Abbey-Roads2

Urban legends promoted on Catholic websites.

Spirit Daily has a link to an article concerning imbedded microchips and smart cards - all the new technology used for commerce.  The name of the article is, “666 decoded: The number of the beast” - it is a fun read - it even makes sense on a certain level, I mean, it is conceivable - if you are a conspiracy theory advocate.  But it’s a long standing urban legend and already has it’s own place in the Library of Internet Folklore.  Now, while Mondex could have put up these de-bunking websites (oooooo!  scary!) - it is much more believable to me that the entire concept remains a part of the apocrypha created by the “Left Behind” series junkies.  Go here - if you are at all interested - for the refutation of ”666 decoded“. 

Conspiracy theories are fun - that’s why they make movies about them - they are entertaining.  And pop-religious writers make a living off of them…while they are hot.  (Recall all the wasted pulp on decoding the Da Vinci Code.  That’s an un-saleable classic these days.) 

What’s in your forehead? 

Holy Thursday 

Lent is just about over…so how did you do?

The only thing I was successful in giving up was my job.  I hope that counts.

Of course I gave up this and that, but I ended up consuming that and doing this.

Can I start over?

Excerpts from the Holy Father’s new book have been published, although the book has not yet been released.  It promises to be an impressive read, too bad it isn’t an encyclical in that it would carry more weight.

It deals with the parable of the Good Samaritan and of course, the application to contemporary man.  The Holy Father actually speaks to how the developed world has stripped the third world, and continues to do so.  The older I get, the more I understand how predaceous the affluent can be.

“One section of the book was printed in Wednesday’s Corriere Della Sera daily before publication later this month by Italian publisher Rizzoli, which owns the newspaper.

A Rizzoli spokeswoman confirmed the authenticity of the excerpts.

In the 400-page book, called Jesus of Nazareth, the Pope offers a modern application of Jesus’s parable of the Good Samaritan, who stopped to help a man who had been robbed by thieves when others, including a priest, had not.

“The current relevance of the parable is obvious,” the Pope writes.

“If we apply it to the dimensions of globalised society today, we see how the populations of Africa have been plundered and sacked and this concerns us intimately,” the Pope says.

He drew a link between the lifestyle of people in the developed world and the dire conditions of people in Africa.

“We see how our lifestyle, the history that involved us, has stripped them naked and continues to strip them naked,” he writes.

Pope Benedict, who has condemned the effects of colonialism before, said rich countries had also hurt poor countries spiritually by belittling or trying to wipe out their own cultural and spiritual traditions.

The Pope says his comments were valid for other regions apart from Africa.

Citing other passages from the book, the EarthTimes says that the pope also draws from Karl Marx’s theory of alienation.

“Karl Marx describes man’s alienation in a drastic way; although by limiting his reasoning to the material sphere he fails to reach the true depths of alienation, he nevertheless provides a clear image of the man who falls victim to the robbers.”

“Is it not true that man … during the full course of his history, finds himself alienated, mangled, abused?” the pope writes.”  - Catholic News