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Pope blames devil for Church divisions, scandals, seeks angel's help


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Pope blames devil for Church divisions, scandals, seeks angel's help

By Philip Pullella

 

2018-10-08T112613Z_1_LYNXNPEE970N8_RTROPTP_4_CHILE-ABUSE-KARADIMA.JPG

FILE PHOTO: Pope Francis arrives to lead the Wednesday general audience in Saint Peter's square at the Vatican, September 26, 2018. REUTERS/Tony Gentile/File Photo

 

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - The devil is alive and well and working overtime to undermine the Roman Catholic Church, Pope Francis says.

 

In fact, the pope is so convinced that Satan is to blame for the sexual abuse crisis and deep divisions racking the Church that he has asked Catholics around the world to recite a special prayer every day in October to try to beat him back.

 

"(The Church must be) saved from the attacks of the malign one, the great accuser and at the same time be made ever more aware of its guilt, its mistakes, and abuses committed in the present and the past," Francis said in a message on Sept. 29.

 

Since he was elected in 2013, Francis has made clear that he believes the devil to be real. In a document in April on holiness in the modern world, Francis mentioned the devil more than a dozen times.

 

"We should not think of the devil as a myth, a representation, a symbol, a figure of speech or an idea. This mistake would lead us to let down our guard, to grow careless and end up more vulnerable," he wrote in the document.

 

The Church has recently been hit by one sexual abuse scandal after another, from Germany, to the United States, to Chile. At the same time, a deepening polarisation between conservatives and liberals in the Church has played out on social media.

 

Francis' use of the term "the great accuser" to describe Satan hit a raw nerve with one of the pope's harshest conservative critics, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, the Vatican's former ambassador to Washington.

   

CHURCH DIVISIONS

In an 11-page statement published on Aug. 26, Viganò launched an unprecedented broadside by a Church insider against the pope and a long list of Vatican and U.S. Church officials.

 

He accused Francis of knowing about sexual misconduct by a former U.S. cardinal with male adult seminarians but not doing anything about it.

 

Viganò, concluding that his former boss had singled him out as the devil in disguise, complained in his next statement that Francis "compared me to the great accuser, Satan, who sows scandal and division in the Church, though without ever uttering my name".

 

On Sunday, a top Vatican official issued a scathing open letter accusing Viganò of mounting a "political frame job devoid of real foundation" and contesting his accusations against the pope point by point.

 

Francis is so convinced that Satan is ultimately to blame for both the sexual abuse scandals and the divisions within the Church that he has enlisted the aid of spiritual big gun - St. Michael the Archangel. Michael is mentioned several times in the Bible as the leader of the angels who ousted Lucifer, the fallen angel, from paradise.

 

Catholics are being asked to recite the rosary daily in October and conclude it with a prayer to St. Michael that was said after Mass until 1964 but then fell into disuse.

 

The prayer reads:

"St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle. Be our defence against the wickedness and snares of the devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray, and do thou, O Prince of heavenly hosts, by the power of God, thrust into hell Satan, and all evil spirits, who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls."

 

(Reporting By Philip Pullella; Editing by Gareth Jones)

 
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-- © Copyright Reuters 2018-10-09
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But i thought that the devil went down to Georgia:


He was looking for a soul to steal
He was in a bind, 'cause he was way behind,
He was willing to make a deal
When he came across this young man
Sawing on a fiddle and playing it hot
And the Devil jumped up on a hickory stump and said,
"Boy let me tell you what:
I guess you didn´t know it, but I'm a fiddle player too,
And if you'd care to take a dare,
I'll make a bet with you
Now you play a pretty good fiddle,
Boy, but give the Devil his due
I bet a fiddle of gold against your soul
'Cause I think I'm better than you"
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God is so unfair!!

The devil makes as do it and yet he send as  to Hell.

What's up with that?

I say we bring a class action suit against God, for unlawful imprisonment. He can afford a hefty settlement, only Jeff Bezos have more money than God. 

PS: include St Peter  in the suit as co-conspirator.

 

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Lost the plot. He and the religious organisations have never had the plot.!! ALL religions are about 3 things and 3 things only MONEY, POWER AND CONTROL OF THE POPULATION and all of their so called holy books are nothing more than fairy tales and how anyone could believe that drivel shows a lot about their mentality.!!!

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7 minutes ago, AhFarangJa said:

Ah, the old "The Devil made me do it" excuse number 2 in the book of excuses......the first excuse is "The Devil told me to do it".....

#3. Moral brake failure.

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55 minutes ago, Credo said:

Unfortunately, the Bible doesn't mention the Devil.   

Ummmm..... but it mentions Satan some 700 times....... perhaps most famously in the form of a serpent beguiling Eve to eat of the fruit of the Tree of Good and Evil.....

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1 hour ago, Credo said:

Apparently "The Devil made me do it" is a defense in the Church.

 

Unfortunately, the Bible doesn't mention the Devil.   

That is quite wrong, but I have noticed that people that haven't read the Bible have some very strange ideas about it.

23 instances of the devil in the Bible.

 

I find the Pope's defense of the church bizarre however. He is basically admitting his priests are controlled by the devil.

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10 minutes ago, animalmagic said:

When children die from horrible cancers or born with horrific defects we are told that it is god's will; surely the revelations of the church's sexual predators is also god's will?

I'm sure you're confusing it with pigswill.

 

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12 minutes ago, YetAnother said:

organized religion = headache

Organised religion; the devil in disguise

 

18 minutes ago, canuckamuck said:

That is quite wrong, but I have noticed that people that haven't read the Bible have some very strange ideas about it.

23 instances of the devil in the Bible.

23; those devilish prime numbers at it again!

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The temptation of Christ is detailed in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke. According to these texts, after being baptized by John the Baptist, Jesus fasted for 40 days and nights in the Judaean Desert. During this time, Satan appeared to Jesus and tried to tempt him.

I'm afraid that a cursory examination of the world today, and the activities of the catholic church, would suggest he might not have resisted.

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23 minutes ago, canuckamuck said:

That is quite wrong, but I have noticed that people that haven't read the Bible have some very strange ideas about it.

23 instances of the devil in the Bible.

 

I find the Pope's defense of the church bizarre however. He is basically admitting his priests are controlled by the devil.

You might want to read up about it.   There was no Devil and no Satan.   The word meant adversary and it was not a proper noun.   

 

The whole concept of the Devil was added and reinterpreted.   

 

There are many, many links.   Here's one:   https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/biblical-topics/bible-interpretation/how-the-serpent-became-satan/

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35 minutes ago, rodney earl said:

Lost the plot. He and the religious organisations have never had the plot.!! ALL religions are about 3 things and 3 things only MONEY, POWER AND CONTROL OF THE POPULATION and all of their so called holy books are nothing more than fairy tales and how anyone could believe that drivel shows a lot about their mentality.!!!

  Amen.

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11 minutes ago, animalmagic said:

The temptation of Christ is detailed in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke. According to these texts, after being baptized by John the Baptist, Jesus fasted for 40 days and nights in the Judaean Desert. During this time, Satan appeared to Jesus and tried to tempt him.

I'm afraid that a cursory examination of the world today, and the activities of the catholic church, would suggest he might not have resisted.

There is an episode in the Gospels, which is rarely mentioned, about Jesus going to the temple and raging against the priests.

No wonder he was persecuted and later crucified.

Should Jesus come back, surely he would have something to say about the vatican and the priests.

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5 minutes ago, mauGR1 said:

Should Jesus come back, surely he would have something to say about the vatican and the priests.

 

If JC came back he would go to a synagogue, not to a church.

He would paraphrase Groucho Marx and say "I would never belong to a religion that worships ME!"

 

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