This Buddhist has a religious question.

[serryjw]

I was raised Jewish and have NO idea about the Armageddon and the rapture. How do Catholics feel about all this? I was wondering why it appears The Pope is supporting Bushit.

[indigobusiness]

1. The Pope? Supporting Bush?

Surely you jest?

[kikiek]

2. Odd thing from what I have read is that fundamentalists like Robertson

think Catholics are going to hell. I doubt that is an across the board belief though.

[HEIL PRESIDENT GOD]

3. Do you mean the bishops?

The pope has condemned the Iraq war, which leaves the question of how the Bishops can defy him.

[kixot]

4. Armageddon yes, rapture no.

There is not as much focus and emphasis on Armageddon as the fundies and evangelicals. Rapture is not biblical, so it's not a part of Catholicism. We pretty much focus on the here and now and try to live by the given tenets. The Pope did not agree with the Iraq invasion, the Pope feels any shedding of blood is a tragedy. I respect this.

There's not much focus on the details of Armageddon, either. It happens when and IF it happens, no point in revolving one's life around such a thing. Especially when we've been expecting it for 2,000 years already. The age of the Church provides some of its temperment. These fly-by-night fundies don't have a sense of history so to them the sky is always falling.

Catholicism is actually the most Buddhist-like of the Christian faiths that I came across. I considered myself Buddhist from the age of 17 to about 21 when I officially converted to Catholicism. The rosary, for example, is also used by Tibetans in much the same way.

[demosincebirth]

5. Catholics do not believe in it.

very well put Kix

[TexasProgresive]

6. Some Catholics believe in the Rapture but that is not RC teaching

Armageddon is a final battle between the forces of good and evil on the plains of Geddon. There is no Catholic doctrine or official teaching about it but it is in the last book of the New Testament, Revelations.Moat Catholic scholars take the book of Revelations to be highly symbolic of the struggle that Christians had during the trials, tribulations and martyrdom of the first two centuries of the Church. The Rapture has no place in Catholic teaching or in the Main Line Protestant churches It is a theology thought up in the 19th century and really can't be supported using the Bible. It was and is a recruitment device to get people to take up a religion in the hopes that they won't have to face tribulation, etc.

I don't know that John Paul II gives a fig for *. He spoke loudly and clearly against the war. JP II chastised Dumbya the last time he was at the Vatican. I'm sure there are those in the Vatican that like Dumbya but they don't speak for the Pope.

[TreasonousBastard]

7. Catholics, along with...

Methodists, Lutherans, and other mainstream Christian churches, don't think much about Armageddon and the Rapture.

Opinions differ among so many different churches, but most of this stuff comes from the Revelation of St. John, (the last book of the New Testament) and very few take it literally. Although some early Christians may have expected another imminent return of Christ way back then, it has occured to most of us that if it hasn't happened yet in over 2,000 years, it's probably not coming the way it was described in Revelation. If at all.

Current thinking by many, if not most, scholars and theologians is that it was a message to the early churches and was written in a sort of code due to the persecution of Christians by Rome at the time. The whole thing is a metaphor not speaking of Christ's actual return, but of the struggles the Church would have to endure and how it would prevail in the end.

Fundamentalists who believe in the absolute literal truth of everything in the Bible are actually a minority, but if they take everything else literally, they have to take the whole Second Coming thing literally.

It might be noted that for the past 2,000 years about every 20 years or so someone has come up with a highly publicized analysis of Revelation and predicted the exact date of Christ's return.

And every single one of them was wrong.

[PATRICK]

8. Tough ones

The Pope was chosen for a conservative resurgence in the light of failing communism and a changing secular world. It has been a long relationship forever abused by Reagan and worse that got the Pope shot for all his efforts in their intrigues. War crossed the line though between clear support for a conservative moral agenda(mostly on sex) tempered by the terrible disconnect with the Right's social agenda and tendency to gold old secular dictatorship. Mainly the Church has been had by the conservatives who have become ever more invasive in their desperation for a conventional religious allies besides the fundie nuts of Islam(great enemies!) and the Christians(scary friends!).

The most conservative Catholics with an inclination toward prophecies and apocalypse like neither the nutty LaHaye variety with its anti-Catholic flavor added to utter foolishness nor the cultist stereotypes in scary movies. It's been 2000 years people. The Church went through most of this hash with the first millennium when there were a lot more ignorant and hopeless people around than now. Easy to follow scholarship makes it abundantly clear the last book of the Bible was a prophecy a clef very specifically symbolizing the Roman persecutions. The immediacy of Jesus was a hard thing to say goodbye to despite many many strong admonitions to get their noses out of the sky by the Gospels themselves and the living presence in Church and sacraments. Human weakness under stress and decadent spirituality is what MOST apocalypticism in all faiths and ages is generally about. Hope amid despair. The LaHaye variety is the dark side most warned AGAINST in scripture.

Your own death and judgment is enough of a crisis. Wanting the whole cosmos to devolve around you is a foolish sin of pride indeed. I think Catholics who don't wander much into scripture on their own get enough
from Sunday sermons and other sources to maintain their sanity. Even if not recognized, the old tone of the wars of religion where the Pope and the Church become Evil Rome in all its symbols, shows anti-Catholicism itself is a recurring subtext in this hysteria.

Personally, seeing we have not blown ourselves sky high through that now deflated bugbear, the Cold War, has freed us to continuing the evolution of creation as it must have been intended- WITHOUT that good old boy free for all known as Armageddon. Come on, if we insist we can all jump off a cliff, but God does not write tragedies in malicious script. The idea is to save, not abort. New possibilities are at war with cynicism and despair. Nor has Jesus really left nor the human race been in its death throes. Nor is it for us to know much less do the dirty work of ending it all.

[serryjw]

9. Hey thanks for the education

I guess i was speaking more of the American Bishops than the Pope. They have divided the American Catholic in a time/election when we need them together.Abortion has always been a sticking point for Catholics as I am sure gay marriage.The point of my question was, THEY are not fundies yet may very well be voting this way because of social issues and they may see themselves as RELIGIOUS even if they are NOT embraced by the fundies.

[PATRICK]

11. Again, these are a MINORITY

of bishops, extremely wacko RW some of them with really skewed vlaue teachings themselves judging by the guy in Colorado- whose retired predecessor seemed to try to put him down.

The deliberately STUPID US media makes it look like the entire US Catholic Synod(hundreds of bishops and cardinals) is behind every goon(including a LAWYER no less!) who calls himself Catholic when that collective body voted NOT to do this sort of thing. Of course, as in most Churches, no one can muzzle a bishop very easily.

The US media rewards this poly every single rotten time and feigns ignorance while they create the wrong impression. Of course, if the Vatican, desperately trying to keep the headstrong American Church in control would stop appointing conservative morons and weaklings this thing would be even rarer.

Note to the clever survivalists of Vatican City. Inferior bishops breed superior power trips, just the opposite of what you really intend. And vice too.

[amber dog democrat]

10. He is not supporting this war.

The Pope came out strongly against it . If Catholics support the Chimp its because of the one issue that they appear to be focused on..... Abortion.
Well maybe they feel safer with the War president and the Terrorism president too.

But the Vatican is opposed to the war in Iraq.