Thursday 2 November 2017

PRIEST -"GOD IS A WOMAN"

God is a woman- Priest who died for 48 minutes claims


Doctors at the Massachussetts General Hospital say that Father O’neal is extremely lucky to be alive, while he is convinced that it is God who sent him back to tell the world who “she” really is 
In Summary
The Archbishop of Boston, Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley, made a public statement this morning stating that Father O’neal suffered hallucinations linked to a near-death experience and that God clearly isn’t a female

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A Catholic priest from Massachussetts was officially dead for more than 48 minutes before medics were able to miraculously re-start his heart. During that time, Father John Micheal O’neal claims he went to heaven and met God, which he describes as a warm and comforting motherly figure.
The 71-year old cleric was rushed to the hospital on January 29 after a major heart attack, but was declared clinically dead soon after his arrival. With the aid of a high-tech machine called LUCAS 2, that kept the blood flowing to his brain, doctors at Massachusetts General Hospital managed to unblock vital arteries and return his heart to a normal rhythm.
The doctors were afraid he would have suffered some brain damage from the incident, but he woke up less than 48 hours later and seems to have perfectly recovered.
The elderly man claims that he has clear and vivid memories of what happened to him while he was dead. He describes a strange out-of-body experience, experiencing an intense feeling of unconditional love and acceptance, as well as being surrounded by an overwhelming light.
He claims that at that point in his experience, he went to heaven and encountered God, which he describes as a feminine, mother-like “Being of Light”.
“Her presence was both overwhelming and comforting” states the Catholic priest. “She had a soft and soothing voice and her presence was as reassuring as a mother’s embrace. The fact that God is a Holy Mother instead of a Holy Father doesn’t disturb me, she is everything I hoped she would be and even more!”
The declarations of the cleric caused quite a stir in the catholic clergy of the archdiocese over the last few days, causing the Archbishop to summon a press conference to try and calm the rumors.



Despite the disapproval of his superiors, Father O’neal says that he will continue dedicating his life to God and spread the word of the “Holy Mother”.



“I wish to continue preaching” says the elderly cleric. “I would like to share my new knowledge of the Mother, the Son and the Holy Ghost with all catholics and even all Christians. God is great and almighty despite being a woman…”
The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston has not confirmed however, if they will allow Father O’neal to resume his preaching in his former parish in South Boston.

The Archbishop of Boston, Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley, made a public statement this morning stating that Father O’neal suffered hallucinations linked to a near-death experience and that God clearly isn’t a female.



PAT SAYS:
This occurrence in this priest's life is extremely thought provoking for anyone interested in God and about God.

One of the biggest problems we have when it comes to talking about God is that we are trying to grasp mysterious concepts with our limited human intellect and trying to talk about superhuman things in limited human language.

If God is the "Higher Power" and "Supreme Being" he is like us in some ways but totally unlike us in so many other ways.

We are male or female and the Godhead is male, female plus - plus - plus to eternity.

God cannot be limited to human limitations like male or female.

As Christians, we believe that God BECAME man - in the form of Jesus of Nazareth. 

But had God "wanted to" (God does not want) God could have become human in the form of Joahanna of Nazareth?

God did not "decide" to do that. Why? We don't know.

I think the main lesson from this elderly priest's experience is to remind us that in God resides what is best about maleness and femaleness and infinitely more than that.

The cardinal is not happy about Father O'Neal's "hallucinations".

But if Father O'Neal was saying that the God he met was a man and he told him the RC church was the only true church, then Cardinal O'Malley would be describing Father O'Neal's experiences as DIVINE REVELATIONS!



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32 comments:

  1. I agree with what you say regarding God being completely outside our limited earthly perception of Him. So in a sense we know only that there is much that we don't yet know.
    Two thoughts - -
    People who are as close to permanent death as that are very likely to be receiving resuscitation drugs have hallucinations which will linger in the mind as very real.
    Secondly, if we accept that the priest had a genuine spiritual experience and encounter, could it be that the motherly presence was Mary the Mother of God if the priest had great devotion to her in life?
    Also - - many people who have written extensively about near death experiences mention that they were aware of an already departed close friend or relative eg their own mother there to greet them. Could this have been his own mother? He describes it as a warm and soothing presence.
    Final thought--
    I doubt if Jesus would have time after time deceived His apostles and those to whom He preached!
    Yet over and over again, He refers to God as He - - as My Father etc
    When He taught the apostles to pray He started with Our Father.... He didn't say Our Mother!
    He referred to Mary as His Mother when he was close to death on the Cross.
    However, I finish as I started. There is so, so much that we don't know this side of eternity. So in the meantime I will go with Jesus' version of it as revealed in the Scriptures - God is "Our Father Who art in Heaven.." (But some people do like new and mesmerising ideas to shake things up)

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    1. Does the Father have genitalia? No? Then Jesus could not have been referring to his 'Father' in a masculine sense.

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  2. Pat unfortunately this is from a fake news website,

    It does however raise an interesting theological point about the gender of God.

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  3. God is the source of masculinity and femininity. God is neither a man or woman because He (the male third person pronoun used in scripture) is Spirit.

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  4. I notice that Fr. O'Neal described God as being great and almighty "despite being a woman"!
    This statement betrays the fact that he regards the female sex as being in general inferior. Why otherwise would he say "despite being a woman"?
    So I am not really interested in hearing his opinions.

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    1. If his opinion is that women are inferior it is no wonder God would appear as female to him and then offer him one more chance to correct that belief.

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  5. I know your last sentence is for rhetorical effect but if the church did say it was revealed God was a man they would still be wrong. God can plainly neither be male or female because of not reproducing sexually. Therefore Fr O'Neal is also on the wrong track, sadly.
    The real issue with gender and God is how we project our own biases and assumptions onto it.

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  6. If the good Fr wants to portray God as female, best of British I say. The reality is that God being infinite is neither male nor female. The Model Scripture and Tradition and indeed the Creeds give us is that of Trinity. The Irish of old knew that worship required a female component so they elevated Mary to fill the Gap. The father image does no favours to those who have poor or abusive male figures in their lifes experience. Poor old O Malley need not get his soutanne in a twist. There are more important issues to pontificate about.

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  7. Tricky thing is mystical ideas of God that he is very unlike us and virtually unknowable come from philosophy not the Bible. Doctrines such as spirit meaning something that has no parts are not in the Bible. The Bible never calls God spirit in that sense. Christianity smuggled in pagan philosophy and logic to create a system that on the face of it looks plausible. It does similar manipulations today with pretending that science and the Bible fit. The reality is that when the apostles said Jesus went up to Heaven on a cloud they thought he was going to live in the sky. And he gave that impression. Science finds no heaven up there. The believers read what they know back into the Bible. Thus they fail to see that it was a mythological product of its time. Its odd to say that the pagans really believed in magical squabbling gods and that the author of Genesis did not mean his tale literally. He did especially when it is tamer than what appears in other religions. Religion and "science" were not distinct then and its spindoctors pretend they are distinct now. If a religion is really true and not man-made it will not all that lying and adjusting to look sensible.

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  8. This is really funny!

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  9. Really funny? - - you mean that God, after all these years should be transgender? Well, it is a bit strange,I agree...!

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  10. That priest is determined not to remain the rest of his life in a state of anonymity, that's for sure!
    I simply don't believe a word of it beyond the fact that he was seriously ill and probably experienced the usual hallucinations during drug administration. Some of us have heard it all before and so I suppose we're less gullible.

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    1. My good friend please read the comments above. THIS WAS A FAKE NEWS STORY

      However, we are discussing the theological reasons regarding the gender of God. Do you think God is both male and female? or genderless?

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    2. @15.20
      I would have thought that my previous post would have made it quite clear that I already kew that this was a fake news story which makes your post a little unnecessary. Incidentally - re /the "My good friend" salutation - - I prefer to decide who my friends are, thank you!

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  11. @9.47
    A lot of over-generalisation and highly individual misinterpretation re/what the "Bible does not say" etc. At least your anonymity has spared you the embarrassment.
    A good start would be to get a copy of the Scriptures and spend time really reading God's Word.
    Then you won't want to write this sort of nonsense by way of "expertise"
    Real scholars get so tired again and again having the task of having to try and write an extended post to explain and refute the errors.
    I will simply leave to you to do so yourself. No reason why you shouldn't.

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  12. Utterly, utterly boring blog today. Utterly and not worth quibbling over. The hallunicatory visions of the good Fr. are precisely that - hallunications caused by medication. It won't change my perception of the God revealed through Jesus - a loving, merciful, compassionate Father! One who embraces all with equal measure like the way a loving parent (s) will do.....a mother or a father! On All Souls Day we should reflect on the mercy and loving kindness of God for our deceased loved ones.

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    1. Yes, why would we worry our heads over all the silly hypothetical arguments that litter the ground when someone spills a fake news story particularly one as silly as this one was!

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  13. This "priest" does not exist and the archdiocese of Boston made no such statement. There's an essay on Google about how this particular fake news item spread. Just cut and paste the headline on the blog post and you'll find the rebuttal easily.

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    1. Unnecessary... We have other things to do that are a little more interesting, thank goodness!

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    2. Time enough to post an asinine comment, 22:11, lol.

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    3. We will leave you to do that.. You are good at it!

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  14. Was Jesus a liar, or deluded, when he talked repeatedly about the Father? No doubt a liberal priest in his well-warmed house will tell me off for saying that.

    Or, if the libs say, it's irrelevant this male/female stuff, why do libs welcome stuff like this?

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    1. Oh, they just like to hear themselves talking..

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    2. Did Jesus openly discuss religious beliefs or did he endear himself to people by defensive rants?

      People are entitled to throw open topics for discussion and in this way the discussion can allow all of us sort out thoughts, doubts and queries. no one person in born with all catholic teaching in their head but open discussion on faith sharing is how we evangelise. Arrogant defensiveness is how the church has driven people away. Your beliefs might be correct, but your current methods of evangelisation require some refinement.

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  15. Pat, why such little commentary today? Just wondering if your blog is now so irrelevant and boring. The only time you get numbers is when there's lots of gossipy stories. Shame. However, the blig puece today is uninteresting and seems like "fake news".....

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    1. Hmmm. You spitefully say that yet you also check in to have a look at Play's blog. Is it because,
      A) you find it interesting
      B) you find the gossip interesting
      Or c) we are all talking about you and you'd like to k ow what we are saying?

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  16. Certain ancient Hebraic texts were, in terms of gender binary, light years ahead of their time. Their word for God (offhand I don't recall it) was not gender specific, but gender compound, that is, it referred to God, not as both masculine and feminine, but only as representative of both sexes. The ontological distinction here is important, because it means that, while these texts acknowledged the inclusivity of gender binary in God, they similtaneously expressed divinity as greater than this binary.

    In a theologically regressive step, later Hebraic texts reflected the patriarchal structure of Judaism by referring to God solely with masculine nouns. (The rise and rise of mysogny.)

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  17. http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2015/02/22/hoax-alert-father-oneal-who-has-met-god-and-thinks-shes-a-woman-is-made-up-just-like-god-herself/

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  18. Bishop Pat, the account never happened. I'm a priest in Massachusetts and would have heard of this by now. Researching it on line found that it is in fact a fabrication by a fake news outlet that went viral after being published by a Uganda news company. Living in Massachusetts, were this story true, it would have been all over the news, which of course it was not. Honestly, it wouldn't bother me if God is Mother ... but that's not the point. The point is that the story is false. Thought you might want to know! .. and thank you for your blog!

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  19. Didn't you read other people's posts?. We knew already that the silly story was false. By the way, people die only once, though they may have near-death experiences.
    Scripture says "It is appointed unto men once to die and after death, the judgment."

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  20. This might be an opportunity for introspection Bishop Pat. I don't agree with you on much — for example, I think St John Paul II was a great man and a fine pope — but I know that you're serious and you're sincere. It's an easy thing, when you write something that strikes me as ambiguous, for me to assign the best possible interpretation to your words.

    My opinion of Cardinal O'Malley is less formed. I know he's a Franciscan friar who still wears the habit. I know he has washed the feet of abuse victims in the Boston Archdiocese. And I know he's a theologian. Not much, but enough to red flag the the final paragraph of this fake news article. It struck me as literally unbelievable that the Cardinal would dismissingly refer to "hallucinations" and declare "clearly God isn't female." As soon as I read that, I knew the veracity of this article required more research.

    I think your initial response to the article suggests some cynicism has taken hold. It's no wonder, considering your experiences with the hierarchy. But I pray you continue to foster habits of charity in thought and deed which eradicate the cynicism.

    Keep up the good work.

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