I have previously expressed my admiration for Pope Francis and his extraordinary reforms of the Catholic Church. As someone of Sicilian descent, that admiration has grown even further today after reading the Pope decision to excommunicate Italian Mafia members. On Saturday, the Pope declared “Those who in their life have gone along the evil ways, as in the case of the Mafia, they are not with God, they are excommunicated.”
As someone who is half Sicilian and was raised Catholic, I have always recoiled at how Mafia figures and families continue to portray themselves as religious people while engaging in every possible mortal sin. It is particularly galling to hear the secret oath invoke damnation if the member breaks Omertà, or code of silence.
The Pope singled out the Southern Italian mafia known as “Ndrangheta” as an example of “the adoration of evil and contempt for the common good.” The Ndrangheta is estimated to make an annual 53 billion euros.
The Pope warned mafia leaders that “hell … awaits you if you continue on this road.”
Bravo, Papa, Bravo.
Dredd – For one who professes to believe that the bible is the word of his god, the pope should lead by example by first removing the plethora of boards from the church’s eye before he turns his self-righteous focus on the splinters in others.
davidm2575
What each of us wrote is correct.
There is a condom machine in Amsterdam which dispenses products with the name Pope Frances printed on the package. Along with the message: Bless Me For I Have Sinned. One of the workers at the cathouse told me about this this afternoon.
Al – as long as the condom does not have Mohammed’s picture on it there will not be problems. BTW, the girl who told you must be working her way back ‘down’ the career ladder.
Samantha–just to clarify, if the government made it mandatory to give up my kidney, I could still function and be alive, whereas an unborn never sees or experiences life.
Al Zheimers–Not all Sicilian’s are mafiosa–I’m Sicilian and I’ve never been connected to the mob. However, there are a lot of Jews, Irish, Germans, and others who are connected with mob, in Sicily, Italy, U.S., and throughout Europe. As we have seen there are mobs all over the world.
Charlie–I’m sorry you don’t believe in the Bible, Jesus, or heaven. You just exist for now. But I have hope for you and other who think it’s cool and smart not to believe in a higher authority.
As for abortion it is a selfish, immoral, and a Mortal Sin. I ask all women to give life a chance to each child. Look at giving birth as a gift and privilege. If a woman can’t take care of a child, give it up for adoption to a good home.
This pope is trying to live and make moral decisions with all credit to God Almighty. He’s afraid and he’s not afraid to die, knowing that some of the best people in history have died for their love and belief of God.
I pray that our Lord will protect him, as he is an inspiration to us all, but the Lord’s will be done, not mine. I put Pope Frances in God’s hands.
Keep praying.
Annie
You hoo! Waving hands and jumping up and down, I have a profound love for children, I was blessed with. I have four of them. Does that make me holy? Perhaps just a wee bit, please? I am like the Pope!
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This Pope seems to have a lot of Main Street in him, and we all have more of this Pope in us than we had of some of his predecessors.
Leaders have forgotten some fundamentals.
There was a time in my life where anger consumed me. It damn near killed me. But, prayer, counseling, and serious lifestyle changes helped free me. I don’t think I could have overcome my downward spiral w/o all three components. But, for me, prayer was the key. The prayer was simple, “Dear Saint Mary, my heart is filled w/ anger and I cannot root it out. Please give me the strength and courage to let go of this anger and feel your love, and love of people around me.” It worked for me.
Pope Joan.
http://abcnews.go.com/Primetime/story?id=1453197
Annie – you are going to go with a hoax? Oh, well, it will not be the first or last time.
You hoo! Waving hands and jumping up and down, I have a profound love for children, I was blessed with. I have four of them. Does that make me holy? Perhaps just a wee bit, please? I am like the Pope!
Annie – you are only like the Pope if you are male, a Jesuit, former Cardinal and now Pope.
There is a back story to this excommunication. This Pope has shown a profound love of children, something I was also blessed w/ from my Dad and Mom. He sees that children are the closest image to God. The dysfunctional culture created by adults quickly takes that purity away from children, This holy man was shaken when he learned of the death of a 3 year old child in a mafia drug execution. Both of this child’s parents are in prison on drug charges. The Pope travelled to the belly of the beast, southern Calabria, where the mafia rules. He visited the parents in their respective prisons and prayed w/ them, and other prisoners. The world needs this great man more than ever. I fear he won’t be w/ us very long.
DavidM, Great comment.
Charlie wrote: “We’re talking about adult human beings who teach the purposeful suspension of critical thinking (aka, faith). … let’s not give credence to the literal nonsense that is religion.”
The Roman Catholic Church has a lot of scholarship in its history. There are certainly a lot of faults in this church, but this commentary is way over the top and misrepresents reality. This church does not teach the suspension of critical thinking. That is not what faith is. From a historical perspective, the religious institutions like the Roman Catholic Church played a huge role in establishing science and the scientific method. One might easily argue that science is a child of the religious institutions. They literally started the very concept of valuing education. I’m not a Roman Catholic defending my religion. I have my own complaints against not only that religion, but all religions. It’s just that I don’t like false characterizations.
J. Brian Harris, Ph.D., P.E.
…
In my study of human history, I have never found authoritarianism to be other than its own ultimate demise.
To sustain itself, authoritarianism inescapably annihilates itself. Why so? Because authoritarianism denies the existence of ignorance, learning, change, interdependence, structure, value, and process, doing so for want of any other method of maintaining its self-proclaimed, delusional authority?
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Interesting closing thought for your comment, which I read en toto.
It caught my eye because I was reading some Toynbee which concurs with you I think:
(A Study of History, by Arnold J. Toynbee).
Job_6:25 How forcible are right words! but what doth your arguing reprove?
Mat_22:30 For in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven.
1Co 15:51 Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed,
1Co 15:52 In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.
1Co 15:53 For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.
The motorcycle thread, not this one.
Really? This thread?
I shall herewith offer a very brief (brief for me, if for no one else?) comment, while intending to write something that may be more complete and more useful later, after I am able to complete a nearly-finished electrical engineering project for one of my electrical engineering clients…
After completing high school, in 1957, I matriculated at Carleton College in the fall of 1957, as a liberal arts student who, at that time, intended to be a physics major. While at Carleton, I took a class taught by professor of physics and religion, Ian G. Barbour (died December 24, 2013) about contemporary (circa 1960) religious thought. One of the texts for that class was Philip H. Phenix, Intelligible Religion: A key to understanding religion in its various forms as differing expressions of five basic universally-shared aspects of human experience, Harper & Brothers, New York, 1954. Part Two of that book is about those five universally-shared experiences, which are:
1. Change.
2. Dependence.
3. Order.
4. Value.
5. Imperfection.
Phenix was, according to the information on the dust jacket, a professor of education at Columbia University’s Teacher’s College, Department of Social and Philosophical Foundations of Education.
In my view, there is “religion” in the form of social establishments (establishments in the sense of, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion”); and there is “religion” in the form of individual human persons engaged in the biological processes of adaptation to life (in the sense of not “prohibiting the free exercise thereof”). For me, as a biologist/bioengineer, the word, “religion” has two, essentially mutually exclusive meanings, and the use of the equivocation fallacy muddles what is, for me a massively important distinction between socially-established authoritarian religions and individual human personal experiences as biological phenomena essential to individual and species survival.
That stated, I find that Phenix may have omitted two of the most important of all possible universally-shared human experiences which are foundational to any biologically-intelligible understanding of religion, My list of the seven seemingly most important aspects of universally-shared human experience, in deceasing order of apparent, to me, significance, are:
1. Ignorance.
2. Learning.
3. Change.
4. Interdependence.
5. Structure.
6. Value.
7. Process.
Alas, when I examine life experiences through those seven universally-shared aspects of human experience, using the methodologies of biological science as best I can understand them, I cannot elude or escape or deny my nearly lifelong observation that the law establishment in the United States of America has drifted, unwittingly, unintentionally, and unavoidably, into having become an “establishment of religion” established by “Congress made law.”
For me, as a biologist/bioengineer, it is Ignorance which has driven Congress to make law respecting an establishment of religion in the form of our present system of adversarial law and jurisprudence. I have spent decades searching for a way to find that the present system of adversarial law and jurisprudence in the United States of America is not, in terms of biological science, an unconstitutional religious establishment, and a way to find that has become, for me, quite blatantly impossible.
The antidote for Ignorance is Learning? Learning is made of Change, Interdependence, Structure, Value, Process; and, perhaps, everything else, including Ignorance?
In my study of human history, I have never found authoritarianism to be other than its own ultimate demise.
To sustain itself, authoritarianism inescapably annihilates itself. Why so? Because authoritarianism denies the existence of ignorance, learning, change, interdependence, structure, value, and process, doing so for want of any other method of maintaining its self-proclaimed, delusional authority?
Annie
Dredd, German soldiers had the words “Gott Mit Uns” on their belt buckles.
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God seems to always be on the side of corrupt warmongers in their own eyes.
Remember Dylan’s “With God on our side” tune of the 60’s …
the Joan Baez version is great.
Charlie
C’mon you guys! We’re talking about adult human beings who teach the purposeful suspension of critical thinking (aka, faith). They make decisions based on select and random interpretations of ancient writings–by people who nothing of science–about an imaginary punisher in the sky (who dwarfs Hitler’s cruelty–and the mob’s) who supposedly is perfect and knows everything, yet wrote such an imperfect fairy tale (Old Testament) that his imaginary offspring had to come along and fix all of infallible Dad’s mistakes (New Testament).
Yes, they also hurt (and help) people in the real world. But let’s not give credence to the literal nonsense that is religion.
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You exhibit a knee-jerk reaction or fear or loathing of religion.
Fine.
But that avoids the topic of a leader excommunicating corruption from his group’s midst.
Like secular government should do to the banks in the secular domain.
I has nothing to do with faith, it has to do with honesty and justice.
Give the Pope his due and give government corruption its due too.
740 East Broadway,
Yes………. but ‘Baby Banging Priests’ will continue to be protected by the church!
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That is a mis-characterization to say the least.
Before the Pope gave it to the Mafia, he said there will be no tolerance of abusive priests.
C’mon you guys! We’re talking about adult human beings who teach the purposeful suspension of critical thinking (aka, faith). They make decisions based on select and random interpretations of ancient writings–by people who nothing of science–about an imaginary punisher in the sky (who dwarfs Hitler’s cruelty–and the mob’s) who supposedly is perfect and knows everything, yet wrote such an imperfect fairy tale (Old Testament) that his imaginary offspring had to come along and fix all of infallible Dad’s mistakes (New Testament).
Yes, they also hurt (and help) people in the real world. But let’s not give credence to the literal nonsense that is religion.