Found this: Don't cut your flesh in worship to any god. It was the custom among Canaanite nations to cut the flesh to express sincerity in idolatrous worship prayer (1Ki. 18: 28). More often this was done for the dead to help wash away sins (Lev. 19: 28; 21: 5).
The Latin says 'super mortuo', which means more 'upon the dead', I'm not really sure what's being described here but it sounds like some ritual being forbidden (one of those times I wish I had some understanding of Hebrew). What's translated as 'tattoos' is 'figuras aliquas aut stigmata', so 'some figures/pictures or wounds'.
I’ve noticed this too. People get their first and then it’s like they’re under some sort of compulsion to get more. This i think is one more thing to factor in - addiction of any kind is never good. As to how to deal with loved ones who already got them I’m not sure. I’m sure more knowledgeable members than myself can come up with something. Oh where’s our dear Caroline when we need her!!??
My grandmother was Eastern European and it was customary for females to get their ears pierced and wear small earrings always. I did that in the 10th grade. My earrings have not always been small but now they are. I might add that my grandmother was extremely religious and always modest in her dress, always wore longer dresses.
I’m sure tattoos are addictive. Very few tattoed people have only one. Having said that I don’t think everyone with a tattoo is under demonic oppression. Fr. Don Calloway certainly isn’t, and God’s Grace is so powerful it overcomes every obstacle including errors made in youth. I don’t see pierced ears as being cuts into the body. A Spanish lady once told me it was routine in Spanish hospitals to pierce the ears of newborn baby girls. I wouldn’t have wanted this for me or my children but it seems to have been a cultural thing. The Queen had pierced ears, I guess she had to do something with all that inherited bling! Her granddaughter Zara had a pierced tongue but I am not sure she does now. Some tattoos can be a gateway for evil spirits to enter. I think we can imagine the kind. My aunt’s husband had ‘Mommy’ on his arm. My parents thought it a bit tacky. What about make up? Painting the face to make it look more beautiful is perhaps worldly. I tried the no makeup route when I was younger but people have often taken my pallor for illness. These days I don’t mind much but when I was younger I wore mascara, blusher and a little lipstick to school and it stopped the teachers from asking me if I was okay. I was a redhead with pale lashes and skin and no one noticed my light artifice.
This is the custom among hispanic families as well. My two nieces whose mother my SIL is Puerto Rican had their ears pierced as babies. And they were a very Catholic family.
I had my ears pierced with I was 18. Once upon a time only a physician could legally pierce ears in Massachusetts, but it was impossible to find a doctor willing who was willing. I had friends who actually pierced their own ears using something they called "sleepers" that were designed to gradually pierce the ear. This was a tortuous process and many ended up with infected ears, so I decided upon different method. There was a jeweler in town who illegally pierced ears at his shop, so this is where I ended up. I still have my pierced ears, but only wear very small earrings as well.
Haha same here about the makeup! I also have very pale skin, to the point that you can see the blue veins under my eyes very clearly. People have often mistaken them for signs that I haven't been sleeping...and one girl in paint class thought I'd accidentally gotten blue paint under my eyes! Lol. So when I go out, I just dab some concealer under my eyes and put a faint line of eye liner on, to draw attention away from those blue half circles lol. The concealer only half works, but it takes me from looking half-dead to alive, haha! I don't wear any other makeup. I think intention probably determines whether make up is bad or good... If you're wearing it to impress everyone, and it's a bit of an obsession, maybe it's not so good. My mom used to tell me about how when she was young and newly-married, she used to spend an hour every morning carefully applying her makeup, and she'd get super stressed if she couldn't get it perfect... So one day when she was throwing a little fit, my dad, who was very laid-back and had few opinions about anything, walked in and told her he didn't want her to wear makeup anymore. He picked it all up and threw it in the trash, and my mom was so shocked that she just said, "Ok," and stopped wearing makeup!
I once read a complex archeological study report, about cave paintings have a surprising number of missing fingers per hand. the main theory\conclusion was that "cavemen" amputated fingers as ritual mourning. https://jralonso.es/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/alonso2019eja.pdf Maybe it was an universal thing about pre-monotheistic humans. Nimrod's reign from Genesis ,maybe? I think caveman were just humans who lived in caves and were savage, not apes..but yes, they are a good guideline for very ancient human communities IMO
There are alternative theories. Hazardous lifestyle. Battle. Perhaps, punitively, as rough justice. Apparently, Cro-Magnon people had notably bigger skulls than contemporary human beings. This shouldn't be all that surprising. They had to deal with far greater challenges than more modern men. Is there also the possibility that modern fallacies of 'evolution' and 'progress' blind us from the possibility that human history since the Fall has been continually downward. There was a quite orthodox Catholic priest in the last century who studied primitive societies both current and past and was adamant that the more primitive the society, the more it gravitated towards monotheism. Perhaps, the more we move away from the time of the Fall, the weaker our memories of Eden get. Goodness knows where we'd be now, were it not for the Incarnation. It's bad enough as it is, with millions sliding into atheism, secularism and ever more toxic kinds of paganism. Not to mention satanism and other forms of demon-worship.
https://www.americamagazine.org/fai...ancis-talks-tech-sex-and-tattoos-young-adults Yulian Vendzilovych, a seminarian at Holy Spirit Seminary in Lviv, asked the pope how a young priest is to judge which parts of modern culture are good and which are not. He used the example of tattoos, which many young people believe "express true beauty," he said. "Don't be afraid of tattoos," the pope responded, noting that for centuries Eritrean Christians and others have gotten tattoos of the cross. "Of course, there can be exaggerations," the pope said. But a tattoo "is a sign of belonging," and asking a young person about his or her tattoos can be a great place to begin a dialogue about priorities, values, belonging, "and then you can approach the culture of the young." A "sign of belonging," oh yes, quite right...belonging...to the devil.
That whole headline seems inappropriate but I cant exactly pinpoint why It makes the Pope look like an uncle trying to teach the family young how to behave
Oh boy he's clueless sometimes. Obsessed with the word dialogue. The gospel of dialogue. The devil loves dialogue, throw yourself down from those cliffs honestly you will be fine.
Pope Francis to a religious congregation yesterday “Thank you for what you do, thank you for your witness. Thank you for your hands, which are joined [in prayer]: not glued, no, because afterwards they have to go to work. Remember the altar boy with joined hands? This Pope is a very, very strange man.
