as a man who "embodied the utmost possible concentration of human wickedness". He "lowered the moral tone of Europe" when, in 1478, he issued a papal bull sanctioning the notorious Spanish Inquisition. Of his personal life, it was said Sixtus was gay - or at least bisexual - and "very probably engaged in incest". Sixtus made six "nephews" cardinals and was renowned as a "bountiful benefactor towards whores ...".I |
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| Erna | Sep 21 2015, 12:02 PM Post #11 |
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In the mid 1970s our father had a meeting in the Vatican with this person: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/22/business/22marcinkus.html?_r=0 Our father commented later that he could see that this person "was totally unqualified for the position" Our mother had to wait in the limo with their Italian driver as she was not invited to the meeting. (Our fabulous Mexican priest hermana trans eldersister whispered that Marcinkus was imported to the Vatican for the purpose of servicing the Popess with his monstrous Polish sizemeat) Edited by Erna, Sep 21 2015, 02:40 PM.
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| Tybee | Sep 21 2015, 12:06 PM Post #12 |
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And still there are people who will say all those cross backed lecherous pigs believed in God. They lived the way they lived because they knew there would be no retribution from a higher power when they died. |
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| Erna | Sep 21 2015, 12:11 PM Post #13 |
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"An intimate of Pope Paul's from then on, Bishop Marcinkus". verificatia of our elsdersister's suspicia |
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| Guest | Sep 21 2015, 12:30 PM Post #14 |
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I don't think it's because of your theory of atheism; but because they realized that being pope of Rome at the time was having a lot of power over pretty much everyone in Europe and even the new world at the time, and having power even over monarchs in other countries. |
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| Guest | Sep 21 2015, 12:32 PM Post #15 |
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LMAO of course a Trans eldersister would claim this as if she would know what really goes on there in the Vatican. Wouldn't that Polish guy be way too old for the pope or various priests anyway? |
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| Guest | Sep 21 2015, 12:33 PM Post #16 |
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He's tame compared to some of them. But there have been lots of books written about other popes who were worse. |
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| Erna | Sep 22 2015, 08:53 AM Post #17 |
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Pope Julius II (1503-13) has been credited with introducing the Swiss soldiers who still guard the Vatican. To Julius, "religion was not even a hobby" - but it appeared surrounding himself with attractive young men like the virile Swiss guards was. Julius no doubt liked his guards' tights tight and their codpieces bulky. Contemporary chroniclers described Julius as "a great sodomite" who "abused two young gentlemen, besides many others". Famously, it was said Julius once committed "unnatural vice" with the gay sculptor Michelangelo, whom he had "pressured" into painting the Sistine Chapel |
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| Tybee | Sep 22 2015, 09:05 AM Post #18 |
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But your statement pretty much verifies what I said. Who cares if they felt they had ultimate power over everyone including all the other heads of state all over Europe? Those were just mortals. If they believed what they preached then they surely knew they may not answer to other mortals, but they sure as hell would answer to The Almighty. I can't believe they were deluded to the point they felt they had ultimate power over him as well. They knew (as all of them in our lifetimes have known) that what they preached was a pack of lies meant to keep the faithful (the morons) in line and continually giving their money to the church. Getting that money is, was, and will be the end all for the church leaders. Otherwise they won't have jobs or paychecks anymore. Privately they don't give a fat rat's ass what the worshipers do in their private lives, no matter what they say publicly. What they care about is the money. Everything else is just the mechanism they employ to keep it coming in. Edited by Tybee, Sep 22 2015, 09:05 AM.
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| Erna | Sep 22 2015, 09:19 AM Post #19 |
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The church takes money from those who chose voluntarily to give it. The IRS, on the other hand, takes money from whose who mostly don't chose to give it - and at gunpoint! |
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| Tybee | Sep 22 2015, 09:39 AM Post #20 |
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They voluntarily give their money because the Church keeps them terrified of going to Hell if they don't. People who throw their money to churches are unwittingly trying to buy their ways into Heaven.
Edited by Tybee, Sep 22 2015, 10:01 AM.
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| Guest | Sep 22 2015, 10:00 AM Post #21 |
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The Vatican has lots of artifacts, artwork, and wealth, including gems, and gold that it considers to be 'gifts'. :rofl |
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| Guest | Sep 22 2015, 10:06 AM Post #22 |
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The popes believe that they are God's representation on earth, and some act as though they're demi-gods in a way. In many ways they did care what people did in their private lives, as the inquisitions were all about this. Even today you have a lot of cardinals, priests, and popes who are against birth control, LGBT rights, women's rights, for ped0s, etc. |
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| Tybee | Sep 22 2015, 11:05 AM Post #23 |
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Come on, that's the "official" line of BS they deliver. What they say in public and what they say (and do) in private are vastly different. Of course they're against all that (at least in public). They're PAID to be against it. |
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| Erna | Sep 22 2015, 11:42 AM Post #24 |
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We have little use for any of the Western 'organized religias' since they are now political entities that are totally separated from spirituality. Christian Science on the other hand is spiritual and not like 'organized religia'. Edited by Erna, Sep 22 2015, 12:40 PM.
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| Tybee | Sep 22 2015, 12:03 PM Post #25 |
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If someone wants to have a spiritual belief in some sort of grander power you don't need some self appointed (more than likely hypocritical) holy man or woman telling you how or what you should believe. |
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| Erna | Sep 22 2015, 12:28 PM Post #26 |
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We need to be reminded that "The Kingdom of heaven is within you" here and now, right here. When we are able to realize that, then we are serene. |
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| Guest | Sep 24 2015, 01:22 AM Post #27 |
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I don’t like this guy. He is nothing but the PR pope. Business has been the same as usual under him. Probably the biggest laugh of all is the fact that the Advocate named him “person of the year”, based of one quote. Afterwards, he immediately started denouncing GLBT and our rights around the world, and attack us with the same hatred as his predecessor. He has not shown respect, or love, or acceptance towards the GLBT community. http://www.latinorebels.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/dictador1.jpg http://www.latinorebels.com/2013/03/13/pope-francis-i-and-argentinas-dirty-war/ |
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| Erna | Sep 24 2015, 03:37 AM Post #28 |
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We much preferred Popess Benedicta and her scorching hot husband. |
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| Guest | Sep 24 2015, 03:38 AM Post #29 |
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Who was her "husband"? |
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| Erna | Sep 24 2015, 03:49 AM Post #30 |
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Edited to force image to appear Edited by Tybee, Sep 24 2015, 08:51 AM.
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| Guest | Sep 24 2015, 04:01 AM Post #31 |
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:rofl Edited to remove oversized link Edited by Tybee, Sep 24 2015, 08:51 AM.
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| God | Sep 24 2015, 08:43 AM Post #32 |
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I plan to rain down my gluten-free, artisan manna at certain intervals. The sun-dried basil parmesano is simply scrummy! |
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| 1 user reading this topic (1 Guest and 0 Anonymous) | |
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3:24 AM Jul 11