Tony Meloche wrote:

running dogg wrote:
-=jd=- wrote:


On Mon 04 Apr 2005 09:14:39p, Al Patrick wrote in
message :


This article is NOT MINE and I do not know the accuracy of it but I
figured a few of you would be interested in it. :-)

======


The Pope's Death: A Defining Moment
"Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for
light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for
bitter!" Isaiah 5:20

As I write this, Pope John Paul II is near death. Once he draws his last
breath, a Vatican official will lightly tap three times upon the
deceased pontiff's forehead with a golden hammer and call his name. Upon
receiving no reply, the cardinal chamberlain will remove John Paul's
fisherman's ring and smash it.
{snippage}


And if there *is* a reply, they will summon the "Holy Sledge-Hammer"...


From the looks of it, they didn't need the golden sledgehammer this
time. Maybe next pope...


With due respect to very old traditions . . .

The hammer bit (and it ws always a silver hammer, not a gold one) was
used for centuries. The ritual was that the Camerlengo
(second-in-command) would tap the Pontiffs head three times, calling out
the Pontiffs baptismal name after each tap. If there was no response,
he would turn to the other Cardinal witnesses and say: "The throne of
Peter is vacant. Of a certainty, the pope is dead". The calling out
three times of the baptismal name is still followed as a mattaer of a
nod to tradition, but the "silver hammer" thing hasn't been done since
the mid-20th century.

In an age in which we know that the Pope died at EXACTLY 9:37 pm Italy
time, the silver hammer is not exactly needed anymore. Presumably 1000
years ago, it was. In the days before we could tell with certainty that
a person was dead, there was a very real risk of being buried alive.
It's happened several times that are recorded. I've read that it even
happened recently (within the last ten years, maybe five) in Saudi
Arabia. The poor guy was buried alive and a shepherd heard him screaming
from inside his coffin and dug him out. He returned home in his burial
shroud and his mother and sister fainted from fright. IMO, this is what
happened to Jesus. He went into deep shock from being nailed to a cross
and seemed like he was dead, but when they went back three days later to
bury him he was actually alive, and the peasants thought that he had
returned from the dead. He was lucky-Jewish law requires a burial within
24 hours, but since he "died" on a Saturday morning (the Jewish day
begins at sundown) and Saturday is the holy day for Jews he was stashed
in an empty tomb for burial on Sunday. In the interim, he woke up. And
we're still suffering for Jesus's incredible stroke of luck 2000 years
later.


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