Posted on 04/15/2006 1:03:31 AM PDT by MadIvan
Pope Benedict said last night that the world was in the grip of Satan and prayed for mankind to open its eyes to the "filth around us".
At an Easter ceremony that recreated the passage of Jesus Christ to the crucifixion, Benedict XVI lashed out at man's "decadent narcissism".
He said "a slick campaign of propaganda is spreading an inane apologia of evil, a senseless cult of Satan".
The Good Friday service, held at the Colosseum, showed the 14 stages of Christ's suffering and was designed to allow worshippers to share in the agony of Jesus. During the first and final stage, the Pope carried the cross.
The prayers, written by Archbishop Angelo Comastri, the Vatican City's vicar general, were approved by the Pope, and reflected his strongly conservative outlook.
"Surely God is deeply pained by the attack on the family," the Pope said. "Today we seem to be witnessing a kind of anti-Genesis, a counter-plan, a diabolical pride aimed at eliminating the family."
He also expressed fears about genetic modification, and said it was "insane arrogance" to play with the "grammar" of creation.
The meditations were designed to invoke a feeling of man's sinfulness ahead of the dark hours of Easter Saturday. Bodies are "constantly bought and sold on the streets of our cities, on our television channels, in homes that have become like streets," he said.
Accumulating wealth was "robbery" when it "prevented others from living". He deplored "the division of our world into belts of prosperity and belts of poverty".
The Pope said society valued "immorality and selfishness as if they were new heights of sophistication".
The downbeat message echoed the Pope's words at the same ceremony last year, when, as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, he led the Way of the Cross in place of the ailing Pope John Paul II.
In those meditations, he compared the Church to "a boat about to sink, taking on water on every side". He lamented "how much filth there is in the Church", and said that "a Christianity which has grown weary of faith has abandoned the Lord".
Since his election almost a year ago, the Bavarian-born Pope has surprised many with his gentle public persona. At yesterday's service, however, his ferocity was a reminder of why he was once nicknamed "Cardinal Rottweiler".
John Allen, the author of two books on Pope Benedict, said: "Is this the real Pope Benedict re-emerging? He has projected a very different tone in the last year, but that does not mean that he has changed."
On Thursday, the Pope poured scorn on revelations within the recently published Gospel of Judas, a fourth century text which is sympathetic to Judas Iscariot and whose crumbling fragments claim that Jesus instructed Judas to betray him.
The Pope celebrates his 79th birthday tomorrow, Easter Sunday.
Mr Allen said he would adopt a lighter tone at an open-air Mass at St Peter's.
You don't know how Bill Gates got his power do you?
It's just you. We all realize Jack Chick has modernized with PC graphics and the image we see today of the Iranian President IS a Chick tract!
Yes - and I, for one, am sick of it.
Sure that will leave my laptop, or is it that you want to just quite any decent that challenges you.
Yes and Christ told the the rich young ruler to sell it all and give it to the poor too.
What misery? I am not miserable just challenging the Church to sell all and give all to the poor. If the church is going to get into politics then it should be taxed. Opp don't want to hear that.
B.S.
You're a disruptor.
Find another thread.
Give your computer to the poor.
It's all temporal. And please show me where the church is told to be to be the good steward of the spiritual riches of Christ’s Mystical Body. How can someone stewart something that is mystical? Is that like trying to control the weather?
That is true. Christ said that the widow who gave so little had given the most.
That is quite well done, as a riposte. It made me laugh. But then I enjoy well done sarcasm. I just do. Cheers.
Censorship, that's just great.
Religious leaders who weigh into the public square, should have their religious corporations subject to taxation eh? That sounds a bit inimical to the first amendment. Speech is good, even when we disagree with it. It causes us to reflect, consider and react,and sometimes reply. I like speech.
The pope is not covered under the first amendment he not an American.
And it appears that any decent around here is taken as an attack. I did not know that this thread was for the thin skinned only.
If any organization that has a tax exempt statues in the U.S. are bound by law to stay out of politics.
When I read my Gospels and the teachings of Paul and the few others that wrote in the New Testament I can not find any political speech.
But I may have over looked that, could you point some out to me?
Praise Jesus' victory on the Cross that brought us our Salvation. God Bless this Pope for speaking the Truth. Happy Easter.
Pray for W and Our Freedom Fighters
They are not complaining about the poor.
I dissented from the Pope's comments myself. But stripping away the tax exemption, as retribution, is anti speech. The nexus between church and state and speech is a difficult one. But for me, let a thousand flowers bloom, if only to point out the flaws of some. In any event, my vague impression of some of the Biblical comments, is that they were rife with public policy political implications. There is no inseperable wall between the sacred and the secular on this mortal coil, and cannot be. It is not what the human experience is about. To get it right, is more complex, and requires more heavy lifting, and we have been struggling with that issue for centuries. But we have it more right on the fruited plain, than in most of history, and in most places. As I say, I'm an optimist.
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