OPEN LETTER TO SEMINARIANS

PLEASE COPY AND PASTE INTO YOUR WORDPROCESSOR AND PRINT AND SEND TO SEMINARIANS FOR THEIR SAKE AND THE SAKE OF THOSE THEY WILL MISLEAD

 

You do not need to be a Catholic priest to help people. Is it really helping people? Is the good done by the Church the enemy of the best? Let's see.

 

Cause and effect describes change. Nothing cannot logically change into something for nothing is not a thing. It is bizarre to argue that nothing cannot change into something and then to say, "It can if God works on it!" It is not that nothing needs something to work on it. It is that nothing by definition cannot change into something. Whatever the answer to is why is there something rather than nothing? then God is not the answer. Atheists and theists are in agreement (though the latter wish otherwise) that we all came from something after all. Physics also denies that nothing is possible. There was always something.

 

Also God's power is boundless or infinite. There is no power but God's. God is his power. Creation implies that God can make something that is not made of his power or anything. So there is power that is not God's power. So God is not infinite after all! If he is then he is the creation.

 

The main reason Catholics oppose birth control is because they think it leads to sex being abused and treated as a form of recreation. But is it fair to condemn birth control because it is abused? The problem is what people are like inside not birth control. You are part of an apparatus that makes it a sin to use a condom to prevent HIV and thus is guilty of favouring religious principles above people.

 

As regards abortion - what if during IVF or the use of fertility drugs too many embryos implant in the womb? Do we want to deprive the woman of the right to have one or more embryos removed by termination? Is it better to remove them at an early stage than to be faced with the huge risk that the babies will have to be delivered non-viable later and die? Do not dismiss this as a minor problem for surely human life is as important as God?

 

And if modern medicine really makes abortion unnecessary as the Church says, it certainly does not stop it from being necessary in the developing world! A religion that thinks if hypothetically a foetus that is only say 7 weeks old should not be aborted even if it is guaranteed to save the mother's life is totally irrational and hypocritical.

 

The Church is homophobic in its own way. To suggest for example that two virgin homosexuals who have sex the once are guilty of an extremely serious sin and will suffer in Hell forever unless they repent is brutal for they do no real harm. Smoking is worse and it is not a sin. Nobody in their right mind - even those who think homosexuals are bad - will think that gay sex always has to be as bad as the Church says. You need 100% proof to accuse people of being capable of such sin. There is none. Psychology says we are not completely free. Mortal sin is near impossible (you need full consent to commit it) if not impossible. Gödel's Theorem proves that mortal sin cannot happen for the sinner must have full knowledge - it shows that when we think we know something we actually have being bringing more assumptions into the equation than we realise. Mortal sin doctrines are just hate speech. What does it say about you that you would worship a God who takes non-sins so seriously as sins? Jesus rather vindictively threatened to use the same measure against you that you use to judge others.

 

The doctrine that the saints influence God by interceding for us implies that God is imperfect for a perfect being cannot be influenced and certainly not by his inferior creatures!

 

Perhaps God just wants us to ask favours of him through the saints and it is not about influence? That could be a mask for idolatry. And it is Catholic doctrine that the saints do not just pray for people but intercede for them.

 

People could argue that the closer you become to the saints the more you please God for that is the way he wants to be pleased. But would you really be honouring the doctor if you asked for medication through his mother when he wants you to and doesn't need you to? You would be honouring his eccentricity not him. Even if he says it is about honouring his mother is it really? Would the mother really feel and be honoured?

 

Catholics pray for one another and say that is all they are asking the saints to do. If that is true then why do Catholics make out the saints seem to know all things like God does? How can the saints influence God unless they have more knowledge of what is best than he does?

 

Asking the saints to pray for you to God is one thing. But the Church goes further than that. The saints are treated as if they can read our hearts and all creation just like God can. These are gods not saints. Idolatry is simply praying to what cannot hear or see you - simple. That is why the rationalisation about the Mass, "If the wafer is not Jesus at least Jesus will still get the worship for it is meant for him", does not work. The Bible God stressed that if something cannot protect itself then it is not a god or God.

 

Some heretics in the early Church thought that since an idol is really nothing and a false god is a fiction there is no harm in pretending to worship them. They failed to see that that is exactly why such worship is so terrible! Better to worship Satan if he exists! Better to worship something rather than nothing. The heretics were condemned in the Bible. Paul in his letters is clear that idolatry is the ultimate sin though it can look good and the problem with it is that the idol is really nothing. If you worship what is not God while thinking that it is then you degrade yourself by worshipping nothing and you are disconnected from God. The problem with idolatry is that in a sense you are worshipping nothing but that still means you are worshipping! If you mistake the blind and savage works of nature as those of God then you are in effect condoning the random evil done by nature to little babies for example. You are seeing what is wholly unjustifiable as God working out his good plan.

 

Idolaters were partly excused by their ignorance of God. Catholics teach the "correct" view of God but mock it by saying God needs to be prompted to do the right thing and help. The idolatry is far more malicious than that of the pagans.

 

The Mass is really black magic.

 

Plus if it is divine grace that feeds us then the body and blood of Jesus cannot feed us. It is blasphemy to indicate that we need to top up on grace by attending Mass and communion as if God's grace is not effective for long.

 

The Bible says that God does not live in temples made by human hands and that we have full bold access to God. What it is trying to convey is that God is as present in a toilet as he is in a temple and that we do not need rites to become closest to him. He wants a relationship with us without limitations. In that light, the Mass where you receive Jesus bodily for a few minutes is blasphemy and degrading to those who participate in it even if they can't feel that it is. The issue is so serious that if the Bible teaches the Mass the books that teach it need to be dropped from the canon.

 

The Church teaches that the Mass is at the centre of Christian life. In other words, it is the Jesus present in the Eucharist that matters. Jesus is to be contemplated and approached only through the Eucharist. The prayers and sacraments are ultimate preparation for the Eucharist. When we pray to him, we must pray to the Eucharist. All things are done through the Eucharist. If this worship is idolatry, it follows then that the Catholic religion is wholly superficially Christian. It honours something it calls Jesus but which is not Jesus. There is far too much staked on such a philosophically and scripturally unconvincing doctrine. The bigger the claim the better the evidence you need.

 

The Mass really has importance among Catholics for they think God is present more fully in his body and blood at Mass than he is at any other time. This is nonsense. It is really about attachment to the human nature of God more than to the nature of God.

 

The teaching that there is a hell of eternal punishment where there is depression and despair forever only sends out the message that people can deserve depression. In fact nobody does for it paralyses them. Even the Devil has the right to be given the chance to do some good. It is great to see people happy even if they have been "bad" for at least they can devote themselves to others even if they don't.

 

The trendy doctrine of Hell that people there won't leave though God wants them to is a pack of lies. Church teaching is clear that you go to Hell for committing mortal sins and not just because you won't repent them. The trendy doctrine is actually a denial that Hell is eternal punishment or any kind of punishment. Jesus vindictively said it was. Jail is not punishment if the gate is left open. Punishment is about paying for doing wrong and you do that by enduring it without your consent. Loss of freedom is the real suffering.

 

If you are to separate the sinner from the sin by loving the sinner and hating the sin then how can you say God is right to keep sinners out of Heaven? You may reply that the sinner judges himself as antagonistic to God and won't go to Heaven so it is his own choice. But that is potentially accusing everybody of being capable of doing that on religious grounds. You need proof before you can say that people suffer in Hell forever and that it is entirely their own doing.

 

It is true that you can love a person and hate the damage they do to themselves. But it does not follow that you really can love the sinner and hate the sin. Sin is a judgemental term and implies that the person should pay for some crime. Judging is saying a person is bad in the sight of the law. Love the sinner and hating the sin is a foundational doctrine of Catholicism and if it is wrong the whole religious system is nonsense. The Church admits that the doctrine is dangerous for the person teeters on the edge of condemning the sinner while telling himself that it is the sin he hates.

 

Only you have the right to judge yourself. If God judges you and you can't see that he is right then what use is that? You will only dislike or hate him more. True punishment requires that the person being punished agrees with it and accepts it as his due. Without that, there is only revenge and violence. The doctrine of the General Judgement is vindictive.

Pius XII condemning and anathemising and cursing people who deny that Mary is bodily in Heaven is just sheer dogmatic bigotry. Though the Catholic style has stopped the cursing, it has not repudiated the practice as wrong in principle. Stopping does not necessarily mean repudiating. This change is manipulative as there is and never will be an apology for the countless attempts by Church councils and popes to stifle freedom of thought by threatening anathemas on people. Anathemas were uttered in the Bible as well (Paul in Galatians) and Jesus once said that if you say his exorcisms are from the Devil you are guilty of an eternal sin. Get real and see these people for the bigots they were. Stop pretending that they loved sinners and hated sins.
 
The practice of making it hard for some sinners to be forgiven is simply vile. Priests cannot forgive all sins according to the Church. There are reserved sins. It is very judgemental to argue that it does a person good to keep them cut off from God. Jesus said if you forgive the sins of any they are forgiven and if you retain sins they are retained. Retaining sins means doing something to them to keep them in their sins. It does not simply mean that if you don't absolve they are still in their sins. It implies the right to say, "I retain you in your sins." To rule that any priest can absolve retained sins when the person is in real danger of death is really to say that avoiding Hellfire matters more than holiness. The whole sacrament of reconciliation is an insult when it requires such base beliefs. Consider the effect such doctrines should have on people and can have.

The Church is not infallible having defined that God created the papacy when it is a historical fact that it is a human creation - read Hans Kung's Can We Save the Catholic Church? And at the Council of Trent it defined infallibly that if you go to confession purely because you fear the punishments of Hell it is enough to gain forgiveness! Imagine the likes of Hitler getting forgiveness when it is not the sin they regret but the punishment they fear! That is not forgiving but condoning.
 
It is awful that a religion can have the right to break child protection procedures and laws in regard to confessing sins. The Church blackmails children to confess at least once a year or if they think they have committed a sin that can land them in Hell forever - and masturbation is an example of such so called sin. It is a grave sin in that faith not to go to confession. The child is alone with a priest and nobody is supervising what is being said between them though there is the chance that sexual matters may come up. Disgraceful.
 
Do the right thing for yourself and everybody else and walk. Do not take the people's money to keep them in religious and factual ignorance and when you have no proof that you really do supernatural services for them. Many people will see you for the fraud you are if you do.
 
You are not an honest person or a servant of truth for if you had checked the Church out online you would know that Catholicism is not a believable religion. It should have the best hard evidence (we are not expecting proof) if God wants us to accept it. But it doesn't.
 
Do the right thing and abandon your plan to be ordained.

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