Pope Prophecy - need help debunking

[Jack by the hedge]

Looking on the upside, the prophecy has run out of popes to describe so, just like the once strictly limited regenerations of Doctor Who, its proponents will in due course simply retcon some explanation for why the world does not in fact end and new popes keep on being elected.

 

[Butter!]

Sorry, I'm not being clear. Although the phrase 'de labore solis' doesn't directly translate as 'eclipse of the sun', It was mentioned as meaning such coloquially by MJ O Brien, who wrote a critical account of these prophecies in 1880.

Obviously this is approx. 100 years before JP II. So even though the translation is not exact, it was taken to be a reference to an eclipse 100 years before the relevant pope. It scares me that JP II is the only pope to be born on the day of an eclipse, regardless of where the eclipse was visible from.

I don't know where to turn to for help. It's like if any of this is somehow true, it confirms the catholic world view and that terrifies me.

Hold up! No, it doesn't.

Even if this prophecy were compelling and true (it isn't), all it would mean is that some ability for humans to prophesy bits of future events is true. Just because Catholics used that ability in this instance wouldn't mean they were the only ones who could, nor would it mean that the source of their prophecy-power was their Catholicism.

I have tendencies toward ruminative anxiety too, so I sort of get where you're coming from overall, but the premise you just stated is simply not true. Even if some popes were accurately predicted (they weren't), that would still give no credence to Catholic dogma as a whole. Every longstanding religion has prophesies; they're all lousy with prophesies. I come from a Catholic family and upbringing, so I totally understand the weird anxiety about hell that gets in your head, even as a rational adult - but you're connecting dots in unsound ways and tormenting yourself.

 

[Confusion]

Thats a very good point. Thank you Butter.

 

[Butter!]

Thats a very good point. Thank you Butter.

Sure thing.

Along my own way, it also helped me to think about how MANY human events and developments completely preceded the earliest advent of Christianity. Aristotle lived his entire influential life 300 years before the generally accepted birth of Christ time period. He was quite anti-mysticism, for what it's worth. His philosophical predecessors, such as Plato, were not as opposed to mysticism in general, but their methods of spiritual thinking were/are completely incompatible with later Christian teachings. If you want to go down a rabbit hole that might help you instead of intensifying your angst, subjects like what I've just described would be more beneficial to you.

Read about how evidence of written mathematics dates back to ancient Sumeria, or how Archimedes developed stuff like the hydrostatic principle, again, hundreds of years before Christianity or the proto-Vatican entities were ever a thing. Hellenic astronomy was well aware of the Earth's roundness by the 3rd century BC, lmao (which makes stuff like the second Genesis creation myth about the "dome" over an apparently flat earth seem even sillier).

I don't know if people always think about Christianity in those kinds of terms, conceiving how much truly went on before it (or even early shades of Yahweh) ever showed up. Why would God wait so long to reveal anything about himself if knowing him is so important? People were clearly kicking along just fine without him. Did all those Greeks and Sumerians just... never have a chance to go to heaven?

We can't say they were simpler people who couldn't comprehend God. They comprehended things people today often struggle to comprehend - complex philosophy, math, astronomy, etc. They had their own religions and systems of rule. They were dumbasses about many things too, obviously, but that doesn't negate any part of my point (which may be waxing a bit rhapsodic by now).

Maybe that kind of thinking won't have as profound an effect on you as it did on me, but I figured I'd suggest it. For me, it really demystified that feeling of Christianity/Catholicism as a "scary ancient mystery," which is a feeling that can be hard to shake even when one has stopped believing. But it clearly wasn't that. It was just a cult that got really, REALLY popular, as well as a spin-off of the first definitive monotheistic religion to ever develop (Judaism).

I don't know what the true nature of reality is, and I hesitate to speak in absolutes more and more the older I get. But I feel I can absolutely say that you do not need to worry about this particular crap.

 

[Confusion]

Again thank you. For some reason, the stuff you've said has somewhat gotten through. I'm feeling a bit less dreadful and logical this afternoon. Anxiety is weird.

 

[Gulliver Foyle]

Again thank you. For some reason, the stuff you've said has somewhat gotten through. I'm feeling a bit less dreadful and logical this afternoon. Anxiety is weird.

No worries, things can get very confused at times for all of us. As others have said it may be a good idea to speak with a mental health professional about your anxieties, you may be able to find a method for managing them without getting into a tizzy with them.

 

[The Great Zaganza]

given the Bible is supposedly the source of Christianity, it is really helpful to realize how much this text is a fabrication of humans, in text and editing and selecting what to put in and not - sometimes by accident.
Again, I suggest the Podcast I mentioned above.

What we think of this religion today has almost no resemblance to what it was 500, 1000, 1500 or 2000 years ago.
And, of course, all Christians today disregard plenty of commandments for convenience ( mixed fabrics etc.) while condemning things the Bible has no problem with (lesbianism, abortion etc.).

by their own standards, every Christian living and past is going to be send to Hell - which is exactly how the Church likes it, because Fear and Anxiety is how you control your Congregation - and milk them for donations and indulgences.

 

[P.J. Denyer]

It's already been pointed out that the claimed papal motto is a fabrication, and that solar eclipses are actually quite common. The chances of someone being born, and having their funeral coincide with a solar eclipse somewhere on earth is unusual, certainly, but hardly so astonishing as to warrant entertaining a supernatural explanation. You appear to be attempting to rationalize a reason to believe a superstitious claim rather than attempting to refute it. And this is your second "I'm a skeptic but I'm having a hard time dismissing a poorly evidenced supernatural claim and I'm really frightened" thread.

I'd also point out that even if we assume that the 'prophecy' is referencing solar eclipses (which is far from a given), it doesn't refer to his birth or funeral (surely death would have been more appropriate - and in this case, if whoever was arranging the funeral was aware of the prophecy they might have finessed the date a day or two either way to add to his myth, or for **** & giggles of course). With 2 to 5 eclipses a year and taking away any requirement to be present at the eclipse, I'm pretty sure that you could find at least a correlation or two for important events in everyone's life.

If you took a list of the key dates in the lives of all the Popes, birth, death, entry into the Church, ordination as priest/bishop/pope, death, burial and the dozens of others that might be significant specifically to them & compared them to a list of eclipses, well, I'd bet a weeks pay you'll find some with more than two.

 

[sackett]

How many popes, antipopes, and contrapopes throughout history are known to have taken a bath? The record is probably silent in most cases. But given the Church's condemnation of luxuria, which included bathing, we can assume that from the waning of Roman influence and its concern with cleanliness, say late 5th century, right through to the mid-18th century at the earliest, no popes bathed.

This gives me no anxiety at all.