Goodbye Joe – Not Sorry to See You Go – Luke 9:5-1/2

Luke 9:5-1/2

…shake off the very dust from your feet as a testimony against them  (JP2/B16)

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The Last Pope and Cultural Christians

Lightning Strike on St. Peter's in Rome - February 11, 2013 - Date of Benedict's Resignation

I starting writing my blog almost five years ago in reaction not to Benedict XVI's visit to my city, New York City, but to the insulting to me media spin of men in collars in the media calling people like me, Cultural Catholics and or get this "Recovering Catholics" - evidence of experts talking out of their arses and pretending to know what they talk about. 

I wanted people like me to feel comfortable with a label Cultural Christian and not feel inferior to the we have a name and a label for everybody and everything crowd which is usually a negative name and or label, with the know it all scholar types like Ratzy in the Vatican.

Joe the Pope as I have lovingly named the present Roman Pontiff in more than one article of that blog had resigned. A non-traditional thing in an institution blue in the face upholding and compulsively obsessed with all things traditional and so-called sacred.

Well it just came to me as I no longer have a whipping boy in Joe that who or what am I going to write about now. Well, in all honesty my blogging has been an education. With Pharisee types parading around the Vatican in fabulous lace things like Ray Burke, it becomes evident that the parade and the show only masks the past glory and the lost present respect that the Vatican gets and deserves now that it is little more than a money launderer for every crank right wing group in existence.

In a way the St Malachy prophesy that these are the last popes in a list revised and extended once I think in the 14th century is a rare glimpse into the humanity of it all, the institution that at this point in time, the Vatican is little different than any other corporate headquarters marketing and franchising cheap chicken sandwiches to the masses.

The facade of the Vatican is just that - a facade.

Perception is everything and many more by the millions now know and recognize the deception. The church now I think is just the people of God no matter how long the museum in Rome continues to stand awaiting tourists with their tourist dollars.

http://thisculturalchristian.blogspot.com/2008/06/cultural-christian.html

Standard Vatican Fare - "Good Eats"

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Joe the Pope - Good for Tourism - Just like With the Queen in England - It Is All In The Wrist - The Wave That Is - And The Hat

Star of Scary Movie III

Joe the Pope - Good for Tourism In Italy - Just like With the Queen in England - It Is All In The Wrist - The Wave That Is - And Don’t Ever Forget The Hat Girl !

Charles' Mum

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The Next Pope – Pope Pee Wee the First – Ha Ha

Considering all the douchebags that are likely in line to succeed Joe the Pope, prying power out of his cold dead hands once he goes to his well-deserved eternal reward (got fire?), they could do worse than electing Pee Wee Herman as the next pope.

I don’t know if he is Catholic but he does have the one important thing needed to be pope – a penis – and he apparently knows how to use it, been known to use it in public on occasion.  At least he doesn’t hide it in a closet like all those other popes and bishops.

Besides, if you are going to elect another clown as pope, you might as well go first class.

Love ya, Pope Pee Wee the First!

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Joe the Pope - Unhate Yourself?

I don't know if the above advertisement is offensive?  I showed it to someone point blank without explanation and she showed no negative response. Said something like "that is the custom over there" in Muslim countries and did not understand when I gave the full skinny on what the above was all about.  That it was not Joe the Pope in the picture etc. 


It is all about the Brand these days.  The Vatican is concerned about the Brand and it is obvious that Benetton did not give a cut $ to the Brand for the supposed use of the supposed sacred image.  Whatever. 


The theme of these ads is "Unhate" meaning two enemies embrace and love. 


I feel all too certain that a self-hating gay like Joseph Ratzinger or all the other self hating gay Cardinals and Bishops of the RCC do not, cannot understand the simple or underlying meaning of the message. 


It is all about the BRAND.


Brand is the modern code word for profit/greed = irrelevant to any or all things human.


Whatever. 


Try to find a little humor in life today.  There is no little out there in the real world these days I think. 




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Penn State National Pedophile Ring Cover Up Continues? – Joe “the Pope” Paterno Scapegoated to muddy the Issue?

Missing D.A. Ray Gricar

It would be great to fire Joe the Pope in Rome, Vatican City, and declare an end to the ongoing Pedophile Cover up by the USCCB and declare the problem over. But the bureaucracy, the Swiss Guards, the Vatican Bank and “jus forget bout it” indicted Bishop Finn in Kansas City and his special relationship to Father Ratigan will not just go away.  Reality is reality.  Science and all that and not magic.

So too, with Joe the Pope in Happy Valley, State College Pennsylvania, taking the Lion's share of the blame here with his firing - does the national pedophile ring operating out of Penn State, supposedly operating under everybody's rural pumpkin noses, under cover of Sandusky's Charity and supposedly sellings kids to rich donors, is it still operating or has the operation moved elsewhere??? 


This - leaving Joe Paterno to hold the bag and draw all the attention of sports writers - Lame Stream Media - writing about every thing other than the elephant in the room, the mafia big business child trafficking thing that probably lead to the mysterious death of the District Attorney that went missing in 2005 and who came up against OMERTA – SILENCE - from everybody including the college president all the way down to the campus police???

RIP?  Ray Gricar – sleeping with the fishes and Jimmy Hoffa? He knew too much!

Revealed: Prosecutor who failed to nail Penn State coach for 'sex abuse' vanished in 2005 and was declared 'legally dead' this year

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2060027/Ray-Gricar-disappeared-2005-tried-bring-sex-abuse-case-Penn-States-Jerry-Sandusky.html#ixzz1dXLO29wS

The district attorney who tried and failed to prosecute Jerry Sandusky in 1998 after reports of sexual abuse emerged, has been missing since 2005 and was declared legally dead in July. 

Ray Gricar disappeared on April 15 six years ago after telling his girlfriend he was going for a drive. 

His body was never found, only his abandoned car and his laptop which had been tossed in the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania without its hard drive.

In 1998, Gricar had attempted to bring a case against Penn State former football defence coordinator Jerry Sandusky on child rape charges.

The case of Sandusky, accused of years of abuse of boys that allegedly was covered up by school officials, has shaken the university and its football programme.

Last night, legendary head coach of Penn State Joe Paterno was fired amid allegations of a cover up.

When it came to the Sandusky allegations 13 years ago, friends and former co-workers said Gricar would never have backed down if he had a strong case.

The lawyer's nephew Tony Gricar told The Patriot-News: 'People ask why Ray did not prosecute, and I have no problem saying, because he clearly felt he didn't have a case for a ''successful'' prosecution.

'One thing I can say is that Ray was beholden to no one, was not a politician.'

The DA had a 'bitter taste in his mouth' for the Penn State program and Coach Sandusky, added his nephew. 

Montour County District Attorney Robert Buehner Jr, a friend of the missing man, told the New York Times that if Gricar had committed suicide, he would have wanted his body found. 

No suspects have ever emerged after investigations into Gricar's death.

Benedict XVI and the Self Hating Gospels

 In an attempt to soften his own roots and contributions to recent European history, Joe the Pope aka Joe the Scholar has let the Jews off the hook for the execution of Jesus in his forthcoming book, Jesus of Nazareth – Part II.

Pope Benedict: Jewish people not guilty for Jesus death

The Jews as a collective body are not directly responsible for the politics of the Jewish “Aristocracy” and or Temple hierarchy that plotted with the Romans to get rid of one minor Jewish Sect/Cult leader in first century Palestine.

Surely Josef Ratzinger was dragged screaming and kicking out of his youthful house and forced to join the Hitler Youth. In a very loose sense, he might be referred to be a self hating German. But the Germans do not really take responsibilty for the Holocaust in their hearts. They have paid some reparations to survivors and built a few monuments and passed a few laws outlawing anti-Semitic discourse in public view. This false sense of mea culpa, of wished for self hating Germans, by the German people for the collective acts of WWII was imposed on them by their conquerors in 1945.

True contrition by individuals can only be experienced by individuals who directly took part in their own little sliver of war crimes during the Nazi regime. Group guilt and group punishment is quite a different matter.

Anti-Semitism is I am told a nineteenth century term. If you go back to the first century the proper term is perhaps anti-Judaism. We again go back to the mysterious dividing line between Jewish Jews following the teachings of Jesus and the half Jews and full Gentiles that morphed a Jewish sect/cult into mainstream Roman pagan culture and Jesus into a god status.

As I have stated before the four Gospels were probably written after the fall of Jerusalem in 70 C.E.. In deed the language of blaming the Jews for Jesus' death in those gospels reeks perhaps of self-hating Jews as authors. So, if it comes down to logic, you can see that the gospels were not written by eyewitnesses or in some cases by real Jews, Jews that Jesus knew in his lifetime.

How many generations from the believed death of Jesus around 30 C.E., to the fall of Jerusalem in 70 A.D., to the Kitos diaspora wars 115-117 C.E., and the final destruction of Jewish resistance by Hadrian in 135 C.E.? Somewhere along that time line, Jesus and his very Jewish mission got turned into Mac and Cheese with Beef Gravy (not kosher).

Benedict XVI scholarship I believe will limit itself to the four anit-Judaic gospels. It is very limited flawed post WWII German scholarship at best for a possible “self hating” German to discount the writings not of first century self hating Jews but rather mid second century Jew hating Gentiles outside of Palestine.

The true message of the Jewish prophet Jesus was, is Love. Anything less, like many passages in the New Testament, just does not cut the mustard.

Third rate hack Roman scholarship seems to have changed little in nineteen hundred years.

And so it goes.

Joe the Pope does England and Scotland

You don’t need a copy of the show business magazine Variety to know that Joe the Pope’s floating circus is about to arrive in Great Britain.


A trip that looked promising mining for women hating COE priest types has gotten down to the nitty gritty stuff of everyday life.

Remarks from Cardinal Kaspar comparing Britain to a third world country has seen him pardon himself out of the pope’s entourage.

Remarks about wearing crosses on British Airways and getting discriminated against coincides with talk of the so called aggressive Atheism breeding on British shores.

The pope should promise to get more info out about the Church’s abuse scandals.

There’s all sorts of goodies to give out and receive in the media in the next few days.

Pope's Visit

Joe the pope, sorry kids, tough luck

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Dear Irish Victims:

Sorry you were buggered by your religious superiors.

Tough luck that this is, was an Irish problem.

A little while back it was an American Problem.

It is not a Vatican problem.

Cardinal Brady will not resign.

He is needed to manage the road back from your Irish problem.

Might even become pope (pope material if you know what I mean).

Yours truly,

Joe the ...

Joe the Pope Stumbles at Midnight Mass

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Since the beginning of the age of Darwin certain scientific methods apply to all things. Cause and effect in one such conundrum.

Joe the Pope stumbled the other night at Midnight Mass which was not at midnight. The 82 year old pontiff with a busy seasonal schedule wanted to go to bed early and get some rest for the next day. Midnight mass started at 10 pm. When you change anything around away from its norm – you have cause and effect. If you want to get to bed early, you are not staying up later than the homeless and the wandering crazy people particular to every urban center on the planet.

A young woman, 25, jumped the barricade separating the processional column of clergy including the Pope from the attending crowd. The security guards tacked the possible assassin and in the collateral damage (catalytic reaction) the would be assailant drags the pope to the floor by grabbing onto his garments.

Scuffle over. The pope is unharmed. An aged French cardinal gets a broken leg. The pope, the superstar of the evening, puts on his usual great performance.

Moral of the story. Security at the Vatican is as lax as at the White House where two publicity seeking clowns walk into Obama’s first State Dinner for the Prime Minister of India. They get photos with everyone and slip away as people are being seated for din-din and where there are no place cards for two party crashers.

The security at the midnight mass looked like they hired some husky tall moonlighting Italian policemen for the evening event. These days all corporations and all governments seem to be staffed by part time, minimum waged temporary staff and guards.

The young lady of Swiss Italian background had apparently done the same thing last year and in the same bright red clothing as at last year’s Christmas midnight mass – so much for my theory of staying up later than the crazies. The temp guards from last year who grabbed this same jumper before she touched the pope were not on duty or not looking or screening the people coming into the mass this year? People were admitted by ticket only.

Which goes to my previously stated assumption, of the fact that only tourists fill in the gaps of the big events like midnight mass – staged for the cameras. So easy to get tickets like at your hotel front desk. No real Roman would go out on a cold winter’s night for midnight mass at St. Peter’s. Romans may show up on a warm spring day for Easter in the plaza but other than that, few if any of the native population participate in the ancient rituals of the church.

Which brings me to my previously stated position, that only a few hundred or a few thousand Romans go to church on a regular basis. Which puts the Bishop of Rome as supposed premier moral leader of the Christian world as a shepherd to an active flock as large (or as small) as any Jesus got in his barnstorming days of preaching.

In any case, the pope is a symbol of Christiandom. I personally do not want to see him harmed. He and his office are deserving of global respect.

Besides, who would I have to call Joe the Pope? Better the pope you know than the pope (next pope) you don’t know. But then again I have already named him Pius XIII and Joe the Pope has yet to give him a red hat. (cause and effect).

If and when the rabble and crazies do storm the Vatican with torches and pitchforks, it won’t be with Joe Ratzinger, the current German pope in residence.

In the meantime, the Vatican better spend a few more lira on competent full time security staff.

Pax

Is Intelligent Design Bullshit ?

If you can define the parameters of any argument, you have the advantage to winning the argument.

I remember when the Jerry Falwell Public Relations oily communication thing was all cranked up under the emperor god Reagan. Cranking out the evil of “secular humanism”.

I at the time heard the phrase and was too busy living my life to try and understand this new modern phrase for satanism or the like. Few if any were challenging the new word factory being pumped out of Fundamentism Central or to admit my ignorance, I was not aware of anybody fighting this abuse of language in the name of the Jebus cash cow.

In retrospect, it is two words. It is secular, a neutral thing. And it is about humanism, a good thing. How can two fine words be put together and be so misused.

How about Intelligent Design as an example?

I recently heard the term Intelligent Design.

From Wiktionary – Intelligent Design :

A conjecture claiming that biological life on Earth, or more broadly, the universe as a whole, was created by an unspecified intelligent agent rather than being the result of undirected natural processes.

Intelligent Design grates on my ear. If Joe the Pope likes it, I know there must be something anti-free choice and pro-mind control about it.

Pope prepares to embrace theory of intelligent design

There have been growing signs the Pope is considering aligning his church more closely with the theory of "intelligent design" taught in some US states. Advocates of the theory argue that some features of the universe and nature are so complex that they must have been designed by a higher intelligence. Critics say it is a disguise for creationism…

The Pope also raised the issue in the inaugural sermon of his pontificate, saying: "We are not the accidental product, without meaning, of evolution."

Intelligent design seems like half-assed science to me. It is two parts “H” without the “O”. It is Hydrogen without Oxygen. It is not the answer. It is not water – the basis of all carbon life forms as we think we understand them. It is an assumption. If you assume, you are likely to makes an “ass” of “U” and “me”.

We may not be an accident in the Universe. But who is to say how much randomness was programmed into the original design? Who is to say that that “design” was not the result of whole eons of universes coming and going from big bang to ultimate implosion over and over again? Maybe randomness is the ultimate program – and not the desired dead end stop – of us – as we would like it or temporarily Re-design it to be?

Maybe this dead end result of how great we are as a species is stalled – an idol of we who cannot manage the natural resources of this planet bestowed on us by “Nature”.

We stand on this sick and or dying planet proclaiming ourselves to be the greatest designed species in the history of the universe.

We, as a limited species, are more than likely little more than a Ford model Edsel, 1958-1960. – Just waiting for another species to absorb or destroy us before we get the chance to destroy ourselves looking blindly into the mirror of life and only seeing “man” and or the man made design of the latest great version of a personal god. Me. Me. Me. Me. I!

It is a continuation of the concept of the personal gods designed in separate ages by Abraham, Moses and Mohammed. The energy that each comes up with to make an intellectual choice and say this is what it is all about may be fine and good. But what did Abraham, Moses and or Mohammed really believe?

If the bible and other writings are any indication of anything, over time the three gods of three prophets merge into one god. We somehow along with cultural conformity must conform to this ancient hodge podge of thought by once living intelligent beings each in their own historic setting. They and their resulting hodge podge of things are valid? And we are not?

I have to agree with the argument in Urban Dictionary that this shit should be taught in schools along with creationism and Darwinism. I look forward to apocryphal stories of Jebus accidently killing his pet dinosaur “Spike” and resuscitating it too etc.

In a way, all of us, individually and collectively and even the disorganized religion types needs a better and or new definition of God. All the old definitions of God, I think, are obsolete.

Though you might not think it, I am searching for that other new definition of God.

I would not think of imposing my definition on others, should I find it, for the sake of an alpha-male “I am RIGHT and you are wrong!” kind of thing.

I respect those people with the gumption to say “I don’t honestly know”.

This grasping for a cliché – sound bite - assumption called Intelligent Design sounds more like imitation science than true faith.

We must I think, agree with Voltaire’s character of Candide, and “cultivate our own gardens” because this is not “the best of all possible worlds”.

Good luck to us all, the human race, in Copenhagen.

Pius XII and Yad Vashem

There is a minor brouhaha with Joe the Pope’s upcoming visit to Israel. Joe is going to lay a wreath at the Holocaust Museum - Yad Vashem - Martyrs' Remembrance site. Joe is not going to visit the exhibition center – no time on the schedule. And while Joe did at some point wear the unifrom of the Wermarcht he wears a totally different uniform now.

There is a plaque among the exhibits that basically trashes Pope Pius XII for his not renouncing Hitler and you know the rest.

I have not been able to find words in print but have taken words off of photos of the exhibit which may at present be worded differently but this is what I have seen:

While the ovens were fed by day and by night
The most Holy Father who dwells in Rome
Did not leave his palace, with crucifix high,
To witness one day of Pogrom...

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…When Jews were deported from Rome to Auschwitz, the Pope did not intervene. The Pope retained his neutral position throughout the war…His silence and absence of guidelines obliged Churchmen throughout Europe to decide on their own how to react.

The above photo is not unlike the holy cards of my childhood whereby the Pope was of a distant and mythical character. The Pope never left the Vatican once elected and stayed there until he died. Vatican II saw John XXIII walking around and visiting the city of Rome and even talking to gardeners in the Papal gardens.

Pius XII is of the old world and the new world. The ugly world of the Third Reich was quite visible to this pontiff in many ways. In many ways he had been elected because he had been the Papal ambassador to Germany in the twenties and because he had experience with and contacts with the Nazi Regime.

Never forget that the Pope is both a spiritual leader and a politician with most times the equivalency of an accounting degree. What was in Pius XII‘s heart regarding the Holocaust? We will never know short of Judgment Day.

Who is to say that Pius XII and his passive actions towards the Nazis did not save more Jews than if he openly opposed them. So too perhaps neutrality was a truth in that Vatican Passports saved Jews before and during the war just as those same passports whisked Nazis to South America after the war.

What I find offensive is not the exhibit itself but where are the photos of all the Jewish leaders before and during the war that had told their peers and subordinates that this was just another Pogrom – that it would pass - stay in place and do not flee. In hindsight, how would all these Jewish leaders and Pius XII know that the storm of the century – a perfect storm - of hate - and the Holocaust were about to happen?

I support Benedict XVI and his action to diplomatically ignore this offensive exhibit at Yad Vashem. The Martyrs deserve better remembrance and wiser insight of that era.

Facebook vs. King Condom

It is a battle of the Titans on WWF? No. Just Factbook against the Pope!

Don’t get too excited and don’t reserve any pay per view channels. It is just the average guys and gals in the street not bowing to the worn out, obsolete PR of the western establishment slowing crumbling before our very eyes.

History and the demise of the RC church in out lifetime may match the timing or go quicker than Bear Sterns went belly up on Wall Street.

The nameless people, the peasants, do not want to be talked down to anymore by a bubble wrapped religious emperor who thinks that every word dripped from his lips should be applauded. Hey Joe, there is a real world outside the Vatican.

Condoms do stop some transmission of the AIDS virus. Read my lips Joe! - or Benedict or whatever name you wish to go by. Truth is not in a name or a title. That is so passé, royal and 12th century.

The people in the streets don’t buy the Cable TV, MSM talking heads, or papel bullshit about forty years of birth control misinformation coming out of the festering corrupt pile of the hierarchy of the RC church.

Real people with real sex lives know how to conduct themselves in bedrooms, between consenting adults, and know how to be informed about safe sex. Sex and the propaganda about condoms did not pour so wonderfully over the pope’s lips in the in-flight news conference where he used the word condom but had possibly never really seen or touched one. Faking it Joe? An 81 year old virgin?

Nameless people change history. Kudos for maybe not nameless people on Facebook who are making their contribution to the continuation and survival of our civilization and secular world!

There are names that escape history. There was a name they dug up for the Abolition movement in the mid 19 century US culture and later refound for the Civil Rights movement in the US 1960’s. The name of Crispus Attucks was one of the first five Yanks that got killed by British “friendly fire” at the so-called Boston Massacre. Being a free black man and 20% of the collateral damage made his example a useful tool to illustrate how blacks had been present all along in American history, though many times swept to a back page as a footnote.

So too Muntadar al-Zaidi’s name is not a famous name in the western world but his throwing his shoes at the Authoritarian President Bush makes him a household name among the world’s billion plus Muslims.

Facebook, an Internet hangout for whatever, has now taken up the challenge. Like nameless peasants with torches and pitchforks, they are ready to storm the Vatican Castle of Ignorance in reference to Scientific Misinformation about Condoms. They “are mad as hell and do not want to take it anymore” in regards to the Papal Misinformation about Condoms and AIDS.

They are proposing to send condoms to the Pope in the Vatican. Oh Joy!

Facebook users wage condom campaign against Pope

A good step – in the right direction? I hope nobody starts throwing those little packets/things at his Holiness. Despite his gross Ignorance, he is defined by his role, stupid as he is at times, and deserving to a measure of old fashioned respect – does the younger generation have any clue what I am talking about. You cannot or should not advocate the change of the world by anything other than non-violent means. Gandhi and MLK in the modern age have demonstrated that.

Remember that Crispus paid with his life for his contribution to the American Revolution and Muntadar got sentenced to three years in jail for his actions and after being tortured and having had his teeth kicked out in the jails of our freedom loving allies – the Iraqi government.

There is always a cause and an effect. That is a law, energy, of Physics.

The peasants with the torches and pitchforks precipitates an end to the monster in the old 1930 Horror flicks – they do not necessarily kill the monster.

The monster within, the beast, the cause of the ghosts of millions of medieval violence victims, harnessed and or orchestrated by the RC church should be a thing of the past. Otherwise, the pope would be on his knees, apologizing and praying for forgiveness for his corporation until the end of time.

That being said. Hip, Hip, Hooray to Facebook!

And also to Joe the Pope - to cause a massive surge worldwide in the sale and use of condoms for safe sex and as a preventative effort to ward off the AIDS virus.

The Force be blessed!