Hot damn. They found Jesus' body

He’s alive….whoops take it back

Filmmakers claim Jesus’ tomb was found, and his body is still there.
Well, that settles that. Tear down the churches and let’s all sleep in on Sunday.

Actually, it’s sort of a trend.

Every Easter, believing Christians are hit with the yearly news magazine and TV exposes on what is the “truth” behind Christianity. Of course, what this means is that they interview a bunch of experts to prove Jesus was just a man and why Christianity is bunk.

Last year the big “let’s debunk Jesus” fad was the Judas gospel, just one of many of the gnostic gospels. The Idea of gnosticism is the body is bad so therefore sex and your daily life is unimportant. Only spirituality is important.

If this sounds familiar, it’s because of all those “Spirituality” fads we read about and watch proclaimed on Oprah and Larry King.
Gnosticism was a fad of the early 2nd century.LINK

And just like you can date pottery by the way it was made, so too you can date writing by not only their font but by the intellectual ideas. Imagine someone “finding” a new Jane Austen novel that discusses Gay rights. It would make you a tiny bit suspicious that Jane didn’t write the book. Same thing here.

In contrast to the esoteric gnostic gospels, the ones in the bible are strangely consistant with reality, a thing I didn’t realize until I worked in Africa as a young doctor.

The woman finding a lost coin. The sheep that wandered off is found by a shepherd. The father who forgave his errant son. The jealous neighbor who sowed weeds among the wheat. The hypocritical religious leaders. The woman who had five husbands and was shunned by other women for fear she would steal their husbands too.The story of travelers having to give birth in a barn. People traveling miles with their sick to see a miracle worker or holy man. Even the story of a poor laborer who upholds the rights of the poor against greedy businessmen and corrupt church officials and who gets killed for it is not a fairy tale in many third world countries.
Yet the yearly debunking of Christianity has more to do with it’s ethical system (a system that it shares with most other great religions and secular ethicist such as Confusius ) than with it’s theology.

In a word: It’s about SEX. Christianity (and most other major religions and ethical systems) are bigoted enough to point out that once you remove sex from marriage and make sex a “morality free zone” you end up with divorce, a million abortions, half the country’s children brought up without a father and often in poverty, HIV and STD’s as a major health problem, and older women deserted and on their own.

Now, Christianity is not alone in it’s teachings on the need for sexual restraint.
Confusius’ emphasis on the family, Musilm rules that protect women, or the Platonic idea of a just man who follows the mean in his passions have the same ethical result. And they too would be debunked if these were the basis for our morality, but the majority of Americans are Christians, so the fight in America is against traditional Christianity.

But only Christianity is arrogant enough to say these ideas are not merely the ideas of a sage, prophet or wiseman, but of God. So all you have to do is “prove” Jesus was “only” a man, and the whole “house of cards” of traditional Christianity is destroyed, and we can go back to doing our own thing while interpreting our own egotism as “spirituality”.

So this year we have, voila, a bigshot film makers who decided they found Jesus’s tomb…and not only his but his mother’s, his wife’s and two of his kids.

“If it proves true, the discovery, which will be revealed at a press conference in New York Monday, could shake up the Christian world as one of the most significant archeological finds in history” proclaim the proud film makers.

Well, damn. Tear down the churches and let’s all celebrate.
Oh wait…Remember James’ Bone box, that got a lot of press a couple years ago…turned out the box was genuine, but the inscription was false. Well, the practice back then was to take the old bones and put them into small boxes and use the large coffins for new bodies. So why all the coffins? They own stock in a mortuary business? Or maybe, like the James Brohaha, it’s a big fraud?
Oh, but the filmmakers are “scientific. “According to the filmmakers, the film’s claim is based on close work with world-famous scientists, archeologists, statisticians, DNA specialists and antiquities experts.”

DNA Specialists? what did they do, find the lady from the DaVinci code and test her DNA?

What’s next? Space Aliens? Yup…look HERE

Yup…Jesus was a space alien, and the coffins will prove it.

————————————————–cross posted to Bloggernewsnet.

Day of Prayer for Zimbabwe on April 18, 2007

Check website.

That country has many believers, and is being destroyed

The sanctity of the ordinary

My rants against the politicization of religion runs deep, because both the Episcopal Bishopess and the politically active nuns see their life's work as changing an evil society.

Ah, but what do they change it to? Utopia.

Ah, but 100 million people in the twentieth century lost their lives to build Marxist and Nazi and Baathist and Islamicist utopias.

What these religious "leaders" are doing is trying to change society by changing the church. Many of the politically active nuns are with "renewal " groups that support homosexuality, abortion, oppose the Iraq war (while keeping their mouth shut about suicide bombers, or even when a marxist Mugabe kills a whole country).

But in the meanwhile, what is happening is that the sheep are not fed.

I'll give an example.
I was "born again" after visiting Medjugorje. Yet a modern nun dismissed the lay prayer groups of my fellow pilgrims by pointing out that they didn't bother to help with the homeless, or with her peace and action committee activities.
A worse example was a holy priest who had done social work all his life. However, he once gave a sermon criticizing us for not helping out with the homeless shelter in the nearby city.
The problem was that he gave the sermon at a Native American parish, and among my patients sitting there were several elderly women who took in relatives out of jobs, and even who relative's children to raise, because their parents were involved with drugs.

Charity begins at home.

And contemplation and prayer are the source for our work.
They are not wasted time, but refresh us to work again, preventing "burnout".

In the latest encyclical, Ratzi pointed out that although eros was considered inferior by many philosophers, the need to be loved and to feel love was an essential part of being a human, and it is the fact that we feel loved allows us to be happy in marriage etc.

And although some may be called to politics, one suspects it is actually a way to flee from the pressures of daily life (I have written elsewhere that when I was a medical student, we were warned not to make medicine a way to escape from life...it is an easy thing to do, the REAL "god delusion", to think you are the greatest person in the world...no, not self esteem, but narcissim. You get this type of delusion when you work with small elitist activist groups, that only you are saving the world).

Yet, as Mark Mallet writes:

Often young people will say to me, "I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. What’s God’s will for me?" And the answer is simple: do the dishes. Sure, God may intend for you to be the next St. Augustine or Teresa of Avila, but the path to His plans are given one stepping stone at a time. And each of those stones is simply the duty of the moment. Yes, the path to sainthood is marked by dirty dishes and filthy floors. Not the glory you were expecting?

Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much. (Luke 16:10)

Ah yes.

And you know what? even what seems to us as "glamourous" sainthood in doing great deeds is actually little things done every day, a daily crucifixion of ordinary deeds.

Let's take this great saint: Father Damian: The LATIMES notes:
Damien built a pipeline to carry water to the island's settlement and urged authorities to provide clothing, food and wood for building homes. When the supplies arrived, he rolled up his sleeves and started hammering.

Yes, others raised money for lepers, or wrote essays defending Damian, or worked in their laboratories to discover the causes and cures of leprosy. But like Damian, they also were faithful to the mundane duties of their daily lives.

And, if I might say this: The politically oriented nuns and priests and bishopesses don't see such things, and therefore are unable to "feed my sheep".

FYI: I was a missionary, so don't use a chickenhawk argument against me. Been there, done that.

Twisting facts in religious coverage

My previous blast was against the episcopal bishopess sort of twisting news in a PC way, saying that since she was trained in science she should be ashamed of herself for pretending things were different from the facts.

But the similar politicized liberal mindset is found among many of the employees of the USCC, and their news service the Catholic News Service.

The link is default, but I'll take the headlines from today's webpage.

Retired priest recalls small 'club' of priests in Congress

GREEN BAY, Wis. (CNS) -- The Jan. 28 death of the most prominent Catholic priest to have served in Congress, Jesuit Father Robert F. Drinan, leaves but one other in the small group of political alumni, ,...... Father Cornell recalled Father Drinan as "a great advocate of human rights and social justice." "I think he'll always be remembered for his statements in regard to issues of that nature," said the priest, who lives at St. Norbert Abbey in De Pere.

Left out of the article: Drinan was pro abortion.

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Religious called to imagine new future

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- Present trends suggest a declining future for many communities of men and women religious, but religious are called to imagine a different future, Sister Doris Gottemoeller said Feb. 3. Sister Gottemoeller, former president of the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas and of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, and Father Canice Connors, a former provincial minister of the Conventual Franciscans and former president of the Conference of Major Superiors of Men, were the main speakers at Washington Theological Union's annual Religious Life Symposium. The theme of this year's symposium was "Re-Imagining Religious Life in the 21st Century." Sister Gottemoeller addressed the overall theme, while Father Connors described a specific effort by a community of Conventual Franciscans in Syracuse, N.Y., to create a new center of Conventual life and ministry.

The LCWR represents "90% of women religious...mostly old.
The destruction of the religious life in the "modern" orders is well documented, but the ones who destroyed the US are continuing to "re imagining religious life".

This link blames the bishops for "stopping renewal"...or maybe it's because women have more choices and don't bother to be sisters...and the traditional orders still getting vocations are just a passing fad...
Because the dirty little secret about these modern nuns is that we Caholic parents shudder when they teach our children left wing popular causes instead of God, and the second dirty little secret is that they are responsible for the decline of Catholic institutions, including schools, hospitals, and their own orders.

Lying numbers

One: The schism is not splitting the Episcopal church. Only a small percentage of Anglicans are US or European. Most live in Asia and Africa, and they do not approve.

Two: although "one tenth of one percent" of parishes are leaving, it includes some of the largest and most vibrant growing churches. Many small Episcopal parishes only have a couple dozen attending.

Three: The rainbow colours are nice, but have no meaning. Traditional liturgy has different colours that mean different things, for different times of the year.

The reporter did a good job by pointing out the large loss in membership that the bishopess did not address.

According to Virtue on line Over 40,000 faithful Episcopalians left the Episcopal Church last year. They didn't just change congregations, but left it altogether. December 2006 saw the greatest single exodus of Episcopalians in the 300-year history of the Diocese of Virginia. More than 20% of the funding and 25% of its members have either left or will leave that diocese this year.

The bishop says that most people aren't christian, and the reporter then posts polls showing 75 % of Americans still consider themselves Christian. What's wrong with this picture?

Lies, damn lies, and statistics

Usually I ignore the infighting of other churches, but this article about the new lady bishop annoyed me. Why? because the bishop twisted a lot of facts to the reporter.

The reporter did counteract with a few polls, but ignored or was unaware of other deceptions by the "bishop".

Ironically, the only thing the bishop cannot be criticized for is her last statement, where she quotes Athanasius saying that God became man so we might become God.

Alas, in today's world, the meanings have changed.
In the past, people who had truly given their lives to God and were filled with God's holiness were often called "divine" with a small d. For example, if you met Mother Teresa, you met God, not because she was God but because she had given up herself to God and God was in her and in her works.

Indeed, we all are "God" when he uses our hands, whether it is a mother nursing her child or a doctor treating a patient.

Alas, in modern terminology, becoming God means to do your own thing and become powerful, whereas in traditional Chistianity, it is subsuming ourselves into God, and letting him take over. This sounds a bit like good Buddhism (as opposed to American buddhism which is new ageism), where we lose our selves into the godhead. But all religions recognize the divine in their saints, and the idea of God within. (yes, it's a heresy, but only a heresy if you see it as the total of the religion. it's merely one aspect of many aspects of God_

Sounds like the Bishop, who is doing her own thing and saying God is behind it, is promoting the modern idea of we are god.

Next post will be how the facts were twisted in her interview...I have to pull up the facts and that will take time.

Development

On my other blog, I posted about Viet Nam. Like the Philippines, it is part of ASEAN, one of the slower "asian tigers".
But they had a major famine in the 1990's and changed their economic policies, so have raised their standard of living. I knew all this, but when I was researching I found that Intel was building a factory there.

So I wonder: Have we been stuck at the "socialist/ liberation theology/help the poor" while essentially helping people be children?

Michael Novak, in his book Business as a calling, points out that God gave some people the ability to run a just business and that by doing so, relied on morality of the employees and staff, but ended up spreading prosperity.

So when we say "poor africans, give our tax dollars" are we wrong, should we be saying: Invest your money in Intel to build a factory instead, and have churches stick to teaching morality i.e. no bribes no stealing.

Just wondering.