Doomsayers Say Benedict Fits World End Prophecy

[DoYouEverWonder]

Thu Apr 28, 9:17 AM ET

ROME (Reuters) - Pope Benedict's ascent to the papacy took a conclave of 115 cardinals, four rounds of voting and followed a lifetime of service to the Vatican.

But ask Internet doomsayers eyeing a 12th century Catholic prophecy and they'll tell you it was all stitched up more than eight centuries ago and that judgment day is nigh.

The prophecy -- widely dismissed by scholars as a hoax -- is attributed to St. Malachy, an Irish archbishop recognized by members of the Church for his ability to read the future.

Benedict, believers say, fits the description of the second-to-last pope listed under the prophecy before the Last Judgement, when the bible says God separates the wicked from the righteous at the end of time.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/pope_prophecy_dc;_ylt=A9FJqYteAXJCoMwAfwOs0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA2bm5xNHVjBHNlYwNtcA--


Don't blame me. I don't write this stuff. I just post it in LBN.

[oblivious]

1. Better get meself one of them "The end is nigh" signs made up.

Gotta warn the people.

[BlueIris]

2. I have to confess, during my Iran is happening NOW

fit of paranoia last week, I read the infamous Prophecy of Malachy and it seriously wigged me out. Now that I've gotten some sleep, it's less wiggy. Still...go read that thing and ponder why Benedict XVI would pick this name knowing what the reaction would be from people who believe the "prophecy"? Actually, Catholic posters of DU, this has me sort of confused. Why would he do that?

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

4. This was discussed in Religion/Theology a while back

and some Catholic posters pointed out that the prophecy states that the second to last Pope would be from the Benedictine Order. The current pope is not of that order. But it still is creepy, imho, that he chose the name Benedict, for the very reason you state. It's close enough to the prophecy for many to say it has been fulfilled.

[sarcasmo]

10. Does this mean that more Religious whack jobs will be killing each other

over bad sermons?

[The Backlash Cometh]

11. More to the point, is it really destiny and fate, if religious zealots

are doing everything they can to fulfill the prophecy?

Wh

[Judi Lynn]

3. The world has already gone around the bend before, fearing the END....

I have heard that the U.S. had some problems in 1900. Here's a world-wide look:

It is often said that current excitement over the Second Coming, centering on the year 2000, had its parallel in a panic over the end of the world that swept through Christian Europe as the year 1000 approached. But did such panic actually occur? As Stephen Jay Gould makes clear in his wise little book Questioning the Millennium (1997), the answer is far from clear. There is now, he tells us, an enormous literature on the topic that spans the full range of opinion from the claim that Europe did indeed experience "panic terror" to the claim that nothing of the sort took place.

Gould cites Richard Erdoes' AD 1000: Living on the Brink of the Apocalypse (1988) as a recent defense of the panic terror school. A German now living in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Erdoes is the author of two previous books, The Sundance Principle and American Indian Myths. "On the last day of the year 999," Erdoes begins his history, ". . . the old Basilica of St. Peter's at Rome was thronged with a mass of weeping and trembling worshippers awaiting the end of the world."
(snip)

More recent moments of brilliance:

In Seoul, South Korea, in 1992, Lee Jang Rim, head of one of some 200 Protestant churches in that country, created nationwide hysteria by announcing that the rapture would take place on October 28, 1992. The prophecy was based on a vision that came to a 16-year-old boy. Twenty thousand Korean fundamentalists in South Korea, Los Angeles, and New York City took the prediction seriously. Hundreds quit jobs, left families, and had abortions to prepare for their trip to heaven. Rim's church paid for costly ads in the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times. They urged readers to prepare for their journey through the skies, and to refuse to allow 666 to be imprinted in bar code on their forehead or right hand.

Riot police, plainclothes officers, and reporters crowded outside Korean churches, flanked by fire engines, ambulances, and searchlights. Believers took the failure of the prophecy calmly, and there were no reported riots. Only sadness. In December 1992 Rim was arrested and sentenced to two years in prison for having bilked $4.4 million from his flock. He had invested the money in bonds that didn't mature until the following year!
(snip/...)

http://www.csicop.org/si/2000-01/gardner.html

[DoYouEverWonder]

5. But this is the first time

that we didn't need a god to destroy the world for us. We are doing a pretty good job on our own.

[Judi Lynn]

7. You've got THAT right, unfortunately! n/t

[Paul Dlugokencky]

8. Right

thanks to the "culture of life" crowd.



http://www.cafepress.com/kickindemocrats

[Dead_Parrot]

13. The End of the World ! (again)

There's a fun list at http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/rapture.html

The fact is that there is ALWAYS some con-artist in a robe, waving around portents, signs, and holy writ, claiming that the world is coming to an end and ofering to tell you what to do about it for only $19.95 (plus if you act now they'll throw in a free glow-in-the-dark plastic Jesus statue).

Now, if you really want to believe in these predictions, that's fine. This is a land of religious freedom and you are free to go hide in a cave and pull a rock in on top of you while you wait out the end of the world. And if you really want to,. you are free to turn over all your worldly goods to the guys in the funny robes and follow them off the edge of a cliff. But what you are NOT free to do is set fire to the planet the rest of us live on because you think this is going to win you an inside track to wings and a harp. That's selfish and rude.

Throughout history, every single idiot who bought into a prediction of the end of the world was made a total fool of. In worst cases, entire lives and even entire towns were wrecked by these con-artists. And the worst con-artists right now are those trying to get you to support wars in the Mideast on promises that it will bring about The Rapture and open up those pearly gates wide for you.

[magellan]

6. I'm tired of Fin de Siècle fanatics

Can't we pre-empt the cyclical hysteria and move on to the Roaring Twenties already?

[Paul Dlugokencky]

9. Sounds good...but without Prohibition, please!

[imenja]

12. They obviously haven't been watching Revelations

They've portrayed the Vatican as the source of evil, working to stop the
discovery of the Messiah.