Every country gets the circus it deserves. Spain gets bullfights. Italy gets the Catholic Church. America gets Hollywood.
Can a free government possibly exist with the Roman Catholic religion?
john adamsDozens of people were nailed to crosses in the devoutly Roman Catholic Philippines on Good Friday, in a gruesome re-enactment of the crucifixion, while others atoned for their sins by flaying themselves with bamboo whips or paddles tipped with broken glass. The ritual has become a Good Friday tradition in certain villages, where tourists flock to hear the locals scream in agony as seven-inch nails are driven into their hands and feet. Penitents are then hoisted up on crosses and left for five minutes in the scorching sun before the nails are pulled out.
The Catholic Church is an institution I am bound to hold divine but for unbelievers a proof of its divinity might be found in the fact that no merely human institution conducted with such knavish imbecility would have lasted a fortnight.
hilaire bellocThe Catholic Church is an institution I am bound to hold divine but for unbelievers a proof of its divinity might be found in the fact that no merely human institution conducted with such knavish imbecility would have lasted a fortnight.
"Joseph Ratzinger has stood still because as a Bavarian Catholic in the Hellenistic tradition, interpreted in Roman terms, he wanted to stand still. To this degree he represented and represents a different basic model of theology and church, as different from mine as in astronomy Ptolemy's geocentric picture of the world is different from Copernicus' heliocentric picture."
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