
From Geluck's Le Chat (The Cat), another crazy Belgian.

Moscow, Russia, Jul 10, 2019 / 05:00 pm (CNA).- The Russian Orthodox Church is debating an end to the practice of blessing large scale weapons, including nuclear missiles.
Last month, a committee on ecclesial law met in Moscow and recommended ending the practice of blessing missiles and warheads, and suggested that priests should instead bless only individual soldiers and their personal weapons.
According to a report by Religion News Service, Bishop Savva Tutunov of the Moscow Patriarchate said that it would be more appropriate to bless only the warrior who is defending their country, and their own personal weapon--instead of bombs.
“One can talk about the blessing of a warrior on military duty in defense of the fatherland,” said Tutunov.
“At the end of the corresponding ritual, the personal weapon is also blessed — precisely because it is connected to the individual person who is receiving the blessing. By the same reasoning, weapons of mass destruction should not be sanctified,” he said.
The proposal to end the blessings for larger weapons has yet to be approved by Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, head of the Russian Orthodox Church.
Weapons systems, including Topol-class intercontinental ballistic missiles, are frequently blessed by members of the Russian Orthodox clergy during military parades and other events. These blessings are seen as a way of spiritually protecting the country.
In 2007, Russia’s nuclear weapons were consecrated in a service at the Christ the Savior Cathedral in Moscow. In Russian Orthodoxy, the patron saint of Russia’s nuclear weapons is St. Seraphim.
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https://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/angl ... -1.5209821Anglican Church of Canada apologizes for spiritual harm to Indigenous Peoples
'We demonized their spiritual traditions — and it's time for us to own up to that history,' says Fred Hiltz
In an open letter published Friday, the leader of the Anglican Church of Canada apologized for its "cultural and spiritual arrogance" that caused harm to Indigenous Peoples.
"We followed too much the devices of our hearts in trying to remake Indigenous Peoples in our image," Fred Hiltz, the most senior archbishop of the Anglican Church of Canada, told CBC News.
"We belittled their traditional teachings, we banned their ceremonies, we demonized their spiritual traditions — and it's time for us to own up to that history."
The apology acknowledged what the church's called its sins of "arrogance in dismissing Indigenous spiritualities ... as being incompatible with the Gospel of Jesus," of declaring Indigenous teachings to be pagan and primitive and of banning smudging, ceremonial pipes, drumming, potlatches and other cultural practices. It acknowledged that these acts caused "intergenerational spiritual harm."
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-43231638 (more pics)In pictures: US gun-blessing ceremony
Hundreds of World Peace and Unification Sanctuary church members get their guns blessed in Pennsylvania.
The Rev Yeon Ah Lee-moon with her golden gun - the church is a small group that splintered away from the Unification Church founded by her father-in-law, the late self-proclaimed messiah Rev Sun Myung-moon
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-07-17/ ... fmredir=smChristian family who argued taxes 'against God's will' ordered to pay $2.3m bill
A Tasmanian family has been ordered to pay more than $2 million to the Australian Taxation Office after failing to pay income tax on the grounds it "goes against God's will".
Christian missionaries Fanny Alida Beerepoot and her brother Rembertus Cornelis Beerepoot faced the Supreme Court of Tasmania on Wednesday after they both failed to pay an estimated $930,000 in income tax and other charges in 2017.
Solicitor Stephen Linden told the court the pair had been served two notices of their debt and had failed to lodge their tax returns.
In their submissions, Mr Beerepoot said Australian taxation law was contrary to the law of "Almighty God".
"We believe that the constitution affirms the fact that the Commonwealth resides within the jurisdiction of the law of the Almighty God and the law of the Almighty God is the supreme law of this land," he told the court.
Family's property previously seized for not paying rates
Representing themselves, the pair told the court they had previously paid income tax prior to 2011 but that a deepened spiritual relationship meant they later realised paying tax was "against God's will".
Mr Beerepoot told the court the pair sent letters to the Queen and Prime Minister last month calling into question the jurisdiction of taxation and the validity of the legislation.
He argued that by being made to pay taxes, their dependence on God was being taken away from them, which was causing Australia to be cursed.
"Transferring our allegiance from God to the Commonwealth would mean rebelling against God and therefore breaking the first commandment."
"As we reject God, the curses upon us become greater, but if we return to God's teachings there will be healing," Ms Beerepoot said.
"We rely on the blessings we receive from God which we give to him and not to an outside entity such as the tax office."
In 2017, the family had their 2.44-hectare property at Mole Creek in Northern Tasmania seized and later sold for $120,000 by the Meander Valley Council after they refused to pay about $3,000 worth of rates on the property over seven years.
"We don't own anything because we are his [God's]," Ms Beerepoot told the court.
If you're OK with girl cooties in the pulpit, there's always the Protestants after all.July 26, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) – The cardinal in charge of safeguarding Catholic doctrine under Pope Benedict issued today a second detailed critique of the Amazon Synod’s working document (Instrumentum Laboris), saying that no synod, Pope, or council “could make possible the ordination of women as bishop, priest, or deacon.”
Cardinal Gerhard Müller, former Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith who was removed from his post by Pope Francis in 2017, concentrated especially on the question of the priesthood and of the impossibility of female participation in it (read full critique below).
“The Magisterium of the Pope and of the bishops has no authority over the substance of the Sacraments," the Cardinal states.
"Therefore, no synod – with or without the Pope – and also no ecumenical council, or the Pope alone, if he spoke ex cathedra, could make possible the ordination of women as bishop, priest, or deacon. They would stand in contradiction to the defined doctrine of the Church," he continues.
"It would be invalid,” he adds.
Cardinal Müller called the upcoming Synod, set to take place in Rome October 8-27, a “wrecking ball” that aims at a “restructuring of the Universal Church.”
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It's not too bad. At least it wasn't when I was an angelic choirboy and Andy Davies, the head chorister, used to nick it from behind the altar and pass it around between weddings. If memory serves, it was cooking sherry. Cheapskate bastards.