Thursday, March 21, 2013

"... then the world wouldn’t [still] be here."

Pope Francis delivered his first Sunday Angelus and blessing to the crowd in St. Peter's Square.

From Vatican Radio:

After returning into the church to take off his liturgical vestments, Pope Francis again greeted the faithful outside, before making his way to his study and the window overlooking St Peter’s Square, below which was gathered a crowd to rival the more than 100 thousand-strong who braved cold, rain and dark to meet the Pope on Wednesday – the night of his election – and receive his blessing for the first time. Dozens of national flags were visible in the packed Square, and a deafening cheer went up when, at last, Pope Francis appeared. Mercy was once again the cornerstone of his reflections ahead of the traditional prayer of Marian devotion. 
He told a story, of an elderly widow he encountered during a Mass for the sick celebrated in connection with a visit of the image of Our Lady of Fatima. “I went to confession during the Mass,” he said, “and near the end – I had to go to do confirmations afterward, and an elderly lady approached me – humble [she was] so very humble, more than eighty years old. I looked at her, and said, ‘Grandmother,’ – where I come from, we call elderly people grandmother and grandfather – ‘would you like to make your confession?’ ‘Yes,’ she said – and I said, ‘but, if you have not sinned…’ and she said, ‘we all have sinned.’ [I replied], ‘if perhaps He should not forgive [you]?’ and, sure, she replied, ‘The Lord forgives everything.’ I asked, ‘How do you know this for sure, madam?’ and she replied, ‘If the Lord hadn’t forgiven all, then the world wouldn’t [still] be here.’ And, I wanted to ask her, ‘Madam, did you study at the Gregorian (the Pontifical Gregorian University, founded in 1551 by St Ignatius Loyola, the oldest Jesuit university in the world)?’ – because that is wisdom, which the Holy Spirit gives – interior wisdom regarding the mercy of God. Let us not forget this word: God never tires of forgiving us,” he repeated, “but we sometimes tire of asking Him to forgive us.” Pope Francis went on to say, “Let us never tire of asking God’s forgiveness.”


We're going to love this Pope.

18 comments:

  1. The difference in end result between having a still existing world because a potentially vengeful god who has forgiven all, and having a still existing world because there's no god, vengeful or not, is zero.

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    1. That went clean over your completely empty head.
      Big surprise there, BF.


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    2. Groucho, you mean to say BF has a head?

      :-)

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  2. Thank you God, for not utterly destroying us, and bless those that grovel to keep us safe from your divine wrath. Amen.

    -KW

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  3. Adm. G Boggs, Glenbeckistan NavyMarch 21, 2013 at 7:51 AM

    Phew! Why do trolls always smell like that?

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    1. Georgie,

      If you can smell something malodorous, seating at your computer, then now is perhaps the time you ought to consider having your fecal incontinence dealt with.

      Delete
    2. Adm. G Boggs, Glenbeckistan NavyMarch 21, 2013 at 10:52 AM

      While I am "seating at my computer"? Wow. I better follow your advice. You must be really smart.

      Delete
  4. What the old gal says makes perfect sense.
    The universe is obviously designed top-down for a final result, and a single component like mankind could easily be substituted like nails for screws in the making of a table.
    God is outside of what we call 'time'.
    He has therefore already forgiven much of the sin we commit.
    If He did not forgive our transgressions, the past would be reformed to suit the desired future and man would be no more. We would have been, as a whole, erased from the book of life and would have NEVER been. God, being God, would have done all this OUTSIDE of time, and so trying to place an order of events is futile. He IS.
    He is the beginning and the end.
    Obviously this lady has not only spent years thinking about these things, but also FEELS them.
    God bless her and keep her safe until the day He calls her home.

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    1. “God, being God, would have done all this OUTSIDE of time”

      Then time is an illusion imposed by a God that could not have done otherwise. No matter you’re feeling of free-will, you’ve already done whatever it is you are going to do. A God living outside of time is unchanging and impotent.

      -KW

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    2. "Then time is an illusion imposed by a God that could not have done otherwise. "
      >Clearly you do not understand the points being made by MrEgnor, Rex, and the woman in the post.
      Also, you make it obvious that you do not understand even the most basic realities of the world in which you live.
      Are you an Atheist by any chance, mr KW?

      "No matter you’re feeling of free-will, you’ve already done whatever it is you are going to do."
      >That is a silly response, mr KW. The argument that Rex has put out is not determinism. It is teleological. The end result is free will.

      "A God living outside of time is unchanging and impotent."
      >mr KW, You use the word God and impotent in the same sentence. What are you? Another illiterate atheist or some sort of devil worshipper?

      -inquiring mind

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    3. crusadeREX,

      "He (God) is the beginning and the end."

      That's a bullseye my friend!

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    4. CrusadeRex,

      As Douglas Adams put it, the water puddle in the pothole in the road thinks that obviously the pothole was designed for it, because the water puddle fits it so perfectly.

      The appearance of intelligent design in the Universe is just an illusion, like the pothole. We wouldn't be here unless the Universe is amenable to life developing at least somewhere somewhen in its enormous size and age.

      The physicist Paul Davies (who is religious to the extent that he won the Templeton Prize one year) reckons that the discovery of intelligent life elsewhere in the Universe would be fatal to Christianity, removing humans' hubris that they're the sole purpose for the Universe existing.

      I doubt it. Christian apologists will find a way to rationalize it away. Not that I know whether there is intelligent life elsewhere. My predictions as to what science would discover has tended to be wrong. I was certain 30 years ago that detecting extrasolar planets from the Earth was a physical impossibility. The total discovered so far the last time I looked was well over 700.

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    5. "As Douglas Adams put it..."
      Water puddles don't think. A bird, dog, or even man drinking from a hole may feel that way - but, I reiterate: A puddle does not 'think', Bach.
      Also, Douglas Adams was a scifi/comedy writer. I enjoyed him too... in 8th grade. Marvin, 42, and the Vogons were worth a laugh back then. But then, so was Cheech and Chong. Anyway, my point is that he is hardly a prized source for philosophical or scientific insight.


      "The appearance of intelligent design in the Universe is just an illusion,.."
      Ergo your argument is a personal illusion and only applicable to be people who perceive and permit that 'view' to be impressed upon them. This is a self refuting line of argument. If you're correct, you cannot be correct - NOTHING is.

      "The physicist Paul Davies (who is religious to the extent that he won the Templeton Prize one year) reckons that the discovery of intelligent life elsewhere in the Universe would be fatal to Christianity[..]"
      Very weird. Sounds like paranoid stance to me.

      [...]removing humans' hubris that they're the sole purpose for the Universe existing."
      A very strange take on Theism in general.
      Hubris? We are all sinners. We all must seek the forgiveness of our creator and live within strict natural laws, that our God loves His Creation so much that he entered our world and died for our (vast) sin? This is Hubris?
      We do not think the Universe was made as our playground, Bach. That is a childish interp of our faith. Nothing like the Christianity I live in and know. My understanding, and that of most of the thinking Christians I know is that the universe and Man were made together, for each other and to His ends. Obviously we are not the only pieces in the masterpiece of creation.
      We were made for Him.
      So was our ever changing and expanding tadpole pond: The 'universe(s)'.


      If there is or is not life about the Universe(s) (I think there is, abundantly - even locally) has no bearing on my faith. I don't see why it would on anyone's. If the nature of Christian faith was as Davies suggested, Christianity would have been destroyed by the discovery of animals not mentioned the bible. My dogs would counter the biblical reality. They do not.


      "I doubt it."
      You are correct to do so, but for the wrong reasons. .

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    6. CNTD

      "Christian apologists will find a way to rationalize it away. Not that I know whether there is intelligent life elsewhere."
      What I think your forwarding is that Christianity is flexible enough to encompass the discovery of life on other worlds. That Christians will not be so easily swayed from their convictions. You're correct.
      We don't need to look further than scripture to find the concept of other intelligent beings and forces within our universe.

      Ours is a robust faith that does not pivot on some limitations to God or His creation. Our God is all.


      "My predictions as to what science would discover has tended to be wrong."
      And it looks as if my predictions were spot on.
      The data (as it is currently interpreted) so far indicates bodies about distant stars.

      "I was certain 30 years ago that detecting extrasolar planets from the Earth was a physical impossibility."
      You were not alone. Many people told me I was crazy back then. Crazy to consider the possibility of life, too. Many of them were materialists. Coincidence? Maybe.
      Or...Maybe it's your faith, Bach, that is threatened by a repeating pattern/design of life?

      Such a repetition would indicate that life has a basic structure and some universal function/purpose for life.... well, it would to most people.
      I am sure atheist apologists will find some absurd, self resulting nonsense to cram that square peg into their tiny two dimensional bunghole.

      "The total discovered so far the last time I looked was well over 700."
      Well, it looks that way. But as with all radio imagery and detection techniques, the data is being interpreted by people LOOKING for exactly what they see. And I don't mean they are wrong, just that the inquiry is not finished/formed.
      Funny how the universe works that way, eh?

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    7. CrusadeRex,

      'radio imagery and detection techniques...'?

      WTF? Extrasolar planets aren't detected by radio imagery (are you thinking of SETI?). They're detected by a number of methods, such as the Doppler effect in which a planet orbiting a star pulls it towards the Sun when it's on the same side of its orbit, causing a blue shift, and away from the Earth when it's on the opposite side causing a red shift in the Stark's emitted light. Or the transit method in which an extrasolar planet causes a small but measurable dip in its star's light output when the planet transits. Or actually directly seeing the planet, as has occurred in at least one case.

      And the observations have to be repeatable, reflecting the extrasolar planet's orbital period, so if the wobble, or dip in light emitted, or the planet doesn't reappear when next expected, then that extrasolar planet is disproved.

      The techniques are biased towards detecting 'hot Jupiters' - giant planets orbiting close to its star. Planets like Jupiter or Saturn would be difficult to detect from other other planetary systems, because you'd need to observe the Sun for multiple orbits of Jupiter (around 10 years) or Saturn (around 30 years).

      The Universe isn't 'obviously designed'.

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  5. We're going to love this Pope.

    The last pope. Once it becomes public why Ratzi really quit, that'll be the end of the RCC.

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    1. Didn't someone say something similar about Urban II?

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    2. CrusadeRex,

      Care to expand on your comment? I agree that it's extremely unlikely that the Catholic Church, or religion in general, will disappear, because it does fill a 'need'.

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