Posted on 07/02/2008 3:28:00 AM PDT by Gamecock
Pope John XXIII believed Padre Pio, the hugely popular Capuchin monk who was canonised in 2002, was a fraud who had "incorrect" relations with women and whose soul was in danger....
Sergio Luzzatto...has also found documents in the Vatican archives suggesting that Padre Pio may have faked his stigmata, the marks of the wounds of Christ, with acid. Vatican officials say both allegations are already well known....
Followers of Padre Pio believe he exuded "the odour of sanctity", had the gift of bilocation (being in two places at once), healed the sick and could prophesy the future.
(Excerpt) Read more at timesonline.co.uk ...
You completely misunderstand my point. It is well known that the American Catholic Church was built by poor immigrants. It isn't the poverty that's the point. It's the whole deal (poor white rural southern etc.).
American Catholics are culturally northern urban liberals who look down on the rural South (and rural America in general). Then there's the fact that American Catholics consider themselves a persecuted minority group and have the strange idea that every single rural American Protestant is Oliver Cromwell.
Moreover Catholics, like the rest of chr*stendom, consider America's rural Protestant culture to be an embarrassment to chr*stianity because of its simple faith in the facticity of the Bible. Please try to understand why it is grating that people who consider the Bible to be mythology insist that a man who died in 1968 was regularly in two places at once.
American Catholics are culturally northern urban liberals who look down on the rural South (and rural America in general).
Sweeping generalization #2:
Then there's the fact that American Catholics consider themselves a persecuted minority group and have the strange idea that every single rural American Protestant is Oliver Cromwell.
Bigoted much?
Ah, "bigotry." The mantra of all urban northern liberals.
Look it up.
Or, for concrete examples, read your post 281.
Today I am in much less of a saucy mood so first let me apologize for my attitude yesterday. Now to your points.
My father’s family is full of poor white southern people. Half of them Catholic. Not a single one has ever relayed a story such as yours. Everyone has been accepted in a parish. If your experience is different, perhaps you should have found another parish.
Even to my parents doing their time in LA while my dad was in the service, Never did my parents have a bad experience in a Catholic Church. Blaming the Church for the problems in a parish will get you know where.
To state that American Catholic are culturally urban liberals is a silly statement. We were in an extremely conservative Polish parish in my childhood. Now I am in a Slovak parish that is so well known for it’s conservative values, it was mentioned on EWTN. In fact, when one considers some of the more well known Catholics (ie Laura Ingraham, Bill Bennett etc.) I would say that we are a mix politically, as are most religions.
I’m sorry that you and your mother had a bad experience in a parish. To then paint us with a broad brush is the same kind of attitude that you got from the Catholics you encountered.
Remember, if Our Lord wants you humble, He will humiliate you. You were given a fine lesson. What did you learn from it?
You need to calm down.
So you have nothing to say to those who say that Catholics must be evolutionists in order to be "good Catholics?" All you have to say after what I told you is "calm down?"
In other words you're an evolutionist yourself. Yet you had the brass to act offended when I merely pointed out that Catholics are evolutionists and therefore hypocrites when they defend post-Biblical miracles!
Please don't ever pull the "why, whatever are you talking about" or "where did you ever get those ideas?" routines again. Okay?
I am glad to hear it, as your attitude yesterday was, to say the least, obnoxious.
Before we communicate further, please read my post #286.
Then post the links.
what Catholics think the Bible is mythology? If they do not believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of the Living God, in the Holy Trinity, the Virgin Birth, etc-—they aren’t really Catholics. They may go to a Catholic Church, but they don’t really believe the essentials of the faith.
And you don’t seem to realize that not all Protestants have the same views of scriptures, and many of them look on the Bible as mythology.
And evidence for miracles associated with Padre Pio is far too strong to ignore.
I am so tired of this.
I am well aware that Catholics believe the miracles in the "new testament" actually happened. However, they take a completely different view of the "old testament."
Admit it . . . you're an evolutionist!
So why don't you answer this, do YOU believe that the events of the New Testament really happened?
Do YOU believe in the Virgin Birth, the Holy Trinity, the Resurrection and Ascension?
“...while you self-righteous hypocrites hide out here with your heads firmly ensconced in your bungholes, which you remove only to bash Fundamentalist Protestants.”
Check out the first few posts on this thread. Do you really think this thread was posted to bash Fundamentalist Protestants?
Freegards
You don't even have a dog in the fight that this thread concerns, yet you show up an awful lot here. You abandoned Catholicism because you perceived your mother being ill-treated. If such occured, that's most regretable, but such an occurence has nothing to do with the Truths of the Faith being true or not. You seem otherwise logical enough to see the silliness of the conclusions you have drawn about Catholicism based on personal slights. If you actually "believed" the Catholic Faith up to that point, to abandon Jesus over a perceived personal scandal merely makes you a victim of what Jesus foretold in Matthew 18:6-7. The remedy for such was recommended several verses later in Matt. 18:15-17. You had recourse to options other than chucking objective realities regarding the Triune God over hurt personal feelings.
If you really believe now that Jesus is a fraud, then just let the whole "package" go and stop whining about the allegedly weak allegiance to Biblical inerrancy held by a bunch of folks you obviously now believe are idolators. Or, at least be consistent, and castigate all of the Christians here for the same offense, and a host of others that necessarily derive from it. Don't project your hurt feelings on us 24/7 if you will make no effort to reflect on how silly it is to let those feelings trump the higher Truths. If Jesus is God, as you apparently once believed, then He is still God, irrespective of how you or your mother were treated, or how little or great the Catholic estimation of poor, white Southerners is. If He is not God, then He is not, and the issue hardly depends on your personal treatment while staying with His lackies. I should think you'd know that.
Actually, I don’t have a strong opinion on evolution or a literal 6 day creation at all. It simply doesn’t effect my faith at all. The point of Genesis is not about a creation timeframe, but is about God’s relationship to man. Whether it is literal or it is a parable, it is the simple truth. period. I really don’t see the point in arguing over it.
Since all truth is God’s truth, no matter how the world actually came about-—whether over billions of years or in six days 6000 years ago, is completely irrelevent to my belief. The Lord made it happen, He created man and all life, and we lost our relationship with Him because of our sins.
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