Vision of Pope John Paul II appears in Polish bonfire

Images of Jesus are regularly seen on parking garage walls and spaghetti billboards. Visions of Mary used bring thousands of believers to suburban meadows near Atlanta. One devout Catholic woman struck a goldmine charging five dollars per person to view an image of Mary in some frozen food she found in her freezer. And Popes Pius XII, John XXIII, Paul VI and John Paul II have all voiced their acceptance of the Marian visitations to three children in Fatima, Portugal, 90 years ago.

And now, the Vatican News Service, a Rome television station specializing in news about the Vatican, is showing non-stop a photo of a flame supposedly in the shape of Pope John Paul II.

In a flame? What's a beloved, dead pope's spirit doing in a flame, a Christian symbol of Hell?

The Polish man who took the photograph, Gregorz Lukasik, told the press, "It was only afterwards when I got home and looked at the pictures that I realized I had something."

Director of the news service and close friend of the deceased pope, Polish priest Jarek Cielecki, went to Poland from Italy (on a Vatican expense account, I bet) to see the photograph for himself. "You can see the image of a person in the flames and I think it is the servant of God, Pope John Paul II," he said.

Religious websites across the world have crashed because of the increased traffic by devout and/or gullible believers wanting to see this photo.

Why, in our 21st-century scientific and technological world, are so many people so eager to believe something so ridiculous? What does that say about humanity? Do we constantly need supernatural reassurance that there is life beyond this one? Do Jesus, Mary, and the Pope need to make regular interdimensional stops to keep us on the Path, or to keep the Sheep in the Fold?

The schedule is unpredictable, but it's still a form of brand marketing. Every once in a while, it seems, the Catholics need a good "manifestation" to keep people believing.

How long has it been going on? How long have people who want to believe in Things Beyond been seeing their favorite Biblical or religious character in random oil blobs, frozen drippings, and flames? And why?

To me, this Christian phenomena calls into question all visions and supernatural sightings, including the one that started the whole thing. Did people really see a risen, living Jesus Christ two days after he was crucified? Or did someone imagine they saw him, and then the madness swept the countryside, and then the world for the past 2,000 years, all based on one person's "belief" that they saw something in a flame, a Pizza Hut billboard, or, in the early morning fog at that tomb outside Jerusalem? What better way to capitalize on people's need for something cosmic in their lives, than to repeatedly create manifestations where there are none, and then, if you'll pardon the pun, fan the flames?

Religious Visions | Catholic Church | Pope John Paul II | Sightings | Flames | Burning Taper | BurningTaper.com

Freemasonry is 'perilous to the Catholic faith'

The Holy Roman Catholic Church has once again climbed up on its ecclesiastical high horse to ride roughshod over Freemasonry.

In today's issue of The Pilot: The official newspaper of the Archdiocese of Boston, several prominent Catholic theologians were quoted regarding Freemasonry.

Father Edward McNamara, a professor at Regina Apostolorum University, has said, "Masonry requires that its members adhere to a minimal belief in a supreme architect of the universe and leave aside all other pretensions of truth, even revealed truth. This basically means that Masonry requires members to renounce truths such as Christ’s divinity and the Trinitarian nature of God. A Catholic cannot ignore the fundamental principles behind an organization, no matter how innocuous its activities appear to be."

Franciscan Father Zbigniew Suchecki chimed in with: "Whoever is inscribed in an association that plots against the Church must be punished with a just penalty; whoever promotes or directs that association, must be banned."

And of course they reprinted an excerpt from the declaration of Cardinal Ratzinger, once head of the Holy Roman Inquisition and now known as Pope Benedict XVI, "The faithful who enroll in Masonic associations are in a state of grave sin and may not receive holy Communion."

In 1996, Lincoln, Nebraska Bishop Fabian Bruskewitz forbade Catholics to belong to Freemasonry and 11 other groups whose goals were "perilous to the Catholic faith." He gave members a month to renounce their memberships and seek "reconciliation." Those who refused were excommunicated.

Do Catholics take this stuff seriously? Do Catholics who are also Masons care what the official church dogma is about Freemasonry?

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Catholic Church claims Freemasonry responsible for rupture in diplomatic relations between Mexican gov't and Vatican

We tend to think of the Catholic vs. Freemason controversy as something from centuries past, and in America, worrying that Freemasons control the world, or at least influence national politics, while fodder for the anti-Masonic conspiracy nuts, is usually downplayed or ignored in polite conversation and in U.S. news reports.

From England we often see articles about the fear townspeople have of the "network" of Masons in political, judicial and law enforcement positions. Demands for Masonic membership lists are common.

In Mexico, too, it seems, Freemasons play a prominent role in politics.

Today I found an interesting item from the Catholic News Agency. The Vatican maintains that for most of the 20th century, Freemasons controlled the politics and government of Mexico.

The report stated:

Mexican Masonry played a decisive role in the configuration of the Mexican State and in political measures such as the stripping of the Church's right to own schools and communications media, the right to vote of priests and religious, and the rupture of diplomatic relations with the Vatican.

The anti-clerical policies were kept in place throughout the entire period of rule by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), dominated by the Masons, from 1929 to 2000.

Recently, Mexican bishops announced they would begin a campaign to regain the rights stripped from them by the previous Mexican constitution, put into place at the behest of Freemasons.

"The Great Teacher" Pedro Marquez, head of the Grand Lodge of the Valley of Mexico, reacted by accusing the Church of wanting to "return to the past."

"The Catholic hierarchy wants to dictate a political policy and that is a very grave error, as our society is no longer in the era of Christianity and priests are no longer viceroys of New Spain," Marquez said during a press conference.

"There is a tendency in the Church to meddle in the social and political affairs of Mexico, but the priests should return to their Churches," he added.

Bro. Oscar J. Salinas sheds further light on the political and religious intrigue surrounding Freemasonry in Mexico in his 1999 talk titled "Mexican Freemasonries: Encounters with Religion and Politics."

Update, Saturday, August 11: A priest known only as "Father V." picked up on this Mexican Masons story from the CNA, and posted the following as part of his "priestly commentary":

I would invite any Catholics who are Masons to renounce their memberships (and not to receive Holy Communion until having done so), get to confession, and join the Knights of Columbus! Your time will be better serving the Lord and His Church, and your dues won't be going to activities that you wouldn't want to support.

Masons | Masonic Politics | Mexican Freemasonry | Freemasonry | Grand Lodge of the Valley of Mexico | Burning Taper | BurningTaper.com

Priest ires Catholics by receiving German Masonic honor

Many Roman Catholics have gotten their rosary beads all a-tangle over Masonic news from Germany.

German Freemasons recently awarded "controversial theologian" Hans Kueng (also spelled Küng) the Kulturpreis Deutscher Freimaurer (Culture Award of German Freemasons), the Catholic Citizens website reports.

In presenting the award to Bro. Kueng, Bro. Jens Oberheide, an atomic physicist at the University of Wuppertal in Germany, reportedly called him a "free and brave thinker" and said Bro. Kueng spoke "straight from our Masonic hearts."

The Catholic website says "the history of Freemasonry at its highest levels is unquestionably hostile to Catholicism. It has long been rumored that in its quest to undermine Catholicism, Freemasons have been sent into the ranks of the Catholic Church's hierarchy since the 1930's."

Bro. Kueng was stripped of his approval to teach Catholic theology in 1979. He has remained a Catholic priest, and to many Catholics' consternation, he is a Freemason.

He became a priest in 1954, and was appointed professor of theology at Eberhard Karls University, Tübingen, Germany in 1960. From 1962 to 1965, he served with now-Pope Ratzinger as an expert theological advisor to members of the Second Vatican Council until its conclusion in 1965, having been appointed by Pope John XXIII.

He was the first prominent Catholic theologian to publicly question papal infallibility since the 1800s, writing a book about it called Infallible? An Inquiry in 1971. In 1979, for this transgression, he lost his license to teach Roman Catholic theology, though he remained at the University until his retirement in 1996, teaching ecumenical theology.

Bro. Kueng regularly lectures on topics from quantum physics to neuroscience, and has recently called Americans who oppose teaching evolution on religious grounds as "naive [and] un-enlightened."

In 2005, he surprised critics by being invited to have dinner and discuss theology with Pope Benedict XVI, his old friend from the 1960s. The pope has written and recently reiterated his displeasure with Freemasonry.

Masons | Masonic Priest | Hans Kueng | Freemasonry | Pope Benedict XVI | Burning Taper | BurningTaper.com

Catholic bishop reiterates Pope's words: Masonry is a grave sin

The Catholic World News is reporting that once again the Vatican wants the world to know that Catholics are not supposed to be Freemasons. They've been hammering this theme for a while now. [Previous Burning Taper article]

I wonder if after the sting they felt while The Da Vinci Code was in the news last year, the Church is trying to position itself ahead of time as against Masonry, before Dan Brown's new book The Solomon Key is published. The novel, expected this year, reportedly prominently features the Masonic fraternity.

Bishop Gianfranco Girotti, the regent of the Apostolic Penitentiary, told a Vatican Radio interviewer that membership in a Masonic lodge is not necessarily grounds for excommunication, but it is a grave matter.

The bishop was responding to a question about Father Rosario Esposito, an Italian Paulist who recently announced his membership in a Masonic lodge. Bishop Girotti reminded listeners that a 1983 statement from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (formerly "The Holy Inquisition") remains in force today. That statement, signed by then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the current pope, said: "The faithful who enroll in Masonic associations are in a state of grave sin and may not receive Holy Communion."

Image: Pope Benedict XVI

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Catholic priest becomes Freemason in Rome; calls Pope's ban 'a thing of the past'

Calling the Pope's edict against Catholics becoming Freemasons "a thing of the past," Father Rosario Francesco Esposito, age 85, took his Masonic obligations recently at the Masonic headquarters at Piazza del Gesu in Rome.

The Italian Paulist priest, along with Father Giovanni Caprile, SJ, was once commissioned by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (known by the name the Holy Inquisition until the early 20th century) to study the Church's teaching on Freemasonry. In 1983 the prefect of the Congregation, then-Cardinal now-Pope Joseph Ratzinger, made a public announcement that the teaching of the Church had not changed. Earlier this month, the Burning Taper reported that Father Edward McNamara, professor of liturgy at the Regina Apostolorum University, reiterated via a Q & A in the Zenit News Agency that a Catholic who joins a Masonic lodge should be given a[n unnamed] "just penalty," and one promoting Freemasonry or in a leadership role should be punished by interdict, an ecclesiastical penalty that deprives the person of the right to celebrate or receive the sacraments but is less harsh than excommunication.

Father, er, I mean Brother Esposito having joined a Masonic lodge must have rankled some Powers That Be in Rome, because the article about him becoming a Master Mason appeared today in Catholic World News. Apparently, it's not yet really a "thing of the past," at least not to his bosses or the Catholic press.

As I write this, there is only one comment on this story on the Catholic World News site, but it's a doozy: "This is one that needs to be slapped down, hard and fast. Freemasons continue to swear blood oaths, and profess belief in a Deist God. That merits roundly the excommunication latae sententiae acknowledged by Bishop Bruskewietz. This priest needs to be suspended fast."

Let's hope the Catholics don't burn him at the stake, and that the Masons don't hang him from a bridge.

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