http://youtu.be/la9RGZnGADQ Using Peter Boghossian’s analysis of “faith” from his book A Manual for Creating Atheists, this is part of a…
Tag the Pope
Many liberal Catholics have been encouraged by Pope Francis’s comments about sexual ethics in a recent interview. His general point was that these are lesser matters, not to be emphasized at the expense of the church’s essential message of healing and salvation.
Tour comes amid division over how to stem flow of believers, particularly from poor communities, towards evangelism
When Pope Francis returns to his home continent on Monday as the first Latin American pontiff, the world’s attention is likely to focus on the adoration of more than a million worshippers expected at a giant open-air mass on Copacobana beach.
But it is during a lower-key visit to a small favela community on Thursday in the north of Rio de Janeiro that he will address the biggest threat to the pre-eminence of the Catholic church in the region: the exodus of believers to US-style evangelical preachers.
Well, the Pope is shaking those old cloisters up! The BBC: Pope Francis: Who am I to judge gay people?…
Didn’t take her long (Guardian):
Cristina Fernández de Kirchner says she requested pontiff’s intervention in dispute with UK over South Atlantic islands
In important scientific news that may answer crucial questions about existence:
GENEVA — The search is all but over for a subatomic particle that is a crucial building block of the universe.
Physicists announced Thursday they believe they have discovered the subatomic particle predicted nearly a half-century ago, which will go a long way toward explaining what gives electrons and all matter in the universe size and shape.
No intro needed. Just pretty funny! And while you’re here, this is sheer genius: And more genius (Jesus…
Well, I was just about to produce a big post on how the explosive, moving, powerful, revealing documentary, Mea Maxima Culpa, was behind the resignation of the Pope, as many have said. Well, the Guardian (reporting La Rupubblica) think otherwise. It’s not “the paedophiles”, it’s “the gays”!
One shitstorm to another.
I am hoping to make this my last post on the short book about the Nativity of Jesus by Pope Benedict XVI (Joseph Ratzinger). So far, from what I can tell, I have been one of the few bloggers going through and being critical of its historical contents, which I will continue here. For background, my first post looked at the apparent lack of engagement with the best literature on the subject of Jesus’ birth, including Raymond Brown’s Birth of the Messiah. My second post looked at the arguments His Holiness used to defend the historicity of certain details of the Gospel(s) version(s) of the birth of Christ and how his own arguments were not correctly applied.
Perhaps few people know that Pietro Beretta arms factory Ltd. (the largest arms industry in the world) and is controlled by the Holding SpA Beretta and the majority shareholder of theBeretta Holding SpA after Gussalli Ugo Beretta, is the IOR(Institute for Works of Religion [commonly known as the Vatican Bank]) private institutionfounded in 1942 by Pope Pius XII and headquartered in Vatican City.
Continuing from my last post, I will take a look at some of the historical claims of the Nativity of Jesus from the Bible and see how Pope Benedict XVI defends them in his most recent book.
First, let’s make a note of an argument that His Holiness seems to use several times in defending the historicity of the stories from modern critics. Many scholars will point to the theological reasons as to why the author of a given Gospel would tell such a story, which in turn gives us reason to suspect that the tale make not be historically authentic. Benedict, on the other hand, says that that is not sufficient to consider the tradition inauthentic. Perhaps not, but it should make us suspicious. Besides, this is not the only reason scholars doubt things such as the birth in Bethlehem or the miraculous conception of Mary. There are other things to consider.
There has been a fair bit of press about the newest publication from the current head of the Catholic Church, Joseph Ratzinger, better known now as Pope Benedict XVI (don’t you just hate sequels?). There was even a humorous take on some of the aspects of the new book from the colossus of comedy Stephen Colbert.