Always nice to see a sanctioned clown of the RCC (I mean Cleric) making an ass of himself and thus bringing the Church down yet another notch in the eyes of reasoning humans. This pope stands a decent chance to undo all the good will the last Pope managed to build up. I think John Paul II was a much more level headed and realistic Pope than any other in the last 100 years. I disagreed with many of his policies and the basic beliefs of his Church, but I could still respect the man. I do not have this problem with the current pope. He is easy to dismiss as a religious crank.
Jim {Yes, I was Roman Catholic, does it show?}
Note: failure to capitalize pope for the current pope was on purpose to show my level of disrespect.
So, that means: the Pope has been (and possibly still is) possessed by the devil! :eek: Remember, Pope Palpatine was, at least briefly, a member of the Hitler Youth during the war.
Personally, I work from 1 Corinthians, chapter 12 here. According to that passage, people are given many gifts, among them such things as “interpretation of tongues”, “prophecy”, and general “miraculous powers”. Now, I don’t know much about miracles, but gifts I can understand. A person with the gift of great intelligence, for instance, can use that gift for good or evil, as can a person with great strength, or great skill, or any other gift. Certainly, people ought to use their gifts for good, but they can choose to use them for evil, and still retain them. Presumably, the same would be true for gifts like “prophecy” or “miraculous powers”.
Now, if a person has “miraculous powers”, and can choose to use those powers for good or ill, it seems to me that “magic” is the appropriate label. Therefore, the Bible acknowledges the possibility of magic among good people. Magic can, of course, be evil, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be, and shouldn’t be. Under this interpretation, Voldemort could be considered to be someone who was given the gift of miraculous powers, and who misused that gift, and is (by virtue of that misuse) evil, while Harry, who received the same gift, used it well, and is therefore good.
Actually, the devil has been on break for well over a thousand years. Those who have been supposedly worshipping God have done so much mischief that he thought adding to it was futile.
Never mind the fact that the RCC hallows the single most-performed act of ritual magic in history, the transubstantiation. From what I remember being taught, somewhere in the world a Mass is being said every hour of every day.
o/Two, four, six, eight! Time to transubstantiate! o/
Apparently these guys think it’s only OK if the invocation includes G-d’s name. The problem is, The Big Guy gets called different names in different languages… so how does this exorcist know that, say, “Leviatio”, isn’t the name of G-d in Kayrill (the language of an otherwise still undiscovered alien species)?
Very easily so. Most churches have daily masses (though not many people attend them), and there are Catholic churches all over the world. In any given time zone, it probably wouldn’t be too hard to find a church with daily mass at, say, 8:00 AM. Or, for that matter, at 8:15, or 7:30, or any other time you care to name. So “every hour” is probably a gross underestimate. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were one every minute.
I’m assuming that you meant that as a joke, so realize that I know that. But the thing is, you can’t give him that. That contention is basically throwing the ultimate responsibility for the atrocities of Stalin and Hitler on the shoulders of a nonexistent demon rather than on the humans (and human societies) that committed them or allowed them to be committed. To deny that humanity is capable of great evil without a supernatural instigator is to blind yourself to possible future Holocausts.
In a way, I suppose you can say that it offends me, as a human being, to be denied the basic human respect that recognizes that I’m capable, somewhere deep inside me, of doing great evil.
Well, sorta. As I’ve had it explained to me, a person does a spell, but God does a miracle. Sure, sometimes He does them in answer to prayers, but He is in charge and He can decide to leave you hanging if He doesn’t like your motives, regardless of how many thees and thous you throw in. That’s why magic is verboten; it promotes willfullness instead of reliance on God’s grace.
I don’t believe in magic, so I don’t worry too hard about it, but that’s what I’ve heard from Christians who do believe in it.
What’s to say you can’t define “Satan” as the human tendancy to commit evil? I don’t think that’s actually even contrary to any official theology. By that standard, not only does Satan exist, but one can very fairly say that the Nazis et al. were possessed by him.
You could do that, I suppose. But in doing that you’re still externalizing the capacity, because even if the word “Satan” denotes the human capacity for evil, it connotes an element of non-culpability because the word “Satan” is currently and historically used to refer to an external entity who has been identified with opposition to God and Good for at least 2000 years.
People don’t WANT to be reminded that the average German knew what Hitler was doing to the Jews. They don’t like to be reminded that the average Soviet soldier actually carried out many of Stalin’s purges. They don’t like to be reminded that evil isn’t that far under the surface, and it can affect “normal” people. They like to think that it’s something remote and rare and exclusive to the rare monstrous personality.
For some reason, I have a feeling that the office of “top exorcist” is one of those positions that no one really thinks too highly of, but they gotta keep around because of tradition and all, so they stick in it the nutjobs who are past their prime that they can’t just kick out.
I might’ve thought so too, if it weren’t for the fact that he alone has reportedly performed 30,000 exorcisms. Which must be pretty darn near a full time job.
