The Catholic Geek: Valentine's Day with Ava Armstrong 02/14 by We Built That Network | Culture Podcasts

The Catholic Geek: Valentine's Day with Ava Armstrong 02/14 by We Built That Network | Culture Podcasts: Host Declan Finn will be covering the joys of Valentine's Day with romance author Ava Armstrong...whether he likes it or not. We will also be covering her latest novel.

Science and Religion … Stupid Catholics.

Every time I hear that all of religion is against science, I just sigh.

They want to cite Galileo. You can read about him in my evolution article. Short version: Considering that he found himself on trial by insulting the Pope, he was lucky, and merely put under house arrest. The charges basically amounted to being a jerk without a license … I should note that Richard Dawkins has such a license. He's British.

Well, I'm Catholic. I think I'm part of the only religion that has it's own observatory. Two of them. One of them is parked outside the Pope's summer home of Castel Gandalfo. We also have a very odd blessing … in 1924, the Church has a blessing for a seismograph.

My church is weird.

Then they whine: evolution!!!  I reply: the Church gave it its "blessing" in 1926 -- meaning that if it is true, that's merely the mechanism of God's action, and it's perfectly okay for Catholics to believe in it.

The major cry about religion being against science amounts to a cry of “Oh, what about embryonic stem cells. Waaaahhhh!!!!!” The short version on embryonic stem cells is that they have been portrayed as a potential miracle cure for practically everything from cancer to paraplegia, and the evil religious people are against it, because all religious people are against science, and progress, etc.

The stated position of most religions I've kept up on has been “Can we have a scientific advancement that doesn't involve killing infants in utero? Thanks.”

However.... Considering that, in 2007, Kyoto University researcher Shinya Yamanaka has already been able to transform skin cells into any other type of cell, I don't think stems cells are really relevant, do you? (Nature, June 6, 2007).

But, what do I know? I'm only the stupid Catholic. Richard Dawkins says that all religious people are stupid, and Dawkins is an educated man.

Let's go through a brief history of scientific research. However, I have a little list … actually, it's a long, long list, and a good chunk of them are here.

I think I'll cover the big names to start with. Below the break

Catholic Conspiracies II: Revenge of the Vatican Ninjas.

Last week, I mentioned that the vast, massive conspiracy theories about the Catholic Church amuse me. I discussed some specific issues and theories, but I find them all funny, almost no matter the details. Why?
Dear God in Heaven, where do I start?

The theories are so ludicrous, I hardly know where to begin.

SECRET SOCIETIES

One running theme of most of the conspiracy theories is that there is a “conspiracy of silence” running around within the Vatican, the hierarchy, an order, pick one or all. This pops up in almost any fiction where a Catholic priest appears.

Given the news of the last decade, anyone should see an immediate problem. Not only does the Church of Rome write everything down, they never throw anything out. This is a bureaucracy that has held onto the divorce petition from Henry VIII of England, written in the early 16th century.  We've held onto it for nearly five hundred years, and we haven't thrown it out yet.

If there were a conspiracy in the church, there will likely be paperwork to document it, and they'd hold onto it with their dying breath. Bad habit for a conspiracy.

But, the way I look at it, the Vatican is essentially the world's biggest marble office building, complete with Dilberts and the occasional pointy-haired boss … or pointy-hatted boss.

In the current day and age, any bureaucracy can keep a secret for a few years. But two thousand? Really?

Catholic Conspiracies: The Illuminati Polka and the attack of the Vatican Ninjas.

 

I have decided to make this a comedy posting. Why?

Recently, I went looking for a book on one end of the crazy spectrum. The book had been (loosely) based on an episode during World War II, and it was supposed to “prove” that Pope Pius XII could not qualify as “Hitler's Pope.” Instead, this conspiracy theory had Pope Pius XII using the Jesuits to assassinate Adolf Hitler in World War II.

It was called Vatican Assassins.

On the one hand, it really covered an actual incident during the war: where German Generals who wanted to kill Hitler had expressed a desire to use Pius XII as an intermediary. The Generals thought that Pius XII could be a neutral party when talking to the British, laying the groundwork for a truce after they had assassinated Hitler. Obviously, the plan didn't work, since Hitler killed himself years later.

Vatican Ninja, by Matt

On the other hand ... Vatican Ninjas?  Are we serious?

Okay, Vatican Ninjas would be cool, but that's next week....

Or I can show a very well done photo by Matthew Funtime, for extra gratuitous coolness....

As for Vatican Assassins, I had originally stumbled across this work six years ago, when I first researched the entire matter of “Hitler's Pope” for a graduate paper. This was a few months before I even started writing A Pius Man. Perhaps an entire year before the book.

Recently, I wanted a laugh, and I wanted to see if anything had happened with this particular nutjob and his Vatican Ninjas.

So, I put Vatican Assassins into an Amazon search, and then Google …

Oh my dear God, the results I got…