From an atheist/agnostic perspective, this story is quite amusing. Most religious folks don't realize or care to think about how many "ordained" doubting or unbelieving priests/ministers/pastors are out there pretending to believe in the existence of God so they can have a job and get paid and a place to live. I am not saying they are all like that, but few believers questions one way or the other. And there is no way of truly knowing for certain . . . believers just take the "man/woman of God's" word on "faith".If a God does exist, would he/she/it consider Baptism, marriage, or any other sacred rite invalid if the person performing such ceremonies were indeed a fake church official?
Fake priest arrested baptising baby
LISBON (Reuters) - A man pretending to be a priest was arrested by police as he prepared to baptise a baby in a small town in the north of Portugal."When the man said 'in the name of the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit' police came in and grabbed him," a member of the church was quoted by local daily Jornal de Noticias as saying.
A spokeswoman for the Portuguese police said the 34-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of impersonating a priest and had several similar arrest warrants to his name.
"We had to interrupt the religious ceremony to identify the suspect," said spokeswoman Amelia Moutinho, adding that the public prosecutor would now investigate the case.
The baby was later baptised by a real priest, the local daily said. The man was arrested on June 16.
3 comments:
Yeah, I wonder how common this sort of thing really is. Wouldn't it be something if significant numbers of American Christians were attending weekly services conducted by atheists?
vjack, the pastor of the last church we attended (Presbyterian) seemed so disgruntled and was always complaining. Then one day he said openly "I am sick of being a martyr for this church!" I found out he is now a high-school English teacher.
Too many Christians and followers of other religions look to their pastors as some kind of "divine" humans when they are just people, many of whom know as much or even less than members of their "flock" know about religion and the Bible, and life in general.
This is even funnier for me given that I'm Portuguese.
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