BLESS ME (GOD)FATHER EVEN THOUGH I DIDN'T SIN ...

 

That's how I feel after trying to get away from this religious business. All was going OK until Robert went off the rails again and fantasised about angels and I had to write about it. See: HERE

Now he's banging on about Purgatory, another ridiculous construct from the Catholic Church.

Have a read of this but hold on to your hat!

"When asleep Fr Nathan says he has dreams where souls from purgatory visit him. He says he tries to help the souls on their journey. In his descriptions they are wandering around kind of lost in an in between state.

Fr Schouppe in 'Purgatory; Explained by the Lives and Legends of the Saints' has a different account of what purgatory is like.

Souls in a state of grace with no conscious mortal sin at death still need to do reparation for sins on earth. Hence the dogma of purgatory. The guardian angels and Mary are still doing their best for them. What helps them most are our prayers and entreaties to God for mercy.

Evidently ghosts most likely are souls from purgatory asking for help."

He embellished this nonsense with, appropriately, some nonsensical 'holy' pictures: 

These bizarre paintings, in the classical style show people (assumed to be sinners) burning in some pit or other reaching out for help to, variously, angels, nuns and some strange bint riding a cloud. 

Bugger me! 

You probably remember that I've written about this Purgatory fairy tale before and suggested that it was a money bilking scam of the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages. See: CATHOLIC CATACLYSM 

I thought that this might have laid it to rest with Robert and, for a while he dropped the subject but now in his latest post he's dredged it all up again. I blame this guy:

A new frock-wearing joker named Father Awaythebetter .... sorry, Father Nathan.

I'm not sure where Robert digs these people up from but I wish he wouldn't.

Look, I'm a long-time reader of fables and fantasy novels like Tolkien's The Lord Of The Rings, Frank Herbert's Dune and Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast series so a little bit of fantasy in one's life is OK as long as you don't let it distort reality.

To this end I've got some cousins (who I have kept away from for years) who were 'Trekkies' who dressed up in Star Trek costumes and attended Star Trek symposiums around the world!

I worry about this that Robert wrote though:

"Souls in a state of grace with no conscious mortal sin at death still need to do reparation for sins on earth. Hence the dogma of purgatory. The guardian angels and Mary are still doing their best for them. What helps them most are our prayers and entreaties to God for mercy."

He's not just paraphrasing his favourite fantasy nor paying homage to it as entertainment. He seems to believe in this.

Okay, okay, I can hear you saying "what's wrong with that - leave him alone - it's harmless" but re-read that extract. It's basically saying that innocent people who have lived their lives blamelessly "in a state of grace" still don't get a leave pass to that mythical heaven. Somehow they're still guilty of something that their god (the Church) dreamed up and pinned on them. How unfair is that? Those floating angels and the bint in the blue outfit can apparently help, or try to if the friends and family of the poor tormented buggers 'pray and entreat' for them.

It's this 'entreating' thing that I mentioned in the Catholic Cataclysm post. You will note that I said:

"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   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).
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)."

So the Catholic Church, like Trump-type grifters the world over found another way to screw money out of their 'faithful'. I just don't understand how they fell for this crap and still do. Robert in another recent post said this:

"Christina asked me if I would mind doing the collection after the prayers of the faithful. As I had worn a suit and tie, I felt presentable enough to walk around in front of a couple of hundred parishioners.  Most people give by bank transfer and not a lot of cash is collected. I'm on shop duty next week so will have to do the collection again next Sunday as well."

People have automatic payments set up to pay the Church! This is like the tithing that goes on in those other even more bogus 'churches' like Samoan Assembly of God Church, NZ Mega Church and the Destiny Church which prey upon those who can least afford to give.

I'm flabbergasted.