Watched the papal mass from Westminster this morning. Intriguing business.
Took some notes so just gonna pretty much reproduce them in somewhat unrefined form here just now. Pope on throne, white hair red robe, reminded me, no disrespect, slightly of santa claus. Opulent cathedral, marble pillars. Red and black robes, white diamond hats (what do you call them?) Paradox: one man, servant of the church but also revered, tight security. Highlights undemocratic church structure? Muslim Glasgow uni professor mona sadiki found this aspect, one man locus of such moral authority intriguing too. A little old man getting such attention, getting out of tinted glass windowed car.
Bible reader sings response - what if he couldn’t sing? (comedy value)
R Dawkins said in newspaper he shd get back to his tin pot castle. 'Trials of the pope' on bbc2 tues, Ratzinger's personal painful history, the lack of empathy - which involves getting to know about someone properly to get a balanced view - deeply unattractive in RD. ‘Catholic voices’ featured on that prog, 2 young girls trained to be on message with media, I learned how they do natural fertility… Shouldn’t the church give its wealth to the poor? Mark Dowd the presenter asked, she wasn’t prepared for that one!
Sung liturgy in latin - why rome, why latin? - in England? Anachronism, indecipherable to an outsider.
Cardinals in black with pink waist bands, magisterial church power.
Appearance of whole show, this locus of wealth and beauty in a world full of poverty ugliness suffering, how justify?
Commentator attitude of neutrality, interest and tolerance. Incense waving, high mass altar. Holy father, putting on his specs - camera homes in, the youth, treating him like a pop star, but he lingered with them, more than protocol required…
Fascinating, much for further reflection.
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5 comments:
Perhaps RD is just outraged that we are paying all this money and giving credibility to a man who covered up the rape of children and refuses to give details over to the relevant authorities - but let not focus on that because he has the balls to point it out -eh? Lets just ignore it cos it was RD that said it!
I saw a good poster about the curch's view on contraception - it simply said "Death by dogma"
What do you make of his athiests love hitler comment - or cant you mention that because he is a "man of faith" and you cant condemn him?
Personally, I think it was an attempt to divert from this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2iQGczIx6Sg
Think about that for a moment!
Criticising the Pope from a reasonably atheistic,LGBT, feminist ,human rights (or Rangers-supporting! :)) perspective is one thing, but evangelical 'observations' on the Pope and traditional (i.e.: real) worship tend to be misguided and laughably solipsitic at best. Examples:
>>Appearance of whole show, this locus of wealth and beauty in a world full of poverty ugliness suffering, how justify?
HM the Queen and the Pope himself quite rightly stressed the work that the Catholic Church does amongst the poor (Billy, I've still to watch Stephen Fry in the Intelligence squared debate, and am certainly not offering this fact as somehow negating the CC's bad points). A parish Catholic Church, replete with vestments, incense and the Eucharist, will invariably have a far more diverse congregation (certainly in Glasgow) than your average Salvation By Being (Upper) Middle-Class iCrap addicted tambourine-banging Evangelical service.
>>>Sung liturgy in latin - why rome, why latin? - in England? Anachronism, indecipherable to an outsider.
Really? They had subtitles, no? Didn't you notice the parts of the liturgy that the Anglican communion (quite deliberately) also uses? And there are a billion Catholics in the world, worth mentioning when people start up the 'we need Shine Jesus Shine and Deeper to be culturally relevant!' crap. Trust me, the Latin mass is, from a global and historically aware perspective, far more 'normal' than Alpha Courses+ BWMs type Christianity.
You can of course, as the Orthodox and many Anglicans do, accept some historical Primacy of Rome, without going along with ideas of Petrine Succession etc :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primacy_of_the_Roman_Pontiff#Relation_between_Catholicism_and_other_Christians
>>Highlights undemocratic church structure?
In fairness, that's hardly strictly a catholic problem. You can go to the most Sola Scriptura church in the world, but it's still assumed that, by virtue of attending, one agrees to be under the spiritual authority of ''Pastors'' or what not. I'm not sure that (say) taking seriously what so-called Christian leaders like Mark Driscoll say is any better than Papal Infallibility; the latter, afterall, has only been used *once*.
>>>Muslim Glasgow uni professor mona sadiki
*Siddiqui*! She's a Muslim, not, as 'Sadiki' would suggest, a Samurai ;)
>> white diamond hats (what do you call them?)
Pope's white skullcap is called a zucchetto. Try : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papal_regalia_and_insignia
Hours of fun! :)
Criticising the Pope from a reasonably atheistic,LGBT, feminist ,human rights (or Rangers-supporting! :)) perspective is one thing, but evangelical 'observations' on the Pope and traditional (i.e.: real) worship tend to be misguided and laughably solipsitic at best. Examples:
>>Appearance of whole show, this locus of wealth and beauty in a world full of poverty ugliness suffering, how justify?
HM the Queen and the Pope himself quite rightly stressed the work that the Catholic Church does amongst the poor (Billy, I've still to watch Stephen Fry in the Intelligence squared debate, and am certainly not offering this fact as somehow negating the CC's bad points). A parish Catholic Church, replete with vestments, incense and the Eucharist, will invariably have a far more diverse congregation (certainly in Glasgow) than your average Salvation By Being (Upper) Middle-Class iCrap addicted tambourine-banging Evangelical service.
>>>Sung liturgy in latin - why rome, why latin? - in England? Anachronism, indecipherable to an outsider.
Really? They had subtitles, no? Didn't you notice the parts of the liturgy that the Anglican communion (quite deliberately) also uses? And there are a billion Catholics in the world, worth mentioning when people start up the 'we need Shine Jesus Shine and Deeper to be culturally relevant!' crap. Trust me, the Latin mass is, from a global and historically aware perspective, far more 'normal' than Alpha Courses+ BWMs type Christianity.
You can of course, as the Orthodox and many Anglicans do, accept some historical Primacy of Rome, without going along with ideas of Petrine Succession etc :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primacy_of_the_Roman_Pontiff#Relation_between_Catholicism_and_other_Christians
>>Highlights undemocratic church structure?
In fairness, that's hardly strictly a catholic problem. You can go to the most Sola Scriptura church in the world, but it's still assumed that, by virtue of attending, one agrees to be under the spiritual authority of ''Pastors'' or what not. I'm not sure that (say) taking seriously what so-called Christian leaders like Mark Driscoll say is any better than Papal Infallibility; the latter, afterall, has only been used *once*.
>>>Muslim Glasgow uni professor mona sadiki
*Siddiqui*! She's a Muslim, not, as 'Sadiki' would suggest, a Samurai ;)
>> white diamond hats (what do you call them?)
Pope's white skullcap is called a zucchetto. Try : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papal_regalia_and_insignia
Hours of fun! :)
thanks ryan, intelligent points, you've made me reflect...
oh and your points have validity too billy, didn't mean to miss that out! there are of course different facets to consider...
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