“Christian Sailer and Gert-Joachim Hetzel, based at Marktheidenfeld in the Pope’s home state of Bavaria, last week submitted a 16,500-word document to the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court at the Hague, Dr Luis Moreno Ocampo. Their charges concern 'three worldwide crimes which until now have not been denounced . . . (as) the traditional reverence toward ‘ecclesiastical authority’ has clouded the sense of right and wrong.”
from times of india: The new Chinese law which would come into effect next month banning reincarnation of the Dalai Lama and other Buddhist monks in Tibet was aimed at wiping out the Tibetan identity and its rich culture, said exiled Tibetan government based here on Monday. The new law which stipulates Buddhist monks in Tibet to seek permission from Chinese communist regime for reincarnation has been ironically described by Chinese state administration for religious affairs as an important move to institutionalize management of reincarnation.
from presscore: The Vatican is considered a castle by some, a temple by most. The Pope does not live, walk, sleep, sit, worship and breath the air of Holy Land but instead lives in a temple where he sits as the head of a state within a state – that state is the Vatican City. The Pope (from Latin: “papa” or “father” from Greek: “papa”, Papa in Italian) is the Bishop of Rome and as such is the leader of the Catholic Church. The Roman Catholic faith was created not by the teachings and followings of Jesus Christ but by the Roman Emperor Constantine (a pagan sun worshipper), 300 years after the Romans put Jesus Christ to death. There is no Apostolic Succession (succession of bishops, in uninterrupted lines, that is historically traceable back to the original twelve Apostles.) as claimed by the Vatican (it is one of four elements which define their false claim to be the true Church of Jesus Christ) because of the fact that the Roman Catholic religion was not created by any of the original twelve Apostles, for they had all died some 300 years prior to the creation of the Roman Catholic faith.
from beliefnet: Oregon prosecutors and lawmakers endorsed a bill Monday (Feb. 21) that would remove special legal protection for parents who treat seriously ill children with faith healing instead of providing medical treatment. Clackamas County District Attorney John Foote and others told the House Judiciary Committee that House Bill 2721 would help halt needless, avoidable child deaths. The bill is a response to the Followers of Christ, an Oregon City church with a history of children dying from treatable medical conditions. It would remove spiritual treatment as a defense against all homicide charges and subject parents to mandatory sentencing under Oregon's Measure 11. Supporters of the bill made two main points. It will eliminate exemptions that give one class of parents - those who exclusively practice faith healing - special rights. And it puts more pressure on the most extreme members of the Followers of Christ church to provide medical care for seriously ill children. In the past two years, Clackamas County prosecuted two couples for failing to provide medical care for dying children. Two other couples are awaiting trial, accused of criminal mistreatment and second-degree manslaughter.
from npr: Valentine's Day is a time to celebrate romance and love and kissy-face fealty. But the origins of this festival of candy and cupids are actually dark, bloody — and a bit muddled. Though no one has pinpointed the exact origin of the holiday, one good place to start is ancient Rome, where men hit on women by, well, hitting them. From Feb. 13 to 15, the Romans celebrated the feast of Lupercalia. The men sacrificed a goat and a dog, then whipped women with the hides of the animals they had just slain. The Roman romantics "were drunk. They were naked," says Noel Lenski, a historian at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Young women would actually line up for the men to hit them, Lenski says. They believed this would make them fertile.
from dailymail: The bizarre sequence of symbols, charts and figures have baffled the world of science for the last 100 years. But now thanks to carbon dating, researchers have finally begun to pick apart the secrets of the Voynich manuscript, the most alien artifact of its kind in the world. They have been able to determine for the first time that it was written in the early 15th century, more than 100 years earlier than previously thought. And while they are no closer to understanding what the complex text actually means, putting a date on it takes them a huge step closer to discovering what it is really about. What is known sounds like the plot from a film and makes the Da Vinci Code pale by comparison. The manuscript was discovered by rare book dealer Wilfrid Voynich in the Villa Mondragone near Rome in 1912 as he was trawling through a chest of books.
from watch.pair: Jewish Kabbalists believe that the ancient civilization which God judged was advanced far beyond our own due to the enlightenment of its inhabitants by an extraterrestrial race of gods—those fallen angels who mated with human women in Genesis 6. So far advanced were the Atlanteans, say the Kabbalists, that they functioned as demi-gods, possessing knowledge of even manipulating the weather. Which begs the question, if the ancient “gods” of Atlantis could control the weather, how was an inferior Demiurge able to destroy their civilization? The answer to this enigma, according to the Kabbalists, is that the Atlanteans disregarded the wisdom of the great initiated teachers, the Ascended Masters, and, preferring power and materialism to the transcendent state, brought destruction on the world!!
Now there's a stunning cover story in The New Yorker - quite long, but worth reading - about Scientology, prompted by the public defection of Oscar winner Paul Haggis from the church/cult... This story is making global news. (After all, as actress and devoted church member Anne Archer claims in the New Yorker piece, the church is in 165 countries.)...
Rolling Stone magazine has republished its 2006 article on Scientology - a reminder that this stuff is not entirely new information. My two cents: On the one hand, Scientologists are correct in noting that any young faith tends to be misunderstood and labeled a cult.
On the other hand, the organization's convenient emphasis on gradual revelation (you don't get to find out the central teachings until you've invested a fortune in time and money - at which point, most people won't suddenly cut and run), its uneducated and isolated workforce, the practice of encouraging members to cut off ties with doubting parents, etc. - paints a disturbing picture. To paraphrase Haggis in the New Yorker expose: if only a fraction of these allegations are true, isn't that indefensible?
from bbc: The Catholic Church has approved an iPhone app that helps guide worshippers through confession. The Confession program has gone on sale through iTunes for £1.19 ($1.99). Described as "the perfect aid for every penitent", it offers users tips and guidelines to help them with the sacrament. Now senior church officials in both the UK and US have given it their seal of approval, in what is thought to be a first. The app takes users through the sacrament - in which Catholics admit their wrongdoings - and allows them to keep track of their sins.
from independent: Benedict XVI has tried to scotch rumours that he carries an organ donor card after his secretary revealed that his ascension to the position of Holy Father means he is no longer able to bequeath his body parts to lesser mortals. On the pontiff's instructions, Monsignor Georg Gaenswein, Benedict's personal secretary, fired off a letter to quell the rumours that started in the Pope's native Germany. "It's true that a simple cardinal can have an organ donor card but, despite public declarations to the contrary, it ceased to apply when he was elected head of the Catholic Church," Mgr Gaenswein said.
from red ice creations: This episode was filmed in Bath and Bristol, England featuring special guests such as Michael Tsarion, Neil Hague, Ralph Ellis, Leo Rutherford, Neil Kramer, Dan Tatman and Peter Taylor. We also interview a priest, university students, teachers and of course a couple random pub interviews. We begin the show discussing the symbolism of two major corporations, Starbucks and Apple. What is really being said in logos?
the catholic church seeks to convert 'witches' to 'christianity' despite conflict of interest in triad of beliefs from daily mail: A guide on how to convert witches to Christianity has been published by the Roman Catholic Church in Britain. The move comes in response to fears that growing numbers of teenagers are being lured into Wicca, occult practices and paganism by the heroic depiction of witches in entertainment including the Harry Potter and The Sorcerer’s Apprentice films, and TV. The booklet, called Wicca and Witchcraft: Understanding the Dangers, offers parents advice on what to do if one of their children takes an interest in witchcraft.
the king's speech comes amid chaos in the kingdom from belief blog: President Barack Obama plans to give an unusually personal speech about his religious faith on Thursday at a high-profile prayer breakfast in Washington, a White House official said Wednesday. “He’ll give a window on the way he approaches prayer, his study of Scripture and some other spiritual disciplines that affect his daily life,” said the official. “I don’t think he’s given a window into how his faith sustains him as president,” said the official, who would not speak for attribution. “That will be a new thing.” Obama’s speech, which will be delivered at theNational Prayer Breakfast, comes on the heels of public opinion surveys that show only a minority of Americans know that Obama is a Christian and that a growing number believe he’s a Muslim. The address will be televised and streamed live on the White House website.
from slashdot: PhysOrg reports on a study by Robert Rowthorn, emeritus professor at Cambridge University, that predicts that the genetic components that predispose a person toward religion are currently "hitchhiking" on the back of the religious cultural practice of high fertility rates and that provided the fertility of religious people remains on average higher than that of secular people, the genes that predispose people towards religion will spread.
For example, in the past 20 years, the Amish population in the US has doubled, increasing from 123,000 in 1991 to 249,000 in 2010. The huge growth stems almost entirely from the religious culture's high fertility rate, which is about 6 children per woman, on average. Rowthorn says that while fertility is determined by culture, an individual's predisposition toward religion is likely to be influenced by genetics, in addition to their upbringing.
In the model, Rowthorn uses a "religiosity gene" to represent the various genetic factors that combine to genetically predispose a person toward religion, whether remaining religious from youth or converting to religion from a secular upbringing. Rowthorn's model predicts that the religious fraction of the population will eventually stabilize at less than 100%, and there will remain a possibly large percentage of secular individuals. But nearly all of the secular population will still carry the religious allele, since high defection rates will spread the religious allele to secular society when defectors have children with a secular partner.
from christian newswire: With tensions in the Middle East escalating daily, the world seems to be on the brink of ruin. Russia is strengthening its ties with China, North Korea, Syria and Iran arming them with sophisticated military weaponry, building up its armed forces, and returning to old Cold War military tactics. Tensions between Israel and Iran have never been higher with each nation poised to strike against the other in a moment's notice.
It seems like we are standing on the cusp of Armageddon and the end of the world. The Gog/Magog war of Ezekiel 38 & 39 seems as if it is about to finally be fulfilled. It seems that in a moment's notice the events described in Ezekiel 38 & 39 could break out right before our eyes...or is it?
Rushing Ahead to Armageddon: Russia, Iran, and the Invasion of Israel ($18.99, paperback, 978-1-61579-796-7) takes on and challenges the popular end-times view of Ezekiel 38 & 39 through a thorough and exegetical analysis of Ezekiel's most well known and discussed prophecy with a conclusion that will shock its readers. Readers will be exposed to new and fresh insights regarding Ezekiel's prophecy about the future that have not been generally discussed in mainstream prophecy circles.
from the new civil rights movement: Pope Benedict XVI is facing charges of crimes against humanity in the International Criminal Court for “the preservation and leadership of a worldwide totalitarian regime of coercion which subjugates its members with terrifying and health-endangering threats,” and for his part in the Vatican’s pedophile priests molestation and rape scandals, and the Vatican’s “adherence to a fatal forbiddance of the use of condoms, even when the danger of HIV-Aids infection exists,” according to a report in The Irish Times.
