Posts by aqwsed12345

119

What does the Catholic church think of JW?

by Halcon in

on a trip to rome a few years ago i asked my friend (who is roman and jw) what the catholic faith thinks of jw.

he simply stated that jw is tolerated by the church but that really not much thought is given to them.

is there an official stance on jw by the catholics?

aqwsed12345

The Catholic Church views Jehovah’s Witnesses (JW) as a religious movement that diverges significantly from historic Christianity, both doctrinally and ecclesiologically. While there may not be a single authoritative magisterial document specifically dedicated solely to Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Church’s general approach to such groups is consistent with her broader pastoral concern for all who have departed from, or never entered into, full communion with the Catholic faith. The Church does not label Jehovah’s Witnesses as Protestant in the traditional sense, because their theology is not a development from the Reformation, but rather a 19th-century innovation that departs sharply from both Catholic and classical Protestant teachings. Although it is an interesting question what we call "Protestant", it can also be interpreted as meaning that any self-proclaimed Christian is a Protestant who does not belong to any church that claims apostolic succession and holy tradition (Catholic, Orthodox, etc.) and believes in the 66-book biblical canon.

From a doctrinal standpoint, Jehovah’s Witnesses reject essential Christian beliefs, such as the Trinity, the divinity of Christ, the immortality of the soul, the bodily resurrection of Jesus, and the sacramental life of the Church. These teachings are not regarded by the Catholic Church as minor theological disagreements but as fundamental errors about the nature of God, Christ, and salvation. As such, the Catholic Church does not consider the Watchtower Society’s teachings to be part of authentic Christianity. Their interpretation of Scripture, which relies on their own New World Translation—a version widely criticized for theological bias—is another major point of concern, as is their rejection of Church Tradition, which Catholics hold to be inseparable from the proper understanding of God’s Word.

Nevertheless, the Church does not approach Jehovah’s Witnesses with hostility or ridicule. Rather, the Catholic attitude is one of respectful engagement, grounded in charity and truth. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church states (no. 818), even those communities that have separated from the Church can possess elements of truth and sanctification. In the case of Jehovah’s Witnesses, their moral seriousness, their dedication to evangelization, and their disciplined community life are often acknowledged. However, the Church also recognizes the spiritual harm caused by the Watchtower’s theological distortions and the psychological burdens sometimes experienced by former members.

Catholics are encouraged to respond to Jehovah’s Witnesses not with indifference, but with patient dialogue and firm understanding of the faith. In practical terms, the Church leaves pastoral decisions about how to address encounters with Jehovah’s Witnesses to local bishops, theologians, and apologists, many of whom have written extensively on how to defend the Catholic faith in these contexts. There are also converts from Jehovah’s Witness backgrounds who now help others make the journey into the fullness of the faith, offering resources that respectfully clarify misunderstandings and present the richness of Catholic doctrine.

In short, the Catholic Church does not ignore Jehovah’s Witnesses, nor does she treat them with hostility. While their theology is seen as gravely deficient and even dangerous to souls, the Church always seeks to engage such groups with truth, reason, and the hope of reconciliation. This is part of the broader mission to lead all people to the fullness of truth found in Christ and in the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church.

Why doesn’t the Catholic Church “take on” Jehovah’s Witnesses directly? From a Catholic perspective, the reason the Church hasn’t launched an official campaign or magisterial document explicitly refuting Jehovah’s Witnesses (JWs) isn’t due to fear or inability—but because the Church does not treat every loud voice on the religious landscape as if it were equally important. To use an analogy: imagine a world-class boxing champion being heckled by a loud amateur outside a bar. The champion doesn’t lace up his gloves to fight him. Why? Because the two aren't in the same league. Engaging him directly might give the impression that they are equals, or that the champion feels threatened—neither of which is true. This is precisely how the Catholic Church views Jehovah’s Witnesses: a noisy but theologically marginal group, whose teachings are already thoroughly answered in the broader scope of Catholic theology and Scripture. Engaging them in an official, top-level capacity might actually validate their self-perception as a persecuted minority doing battle with the "false Church." It would feed their internal narrative that they are the "faithful remnant" under siege from Satan’s system—which, ironically, includes all other Christians.

Why not publish an encyclical refuting them? Simple: it’s not needed. The theological errors of the Watchtower are already refuted in Catholic dogma, councils, and Scripture-based tradition. The Trinity, the divinity of Christ, the immortality of the soul, the existence of hell, and the visible, apostolic nature of the Church have all been taught and defended for two thousand years. The Church has answered more sophisticated heresies—Arianism, Sabellianism, Donatism—long before Jehovah’s Witnesses even existed. To single out the Watchtower would be like aiming a cannon at a soap bubble. It wouldn’t destroy the bubble—if anything, it would draw attention to it and allow them to claim they are a real threat to “Babylon the Great.”

Wouldn’t that help Catholics avoid being misled? It’s a fair question. But here’s the reality: today, in the digital age, any sincere Catholic has access to countless well-reasoned biblical and theological responses to Watchtower teachings. Catholic Answers, Trent Horn, Jimmy Akin, and dozens of reputable scholars have addressed their doctrines point by point. YouTube, podcasts, books, and online apologetics are overflowing with responses to every Watchtower claim. Moreover, in the modern West, people don’t join Jehovah’s Witnesses because of theology—they join because of emotional, social, or psychological needs. Many converts are drawn in by the community, the certainty, the structure. In that sense, the Watchtower offers a feeling of stability in a chaotic world. Most who “fall” into it aren’t convinced by Greek grammar or clever proof-texting—they're searching for belonging. And as many ex-Witnesses will tell you, they also leave not because of theological arguments, but because of human disappointment, control, and spiritual exhaustion.

Why doesn’t the Church “train the faithful” to debate them door-to-door? Because Catholic preaching is not designed to create amateur theologians who can argue syntax with passing strangers. A homily is not a Greek grammar class. The Church equips her faithful primarily through the sacraments, the creed, and lifelong formation in virtue and love. That's a different mission than training people to win debates on porches. Of course, apologetics has its place—and more Catholic laypeople should learn to defend their faith—but this is best done broadly: defending Christ’s divinity, the sacraments, the communion of saints, Scripture and Tradition—not by narrowly obsessing over every minor sect.

So are Jehovah’s Witnesses dangerous? They’re loud, persistent, and sometimes persuasive—especially to the poorly catechized. But from the Church’s point of view, the real dangers today are secularism, relativism, and religious apathy. These erode the soul far more pervasively than any group of well-dressed door-knockers. The truth is, the Church doesn’t revolve around the Watchtower. Nor does the Pope stay up at night worrying about what's being printed in Warwick. The Catholic Church has the dignity of silence when needed. We don’t dignify every attack with equal attention—especially not when the attacker is already showing signs of cultural decline and internal division.

Final Thought: The Jehovah’s Witness movement thrives on the idea that they are under siege. If the Church responded with a formal condemnation, it would be a PR gift to them. It would confirm their "persecution complex" and be paraded in their literature as proof that they are the true faith, “opposed by Satan’s church.” Instead, the Church chooses a more strategic approach: truth calmly taught, not shouted; dignity over spectacle; and confidence over anxiety. The real task for us is to live the truth joyfully, defend it charitably, and never confuse theological noise with spiritual authority.

Let the flea jump. It doesn’t mean the lion is bothered.

Some resources:

46

the pope has died

by stan livedeath in

most people on the planet have heard of the pope.. most people on the planet have never heard of the governing body..

aqwsed12345

@slimboyfat

Your interpretation of Franz Dünzl’s A Brief History of the Doctrine of the Trinity as merely a candid exposé of political and personal factors overriding theological truth profoundly misrepresents both Dünzl’s own conclusions and the nature of orthodox Trinitarian theology as historically and theologically received. Indeed, Dünzl is forthright about the complexity of doctrinal development, but rather than discrediting orthodoxy, he presents it as the fruit of historical providence — not political manipulation.

Dünzl never denies the role that politics or personalities played in the fourth-century Trinitarian controversies, but he explicitly rejects the reduction of doctrinal development to mere political expediency. He states that “the history of revelation is not played out untouched by external influence… [but] that is not a defect but a touchstone of the monotheistic view of the world”. Politics and historical contingencies, in Dünzl’s framework, are the arena in which divine providence operates, not an alternative to it. This is not triumphalism, but a recognition that God works through the vicissitudes of history, even through flawed human agents.

Your implication that Dünzl views Nicene orthodoxy as a “late invention” or as merely a Cappadocian theological innovation is likewise inaccurate. Dünzl carefully distinguishes between the development of terminology and the continuity of faith. The Cappadocian contribution was to clarify and stabilize the vocabulary (not invent the dogma), resolving semantic ambiguities between Greek terms such as ousia and hypostasis. Far from seeing this as a new doctrine, Dünzl portrays it as the culmination of reflection on revelation already received in Scripture and confessed in the life of the Church from the beginning. The Cappadocians did not “replace” an angelic or sub-divine view of Christ; they brought coherence and conceptual rigor to what the Church had always believed about the Son’s divinity.

Moreover, Dünzl underscores that the Cappadocian Fathers operated from the principle of apophatic theology — that God’s essence is beyond comprehension and human language cannot exhaustively define divine substance. This stands in stark contrast to the Arian and Anomoean confidence in rational categories that sought to locate divine identity in terms such as “unbegottenness.” For the Cappadocians, the unity of the divine substance and the distinct persons of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are truths received from Scripture and liturgical confession, not philosophical deduction.

It is also significant that Dünzl defends the ontological equality of the divine persons and affirms the non-creaturely status of the Son and Spirit. He explicitly rejects any ontological subordination within the Trinity, stating that “there is no rank in the infinite” and that the divine causality within the Godhead is eternal and not temporal. This theological position decisively severs any alignment with Arian or semi-Arian interpretations.

In sum, Dünzl’s work — far from offering ammunition for an Arian critique of Trinitarian orthodoxy — provides a scholarly and theological affirmation of the Church’s articulation of the Trinity as a mystery of divine self-revelation. He does not depict the development of doctrine as an abandonment of biblical truth but as a faithful engagement with it under the guidance of the Holy Spirit amid historical complexity. To misuse his work as a polemic against the Trinity is to twist both his intention and the substance of his historical-theological analysis.

13

JULY 2025 STUDY WT How to Give Advice

by blondie in

jw
friends

i scanned this article and i saw a theme throughout it.

when info like this shows up in the study wt, you can be sure the elders are doing it wrong and the wts hits directly on what it is.

older elders do it wrong and train by word and action the newer elders to do it wrong.

aqwsed12345

@Rattigan350

From Wikipedia:

From 1931, when the name "Jehovah's witnesses" was adopted, Watch Tower Society publications maintained the view of Society founder Charles Taze Russell that the reference to abstaining from the eating of blood in the Apostolic Decree of Acts 15:19–29 was a "suggestion" to be given to Gentile converts.[1][2] Watch Tower publications during the presidency of Joseph Franklin Rutherford commended the commercial and emergency uses of blood.[3][4] A 1925 issue of The Golden Age commended a man for donating blood 45 times without payment.[5] In 1927, The Watchtower noted, without elaboration, that in Genesis 9, God decreed that Noah and his offspring "must not eat the blood, because the life is in the blood".[6] In 1940, Consolation magazine reported on a woman who accidentally shot herself with a revolver in her heart and survived a major surgical procedure during which an attending physician donated a quart of his own blood for transfusion.[6]

"The Apostolic Council". Zion's Watch Tower. November 15, 1892. It will be noticed that nothing is said about keeping the ten commandments, nor any part of the Jewish law. It was evidently taken for granted that having received the spirit of Christ the new law of love would be a general regulation for them. The things mentioned were merely to guard against stumbling themselves or becoming stumbling blocks to others.
"Settling Doctrinal Differences". The Watchtower. April 15, 1909. pp. 116–117. These prohibitions had never come to the Gentiles, because they had never been under the Law Covenant; but so deeply rooted were the Jewish ideas on this subject that it was necessary to the peace of the Church that the Gentiles should observe this matter also ... these items thus superadded to the Law of Love should be observed by all spiritual Israelites as representing the Divine will.
"Manufacturing and Mining". The Golden Age. October 15, 1919. p. 47. A serious difficulty which has been overcome in the use of plywood for airplanes construction was the making from blood of a glue that will stand any quantity of moisture without letting go…. In this plywood, stronger than steel, we have an illustration of how the Lord can take characters, weak in themselves, and surround them with such influence and so fortify them by his promises as to make them "mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds" of error and sin.
"Here and There Over the Planet". The Golden Age. December 17, 1924. p. 163. Fearing the death of the child, the woman deliberately cut her arms and breast with glass from the windshield to provide blood to keep the child alive during the cold nights. The child will recover, but the heroine is expected to die.
"Flotsam and Jetsam". The Golden Age. July 29, 1925. p. 683.
"One Reason for God's Vengeance". The Watchtower. December 15, 1927. p. 371.
"Surgery". Consolation. December 25, 1940. p. 19. one of the attending physicians in the great emergency gave a quart of his own blood for transfusion, and today the woman lives and smiles gaily over what happened to her in the busiest 23 minutes of her life.

46

the pope has died

by stan livedeath in

most people on the planet have heard of the pope.. most people on the planet have never heard of the governing body..

aqwsed12345

@Duran

The objection misunderstands both the purpose of Christ’s tears at Lazarus’s tomb and the meaning of “sleep” as applied to death in biblical language. It assumes that if Christ truly believed Lazarus was merely “unconscious,” there would be no cause for emotion. But this is a reductive, almost mechanical understanding of both the Incarnation and of grief itself. Jesus, fully divine yet fully human, experiences sorrow not because He is confused or misinformed, but because He is compassionate. He is moved not by theological uncertainty, but by love — a perfect love that does not negate knowledge but exists in harmony with it. The passage says He was “troubled” and that He “groaned within Himself” not because He questioned the reality of resurrection, but because He entered fully into the suffering of those around Him. Christ wept because those He loved were weeping. To suggest that He cried only because of their ignorance about what was about to happen is to reduce His empathy to mere performance or condescension. But the text makes clear: He loved Lazarus. He loved Mary. He loved Martha. And love mourns, even when it hopes.

As for the term “fallen asleep,” it is a phenomenological description of the body and a metaphor — one common in both Scripture and Second Temple Jewish literature — used to describe death from the perspective of the living. It does not imply unconsciousness in a modern or materialist sense, and certainly not annihilation. Paul, for instance, uses “sleep” to describe death in 1 Thessalonians 4, but goes on to affirm that the dead in Christ will rise — not from non-existence, but from death, which is temporary precisely because of the resurrection. Moreover, Paul also says in Philippians 1:23 that he “desires to depart and be with Christ,” which is “far better.” How can that be squared with the idea of soul sleep or unconscious oblivion? It cannot. Nor can 2 Corinthians 5:8, where Paul says he would “prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord.” This implies immediate fellowship — not suspended animation.

The attempt to read John 11 through an annihilationist lens also ignores Christ’s own words in John 11:26: “Everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.” This is not a promise of mere future resurrection but a present participation in life — eternal life — that begins even now and continues, uninterrupted, through physical death. The Catholic Church teaches that while the body dies, the soul lives on. The saints are not inert, unconscious corpses waiting for reassembly. They are alive in Christ, as He Himself said: “He is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for to Him all are alive” (Luke 20:38). That is why Moses and Elijah appear and speak with Christ at the Transfiguration. That is why the souls under the altar in Revelation cry out with longing for justice. And that is why Jesus can say to the good thief, “Today you will be with me in Paradise” — because Paradise was then the abode of the righteous dead, awaiting redemption, and Christ’s descent into Sheol (not the grave, but the realm of the dead) was the prelude to His harrowing of it, His liberation of the captives.

The claim that “sleep” = “unconsciousness” as an ontological state is not only exegetically shallow but collapses in the face of the full biblical witness. “Sleep” as a metaphor allows for the continuation of personal identity, memory, and even intercession — as the parable of Lazarus and the rich man shows, where both characters speak, see, and remember. If that is only a parable, then it must still communicate something true about reality — and it does: that the soul does not cease.

So, yes, Jesus wept. Not out of ignorance. Not because He thought Lazarus was gone forever. But because love mourns, and God incarnate chose not only to redeem us from death, but to feel its sting alongside us. That is the scandal and the beauty of the Cross — not that Christ avoided death, but that He embraced its full weight. And yet even in weeping, He declared: “I am the resurrection and the life.”

You may claim to know what Jesus felt. But we have His words. And they say otherwise.

46

the pope has died

by stan livedeath in

most people on the planet have heard of the pope.. most people on the planet have never heard of the governing body..

aqwsed12345

The notion that Catholic doctrine was rigidly fixed by the fourth century and is merely the product of early political machinations reflects a reductionist historiography often found in Enlightenment-era polemics rather than contemporary ecclesiology. While it is true that ecumenical councils such as Nicaea (325) and Constantinople (381) were influenced by political contexts—what council in human history is free of context?—the doctrine of the Trinity did not originate there. It was defined more precisely in response to heretical distortions, such as Arianism, but its roots are profoundly biblical and already articulated in the writings of the ante-Nicene Fathers, such as Tertullian, Origen, and Irenaeus. The development of doctrine in Catholicism is not the arbitrary imposition of politics onto theology, but the organic unfolding of apostolic faith under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. This understanding is most classically expressed by John Henry Newman in his Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, where he argues persuasively that true doctrinal development, unlike innovation, preserves the essential identity of the original deposit of faith.

The comparison between Fred Franz and the early Church Fathers or Catholic theologians falters precisely here. Franz was not merely a voice within a larger interpretive tradition; he was part of a governing body whose teachings were not open to peer review or conciliar correction. There was no ecumenical or doctrinal process of discernment through which the 1975 prediction, or other eschatological expectations, could be tested against the faith once delivered to the saints (Jude 3). In Catholicism, even a pope is subject to the faith—non est supra Verbum Dei. If a pope were to teach something contrary to Scripture and Tradition, he could be resisted and his teaching clarified or corrected, as history indeed shows (e.g., Honorius I and the Sixth Ecumenical Council). The magisterium is a servus Verbi, not its originator.

Moreover, the comments about Rutherford’s use of the divine name “Jehovah” and its adoption as the organization's identifier highlight something quite telling: the centrality of idiosyncratic decision-making in shaping core Witness identity. Whether or not Franz was the “ghostwriter” is immaterial to the broader ecclesiological critique. The issue is not literary authorship but the absence of a theological framework that safeguards against the elevation of private judgment to dogmatic authority. Catholicism, by contrast, insists on the regula fidei—faith as received, not fabricated. It guards against precisely the kind of theological volatility seen in the multiple reconfigurations of Watch Tower eschatology and identity from Russell through Rutherford to Franz.

Regarding your concern that AI responses are shaped by the prompt, this is undoubtedly true. However, this observation cuts both ways. A prompt inviting a Catholic refutation will naturally yield a Catholic response, just as a prompt from a Unitarian, Muslim, or Jehovah’s Witness perspective would shape the response accordingly. The difference lies in the intellectual integrity of the argument and its fidelity to historical and theological sources, not in whether it affirms the user’s priors.

Ultimately, the issue is not whether human beings shape religious institutions—of course they do. The question is how this shaping occurs, and whether the institution has internal mechanisms to prevent the solidification of error. Catholicism, for all its failures, has a structure of doctrinal accountability rooted not in personality or institutional convenience, but in apostolic succession and ecclesial discernment. It does not place eschatology at the mercy of speculative arithmetic or organizational fiat. The enduring legacy of figures like Augustine and Aquinas stands in marked contrast to the shifting doctrinal sands of successive Watchtower administrations, where corrections are often presented as "new light" rather than the honest acknowledgment of past theological missteps.

46

the pope has died

by stan livedeath in

most people on the planet have heard of the pope.. most people on the planet have never heard of the governing body..

aqwsed12345

Fred Franz was undoubtedly a central figure in the evolution of JW theology and identity, especially in shaping its literature and doctrinal positions. His role in the promotion of the NWT, the emphasis on the name "Jehovah," and the eschatological speculations surrounding 1975, mark him as a pivotal architect of the Witnesses’ 20th-century identity. Yet the very admission that he could have been "hauled before a committee" had he not been a member of the Governing Body betrays a key institutional weakness: the selective application of discipline based on status rather than doctrine. In contrast, the Catholic Church, while acknowledging that human weakness affects all ecclesiastical structures, operates under a Magisterium that is fundamentally rooted not in individual charisma but in apostolic succession and conciliar authority. No pope or bishop is above the deposit of faith; their teachings are judged by their continuity with Sacred Scripture and Tradition—not by institutional immunity.

The claim that Catholicism "replaces the Bible with the fathers" reflects a common misunderstanding of Catholic hermeneutics. The Church does not substitute the Bible with patristic writings but reads Scripture in the living context of the Church—where the Fathers, the liturgy, and the magisterial teaching serve as interpretive guides rather than replacements. It is this living Tradition, not individual speculation, that guards against the kind of doctrinal improvisation that enabled the 1975 debacle to gain traction within the JW community. The Catholic Church would never hinge its eschatology on a date calculated by private interpretation. As Saint Augustine warned centuries ago, such date-setting is presumptuous and spiritually dangerous.

Moreover, the contrast between Pope Francis and Franz is misleading. The pope's teachings are public, voluminous, and subject to intense theological scrutiny. Allegations of "heresy" among Catholic theologians are debated within an open, critical, and historically conscious theological tradition. Any serious claim of heterodoxy must be evaluated in light of official Church teaching and not the opinions of dissidents, whether from the right or the left. In Franz’s case, however, the doctrinal errors were not peripheral or disputed interpretations but became organizational orthodoxy—leading to widespread disillusionment when the predictions failed.

Catholicism does not pretend to be exempt from human failure, and history bears witness to corruption and reform. But its doctrinal framework, centered on Christ, Scripture, and apostolic tradition, is inherently stable and accountable in a way that JWs’ theocratic structure, governed by an anonymous and unaccountable Governing Body, is not. The idea that “God uses even flawed leaders” is, in the Catholic worldview, true in the providential sense—but this does not absolve the need for ecclesial structure, theological rigor, or repentance when error is proclaimed from positions of authority.

The legacy of Fred Franz illustrates the peril of elevating personal doctrinal creativity over ecclesial continuity. The Catholic Church, for all its human complexity, has withstood the test of centuries precisely because it is not built on the shifting interpretations of a single generation or governing board. The Church’s magisterium, unlike the Watchtower’s Governing Body, is not a self-appointed interpretive monopoly but a servant of the Word, tasked with faithfully transmitting what has been handed down. It is here, not in novelty or esoteric typology, that true doctrinal security lies.

46

the pope has died

by stan livedeath in

most people on the planet have heard of the pope.. most people on the planet have never heard of the governing body..

aqwsed12345

@Duran

You wear your scorn like a badge of honor, and yet it betrays you. You masquerade as some disillusioned prophet above all religion, but your rhetoric reeks of something older, smaller, and far more predictable: bitterness dressed up as boldness, cruelty packaged as clarity, and a confused theology you inherited and never transcended. You say you're not mocking the Pope, not mocking the dead, not mocking grief — and yet your words twist and turn with a smug satisfaction that speaks for itself. You can’t hide behind semantic gymnastics. Your shirt idea, your tone, your selective outrage — they don’t reveal some daring insight. They reveal a man sneering at sorrow while calling it “truth.”

You claim you “embrace death.” No, you trivialize it. There’s a difference between hope and mockery, between eternal perspective and cheap provocation. The shirt comment wasn’t a theological inquiry; it was an emotional grenade — lobbed at Catholics because you despise not only their Church but their very right to mourn. You didn’t ask, “Why do Catholics mourn if they believe in heaven?” You laughed, smirked, and prepared your T-shirt punchline in a grotesque attempt to paint yourself as profound. But it wasn’t profound — it was petty. And now, caught in the backlash of your own tastelessness, you’re scrambling to rewrite the narrative. You weren’t mocking? Please. Every word drips with condescension, not conviction.

You’re fixated on the false dichotomy: if someone believes in heaven, mourning is hypocrisy. What nonsense. Christ Himself, who knew better than anyone the reality of resurrection, wept at the tomb of Lazarus (John 11:35). Was Jesus confused? Emotionally inconsistent? Or are you just unable to grasp that love still aches even when hope endures? Mourning is not unbelief. It is the soul’s cry in the space between time and eternity. And to weaponize that moment with sarcasm and mockery isn’t spiritual clarity — it’s spiritual callousness.

Then you ask why Pope Francis didn’t say, “Don’t mourn me.” That’s not a serious question. It’s a snide jab, rooted in your inability to comprehend Catholic theology or human dignity. A funeral is not “wasting money” — it’s honoring a life, a soul, a body that was fearfully and wonderfully made. We are not Gnostics who discard the body like trash. We believe in the resurrection of the flesh — that the same body will rise again. Cremation, burial, vigils, rites — they all testify to the Christian hope that death does not have the final word. What you see as pomp, we see as proclamation: “I believe in the resurrection of the body and life everlasting.”

And your jab at “Karol watching with Jorge” as some kind of postmortem vanity contest? That’s not clever. That’s cheap. It doesn’t even rise to the level of satire. It’s the kind of adolescent snark you’d expect in a YouTube comment section, not from someone claiming to represent truth.

You quote Revelation like it’s your personal sword, yet you mutilate the text through Watchtower-style atomization — yanking verses out of context, flattening apocalyptic literature into literal checklists, as though the Book of Revelation is a procedural manual for judging popes. Your entire theology is a patchwork of proof-texts and paranoia. You reject the papacy, the communion of saints, the visible Church — and yet you presume to speak with authority about the resurrection, the elect, and the eschaton. What is your authority? Who sent you? Where is your Church? Christ never promised private visions to anonymous internet critics. He built a Church — a visible, historical, apostolic Church (Matthew 16:18) — and whether you admit it or not, that Church still stands, and you are raging against it in vain.

Your theology of the soul and death is a pale imitation of ancient errors. Ecclesiastes 9:5 doesn’t mean what you think it means. It’s poetic wisdom literature, not a treatise on the afterlife. The same book says, “Better is a live dog than a dead lion” — shall we build our entire eschatology on that too? You cite Genesis and Luke like they collapse into your materialist view of the soul, yet ignore the very passages that obliterate your claims. Did you read Luke 23:43? “Today you will be with me in Paradise.” Or Philippians 1:23, where Paul desires “to depart and be with Christ”? Or 2 Corinthians 5:8 — “to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord”? Your theology can’t handle these. So you dodge, dilute, or dismiss.

You demand to know if Jorge is thinking, feeling, remembering — as if you could comprehend the mystery of glorification or reduce heaven to your checklist. Are the saints disembodied? Yes — for now. Are they conscious? Absolutely. The Transfiguration wasn’t Jesus talking to corpses. The souls under the altar in Revelation speak and cry out. The rich man in Luke 16 sees, feels, pleads. These aren’t poetic illusions — they’re divine glimpses into a reality you mock because it doesn’t fit your framework. You scoff at the very hope that gives the martyrs their courage.

You ask whether saints in heaven think, feel, remember, and speak—and you assume the answer must be no, because “dead people” can’t do these things. But you’ve already made your first and fatal mistake: you confuse the death of the body with the extinction of the person. This is pure materialism with religious makeup—a reheated Watchtower doctrine dressed up in biblical citations taken out of context. The Catholic Church, in fidelity to Scripture and the earliest Christian witness, utterly rejects this annihilationist myth.

You demand to know if the saints are “alive” in heaven. The answer is a resounding yes—just as Jesus Himself says: “God is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for to Him all are alive” (Luke 20:38). That includes Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and yes—every saint and martyr who has departed this life in friendship with God. Your appeal to Ecclesiastes 9:5 falls flat, because it reflects the limited Old Covenant understanding of death before the full revelation of the afterlife in Christ. The progressive unfolding of Scripture means that isolated Old Testament verses must be interpreted in light of the New, not weaponized against it.

You try to bury Revelation 6 under speculation and chronology games, as if this vision of the martyrs “under the altar” crying out to God isn’t a clear affirmation of their conscious existence. They speak, they remember, they desire justice. That’s not poetic corpse-language—it’s a vivid depiction of the souls of the righteous in heaven before the resurrection. They are already “with Christ,” as Paul confidently expected to be when he said, “I desire to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better” (Phil 1:23). You ignore this verse. You ignore 2 Corinthians 5:8, where Paul says he would “prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord.” The disembodied soul is with Christ—not extinguished, not unconscious.

You obsess over Revelation 20 and try to reduce the “first resurrection” to a hyperliteral, future-only event that excludes anyone not martyred by the Beast. But this is flat-footed exegesis. The Church Fathers understood the “first resurrection” in multiple senses—baptism, martyrdom, and the entrance of the soul into glory before the bodily resurrection. Your framework is artificial, arbitrary, and completely ignores how symbolic apocalyptic literature functions.

And your mocking of Catholic saints and popes is as misplaced as it is bitter. You demand to know whether the popes are “in heaven” and whether they’re thinking or feeling. But you conveniently forget that Christ’s mercy is not restricted to those who suffer martyrdom under some 8th king. Revelation is not a checklist for Watchtower-style gatekeeping—it is a vision of God’s ultimate triumph through the Lamb who was slain. Your entire argument collapses when you realize that the Church never taught what you pretend to refute. Martyrdom is one way into glory. So is dying in sanctifying grace. You dismiss the entire sacramental economy of Christ and then pretend we are the ones inventing doctrines.

Then there’s the grotesque twisting of Genesis and Luke to prove your annihilationist thesis. Rachel breathes her last and dies. Of course. So did Jesus. But death in the flesh is not the end of the soul. Christ’s own words to the penitent thief—"Today you will be with me in paradise"—demolish your position. And don’t pretend that "today" just means "I’m saying this now." That’s a pathetic dodge, and you know it. Jesus didn’t go to Gehenna; He descended to Sheol, Hades—not the grave, but the realm of the dead, where the righteous awaited redemption. That’s why 1 Peter 3:19 says He preached to the spirits in prison. That’s why Ephesians 4 says He descended into “the lower parts of the earth” before ascending. He harrowed hell—not the hell of the damned, but the Limbus Patrum, Abraham’s Bosom, where the faithful of the Old Covenant waited for the gates of heaven to open.

And yes, “He led captivity captive” (Eph 4:8). He brought the righteous into heaven—bodyless souls, awaiting the resurrection. Paradise is now heaven. But before Christ’s victory, it was the resting place of the just. So when you ask, “Do the saints think, feel, remember, and speak?”—the answer is yes, because they are alive in Christ. As Jesus said: “Everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die” (John 11:26).

You’ve exchanged the glory of the Gospel for a religion of silence and sleep. You treat the soul as an engine that shuts down at death rather than a spirit that returns to God (Ecclesiastes 12:7). You reduce the promise of eternal life to a kind of suspended animation, pretending that this fits the full witness of Scripture. But Scripture itself says otherwise.

You’re not following Christ. You’re following the leftovers of a failed apocalyptic sect that taught 1914 as Gospel and couldn’t decide if the anointed were in heaven or asleep. And now you recycle its ruins into a new theology of oblivion, and call it “biblical.”

It’s not. It’s impoverished. And it’s wrong.

You sneer at the papacy, rattling off death dates like they disprove something — as if the mortality of popes invalidates their office. So what? Even Peter died. So did Paul. So did every apostle except John. Are they disqualified too? No — they are glorified. That’s the scandal of your theology: you believe in annihilation, in soul sleep, in some cold void where the saints are mute and the Church is dead. But the Catholic Church, despite all the hatred hurled at her, stands and sings: “I believe in the resurrection of the body and the life of the world to come.”

Your vision is small, cold, dead. Ours is living, full, and cosmic. You mock our mourning because you cannot understand our hope. You dismiss the papacy because you fear the Church Christ founded. You toss out Scripture when it rebukes you and cling to it when it suits your polemic. You quote the Word of God while rejecting the Body of Christ.

And now, when confronted, you call names. You mock grief. You redefine insults as inquiries. But we see through it. All of it.

You call the Bible your weapon. But the Word is not a tool of contempt — it is a sword of the Spirit, which cuts the heart and brings life. You wield it like Cain with a stone — not to proclaim truth, but to bludgeon brothers.

You’re not defending truth. You’re attacking love.

You’re not a prophet. You’re a parody.

And until you learn that truth without charity is a lie in disguise, and that holiness without love is just hatred in robes, you will remain trapped in the very darkness you claim to condemn.

The light has come into the world. But you have shut your eyes — and then laugh at those who weep.

Christ wept.

And that tells me more about who He is — and who you are not — than anything you’ve written.

46

the pope has died

by stan livedeath in

most people on the planet have heard of the pope.. most people on the planet have never heard of the governing body..

aqwsed12345

@Duran

Your message is a sad display of precisely the kind of arrogant, crude, and confused rhetoric that exposes the spiritual poverty of your worldview. You dismiss not only Catholicism but every form of religion, then hypocritically wield the Bible like a weapon — as if you were its sole, self-appointed guardian — all while spewing vulgarities, mocking the dead, and congratulating yourself for insulting people who mourn. That’s not biblical authority. That’s blasphemous pride.

Let’s cut through the fog: you claim this is a space “not for Catholics,” as if truth must retreat before the whims of a comment section. You believe you’re clever for using Jehovah’s Witness materials against the Governing Body — and you expect applause for that? All you’ve done is exchange one form of self-righteousness for another. The bitterness, the vulgarity, and the cold-hearted glee you display isn’t freedom from religion — it’s just a different kind of bondage. You didn’t walk away from authoritarian religion into truth; you just picked up a different sledgehammer to keep swinging at people who don’t conform to your bitter creed. In fact, your theology is 98% the same as the JWs, your break from the GB is roughly like Rolf Furuli's. But professing JW theology without GB is not a real step.

So what is your creed, exactly? You say you “believe the Bible.” So do Catholics — we canonized it, preserved it, copied it, translated it, and proclaimed it for two millennia before your ideology ever existed. But unlike you, we don’t treat the Bible as a bludgeon for mocking the dead or a pretext for laughing at grief. The Bible isn’t a sword you wield to prove how smart you are. It is the Word of God — living, reverent, and holy. And you quote it like a man spitting on an altar, then wonder why people recoil. If you were truly critical of the GB, you would have already switched to some scholarly translation instead of the NWT a long time ago, for example I recommended NRSVue to you a long time ago (not even is it not Catholic one), instead you use the NWT's falsifications to support your JW theological bias. The only useful thing would be to use KIT against the NWT.

You think quoting 1 John 4:1 or Acts 17:11 somehow validates your crude mockery? Newsflash: the Bereans searched the Scriptures to seek Christ, not to ridicule those who grieve the death of a man who devoted his life to Him. Your attempt to twist the Word of God into a justification for your contempt is exactly the kind of “false inspired statement” the Apostle warns about.

You say, “If one believes the Bible, then that one's beliefs should be from the Bible.” And yet your beliefs — sneering mockery, public gloating over a man’s death, vulgar language, and theological incoherence — come not from the Bible but from your own wounded pride and unresolved rage. Where in Scripture does it tell you to laugh at death, to curse those who mourn, to spit on the dignity of another human being? Christ wept at the tomb of Lazarus — does that make Him “foolish” in your eyes too?

Your comparison about your father only shows your shallow understanding of Christian mourning. Mourning is not a denial of life after death — it’s the human expression of love in the face of loss. It’s the soul crying out between the already and the not yet, between faith in the resurrection and the pain of separation. If your father were truly standing behind you, risen in glory, no one would mourn — but that’s not how the world works, and it’s not how death works. We mourn because we love, and because death — though defeated — still wounds. The victory is certain, but we still bleed in its wake. That’s what it means to be human. You mock that grief as if it were a weakness. But in truth, it's your heart that has grown callous.

You denounce Pope Francis as a “ridiculous man in a white dress.” It’s hard to take seriously the theological musings of someone whose critique amounts to the spiritual equivalent of a playground insult. You may hate the papacy — many before you have tried — but even your hatred must bow to history: the pope occupies an office founded by Christ Himself in Matthew 16:18. Your mockery doesn’t refute that reality; it merely exposes your inability to grapple with it.

The institution of the papacy is the most tangible evidence in existence today that Christ was a true teacher, or indeed that He ever existed. The fact that the papacy has survived for two thousand years is the fulfillment of the prophecy of Matthew 16:18, for if the papacy ceased to exist, Christ would have been but one of so many charlatans, false prophets, and deceivers in history.

You claim to reject all religion — but what you really reject is any authority outside your own opinion. That’s not enlightenment. That’s narcissism wrapped in pseudo-biblical posturing. Your contempt for Catholic belief is not based in truth; it’s rooted in resentment. You don’t just challenge dogma — you revel in cruelty. And that has nothing to do with Christ.

You laugh and say “LOL” at the beginning of your response. That’s your legacy: laughter at sorrow, mockery of faith, vulgarity in place of reverence. And in the end, that laugh is hollow. Because it is not built on truth, or love, or hope — but on the fragile scaffolding of your own rage.

You don’t need a better argument.

You need a new heart.

Because no matter how many verses you can quote or how many people you think you’ve “owned” online, none of it will save you from the emptiness that comes from rejecting not just religion, but charity, decency, and grace.

You claim you’re “free.” But your hatred has made you a slave.

And Christ came to set slaves free — even you.

You’ve read the Bible. Now try listening to it.

46

the pope has died

by stan livedeath in

most people on the planet have heard of the pope.. most people on the planet have never heard of the governing body..

aqwsed12345

@Duran

Your condescending mockery masquerading as “biblical insight” is neither clever nor righteous — it’s a car crash of arrogance, theological confusion, and shallow provocation wrapped in a cloak of self-importance. So let’s pull back the curtain on your smug performance and expose the intellectual and spiritual fraud behind it. You say you’re mocking not the Pope, but those who mourn him. That’s a distinction without a difference. You imagine your shirt would cleverly expose “inconsistencies” in belief — but in reality, all it exposes is your own inability to understand grief, doctrine, or human decency. Yes, Christians believe in eternal life. But mourning isn’t a denial of that hope — it’s a deeply human, Christ-like response to the separation caused by death. Jesus Himself wept at Lazarus’ tomb (John 11:35), despite knowing He was about to raise him from the dead. By your logic, Jesus must’ve been a fool. Or do you dare to accuse Christ of inconsistency too? Your “argument” is built on the false assumption that faith in heaven = no sorrow. That’s not biblical, it’s emotionally stunted. The Bible doesn’t condemn mourning — it redeems it. We “do not grieve like those without hope,” not “do not grieve at all” (1 Thess 4:13). You conflate hope with emotional numbness, but they’re not the same thing. Rejoicing in eternal life doesn’t mean celebrating death. And it certainly doesn’t mean mocking the dead with crude T-shirt slogans designed to trigger outrage.

You claim to believe “all religions are false,” and yet you stand on a moral high horse as if you had divine insight. Let’s get this straight: you denounce all religion — including Jehovah’s Witnesses — and yet you argue like one, cite their proof-texts like one, and mimic their disdain for historic Christianity like a copy-paste apologist with a broken theology generator. You say you’re “not a JW,” but you parrot their rhetoric word for word. Denying membership while promoting their theology is like selling Watchtower pamphlets and then claiming you’re just “spiritually independent.” You criticize the Catholic Church for mourning the Pope — but again, you don't believe in heaven, hell, or the communion of saints. You reject all ecclesial tradition. So what standard are you even appealing to? Whose theology are you defending, other than your own ego?

Your citation of John 14:28 is a textbook case of Arian misinterpretation. You quote this like it’s some devastating mic-drop, but let me educate you. This verse reflects the economic (not ontological) subordination of Christ in His earthly mission — not a denial of His deity. The early Church Fathers — yes, those you reject without ever having read — already refuted your misuse of this verse in the 4th century. Christ is eternally equal to the Father in nature (John 1:1, Philippians 2:6), but in His incarnate role, He submits to the Father’s will — a fact acknowledged by every orthodox theologian from Augustine to Aquinas. So spare us the Arian relics. They were buried centuries ago at Nicea.

You pretend you never asked us to “compare what Jehovah’s Witnesses show in the Bible.” But your whole line of thought is that comparison. You quote exclusively from the NWT, and all your comments are filled with links to the their website. Even if you didn't type the words verbatim, your entire argument assumes a contrast between “what the Bible says” and “what Catholics believe.” You imply Catholics don’t follow the Bible — and present your mutilated interpretation of Scripture as the corrective. That’s exactly the tactic of the Watchtower: selective quotation, superficial theology, and condescending judgment.

Your theology of death is a confused mess of contradiction and coldness. Let’s walk through your logic:

You claim it's “illogical” to mourn a man who went to heaven.
Yet you don’t believe he went to heaven.
And you think all religions (including Catholicism and JWs) are false.
But you still quote the Bible as your supposed authority.

So let me ask: what worldview are you even arguing from?

You believe everyone’s wrong, but somehow you — an anti-religion iconoclast with a glib T-shirt joke — have the insight to mock others for grieving the loss of a faithful servant of God? What makes you the judge of how Christians should express hope?

You say the Pope was part of a false religion. Fine — that’s your belief. But gloating over death is not conviction. It’s cruelty. And it reflects a heart not filled with truth, but with spite.

Let’s talk about the fruit of your spirit. Jesus said: “By their fruits you will know them.” (Matthew 7:16)

What’s the fruit of your comment?

Mockery of the dead.
Contempt for grief.
Disdain for fellow humans.
Twisting of Scripture.
Evasion of theological accountability.

None of this reflects Christ. None of it reflects biblical truth. It reflects a hollow ideology of sneering cynicism disguised as righteousness. You speak not from the Spirit of truth, but from the arrogance of self.

You asked: Should Catholics rejoice or mourn? Answer: Both.

Rejoice in the hope of eternal life.
Mourn in the pain of separation and loss.
Honor a man who served God and the poor with humility.
Reject your callousness dressed up as wit.

And most importantly, we will soon have the joy of celebration because they will proclaim, "habemus papam," and we will have our 267th pope, because there will always be popes, from the first coming of Christ to the second, as He infallibly promised us. Can you name a single institution in the world that could rival the papacy in terms of antiquity and continuity?

"There is not, and there never was on this earth, a work of human policy so well deserving of examination as the Roman Catholic Church. The history of that Church joins together the two great ages of human civilisation. No other institution is left standing which carries the mind back to the times when the smoke of sacrifice rose from the Pantheon, and when camelopards and tigers bounded in the Flavian amphitheatre. The proudest royal houses are but of yesterday, when compared with the line of the Supreme Pontiffs. That line we trace back in an unbroken series, from the Pope who crowned Napoleon in the nineteenth century to the Pope who crowned Pepin in the eighth; and far beyond the time of Pepin the august dynasty extends, till it is lost in the twilight of fable. The republic of Venice came next in antiquity. But the republic of Venice was modern when compared with the Papacy; and the republic of Venice is gone, and the Papacy remains. The Papacy remains, not in decay, not a mere antique, but full of life and youthful vigour. The Catholic Church is still sending forth to the farthest ends of the world missionaries as zealous as those who landed in Kent with Augustin, and still confronting hostile kings with the same spirit with which she confronted Attila. The number of her children is greater than in any former age. Her acquisitions in the New World have more than compensated for what she has lost in the Old. Her spiritual ascendency extends over the vast countries which lie between the plains of the Missouri and Cape Horn, countries which a century hence, may not improbably contain a population as large as that which now inhabits Europe. The members of her communion are certainly not fewer than a hundred and fifty millions; and it will be difficult to show that all other Christian sects united amount to a hundred and twenty millions. Nor do we see any sign which indicates that the term of her long dominion is approaching. She saw the commencement of all the governments and of all the ecclesiastical establishments that now exist in the world; and we feel no assurance that she is not destined to see the end of them all. She was great and respected before the Saxon had set foot on Britain, before the Frank had passed the Rhine, when Grecian eloquence still flourished at Antioch, when idols were still worshipped in the temple of Mecca. And she may still exist in undiminished vigour when some traveller from New Zealand shall, in the midst of a vast solitude, take his stand on a broken arch of London Bridge to sketch the ruins of St. Paul's."
- Thomas Babington Macaulay

In conclusion: You are not the prophet of truth. You are the punchline of your own failed theology. You claim superiority over “all religion,” but can’t even construct a consistent moral or doctrinal position.

Your shirt idea isn’t clever — it’s cruel.

Your theology isn’t deep — it’s delusional.

Your tone isn’t biblical — it’s belligerent.

You don’t follow the Christ who weeps, heals, and saves.

You follow the voice that says: “I am holier than thou” while trampling on the sorrow of others. That voice is not from heaven — and deep down, you know it.

Repent of your pride, your mockery, and your false gospel of scorn.

Because Christ is risen — and He’s nothing like you.

46

the pope has died

by stan livedeath in

most people on the planet have heard of the pope.. most people on the planet have never heard of the governing body..

aqwsed12345

@Duran

Your statement is not only appallingly disrespectful and juvenile, it exposes the deep moral and theological bankruptcy of the ideology you subscribe to. You mock death, trivialize the dignity of the human person, and parade a grotesque form of self-righteousness masked as spiritual insight. And to call Pope Francis “a ridiculous man” — a man who has devoted his life to service, humility, and the Gospel — reveals far more about your heart than his.

Let’s be clear: your comment is not a challenge to Catholicism. It is a stain on basic decency and Christian charity. No genuine follower of Christ speaks with such contempt for a fellow human being, especially not for a spiritual leader whose very office — the papacy — was instituted by Christ Himself when He said: “You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church” (Matthew 16:18). You may not like the Pope, but mocking his death as a punchline shows that you are not led by the Spirit of Christ, who taught us to bless even our enemies — let alone mock the dead.

Your “shirt idea” is a theological contradiction. If, in your warped logic, you're happy the Pope is dead because you believe he’s in heaven — then why the mockery? Why the sneering provocation? Why the grotesque glee? If you really believed Pope Francis is now in the presence of Jehovah (whom you insist we must name constantly, though Jesus never did so once in prayer), then you ought to approach the matter with reverence and gratitude — not a smug smirk and a snide T-shirt slogan.

But here’s the deeper irony: you don’t actually believe he’s in heaven. Your cult teaches that Pope Francis is part of “Babylon the Great,” the so-called “world empire of false religion.” In your worldview, he’s not saved at all — so your “back of the shirt” question isn’t sincere. It’s a baited trap. And yet it fails miserably, because it assumes the audience is as callous and combative as you.

If someone made a shirt that said “I’m happy Charles Taze Russell is dead”, would you think that’s godly? Would you defend it as righteous? Or would you recognize it as a cruel, disgusting gesture?

Your message has nothing to do with truth or Scripture. It’s just venom dressed up as piety.

If this is the kind of “good news” you believe Jehovah’s Witnesses are called to spread — the celebration of death, and the mockery of human suffering — then I can confidently say your gospel is not that of Jesus Christ.

Because the real Jesus weeps over the death of His friend (John 11:35), dines with sinners, loves His enemies, and rebukes those who would call down fire from heaven in self-righteous rage (Luke 9:55).

Your version of “truth” is little more than sanctified cruelty.

You ask us to “compare what Jehovah’s Witnesses show in the Bible” — but what you just showed me is not Scripture. It’s not even doctrine. It’s hatred with a false halo.

Take off the mask.

Until you learn to speak the truth in love (Ephesians 4:15), and abandon the gleeful spite of this toxic rhetoric, don’t talk to me about being a follower of Christ.