I had some hopes for Pope Francis, but of course that was stupid. He’s the head Catholic, for crying out loud, so how wonderful can he be? At any rate, there were two Popeish incidents of note this week.
First, Francis inadvertently exorcised demons from a young man! As Newsmax.com reports:
Is Pope Francis an exorcist?
The question has been swirling ever since Francis laid his hands Sunday on the head of a young man after celebrating Mass in St. Peter’s Square. The young man heaved deeply a half-dozen times, shook, and he then slumped in his wheelchair as Francis prayed over him.
The television station of the Italian bishops’ conference said it had surveyed exorcists, who agreed there was “no doubt” that Francis either performed an exorcism or a prayer to free the man from the devil.
The Vatican was more cautious Tuesday. In a statement, it said Francis “didn’t intend to perform any exorcism. But as he often does for the sick or suffering, he simply intended to pray for someone who was suffering who was presented to him.”
. . . The Rev. Giulio Maspero, a Rome-based systematic theologian who has witnessed or participated in more than a dozen exorcisms, says he’s certain that Francis’ prayer on Sunday was either a full-fledged exorcism or a prayer to “liberate” the young man from a demonic possession. He noted that the placement of the pope’s hands on the man’s head was the “typical position” for an exorcist to use.
“When you witness something like that — for me it was shocking — I could feel the power of prayer,” he said in a phone interview, speaking of his own experiences.
And the honeymoon’s over, for Francis is apparently obsessed with Satan, something that I thought the Church had quietly shelved, now describing hell as only “alienation from God.” Apparently not.
Fueling the speculation [about the exorcism] is Francis’ obsession with Satan, a frequent subject of his homilies, and an apparent surge in demand for exorcisms among the faithful despite the irreverent treatment the rite often receives from Hollywood.
Who can forget the green vomit and the spinning head of the possessed girl in the 1973 cult classic “The Exorcist?”
In his very first homily as pope on March 14, Francis warned cardinals gathered in the Sistine Chapel the day after he was elected that “he who doesn’t pray to the Lord prays to the devil.
“He has since mentioned the devil on a handful of occasions, most recently in a May 4 homily when in his morning Mass in the Vatican hotel chapel he spoke of the need for dialogue — except with Satan.
“With the prince of this world you can’t have dialogue: let this be clear!” he warned.
Experts said Francis’ frequent invocation of the devil is a reflection both of his Jesuit spirituality, his Latin American roots — and a reflection of a Catholic Church weakened by secularization.
The results of polls vary, but at a minimum 30% of Americans believe that Satan is a real person, while 62% believe the Hornéd One is not a real person, but a symbol of evil. I suspect Frances is in the former category.
In other Popey news, the Guardian and other venues report that Francis admitted two days ago that atheists can be good people. That’s about as delayed—and necessary—an admission as the church’s 1992 statement that Galileo’s punishment was an error after all.
Atheists should be seen as good people if they do good, Pope Francis has said in his latest urging that people of all religions, and none, work together.
The leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Roman Catholics made his comments in the homily of his morning mass at his residence, a daily event at which he speaks without prepared comments.
He told the story of a Catholic who asked a priest if even atheists had been redeemed by Jesus.
“Even them, everyone,” the pope answered, according to Vatican Radio. “We all have the duty to do good,” he said.
“Just do good, and we’ll find a meeting point,” the pope said in a hypothetical reply to the hypothetical comment: “But I don’t believe. I’m an atheist.”
Well, I suppose that’s all he can say. I don’t quite get the last part, but I wonder whether that “meeting point” is Heaven.
I’m so glad to lean that I’ve been redeemed by Jesus, and I’m sure religous Jews will be happy as well. Such redemption, of course, goes against the teachings of many other Christian religions, especially in America. If you want to tick off a liberal Christian like Kenneth Miller or Francis Collins, ask them if you think that you (as an atheist) are going to hell. When I asked Lutheran theologian Lea Schweitz this in our discussion in Charleston, she equivocated, saying that there were “many interpretations” of what hell is. Her church, however, thinks otherwise.
h/t: Chris, Martim, Dom
Times must be desperate for the church especially in the face of growing secularism and they need to be heard even when they have become irrelevant.
Maybe the pope will someday say it was all a hoax.
….or that the devil made him do it since he seems somewhat devil obsessed. 🙂
Oh yes, that is could be possible. He could have exorcised a fellow and the devil decides to possess him.
I’ve already threatened Catholics I know with showing up in Catholic heaven since god’s right hand man said I’m no longer hell bound.
The last Christian I brought up the grace thing to responded that “that’s not what I was taught”. Okay then, time to actually read your literature. This person also didn’t believe me when I said that women weren’t allowed to talk in church but had to ask their husbands questions later instead.
Ah, there’s as whole branch of apolgetics devoted to the premise that Paul didn’t write that and therefore isn’t true. This is from the inside of Christianity. And overlaps with a significant portion of Bible scholars who assert that those proscriptions were added in LATER. And they make a good case about that and other changes in the texts to remove early women church leaders in order to perpetuate a male-only hierarchy.
And I don’t mean from the post-modernist make-up-bullshit-theories crowd. I throw them in the trash immediately.
Rather, I’m talking serious biblical scholarship where these men and women are spending their lives studying the direct, ancient texts and have to put-up or shut-up through the pier-review process.
Different types of review processes:
– Peer review
To publish papers after critical overview. Typically what scientists do.
– Pier review
To walk the short plank after critical overview. Typically what pirates do.
– Pierpont review
To launch Yale after critical overview. Typically what only James Pierpont did.
– Spear point review
To explain yourself before Grog. Typically what Og did.
Oh I just knew “pier review” was not going to go unremarked 🙂 I thought of it more the decision just deciding to walk the plank instead of subjecting oneself to “peer review”.
Make that the decision to just walk the plank.
Every time I’m a wise ass I mess up in grammar. It must be my subconscious way of punishing myself.
My mother once (when a wee bit tipsy) was walking along a pier, counting the “slits” between the boards as she went, and didn’t stop in time. (splash)
My aunt told this story to my punster dad who, without skipping a beat, said: “It just goes to show… when you’re out of slits, you’re out of pier.”
(sorry… probably only 40-50+ y.o. Americans will even get that one.)
That was damned clever of your father!
LOL…thats cute…I remember the commercial!
It took a few moments, but I got it too! That was a long time ago. Hilarious!
!! Excellent!!
What if Paul didn’t actually write that? What of it? It makes no difference to you and I as atheists, of course. The whole shebang is a bunch of nonsense.
But countless religious authorities, whose authority followers believe comes directly from god, have upheld the teaching. From a believer’s perspective, showing that Paul didn’t write that should be tantamount to showing it’s all fabrication. If there is a god, how could it grant authority to leaders who have basic doctrinal points wrong?
*you and me*
– Piers review
To be interviewed by Piers Morgan
– Pierrepoint review (UK)
To be hanged by Albert Pierrepoint
– Robespierre review (France)
To be guillotined by Maximilien Robespierre
RE: Good works by atheists
At another site I read, this got into a discussion about how Catholics can see you as almost redeemed because you do good works, but Protestants don’t. My meager understanding is that Roman Catholicism says the path to Jesus is “faith & works”, while Protestantism is “faith not works”. I checked with a coworker (The Angry Christian) and he agrees with that assessment.
Yup, looks to me like a kind of Pelagian heresy on the Pope’s part; Augustine of Hippo (who, as far as I interpret it, was a proto-Protestant) did for poor old Pelagius.
They do half get in a bind on this faith and/or works conundrum.
I’m sure that some of the 30K Protestant denominations, sects and scims may have re-incorporated works. But your friend is right. It goes something like this:
You are saved by Faith in (the name of) Jesus, and are granted eternal life through the Grace (gift) of God, and Glory only to God who provided Jesus for atonement and the gift of grace for salvation.
Might not of worded in the best form. But that’s core of Protestantism.
There’s a “logical” historical reason why a large segment of Protestantism (and Lutheranism, in particular) reject good works as an element of salvation. Luther had to develop a cosmology in which selling of indulgences was impossible; it’s frequently pointed out that this was why he rejected purgatory. (For if God listens to and answers prayers, paid prayers for souls in purgatory will mean something; hence, selling indulgences can work.) However, less attention is paid to how the rejection of purgatory led to his emphasis on “faith alone” as a condition for salvation.
In Catholic theology, purgatory exists to deal with the question of how to distinguish between people who are truly saintly and those who are “just barely” good enough to be saved. The better you are, the less time you spend in purgatory before ascension to heaven. If salvation is based on good works, this issue is obvious, because people obviously come in different degrees of goodness. So Luther decided that salvation must be based on something that does not necessarily have degrees: faith. He would have argued that a person either had faith in Greasy Josh, or they did not. Hence, would be no gradation in the quality of the saved, and no call for anything like purgatory. (Calvin’s belief in predestination plays a similar role in eliminating the need for purgatory, but it was probably less influential.)
“[H]e who doesn’t pray to the Lord prays to the devil”, said the Pope. So, he’s playing the old “you’re either with me or against me” card. Now that sophisticated theology right there. I can’t wait for the witch burnings.
That a pope would wrap a perfectly obvious idea (treat people who do good things with respect) and wrap it up in the poison of religious condescension is really not much of a surprise.
Well put.
Well, I would be satisfied with them having tolerance for other people’s behavior.
You know, tolerance as in how secularists typically behave.
The Pope is such a wonderful human being, deserving of his divine status. Atheists can be good people, can you understand how much courage that took and how deep an intellect that shows? Sometimes he touches sick and disabled people and says a magic spell. As an atheist I can never understand the amount of compassion it takes to do a truly selfless and compassionate act such as that. Next he will be saying that perhaps women can be intelligent too, if they study hard enough!
**
Pope Francis may have suggested that atheists can get to Heaven, but I just won’t stop worrying until a medium assures me that my aura can be cleansed.
“Accidental Exorcist” would be an awesome name for a band.
It’d probably make for a tolerable action slapstick Hollywood blockbuster, too.
b&
Or the title of an autobiography….
Or another title for the Pope!
Exorcism is one of the most vicious forms of abuse. Some of the stories of exorcism are horrific. A few years ago a boy with autism was killed during an exorcism. http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-201_162-570077.html The idea that mental illness is actually the devil or a tortured soul within a person is despicable.
A catholic apologist website has dedicated a new section to dialogue with atheists, apparently in the mistaken belief that atheists are atheists simply because nobody has ever explained catholic beliefs to them.
Much hilarity has ensued.
http://www.strangenotions.com/atheists-redeemed/
Ah yes, the site where Leah Libresco went after her conversion. And said enough stupid things to make me feel she’s not much of a loss to atheism.
Oh, that is hilarious.
Here’s what I wonder: was Catholicism “incredibly nuanced” (a term used by one of the apologists) right from the start or did it take hundreds of years for then to think up all that nonsense?
I think it’s pretty clear that they were at each other’s throats with different theologies and beliefs from day one. Paul is always complaining about false prophets and all the different gospels which didn’t make it into the bible make it pretty clear that things were very complex and confused from the beginning.
I peeked. They have a page of 20 proofs for the existence of god. The first one is “The Argument from Change.” Key section: “To explain the change, can we consider the changing thing alone, or must other things also be involved? Obviously, other things must be involved. Nothing can give itself what it does not have, and the changing thing cannot have now, already, what it will come to have then. The result of change cannot actually exist before the change. The changing thing begins with only the potential to change, but it needs to be acted on by other things outside if that potential is to be made actual. Otherwise it cannot change.” (italics mine)
Counterexample: the spontaneous decay of a radioactive atom.
Key section: “Nothing changes itself. Apparently self-moving things, like animal bodies, are moved by desire or will—something other than mere molecules.”
Logical error: unwarranted assumption (the existence of the soul), leading to begging the question (what I call it when someone smuggles his or her conclusion into the argument, although I understand others use the phrase differently).
Refutations of the remaining 19 arguments are left as exercises for the reader.
Of course, once he’s done another exorcism magic trick, he’ll be eligible for sainthood. If he does enough of them, maybe the Church will make an exception for him and canonize him while he’s still pope. A one-off, sort of. Then he’ll be Pope Saint Francis!
“He who doesn’t pray to the Lord prays to the devil.” doesn’t seem to square with “Atheists should be seen as good people if they do good.”
Perhaps the good pope is confusing himself.
Yup, he’s trying to have it both ways.
A religion specialty. It takes years of cognitive dissonance training, but eventually you too could believe six contradictory things before breakfast.
1. “He who doesn’t pray to the Lord prays to the devil.”
By definition no atheist prays to the Lord
:. all atheists pray to the Devil
2. “Atheists should be seen as good people if they do good.”
Some atheists do good
:. some atheists should be seen as good people
1+2
Some good people pray to the Devil….
Are any of Jerry’s last few debates online anywhere?
If you let me GOOGLE that for you 🙂
You will see all the important talks/interviews
If you actually want a debate video, then look for the one with Haught above. However I prefer the talks.
First time I’ve seen that site. Hilarious!
Oh LMGTFY is awesome – now that you’ve found it, you, like me will send links to all friends and relatives who constantly ask you questions that you yourself will just google for the answer. 🙂
I’m waiting for a similarly functional “RTFM” site
A post-breakfast coffee isn’t complete without the tools to fire off a snarky email reply to those who require me to tie their internet shoelaces for them 🙂
I know how to google! I meant specifically the debates Jerry participated in recently (one of which he makes mention of in this post), and I follow this website thoroughly and hadn’t noticed any posts about them. Was only asking.
THIS HERE is probably a better list of videos though
Please ignore the Justicar video
There are some amusing intermingled creationist responses if you fancy a laugh [or cry]
Give the Pope a break! There has to be another explanation. What if the young man in the wheel chair had a serious allergy to peanuts? And what if the Pope had peanut butter and jelly on toast for breakfast that morning, and failed to wash his hands? Pressing his contaminated paws on that boy’s sweaty head could have seriously injured him.
You have the accent wrong in “Hornéd One”. It should be grave, not acute.
I know it’s supposed to be infra dig these days but – lol.
Goodness – pope refutes Pascal’s wager. But JC’s first commandment was to love God and then to love one’s neighbour. We atheists need some Jesuitical clarification here to be clear how we stand in the little matter of eternal damnation.
Rather than worry about Pascal’s Wager, I’ve always thought with Heine that “God will forgive me, that’s his job”. After all, as He says in Time Bandit’s, “I am the nice one.”
Bloody apostrophe. Sorry, everyone. Sorry.
Ralph Richardson is one of my very favorite gods!
Didn’t know that someone else had the same idea – I’ve said as much myself to believers.
I prefer Simpson’s retort to Pascal’s Wager:
“What if we picked the wrong religion? Every week we’re just making God madder and madder.”
–Homer Simpson, trying to get out of going to church
Superb! I’m not a Simpsons watcher, so I rely on others to bring up these great points for me.
This is all quite reasonable when you understand that good believing Catholics are blessedly homozygous for the Sensus divinitatis, and we atheists have lost this ability through a filthy mutation or a generalized slippery-slope entropy because we don’t understand the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics.
When “surveyed exorcists, who agreed there was “no doubt” that Francis either performed an exorcism or a prayer to free the man from the devil”, speak on the topic, please remember that there is a scientific explanation for their lack of doubt.
Yea pope, it beats Pascal’s wager. I’ll take it.
Alienation from God is ‘Hell?’ Maybe the Catholics need to read the bible. I can give them some hints about burning the lake of fire (and sometimes sulphur too!):
Revelation 20:10
Revelation 21:8
Revelation 20:15
Matthew 25:41
Revelation 20:14
Revelation 20:7-10
And there are more. Luke. Mark. John. Acts. The Old Testament.
Sigh:
about burning the lake of fire
Should be:
about the burning lake of fire
I really should proof-read what I write…
but i like YOUR version better!
Don’t misunderstand what he said. He is saying Christ redeemed everyone, but the Church still insists that if you are not a Catholic you blew it and are going to hell. Even Ken Ham.
Especially Ken Ham.
Yes, the Vatican issued a statement to explicitly restate this:
Blech. Out of all the mealy mouthed theology out there, Catholic theology is the mealiest.
I read the statement, not just the media reports of the statement.
Basically, he said “god has already built you a nice post-death apartment with the kitchen upgrade. But you have to sign this lease before you get it. Until then, though, we’ll be happy to work side-by-side with you on Earthly things. Because eventually, you might sign the lease.”
But if you don’t sign the lease, there’s no nice apartment with the kitchen upgrade. There’s only the tenement with the broken radiator in the shitty neighborhood.
He is specifically going to the Chinese hell of barbed-wire piglets. Sophisticated theology, dontcha know.
Then why say it at all?
“Christ redeems only Catholics, no one else”
“No, Christ redeems everyone (as long as they are all Catholic)”
???
In all honesty, some Catholic priests told me:
1. there was no information as to the population of hell and
2. there was nothing that says that the stay time in hell was eternal.
It was almost as if hell were some sort of cosmic “boot camp” to prepare the most stubborn to be able to enjoy the glory of god, so to speak.
Yes, they told me such things when I was still a believer!
So Purgatory has basically Occupied Hell?
Im a conservative (and atheist) and I don’t trust NewsMax.
If this man was truely under the control of Satan, what was he doing in St Peters Square? Nicely dressed too?
Everyone knows Satan dresses well. Man of wealth and taste and all that.
So it’s possible, according to the pope, that I can die and heaven will be full of atheists with a few believers spattered about? All the bigotry and hatred (for gays, other sects, etc.) might keep the believers out and get many non-believers in. Heaven for the climate and the company.
After you’ve lived in Arizona long enough, you’ll find the climate in Hell quite refreshing, actually. Some of us get to enjoy both climate and company!
b&
My religious background rejected the Catholic version of Original Sin, that we are born already bound for Hell. Rather, it was considered that we were innocent until such time as we actually sinned, then we were bound for Hell. In our sect, babies got a free pass. It was also standard doctrine that souls came into existence at the moment of fertilization. Combining these doctrines with the fact a large percentage of fertilized eggs never implant, and many more fail early on, possibly as many as 50%, one is led to the depressing conclusion that Heaven must be mostly full of the souls of dead embryos. That doesn’t bode well for the company.
See you in heaven, Jerry.
OMCC! So, remembering that this church leader is claiming to be infallible, now I’m supposed to want to be a catholic atheist!?
No, thank you. But dumping the nutty Pascal’s Wager, good for you, Francis. Now there is only about 665 nutty things left to drop before we can start having a reasonable conversation.
And I forgot:
Statistically atheists are better at doing good than religious. Just ask the US prison population with around 1/10 the expected frequency of atheists if they did as good (bad) as the religious.
So does this mean the front seats in Heaven are reserved for the atheist do-good-but-not-god population, and the front seats in Hell are reserved for the catholic do-god-but-not-good population?
He could start by fully shutting down their private child sex ring and handing over to the police those (such as Bernard Law) responsible for running it.
He could also do something about the Church’s African Genocide — the one whereby they’re spreading AIDS by way of their active opposition to the only effective form of treatment available. (Yes, they’ve officially softened their stance. Sorta. Maybe. I’ll believe it when every church has bowls full of condoms next to the the bowls of holy water.)
b&
lol.
I don’t think Franky and his minions quite get how the Godless view them.
It’s like watching a grown ass adult believe the Silver Surfer loves him.
haha
“Atheists should be seen as good people if they do good, Pope Francis has said in his latest urging that people of all religions, and none, work together.”
All I can say is: duh!
Good people are good and bad people are bad. Duh! So profound.
…but for good people to do evil, that takes religion (Steven Weinberg).
What am I missing? The Pope just admitted that good people are saved by their deeds, not an acceptance of God or Jesus!
Heaven is open to all good people and there is no need of God except as a good-person-bookeeper. So tell me fellow atheists, are you on Santa’s naughty or nice list?
To the “Catechism of the Catholic Church” http://www.usccb.org/beliefs-and-teachings/what-we-believe/catechism/catechism-of-the-catholic-church/epub/index.cfm#, the meeting point is the final judgment.
681 On Judgment Day at the end of the world, Christ will come in glory to achieve the definitive triumph of good over evil which, like the wheat and the tares, have grown up together in the course of history.
682 When he comes at the end of time to judge the living and the dead, the glorious Christ will reveal the secret disposition of hearts and will render to each man according to his works and according to his acceptance or refusal of grace.
1022 Each man receives his eternal retribution in his immortal soul at the very moment of his death, in a particular judgment that refers his life to Christ: either entrance into the blessedness of heaven — through a purification or immediately,— or immediate and everlasting damnation.
And here it’s difficult to say if the pope really believes in eternal Hell condemnation but doesn’t say it openly or articles like theses are only a rhetoric piece to him. There are many kinds of catholics, from liberation theology to the Pio X fraternity. And please everyone is not an easy work.
As a curiosity, at Qumran it was found an interesting document called Genesis Apocryphon (dated between 50 BCE–70 CE) where in a legend Abram exorcises an evil spirit from the Pharaoh! 20:29–34 “So I prayed for that [ ]…, (v. 29) and I laid my hands upon his [he]ad. The plague was removed from him and the evil [spirit] was commanded (to depart) [from him], and he was cured. …” and one wonders to what extent he is trying (only) to satisfy the most superstitious part of his flock, since he have easy access to documents like this.
I used to be a Southern Baptist. Since they believe in “perseverance of the saints” (i.e., once saved, always saved), I should still be good to go. In fact, when I left the Southern Baptist Church for a better fit Wesleyan church, the only reason I didn’t join as a member is because they believe you can lose your salvation, which of course I thought was wrong. And growing up in Bible country as an evangelical, the word “redeemed” has a very specific meaning to me, and so I found the Pope’s words confusing — it is impossible for atheists to be “redeemed” because otherwise they would be former atheists who are now Christians.
Making my head hurt. Now I remember why I left! Back to evolution research…
Hi Cathy:
I used to be a baptist, too, though not southern. While I greatly appreciate all the comments on this thread, it is quietly amusing that my co-religionists (and I, at the time) did not consider catholics even to be christians! In fact, the missionary organization with which I worked specifically targeted catholics in a number of European countries. Furthermore, we did not accept any of the “catholic” miracles as valid. Just another proof that any “evidence” (I should rather say, “argument”) in favor of one religion is ipso facto an argument against the other 9,999 human religions.
Best of luck to you in your research!
I must add that I currently live in Louisiana, which is a majority Catholic state, as opposed to the rest of the South which is mostly Protestant evangelical. I find that my current location feels much friendlier to us non-believers than, say, where I grew up in Alabama. The Catholics here have faith just as strong as the Baptists of Alabama, but they don’t seem to be nearly as tight-ass horrified to come across a heathen. (We do, after all, have drive-through daiquiri stands and Sunday liquor sales.) I could see them being ok with the Pope’s comments.
Popey says “Atheists should be seen as good people if they do good”. Note, he did not say “People should be seen as good people if they do good.” Therefore, the implication is that atheists must do good to be good whereas the faithful are good whether they do good or not.
Thanks for nothing, popey.
>>Atheists should be seen as good people if they do good
Francis is a consequentialist!!
I’m kinda surprised that, with all these comments on the Poop’s hinting that atheists might or might not be so evil…that nobody’s yet remembered that, to the religious, “doing good” doesn’t necessarily mean charity and helping the little old lady neighbor with her groceries, but rather tithing and praying and all the other churchy things.
It’s a Catch-22 in the classic sense. Of course an atheist can be a good person and go to heaven — just so long as you’re a good Christian. If you’re a good Christian who likes to be referred to as an atheist, you’re one of the “atheists” who gets to go to heaven — but, of course, no good Christian would actually want to be called an atheist….
Really, I wouldn’t read anything at all into the Poop’s statement. It’s just a minor variation on the theme of “I was an atheist once, too, when I was especially mad at Jesus during my rebellious teenage years. I even cursed Him once, if you can believe it! Told Him He can go straight to Hell, and I meant it. How He ever forgave me after that I don’t know, but He did and now I’m eternally grateful to be taken back to the Bosom of the Lord.”
TL/DR: “atheist” has an entirely different meaning to the religious than to the sane.
Cheers,
b&
Maybe we should buckle up for the long ride? Archbishop of Madrid appointed today 8 exorcists ‘to deal with the growing number of cases of demonic possessions’, while in Milan last month the number of exorcist priests was doubled to 12.
http://www.ionline.pt/artigos/mundo/preocupada-possessoes-demoniacas-igreja-espanha-nomeia-emergencia-oito-exorcistas
It’s in Portuguese, I can work out a translation if you’d like.
Who you gonna call? Pope Busters!
Various interpretations of biblical myths aside, what about the fact that since there never was an original human Adam and Eve pair, the idea of their original sin causing trouble for the rest of us is pretty much hoqwash.