Catholic Litmus Test

If you are Catholic, then I hope for the sake of your soul you said he is welcoming Christ bodily into the world. If you didn’t you aren’t looking too good for eternal salvation.

But relax, the Church isn’t too caught up on apostasy and is no longer too strict on matters of dogma. Sure, there was a time when it would slit the throats of those who said the wafer wasn’t wasn’t actually Jesus. Now though, they, and their spittle-mouthed and frantic god-loving supporters, are blind to hypocrisy and theological difference and accept anyone into the fold. Isn’t that great? A religion that will accept even those who lack devotion and faith? No, it’s not, it’s duplicitous but they just want the strength of numbers and don’t really care.

Great Miseries of War – The Hanging by Jacques Callot

Nowadays most people who consider themselves Catholics anyhow disregard transsubstantiation as a quaint notion form a remote past. But it is only 400 years ago that Europeans were willing to tear each other apart in a war over such trivial matters (albeit a war that muddied the waters with other subjects such as royal succession and land-grabbing). In parts, two thirds of the population died. Mittel Europe was decimated.

The Counter Reformation was bloody, morally corrupt and as mephistophelean as Nazi Germany. It gave rise to the spying & prying institution of torture this blog is named after. Armies marched to proclaim the actuality of Jesus appearing in corporeal form, summoned in Latin by priests in every mass. This was never a small matter. It’s just convenient to fallaciously portray it as a minor historical point of interest now so that schools can say they have so many pupils who are good Catholics, and the Church can gleefully count its adherents as it lulls itself to sleep in its gilded bed.

It has always been a question of accumulating followers, like some spammy social media account. Andrzej Zebrzydowski, Bishop of Krakow, told his flock, “I don’t care if you worship a goat, as long as you keep paying your tithes”.

Here in Ireland we bring our children up as proud false Catholics to ensure the “best” education, and partially to bow to our superstitions to give them a good shot at a decent afterlife. It’s clearly all only notional, but we play along.

Overdose

True Catholics beware. You can have too much of a good thing. Consuming the trans-substantiated eucharist more then once a day is considered to be an abuse. But like all matters of abuse the church doesn’t really mind.

The Numbers Game

Lies, damned lies, etc but for the record only 26% of Ireland’s Catholics believe in trans-substantiation. It’s not a fluffy notion, it’s a major theological difference between Catholics and most strains of protestantism. Irish Catholics wouldn’t want to admit their beliefs are protestant would they?

But maybe a better way to write the headline from 3 years ago would have been, “74% of Irish People Think the Catholic Church Misrepresents Fundamentals”

Bibliography
God’s Lunatics, Michael Largo, Harper, 2010
Germania, Simon Winder, Picador, 2010
Danubia, Simon Winder, Picador, 2013
The Polish Way, Adam Zamoyski, Hippocrene Books, 1986
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2012/06/10/if-you-dont-think-the-wafer-turns-into-jesus-youre-not-really-a-catholic/

Original content created by: The Inquisition

Bibliography
The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell, Little Brown, 2000
The Ancient Paths, Graham Robb, Picador, 2013

Original content created by: The Inquisition