Posted on 10/01/2004 5:47:44 PM PDT by marshmallow
VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Never one to shrink from criticism, Pope John Paul is again putting controversial figures on the road to sainthood, including Austria's last emperor and a mystic nun who inspired Mel Gibson's film on Christ's passion.
With Sunday's ceremony in St Peter's Square, the ailing 84-year-old Roman Catholic leader will have beatified some 1,340 people, more than all his predecessors combined.
The Pope will confer beatification -- the last step before Roman Catholic sainthood -- on five people on Sunday. The two most controversial could not have been more different.
One was born in a wooden farmhouse with no running water and the other in a castle. But both have ignited as much passion after death as they did in life.
Anne Catherine Emmerick, a sickly German mystic nun who lived from 1774 to 1824, has been called "Mel's Muse." It was her book, "The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ," that gave Gibson some of the most grisly details.
Although Gibson said his hit film "The Passion of the Christ" was true to the Gospels, he clearly turned to the what the "Maid of Muenster" saw while gripped in visionary ecstasy.
The episode where Mary mops up her son's blood after his sadistic scourging is pure Emmerick. No Gospel mentions a hooded devil inciting Jews as they demanded Christ's crucifixion or following him as he carried his cross.
Jewish groups condemned the film, saying it would spur new forms of visceral anti-Semitism. They now fear that moving Emmerick closer to the glories of the altars, as sainthood is known, will only make matters worse.
"I think the timing of this is unfortunate and particularly damaging," said Rabbi Gary Bretton-Granatoor, director of inter-faith activities for the Anti-Defamation League.
"Had this happened 5 or 10 years ago, only those in the know would have noticed. But now, after Gibson's film, Emmerick's anti-Semitic writings have spread to a much wider audience," he told Reuters by telephone from New York.
Jewish leaders say the film and Emmerick's new popularity will resurrect deicide charges against Jews which, had been officially repudiated by the Second Vatican Council in 1965
Emmerick was an invalid by the time she was 14 and had the stigmata, the unexplained bleeding of the hands and feet similar to the wounds of the crucified Christ.
SAINTLY WARRIOR?
The beatification of Karl I, last emperor of the Austro- Hungarian Empire, has caused an uproar in Vienna, with critics denouncing him for his army's use of poison gas during World War One or lampooning him as "the patron saint of losers."
It has also opened the Austrian Church, which has been rocked by a homosexual scandal at a seminary near Vienna, to public ridicule for saying he performed a miracle by healing a Brazilian nun of her varicose veins and leg sores.
Karl, a devout Catholic who mounted the throne in 1916, made futile efforts the following year for peace talks with France.
Forced out at the end of the war in 1918, he went into exile first in Switzerland -- from where he twice tried to retake power in Hungary -- and then Portugal, where he died in 1922.
His defenders stress how he tried to lessen the burden of the war for soldiers and civilians by recalling from the front fathers who had lost sons and banning bombing raids on cities.
Detractors counter that the Austrian army under his command, which fought alongside Germany, used poison gas in the war.
"He was not an especially bad character, but no model figure either," said Austrian political scientist Anton Pelinka, who called the event "a beatification bordering on the absurd."
| I strongly remind each and every one of you that the cross of Christ is the way of life and salvation, the way to receive the palm of victory on the day of resurrection. JPII |
Mel Gibson has said from the very beginning it was his (everyones) sins who crucified Christ-he even uses the image of his own hand to hammer one of the nails into Christ hands to get this point across....the movie IS NOT anti-semantic.
Yes the scene showing Mary wiping up Christ's Precious Blood is very gripping but NOT anti-semantic.
The Catholic Church DOES NOT take the beautification of a person lightly years of through investigation goes into the process.
Mel Gibson has said from the very beginning it was his (everyones) sins who crucified Christ-he even uses the image of his own hand to hammer one of the nails into Christ hands to get this point across....the movie IS NOT anti-semantic.
Yes the scene showing Mary wiping up Christ's Precious Blood is very gripping but NOT anti-semantic.
The Catholic Church dDOES NOT take the beautification of a person lightly years of through investigation goes into the process.
I have read accounts of her life, and it seems to me that she was well chosen as a saint.
She was a victim not only of painful diseases (which this Reuters jerk belittles when he calls her "a sickly German mystic nun") but of Napoleon's tyrannical persecution of European Catholics. She remained faithful to her vocation under terribly difficult circumstances in the face of the worst anti-religious bigotry, a forerunner of the anti-religious bigotry that we see among the elite today.
What this has to do with antisemitism is a complete mystery to me.
THe ADL and a political scientist oppose the Beatification? Oh my...whatever shall we do ? :)
Man, one thing's for sure, I'm not posting on this thread!
Exactly. The cause for her beatification makes no mention of her "visions," which may or may not be authentic.
And it may also be pure fantasy. The Church has never made a judgment on Emmerick's "visions." Her beatification has nothing whatsoever to do with them.
Methinks the ADL will not be satisfied until they have excised every reference to "the Jews" from the Gospel according to St. John---including burning any and all of the non-revisitionist texts.
By the way, where was all the anti-Semitism that was supposed to flood out onto the streets after the film was released?
I've read the whole book through and even though it is a very hard read, it's worth it. The visions that Anne Catherine Emmerick are amazing and should be take as such.
Her visions are very diffuclt to read without feeling sorrow for your sins which caused the sufferings of Christ.
Personally, I believe in what she recounts in her visions. The narrrative given in the Gospel accounts is "sanitized", in the sense that persons of that day knew exactly what Roman torture and execution of criminals was: brutal. It was intended to be so, as to deter others.
Some victims were literally flogged to death. In contemporary secular accounts, Roman flogging was considered "the first death" - crucifixion was the second death. Some crimonals were scourged and let go. In the movie, Christ was first beaten with rods, which would cause bruising and bleeding, but would not be fatal. The Roman flagellum-which was then used - was a weapon which, as portrayed, would literally flay the victims skin. A man so tortured could live, although he would be in serious medical condition by today's standards.
Gibson's movie - for as much brutality as it shows - is only a portrayal. It is not seeing it for real. It also does not include some details which Emmerich decribes - as Gibson did tone down the horror. She does note that Christ would have surely died much earlier in his passion had he not been strengthened by angels. By the time he arrived at Calvary, he was surely in critical condition.
Brutality? Yes - the Romans were very severe to Him, as they resented his alleged pretense to earthly royalty, they were sadistic brutes to begin with, and they were egged on by demons to greater cruelty.
The Devil incited bloodlust in the Jews, as surely as he tempted Judas. Indeed, his demons entered into the Jews who cried "Crucify him" before Pilate.
As far as the ADL - they are certainly not religious, and give their people a bad name. They also show both ignorance and hatred of their own scriptures. For it says in the Torah that "the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children for generations". In addition to that, we have in the New Testament" "let his blood be upon us and on our children".
It is quite interesting that Jews will not stand to take any responsibility for the death of Christ, while every German - and all other Gentiles - must feel responsible for the Holocost. This is obviously unfair.
Emmerich's visions do have church approval, and are a sure way to proper sorrow for sin, as a meditation of the passion of Our Lord.
Yes, Mel Gibson's hand, my hand, your hand, and the hands of all - Gentile, Jew and Pagan - who have sinned and broken the law of God - held the hammer which drove the nail into the hand of the Son of the living God.
And if Emmerich is to be raised to the honors of the altar it is because of her personal sanctity. And it is because of her personal sanctity that God allowed her to share in Christ's suffering by bearing his wounds, and to live his passion in pain, and by visions - which were clearly of and by God.
The Church honors her - all of her...her personal holiness, stigmata, and visions, by beatifying Anna Katerina Emmerich.
True?
Jewish people do love to complain, don't they?
What of Emmerich's delusion that the crucifix was built by Jews in the Temple?
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