STIGMATA

This is another post of some of the most ridiculous beliefs of the catholic church.

Stigmata is when a person has unexplained wounds on their body that match those that Jesus Christ supposedly had following his torture and death at the hands of the Jewish authorities and the Romans.
Sometimes the wounds show up in one or two of the reported areas - say hands and feet but in other 'cases' they have occurred in all five places that Christ was wounded. The wounds can be painful and are worse on holy days.

"Now I wonder how that happened"

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"Stigmata (singular stigma) is a term used by members of the Catholic faith to describe body marks, sores, or sensations of pain in locations corresponding to the crucifixion wounds of Jesus Christ, such as the hands, wrists, and feet. An individual bearing the wounds of Stigmata is referred to as a Stigmatist or a Stigmatic.
The term originates from the line at the end of Saint Paul's Letter to the Galatians where he says, "I bear on my body the marks of Jesus." Stigmata is the plural of the Greek word στίγμα stigma, meaning a mark, tattoo, or brand such as might have been used for identification of an animal or slave.
Stigmata are primarily associated with the Roman Catholic faith. Many reported stigmatics are members of Catholic religious orders. St. Francis of Assisi was the first recorded stigmatic in Christian history. For over fifty years, St. Padre Pio of Pietrelcina of the Order of Friars Minor Capuchin reported stigmata which were studied by several 20th-century physicians.
A high percentage (perhaps over 80%) of all stigmatics are women. In his Stigmata: A Medieval Phenomenon in a Modern Age, Ted Harrison suggests that there is no single mechanism whereby the marks of stigmata were produced. What is important is that the marks are recognised by others as of religious significance. There have been many cases of fraudulent stigmata."

Major take-out from this is the last sentence -

"There have been many cases of fraudulent stigmata."

Oh really?

Many of the stigmatists are women which isn't surprising when they are nuns locked up behind stone walls separated from family, children and loving relationships.

Sister Mary Fruitloop got a bit carried away with the knitting needles here.

Give us a break.

MONKEYING AROUND

Capuchin monkey

Robert in his recent post here:

GET IT HERE QUICK BEFORE IT GETS DELETED

talks about some old priest or monk or saint as a young boy and says that this joker wanted to be a

"Capussian monk"


Well, he may have meant 'Carthusian monk' but, with Robert you never know.


I prefer to think that he meant 'Capuchin monk' like the monkey.

Capuchin monks

TELLING IT LIKE IT IS

Australia has seen quite a lot of instances of catholic priests fondling children in a sexual way and even their cardinal has been suspect.

It's good to see that a sculptor has depicted what's really going on going by this statue in an Adelaide school:

Blackfriars Priory School

Blackfriars Priory School to redesign 'suggestive' statue of saint and child after online ridicule

 By Daniel Keane

"An Adelaide Catholic school has covered up a statue of a religious icon after it created a stir on social media because of its apparently unintended suggestiveness.
The statue was recently installed at Blackfriars Priory School in Prospect and depicts a 16th century saint handing a bread loaf to a child's outstretched hand.
But, as numerous online commentators have pointed out, the effect is somewhat different.
In the past 12 years, at least two former Blackfriars teachers — Stephen John Stockdale-Hall and Ronald William Hopkins — have been jailed for sexually abusing students at the school.
On Wednesday the school said the design of its new statue looked fine on paper but acknowledged it could be interpreted in a more sinister way.
"The two-dimensional concept plans for the statue were viewed and approved by the [school's] executive team in May but upon arrival the three-dimensional statue was deemed by the executive to be potentially suggestive," principal Simon Cobiac said in a statement.
"As a consequence, the statue was immediately covered and a local sculptor has been commissioned to redesign it."
Mr Cobiac said the embarrassing artwork was created in Vietnam by a sculptor who had done other work for the school."

The've covered it up which is a typical response from the catholic church

Personally I think that the sculptor was " 'Aving a laugh"

CATHOLIC CATACLYSM

Gosh darn*, where to start? There are just so many inconsistencies, mistruths, bizarre assertions and assumptions and plain nonsense in the catholic cataclysm catechism that beggar belief.

As you saw from that comment from Richard of Richard's Grumpy Blog in the first post he's impatient for this blog to get underway. I was going to wait until my main inspiration for religious response, Robert, he of the insane uttering on the existence of a trilogy of mythical beings, made a new pronouncement but - needs must. I'll kick off with  a discussion of some of the more weird teachings of catholicism. Most of these were taught to me at primary school and some have been promulgated later.

First up:

Indulgences

Catholics are taught that there are two types of sins: Mortal Sin which is punishable by being sent to Hell for eternity (Hell will be explained in a later post):

HELL

Oh, sorry, not that one, try this one:

HELL - NO-ONE WILL GET YOU OUT OF THERE

 and Venial Sin which is temporal and punishable by being sent to Purgatory (Purgatory will also be explained in a later post):

PURGATORY - THE ANGELS WILL EVENTUALLY GET YOU OUT

While if you commit a Mortal Sin and don't clean up the mess by confessing to a guy in a black dress (Confession will be covered in a later post) you will go to Hell and stay there for eternity, if you go to Purgatory by committing a Venial Sin (eating meat on Friday or saying 'Bugger' in the earshot of one of those jokers in a black dress) you will only stay there for an (unspecified) period of time - not eternity.

Got it?

Right.

But wait, there's more. The Catholic hierarchy somewhere along the way in the Middle Ages were being pressured by their congregations to explain how long they might have to stay in Purgatory before going to Heaven (Heaven to be explained in a later post). Obviously a lot of Friday meat eaters saying 'Bugger' were about then. The church hierarchy saw that they had a ready market and being wonderful snake oil salesmen decided to create the concept of Indulgences.

 Indulgences are special actions that a person can perform in order to reduce or remove the temporal punishment they are owed due to having died in a state of Venial Sin. The idea behind it is that certain acts of holiness can take the place of punishment. Indulgences must be declared by the Pope (the chief snake oil salesman).

"WANNA BUY SOME SNAKE OIL"?

There are two types of indulgence: 

Plenary (removes all temporal punishment) and partial (removes some punishment). 

A partial indulgence can be for a specific number of days or years. Some indulgences only apply to the actual souls in Purgatory but any personal indulgences can also be offered for those souls, rather than your own if you know say that Uncle Fred said 'Bugger' and dropped down dead. 

A Plenary indulgence is applicable only to the Souls in Purgatory and is granted to the faithful who devoutly visit a cemetery and pray for the departed. The indulgence is plenary each day from the 1st to the 8th of November; on other days of the year it is partial.

Got that?

Well that's good because it makes no sense to me.

During the Middle Ages the Church told people that they could pay for indulgences. This abuse helped in starting the Protestant Reformation where Martin Luther nailed his faeces theses to the door of a church in which he complained about the practice of selling indulgences for money (I guess he preferred the trade of prayers to get some time off for good behaviour in Purgatory).

Eventually the official practice of selling indulgences was quashed (at least officially) but it is quite common for the Pope to announce new indulgences from time to time, to mark special occasions – such as the Jubilee in which Pope John Paul II granted a plenary indulgence.

Well I hope that makes more sense to you than to me.





* On The Religious Curmudgeon cursing and bad language is frowned upon.

HAVE YOU HEARD THE GOOD NEWS?

Announcing the creation of a new blog - THE RELIGIOUS CURMUDGEON

The idea was initiated by Richard of Richard's Bass Bag which is a.... never mind, you've probably never heard of it. Anyway, thanks Richard.

I'd been thinking recently of ceasing any posts or comments on religion, particularly that form of christianity practised by Robert who has an even more obscure blog than Richard. Robert, who is an educated idiot idiosyncratic person for some bizarre reason believes in the teachings of the catechism which is kind of like a more unbelievable form of Grimm's or Aesop's fables.

I then thought, prompted by Richard (who?) Richard of Richard's Bass Bag (what?) - that as no doubt Robert will write something silly soon about holy ghosts, gods hiding in boxes and some mythical being creating the universe in less than a week, that I'd get annoyed and be forced to respond so it would be better to isolate those responses in a separate blog. This blog would act like a quarantine area separate from the others.

So, last night, fuelled by some nice wine (Villa Maria 2017 Hawkes Bay Rose) I created this new blog

THE RELIGIOUS CURMUDGEON

Look out for news, articles and some spleen venting in due course.