There isn't that much daylight between the superstitions of Orthodox Christianity and American charismatic Christianity except the former has way cooler outfits

 

Beni Johnson soaking up something from the grave of C. S. Lewis in 2014

If God's love is so miraculous why is he still dead?

Very superstitious: Rod Dreher's demons posing as UFOs obey the FAA lol

 

Rod lives in another land.

 Northeast drone sightings surge again after FAA lifts restrictions

A brief lull in activity that coincided with flight restrictions imposed by the feds has ended, now that the Federal Aviation Administration lifted the ban. ...

The uptick came after sightings plummeted by 43% following the FAA flight restrictions imposed on Dec. 18, Kim said.

On that same day, Enigma received nearly 50 sightings. A week later, only four sightings were reported.

The restrictions were lifted Jan. 17, and since then, Enigma’s received 22 reports of sightings.

People are credulous

 

 Wise judges have prescribed, that men may not rashly believe the confessions of witches, nor the evidence against them. For the witches themselves are imaginative; and people are credulous, and ready to impute accidents to witchcraft.

-- Francis Bacon

Deeply spiritual Joe Biden and Kamala Harris really like the OT books written by priests of the NT church and the practitioners of palmistry lol

"That's not in Ecclesiastics" in minute 37:00

 

The Shroud of Turin dates to the time of Jesus . . . IF it was kept around 20-22.5 degrees C and relative humidity of 55-75% FOR THIRTEEN CENTURIES OF UNKNOWN HISTORY

https://nypost.com/2024/08/22/world-news/ai-recreates-possible-face-of-jesus-from-turin-shroud/

 

LOL, C'mon man.

Turin Shroud Study Claims Controversial Cloth Does Date to Time of Jesus

The authors said the results of their analysis were "fully compatible" with analogous measurements obtained from a linen sample whose dating, according to historical records, is A.D. 55-74, and consistent with the hypothesis that the Shroud is a 2,000-year-old relic.

The authors note that the results are only compatible with this hypothesis under the condition that the artifact was kept at suitable levels of average temperature (around 20-22.5 degree Celsius, or 68-72.5 degrees Fahrenheit) and a relative humidity of 55-75 percent for 13 centuries of unknown history, in addition to seven centuries of known history in Europe.

Head of Christ, Warner Sallman 1940

 

She's still dead, Jim

 

 Many of the monastery’s visitors said they believed Sr. Wilhelmina’s body to be miraculously incorrupt. ...

“Sister Wilhelmina's body was not embalmed, nor was there anything to preserve her in the state in which we buried her,” [the abbey’s superior, Mother Abbess Cecilia Snell] explained. “There were bugs eating at the foam under her, but none had touched her body or her habit - the latter’s failure to deteriorate being a phenomenon just as miraculous as her intact body!” ...

Many visitors to the abbey since the discovery of her intact remains have voiced belief that their preservation is “miraculous,” and noted incorruption after death is a sign often associated with saints. ...

In De Cadaverum Incorruptione, written in the mid-1800s, Pope Benedict XIV stated that an incorruptible body should only be considered miraculous when its lifelike condition is maintained for a great period of time.

More.

Vatican issues new norms to try to keep phenomena like Medjugorje in Bosnia-Herzegovina from getting out of hand again

Christopher R. Altieri for The Catholic World Report tends to think "Our Lady" made no appearance in Medjugorje in 1981, but will believe it if the church ever says he must.

 

He notes that the (phony) miracle is a hard case, which has, however, helped millions become better Catholics. (No word is offered on how many millions the superstition has driven away from the faith).

Altieri doesn't tell you that by 1983 the local bishop had decided that the apparitions were Franciscan fabrications, but by then it was too late because the hysteria for the site had already become a worldwide phenomenon.

On the new Vatican norms for the discernment of supernatural phenomena :

Much of the talk last week was about the new Vatican norms for the discernment of supernatural phenomena—apparitions especially, but not exclusively—presented at a press conference in Rome on Friday. ...

Under the old norms, local bishops had to talk with Rome but were free to make their own determinations. Also, and more importantly, the locals had to keep mum about their consultations. Local bishops, in other words, couldn’t say what Rome said to them about the thing(s) the locals were examining.

Local bishops, in other words, bore all of the public responsibility for judgments that were theirs only in part (if they were really the locals’ judgments at all). ...

Under the old disposition, a local bishop could issue a judgment: Constat de supernaturalitate. A judgment of constat de supernaturalitate does not quite say that a phenomenon is certainly of supernatural origin, but only that “it [clearly] evinces [signs of the] supernatural.”

The opposite of constat under the old scheme was—you guessed it—non constat (de supernaturalitate), which simply meant that there were lacking sufficient grounds for agreement on the origin of the phenomenon.

A judgment of constat de supernaturalitate did not compel an assent of faith, in other words, but only proposed its object as worthy of belief. The point is that it did propose something.

The new norms, on the other hand, borrow from bureaucratic argot to create a new category: Nihil obstat, which does not propose anything as worthy of belief but only says that there is nothing standing in the way of believing in the supernatural origin of a given phenomenon. That’s nice to know, but it really only tells us something about what isn’t there. ...

On the one hand, it is now unmistakably clear that the Vatican not only gets the final word but is involved in the investigation and adjudication of purportedly supernatural phenomena from the start. On the other hand, the Vatican will henceforth refrain from proposing even thoroughly vetted phenomena as worthy of belief and will limit itself to saying that nothing stands in the way of believing a given phenomenon to be of supernatural origin.

The Athenian general Nicias in the history of Thucydides was not the superstitious man scared by a lunar eclipse in the biography of Plutarch

Thucydidean Nicias is presented as a rational general and tactician ... he has no relation to Plutarch’s fearful and superstitious character. ... Nicias’ decision to side with the seers may have been a rationally based choice with the aim of avoiding mutiny in his army – a mutiny which would have proven fatal to their survival. ... the historian shows profound admiration of Nicias in a funerary epigram in which he praises the latter as a man of exceptional arete. ... Nicias’ partiality to the manteis was considered a weakness by the historian, but it was a tiny part of his overall positive presentation: we might call it a mere parenthesis, rather than a judgment long held back, as the authoritative commentator [Hornblower] puts it.

-- Nanno Marinatos, A NOTE ON THE THEIASMOS OF NICIAS IN THUCYDIDES, C&M 70 (2022) 1-16.

 

America's amusing smorgasbord of religious, social, and political beliefs according to Real Clear, ranked, annotated

Percent who believe in, believe that, say that, are, et cetera, per Real Clear Opinion Research, here:

 

Religious freedom is a fundamental human right 93.8 (this idea was foreign to ancient Israel, Greece, Rome, Christian Europe, and the era of the Muslim conquests, to name just a few)

 

God 85.4 (name not indicated)

Heaven 84.7 (John Lennon most hurt)

Healthcare is a fundamental human right 83.7 (the propaganda of the ObamaCare era worked)

Miracles 83.0 (Justin Amash fooled the people 5 times, Peter Meijer only once)

"In God We Trust" 83.0 ("In Fiat Money We Trust" was too long)

Jesus is God or Son of God 80.3 (thanks to not being aborted by the Holy Virgin Mary)

 

Hell 72.4 (San Francisco, New York City, Portland, et cetera)

The Devil 70.3 (yeah baby, drugs, sex, and rock and roll)

 

A woman and her doctor should get to decide whether to have an abortion 63.4 (vaccination highly recommended)

Ghosts 61.4 (unstated whether they are tiny baby ghosts or not)

 

Aliens 56.9 (oddly explains the southern border)

God is male 50.0 (Jesus is shocked, shocked, I tell you)

 

Reincarnation 47.7 (belief in Hinduism is dead last 0.5% ha ha ha ha ha, see below)

Witches 45.8 (strongly believed in Michigan methinks)

Prejudice against Jews is a very serious problem in the US 42.6 (because the Jews run everything)

 

2020 Joe Biden 38.6 (voting by mail multiple times or in person not specified)

Protestant 36.3 (prejudice problem 17.3)

2020 Donald Trump 34.6 (not everything deserves a comment)

Democrat Party 33.6

Republican Party 32.8

 

Never attend religious service 29.2 (makes sense given these results)

Prejudice against Muslims is a very serious problem in the US 29.1 (because of what they did on Oct 7)

God is neither male nor female 27.5 (0.9% of respondents also neither male nor female)

2020 didn't vote 24.8 (thank God) 

Catholic 22.0 (prejudice problem 14.9)

Independent party 21.4

 

Attend religious service once a week 19.5 (as good as it gets for category)

No religion 19.4

Prejudice against Evangelical Christians is a very serious problem in the US 17.3

Prejudice against Hindus is a very serious problem in the US 16.2 (but, but reincarnation)

Prejudice against atheists is a very serious problem in the US 15.7

Prejudice against Catholics is a very serious problem in the US 14.9

God is female 14.1

Not registered to vote 12.1

Atheist 3.8 (prejudice problem 15.7)

Agnostic 3.7

Other religion 3.3

Islamic 3.2 (prejudice problem 29.1)

Mormon 2.9

2020 voted for other 2.0

Judaism 1.9 (prejudice problem 42.6)

Buddhist 1.6

Orthodox 1.3 (Rod Dreher)

Hindu 0.5 (prejudice problem 16.2)

 

People clearly believe that some groups, to paraphrase Barack Obama in 2012 about the Danes, the Dutch, the Norwegians, the Irish, and the Filipinos, seem to get punched far out of proportion with their weight in the culture. 

 

Results discussed here, where this is surely wrong, leaving out the little word "not" in a crucial spot at the end:

Most Americans also remain deeply respectful of the country’s religious roots. A strong majority of respondents – 83% – believe the phrase “In God we trust” should remain on U.S. currency and coins, compared to 17% who back the phrase’s removal.

“Republicans felt more strongly that the phrase should remain compared to Democrats, with 91% believing the phrase should [not] be removed, compared to 78% of Democrats,” Kimball said.     

In 2011 former Republican Justin Amash (MI-3) joined eight Democrats to vote against "In God We Trust", which in his first term was a sign of things to come in his last.

 

 

The credulity of Rod Dreher is one thing, the insufficiency of Christ's sacrifice to save is quite another

 *'Get Me Out Of Here!'

How Danny called out to his family from beyond the grave -- and they responded

 

And we did what we could to help his soul to reach heaven.

OMG hardly ever springs to my lips anymore, and then I stumbled over this

 

IVP used to be a respectable evangelical publisher, now also gone the way of Eerdmans.

... helpless man, in ignorance sedate, rolls darkling down the torrent of his fate.

Run for your lives.

Young people are falling for the disproven science of astrology in record numbers, think birthdates and celestial objects determinative of their lives

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 The astrology business has boomed by 482% since 2018, now valued at $12.8 billion and rising:

. . . more Americans know their zodiac sign than their blood type, and likewise, as many as 70 million Americans check their horoscopes daily.

More.

The numbers rival American Catholicism.

The reason?

Today's young are the most unchurched yet. Having given up on one superstition, they have simply fallen for another:

 In terms of identity, Generation Z is the least religious generation yet. More than one-third (34 percent) of Generation Z are religiously unaffiliated, a significantly larger proportion than among millennials (29 percent) and Generation X (25 percent). Fewer than one in five (18 percent) baby boomers and only 9 percent of the silent generation are religiously unaffiliated. ... Less than half of millennials (45 percent) and Gen Zers (40 percent) say they attended church weekly [during childhood].

In the Catholic Church, God does miracles from time to time which just coincidentally validate its central Eucharistic rite

 

“One of our eucharistic ministers was running out of hosts and suddenly there were more hosts in the ciborium. God just duplicated himself in the ciborium,” an emotional Crowley told the faithful. ...

“They were running out of hosts and all of a sudden more hosts were there. So today not only did we have the miracle of the Eucharist, we also had a bigger miracle. It’s pretty cool,” the priest said.

There's even a traveling Eucharistic Miracle Road Show which promotes the Eucharist, not unlike the traveling Protestant revivals and camp meetings common in America where powerful moves of God produce dramatic conversions at altar calls, miracles of speaking in tongues, divine healings, and the like.

A Vatican-endorsed exhibit “Eucharistic Miracles of the World,” featuring documentary evidence of 152 such miracles, has visited over 3,000 churches on its international tour.  

If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.

More.

Russell Moore lol

 

Portents are a dime a dozen

 Every unwonted meteor is portentous, and some divine prognostick.

-- Joseph Glanvill

Rod Dreher, so-called most important Christian thinker of our age, differs little from the superstitious fear-peddlers of any previous age

 On this day twenty years ago, a shocking sign appeared in New York. ... I remember standing there at the edge of Ground Zero, looking at my watch, waiting for the minute when, one year earlier, the first plane struck the north tower. That was also to be the signal for the start of the memorial service at Ground Zero. At that moment -- at that precise moment -- a ferocious wind blew in from the same direction that the plane had taken. It was uncanny. There was a hurricane far offshore, and this was its outermost fringe. Still, the timing was eerie. ... When I emerged out onto the street a few minutes later, the wind had stopped. I don't know what time it ceased to blow, but I would bet it was when the last name was read. ...

 

 The phone rang. It was my journalist friend, slightly freaking out. "Come over," she said. I took off. At her apartment, she led me into her home office, and pointed to something hanging on a wall. It was a small American flag, almost paper-thin, and very old. Judging from the number of stars on its field, I would say from the Revolutionary War era. It was mounted and framed under glass.  ... On this day, however, when she returned from Ground Zero, she noticed that it had been torn right down the middle. ... Both of us were, and are, Christian. The significance of this sign was not lost on us. ... I immediately interpreted the torn flag as a sign that God had withdrawn his protection from America, in judgment.

 

The whole thing is here.

There shall no sign be given unto this generation. 

 

-- Mark 8:12

 

Somebody has to pay for those French oysters, and his son's college education.

 

Might as well be you.

The belief of fools and wise men

 Superstitious prophecies are not only the belief of fools, but the talk sometimes of wise men.

-- Francis Bacon

The superstition around baptism remains strong in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Phoenix

Our Lady of Guadalupe, patron saint of the Diocese

Thousands of baptisms over 20 years were declared "invalid" and "nullified" in St. Gregory parish because the priest in question routinely said "We baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit," instead of "I baptize you . . .", an "incorrect formula" which failed to indicate that it is Christ who baptizes in the sacrament since it is the ordained priest who is uniquely invested with the spiritual power and presence of Christ:

"The issue with using 'We' is that it is not the community that baptizes a person, rather, it is Christ, and Him alone, who presides at all of the sacraments, and so it is Christ Jesus who baptizes."

More.

This is pure magical thinking, an example of decadence, the degeneration of the original conception of baptism, from sign of repentance, renunciation of the world, and attachment to the new community of the elect to mysterious, wonder-working ritual imparting divine grace and forgiveness of sins.

The evidence of the Synoptics shows that Jesus himself did not baptize anyone like John the Baptist did. Only the Fourth Gospel says that Jesus so baptized, in John 3, but that is deliberately corrected in John 4 to state that Jesus himself did not baptize, and that only his disciples did.

Well, set aside the contradiction and ask, what formula did they use?

Did the disciples of Jesus use the formula "in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost"? 

The idea is preposterous.

So did that make those baptisms "invalid" and therefore null?

Totally kooky.

Magic is for a world continuing on into the indefinite future, with billions of possible customers. The baptism of repentance was for salvation from a world soon coming to an abrupt end. The failure of the latter paved the way for the former.

The superstition of bells and smells

 The causes of superstition are pleasing and sensual rites, excess of outward and pharisaical holiness, over-great reverence of traditions which cannot but load the church.

-- Francis Bacon

LOL, Calvinist John Piper says you are free to obey The Emperor and get vaccinated

And you thought "freedom is slavery" was an Orwellian idea. The inspiration is thoroughly Christian, and "The question is", said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master, that's all".

 

The apostle Peter said,

This is the will of God, that by doing good you should put to silence the ignorance of foolish people. Live as people who are free, not using your freedom as a cover-up for evil, but living as slaves of God. Honor everyone. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the emperor. (1 Peter 2:15–17)

“Live as people who are free.”

Peter had just said, “Be subject for the Lord’s sake to every human institution, whether to the emperor as supreme, or to governors” (1 Peter 2:13). So how can you “be subject” and “be free” at the same time?

Peter’s answer is that Christians are “slaves of God.” In other words, when you submit to a “human institution” (1 Peter 2:13), you don’t do it as the slave of that institution. You do it in freedom, because you are slaves of God, not man. God owns his people — by creation and redemption. ...

When we submit, we do so for the Lord’s sake. Because he said to. God’s ownership of his people strips every decisive entitlement from human authority. It turns every act of human compliance into worship. When we submit, we do so for the glory of our one Owner and Master. Life is radically Godward.

More.

 

Every act of compliance is worship, eh?

In the 3rd century many Christians found one act of compliance utterly beyond the pale. They refused to comply with an edict of Decius requiring everyone to perform a sacrifice to the gods in the presence of a Roman magistrate, which was deemed sufficient to demonstrate one's loyalty to the empire.

Some Christians at the time thought such sacrifices to be idolatrous. Many were killed for refusing to offer them.

Many people today, and not just Christians, think that the vaccines can cause harm, to their children and/or to themselves, and refuse to take them or allow them. Some people are losing their jobs as a result.

Many wonder what happened to the ideas we grew up with, that in America health decisions are between the individual and her doctor and are no one else's business, especially not the government's business. Many today wonder what happened to the "first, do no harm" line in the Hippocratic oath.

Circumstances likewise changed a great deal between the composition of I Peter and the 3rd century. There was no formal empire-wide persecution of Christians before the Decian edict of 250 AD. In the absence of official edicts requiring apostasy, obeying the law was not at issue and was promoted in the interests of evangelism and comity, especially in the 1st century.

Similarly Paul in I Corinthians 8 knew that eating meat offered to idols was nothing because no other gods actually exist, but that weak minds found it offensive, for which reason he said that one should not eat meat offered to idols to protect their feelings.

This advice had unintended consequences. The weak minds proliferated, to the point that by the 3rd century the Christians were literally a people living apart from the wider Roman society, attracting suspicion and ultimately the ire of the authorities for failing to behave like Romans. Rod Dreher fans should take note. His prescription in The Benedict Option might be more cause than effect of the troubles he believes are coming, and may prove to be a self-fulfilling prophecy.  

Today vaccine compliance earns you a proof of vaccination card. With it you can go about the normal business of living, including going to work. In the 3rd century, sacrifice earned you a libellus, a proof of sacrifice card. With it you could escape execution.

You would expect that in a liberal society, a free society such as that bequeathed to us by the Protestant founders of America who inherited the ideas of Paulinism, the, if you will, weak-minded anti-vaxxers among us would be cut the same slack Paul cut those who were superstitious about idol meat.

But we don't live in that world any longer. We live in an absurd world where the vaccinated, the protected, promote fear of the unvaccinated, which is superstition. It's getting to be more and more like the 3rd century world of suspicion and compulsion.

John Piper has as little to say to the one as to the other. But the 3rd century speaks volumes.