From: g87@optusnet.com.au
Sent: Monday, December 14, 2015 9:51 AM
To: the australian
Subject: Of purgatory, limbo and better sex in the
Vatican
George Fishman
Last Post 14/12. is sadly wrong: ‘Limbo’ is a place reserved somewhere betwixt
heaven and hell for the souls of unbaptized infants who died before Jesus’s
coming.
Methinks George should thank the Pope
for no longer
allocating purgatory or exorcism for non –
believers.
Purgatory: (in Catholic doctrine) a
place or state of suffering
inhabited by the souls of sinners who are expiating
their sins
before going to
heaven.]
Indeed I note with bemusement that the Church is far more
enlightened with their attitude to sex:
Get a better
sex life, via the Vatican’s Catholic university.
The Australian 12 December
Geoff Seidner
13 Alston Gr
East St Kilda 3183
03 9525 9299
George Fishman Last Post 14/12. is sadly wrong: ‘Limbo’ is a place reserved
somewhere betwixt heaven or hell for newborn unbaptised babies:
Methinks George should thank Il Papa for no
longer allocating purgatory and exorcism for non –
believers.
Purgatory: (in Catholic doctrine) a place or
state of suffering inhabited by the souls of sinners who are expiating their
sins before going to heaven.]
Indeed I note with bemusememnt that the Church is far more enlightened with their attitude to the bedroom darby:
As a Jew I
will always be grateful for the latest announcement by the Catholic church
allowing me into heaven (“Jews ‘can get to heaven without believing in Jesus’
’’, 12-13/12. And to think that I may have been eternally condemned to
limbo.
Get a better sex life, via the Vatican’s Catholic university
Pope
Francis in St. Peter's Square at the Vatican.
A Catholic university overseen by the
Vatican has agreed to host a conference of “aesthetic” gynaecologists who
promise women they can amplify G-spots and kick-start sex
lives.
The
Augustinian Patristic Institute, 100m from St Peter’s Square in Rome, usually
sticks to courses in early Christianity, as part of the curriculum of the
Vatican’s Lateran University. But in April it will host the first Congress of
the European Society of Aesthetic Gynaecology, to be capped by a meeting for
delegates with Pope Francis.
The
society’s president, Alexandros Bader, boasts on his website that he is highly
knowledgeable about the “secrets of the female body” and uses techniques
designed to help women increase their sexual performance and
libido.
Topics at
the conference will include the reduction, lifting, tightening and bleaching of
female genitalia, as well “G-spot amplification” — and even “O-spot
amplification” — a reference to a point, somewhere behind the cervix, which
experts claim is even more sensitive than the G-spot.
After
sharpening up on the latest techniques in reconstructive and cosmetic surgery,
delegates will attend a papal audience and visit the Vatican gardens. Then, at a
second location, delegates will participate in a follow-up, “hands-on course”,
participating in operations featuring “14 live cases”.
A
spokeswoman for the event said the conference venue was not within the walls of
the Vatican City. “There are plenty of foreigners coming from all over the world
and they want to be close to the centre of Rome, that’s all,” she
said.
The Times
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/the-times/arrests-after-fatal-exorcism-in-frankfurt-germany/news-story/5794ba36f292913a7f6536a359d50e72
Arrests after fatal exorcism in Frankfurt, Germany
Police
found the body of a 41-year-old woman in a room at an InterContinental hotel in
Frankfurt.
Five relatives of a woman who died in an
exorcism ritual have been arrested and a second woman, bound in cling film and
close to death, rescued from the family’s garage.
Police
found the body of a 41-year-old woman in a room at an InterContinental hotel in
Frankfurt after being alerted by a Catholic priest, who had been contacted by
the family. They are thought to have arrived in Germany from South Korea about
six weeks ago.
Prosecutors
said the woman had been tied to a bed and beaten for two hours with the aim goal
of “driving out the devil”. She suffocated because a towel had been stuffed in
her mouth to stifle her screams.
A second
woman, also 41, was found close to death from dehydration and hypothermia in the
garage of a home in the nearby town of Sulzbach.
Prosecutor
Nadja Niesen said the suspects were a 44-year-old woman, her 21-year-old son and
19-year-old daughter, and two 15-year-old boys, one of whom was the victim’s
son. “The suspects subjected the victim to pain and agony for at least two
hours, and their actions were motivated by a callous and merciless attitude,”
she said. “The woman eventually died from asphyxiation as a result of the
massive chest compression and violence to her neck.”
Exorcisms
are permitted by the Catholic Church, but under strict conditions and with the
involvement of a priest. An 87-year-old woman died in 2009 in Frankfurt when her
son beat her with a Bible.
THE TIMES
Jews ‘can get to heaven without believing in Jesus’: theologians
Catholic theologians
have said that Jews can secure eternal salvation without converting to
Christianity.
Jews can secure
eternal salvation without converting to Christianity, senior Catholic
theologians say in a report published yesterday in the latest refinement of
their stance on a vexed theological issue.
Addressing a question that has long blighted relations
between the faiths, the report also unequivocally says the church should not
actively seek to convert Jews, echoing the stance outlined by former Pope
Benedict XVI in 2011.
The report, drawn up by the church’s Commission for
Religious Relations with the Jews, goes further than Benedict, however, in
effectively affirming that Jews can be saved independently of Christ.
“Although Jews cannot believe in Jesus Christ as the
universal redeemer, they have a part in salvation, because the gifts and the
calling of God are irrevocable,” the report says, according to a summary
released to the media.
The belief that the only way to salvation is through
belief in Christ is a fundamental tenet of every strand of
Christianity.
But it has also been blamed for creating an evangelical
tendency responsible for some of the darkest periods in the history of religion,
notably the anti-Muslim crusades of the Middle Ages and centuries of Christian
anti-Semitism.
The latest report reiterates that it is only thanks to
Christ’s death and resurrection that all people have the chance of salvation but
accepts that Jews can benefit from this without believing in him.
The authors appear to acknowledge they are effectively
squaring a theological circle.
How Jews being saved while not believing in Christ “can
be possible remains an unfathomable mystery in the salvific plan of God”, they
say.
The report, which does not constitute a formal change to
official doctrine, was published to mark the 50th anniversary of the close of a
landmark Vatican Council that attempted to draw a line under centuries of
persecution of Jews based on Catholic teaching.
The council, widely known as Vatican II, disowned the
concept of collective Jewish responsibility for the crucifixion of Christ,
decried anti-Semitism and emphasised the shared heritage of the two
faiths.
Relations between the two faiths have warmed steadily
since then and were helped by a 1998 report from the same commission which
called on Catholics to repent for their failure to do more to prevent the
Holocaust while stopping short of blaming the church as an institution for its
silence under the leadership of wartime pope Pius XII.
AFP
