FROM THE DESK OF Roland Rocchiccioli – July 4, 2019

Israel Folau argues he is fighting for his religious freedom. That is spurious. He is not. He is free to worship a palm tree, if he chooses.

WHAT he cannot do is espouse dangerous beliefs, carefully wrapped in a veil of religious ignorance.

I have viewed his so-called sermons which border on the incoherent; an unintelligible diatribe of rambling silliness. Mr Folau is, in my opinion, a functioning illiterate. His inability to prosecute an argument, and to articulate and maintain a clean line of logic is disquieting. It would be a quantum leap to suggest he is possessed of intellectual agility; and, for whatever reasons, his command of the language, and its convoluted syntax, is deplorable; however, all that notwithstanding, one is left with distinct impression that his definition of what qualifies as religious freedom is dubious.

Shooting your mouth-off, however well intentioned, under the patina of religious freedom is dangerous.

The twenty-one great Catholic Councils (over 1900-years) brought enormous change to the perception of limbo, purgatory, and hell; heresy; plenary indulgences (they remit all temporal “punishment” required to cleanse the soul from attachment to anything but God), and which have now been abolished; states of mortal and venial sin (abolished); the absolution of confession; the transubstantiation; the mystery of the Blessed Sacrament; and the Trinity – about which I suspect Mr Folau would be ignarus fidelis.

His prophesying for homosexuals, adulterers, idolaters, drunkards, fornicators and the rest of the good-time, rag-tag bunch is risible. I make no judgement to the veracity of the claim, but one of his playing colleagues remembers a very different Mr Folau from a time when they kept company. Who cares?

Historically, for the first 1500 years until the reformation and the establishment of the Church of England, Hell was the purview of the Church of Rome – the original Christian church, and from whom all dogma was decreed; hence, ex cathedra and papal infallibility. Down through the ages, popes have embellished the truth and existence of hell, using it to their controlling advantage. In more recent times, Pope Francis in answer to the question, “If God forgives everyone, why does hell exist?”, proffered, “This is hell. It is telling God, ‘You take care of yourself because I’ll take care of myself.’ They don’t send you to hell, you go there because you choose to be there.” The Aesopian fable of Hell is based on a recalcitrant and envious Angel who attempted to depose God. He rejected God’s forgiveness and was banished. Piqued, he set-up his own kingdom. Hell! Now, if you believe that, I own a bridge in Sydney I am trying to sell; or alternatively, go to my ‘GoFundMe’ page and make a huge donation!

The bible, originally in Classical Hebrew and Aramaic; translated to Latin Vulgate – 4th century; Greek, and then, English. Translations, by definition, are inaccurate.

Hell is based on the premise of faith, and a belief in God. Most contemporary theologians (excluding self-appointed preachers in the more fundamentalist splinter churches) are in consensus: Hell is not about fire and brimstone; it is about the freedom to say ‘no’ to God. When you close your heart and tell the world to go to hell, you are in fact choosing hell for yourself. Hell is the absence of love, companionship, and communion. We are not sent there. We choose it.

Mr Folau doesn’t realise that God – if he exists – did not create hell. We did! This is not about freedom of religious speech. Mr Folau can say what he wants, but he is not immune to the consequences of doing exactly that.

Mr Falou believes in the entity of the Devil. Do you think perhaps he might look a little like the late Frank Thring in the Little Lucifer firelighter advertisements? I do hope so. He was a dear friend.

Roland can be heard every Monday morning – 10.30 – on radio 3BA and contacted via [email protected].