What can I really say about this??
Its masochism.
The idea that hurting yourself makes you a more perfect Christian is beyond my comprehension.
This is very odd to me.

Originally posted by DrumsRfun
What can I really say about this??
Its masochism.
The idea that hurting yourself makes you a more perfect Christian is beyond my comprehension.
This is very odd to me.

Shia Muslims have done this for centuries. No comment there or do you just question Christians?

Yes, it is quite an odd circumstance, but Catholicism is only very loosely based on the Bible to begin with. The Apostle Paul's writings talk of a time when men will be forbidden to marry and uses that as a sign as to when the gospel is really becoming bastardized. It's no surprise to me that John Paul was a masochist. After all, there's nothing in the Bible to mention anything about a pope. The concept of a pope is a non-christian ideal (i.e. Christ didn't adopt it). I'm not surprised in the least.

(Edit for Grammar and Disambiguation)

[edit on 27-1-2010 by Epsilon5]

Signals is very disturbed by this thread.

But you do get the ~Title Of The Day Award~.

Penitence and castigation is more Opus Dei than what a pope should be doing. Opus is a very right radical wing of Catholicism and very extreme.


The horror of it all!! I was born Catholic, but man, this is too weird to digest!

Now i hear so and so is a Catholic and i chuckle!!!!

Aahh...lots of religions and spiritualities use physical pain or discomfort to push the consciousness within. Often the point of it is to help seperate your conscious focus from the external world to the internal so you can reach greater heights of spiritual focus. The native americans do it with sweat lodges and sundance ceremonies, many african tribes do similar with body piercings and such, an earlier poster pointed out that muslims do it. Tibetan monks do the all night meditating in the snow naked thing, hawaiians fire walk, etc. I dont think that a body marked by such things is any less worthwhile to god than a body unmarked by toil....god does not judge such things i think. May as well try to say that god likes beautiful unscarred people better than he likes ugly scarred ones. It is not defiling the temple to do superficial scratching with no lasting damage.... As a wise buddhist said "a long body is the long buddha, a short body is the short buddha".

This idea may seem strange to many of you....however, many of you have probably only gone so far as sitting in a mass in pursuit of your spiritual growth, and so most anything other than that for conscious expansion probably seems weird and destructive to you. Sitting in a mass is only a baby step on the path to spiritual development, and the practices for such very widely from meditation, to swinging from hooks in the skin, to partaking of ayahuasca and peyote, etc. Often each is a learning experience in its own way, and most are extremely powerful, and much more revealing than sitting and listening to a preacher who doesnt experience life, reciting a sermon from an old book, that has answers people came up with 1500 years ago.

Of course inflicting pain on yourself makes you a better Christian!

This is why women are such good Christians. Most guys have no idea how painful it is to get your hair permed, and then sprayed with muck that chokes you and gets in our eyes. And have you ever tried walking around all day in high heels?

Then there's depilation, (rubbing your skin off,) and leg waxing. For the ladies who prefer a more painful method of yanking their hair out by the roots there is a variety of electrical machines with spinning heads full of tweezers to choose from. Just imagine the agony of using one of those on your tender underarms!

And, if you want to process even further toward sainthood, there is always the Full Brazilian.

Poor John Paul was just a wimpy amateur. No stars, (or should that be scars?) for him.

I must admit to some confusion and surprise that many of you have not heard of self flagellation.

I have known about it since I was in my early teens and along with whippings oneself there is the wearing of hair shirts that to my mind would be more uncomfortable and in the long term, much more painful than giving oneself a good whipping.

Over time the wearing of a hair shirt referred to as a Cilice (made from goat’s hair) could wear skin from flesh and I have read that in severe cases could even expose bone or cause blood poisoning and eventually, death.

In some parts of the world Christians show their devotion to their faith by actually crucifying themselves even these days and it is something that rarely receives much media attention. I believe self flagellation was a common practice among the catholic church right up to the 50’s and it was not deemed deviant, rather respectful and something to be admired as anything to bring a devotee closer to their god was always a good thing even if shredded skin and blood stains were a consequence.

Religion is a strange beast of course said as subjectively as an atheist looking in but even so, as long as religion stays out of my life and does not strive to interfere in my life or my choices within my life I see no problems with a religious person no matter how strong they hold to their faith.

Because the Pope self flagellated does not mean he was a masochistic or that he even enjoyed the process, it would make more sense to me that the pope self flagellated because he loathed the process but in succumbing to the very thing he did not enjoy then in his mind such an act brought him closer to his god?

It seems fair enough to me that a pious person would see things in that light rather than has been indicated – that he rubbed his hands with a wry smile, looking forward to an evening of debouched masochistic whippings.
It is not as if the Pope was wearing a black rubber hood with a silver zipper down the front and shouting “HARDER MY SON – god wills it.”

Religion and meditation ae similar in some ways in that they both have many aids to enable a deeper level of oneness with themselves or their creator. Being the sensory creatures that we are it is understandable that these aids tend to come in the form of a level of discomfort or even outright and unrelenting pain.

Like a chant or mantra, pain is used in the very same manner and it works to separate the mind from reality and to thus get a clearer sense of the unreality that surrounds us.

If the only person getting whipped is themselves what harm is it?

WOW.

Thank you all for opening up my eyes with some nicely informed opinions.

I never really realized that kind of thing happens in different religions throughout the world.
I guess I always thought masochism was a fetish and had no place in religion.
To each their own.

When I read that I kinda thought the pope might just have a strange fetish.
I think poedexsoldiervet made a great point.
If all you have to do is accept Jesus then isn't that enough??

I always believed the body was a temple and like in real life you shouldn't deface a place of worship out of respect.
Doing that to your own body in the name of religion boggles my mind because the bible is where I read that.

(I am not into any form religion but I won't throw the baby out with the bathwater either)

While just accepting jesus might be all that is needed to become christian...it is not all that is needed to develop spirituality and consciousness. It is not all that is needed to develop wisdom and maturity, or to expand your consciousness. That is a much more dedicated path, and often takes extensive practice, meditation, and work. Developing and cultivating spirit is not just a decision, its a calling, and something you must work on every day, with many different paths and MUCH discipline.

Just making a statement of belief, and going through motions, sitting through mass, and repeating prayers and mantras, is an empty spirituality, and of itsself promotes no real progress.