| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"words of truth" |
| Date: |
10 Oct 2005 04:43:09 PM |
| Object: |
Confronting the New Clone Age |
Raelians, Catholics and the Clone Age
By Deacon Keith Fournier
Founder/president
Confronting the New Clone Age will require a genuine Christian rebirth
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"When men cease to believe in God," said G. K. Chesterton, "they do not
believe in nothing; they believe in anything!"
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
On the day after Christmas, the world watched in shock as
"Brigitte" an alleged "Bishop" of the "Raelian" movement,
announced that "Clonaid", a for profit outreach of the same
movement, had "successfully" cloned a baby girl whom they had named
"Eve".
I was reminded of a phrase used by an editorialist I read years ago
when he warned of a new "Clone Age."
Amidst the cries of "hoax" and the justified international uproar
against the "ethics' of this macabre claim (and even more
importantly, the disastrous path of "cloning" human beings at all)
there is a bigger struggle unfolding. It is a struggle for the heart,
mind and soul of the human race at the threshold of the Third
Millennium. At risk is nothing less than the future of civilization
In years past I probably would have thought that this (up until
recently) obscure, esoteric sect was only one of many examples of the
timeless truth of the maxim of the great Catholic writer, G.K.
Chesterton, "When men cease to believe in God, they do not believe in
nothing; they believe in anything!"
However, these last few days have opened my eyes. I have read much
about these people, their philosophy, their claims, their plans and
their founder. The ideas behind their actions may reveal the next great
struggle in the continuing battle for the future and the soul of human
civilization, especially if we do not act quickly to stop this insane
movement toward a new "Clone Age".
This "Bishop" ( a woman dressed in skin tight black clothing) is a
follower of Claude Vorhilon (a.k.a."Rael"). This new Pied Piper of
the U.F.O. jet set claims to have been given both a revelation and a
new name by a visiting space alien named "Yahweh Elohim" (two of
the names given to God in the Hebrew Scriptures) on a volcano in 1973.
In that encounter he also claims to have been given a mission to
prepare this manufactured race for the return of their masters in 2035.
In this "new" teaching, the manufacturers of the human race were
not "gods" at all but simply a master race of aliens. The
technology they used is now being revealed and by harnessing it we can
become like them. We can create our own future and "make" new
humans.
The preparation that "Rael" preaches, that must precede their
return, is to encourage his followers to live a life of complete and
total self centeredness and self worship and bring others to do the
same. "Liberation" in this new "way" is simply licentiousness
dressed up in a science fiction soup of bizarre esoteric
pseudo-spiritual mumbo jumbo. They claim that they can "free" the
inhabitants of this planet from their restrictive morals and world view
by bringing them into this new "way".
The group has an open hatred for Catholics in particular. They
regularly disturb Catholic schools in Canada by handing out condoms to
children in order that they may begin to adopt the way of his new
Raelian definition of freedom. I think their hatred of Catholic
Christianity is actually quite understandable. If, as I do, one
believes that Catholic faith is the fullness of Christianity and that
what the Catholic Church teaches about human sexuality, dignity and
destiny are true, it is the opposite of what they teach. No wonder it
is therefore their great enemy!
The seed of the profane dogma proclaimed by the words and deeds of the
Raelians is set forth in its seed form in Rael's book entitled
"Extra Terrestrials Took me To Their Planet." It extols a form of
sexual "liberation" including teaching children to engage in sexual
activity as early as possible "purely for pleasure without any
commitment to the sexual partner."
Additionally, the "liberation" message includes directions to women
to "have sex with one or more individuals of either sex as long as
the individuals agree, since contraception has freed women from fear of
pregnancy..." Thus the group promotes regular orgies and has
completely separated sexual activity from marriage, love, reproduction
or any connection whatsoever and simply made it one more "thing"
that one does to gratify self.
In the final act of desecration, this bizarre new way of "living"
promises a form of eternal "life". This is to be gained by
adherents following the instruction that all "Raelians" are to
"arrange on their death, (that) one square centimeter of the bone
from their forehead, 33 millimeters above the middle axis between their
pupils , is sent to the (Raelian) embassy for re-creation purposes"
You see, they have a new method of "creation" of the future
enlightened "human" race, cloning-which is the scientific
"manufacture" of new beings with no real mother or father, no
family. In their new account of the beginnings of our race, they
maintain that were manufactured by a race of aliens - not created out
of love by a loving God.
The continuation of creation does not come about through the mutual
gift of self, a free expression and exchange of committed love between
a married man and a woman who give themselves to the other, always open
to life, as is the claim of the Jewish and Christian Revelation.
Rather, both the propagation and the perpetuation of this race are
actually all about chemical manipulation and manufacture. Humans can be
re-made by genetic manipulation. In a sense, in a profane reverse of
the Christian creed, they claim that we are made and not begotten.
Conjugal love therefore has no real meaning to these folks, it is
outdated and restrictive. They are about only unrestricted copulation -
no, actually just unrestricted libertine sexual license and the
degradation of another person who becomes an object to be used in a
vain attempt at sexual self satisfaction.
It is no accident that their first claimed "clone" of the new
"master race" is named "Eve." It is a part of their plan. She
was the first to be made by their technology. Apparently from her a
"new world" and "new race" will be manufactured.
It is easy to see how cloning is such a "fit" in the Raelian
worldview, involving as it does the making of a replica of the mother
by taking DNA from one cell, implanting it in egg that has been emptied
out and making a replica with no need for sperm from a father at all.
The family is no longer necessary.
Allegedly, after all, this kind of "manufacture" is how it all
began. The alien who revealed himself to the founder of the group, who
is their new "Messiah" of sorts, claimed to have made all of us
through genetic manipulation of D.N.A. molecules.
Now, admittedly, this is the stuff of a bad science fiction novel,
right? Well, let's be careful not to dismiss the underlying concepts
in our rush to write off the kookiness of their claims.
When one examines some of the underlying philosophical tenets of their
teachings and their lifestyles, you must ask some questions. Are their
teachings and practices really all that different than what has
masqueraded as "freedom" in many circles for the last fifty years?
Oh, I know, Raelianism has space aliens, kooky "bishops" and
strange characters out of a bad Star Trek episode. However, as it
relates to their view of the human person, human sexual activity and
"liberation, is it not eerily familiar?
In a culture that has turned persons into objects, separated sexual
acts from conjugal love and sought to "liberate" itself from both
nature and the God who created it , isn't it actually just one more,
albeit more bizarre, sad expression of the "culture of death" and
the utilitarian narcissism of the age?
Is it not one more promised "enlightenment" that, if left
unchallenged and unchecked, will lead the gullible to empty despair?
However, the only difference is that the technology that can be used by
its proponents can and will open the proverbial "Pandora's box"
if we do not act quickly. What they claim will lead to the
"enlightenment" of the human race, could lead to the end of
civilization and civility.
Blaise Pascal was one of the "fathers"of what has been called the
modern "enlightenment". Born in 1623, he was a French philosopher,
mathematician and chemist. He was followed in birth by another
mathematician and Frenchman, Rene DesCartes who also championed a new
'way", called the "scientific method".
Descartes is known for the oft quoted (and misquoted) maxim, the
"cogito ergo sum" (I think therefore I am). Both men sought to find
a 'deeper" meaning to life and promised that science could liberate
a waiting world.
DesCartes "threw off" what he perceived to be the "old way" of
religious faith. His "method" of discovering knowledge involved a
process of breaking everything into smaller parts and, in a sense,
putting them on a rack for examination. Perhaps it is not a bad
approach if you are dealing with science, math and maybe frogs, but not
human persons. It has all too often led to devastating results.
We are not machines. Nor are we simply an amalgam of chemicals to be
manipulated.
The classical world view that Descartes rejected actually had it right
when it claimed a special place for the human person in the order of
the universe precisely because of a special relationship between all
human persons and God. We were made "Imago Dei" in the "image of
God."
In mid-life, unlike Descartes, at least Pascal became interested in
religion and wrote the phrase now so often attributed to him "Within
each one of us there is a God-shaped vacuum that only God can fill."
In fact, the phrase is probably better attributed to an early Church
father named Ambrose. It is a great summary of the existential angst
revealed throughout all of human history. That hunger, found within
every human person, cries out for a deeper meaning to our life.
Beginning to search for this deeper meaning is the prelude to authentic
religious conversion and the path to becoming fully human.
The great western Church father Augustine spent his youth dabbling in
his centuries versions of libertinism. He succumbed to an earlier set
of Raelian- like teachings from a group called the Manichees. They
taught that matter was 'evil" and promoted sexual libertinism,
abortion, contraception as a path to a promised "liberation."
This empty way also failed to liberate. In fact it enslaved. After
years of degradation, Augustine came back to the Christian faith of his
mother. In his reflections on the journey called "the Confessions",
he wrote the now famous insight that: "Our hearts were made for Thee, O
Lord, and will not rest until they rest in Thee."
Ambrose (and Pascal) aptly referred to that restlessness, that hole in
the soul, as a vacuum. It has a force behind it and it will suck up
anything to fill it. That is partly why the bizarre teachings of this
esoteric sect filling our news since Christmas, actually find receptive
listeners, at least fifty thousand of them, who have "itching ears"
in this "clone age". People are hungry for meaning. The problem is
that these bizarre claims are not true and, they are dangerous.
The Christian claim is that we can all "know the truth and the truth
will set us free". Only Truth can fill that hole - that vacuum- in
every soul. The Christian claim is that Truth is a person, who can be
known, the God who became man, Jesus Christ.
In his encyclical letter entitled "The Gospel of Life", John Paul II
speaks of a "profound crisis of culture" which permeates the
contemporary age.The disturbing claim of the Raelians that they have
manufactured a new "Eve" certainly confirms that this crisis is
getting worse.
We live in an age of scientism and utilitarianism wherein we are losing
the sense of any respect for human dignity, a holy and healthy view of
human sexuality and the sanctity of the human body. We have also lost
our sense of the true deeper meaning to human existence and the higher
destiny of every human person.
The contemporary void of authentic spirituality has produced a cultural
vacuum. It is into the empty culture that contemporary Christians are
now sent on mission of evangelization. We must understand the cultural
climate in order to effect its transformation.
The Raelian ideas are not really unusual in a world where the dignity
of the sexual act has been completely undermined by the separation of
the "unitive" and the "procreative" dimensions of the conjugal
act. That great "prophet", Pope Paul VI, in his encyclical letter,
"On Human Life" (Humanae Vitae) warned of the trajectory that would
follow the acceptance of abortion, contraception and the rejection of
the fundamental Christian teaching concerning human life and dignity.
The "new" form of hedonism evidenced in our contemporary culture is
not that different than the old forms of hedonism and paganism that the
Christian message both confronted and transformed in both the first and
the second millennium. We think that abortion, contraception and the
"culture of death" are a new malady. They are not. The early
Christian church entered a world where all of these, along with
'exposure" (leaving unwanted fully born children on rocks to be
eaten by birds of prey) were practiced.
This post "Humanae Vitae" world has again devolved into accepting a
view of the body as an object to be used. The fractured relationships,
that always accompany the breakdown of the family, have led to the real
loss of the beauty of faithful married love as the only proper
environment for sexual activity. It has always been the Christian claim
that the complete gift of self sexually belongs within the marriage
relationship. It is in the "marriage bed", that the couple
participates in the full beauty of the nuptial mystery.
There also where their love unites and, in their gift of self to the
other, they participate in a wonderful way in the nuptial mystery of
God's love. There also where pro-creation occurs, where mere mortals
are invited to participate with the God who created us in the
continuing work of His creation. It is in that sacred relationship that
the wonderful mystery of the fruit of love, a child, is, in a sense
"begotten not made" when conceived. There also, in the beauty and
stability of a family where that child learns to live and to love in
the first society, the domestic church.
Rather than being 'antiquated" these are the very teachings that
have liberated barbarians throughout the ages and the only ones that
can lead us to a future of authentic freedom.
Yet, the new barbarians abound as we enter the Third Millennium. Though
they may not look like their forbears, they are cut from the same
stock. Their lies are old hat and all symptomatic of both the loss of a
Christian (in fact a Judeo-Christian) worldview and the lack of a
Christian influence in the 'world".
As in times past, what is needed most is a new generation of
"missionaries, but this time sent into our universities, our
marketplaces and our laboratories. We need authentically Christian
scientists, artists, statesmen and women, poets, artists and artisans.
When Christians leave science, commerce and other vital fields of
endeavor to barbarians, they make a huge mistake!
In their feigned promises of liberation, all these modern Manichees
proclaim a message that always leads to slavery. In claiming to
liberate they lead human beings down the path to slavery.
For example, our bodies are not merely a carrying case. We are created
as "body persons". Our bodies actually talk. The real question is
what are we saying through them? What are we saying when we speak the
bizarre acts and practices that the raelians advocate?
Pope John Paul II coined a phrase in his extraordinary teachings on the
"Theology of the Body." He speaks of the "language of the body." In
so doing he reminds us that our bodies are meant to be the vehicle
through which we speak the language of love.
Serious mission- minded Christians need to understand that we are now
sent to articulate the profound truth of the Christian revelation
concerning the dignity and wonder of the human body and human sexuality
to a world that has produced such oddities as the Raelian movement.
We need to be in the forefront of teaching the dignity of every human
person, the dignity of sexuality, the beauty and destiny of the human
body and the entire human race. We need to be demonstrating what we
proclaim and leading humanity on the path "back to the future" by
proclaiming a message of authentic freedom and asserting that true love
is cultivated in the garden of married love and authentically human
persons are begotten not made.
Manicheeism was only one of several heresies that infiltrated the early
Christian Church. Manichees viewed the body, indeed all matter, as
actually evil! Unfortunately, if we were to ask many contemporary folks
what Christians believe about the body and human sexuality, they would
probably say we Christians do as well.
Christians do not believe that matter and the human body are evil. Nor
do we believe that sex is sin. To the contrary, Christians proclaim
that the body is an expression of the "Imago Dei", the image of God.
The Christian faith proclaims that our bodies will be raised from the
dead and that we will live in a new heaven and new earth.
Because we value the beauty, purpose and dignity of sexuality we also
proclaim that its fullness is designed to be expressed in the
committed, indeed sacramental, relationship of married love. In the
conjugal act, always open to life, husband and wife fully give
themselves to the other and in the very act express symbolically the
deeper meaning of all of life. We were all created to give ourselves
away in love to God and to one another. It is in this gift of self that
we become fully human.
The unitive and procreative dimension of the conjugal act must never be
separated. The bad fruit of this effort to separate the two always
leads to the kind of insanity revealed in the Raelian worldview and its
resultant horrors. Though an extreme version, the Raelian worldview is
simply one more expression of a culture of selfishness, death and
sexual activity as use of another.
In an insightful document entitled "Toward a pastoral Approach to
Culture", the Pontifical Council for Culture (A Vatican Missions
Council) speaks to the challenges faced in efforts geared toward the
evangelization of cultures:
"From the time the Gospel was first preached, the Church has known the
process of encounter and engagement with cultures, (Fides et ratio
n.70), for it is one of the properties of the human person, that he can
achieve true and full humanity, only by means of culture (Gaudium et
Spes, n. 53).
In this way, the Good News, which is Christ's Gospel for all men and
the whole human person, both child and parent of the culture in which
they are immersed, (Fides et ratio, n.71), reaches them in their own
culture, which absorbs their manner of living the faith and is in turn
gradually shaped by it.
Today as the Gospel gradually comes into contact with cultural worlds,
which once lay beyond Christian influence, there are new tasks of
inculturation (Ibid. 72). At the same time, some traditionally
Christian cultures, or cultures imbued with thousand-year-old religious
traditions are being shattered.
Thus, it is not only a question of grafting the faith onto these
cultures, but of revitalizing a de-Christianized world whose only
Christian references are of a cultural nature. On the threshold of the
third Millennium, the Church throughout the world is faced with new
cultural situations, new fields of evangelization"
This lengthy excerpt from this theologically dense document sets the
framework for the task that we face in our missionary work in a
de-Christianized America and western culture. We need a form of
"inculturation" that will help us to re-Christianize the
contemporary culture.
It has been my experience that those involved in the task of
evangelization often fail to see the depth of the loss of even an echo
of Christian influence in America. The current morass surrounding the
area of human sexuality is only one more bad fruit of this corruption
and loss.
Some Christians face all of this and pine for the past, others fear the
future. Neither response is the proper one. Rather, what is needed is
revealed in the now popular phrase coined again by John Paul II, a "New
Evangelization."
In his apostolic letter "The Light Of The East" John Paul synthesizes
his teaching on the theology of the body:
"Christianity does not reject matter. Rather, "bodiliness" is
considered in all its value in the liturgical act, whereby the human
body is disclosed in its inner nature as a temple of the Spirit and is
united with the Lord Jesus, who Himself took a body for the world's
salvation.... With the rejection of all dualism and every cult of
pleasure as an end in itself, the body becomes a place made luminous by
grace and thus fully human." (n.11)
The Raelian worldview is actually not new at all. It is simply one more
expression of a return to a pagan worldview precipitated by the vacuum
of authentic spirituality in our age. "Modern" men and women are
still "restless", they still have a "God shaped vacuum" deep
inside.
The Raelian worldview and so many other contemporary expressions of the
new paganism offer the same old counterfeit promise of freedom. They
also offer a false anthropology - the study of the nature and destiny
of the human person. They are dualistic, completely separating the
physical and the "spiritual."
It is the Christian worldview that proclaims that we are called to live
a unity of life. Though the new paganism, like the old, promises
liberation it actually promotes slavery to unbridled passion. In its
misguided sensuality it has lost the sense of the beauty and dignity of
the human person in his/her fullness as a "body person." It is
completely at odds with a Christian anthropology and view of life.
We do not "have a body"- we are a body. The truth of the Christian
revelation is that we will one day have resurrected bodies! We are
en-souled bodies or em-bodied souls. The two cannot and must not be
separated.
The body is not evil. It is beautiful! It is a part of how we image the
God who created us! The mystery and marvel of the Incarnation is that
God the Son took a Body and is at the right hand of the Father even now
in a resurrected Body!
Pope John Paul II has done us a great service by re-presenting a
classical Christian view of the body right at a critical time in
history where the human race is being led into new forms of old
heresies regarding the body and the entirety of creation. Understanding
it, proclaiming it and living it is the only way we can expose and
counter the insanity so fully obvious in the Raelian claim
I began with a quote from one of my favorite Catholic thinkers, G.K.
Chesterton. It is fitting that I end with one:
"Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found
difficult and not tried."
Part of the blame for the confusion that actually opened the door to
the "Raelians" and other bizarre contemporary ideologies is the
very weakness of the Christian church. The philosophical errors at the
root of these contemporary pagan claims have found a hearing, all too
often, because we have been silent or have not lived what we profess.
We are still reeling from a year in which our Church has been rocked by
scandal. The root of that scandal is the infidelity of a small minority
of clergy. However, the actual sinful activities engaged in by these
members of the clergy, their participation in what Pope John Paul
rightly called the "Mystery of iniquity", are rooted in the same
misguided notion of human sexuality that gives room for the use of
persons as objects.
The way out of the horrors that will result from the "clone age"
lies at the feet of the Christian Church. We who are members of that
Church must rise up, reclaim the truth and proclaim it afresh in both
word and deed to a culture desperately in need of true freedom.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rev. Mr. Keith A Fournier, the founder and president of "Common Good",
is a constitutional lawyer. He is a pro-life and pro-family lobbyist.
He was the first Executive Director of the ACLJ (American Center for
Law and Justice). He also served as an advisor to the presidential
campaign of Steve Forbes. Fournier holds a Bachelors degree (B.A.) from
Franciscan University of Steubenville in Philosophy and Theology, a
Masters Degree (M.T.S.) in Sacred Theology from the John Paul II
Institute of the Lateran University, a Juris Doctor (J.D.) from the
University of Pittsburgh and an Honorary Doctor of Laws (L.L.D.) from
St. Thomas University. Fournier is the author of seven books on issues
concerning life, faith, evangelization, ecumenism, family, political
participation, public policy and cultural issues. He is a features
editor for Catholic Online and the Co-Director of "Your Catholic
Voice"
http://www.christianity.com/partner/Article_Display_Page/0,,PTID5339%7CCHID14%7CCIID1494830,00.html
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| User: "Elf M. Sternberg" |
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| Title: Re: Confronting the New Clone Age |
10 Oct 2005 08:07:25 PM |
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"words of truth" <wordsoftruth21@lycos.com> writes:
The way out of the horrors that will result from the "clone age"
lies at the feet of the Christian Church. We who are members of that
Church must rise up, reclaim the truth and proclaim it afresh in both
word and deed to a culture desperately in need of true freedom.
And the truth, according to these people, is that it is better
to suffer and die than to live a lifespan of centuries happy and
healthy, secure in the knowledge that you might well live far beyond
that. The truth, according to these people, is that every advance of
human knowledge has been a tragedy, and the 20th Century the most tragic
of all, because today more people are housed, fed, and educated than
ever before.
Elf
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| User: "shrikeback" |
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| Title: Re: Confronting the New Clone Age |
11 Oct 2005 12:43:50 AM |
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"words of truth" <wordsoftruth21@lycos.com> wrote in message
news:1128980589.735827.266780@g49g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
Raelians, Catholics and the Clone Age
By Deacon Keith Fournier
Founder/president
Confronting the New Clone Age will require a genuine Christian rebirth
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"When men cease to believe in God," said G. K. Chesterton, "they do not
believe in nothing; they believe in anything!"
I'm sorry, I don't believe in that.
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| User: "Mark K. Bilbo" |
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| Title: Re: Confronting the New Clone Age |
10 Oct 2005 06:18:17 PM |
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In <1128980589.735827.266780@g49g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>, "words of
truth" <wordsoftruth21@lycos.com> wrote:
"When men cease to believe in God," said G. K. Chesterton, "they do not
believe in nothing; they believe in anything!"
Which is a lie of course but, well, you're fundamentally dishonest so
you'd approve...
--
Mark K. Bilbo
--------------------------------------------------
"We're angry, Mr. President, and we'll be angry long
after our beloved city and surrounding parishes have
been pumped dry. Our people deserved rescuing.
Many who could have been were not. That's to the
government's shame."
http://makeashorterlink.com/?F2D511CBB
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| User: "raven1" |
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| Title: Re: Confronting the New Clone Age |
10 Oct 2005 05:12:03 PM |
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On 10 Oct 2005 14:43:09 -0700, "words of truth"
<wordsoftruth21@lycos.com> wrote:
"When men cease to believe in God," said G. K. Chesterton, "they do not
believe in nothing; they believe in anything!"
Chesterton was right for the wrong reasons: someone who's silly enough
to believe in "God" *is* actually likely to be gullible enough to
"believe in anything"...
---
"This is how liberty dies: with thunderous applause"
- Padme Amidala, Episode III
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| User: "Paul Duca" |
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| Title: Re: Confronting the New Clone Age |
10 Oct 2005 06:14:18 PM |
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in article 1128980589.735827.266780@g49g2000cwa.googlegroups.com, words of
truth at wrote on 10/10/05 5:43 PM:
Raelians, Catholics and the Clone Age
By Deacon Keith Fournier
Founder/president
Confronting the New Clone Age will require a genuine Christian rebirth
And uses that as an excuse for not doing anything else (and why its God
fails to do anything, either).
Paul
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