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| Church of Santa Sabina |
The Catholic NewsService reporting on Pope Benedict’s homily for the first day of Lent at Rome’s
Church of Santa Sabina was filled with some incredibly dark images based
on his frequent literal rather then interpretative interpretation of Scripture.
In his
opening remarks the Pope said . . . "In the
Catholic liturgy, ashes are "one of those material signs that bring the
cosmos into the liturgy," he said. They recall both the fact that God
created human beings out of the dust of the earth and breathed divine life into
them, but also that after Adam and Eve sinned, God cursed the ground and made it bring forth thistles and thorns. Only by giving this passage a simple literal interpretation could any reader deduce that it was God who cursed the ground. Again in clear contradiction of scripture
should we not recall that at the end of the sixth day “God looked at everything
he had made, and he was very pleased”! Could
it be this passage marks the very first time man tried to create God in his
image?
Speaking
about the sins of Adam and Eve, Benedict went on to say. . . “while God punishes people for their sins, his punishment is ‘medicinal’ because God is good and loving' . . . This
was followed by an even more challenging theological interpretation as Benedict
announced that . . . ‘God sent his son ‘to our earth devastated by sin so that we,
prodigal sons and daughters, could return repentant and redeemed by his mercy
to our true homeland" in heaven” . . .
The
Pope’s reference to God’s punishment reminds this blogger that our Pope is not
only a theologian with dark
fundamentalist (Jansemism) views which sets back Catholicism centuries to the days of the
Inquisition, crusades, witch-hunts, and the persecution of Jews but also why he is
able to justify his unusual focus on the sexual sins of so many these days. Our God does not punish, reward, demand, or play favourites - we do.
The
Pope's further suggestion that . . . "God sent his son was because “our earth was
devastated by sin” . . . . offers yet another clear contradiction. It ignores Jesus’ message “I came so that you might have
life to be lived in all its fullness’! (John 10:10) God sent
his son because he loves all of his creation.
No greater sacrifice could be made than to die for another, i.e.,
us! The Pope’s fear based message is
hardly likely to heal anyone’s image of a loving God. His Augustinian view of the world makes a
mockery of God’s unconditional love. (readers may be interested to learn that St. Augustine is Benedict's favourite Saint). BTW the word 'bless' and variations thereof appears more than 85 times in the book of Genesis. Should that not tell us something about the true nature of God?
Let
us celebrate Lent with the knowledge that God does not punish, reward, demand
or send anyone to hell. God is only interested in blessing us. Perhaps we could open our hearts to his many blessings and spend the next forty days reflecting on Jesus’ rejection of the only Satan
that exists and that is our EGO. Of course as anyone knows that takes true
humility and a change of heart.
1 comment:
It's a good thing Pope Benny isn't in charge of the last judgement. His take on Genesis makes Orville Roberts look like Mary Poppins. Has he read a single article of biblical scholarshp written in the last 50 years? I hope he and St. Augustine are very happy in the the boys only tree house that will be their version of heaven!
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