Pope Francis, Catholics, and Christians in the news worldwide
“Seven Storey Mountain” by Thomas Merton, published in 1948, I am happy to report, is still available on Amazon.
I enjoyed reading Merton's Seven Storey Mountain, but don't think it requires rescuing any more than Faulkner's many semi-autobiographical novels. They will likely all stay "in print" in a digitized age.
God isn't involved in personal computer storage, though he may be in the cloud.
dave said:
God isn't involved in personal computer storage, though he may be in the cloud.
But you could download a few commandments on your tablet..
Good news — from of all places — Los Angles!
Thought of you this morning when I read this from The Tablet…
Up in Edinburgh over the weekend, I cannot claim to have sampled the most adventurous limits of the Fringe. My tour took in some decidedly un-experimental stand-up and improv, a live-band singalong of ‘80s and ‘90s hits, Mass at the cathedral in Polish (I do not speak Polish) and the feminist bookshop Rare Birds, where Lucy Lethbridge’s Tourists was appositely displayed. I enjoyed it all very much, Polish hymns included.
My only real departure from this staid course was to the upstairs of a Baptist chapel on Saturday morning to see a one-man dramatisation of Mark’s gospel. It seemed an odd way to start a day after hearing comics deliver racy Max Miller jokes from the 1930s, but roll over the idea in your head and you realise that, as scripture goes, it’s perfect Fringe-fare: a tight text and narrative that one performer can summon up with minimal tech, props and budget. It’s how the ancient world would have first heard the story. Why hadn’t somebody thought of it before?
The actor Stefan Smart explained to me that they had. His performance, I am Mark, was inspired by the great Shakespearean Alec McCowen, who recited Mark in the Authorised Version to packed houses in the West End and Broadway in the late 1970s and ‘80s. (McCowen’s breakthrough role had been as the eponymous rogue pope in Hadrian the Seventh; he would later play the also-rogue missionary Uncle Jack in the original 1990 production of Dancing at Lughnasa.) Smart has a more explicitly evangelical purpose, but he insists that the key to Mark’s gospel in this setting is its merit as a script – regardless of one’s attitude to the content.
Smart’s mighty performance, with only a chair on stage for company, makes his case. It rests in deep story-telling tradition. He does not play each part but performs the role of a narrator (or evangelist) deploying a cast of characters: a sneering voice denotes a Pharisee, a clueless stare a disciple. If these dramatic masks seem overwrought at first, they quickly become valuable reference points as Mark’s ostensibly simple structure – miracles, parables, Passion – reveals patterns of foreshadowing and resonance that we must at once think and feel. By keeping his role simple and technically adroit, Smart makes the story limpid in a way that plain prose cannot always do.
Many worthy homilies attempt to explain the context of the gobbets of scripture we hear at Mass but, lacking the discipline to get through a gospel in one sitting, I needed this to understand what “context” really means. As Smart observes, religion isn’t required to appreciate the show, but its dramatic strength aren’t wholly separable from the theological content. The things that make it a good story can also be what make it a true story.
mtierney said:
Thought of you this morning when I read this from The Tablet…
Up in Edinburgh over the weekend
Thanks, but my family are from Glasgow.
mtierney said:
Good news — from of all places — Los Angles!
I am a fan of St Michael's. The acts of public penance performed by the priests of St Michael's (for the involvement of the Abbey's founder in the crimes of one of the most vile pedophile clerics) took real courage at a time when courage was notably lacking in the Church.
"Pope Francis blasts reactionary American Catholics who oppose church reform"
"The situation in the United States is not easy: there is a very strong, reactionary attitude. It is organized and shapes the way people belong, even emotionally," said the pope. "I want to remind these people that backwardism is useless ...
"Those American groups of which you speak, so closed, are isolating themselves. And instead of living by doctrine, by the true doctrine that always develops and bears fruit, they live by ideologies," he added. "But when you abandon doctrine in life to replace it with an ideology, you have lost, you have lost as in war."
nohero said:
"Pope Francis blasts reactionary American Catholics who oppose church reform"
"The situation in the United States is not easy: there is a very strong, reactionary attitude. It is organized and shapes the way people belong, even emotionally," said the pope. "I want to remind these people that backwardism is useless ...
"Those American groups of which you speak, so closed, are isolating themselves. And instead of living by doctrine, by the true doctrine that always develops and bears fruit, they live by ideologies," he added. "But when you abandon doctrine in life to replace it with an ideology, you have lost, you have lost as in war."
Are you sure that's not a headline from The Onion?
In other words, ideologies follow the will of a mortal or mortals as opposed to bowing to the celestial will (the Pope). It's not easy for me to parse it out, but I kind of understand. There's a song by Tears for Fears about it.
dave said:
In other words, ideologies follow the will of a mortal or mortals as opposed to bowing to the celestial will (the Pope). It's not easy for me to parse it out, but I kind of understand. There's a song by Tears for Fears about it.
There’s also another song that goes…Advice for the young at heart
Soon we will be older…When we gonna make it work? In violent times
You shouldn't have to sell your soul either…it’s a very very mad world…when our pope is a communist.
dave said:
In other words, ideologies follow the will of a mortal or mortals as opposed to bowing to the celestial will (the Pope). It's not easy for me to parse it out, but I kind of understand. There's a song by Tears for Fears about it.
I think you're misunderstanding the context of the remarks. Note the headline, that the remarks are about "reactionary American Catholics who oppose Church reform."
The reactionaries (or "backwardists", as the Pope refers to them) are opposing reforms, making the argument that they are defending "doctrine" (that is, what you call in your phrase "celestial will").
Must never forget Jorge Bergoglio's first job was as a bouncer. Now he's the CC doctrine's bouncer.
In case you missed this, mtierney.
Pope Says a Strong U.S. Faction Offers a Backward, Narrow View of the Church
The Pope is infallible, right?
Judge rules former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick is not competent to stand trial in sex abuse case, dismisses charges
(A Massachusetts case was dismissed yesterday after experts from both sides said that McCarrick, age 93, former Archbishop of Newark for 14 years,was incompetent, meaning that he either didn't understand the charges against him or was unable to cooperate in his defense. Usually this happens when a defendant is psychotic, but after a few months of medications, he becomes competent again. However, in cases of dementia or other permanent neurological conditions, if there is not possibility of a person regaining competency, then the charges must be dismissed).
https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/30/us/theodore-mccarrick-sex-abuse-trial/index.html
“Getting to know you…” — Pope Francis’ theme song…
Mongolia welcomes Pope Francis….
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/02/world/asia/pope-francis-mongolia.html
American conservatives are not more Catholic than the pope
"Pope Francis made headlines recently by ripping the conservative Catholics who dominate the U.S. church as a 'reactionary' cohort who have replaced faith with ideology. It was the pontiff’s most pointed criticism of the influential Americans who have been his harshest foes since he was elected more than a decade ago. The comments came in a meeting last month with fellow Jesuits in Portugal, where one of the priests remarked that he had spent a year in the United States and was shocked by the anger directed at Francis.
The pope replied at length, saying he knows the issues all too well and explaining that, to his mind, the loudest voices in American Catholicism are 'backward-looking' moralists ('indietristi') 'disconnected from the roots of the church.' Catholic tradition and history, Francis said, is about moving forward, changing to live the Gospel message in the midst of current realities. The pope’s words were both surprisingly frank and frankly unsurprising, given the persistence of right-wing anger directed at his modernizing approach.
...
American conservatives don’t simply disagree with Francis or dissent from his teaching. They actually see themselves as more Catholic than the pope, and they’re not shy about saying so. Francis is 'undermining' the faith or is teaching 'error.' To some, he’s even a heretic or he is fomenting schism and his very legitimacy is in question. When Italian Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, Benedict XVI’s ambassador to the United States, dropped a 2018 manifesto of accusations against Francis, he concluded by demanding that the pope resign. Some two dozen U.S. bishops publicly vouched for Viganò’s credibility and many more were privately supportive. This is unprecedented.
...
"As he headed to Mongolia shortly afterward, reporters asked Francis what he thought about the angry reaction of U.S. conservatives to his remarks. He seemed unperturbed. 'They got angry, but let’s move on, move on,' the pope said. Translation: In the Catholic Church of the future, those who go backward are likely to be left behind."
Hope films such as this get to EWTN…
There are no saints, it’s just some decent people living in an indecent world.
Beautiful account of survival during the World Trade Center attack 22 years ago…
There is an interesting article in the Times about mtierney's dehydrated nun.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/09/us/missouri-nun-habit.html
The article raises a number of troubling issues about the way this woman's body has been treated. Apparently, the woman's family were not consulted about her exhumation and subsequent promotion as a road side attraction.
GoSlugs said:
There is an interesting article in the Times about mtierney's dehydrated nun.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/09/us/missouri-nun-habit.html
The article raises a number of troubling issues about the way this woman's body has been treated. Apparently, the woman's family were not consulted about her exhumation and subsequent promotion as a road side attraction.
They probably dug her up to see if she really was green.,,
mtierney said:
Another biblical film to watch for…
After reading the link, it’s obvious that this is a political movie.
In stark contrast to the recent news about Pope Pius XII knowing of the desperate plight of Jews and Poles as Nazis advanced and reshaped Europe, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/16/letter-suggests-pope-pius-xii-knew-of-mass-gassings-of-jews-and-poles-in-1942, yesterday we were reminded of a very compassionate young Australian who worked hard to change the fate of many European families.
More people need to know about Bruce Dowden:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/17/forgotten-australian-second-world-war-hero-who-worked-for-british-intelligence-should-be-honoured-say-family-paul-dowden
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One wonders whether Mary (mother of a child whose father was not her husband) would have been allowed to teach at Cardinal Pell Elementary School (above).