Pope declares it's time Latin America was reconverted to the other Only True Faith.
http://au.news.yahoo.com/070512/19/13fpr.html
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Saturday May 12, 01:12 PM
<b>Pope gives Brazil its first saint, speaks out against hedonism</b>
Photo : AFPÂ
SAO PAULO (AFP) - Pope Benedict XVI on Friday created Brazil's first native-born saint and spoke out against hedonism at a million-strong open-air mass in Sao Paulo as the <b>Catholic Church seeks to extend its missionary reach in the Latin American region.</b>
The mass at Sao Paulo's Campo de Marte elevated Franciscan monk Antonio de Sant'Ana Galvao to sainthood while providing a platform for the pope to condemn "an age so full of hedonism."
The friar, he said, showed that "the world needs transparent lives, clear souls, pure minds." The 80-year-old pontiff blasted "those elements of the media that ridicule the sanctity of marriage and virginity before marriage."
<b>Later Friday, the spiritual leader of the world's 1.1 billion Catholics met with Brazil's 430 bishops to lay out a blueprint for rebuilding the Church in its stronghold, home to some 155 million faithful.
The Church hopes to reverse the major inroads evangelical faiths have made not only in Brazil, but also across Latin America, a region that represents nearly half of the world's Catholics.
In the speech, the German pontiff urged: "No effort should be spared in seeking out those Catholics who have fallen away."</b>
Acknowledging that "the present is a difficult time for the Church," the pope spoke of the "worrying disorientation" of society, with marriage and the family under attack and "crimes against life (that) are justified in the name of individual freedom and rights."
<b>Within the Church, the pope also lamented the growing questioning of the requirement of priestly celibacy, which he reiterated "is a gift which the Church has received and desires to retain."</b>
Benedict said desertions from the Catholic fold were due primarily to the "the lack of an evangelization completely centered on Christ and his Church."
<b>He said people who are "insufficiently evangelized (are) most vulnerable to the aggressive proselytizing of (evangelical) sects" adding that such people "are easily influenced because their faith is weak, confused, easily shaken and naive, despite their innate religiosity."</b>
(I hope non-catholic Indian christians in India see fit to raise protests against the Pope for his lightly-veiled insults. Keep it non-violent for a change, please.)
Friday's canonization mass was the biggest event in Benedict's five-day trip to Brazil, which is to end Sunday in the nearby sanctuary town of Aparecida, where he is to open a Latin American bishops' conference.
That meeting will also be aimed at giving impetus to the church's missionary reach in the region.
In recent years in Latin America, the Church has lost ground to rival evangelical faiths, as well as to <b>a growing number of people who have abandoned religion altogether.</b>
In Brazil, 64 percent of the population is Catholic, but the figure has fallen from 74 percent a decade ago, according to a recent study. At the same time, the number of evangelical followers has risen to 17 percent from 11 percent, the Datafolha institute said.
<b>Benedict proposed "on every level, a methodical evangelization aimed at personal and communal fidelity to Christ."
He added: "What is required, in a word, is a mission of evangelization capable of engaging all the vital energies present in this immense flock."
Benedict urged that missionaries be sent "to homes on the outskirts of the cities and in the interior," the two areas where Brazil's poor are concentrated.
"The poor ... need to feel that the Church is close to them, providing for their most urgent needs, defending their rights and working together with them to build a society founded on justice and peace," he said.</b>
Benedict also addressed the severe lack of priests in Brazil, where in some places the ratio can be one to 15,000 faithful. While Catholic priests must complete an elaborate seminary education, evangelical pastors need little training.
(Earlier, I had thought it a good idea for Indian catholic christos to play priests and nuns in S and C America. But it's bad enough they terrorise Indians, it would be irresponsible to have them unleashed in Latin America. As it is, the S and C Americans will be exposed to more than enough, what with having to deal with the terrorist evangelicals <i>and</i> catholic missionaries who will be heating up their full-out 'battle over Latin American souls'.)
One response to the problem is to train lay ministers to perform certain priestly functions.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->From stuff above:
(1) <b>"the world needs transparent lives, clear souls, pure minds."</b>
Then don't join christoislam. Be free, be non-religious. Anything, except cults of terror.
(2) <b>Within the Church, the pope also lamented the growing questioning of the requirement of priestly celibacy, which he reiterated "is a gift which the Church has received and desires to retain."</b>
'The Catholic church receives the gift of priestly celibacy':
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>GREGORY VII 1073-1085</b> Pope who made it compulsory for priests to be celibate. In 1074, Gregory with his mistress Countess Matilda by his side, issued an edict ordering his priests to abandon their wives. The alternative, Gregory said, was to be cursed forever. "The whole body of the married clergy offered the most resolute resistance," according to the <i>Catholic Encyclopedia</i>. In his <i>Sex Lives of the Popes</i> Nigel Cawthorne said the effect of Gregory's legislation was to make "virtual prostitutes of the thousands of innocent wives of bewildered and angry little clergymen" and that "Husbands and wives were separated in large numbers ... (and) many abandoned women committed suicide".<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->And let's not forget the wonderful papal invention of the sex tax - taxing priests for having sex:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>URBAN II 1088-1099</b> Introduced sex taxes and the Crusades. At the Council of Piacenza in 1095, some 400 clerics and 30,000 laymen passed a resolution finally outlawing the marriage of priests. The result was that many wives were sold into slavery. Seeing an opportunity, Urban II (1088-99) introduced the infamous <b>cullagium</b> - or sex tax - which allowed a priest to keep a mistress so long as he paid an annual fee.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd--> ( http://freetruth.50webs.org/C2b.htm )
The church realised it could make a lot of money by taxing clergymen. After all, most people don't find celibacy comes natural. What better way to make money then tax them for one of the seven signs of life. It's a miracle they weren't taxed for the other six.
(3) "The poor ... need to feel that the Church is close to them, providing for their most urgent needs, defending their rights and <b>working together with them to build a society founded on justice and peace</b>"
What? Like how Pinochet and the Church worked together?
Or the justice and peace that catholicism gave to Latin America in the last 5+ centuries?
Catholicism in the Americas was never even <i>founded</i> on justice and peace, unless these two words mean genocide of native Americans.
Must say, I am afraid for the unfortunate Latin Americans. They don't deserve this. They were just starting to loosen up or break free even. Now the Pope is approaching with the chains of the catholic church in his hands again, and it might become a choice between the devil and the deep blue sea for S and C Americans, considering the unappetising alternative to the Roman church being offered. (Personally, I find jumping off a cliff to be a better option than evangelical christianity. In fact, even the fictional christoislamic hell sounds like a wonderful place when one considers that there will no christianity or islam there....)
http://au.news.yahoo.com/070512/19/13fpr.html
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Saturday May 12, 01:12 PM
<b>Pope gives Brazil its first saint, speaks out against hedonism</b>
Photo : AFPÂ
SAO PAULO (AFP) - Pope Benedict XVI on Friday created Brazil's first native-born saint and spoke out against hedonism at a million-strong open-air mass in Sao Paulo as the <b>Catholic Church seeks to extend its missionary reach in the Latin American region.</b>
The mass at Sao Paulo's Campo de Marte elevated Franciscan monk Antonio de Sant'Ana Galvao to sainthood while providing a platform for the pope to condemn "an age so full of hedonism."
The friar, he said, showed that "the world needs transparent lives, clear souls, pure minds." The 80-year-old pontiff blasted "those elements of the media that ridicule the sanctity of marriage and virginity before marriage."
<b>Later Friday, the spiritual leader of the world's 1.1 billion Catholics met with Brazil's 430 bishops to lay out a blueprint for rebuilding the Church in its stronghold, home to some 155 million faithful.
The Church hopes to reverse the major inroads evangelical faiths have made not only in Brazil, but also across Latin America, a region that represents nearly half of the world's Catholics.
In the speech, the German pontiff urged: "No effort should be spared in seeking out those Catholics who have fallen away."</b>
Acknowledging that "the present is a difficult time for the Church," the pope spoke of the "worrying disorientation" of society, with marriage and the family under attack and "crimes against life (that) are justified in the name of individual freedom and rights."
<b>Within the Church, the pope also lamented the growing questioning of the requirement of priestly celibacy, which he reiterated "is a gift which the Church has received and desires to retain."</b>
Benedict said desertions from the Catholic fold were due primarily to the "the lack of an evangelization completely centered on Christ and his Church."
<b>He said people who are "insufficiently evangelized (are) most vulnerable to the aggressive proselytizing of (evangelical) sects" adding that such people "are easily influenced because their faith is weak, confused, easily shaken and naive, despite their innate religiosity."</b>
(I hope non-catholic Indian christians in India see fit to raise protests against the Pope for his lightly-veiled insults. Keep it non-violent for a change, please.)
Friday's canonization mass was the biggest event in Benedict's five-day trip to Brazil, which is to end Sunday in the nearby sanctuary town of Aparecida, where he is to open a Latin American bishops' conference.
That meeting will also be aimed at giving impetus to the church's missionary reach in the region.
In recent years in Latin America, the Church has lost ground to rival evangelical faiths, as well as to <b>a growing number of people who have abandoned religion altogether.</b>
In Brazil, 64 percent of the population is Catholic, but the figure has fallen from 74 percent a decade ago, according to a recent study. At the same time, the number of evangelical followers has risen to 17 percent from 11 percent, the Datafolha institute said.
<b>Benedict proposed "on every level, a methodical evangelization aimed at personal and communal fidelity to Christ."
He added: "What is required, in a word, is a mission of evangelization capable of engaging all the vital energies present in this immense flock."
Benedict urged that missionaries be sent "to homes on the outskirts of the cities and in the interior," the two areas where Brazil's poor are concentrated.
"The poor ... need to feel that the Church is close to them, providing for their most urgent needs, defending their rights and working together with them to build a society founded on justice and peace," he said.</b>
Benedict also addressed the severe lack of priests in Brazil, where in some places the ratio can be one to 15,000 faithful. While Catholic priests must complete an elaborate seminary education, evangelical pastors need little training.
(Earlier, I had thought it a good idea for Indian catholic christos to play priests and nuns in S and C America. But it's bad enough they terrorise Indians, it would be irresponsible to have them unleashed in Latin America. As it is, the S and C Americans will be exposed to more than enough, what with having to deal with the terrorist evangelicals <i>and</i> catholic missionaries who will be heating up their full-out 'battle over Latin American souls'.)
One response to the problem is to train lay ministers to perform certain priestly functions.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->From stuff above:
(1) <b>"the world needs transparent lives, clear souls, pure minds."</b>
Then don't join christoislam. Be free, be non-religious. Anything, except cults of terror.
(2) <b>Within the Church, the pope also lamented the growing questioning of the requirement of priestly celibacy, which he reiterated "is a gift which the Church has received and desires to retain."</b>
'The Catholic church receives the gift of priestly celibacy':
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>GREGORY VII 1073-1085</b> Pope who made it compulsory for priests to be celibate. In 1074, Gregory with his mistress Countess Matilda by his side, issued an edict ordering his priests to abandon their wives. The alternative, Gregory said, was to be cursed forever. "The whole body of the married clergy offered the most resolute resistance," according to the <i>Catholic Encyclopedia</i>. In his <i>Sex Lives of the Popes</i> Nigel Cawthorne said the effect of Gregory's legislation was to make "virtual prostitutes of the thousands of innocent wives of bewildered and angry little clergymen" and that "Husbands and wives were separated in large numbers ... (and) many abandoned women committed suicide".<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->And let's not forget the wonderful papal invention of the sex tax - taxing priests for having sex:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>URBAN II 1088-1099</b> Introduced sex taxes and the Crusades. At the Council of Piacenza in 1095, some 400 clerics and 30,000 laymen passed a resolution finally outlawing the marriage of priests. The result was that many wives were sold into slavery. Seeing an opportunity, Urban II (1088-99) introduced the infamous <b>cullagium</b> - or sex tax - which allowed a priest to keep a mistress so long as he paid an annual fee.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd--> ( http://freetruth.50webs.org/C2b.htm )
The church realised it could make a lot of money by taxing clergymen. After all, most people don't find celibacy comes natural. What better way to make money then tax them for one of the seven signs of life. It's a miracle they weren't taxed for the other six.
(3) "The poor ... need to feel that the Church is close to them, providing for their most urgent needs, defending their rights and <b>working together with them to build a society founded on justice and peace</b>"
What? Like how Pinochet and the Church worked together?
Or the justice and peace that catholicism gave to Latin America in the last 5+ centuries?
Catholicism in the Americas was never even <i>founded</i> on justice and peace, unless these two words mean genocide of native Americans.
Must say, I am afraid for the unfortunate Latin Americans. They don't deserve this. They were just starting to loosen up or break free even. Now the Pope is approaching with the chains of the catholic church in his hands again, and it might become a choice between the devil and the deep blue sea for S and C Americans, considering the unappetising alternative to the Roman church being offered. (Personally, I find jumping off a cliff to be a better option than evangelical christianity. In fact, even the fictional christoislamic hell sounds like a wonderful place when one considers that there will no christianity or islam there....)