A Brief History
On January 25, 2016, we published an article about The Blood of Pope John Paul II Stolen for Satanic Ritual. As much out of the mainstream Christian and Catholic faith such idiocy may seem to be, there is an even goofier series of incidents involving body parts and gifts to popes.
Digging Deeper
Specifically, the coronation of Charlemagne, King of the Franks, as the first Holy Roman Emperor on December 25, 800 by Pope Leo III was a momentous occasion in History and in the history of the Catholic Church. Charlemagne saw fit to bestow a most holy gift to the Pope, The Foreskin of Jesus Christ! Right off you may be suspicious that the foreskin of Christ, a left over part of the circumcision of Jesus that would have taken place as part of normal Jewish life had been saved at the time of the circumcision at all, let alone survived for another 800 years, and just happened to be in the custody of the King of the Franks, far away from the land where Jesus was born and lived. (Charlemagne simply explained that an angel had brought him the treasured bit of the penis of God’s son, apparently because that is what angels do.)
Just as there have been enough “splinters of the True Cross” to build a few Redwood trees, and enough “Spears of Destiny” to equip an army, the foreskin of Jesus, known (yes, it has its own name) as The Holy Prepuce, seems to have been somehow produced in enough abundance that numerous gifts of this holy relic have been bestowed upon various reigning popes! This fascination with the supposed penis skin of Jesus Christ had gotten to ridiculous proportions, and various churches throughout the Catholic faith had a treasured Holy Prepuce of their own. By the year 1900 (what in the hell took 1100 years for the Church to get the picture???) the Catholic Church finally said enough! and put forth a ruling that anyone even speaking or writing of the Holy Prepuce would be ex-communicated. This punishment was increased in 1954 to a harsher form of ex-communication, just to be on the safe side. Then, in the Second Vatican Council the Church officially removed the Feast of the Circumcision of Our Lord from the Church calendar. Although the Church now refers to January 1 as the Octave of the Nativity with no mention of circumcision, traditional Catholics and Eastern Rite worshipers still celebrate the holy sexual disfigurement.
The removal of the foreskin of baby boys is not only a Jewish ritual, but is a common practice in the United States and in much of the industrialized world. Some African and other societies practicing traditional religion remove the foreskin as the boy transforms into a man (puberty), and some cultures in the African and Muslim world perform “female circumcision” in which the clitoris is removed and/or the labia are cut and sewn together, guaranteeing virginity at the time of marriage.
Question for students (and subscribers): What do you think of ritual sexual disfigurement? Are there really any benefits to circumcision? What about “female circumcision” done without the consent of the baby girl, condemned to live life without sexual pleasure? Please share your thoughts and opinions on these matters, and also if you believe any of these Holy Prepuces are genuine, in the comments section below this article.
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Historical Evidence
For more information, please see National Geographic.
The featured image in this article, a painting by Friedrich Herlin (1435–1500) photographed by Daniel71953 (Daniel Leclercq) on 2006-04-06 of the Circumcision of Christ, detail from Twelve Apostles Altar (Zwölf-Boten-Altar), is a faithful photographic reproduction of a two-dimensional, public domain work of art. The work of art itself is in the public domain for the following reason: This work is in the public domain in its country of origin and other countries and areas where the copyright term is the author’s life plus 100 years or fewer. This work is in the public domain in its country of origin and other countries and areas where the copyright term is the author’s life plus 100 years or fewer.
