Bishop Bernardo Bastres Florence of Punta Arenas, Chile has an
interesting suggestion for those convinced that the world will end Dec.
21, as predicted by the Mayan calendar.
According to local newspaper La Prensa Austral, the bishop said that
those who believe the Mayan prophecy should donate their worldly goods
to the Church.
“If there are many who believe the world will end on Dec. 21, as the
Church, we have no problem with them naming us as the beneficiaries of
their possessions in their wills,” he quipped in a Dec. 9 interview.
Doomsday predictions about the end of the world, as documented by the
Mayans, have circulated in recent years and grown in popularity. The
Mayan Long Count calendar begins in 3,114 B.C., which accounts for time
in 394-year periods known as Baktuns. The Mayans allegedly believed that
the last, or 13th Baktun, ends Dec. 21, 2012.
To those who are convinced that the world is ending next week, Bishop
Bastres said “I assure them that after Dec. 21, we will eternally pray
for them.”
“Because I am sure that we will all be alive after that date. If they
wish to pass on, they could do enormous good by donating their
properties to the Church.”
Adding to criticism of the prophecy, Father Jose Funes – who directs
the Vatican Observatory – wrote in the Vatican daily L'Osservatore
Romano that “it's not even worth discussing” the predictions.
In his Dec. 12 piece titled, “The end that won't come – at least for
now,” he countered doomsday scenarios by stressing that the “Word of God
reminds us that we are heading toward a fundamentally good future,
despite the crises of every kind in which we are immersed.”
“That's because we are assured that, in Christ, there is a future for
humanity and for the universe,” the Jesuit priest added.
“In the depths of the human being is the fundamental belief that death cannot have the last word.”
Although Cosmology shows that the universe will – billions of years
from now – go into “a final state of cold and darkness,” he noted, the
Christian message “teaches us instead that in the final resurrection,
the last day, God will reconstitute every man, woman and all the
universe.”