tayo na sa antipolo!

i know you've been the antipolo church already,

but anyway it was my first time last week,

and i enjoyed some of the elements of the church...

like the floral iron gates...

the big dome...


the gold chandeliers...

and the nice old doors...

yun lang!

bye-bye, limbo!

this is kinda old news, but anyway, i just heard about it yesterday and was quite intrigued...

didja know that in april of last year, the vatican pretty much put an end to the idea of "limbo"?  as per the church, limbo is where the souls of the unbaptized  babies go.  

because the church teaches that "baptism is the ordinary way of salvation", it then follows that unbaptized babies are not saved. 

but, after 3 years of mulling and writing, a 30-member International Theological Commissiona came up with a 41-page document entititled "The Hope of Salvation for Infants Who Die Without Being Baptized", it is now believed that the concept of limbo reflects an "unduly restrictive view of salvation." 

(ummmm..... ya..................)

current catholic teaching states that unbaptized infants are entrusted to God's mercy. this new document, though, abolishes limbo, by saying that "God can therefore give the grace of baptism without the sacrament being conferred, and this fact should particularly be recalled when the conferring of baptism would be impossible".

by saying all this though, it complicates the other key catholic dogmas... which leads the church to then say that putting an end to limbo does not deny that all salvation comes through Christ and in some way through the church, it said, but it requires a more careful understanding of how this may work.

and then more explanations are made for this "careful understanding". 

silly?  a li'l bit, i think.

read more about it here.

sanctuario del santo cristo

day five: sanctuario del santo cristo, san juan. this church was rebuilt several times after wars and fires, and the final church was erected in 1774. its quite a large church with very interesting interiors, not what you would expect from what it looks like outside. see for yourself....




people could actually walk up to the crucifix through a staircase at the back of the altar...


waiting for the sun to rise....

medjugorje

"The Vatican has authorized "severe cautionary and disciplinary measures" against a priest who served as spiritual director to the visionaries in Medjugorje, Bosnia-Herzegovina.

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has written to Bishop Ratko Peric of Mostar-Duvno, whose diocese covers Medjugorje, to inform him that they are investigating the case of Franciscan Father Tomislav Vlasic...

...for the diffusion of dubious doctrine, manipulation of consciences, suspicious mysticism, disobedience toward legitimately issued orders" and charges that he violated the Sixth Commandment...

...Father Vlasic was a central figure in promoting the apparitions at the unofficial shrine in Medjugorje.

In 1984 he wrote to Pope John Paul II to say that he was the one "who through divine providence guides the seers of Medjugorje...

Four years later -- after it was revealed that he fathered a child with a nun -- he moved to Parma, Italy, where he set up the coed Queen of Peace religious community dedicated to the Medjugorje apparitions...

...The Medjugorje phenomenon began June 25, 1981, when six children told a priest they had seen Mary on a hillside near their town. Since then, Mary is said to have appeared to the six more than 40,000 times and imparted hundreds of messages.

But three church commissions failed to find evidence to support their claims, and the bishops of the former Yugoslavia declared in 1991 that "it cannot be affirmed that these matters concern supernatural apparitions or revelations."

In 1985 Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, then prefect of the doctrinal congregation and now Pope Benedict XVI, banned official, diocesan or parish-sponsored pilgrimages to the shrine. However, individual Catholics are still free to visit and have a priest with them."

read the whole article here.

eenteresting...