tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5808352761959748912023-11-15T10:46:25.810-08:00The Art of Dying without FearNoel Griesehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01763989108086128553noreply@blogger.comBlogger9125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-580835276195974891.post-30623188431862909402012-01-22T18:11:00.000-08:002012-01-22T18:38:34.002-08:00Robert Bellarmine and 'The Art of Dying Well'<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt;">I named this blog after a book by Robert Bellarmine (1542-1621) entitled <i>The Art of Dying Well</i>. The book might as well have been titled <i>The Art of Dying without Fear</i>. </span><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt;">The book, which is not very long, is a road map for living a heroically virtuous life. For anyone who would like to read it, here’s a link to a free PDF: </span><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt;"><a href="http://goodcatholicbooks.org/pdf/bellarmine_art-of-dying-well.pdf">The Art of Dying Well (text PDF)</a>. Take note, the PDF is littered with typographical errors. You can buy a copy that might be error-free from Amazon, but I suspect the version being sold is the Coffin translation and will contain the same errors as the free PDF.</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" /> <br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" /> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal">Robert Bellarmine (his full name in Italian was Roberto Francesco Romolo Bellarmino) was an Italian Jesuit and a cardinal of the Catholic Church. He was canonized a saint in 1930 and has been named a Doctor of the Church.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Bellarmine was born at <span style="color: windowtext; text-decoration: none;">Montepulciano</span>, Italy, the son of Vincenzo Bellarmino and his wife Cinzia Cervini, who was sister of Pope Marcellus II. As a boy he knew Virgil by heart and composed a number of poems in Italian and Latin. One of his hymns, on Mary Magdalene, is included in the Breviary. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Bellarmine's systematic study of theology began at the University of Padua in 1567 and 1568, where his teachers were <span style="color: windowtext;">Thomists</span>. In 1569 he was sent to finish it at the University of Leuven in Flanders. There he was ordained, and obtained a reputation both as a professor and a preacher. He was the first Jesuit to teach at the university, where the subject of his course was the <i>Summa Theologica</i> of Thomas Aquinas.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Until 1589, Bellarmine was occupied as professor of theology. After the murder in that year of Henry III of France, Pope Sixtus V sent <span style="color: windowtext;">Enrico Caetani</span> as legate to Paris to negotiate with the Catholic League of France, and chose Bellarmine to accompany him as theologian. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The next pope, Clement VIII, set great store by him. He was made rector of the Roman College in 1592, examiner of bishops in 1598, and cardinal in 1599. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">In 1602 he was made archbishop of Capua. He received some votes in the 1605 conclaves which elected Pope Leo XI, Pope Paul V, and in 1621 when Pope Gregory XV was elected, but only in the second conclave of 1605 was he <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papabile" title="Papabile"><span style="color: windowtext; text-decoration: none;">"papabile</span></a>."</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">In 1616, on the orders of the then pope, Paul V, Cardinal Bellarmine summoned Galileo Galilei, notified him of a forthcoming decree of the Congregation of the Index condemning the Copernican doctrine of the mobility of the Earth and the immobility of the Sun, and ordered him to abandon it. Galileo agreed. When Galileo later complained of rumors to the effect that he had been forced to abjure and do penance, Bellarmine wrote out a certificate denying the rumors, stating that Galileo had merely been notified of the decree and informed that, as a consequence of it, the Copernican doctrine could not be "defended or held.” Cardinal Bellarmine was himself ambiguous about heliocentrism, personally noting that further research had to be done to confirm or condemn it.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">In his old age he was bishop of Montepulciano for four years, after which he retired to the Jesuit college of St. Andrew in Rome. Bellarmine died in Rome on September 17, 1621.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">During his retirement, he wrote several short books intended to help ordinary people in their spiritual life: <i>De ascensione mentis in Deum per scalas rerum creatorum opusculum</i> (<i>The Mind's Ascent to God</i>) (1614) which was translated into English as <i>Jacob's Ladder</i> (1638) without acknowledgement by Henry Isaacson, <i>The Art of Dying Well</i> (1619) (in Latin, English translation under this title by Edward Coffin), and <i>The Seven Words on the Cross</i>.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">He was canonized by Pope Pius XI in 1930; the following year he was declared a Doctor of the Church. His remains, in a cardinal's red robes, are displayed behind glass under a side altar in the Church of Saint Ignatius, the chapel of the Roman College, next to the body of his student, St. Aloysius Gonzaga, as he himself had wished.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Saint Robert Bellarmine's feast day is on September 17, the day of his death. In 1969, it was downgraded to an "optional memorial.”</div>Noel Griesehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01763989108086128553noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-580835276195974891.post-70408112107969265632012-01-19T16:04:00.000-08:002012-01-22T18:22:05.292-08:00What happens to us after we die? Six AnswersThe human race has come up with five basic answers to the question "What happens to us after we die," and God has come up with a sixth.<br />
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According to C.S. Lewis in <i>A Grief Observed</i>, the first five possibilities are:<br />
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1. Annihilation. Nothing. Death ends it all, except our reputation, our works, and our children, which live on after us<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt;">―</span>but we know and enjoy nothing of them if we are annihilated forever. This is a typically modern concept, although a few ancient Greek and Roman philosophers, such as Democritus and Lucretius, held it. For materialism, death is everything, because in it we become nothing. <br />
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2. We survive death, but only as ghosts. We become pale shadows of the living selves we once were. This is the mythic view of shades in Hades. It is the belief of most ancient tribes and cultures, including the early Jews and Greeks. In the mythic view, we become less than we were before death. <br />
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3. Reincarnation. We come back to earth in another mortal body. Belief in reincarnation has been popular in many times and places, including the present. It usually exists together with possibilities 4 or 5 below. In reincarnation, we become the same sort of thing we were before death. <br />
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4. The natural immortality of the soul. Each individual's disembodied spirit, liberated by death, survives as a pure spirit, like an angel. This spirit had been imprisoned in an alien thing, a body, until released forever by death. The concept is grounded in Platonism, but is often confused with Christianity, which teaches supernatural resurrection rather than natural immortality, and of the whole person, not just of the soul. For Platonism, death is nothing, as can be seen in the way Socrates faces death: as indifferently as Buddha. Whether the spirit is a universal impersonal spirit, as in Buddhism, or an individual human spirit, as in Platonism, death does not affect it, since it is radically different from the body. In Buddhism the individual body is illusion (so is the individual soul); in Platonism it is a mere prison (<i>soma</i>, "body," equals <i>serna</i>, "tomb"). <br />
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5. The only thing that survives death is the only thing that was real before death: cosmic consciousness, the One, Atman, the Buddha-mind, perfect, eternal, transindividual spirit. This is the cosmic consciousness view of Hinduism and Buddhism. For Hinduism and Buddhism, death is nothing, because we already are everything, and death does not change that. It simply occurs within the all-encompassing Everything we are. <br />
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And God gives us the sixth answer:<br />
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6. Only in Christianity do we become more than we were before death. It is the startling, surprising idea of a new, greater resurrected body. As C.S. Lewis puts it in <i>Miracles</i>: "The records represent Christ as passing after death (as no one had passed before) neither into a purely . . . 'spiritual' mode of existence nor into a 'natural' life such as we know, but into a life which has its own new Nature. . . ." As described in the New Testament Gospels, the resurrected Jesus in the forty days before his ascension into heaven had a physical body that was solid, a body into which the doubting Thomas could put his hand to feel the wound of the spear of a Roman soldier, yet a body that could pass through solid walls into locked rooms where his frightened disciples hid.Noel Griesehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01763989108086128553noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-580835276195974891.post-38810846373335126992011-10-30T07:17:00.000-07:002011-10-31T13:30:39.781-07:00Angels and demons: Do they really exist?<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">I’ve noted in an earlier post that seventy-two percent of Americans believe in angels. Why would so many people believe in the existence of beings for which there is not a scintilla of scientific evidence? Partly because of references to angels in the Bible and other literature. Mostly because they either believe they’ve had an experience with an angel, or have heard the story of someone who claims to have had such an encounter. </span><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">There are numerous references to angels and demons in the sacred scriptures and apocrypha of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Three angels are mentioned by name in the scriptures of all three of these religions</span>—<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">the archangels Rafael, Gabriel and Michael. The names of many more angels and demons are laid down in the apocrypha of the three religions.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">For Christians, and especially for Catholics, the biographies of the saints provide numerous accounts of encounters with angels and demons. Perhaps the saints are the most likely to be tempted and tormented by demons, while being protected by their personal angels. Then again, such encounters are most likely to be recorded in the investigations into the lives of saints made by church officials. The lives of those of us that have not attracted the attention of church investigators are not so carefully scrutinized. Perhaps such encounters are far more common than realized.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">More than 100 concise sketches of encounters of the saints with angels and demons appear at the following site: </span><a href="http://tinyurl.com/43ss3fu"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">http://tinyurl.com/43ss3fu</span></a><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">. I recommend that you start by reading a few of the following accounts:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; tab-stops: .25in .5in right 5.25in 459.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"> 003 Maria of Jesus of Agreda - (1602-1665) </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; tab-stops: .25in .5in right 5.25in 459.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"> 011 Saint Robert Bellarmine - (1542-1621) </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; tab-stops: .25in .5in right 5.25in 459.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"> 012 Saint Benedict - (Circa 480-547) </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; tab-stops: .25in .5in right 5.25in 459.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"> 014 Servant of God Anfrosina Berardi - (1920-1933) </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; tab-stops: .25in .5in right 5.25in 459.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"> 015 Saint Louis Bertrand - (1526-1581) </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; tab-stops: .25in .5in right 5.25in 459.0pt; text-indent: .25in;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">017 Blessed Veronica of Binasco - (1445-1497) </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; tab-stops: .25in .5in right 5.25in 459.0pt; text-indent: .25in;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">019 Servant of God Maria Bolognesi - (1924-1980) </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; tab-stops: .25in .5in right 5.25in 459.0pt; text-indent: .25in;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">026 Servant of God Edvige Carboni - (1880-1952) </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; tab-stops: .25in .5in right 5.25in 459.0pt; text-indent: .25in;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">027 Servant of God Giulio Castelli - (1846-1926) </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; tab-stops: .25in .5in right 5.25in 459.0pt; text-indent: .25in;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">028 Saint Catherine of Siena - (1347-1380) </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; tab-stops: .25in .5in right 5.25in 459.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"> 031 Saint Bernard of Clairvaux - (1090-1153) </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; tab-stops: .25in .5in right 5.25in 459.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"> 034 Saint Joseph of Cupertino, O.F.M.Conv. - (1603-1663) </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; tab-stops: .25in .5in right 5.25in 459.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"> 038 Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich - (1774-1824) </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; tab-stops: .25in .5in right 5.25in 459.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"> 040 The Apparitions of the Angel at Fatima 1 - (1916) </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; tab-stops: .25in .5in right 5.25in 459.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"> 043 Blessed Angela of Foligno - (1248-1309) </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; tab-stops: .25in .5in right 5.25in 459.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"> 044 Saint Francis of Assisi - (1181-1226) </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; tab-stops: .25in .5in right 5.25in 459.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"> 048 Blessed Maria of Jesus Crucified - (1846-1878) </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; tab-stops: .25in .5in right 5.25in 459.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"> 049 Saint John of the Cross - (1542-1591) </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; tab-stops: .25in .5in right 5.25in 459.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"> 050 Saint John of God - (1495-1550) </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; tab-stops: .25in .5in right 5.25in 459.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"> 056 Teresa Higginson - (1844-1905) (Sacred Head of Jesus) </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; tab-stops: .25in .5in right 5.25in 459.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"> 058 Saint Faustina Kowalska - (1905-1938) </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; tab-stops: .25in .5in right 5.25in 459.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"> 059 Saint Catherine Labouré - (1806-1876) </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; tab-stops: .25in .5in right 5.25in 459.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"> 060 Father Lamy - (1853-1931) </span><span style="font-size: 10pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; tab-stops: .25in .5in right 5.25in 459.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"> 065 Pope Leo XIII - (1810-1903) (Rerum Natura encyclical) </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; tab-stops: .25in .5in right 5.25in 459.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"> 066 Saint Alphonsus Maria de’ Liguori - (1696-1787) </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; tab-stops: .25in .5in right 5.25in 459.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"> 068 Saint Ignatius of Loyola - (1491-1556) </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; tab-stops: .25in .5in right 5.25in 459.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"> 098 Saint Pio of Pietralcina (Padre Pio) - (1887-1968) </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; tab-stops: .25in .5in right 5.25in 459.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"> 119 Saint Bridget of Sweden - (1303-1373) </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; tab-stops: .25in .5in right 5.25in 459.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"> 124 Saint Thomas Aquinas - (1224/25-1274) </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; tab-stops: .25in .5in right 5.25in 459.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"> 128 Saint John Maria Vianney - (1786-1858) </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><br />
What makes me think that angels and demons exist? </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">I’ve never seen my guardian angel, or any other angel, for that matter, so far as I know. But I did have one experience with a demon. It happened when I was an undergraduate at the University of Wisconsin. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">I was working on a term paper in 1959 about elements of witchcraft in the poetry of William Butler Yeats. At the time, I was corresponding with Gerald Gardner, who ran the Witches Museum at Castletown, Isle of Man, until he died in 1964. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">At the time, I began reading extensively in the occult, from the apocryphal books of Judaism dealing with demons through accounts of the maguses of the Middle Ages on down to the thinking in the late 1950s about wicca and the occult. If you’ve not read the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Book of Solomon</i>, an apocryphal Judaic text, it’s about the supposed power King Solomon had over demons, and was a favorite text of medieval necromancers, alchemists, and maguses.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">One weekend night in Madison. I decided to see if I could summon a demon using instructions in one of the books I was reading. Alone in my room at Maude Tarr’s boarding house just off the University of Wisconsin campus, I drew a pentacle on the floor of my room, lit some candles, and uttered the incantation I’d found in a book of spells. I was frightened out of my wits when a demon’s head materialized in the room. The flesh of its face was green and purple, its mouth was filled with hair, and its eyes glowed red. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">I broke the pentacle by erasing a part of it with my shoe, blew out the candles, and the specter vanished. I’ve never experimented with summoning demons since. Was I hallucinating, hypnotized by the candles, and by my own chanting? Probably. But that specter was awfully real to me at the time, and I still have memories of it more than 50 years later.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">If you are looking for more information about angels and demons, you might try Peter Kreeft’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Angels and Demons: What Do We Really Know about Them?</i> (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1995).</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Much of what we think we know about angels and demons, heaven, hell, and purgatory, comes not from nonfiction works on theology and philosophy, but from fiction. If I had to recommend any one work of fiction, it would be the John Ciardi translation of Dante Alighieri’s epic poem <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Divine Comedy</i>. There are two reasons I recommend Dante. One is that Dante is generally recognized as one of the four greatest authors of world literature - along with Shakespeare, Cervantes and Homer. The other is that although the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Divine Comedy</i> is fictional, Dante’s journey through hell, purgatory and heaven is based on the theology of St. Thomas Aquinas’ <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Summa Theologica</i>, written by perhaps the greatest of the Catholic doctors of the church. Dante’s epic poem is fictional, but grounded in the Aristotelian logic of Aquinas. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Dante’s visit to hell is probably the most famous literary depiction of the realm of Lucifer in literature. Hell was created by Lucifer's fall, and he is now trapped, in Dante’s poem, in the lowest level, reserved for traitors. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt;">While on the surface the poem describes Dante's travels through hell, purgatory, and heaven. at a deeper level, it represents allegorically the soul's journey towards God. At this deeper level, Dante draws on medieval Christian theology and philosophy, especially, as already noted, the Thomistic philosophy of the <i>Summa Theologica</i>. Consequently, the <i>Divine Comedy</i> has been called "the <i>Summa</i> in verse."</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt;">If you manage to wade through the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Divine Comedy</i>, you might next try John Milton’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Paradise Lost</i>, another epic poem dealing with Satan’s fall from grace.</span></div>Noel Griesehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01763989108086128553noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-580835276195974891.post-68065657524689928282011-10-15T19:53:00.000-07:002011-10-15T20:03:05.429-07:00The Catholic path to the afterlife in a nutshell<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Our life here on Earth is a brief flicker in time that ends at the gateway to eternity.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">What is eternity like? Scientists tell us <span class="st">it has been about 13.75 billion years, give or take a few million years, since the Big Bang created the universe. </span></span><span class="st"> </span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Planet Earth is almost five billion years old. Modern humans first emerged in East Africa some 100,000 to 200,000 years ago, gradually spreading out across the globe. Migration of modern humans from the Black Sea area into Europe started some 45,000 years ago. By 20,000 years ago, the whole of Europe was settled by <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">homo sapiens</i></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">—</span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">modern</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">man as we know him. Some 2,000 years ago, the Christos was born around the year 6 BCE (before the common era, or before Christ), and died around 30 CE (common era, or <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">anno domini</i>). Here in the United States, our average lifespan is 78 years. That gives you some idea of eternity versus our temporal lives. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">While all sorts of good things and bad things can happen to our body and our soul along our journey to the final destination, the end-point for most Catholics is to get our spirit or soul to an eternity in heaven after death.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">To get to heaven, one tries to avoid evil, do good, and die in a state of grace (for Catholics, free of mortal sin).</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Catholic theology holds that at the instant of death, the soul, which is eternal, leaves the body, and goes before God. According to Catholic folklore, each person has a guardian angel who guides the soul to God and judgment. In His infinite wisdom, God judges the soul when it arrives.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">The soul will eventually undergo two judgments. The first is called the particular judgment. It’s what happens when the just-released soul arrives before God. This judgment applies only to the soul. Later, there will be a general or final judgment at the end-times, the second coming or apocalypse. Only God knows when this final judgment will occur. At the final judgment, the soul of the deceased will be reunited with the risen body that the soul occupied in life. Until then, only the soul is involved in the afterlife.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">At the particular judgment, one of three things can happen to the soul. Those who reject God’s love and die in mortal sin without repenting go to hell, cut off from the love and light of God for eternity. The saints whose love for God has been perfected in this life go straight to heaven for eternity. Those who die without mortal sin but whose love of God is imperfect go to a place called purgatory where the soul will be perfected and eventually go to heaven for eternity. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Indulgences can shorten the soul’s stay in purgatory, or permit the soul to bypass purgatory altogether. There are two types of indulgence</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">—</span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">a partial indulgence, which shortens the stay in purgatory, or a more powerful plenary indulgence, which permits an instant release of the soul from purgatory. Indulgences may be earned (they may not be bought) only by the living, who must meet specified criteria. Indulgences may apply to the souls of the living or to the souls of the deceased depending on the nature of the indulgence. See the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Enchiridion of Indulgences </i>at ( </span><a href="http://tinyurl.com/m3v8g"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">http://tinyurl.com/m3v8g</span></a><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"> </span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">). </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">To help along the way to the end of the journey, there are seven sacraments. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">The first is baptism, which for most Catholics occurs a few weeks after birth. Through baptism, we join in the communion of the church and communion with God. This communion joins us with those who have been baptized who have gone before us in history, and with those who have not yet been born who will be baptized. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">By early grade school, the Catholic child experiences the sacrament of reconciliation (also known as penance, penance and reconciliation, or confession). After reconciliation, the child or convert takes first communion (the Eucharist). Near the end of grade school, the young Catholic is confirmed in the faith. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Baptism and confirmation are one-time events, although baptismal vows (a credo of beliefs) may be repeated on occasion. Reconciliation and communion are repeated throughout life.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">The next sacraments a Catholic is likely to encounter are marriage or, for the male who so chooses, holy orders</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">—</span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">becoming an ordained priest committed to celibacy.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">The final sacrament is anointing of the sick, formerly called last rites or extreme unction. That occurs when a person is seriously ill or at death’s door. A plenary indulgence is associated with the administration of this sacrament by a priest.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Catholics believe in two types of sin</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">—</span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">mortal and venial. Mortal sins are serious business. Venial sins are less serious, relatively minor in nature. Either type of sin can be forgiven by the sacrament of reconciliation. If reconciliation is not available, sins may be forgiven by a perfect act of contrition, in which the person is sorry for the sins not because of a desire to avoid condemnation and hell, but because the person recognizes that the sins are offensive to an all-loving God.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Acts that constitute sin fall under two main groupings</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">—</span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">violations of</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">the Ten Commandments, which are enumerated in the first two books of the Old Testament ( </span><a href="http://tinyurl.com/b8nt9"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">http://tinyurl.com/b8nt9</span></a> <span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">, </span><a href="http://tinyurl.com/m3v8g"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">http://tinyurl.com/m3v8g</span></a><b> </b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">) and commission of any of the seven cardinal sins (</span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrath" title="Wrath"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">wrath</span></a><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">, </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greed" title="Greed"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">greed</span></a><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">, </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sloth_%28deadly_sin%29" title="Sloth (deadly sin)"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">sloth</span></a><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">, </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pride" title="Pride"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">pride</span></a><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">, </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lust" title="Lust"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">lust</span></a><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">, </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Envy" title="Envy"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">envy</span></a><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">, and </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gluttony" title="Gluttony"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">gluttony</span></a><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">). Pride is the most serious of the cardinal sins. As the ancient Greeks said, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">hubris</i> leads to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ate</i></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">—</span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">pride goeth before a downfall.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-outline-level: 2;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">The good works individuals are to do in this life fall generally under the seven cardinal virtues</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">—</span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chastity" title="Chastity"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">chastity</span></a><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">, </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temperance_%28virtue%29" title="Temperance (virtue)"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">temperance</span></a><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">, </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charity_%28virtue%29" title="Charity (virtue)"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">charity</span></a><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">, </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diligence" title="Diligence"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">diligence</span></a><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">, </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patience" title="Patience"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">patience</span></a><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">, </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kindness" title="Kindness"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">kindness</span></a><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">, and </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humility" title="Humility"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">humility</span></a><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-outline-level: 2;"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-outline-level: 2;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">There are a number of excellent books about the theology behind the concept of purgatory. If you are interested, you might start with <span style="color: black;">Dr. Gerard van den Aardweg's best-selling <i><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Hungry Souls. </span></i><i><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-style: normal;">It</span></i> recounts Church-verified accounts of earthly visitations from the spirits of the dead residing in purgatory. If you don’t have time to read the book, read a few of the reviews posted at Amazon.com at </span></span><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:TrackMoves/> <w:TrackFormatting/> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:DoNotPromoteQF/> <w:LidThemeOther>EN-US</w:LidThemeOther> <w:LidThemeAsian>X-NONE</w:LidThemeAsian> <w:LidThemeComplexScript>X-NONE</w:LidThemeComplexScript> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> <w:WrapTextWithPunct/> <w:UseAsianBreakRules/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> <w:SplitPgBreakAndParaMark/> <w:DontVertAlignCellWithSp/> <w:DontBreakConstrainedForcedTables/> <w:DontVertAlignInTxbx/> <w:Word11KerningPairs/> <w:CachedColBalance/> </w:Compatibility> <m:mathPr> <m:mathFont m:val="Cambria Math"/> <m:brkBin m:val="before"/> <m:brkBinSub m:val="--"/> <m:smallFrac m:val="off"/> <m:dispDef/> <m:lMargin m:val="0"/> <m:rMargin m:val="0"/> <m:defJc m:val="centerGroup"/> <m:wrapIndent m:val="1440"/> <m:intLim m:val="subSup"/> <m:naryLim m:val="undOvr"/> </m:mathPr></w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" DefUnhideWhenUsed="true"
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</style> <![endif]--><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;"><a href="http://tinyurl.com/3ffx8sz">http://tinyurl.com/3ffx8sz</a> </span></div><a href="http://tinyurl.com/3efglms"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"></span></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-outline-level: 2;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">So, do I think the Catholic path I just covered is the best path to the afterlife? I don’t know. Other paths might well be better. All I can say is that I’m comfortable with the path I’ve chosen. It makes me less afraid of dying and of death.</span></div>Noel Griesehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01763989108086128553noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-580835276195974891.post-24649796195518007282011-10-08T10:13:00.000-07:002011-10-11T16:52:45.586-07:00On Halloween, ghosts, the soul and the afterlife<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">With Halloween just around the corner on October 31, it seems appropriate to take a break from the serious topics I’ve been discussing to talk about something lighter.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">According to various surveys, eighty-two percent of adult Americans believe in God and in an afterlife. One recent survey found that more Britons believe in ghosts than believe in God. Other surveys find that from thirty-three to seventy percent of Americans believe in ghosts. The main reason people state for believing in ghosts is that they’ve either had an experience with one themselves, or know someone who has.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">The closest I think I’ve ever come to seeing a ghost is in a photograph I took at dusk of the Castillo de San Marcos in St. Augustine, Florida. The Castillo is one of the oldest structures in the United States, dating back to the Spanish occupation of Florida after Columbus “discovered” America. When that exposure came back developed, there were four transparent soldiers in red and white uniforms, one with a drum, marching beside the Castillo. The photo is not a double exposure, and I hadn’t seen any transparent soldiers marching in the camera viewfinder when I took the picture.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">One of our daughters lived for a time in rural Georgia in an old farmhouse. At various times, she, her husband and both of their children saw the ghost of a young boy. Sometimes the boy would be looking through farmhouse windows from outside. Sometimes the ghost would appear in the house, looking into a bedroom or another room. These apparitions occurred so often that it would be difficult to term them hallucinations.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">So, is it possible that some souls linger here on earth for a time, unable to find their way to the afterlife where they belong? And are ghosts, which are recognized in almost all major cultures across time, evidence that a part of us—our spirit or soul—lives on after death, in a form that is devoid of matter, but in appearance resembles the body we had in life?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">The Catholic Church has its own take on ghosts. The Church believes that ghosts, or spirits, do exist. There are times when spirits appear to our benefit, but we are warned against attempting to contact these spirits—especially the spirits of departed loved ones—through occult means such as séances. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">As for children going out on Halloween to “trick or treat,” dressed up as ghosts, zombies, vampires and the like, the Church has no objections. Father Gabriele Amorth, a Vatican-appointed exorcist in Rome, has said, "if English and American children like to dress up as witches and devils on one night of the year that is not a problem. If it is just a game, there is no harm in that.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Catholicism holds that we must not attempt to conjure or control spirits. But that doesn’t mean we’re forbidden from asking one or another of the saints to intercede for us. When our Siamese cat Sadie escaped the house in pursuit of a neighborhood cat she dislikes, I asked for the intercession of Saint Anthony, the patron of lost items. There’s a little prayer Catholics say, “St. Anthony, please look around, something lost has to be found.” I said it multiple times, and after three days of searching, we successfully found the cat, who had gone into hiding. Did St. Anthony intervene? I’ll probably never know that, but I’m grateful the cat was found before harm came to her. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Getting back to the discussion of ghosts … “Ghost” is simply another word for spirit. (Geist means “spirit” in German.) There are three kinds of spirit: the human spirit which, combined with body, make up a human being; the defined spirit that has no body, such as angels; and the infinite Spirit, or God, of whom the third person is the Holy Ghost. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">When someone asks about ghosts, he or she usually has in mind the first kind, a human spirit or soul that may be incorporated in a body, or may have departed the body.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Not just Catholicism, but Christianity in general, believes that God may, and sometimes does, permit a departed soul to appear in some visible form to people on earth. Allowing for legend and illusion, there is enough authentic evidence, in the lives of the saints for example, to indicate that such apparitions occur. The purpose of the ghost may be to teach or warn, or request some favor of the living.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">The history of Halloween’s evolution from a pagan to a Christian observance is an interesting one. Antecedents can be traced to the Roman observances of Pomona (goddess of fruits and seeds) and Parentalia (festival of the dead), and the Celtic observance of Samhain (summer’s end). For more information on Halloween, visit:<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> </b></span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween</span></a></div><h1><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt; font-weight: normal;">For more on ghosts, visit: </span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt; font-weight: normal;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost</a></span></h1><h1><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt; font-weight: normal;">For an excellent article on why people believe in the paranormal, or in God, go to:<a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2008/10/24/why-we-believe.html"> http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2008/10/24/why-we-believe.html</a></span></h1><h1><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt; font-weight: normal;">For more on surveys about people who believe in ghosts, visit:</span></h1><h1><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt; font-weight: normal;"><a href="http://www.standard.net/topics/events/2010/10/28/do-you-believe-ghosts">http://www.standard.net/topics/events/2010/10/28/do-you-believe-ghosts</a></span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt;"></span></h1><h1><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt; font-weight: normal;"><a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/10/29/opinion/polls/main994766.shtml">http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/10/29/opinion/polls/main994766.shtml</a></span><span style="font-size: 11pt;"></span></h1><h1><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt; font-weight: normal;"><a href="http://www.gallup.com/poll/17275/onethird-americans-believe-dearly-may-departed.aspx">http://www.gallup.com/poll/17275/onethird-americans-believe-dearly-may-departed.aspx</a></span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt;"></span></h1><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt; font-weight: normal;"><a href="http://www.gallup.com/poll/17275/onethird-americans-believe-dearly-may-departed.aspx"></a></span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"><a href="http://www.gallup.com/poll/17275/onethird-americans-believe-dearly-may-departed.aspx"></a></span></b>Noel Griesehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01763989108086128553noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-580835276195974891.post-4867166309259428712011-10-06T10:51:00.000-07:002011-10-08T17:48:13.598-07:00I choose my path for the journey to the afterlife<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">In my last post, I discussed what most Americans believe about the afterlife. </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Like eighty-two percent of adult Americans, I believe in God. And like seventy percent or more of U.S. citizens over age eighteen, I believe in miracles, heaven, that Jesus is God or the Son of God, angels, the survival of the soul after death, and in the resurrection of Jesus. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">The beliefs just enumerated are for the most part Christian beliefs, so I, like the vast majority of Americans, choose to follow the Christian path to the afterlife.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">The specific Christian path I choose to the afterlife from among the more than 630 Christian denominations in the U.S. is Catholicism.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Why? Not because of consensual truth, although 1.2 billion citizens of the world have chosen Catholicism as their religion. It’s more because of being raised Catholic, because of a lifetime of study of the history of the religion, and because of various experiences I’ve had.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Am I absolutely sure Catholicism is the right path? Of course not. Any of the 22 paths I’ve already discussed - the major religions of the world, plus agnosticism and atheism - might be the right path. Perhaps a combination of two or more paths would be the right way to go. But I’m comfortable with the path I’ve chosen, and that’s the one I will follow. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">As the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">pater familia</i> of my family</span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">—</span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">the father of my family</span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">—</span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">I want to leave behind some of my thoughts about Catholicism for family members to think about. I’ll do that in small bursts, and hopefully record the most important thoughts before my time is up.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">I’m thoroughly familiar with all the mistakes the Catholic Church has made over the centuries. I know about the bad popes, the selling of indulgences, the silencing of Galileo, the Inquisition, the resistance of the church to translation of the Bible into English and other local languages, and right down to the present day, the church cover-up of pedophilia and other sexual abuses by a small minority of priests. Remember that the church is populated by humans who have failings and make mistakes. The humans who constitute the church ecclesia have had more than 20 centuries to make mistakes, and they’ve made plenty.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">But let me turn from the negative to the positive experiences that influenced my belief system over the years. Among the more significant:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"> (1) I was baptized a Catholic shortly after my birth. As Jesus Christ was baptized by John the Baptizer, so baptism is what initiates a Catholic into the religion. For most Catholics, it occurs a few weeks after birth, although it sometimes occurs later in life, especially for converts. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"> (2) I attended a Catholic grade school, Holy Name, in Kimberly, Wisconsin. That’s where I memorized the catechisms (questions and answers about the key beliefs and tenets of the faith).</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"> (3) In grade school, I became an altar server or acolyte in the days before Vatican II, when the liturgy was said in Latin and the priest faced the altar rather than the congregation. I most often served the 6:30 a.m. daily mass, meaning I got up around 5:30 a.m., dressed, stopped at the local Lamers Dairy for a bottle of milk, stopped at the Van Thull’s bakery for a roll, and then walked the rest of the way to the church. In those days, we fasted before taking communion (the eucharist) at mass, and the bottle of milk and roll were for breakfast after mass. What I most remember about this period of serving mass are the walks in the frigid Wisconsin mornings, snow crunching under my galoshes (rubber boots), and the ghostly quiet landscape lit by the moon and the stars. I also served at a number of functions other than the mass - benedictions, stations of the cross, funerals (requiem masses in Latin in those days), and group rosary recitations. I still have a fondness for religious services said in Latin, and for Latin hymns like the <i>Requiem Aeternam</i>.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"> (4) As a Boy Scout, I earned the highest award a Catholic scout can achieve, the <i>Ad Altare Dei</i>, which got me interested in liturgical symbolism.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"> (5) In grade school, riding to Appleton in a car driven by the father of one of my friends, in the days before seat belts and air bags, we were involved in an accident</span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">—</span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">the car rolled over, knocked over a gasoline pump at a gas station, and ended upside down on its roof. I have an intuition that my guardian angel (Catholics think everyone has one) kept me from emerging from the accident without a scratch. I suspect the same angel was there when I had some other close calls in my life.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"> (6) In my first year at the University of Wisconsin, I lived in an Opus Dei house where I could attend daily mass. After that, I moved into a single room in a boarding house just around the corner from St. Paul’s, the Catholic church on the University of Wisconsin campus. For the next three years, I ate my lunch and dinner meals at the student co-op in the basement of the church, where we all participated in preparing group meals as well as in enjoying the companionship. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"> (7) One of my major influences at the University of Wisconsin when I was working on my first degree (I eventually got three degrees from UW, Phi Beta Kappa, Phi Kappa Phi) was an English professor named Helen White. The main library at the University of Wisconsin is now named after her. She was one of America’s top Shakespearian scholars, but also wrote an award-winning biography of Francis of Assisi entitled <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Firebird of Assisi</i>. I’d written my first UW term paper on the Giotto frescoes of Francis of Assisi, and Dr. White’s classes got me interested in stigmatics, religious ecstatics, and ecstatic poets like John Donne. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"> (8) I suspect my guardian angel kept me out of harm’s way when I was serving on active duty overseas as a U.S. Army officer. One of my bunkmates in those days was a Jesuit chaplain named Fr. Aloysius McGonigal. I’m working as I write this blog post on a magazine article about him. He was killed in action in Hue, Vietnam, during the Tet Offensive, while giving comfort and last rites to the wounded and dying. He’s been nominated for the Medal of Honor.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"> (9) Over the years since, I’ve read and studied a great deal about religious history, and one of my hobbies has been photographing and studying religious stained glass. I’m especially fond of Tiffany and LaFarge glass, although I also admire much of the work of German masters. My favorite glass is at the French cathedrals of Mont St. Michel and Chartres. I read a lot about the historiography of Christianity - the history of how Christianity developed from Jewish and other religious traditions down to the present day.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"> (10) I’ve already mentioned Helen White, the University of Wisconsin Shakespearian scholar. Ever since I took a course she taught in the ecstatic poets, and got interested in her biography of Francis of Assisi, believed to be the first religious stigmatic (a stigmatic displays the same wounds as Jesus Christ at the crucifixion), I’d wanted to do a book on someone similar. When Mel Gibson brought out his “Passion of the Christ” movie, I knew immediately that he had relied heavily in scripting the film on the visions of a 19th century nun, ecstatic, stigmatic and inediac, Anne Catherine Emmerich (Anna Katharina Emmerich). So I immediately set to work on a 100-page introduction to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ</i>, an 1833 account of her visions of the passion and crucifixion set down by German folklore scholar Clemons Brentano. My version, which identifies 43 scenes in the Gibson movie based on Emmerich’s visions, was published it in 2005. The book was reviewed well by <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Publishers Weekly</i> and other outlets, and has sold well since, especially to filmscript and devotional literature courses taught at Catholic colleges and universities.</span></div>Noel Griesehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01763989108086128553noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-580835276195974891.post-73452231286812605032011-09-30T08:33:00.000-07:002011-10-07T05:38:17.829-07:00Choosing your path to the afterlife: Religion in America<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">In my last post, we looked at the popularity of twenty-two religions around the world. That’s twenty-two different paths to the afterlife to choose from for those who seek a religious path. If you’re an agnostic or atheist, that path is included in the twenty-two as well.</span> <br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">The most popular religions worldwide, as I noted in the earlier post, are Christianity (2.1 billion followers), Islam (1.5 billion), secular/agnostic/atheist (1.1 billion), Hinduism (900 million), Chinese traditional religion (394 million), and Buddhism (376 million). </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><br />
While Christianity has a slight edge in popularity worldwide, it is far and away the most popular religion in the United States.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Broad-brushing the results of recent surveys, the majority of Americans (seventy-six percent) identify themselves as Christians, with Protestant adherents accounting for fifty-one percent of the U.S. population and Catholics for twenty-five percent. About 3.9 percent to 5.5 percent of the adult U.S. population is affiliated with non-Christian religions including Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and so on. Another 15 percent of the adult population identifies as having no religious belief or no religious affiliation. About 5.2 percent responded to the surveys saying they did not know what religion they were, or more characteristically, refused to reply to a question about their private beliefs. </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">According to the American Religious Identification Survey, religious belief varies considerably across the country: fifty-nine percent of Americans living in Western states report a belief in God, but in the South (the "Bible Belt"), the figure is as high as eighty-six percent.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">A 2009 online Harris poll of 2,303 U.S. adults 18 and older found that "eighty-two percent of adult Americans believe in God,” the same number as in two earlier polls in 2005 and 2007. Another nine percent said they did not believe in God, and nine percent said that they were not sure. It further concluded, "Large majorities also believe in miracles (seventy-six percent), heaven (seventy-five percent), that Jesus is God or the Son of God (seventy-three percent), in angels (seventy-two percent), the survival of the soul after death (seventy-one percent), and in the resurrection of Jesus (seventy percent). Substantial minorities of adults, including many Christians, reported holding pagan or pre-Christian beliefs such as a belief in ghosts, astrology, witches, and reincarnation.<br />
<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" /> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">While more than seventy-five percent of Americans call themselves Christians, many of them are not regular churchgoers, an indication that their beliefs may be held rather shallowly. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">According to a poll by Gallup International, forty-one percent of Americans reported that they regularly attended religious services, compared to fifteen percent of French citizens, ten percent of UK citizens, and 7.5 percent of Australian citizens.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">However, the Gallup numbers are open to dispute. ReligiousTolerance.org states: "Church attendance data in the U.S. has been checked against actual values using two different techniques. The true figures show that only about twenty-one percent of Americans and ten percent of Canadians actually go to church one or more times a week. Many Americans and Canadians tell pollsters that they have gone to church even though they have not."</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">A 2006 online Harris Poll of 2,010 U.S. adults 18 and older found that only twenty-six percent of those surveyed attended religious services "every week or more often,” nine percent went "once or twice a month,” twenty-one percent went "a few times a year,” three percent went "once a year,” twenty-two percent went "less than once a year,” and eighteen percent said they never attend religious services. An identical survey by Harris in 2003 found that only twenty-six percent of those surveyed attended religious services "every week or more often,” eleven percent went "once or twice a month,” nineteen percent went "a few times a year,” four percent went "once a year,” sixteen percent went "less than once a year,” and twenty-five percent said they never attend religious services.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"></span></div>Noel Griesehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01763989108086128553noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-580835276195974891.post-68140535354330334532011-09-25T09:58:00.000-07:002011-09-25T12:21:15.741-07:00Why fear the afterlife?<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt;">One reason people fear dying is because they don’t know what awaits them on the other side.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt;">There are only three possible outcomes when we die:</span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt;">1. There is no afterlife - we simply cease to exist. No reason to fear this.</span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt;">2. A part of us - a soul, a spirit - lives on after we die. </span></div><ul><li><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Our soul lives on in a pleasant place such as heaven or regenerates (reincarnates) in a pleasant new existence. Nothing to fear here.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt;">We go to an afterlife in an unpleasant place such as hell or we reincarnate in an unpleasant form such as a worm or cockroach. If you have a fear of this, time to do something about it.</span></li>
</ul><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt;">A few words about truth. There are many forms of truth. To name just three:</span></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo3; text-indent: -.25in;"><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 12pt;">·<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span><u><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Scientific truth</span></u><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt;"> is the truth of the scientist</span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">―</span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt;">the physicist, the chemical engineer, the statistician. It’s the truth of evidence, the truth of experiments in which the outcomes repeat time after time, the truth of the formula. If you haven’t read Karl Pearson’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Grammar of Science</i>, written in the 1890s, you might wish to do so. It’s a great book that, among other things, gave us the chi-square test and Pearson product-moment coefficient of correlation</span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">―perhaps the most used statistical tests of significance today.</span></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo3; text-indent: -.25in;"><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 12pt;">·<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span><u><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Consensual truth</span></u><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt;"> is the truth of the group, where people for the most part agree or disagree about something. Consensual truth is the truth of the opinion poll.</span></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo3; text-indent: -.25in;"><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 12pt;">·<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span><u><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Revealed truth</span></u><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt;"> is truth that people accept as true because God revealed it through prophets or by other means. It’s the truth of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Torah</i>, the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Bible</i>, the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Qur’an, </i>and the<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> Vedas</i>. It’s the truth of miracles as well</span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">―</span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt;">the truth of Eucharistic miracles, Marian apparitions and the like.</span></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt;">What do these three kinds of truth have to say about an afterlife?</span></div><ul><li><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"></span></span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt;">There is no scientific proof for an afterlife. Scientists say that if there is a soul that lives on after we die, it probably resides in the brain, but no scientist has yet been able to find any proof for such a thing. If there is no scientific proof for the existence of a soul, then there can be no scientific proof for an individual afterlife.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"></span></span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt;">At the consensual level, a majority of people around the world believe in some form of life after death.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"></span></span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt;">At the revealed truth level, those who are active in one or another of the major religions of the world almost universally believe in an afterlife of some sort.</span></li>
</ul><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt;">I took a course in comparative religion as an undergraduate at the University of Wisconsin in the late 1950s. I’ve been interested in the subject ever since, and have devoted a good deal of my reading time to the subject. Now, as I approach my end of life, I know more than the average layman, but not as much as theological scholars who devote their entire adult lives to the study of comparative religious concepts.</span></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt;">The major current religions of the world are Christianity (about thirty-three percent of world population), Islam (about twenty-one percent), Hinduism (about fourteen percent), Buddhism (about six percent), and Sikhism and the Abrahamic group/Judaism (less than one percent each). Another twelve percent of the world population pursues Chinese traditional and primal-indigenous religions. The remaining 16 percent of the world is nonreligious</span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">―</span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt;">agnostic or atheistic. </span></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Here’s a listing that you can use to get more information on any of the major religions, along with the approximate number of followers of each religion:</span></div><ul><li><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><a href="http://www.adherents.com/Religions_By_Adherents.html#Christianity">Christianity</a>: 2.1 billion </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt;"> <a href="http://www.adherents.com/Religions_By_Adherents.html#Islam">Islam</a>: 1.5 billion</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><a href="http://www.adherents.com/Religions_By_Adherents.html#Nonreligious">Secular/Nonreligious/Agnostic/Atheist</a>: 1.1 billion</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><a href="http://www.adherents.com/Religions_By_Adherents.html#Hinduism">Hinduism</a>: 900 million</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><a href="http://www.adherents.com/Religions_By_Adherents.html#Chinese">Chinese traditional religion</a>: 394 million</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><a href="http://www.adherents.com/Religions_By_Adherents.html#Buddhism">Buddhism</a>: 376 million</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><a href="http://www.adherents.com/Religions_By_Adherents.html#primal">primal-indigenous</a>: 300 million</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><a href="http://www.adherents.com/Religions_By_Adherents.html#African">African Traditional & Diasporic</a>: 100 million</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><a href="http://www.adherents.com/Religions_By_Adherents.html#Sikhism">Sikhism</a>: 23 million</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><a href="http://www.adherents.com/largecom/Juche.html">Juche</a>: 19 million</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><a href="http://www.adherents.com/Religions_By_Adherents.html#Spiritism">Spiritism</a>: 15 million</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><a href="http://www.adherents.com/Religions_By_Adherents.html#Judaism">Judaism</a>: 14 million</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><a href="http://www.adherents.com/Religions_By_Adherents.html#Baha%27i">Baha'i</a>: 7 million</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><a href="http://www.adherents.com/Religions_By_Adherents.html#Jainism">Jainism</a>: 4.2 million</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><a href="http://www.adherents.com/Religions_By_Adherents.html#Shinto">Shinto</a>: 4 million</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><a href="http://www.adherents.com/Religions_By_Adherents.html#CaoDai">Cao Dai</a>: 4 million</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><a href="http://www.adherents.com/Religions_By_Adherents.html#Zoroastrianism">Zoroastrianism</a>: 2.6 million</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><a href="http://www.adherents.com/Religions_By_Adherents.html#Tenrikyo">Tenrikyo</a>: 2 million</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><a href="http://www.adherents.com/Religions_By_Adherents.html#Neo-Paganism">Neo-Paganism</a>: 1 million</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><a href="http://www.adherents.com/Religions_By_Adherents.html#Unitarian">Unitarian-Universalism</a>: 800 thousand</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><a href="http://www.adherents.com/Religions_By_Adherents.html#Rastafarianism">Rastafarianism</a>: 600 thousand</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><a href="http://www.adherents.com/Religions_By_Adherents.html#Scientology">Scientology</a>: 500 thousand</span></li>
</ul><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt;">If you wonder what the specific religions of the world say about the afterlife, you can get a beginner’s overview at <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afterlife">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afterlife</a>. But be skeptical of anything said in this 20-plus-page article. Far more goes unsaid than said, as you would expect from an article attempting to provide an overview of a subject that has fascinated scholars and laymen alike since the beginnings of recorded history. If you start your research here, don’t end here.</span></div>Noel Griesehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01763989108086128553noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-580835276195974891.post-56049986604279590472011-09-17T13:36:00.000-07:002011-09-20T17:46:24.295-07:00The 25 documents you need before you die<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt;">We are all going to die eventually. One of the reasons we fear dying is that we’ll leave behind those we love without providing as best we could for them.</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-outline-level: 1;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt;">If you want to die without fear, one of the things you need to do is get together all the information that those you love will need to carry on after you’re gone.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-outline-level: 1;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt;">It’s easy to procrastinate on preparing the necessary documents. Most of us say, “That can wait till I’m older, and closer to dying.” But remember - the inevitable might come sooner than you think - perhaps as early as today or tomorrow, in the form of an accident or unanticipated illness.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-outline-level: 1;"><br />
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt;">So, where do you begin?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-outline-level: 1;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt;">On July 2, 2011, Saabira Chaudhuri had an article in the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Wall Street Journal</i> entitled “The 25 Documents That You Need before You Die” that is an excellent place to start. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-outline-level: 1;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Here’s a link to the article. I hope you will read it! </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-outline-level: 1;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303627104576410234039258092.html">http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303627104576410234039258092.html</a></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
</div><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=580835276195974891" name="U502512552513JIG"></a><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">One of the most frequent errors made by people who die unexpectedly - or even those who die with knowledge that the end is imminent - is failure to list bank accounts and other places where money is squirreled away. According to the National Association of Unclaimed Property Administrators, state treasurers currently hold $32.9 billion in unclaimed bank accounts and other assets. Does your spouse or someone else close to you know how to find your various accounts, and have you made provision for that person to access your accounts? If you wish, you can search for your own unclaimed assets at </span><a href="http://www.missingmoney.com/" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">MissingMoney.com</span></a><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"> .</span><br />
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=580835276195974891" name="U502512552513RBH"></a><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Here are three other sites you will find helpful:</span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt;"></span></div><ul type="disc"><li class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; tab-stops: list .5in;"><a href="http://www.smartmoney.com/plan/insurance/how-to-manage-important-documents-1307549338283/" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt;">How to Manage Important Documents</span></a><b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt;"></span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; tab-stops: list .5in;"><a href="http://www.smartmoney.com/taxes/estate/how-to-write-a-will-1304667127685/" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt;">How to Write a Will</span></a><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt;"></span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; tab-stops: list .5in;"><a href="http://www.smartmoney.com/taxes/estate/how-to-choose-a-beneficiary-1304670957977/" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt;">How to Choose Beneficiaries</span></a><b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></b><b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: normal;"></span></b></li>
</ul>Noel Griesehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01763989108086128553noreply@blogger.com0