Cults – Page 4 – James Wagner

Abbé Pierre, the excessive priest

PierreL%27Abbe.jpg
“holy anger”

Abbé Pierre died yesterday. If there is such a thing as a “saint”, this man clearly deserved the title, but he will never be canonized by the Church. Too excessive.

He wrote that as a young priest, he had sex with a woman, and further infuriated Roman Catholic authorities by advocating gay marriage.

Even Jeanne d’Arc, who finally made saint after waiting 600 years, had never talked that kind of nonsense.
This and (almost) everything else in this remarkable NYTimes obituary of a 20th-century St. Francis almost reads like pure invention; it describes the perfect French or even universal hero of the poor, the homeless, the disenfranchised. And there’s recycling in there too!
ADDENDUM: In doing a little searching I’ve just discovered that l’Abbé was a good friend of this dangerous man.

[image of Jacques Nadeau from Le Devoir]

we’ve just found another war!

is this trip necessary?

Does our singular bellicosity stem simply from our addiction to oil, or from our growing cult of christianism? Or is it simply the pathological expression of a frightened, isolated, ignorant, provincial and bored people?
My question seems to assume that all Americans are responsible for creating and sustaining the most war-like society in history, but while it’s clear the buttons themselves are pushed by a military-industrial-media establishment, if we continue to describe our nation as a democracy we have to take as full a responsibility for the evil done in our name as for the good.

[image from C-130 Headquarters]

the antidote to 9/11 24/7

I wasn’t going to say anything more today about the fifth installment of our annual orgy of mourning and revenge, the anniversary of September 11. But things just got out of hand once we walked into Pierogi this evening and now I can’t help myself.
For some this sacred holiday was all about a service held around a small temporary wading pool installed downtown at the bottom of a very big hole (by now the flower-filled tank of water has probably been drained and its parts tossed into some recycling bin), but some of us decided we had to be around other, more thoughtful New Yorkers on the evening of the day which just won’t shut up, the drubbing from which most of our countrymen seem to have learned all the wrong lessons.
Barry and I decided to go to Brooklyn, and specifically Williamsburg, always a reasonable choice in stressful times.
Tonight Pierogi Williamsburg threw an opening party for “Matt Marello and Matt Freedman, Five Years After” and it would have been a smash even without the presence of most of Brooklyn and Downtown Manhattan’s art world working aristocracy and creative yeomanry. Matt Marello was in Gallery 1. From the press release:

Matt Marello’s “1968/2001” is an extensive multimedia presentation based on the phenomenon of apophenia [the experience of seeing patterns or connections in random or meaningless data, according to the press release]. A few years ago, while digesting the events of 9/11, Marello began to notice an odd synchronicity between the destruction of the World Trade Center and Stanley Kubrick’s sci-fi epic, “2001: A Space Odyssey.” His further explorations led him into a strange and murky world, linking together such diverse elements as the moon, apes, 9/11, “2001: A Space Odyssey” and the historically pivotal years 1968 and 2001.

Matt Morello Lenticulars: Ground Zero/Planet of the Apes/Apollo 8 Astronauts/Escape from the Planet of the Apes 2006
2 Lenticular prints 20″ x 63″ [large detail of installation]

Matt Morello Bone (WTC)/Plane (2001: Space Odyssey) 2006 large format ink-jet print 60″ x 158″ [large detail of installation]

Matt Freedman’s “Twin Twin II” in Gallery 2 was a wonderfully silly and welcome magical antidote to the baneful effects of our self-inflicted twenty-first century affliction: 9/11 24/7. From the artist:

I kept coming around to the notion that the images of the towers were sort of recurring waking dreams, and that collecting them should be a continuing process of perception and manipulation. What I keep looking for in all the material I am using is something uncanny–either in the found objects themselves, or in the nature of the interventions I make–that leaves a lingering sense of unresolved discomfort in the mind of the viewer. The overriding and consciously dumb idea behind the work is that whatever else the towers are, they are definitely not gone from our lives, and they never will be. (Freedman, 2006)

Thumbnails of only a very few of the twinned objects seen tonight in Freedman’s ongoing project:

Presto! Exorcism complete.

closer to Armageddon

Sue Coe War Street 2000 etching 9.5″ x 12.5″

Okay, for better or for worse, the U.S. is the only “superpower” (for now) so I don’t think it’s presumptuous to talk about the size of our footprint: Right now unfortunately our impact doesn’t seem to be meliorative anywhere, and there may be no better gauge of the bankruptcy of American leadership and diplomacy than the headlines which appear on my YAHOO! page at this moment.

REUTERS:
Israeli reprisals hit Lebanon
North Korea storms out of meeting with South
Iran defiant after case goes back to UN
ASSOCIATED PRESS:
Israel attacks Beirut airport
India names suspects in train attacksJapan wants quick U.N. vote on N. Korea
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE:
Dozens killed as Israel bombs Lebanon over seized soldiers
North Korean missile diplomacy falters
Defiant Iran threatens to quit nuclear treaty

Now, what was it the Bush administration neocons were going to teach the world? It looks like we’re closer to the fundamentalist/crazies’ longed-for Armageddon than the Kristols’ new world of cadet-democracies, but that should not be either a surprise of a disappointment for most of Bush’s hard-core fans.

[image from Graphic Witness]

reopening the Kulturkampf in the 21st century

I’ve had it.
This Catholic apostate would like to be among the first to re-visit a question which most Americans had thought satisfactorily resolved decades ago, with JFK’s election in 1960: Recent political moves by confessing Roman cultists have unfortunately made it inescapably clear that a Catholic qua Catholic simply cannot be allowed to hold public office in a democracy.
For the genuine Catholic zealot the bogus political issue of abortion takes precedence over any real issue of life or death for the born. The democratic process is being dramatically subverted by a minority in a blind pursuit of a fanatical crusade, and unfortunately a Democratic party affiliation is no obstacle to enlistment.
South Dakota recently passed a law banning nearly all abortions. The main sponsor in the state senate was a Catholic Democrat. Today the Catholic Democratic Governor of Louisiana signed into law a virtually total ban which she had championed through her state’s legislature, and essentially announced how proud she was to impose her personal superstition as the law of her benighted land, telling the media:

The central provision of the bill supports and reflects my personal beliefs.

Translation: I’m the king, er . . . pope.

“Mahomet débordé par les intégristes”

This cartoon appeared today in Charlie Hebdo, a French satirical weekly associated with the radical Left. The in-house drawing portrays the prophet of Islam next to a headline, “Mahomet overwhelmed by the fundamentalists.” The distraught man cries, “It’s hard to be loved by fools.”
Anyone who comes to my blog regularly knows that I have great affection for the planet’s diversity, and that I am extremely sympathetic to the people and cultures of the middle east, but I expect I’ve also made it pretty clear that I consider myself an adversary not just of fundamentalism, but of all organized religions, equally, and regardless of where they are found. Okay, I admit that sometimes there’s a worthy aesthetic element, but as in any other institution, that’s not the part that destroys and kills.

BETTER THAN A CARTOON
Barry has uncovered the best words to appear on the subject of the cartoon war yet.

The fact that fundamentalists of all persuasions are completely incapable of self-reflection, self-criticism, and self-irony would not warrant a mention, were it not for their practice of imposing their issues on me and my world. They assume that we will kowtow to them as soon as we recognise who they are: “Look out! Religious feelings! We’re leaving the private sphere.”

See his site for the context of this piece and a link to Sonia Mikich’s entire text.

[image from nouvelobs, via a news item from Reuters]

wacky Christians green with envy?

The U.S. and British governments criticized publication of the caricatures as offensive to Muslims, raising questions about whether the line between free speech and incitement had been crossed. [Associated Press]

One more short thought on the subject of cartoons (although as much as I would like never to have to address this stupidity again, I suspect this is only the beginning):
Our own fundamentalist Christian religio/politicos must be green with envy of their Islamist fellows for what they have been able to accomplish around the world in just a few days.
Contrary to the principles and practice of their open societies, virtually everyone of any authority in what we would like to regard as an enlightened world is currently bending over backwards to apologize (for the normal exercise of hard-won fundamental freedoms) to particularly vocal members of one cult. Our sad, clueless guardians and the institutions they control are going even further and affirming a quite new and unrestricted principle of untouchability with respect to both the practice and beliefs of that cult – and in theory at least that of any other which manages to get noticed.
Where will this end? There are lots of different religious formats out there, with lots and lots of taboos, and lots of cynical people willing to use them for their own political purposes.
We seem to be engaged in a political and cultural suicide which will be mourned by people of intelligence and good will everywhere in the world – if any of us survive the deceased ourselves.

we are all Danes today

This whole Mohammed image thing is almost perfectly ridiculous, but there is one perfect solution to the problem.
Denmark simply must not be left hanging in the wind. There is a popular, although apparently apocryphal story concerning the Danish resistance to the Nazi occupation. Supposedly the aged King Christian X left the palace on his daily ride wearing the yellow Star of David, the symbol which jews had been ordered to display prominently on their clothing.
Maybe it’s just a nice story, but whatever its basis in fact, the combined efforts of the Danish population saved from extermination all but a few dozen of the nation’s 6500 jews.
Let’s put together a wonderful, real story with the material we’ve been handed sixty years later.
It’s time for all newspapers, and all nations, everyone who has a media outlet, to make themselves a common target of those who would threaten the freedoms which support liberal societies.
I believe the images scorned by ignorant or cynical people who do not, or pretend not, to understand our liberties should be shown everywhere, and as prominently as is possible. Now.
We are all Danes today, regardless of our beliefs.

[image via Dutch MP Geert Wilders, who has published all 12 original cartoons on his blog]

NOTE:
It would be inappropriate under the circumstances were I not to mention the significance of the source of the very elusive image I’ve used and the link I provide. Geert Wilders is more than a little controversial himself.

of superstition and death

Voltaire: not quite an atheist, but an enemy of superstition everywhere

Even, or perhaps especially, in the midst of so much grief being felt in Mecca and all over the world today, I don’t think it’s unfair to ask:

When was the last time we’ve read about hundreds of atheists deliberately drinking poisoned Cool Aid together, or accidently trampling each other to death [again], while passionately pursuing preposterous belief?

[Jean Huber image from University of Chicago, Humanities Division]

Jesus, just visiting

the eyes have it

As I write this it’s already the early hours of January 6, the Feast of the Epiphany and traditionally the absolute finish to the long holiday which celebrates the birth of the founder of the Christian religion.
But of course there’s another story behind the seasonal image I’ve uploaded above.
I don’t have a religious bone left in my body, but I can’t ignore a pretty face. A number of years ago Barry and I were in New Mexico where we stopped at one of the more important Mexican colonial country churches. Attached to the beautiful ancient adobe stucture and just beside the sacristy was a fairly serious gift shop. We were alone in its two short aisles for a few moments, so we were able to discuss between ourselves (but still carefully sotto voce) the purchase of this delicate ceramic figure of a baby Jesus sporting some pretty amazing eye make-up.
We were both very much afraid that the middle-aged Franciscan who managed the shop might realize that our interest in the object was not wholly devotional, but the weight of experience assembled during my extended Roman Catholic childhood and our two very straight faces managed to carry the day.
Every year since that day we’ve placed the pretty little tyke in a thin bed of straw on a prized side table in the parlor every year around the period of the ancient pagan feasts of Yule and Saturnalia. Oh yeah, we give him a small pair of wooden dreidels to play with while he’s there.
We figure Jesus needs a vacation from all the Christmas fuss. And besides, we really like kids.