Posted on 10/25/2007 9:24:05 AM PDT by NYer
The Other Christ: Padre Pio and 19th Century Italy, by the historian Sergio Luzzatto, draws on a document found in the Vatican's archive.
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The document reveals the testimony of a pharmacist who said that the young Padre Pio bought four grams of carbolic acid in 1919.
"I was an admirer of Padre Pio and I met him for the first time on 31 July 1919," wrote Maria De Vito.
She claimed to have spent a month with the priest in the southern town of San Giovanni Rotondo, seeing him often.
"Padre Pio called me to him in complete secrecy and telling me not to tell his fellow brothers, he gave me personally an empty bottle, and asked if I would act as a chauffeur to transport it back from Foggia to San Giovanni Rotondo with four grams of pure carbolic acid.
"He explained that the acid was for disinfecting syringes for injections. He also asked for other things, such as Valda pastilles."
The testimony was originally presented to the Vatican by the Archbishop of Manfredonia, Pasquale Gagliardi, as proof that Padre Pio caused his own stigmata with acid.
It was examined by the Holy See during the beatification process of Padre Pio and apparently dismissed.
Padre Pio, whose real name was Francesco Forgione, died in 1968. He was made a saint in 2002. A recent survey in Italy showed that more people prayed to him than to Jesus or the Virgin Mary. He exhibited stigmata throughout his life, starting in 1911.
The new allegations were greeted with an instant dismissal from his supporters. The Catholic Anti-Defamation League said Mr Luzzatto was a liar and was "spreading anti-Catholic libels".
Pietro Siffi, the president of the League, said: "We would like to remind Mr Luzzatto that according to Catholic doctrine, canonisation carries with it papal infallibility.
"We would like to suggest to Mr Luzzatto that he dedicates his energies to studying religion properly."
I wonder how they explain bilocation?
St. Pio appeared in two places at once a number of times.
Praying to dead people is necromancy. Forbidden by God.
If the saints in heaven are "dead," then Jesus wasted his time. Besides, he explicitly rejects that idea in Mt 22:32.
Necromancy is consulting the dead for the purpose of fortune-telling, which is why it's condemned in scripture with other forms of fortune-telling, and why the Catholic Church regards it as seriously sinful.
Nothing wrong with praying directly to Jesus, we do it all the time.
Why does St. Paul as his readers, in several places in Scripture, to pray for him? Does he think he can't go directly to Jesus?
When my late pastor was in the seminary in the 1930’s he served Mass for Padre Pio and personally witnessed his bandaged hands begin bleeding at the Consecration. He told me this himself.
Good post. To sum up, the phrase, “Pray to X” doesn’t necessarily mean worshiping “X”.
Padre Pio, I pray you pray for us!
St Paul is asking believers who are alive on the earth, who can read his letter, to pray to God for him. He is not asking those who are not physically there and cannot read his letter, to pray to God for him.
If Paul wanted the dead to pray for him to God on his behalf, he would not need to write a physical letter. Your example thus refutes itself. The only reason therefore that Paul would write a physical letter to physical living people is because he was asking the people who were alive in this particular church to pray for him. If Paul wanted people to pray to dead Christians to interced for us, you would have cited an example from the Bible that shows Paul directly promoting or using such a practice.
Paul was not asking the dead in Christ to pray for Him, because they don’t make intercessions for us and are not in a position to make intercessions for us. You don’t have conversations with dead people, whether they are Christians or not. We can have intercession to God through his ONE mediator (the Bible says ONE mediator), the God-man Jesus Christ precisely because He is not dead. Christ, the first fruit, was resurrected (no other Christians who have died are yet resurrected and alive again) and He is alive right now and forever.
It is interesting that you try to use an example from the bible to justify prayers to teh dead when it actually shows asking living people to pray for you, not dead people. Further the real story of the rich man and Lazarus after death shows the dead cannot intercede on their own behalf or anyone else.
Paul was not asking the dead in Christ to pray for Him, because they don’t make intercessions for us and are not in a position to make intercessions for us.
Revelation 5:8 flatly disagrees with you.
We can have intercession to God through his ONE mediator (the Bible says ONE mediator), the God-man Jesus Christ
The intercession of the saints in heaven depends totally on Christ's mediation with the Father and is not independent of it, so your objection is irrelevant.
Besides, if you read the verse in context, you'll find the chapter in question commands intercessory prayer, it doesn't prohibit it. You'll also discover that that word in Greek translated "one" is not monos (one and only one) but heis (one, unique, primary).
precisely because He is not dead.
And those who have fallen asleep in Christ are dead? (You'd better consider John 11:25-26 before answering.)
You call Christ your one mediator, and proceed to dismiss his words which condemn your argument. If you call him "Lord, Lord," why do you not believe him when he says that nobody who believes in him ever dies?
Oh, and by the way: Matthew 22:32. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob aren’t dead, according to Jesus.
Plus, "necro" means "dead."
Divination by means of conjuring the dead is something plainly forbidden: I think all Christians agree to that.
This does not exclude the fellowship we still enjoy with the departed who are in the Lord, and indeed with anyone in heaven or on earth who is a member of the Body of Christ: we love each other, we pray for and each other; nothing separates us from each other in the love of Christ.
The Body of Christ is not part-living and part-dead: Christ is not necrotic!
The Body of Christ includes the faithful departed, who are in fact closer to us than our own blood kin.
Besides, you cannot prove that something is not permitted solely because it is not found in the pages of the New Testament. The list of the very books of the New Testament is not found in the New Testament; neither are the certain truths of the Incarnation or the Trinity nor many other truths which Christ teaches us through His Church. I invite you not to take a truncated view of Christ's Church, as if it folded up shop or "petered out" some 1900 years ago.
And have you never asked another member of the Body of Christ to pray for you? Your mom? Your pastor? Your fellow servant?
For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus. I Timothy 2:5 (not the saints)
And you are purposefully twisting Matthew 22:32 to meet your agenda. They are dead in their body and their spirits are moved to Heaven or Hades. Talking to the dead is witchcraft.
That is why Saul got in serious trouble with God when he tried to call up Samuel.
As for Tolkien, I can pick whatever name I want as long as it's not taken by anyone else. If it's so important to you, why didn't you take it when you had the chance? I like him for his authorship, not his religion.
This stuff rears its head from time to time when ol' Nick cranks up the filth blowing machine and nobody is immune.
We've had the Jesus was married, Jesus was gay, Mary was not a virgin, schools of thought, so the saints are certainly not going to be exempt from the "treatment".
Where? It says "necromancy," not "talking to the dead for any purpose".
Was Jesus sinning at the Transfiguration?
And you are purposefully twisting Matthew 22:32 to meet your agenda.
And you're ignoring it to meet yours.
BTW, Saul clearly wanted his fortune told. He was also going through a witch.
Neither issue applies to Catholics asking for the prayers of the saints.
One of the best-documented cases of bilocation was that of Mary of Agreda, who in the 1600's bilocated in Texas/New Mexico while never leaving her native Spain; historian William Carroll says it is completely inexplicable outside of supernatural intervention.
Now, now, pillut . . .
we are supposed to ignore the RC’s rubber dictionary and rubber Bible.
prayer means prayer except when it doesn’t.
Intense adoration, reverence, veneration . . . = worship except when they don’t.
And, yes, one could construe RC theology to be a variation of THE MATRIX version . . . 5 or 6 or maybe even version 666 perhaps depending on the variation involved.
But mostly I think it’s another variation on humanity’s very human tendencies to politically control things; manage things; decide things . . . even supposed truth.
What kind of Bible teaches you to resort to derision and namecalling instead of actually discussing the issues?
Matthew 17:3
And behold, there appeared to them Moses and Elijah, talking with him.
"Have you not read what was said to you by God: 'I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob'? He is not God of the dead, but of the living." And when the crowd heard it, they were astonished at his teaching." (Matthew 22:31-33)
I think the problem here is that you are looking at those who have passed away in a natural or fleshly way, as if they were dead; whereas as Christ has plainly shown us, they are living.
Do you doubt that they are alive in Christ? Do you doubt that we are alive in Christ? And if they and we are alive in Him, can't we not pray together in Him as one living body, in the living Christ?
In fact, this is the key to all of it:
Romans 12:5
so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.
1 Corinthians 12:12
Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ.
1 Corinthians 12:27
Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.
My mother passed away this morning and my Baptist sister was telling me how she’s an angel now, I didn’t want to disagree with her but just agreed that, God willing, she is with Him now and also with us still.
We Catholics believe that we are no more separated from the saints than we are from the living, breathing humans on this earth. Through the power and presence of God they are aware of us and they hear our prayers. They have no power outside of God, they aren’t demi-gods that we worship but humans who have led the way and have attained what we hope to attain through the sacrifice of our Lord, Jesus Christ.
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