Candles, flowers and a painting of the Virgin Mary embracing John Paul II line the section of the Kennedy Expressway underpass on Chicago’s northwest side Tuesday, April 19, 2005, where a yellow and white stain on a concrete wall that some believe is the image of the Virgin Mary has been discovered. Hundreds of people have visited the site since Monday’s discovery. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)
The caption is exactly that which appears on the Associated Press sight. I see no need for further comment – except maybe: “Wow, what a great picture!”
[image by Charles rex Arbogast from the Associated Press]
Category: Cults
don’t forgive them; they know what they’re doing
(just for starters)
Relativism be now damned! Absolutism has now triumphed! “Dictator” would be nice, but “pope” will do just fine. Besides, it amounts to the same thing, and the costumes are great. The man who would be baby Jesus’s vicar on earth knows the certainty of objective truth and he’s not going to be shy about reminding us.
Benedict XVI has a lot to answer for, but for starters I’ll point to a trespass which has weighed heavily on queers for almost two decades, whether or not they are aware of it. Seven years ago Peter Tatchell warned the world about the sour man who was appointed pope today, Joseph Ratzinger, “arguably the most homophobic of all Vatican leaders”:
In 1986, Cardinal Ratzinger wrote the infamous Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons. Ratzinger wrote that a homosexual orientation, even if the person is totally celibate, is a “tendency” toward an “intrinsic moral evil”. Moreover, a homosexual inclination is both an “objective disorder” and a “moral disorder”, which is “contrary to the creative wisdom of God”.
. . .
Most shocking of all, [a 1992 Vatican proclamation written by Ratzinger and authorized by John Paul II states] that when lesbians and gay men demand civil rights, “neither the Church nor society should be surprised when … irrational and violent reactions increase”.
This implies that by asking for human rights, lesbians and gay men encourage homophobic prejudice and violence: we bring hatred upon ourselves, and are responsible for our own suffering. The Catholic Church, it seems, blames the victims of homophobia, not the perpetrators.
This ugly stuff is in the public record, and every cardinal had to read it, but today 115 old men* decided to appoint the man responsible for it as their cult’s latest absolute monarch.
I can’t imagine good people wanting to have anything to do with this crew, but millions around the world continue to enable the evil they do.
* This is a board whose members almost to a man were selected with the counsel of, and in the mold of, the cardinal whom they chose as pope today. Borrowing some of Ratzinger’s own, notorious phrasing: When entrenched reaction demands conformity, “neither the Church nor society should be surprised when … [it gets it].” I expected a conservative successor to a conservative pope, but I didn’t expect the choice would be so obvious; the current college of crimson-robed cyphers has no imagination whatsoever.
[image by Kathryn Gaitens from nowtoronto]
but without the drugs, sex or rock and roll
whose streets?
We love Rome, but we’re very happy we didn’t plan a trip this month. The beautiful ancient streets are filled with cultists and the more than idly-curious; the city’s broad and narrow ways fill with their trash as soon as it is cleared away; and the pavements and walls smell of urine and sometimes more.
But People live and work in that great city. Some of them are less-than-eager hosts. The Roman father of an Italian friend of ours, an eminent linguist known for his bon mots, describes a city overwhelmed by unwashed hordes of media victims seeking to be a part of history, “It’s like Popestock here!”
[image by Peter Dejong from the Associated Press]
beware of that “dictatorship of relativism”
when “relativism” knew its place
[I wouldn’t be so interested in this dreck if I hadn’t spent the first twenty years of my life as its prisoner, giving me far too much experience of its evils]
How do they keep a staight face? His former boss, Wojtyla, was also no friend of democracy or even of republics, in spite of the illusion manufactured by the media and bought by his weeping fans. At best, the Catholic Church is and always has been indifferent to the concept of responsible government.
In Rome on the same day his corporate board begins the selection of a new CEO, its chairman (perhaps only incidently a former Hitler Youth and Reichswehr soldier, and much later the chief of the Holy Inquisition) can find nothing more important to warn his “princely” colleagues about than a “dictatorship of relativism.” Huh?
And they’re still allowed to sell this stuff.
[unattributed image from silkeborg amtsgymnasium]
chapel computer
Europe’s fastest supercomputer, an IBM capable of making 40 trillion calculations per second, was booted up for the first time yesterday in a chapel [italics mine] of the Polytechnical University in Barcelona, Spain
A beleaguered American atheist, I was startled by this picture and caption when I came across it in Newsday this morning (I couldn’t find it on their on-line edition). I showed it to Barry who said, “This is not your father’s Spain,” and then he went on with something about using churches more productively, for performances, galleries or . . . computers.
meanwhile, with merry wives and husbands in Windsor today
a voice crying in the wilderness
Peter Tatchell is fabulous, and absolutely irrepressible. We love him!
The AP photo caption reads:
Gay rights activist Peter Tatchell makes a protest as he stands in the crowd that were spectating the royal wedding between Britain’s Prince Charles and the Camilla Duchess of Cornwall in Windsor England Saturday April 9, 2005.
[image by Peter Tarry from the Associated Press pool; caption also from the AP]
now that he’s finally quiet, let’s keep him warm indefinitely
(before)
I heard earlier today that Karol Wojtyla is receiving food via a feeding tube and that he has effectively expressed his will that he be kept alive by artificial means even if he were to fall into a coma or a persistent vegetative state. At this point, especially since he has hand-picked the members of the college of electors which would choose his successor, presumably a man pretty much in his own dark political image and likeness, it occurs to me that almost nothing could be healthier for the world than to be without a governing pope for as long as possible.
Although I would really enjoy the pageantry which would inevitably surround the placement of a new CEO, even in the twenty-first century (what kind of hat will he pick, and will they bring back the ostrich-feather fans?), were it up to me I would gladly forego those pleasures in the interest of bringing about a better world. It is thus with only the best graces that I extend to him, to his firm and to the entire planet my best wishes for years, and hopefully decades, of a successful relationship between the man called John Paul II and any unnatural life-sustaining mechanisms available.
Still, it does seem pretty weird to me that a man who has so often in the past condemned any artificial means of controlling birth (even if the extraordinarily-simple device also stops the transmission of a deadly AIDS virus) should be such a strong advocate against natural death. But surely the god has her reasons.
[scary image from GodBlogging]
but how would a vegetarian say it?
spotted tonight in the 23rd Street 1/9 subway station
My first thought was, this is Chelsea, and some of our neighbors have interesting ways of showing affection, but then it occurred to me that the message could have been meant literally, a la Valerie Solanas. Gulp.
And oh yeah, for those who collect such details, or just for the record, the sign seems to have been re-constructed from one of the MTA’s advisories about service disruptions.
just crazy about dancing and such things
Opal Petty 1918-2005
She was 16 when her family had her committed to a mental hospital.
“Being fundamentalist Baptists her family didn’t approve of her wanting to go out dancing and such things. A church exorcism didn’t work, so the family made the decision to commit her.”
The quote is from the director of the Texas Civil Rights Project, Jim Harrington, the man who fought successfully for Opal Petty‘s right to return to society after 51 years.
She died one week ago at the age of 86, damaged by an “institutional syndrome,” but having lived nearly twenty years with people who loved and cared for her, and who were responsible for her resurrection.
Petty’s story should strike a painful chord in the hearts of most girls and women, and certainly queers of any age, who as little children were chastised by their families, to any degree, for behaving inapproriately. Some of us make it through.
[1994 image by Larry Kolvoord/The Austin American-Statesman via the NYTimes]
Winter Solstice
Solstice lights
Only now that my birthday has passed (even when quite old, late-December children sometimes remain pretty sensitive about their personal nativity celebratory rites) I can start to think about the pagan Saturnalia, the forest peoples’ Yule or any of the other defiantly-non-commercial celebrations of the return of the sun. I think Festivus could well be included among those observances and entertainments.
I took the image above on this very cold, windy afternoon. It’s a deliberately fuzzy representation of one of the most prominent modern manifestations of hoary early-winter tradition, the fully-lighted Rockefeller Center tree. (I prefer to think that any connection between it and Christian worship is pure invention). It’s a pretty neat sight if you could forget almost everything around it right now. I couldn’t, so I decided the shot had to be fuzzy – and dark. This huge dead tree’s penultimate resting-place environment is not a pretty thing one week before Christmas.
Of course the deco buildings are pretty fabulous, but the several rows of security barricades set up around the tree (they’re gaily painted red and green) and the offensive, vulgarly-omnipresent NBC visual promotions (even during the hours when their storefront studio lies empty) have at least temporarily erased the charm once associated, even in the last weeks of the year, with this wonderful midtown oasis. Cranky tourists and pushy shoppers (and big Christmas tchotchkes in the terraced Channel Gardens) only added to the ugliness today.
I haven’t even mentioned the scary over-amplified “holiday music,” which seems to be stressing out even the normally-unflappable pigeons around St. Patrick’s and the Olympic Tower.
Alright, I’m now back home in my warm cave, so maybe I should be quiet and think lovely thoughts. Happy Solstice everyone, and many happy returns!