Posted on 04/21/2005 11:17:55 PM PDT by sionnsar
Reacting to the election of Pope Benedict XVI, former Roman Catholic and current Episcopal priest Matthew Fox goes completely insane. I mean, dude freaking loses it. Matt's got some questions for the new pope. Here a few of them:
1. You come from Bavaria, that part of Germany that most admired Hitler and first voted for him. Did you ever denounce Hitler or fascism? If so, when? If not, why not?
That Nazi theme is going to come up again and again. Like here, for example.
3. If you denounced Hitler then why do you carry on in his ways such as 1) bookburning and denouncing of thinkers and theologians? 2) whipping up hostility toward homosexuals as he did? 3) excluding women of all decision-making and leadership? 4) create scapegoats including people of religions other than Catholic along with women and gay people?
I've never heard of Cardinal Ratzinger burning any books or "whipping up hostility toward homosexuals" or anyone else. But Matt's had an active imagination for some time now. And when he gets an idea into his head, it tends to hang around a while since there's nothing else up there.
4. Do you want to put gays in concentration camps like Hitler did?
Matt's a multifaceted nutcase. Here, he gets a little raving paranoia in.
6. According to a serious study done on the death of Pope John Paul I, cardinals were part of the plot that killed him. Do you know which cardinals were involved in his murder and have they ever been brought to justice?
7. How much was the CIA involved in the rushed election of John Paul II? (A CIA agent told me he had been "their man in Poland" for many years.)
Matt figures he'll accuse Benedict of being a mass murderer while he's at it.
10. How do you sleep at night knowing that your theology of forbidding condoms in a time of AIDS has contributed to the death of millions in the African continent and beyond?
11. How do you sleep at night knowing that your theology of no birth control is contributing to the destruction of 25,000 other species annually as well as to the degradation of life among human beings?
I'm not really sure why other animals care whether someone uses a condom or not. And I don't think that being able to freely boink everyone in sight without having to worry about a little tax write-off poking its head out nine months later elevates the human species any.
By the way, Matt, how do you sleep at night after accusing someone of killing millions of people based on totally unproven leftist cliches? Doesn't seem very Christ-like to me. And it seems like it would be a tough thing for anyone with a functioning conscience to do. Matt then hauls out this discredited old chestnut.
12. Did Jesus ever say anything at all about condoms or birth control or homosexuality or the ordination of women? (In fact, today’s scholarship shows how many women were in position of leadership in the early church.) Then why are you so sure of your absolutist position?
For the same reason that joining the Ku Klux Klan is a bad thing for a Christian to do even though Jesus never said anything about racism. But Matt doesn't want to dwell on that one too long because it's back to paranoia again.
15. Are you aware that your destruction (with the help of the CIA) of liberation theology and base communities in Latin America has stripped Catholicism so bare that Pentecostals are taking over the continent?
Once again, we note the long reach of the sinister Worldwide Pentecostal Conspiracy. Matt doesn't care for Pentecostals much. Their worship is just too weird for a normal Christian guy like him. Then the old fraud actually has the audacity to ask this.
18. Are you a Christian? (A canon lawyer who spent years in Rome told me that to understand you I had to first realize that you are not a Christian.) Can you prove it to us please?
With your permission, Your Holiness, I'll field that one. Benedict XVI won't compromise the faith once delivered to the saints for public approval or so people who want to call themselves "spiritual" will call him a prophet. He believes the Gospel of Jesus Christ, including the parts similar to this.
And the new pope has never once participated in anything called a Cosmic Mass. That's proof enough for you, old man.
19. Are you the first Grand Inquisitor to be elected pope? What does that tell us about the state of the Roman Catholic Church at this time in history? How does that feel to be treading such fresh ground?
No, since Cardinal Ratzinger never held that title.
20. A Native American woman who is also a Roman Catholic went to Rome a few years ago for the beatification of Blessed Tekekwitha. It was her first visit to the Vatican and she was looking forward to it. However, she came back shaking her head saying, "there are evil spirits in that place." Was she correct? Have evil spirits taken over the Vatican at this time in history?
No. They're all hanging out at the University of Creation Spirituality and any place you do those Cosmic Masses of yours.
21. Why do you denounce Buddhists as "atheists" and "autoerotocists?" Why do you condemn Hindus? Protestant churches? Pagans? Goddess worshippers? Native American believers? Feminists? The practice of Yoga? (You write that it gets you "too much in touch with your body"). Is your church--mother of Inquisitions and Crusades and anti-Semitism--without sin and the holder of all spiritual wisdom? Why did your church never excommunicate Hitler?
Let's see. Because Benedict XVI believes that his church's doctrines are true. The Roman Catholic Church is not without sin which puts it light years ahead of people like Matt who have pretty much abandoned the whole sin idea entirely. And if invoking Hitler means that you have lost the argument, then Matt Fox has not only lost the argument but the argument is currently kicking Matt's ass.
22. Why do you forbid Catholics to talk about God as Mother? God as Child? Original Blessing instead of Original Sin (which is not in the Bible)? God as female as well as male?
Might have something to do with the fact that the Scriptures as well as Jesus Christ, the Son of God, repeatedly refer to God as Father. But that's just a guess and Matt won't read it anyway. Because right about now, Matt's so mad that he can't even type straight.
Now the good news. The silver lining in the election of this, the first Grand Inquisitor as Pope, is this: Now people of conscience the world over have a clear choice between Religion and Spirituality; Fundamentalism and Wisdom; A Punitive Father God and the Mother-Father Creator of Justice and Compassion; Fascism and Control vs. Letting the Spirit Work; between a preferential option for the rich and powerful (cf. Opus Dei) and a preferential option for the poor (as in liberation theology).
EASY, Matt.
Now all people--and Catholics in particular--are called to find their consciences and take a stand about the Punitive Father God of Fundamentalism and the Divine Wisdom of Justice and Compassion and against idolatry including religious idolatry and papalolatry and the television cult of personality, and between lies and truth.
Matt! Deep breaths, buddy!
This is already happening. I received an e mail this morning from a life-long Catholic who says she is now leaving the Ratzinger Church. Ratzinger and his German entourage have been running the Vatican for the last twenty-five years while Pope John Paul II traveled about the world. From that point of view, nothing has changed. Only that their head man is now the man out front. ALL bishops and cardinals have been appointed through Ratzinger already. This is how he got so many votes so swiftly in the conclave. It is his church. It is a schismatic church. They are out of touch with the spirit and letter of Vatican II as well as the person and teachings of Jesus.
The Ratzinger Church. The Roman Catholic Church is "schismatic" and "out of touch with the spirit and letter of Vatican II." Whatever, sunshine. As for "the person and teachings of Jesus", it seems to me that repeatedly calling people Nazis and accusing them of being mass murderers seems about as far from "the person and teachings of Jesus" as it is possible for anyone to go. Of course, I'm not current in modern liberal Christian theological scholarship.
A New Reformation can happen swiftly. It is already underway. The Internet can help feed it. The myths that have kept the Roman Catholic Church afloat for 1800 years have been washed away. (The historical Jesus never said: "Thou art Peter and upon this rock I will build my church." That came later.) Maybe the new version of Christianity need not be Peter based (Roman Catholicism) or Paul based (the Protestant option) but Mary Magdalene based. Any takers?
No thanks, Matt. I prefer real Christianity to that bitter, hysterical, pagan, pseudo-spiritual scam you've got going.
Says here that Matt's on the staff of Grace Cathedral of San Francisco which is in the Episcopal Diocese of California. The Bishop out there is William Swing. If you'd like to get in touch with the Bishop to complain about this attack on Benedict XVI, ask Swing if he approves of one of his ministers engaging in public slander or enquire why an allegedly Christian church hasn't kicked a goofball like Matt Fox to the curb yet, you can e-mail him here. Tell the Swinger I sent you.
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"Why did your church never excommunicate Hitler?"
Maybe because Hitler was not a Catholic.
Dear, dear me. What a complete nutter!
It's curious, Stalin was 9 years older than Hitler, and his mother had him placed in an Orthodox Christian seminary. But Stalin couldn't be reached either, and was no more interested in the Orthodox Christian faith than Hitler ever was in the Catholic Christian faith.
Wasn't Hitlers mother of Jewish descent? And, according to Jewish law, wouldn't that make her children Jewish?
Are you crazy? Hitler's mother was an Austrian and she certainly wasn't a Jewish Austrian. Read some history, it helps...
I have done some reading, and it seems there are quite a few conflicting views on this matter. Some sources say it was his father (born illegitimate)who was Jewish, others say it was his mother. And other still say Hitler's parents were cousins.
"Read some history, it helps..." and BTW, there is really no reason to be rude.
"...Matt Fox has not only lost the argument but the argument is currently kicking Matt's ass."
LOL! that's a good one. I'm going to use that some day!
Pope Benedict should have belonged to the KKK instead of Hitler Youth, eg Robert Byrd and supreme Court justice Hugo Black, then MSM would give him a pass
Matthew Fox gives barking moonbats a bad name!
"8:5 And when he was entered into Capernaum, there came unto him a centurion1, beseeching him2,
8:6 and saying, Lord, my servant lieth in the house sick of the palsy, grievously tormented18:7 And he saith unto him, I will come and heal him
8:8 And the centurion answered and said, Lord, I am not worthy that thou shouldest come under my roof1; but only say the word, and my servant shall be healed2.
8:10 And when Jesus heard it, he marvelled1, and said to them that followed, Verily I say unto you, I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel2.
St. Matthew (Douay)
If Jesus could look upon the centurion who was certainly an officer with soldiers under his command whose Roman Procurator had a part in Christ's crucifixion, and marvel at the man's faith,
who
is Matthew Fox to condemn a man who was a teenage footsoldier who fled his army?
His daddy's mother wasn't married when she gave birth. Her name was Schicklgruber (hence the derisive references to Adolf as "old Schicklgruber") and she later married a man named Heidler or Hitler . . . but Alois (Hitler's dad) didn't change his name to Heidler (or Hitler) until he was almost 40 years old.
There are long standing rumors that Maria Schiklgruber was working in a Jewish household when she got pregnant by the father or a son of the house . . . no documentary support but lots of questions. Our good friend Cecil Adams of The Straight Dope as usual has rounded up the info on this. I have always found Adams (or Ed Zotti if you prefer) to be surprisingly accurate (and not just for a column in an alternative newspaper - he has good researchers.)
Nothing quite so vicious against Catholics as an ex-Catholic.
There is no evidence that he attended mass (or even merely entered a church) after his childhood. By the time he entered power he retained no vestige of Christianity. The eulogy that he gave for the late president Von Hindenburg in 1933 was unabashedly pagan, filled with references to the Norse pantheon and culminating with a thunderuous peroration: "Enter, thou great warrior, into Valhalla!" The Lutheran pastors in attendance were aghast.
Don't forget, Georg Heidler was probably Miss Schicklgruber's first cousin. What an inbred mess that family tree is!
(whistle Colonel Bogey March here . . . ) < g >
Hitler also discussed assassinating or kidnapping Pius XII, but was talked out of it by the general in charge of Rome.
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