The Evil Of Catholicism

 

    

Tucson Weather Today

 

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The movie I forced myself to  yesterday was The Exorcism Of Emily Rose. Back in the mid-1970s I had viewed the original movie titled The Exorcist written by William Peter Blatty and it simply scared the Bee-Jesus out of me, I swore to myself that I would never watch such crap designed to stir up primal fears again. But now I've gone ahead and done it anyway.

This latest exorcist story was more of a  courtroom drama and, as such, wasn't as viscerally terrifying as the first but I still wish I hadn't watch it. Movies such as these, blindly accepting faith in nonsensical religious quackery, only strengthen my aversion (my abhorrence) to The Catholic Church. After witnessing such downright charlatanism, such blatant perversion of logic and reason, I knew that I needed something beautiful and good to wipe away the stains of superstitious claptrap, to help cleanse my inner self... so I searched the Internet and found just what did the trick.

A picture of Mila Kunis

 

Such a lovely young woman

 

Here is another

 

 

I think it would be a good idea for me to search out a large picture of Mila to use as wallpaper for my computer monitor.

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TRIVIA

A goldfish has a memory span of three seconds.

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HISTORICAL EVENT

 

On this day in 1973, future President Jimmy Carter filed a report with the National Investigations Committee on Aerial  Phenomena (NICAP), claiming he had seen an Unidentified Flying Object (UFO) in October 1969.

During the presidential campaign of 1976, Democratic challenger Carter was forthcoming about his belief that he had seen a UFO. He described waiting outside for a Lion's Club Meeting in Leary, Georgia, to begin, at about 7:30 p.m., when he spotted what he called "the darndest thing I've ever seen" in the sky. Carter, as well as 10 to 12 other people who witnessed the same event, described the object as "very bright with changing colors and about the size of the moon." Carter reported that "the object hovered about 30 degrees above the horizon and moved in toward the earth and away before disappearing into the distance." He later told a reporter that, after the experience, he vowed never again to ridicule anyone who claimed to have seen a UFO.

During the presidential campaign of 1976, Carter promised that, if elected president, he would encourage the government release "every piece of information" about UFOs available to the public and to scientists. After winning the presidency, though, Carter backed away from this pledge, saying that the release of some information might have "defense implications" and pose a threat to national security.

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WORD FOR TODAY

Catholicism
noun
The faith, practice, and church order of the Roman Catholic Church.

Catholicism is a broad term for describing specific traditions in the Christian churches in theology and doctrine, liturgy, ethics and spirituality. For many the term usually refers to Christians and churches, western and eastern, in full communion with the Holy See, usually known as the Catholic Church or the Roman Catholic Church.

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CELEBRITY BIRTHDAYS

James Joseph Gandolfini, Jr
(Sept 18, 1961 - June 19, 2013)

James Gandolfini was an American actor best known for his role in The Sopranos as Tony Soprano, a troubled crime boss struggling to balance his family life and career in the Mafia. Gandolfini garnered enormous praise for this portrayal, winning three Emmy Awards, three Screen Actors Guild Awards and two Golden Globes for Best Actor – Drama Series as well as two further SAG Awards as a member of the series' ensemble. Gandolfini's other roles include the woman-beating Mob henchman Virgil in True Romance, enforcer/stuntman Bear in Get Shorty, and the impulsive Wild Thing Carol in Where the Wild Things Are.

Jada Koren Pinkett Smith
(born September 18, 1971)

Jada Pinkett Smith is an American actress, singer-songwriter, and businesswoman. She began her career in 1990, when she made a guest appearance in the short-lived sitcom True Colors. She starred in A Different World, produced by Bill Cosby, and she featured opposite Eddie Murphy in The Nutty Professor (1996). She starred in dramatic films such as Menace II Society (1993) and Set It Off (1996). She has appeared in more than 20 films in a variety of genres, including Scream 2, Ali, The Matrix Reloaded, The Matrix Revolutions, Madagascar, Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa and Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted.

Frankie Avalon
(born September 18, 1940)

Frankie Avalon is an American actor, singer, playwright, and former teen idol. Teamed frequently with Annette Funicello, Avalon starred in a number of popular "beach party" comedy films during the mid-1960s. The wholesome and romantic coupling of "Frankie and Annette" in summer movies such as Beach Party and Beach Blanket Bingo became iconic figures in American films during that era.

Avalon also had straight dramatic parts in the John Wayne historical western film The Alamo, as well as the science-fiction story Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1961) with Barbara Eden.

Aisha Tyler
(born September 18, 1970)

Aisha Tyler is an American actress, comedian, and author, known for her regular role as Andrea Marino in the first season of Ghost Whisperer and voicing Lana Kane in Archer, as well as her recurring roles in CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, Talk Soup, and on Friends as Charlie Wheeler. She is currently a co-host of The Talk and the new host of Whose Line is it Anyway?.

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"I can't bear Catholicism."
--George Michael

NASA TV

This Is Who I Am

    

3-15-13

    

Tucson Weather Today

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The TV channels are still at it, concentrating on multitudinous details surrounding the recent election of a 76 year old Pope. Some have created even more hype from the incident where a seagull landed and loitered long upon the perch created by the installation of a chimney on the roof of the Sistine Chapel. It has become, according to the ladies of CBS News, a dove like symbol of God's blessing on the new Pope.

 

Glory Be!

Catholicism, in my skeptic's mind, is nothing more than a mixture of naive dependency on childlike superstition and the sheer stupidity of the human race.

Also:

If I understand it correctly, women's groups are calling for more inclusion in Church policy.

Evidently the feminists want to change, for one thing, what Church Doctrine decrees about women being excluded from the priesthood. In other words, modern women know better than does the old outmoded male hierarchy and their sexist God, and only women know what the real role of a woman should be in this enlightened twenty-first century.

When I was quite young, back in the mid to late 1940s, there were several protestant churches in my small Indiana hometown and one Catholic Church with its own Catholic Grammar School. Sometimes, while walking home in the afternoon when school let out, we encountered homeward bound students from the Catholic school. When this happened, it invariably led to the two groups picking up rocks and throwing them at each other accompanied by shouted epithets we'd learned from the older kids in the neighborhood. Stuff like: "Dirty Cat-lickers!" (Catholic-ers)" answered by "Shitty pup-lickers" (Public-ers).


My grandfather told me some eye-popping horror stories about Catholics, such as how the priests sometimes kidnapped women and protestant kids and tied them down on altars and sacrificed them by stabbing them with daggers and drank their blood from jeweled golden cups in midnight rituals called Masses.

 

I think he really believed those stories himself. Many people did in those days. Some still do.

 

There was no Catholic High School in that town so Catholic students attended our Public High School, and I got to know them, and learned how wrong my grandfather was.

And how horribly wrong adults often were (and still are) about things.

Most things.

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HISTORICAL CLIP

On this day in history, March 15, 44 B.C., Julius Caesar, the "dictator for life" of the Roman Empire, was murdered by his own senators at a meeting in a hall next to Pompey's Theatre.

Details at The Ides Of March

 

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WORD FOR TODAY

Pope
noun
The bishop of Rome as head of the Roman Catholic Church.

The Pope (Latin: papa; Greek: pappas; a child's word for father) is the Bishop of Rome and the leader of the worldwide Catholic Church. In the Catholic Church, the Pope is regarded as the successor of Saint Peter, the Apostle.

Many Protestants claim that when Catholics address priests as "father," they are engaging in an unbiblical practice that Jesus forbade: "Call no man your father on earth, for you have one Father, who is in heaven" (Matt. 23:9). In his tract 10 Reasons Why I Am Not a Roman Catholic, Fundamentalist anti-Catholic writer Donald Maconaghie quotes this passage as support for his charge that "the papacy is a hoax."

Bill Jackson, another Fundamentalist who runs a full-time anti-Catholic organization, says in his book Christian’s Guide To Roman Catholicism that a "study of Matthew 23:9 reveals that Jesus was talking about being called father as a title of religious superiority . . . [which is] the basis for the  [Catholic] hierarchy."

How do Catholics respond to such objections?

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BORN ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

Judd Hirsch

 

Born Mar 15, 1935
Age: 77 years old

Judd Hirsch is an American actor most known for playing Alex Rieger on the television comedy series Taxi, John Lacey on the NBC series Dear John, and Alan Eppes on the CBS series Numb3rs. He is also well known for his roles in films such as Independence Day (1996), A Beautiful Mind (2001), and Ordinary People (1980), for which he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.

Alan Bean

 

Born Mar 15, 1932
Age: 80 years old

Alan LaVern Bean is a former NASA astronaut and currently a painter. Bean was selected to become an astronaut by NASA in 1963 as part of Astronaut Group 3. He made his first flight into space aboard Apollo 12, the second manned mission to land on the Moon, at the age of thirty-seven years in November 1969. During this mission, Bean became the fourth person to walk on the Moon. He made his second and final flight into space on the Skylab 3 mission in 1973, the second manned mission to the Skylab space station.

Joe E Ross

 

Born: Mar 15, 1914
Died: Aug 13, 1982

Joe E. Ross (born Joseph Roszawikz) was an American actor known for his trademark "Ooh! Ooh!" exclamation, which he used in many of his roles. He starred in such TV sitcoms as The Phil Silvers Show and as Patrolman Gunther Toody of New York's 53rd Precinct in Car 54, Where Are You?.

Jimmy Swaggart

 

Born Mar 15, 1935
Age: 77 years old

Jimmy Lee Swaggart is an American Pentecostal pastor, teacher, musician, author, television host, and televangelist. He has preached to crowds around the world through his weekly telecast. According to the official website for Jimmy Swaggart Ministries, his 1980s telecast was transmitted to over 3,000 stations and cable systems each week.

Sexual scandals in the late 1980s and early 1990s led the Assemblies of God to defrock him, and to his temporarily stepping down as the head of Jimmy Swaggart Ministries. He is a cousin of Jerry Lee Lewis.

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Show business offers more solid promises than Catholicism.
--John Guare
    

I Am Not An Atheist

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Tucson Weather Today

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A great many people believe in a personal God, a supremely powerful entity that is responsible for the creation of the entire universe and all things in it, and who is vitally interested in the minute by minute, second by second actions and thoughts of each living person's everyday life.

I do not.

All the many wrongs I have committed throughout my long life are my sole responsibility, committed either from my own ignorance of the harm I was bringing about to others or through the all too many pleasure seeking indulgences of my inborn and wholly instinctive animal passions.

My wrongdoings are my own. They are not merely the bits and pieces of some hugely complex plan of some unseen and unknowable divinity.

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Catholicism

The Predator Priest Who Got Away:

The Rev. Lawrence C. Murphy admitted he sexually abused deaf boys at his boarding school for 22 years. Victims tried for more than three decades to bring him to justice, but documents show that the church neither defrocked him nor referred him for prosecution.

Catholic priest molests 200 deaf boys says The New York Times.

According to The Times, that priest was Lawrence C. Murphy, who worked at a renowned school for deaf children for 22 years. But it is only one of thousands of cases forwarded over decades by bishops to the Vatican.

The Catholic Church . . . "yuk!"

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Islam

An adherent of Islam is called a Muslim.

Muslims believe that God is one and incomparable. Muslims also believe that Islam is the complete and universal version of a primordial faith that was revealed at many times and places before, including through the prophets Abraham, Moses and Jesus.

I prefer to say nothing here, and at this time, about Islam.

After all, its many publicized actions speak for itself.

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The Protestants

Once a protester, always a protester. Members of the Protestant Church believe that God, goodness, and evil are exactly what each individual protestant believes those things to be, within his or her own individual mind.

There is a great truth stated in the King James Bible, which is:

Vanity of vanities,
saith the Preacher,
vanity of vanities;
all is vanity.
--Ecclesiastes 1:2

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I am not an Atheist

While I have become unable to believe in the simplistic concept of a personal God as proposed by the major organized religions, I cannot bring myself to smugly deny the possibility of some ultra-powerful entity existing within (or perhaps outside of) the thought-model we label as the universe.

The early morning sky above the peaks of the Rincon Mountains I am now seeing out my window from the corner of my eye as I type this...


...could be but a single unit (cell?) of some superhuman being that is somehow responsible for regulating some facet of the workings of the cosmos.

Or The Earth itself could be that single cell.

Or, our solar system could be that single cell.

Or a galaxy could be that single cell.

Or, perhaps the entire universe, composed of billions of galaxies could itself be that single cell.

(give that some thought)

Organized religions are so chintzy with their paltry concepts of God.

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Jesus tells it like it is