Textus receptus; or, "i m d trditn"

Who said the Popes are semper et ubique opposed to Artificial Methods of doing things?

Pilgrims at this year's World Youth Day in Sydney will receive inspirational text messages from the Pope in an effort to better connect with the event's technologically-savvy participants. The messages are just one of a number of new digital services that will feature during the week-long event. World Youth Day coordinator Bishop Anthony Fisher says a number of new services are being introduced to the event for the first time. "For the week of World Youth Day, while the young people are here, those who've given their mobile phone numbers to us will receive a message each day," he said. "There's going to be digital prayer walls at the event sites where the young people can put up their own messages asking people to pray for their intentions," he said. "There's also going to be a social networking site, a kind of Catholic Facebook if you like." Bishop Fraser says the new services are about better connecting with young people. "We very much want to use the best of the modern technologies and the language of the young people when we are communicating with them during this coming World Youth Day," he said.

" 'God b wth u': Pope to text Sydney pilgrims," ABC News (Wednesday 7 May 2008)

Next: Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem to announce the Wailing Funwall.

Portman, Kidman, Pullman

[1] "Natalie Portman and Hayden Christensen have topped a poll of the most unconvincing on-screen chemistry for Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones."
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/slideshow.aspx?sectionid=1915&sectionname=slideshow&subsectionid=74938&subsectionname=young

[2] "Film not anti-Catholic: Kidman"

Nine.MSN News (Sunday 19 August 2007)

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=287522

Nicole Kidman has been forced to deny her latest film is anti-[C]hurch and [to] reaffirm her own faith as a religious controversy threatens to brew in the United States.

Kidman stars in the fantasy film The Golden Compass, an adaptation of a book that has been labelled 'anti-Catholic' in the US.

[Well, that's not really fair. Pullers has a swipe at "every religion" in his books. Yes, that does include even Bahais and Hollywood Buddhists, I presume - he did say "every".]

The film also stars Daniel Craig and recent Bond-girl Eva Green.

[As opposed to ancient Hitler girl Eva Braun...?]

''I wouldn't be able to do this film if I thought it were at all anti-Catholic,'' Kidman told Entertainment Weekly magazine.

''I was raised Catholic, the Catholic Church is part of my essence.''

[What, not merely one of her accidents?]

The film's screenplay is based on Philip Pullman's book Northern Lights, which has reportedly gained attention in the US for its perceived anti-Catholic rhetoric.

Kidman, who is currently midway through production of the Baz Luhrmann period epic Australia, told the US magazine that the screenplay had been altered.

''It has been watered down a little,'' she said.

[Yeah, well... up to a point, Lord Summerisle. In the film version, the corrupted priests of "Pope John Calvin" only eat the babies raw; they don't burn them alive first, like in the books.]

Blue Murder in the Cathedral

"Church apologises "

http://www.skynews.com.au/story.asp?id=181456

A racist outburst by a leading member of the Catholic Church has been caught on camera and posted on video website YouTube.

The clip shows the Dean of St Patrick's Cathedral in Melbourne, the Reverend Geoffrey Baron, confronting a group of youths riding skateboards on the church property.

He tells them to leave, but as they taunt him, his demands become more abusive.

Joe Tucci from the Australian Childhood Foundation says the remarks were offensive and the Church should arrange anger management and counselling.

Vicar General of the Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne, Monsignor Les Tomlinson has apologised unreservedly for the remarks made by the priest.

I can understand FGB being provoked and angry under these cirucmstances. However, his response was disproportionate. In today's climate, there is a certain percentage of the population among whom you automatically forfeit all moral legitimacy if you make a negative racial/ ethnic statement. Doing that is a deal-breaker, one that automatically makes you more sinning than sinned against, regardless of what the other person (or group) was doing to you.

Anyway, these skateheads should be thankful that Guilfuss never got hisself ordained (apparently he declined all attempts to recruit him the clergy by maintaining steadfastly that he wanted to pursue a career where he could produce some visible results). Had he been corporeally present thereat, the Lunar Love God would'a flogged 'em with rosary beads, as the corrupted priest who was protagonist of Anthony Burgess' novel Earthly Powers did to a Nazi war criminal.

Heck, I'd even settle for Fr Bob Maguire (of John Safran fame) giving these bogues the sharp edge of his tongue, as long as it could be captured on ThouTube.

UPDATE: Well, my desire to have Fr Bob putting the boot into theological opponents via online video has been partly met, now that NINEMSN has posted this video expose http://ninemsn.video.msn.com/v/en-au/v.htm?f=39&g=ad204a6d-3a51-47f0-af65-24f5b5986f4b&p=aunews_auaca&t=m164&mediaid=106151 , with him using his acerbic tongue on Hillsong. FBMG is particularly steadfast in upholding the Catholic Church's 1,700-year-old [T]radition abhorring the use of religion as a means of accumulating wealth. Channel Nine, too, is shocked! - shocked! - at the idea that people would do things to make huge amounts of money. Kerry Packer could not be reached for comment, even by Fr Bob.

What Prots miss out on by not having a Magisterium

Now, normally when anyone named Miller starts writing about Vatican pronouncements on Catholic Social Teaching, I reach for my revolver and pop a few rounds of Guilfussian Priest Chasers through my monitor screen, like Elvis with his TV set. This particular posting, however, is amusing and worth reading (and savouring) in full.

That's in no way to deny, of course, that Protestant synods are capable of generating equally bad or worse sludge - one imagines the Unitingarians producing some dreadfully earnest "Year of Listening Communique", or suchlike, which exhorts all Christians to use one less sheet of toilet paper a day, and to make sure they leave the dunny seat up. But at least the Prot versions don't end with anathemata being thundered against whomsoever should take away the least jot or tittle from the document. You can disregard these decrease without going to Hell or some intermediate version thereof.

Next: "We therefore, in the most authentic exercise of our teaching Magisterium, entrusted to the Apostle Peter by Our Lord Jesus Christ, do pronounce it objectively necessary, and the dereliction thereof to be gravely illicit, that you - shall Wear Sunscreen."

"The Ten Commandments of... What?"

By Robert T Miller

Tuesday, July 3, 2007, 6:26 AM

http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/?p=789

I present to you a document of some forty pages entitled "Guidelines for the Pastoral Care of the Road <http://www.zenit.org/article-19915?l=english" prepared by a Vatican office known as the Pontifical Council for Migrants and Itinerant People, which is under the supervision of Cardinal Renato Martino. "The outcome of a great endeavor entailing listening, reflection and insight," the document begins with a fascinatingly uninformative reflection on "The Phenomenon of Human Mobility":

"Moving from place to place, and transporting goods using different means, have characterised human behaviour since the beginning of history...

"The transportation of goods and people is increasing at a dizzy pace, sometimes taking place under difficult conditions and even putting life at risk...

"A modern phenomenon, full of consequences, which is part of this mobility, and the progress that derives from it, is traffic in general, and especially road traffic. Traffic has gradually increased...

"We only need to consider the many uneven roads travelled on by unsafe and overloaded means of transport, which constitute a grave danger for everyone, especially at night...

"Undoubtedly, road vehicles give us many advantages. They provide a rapid means of transport for people (getting to places of work and study, weekend outings with the family, going away on holiday, meetings with friends and relatives)... Means of transport are particularly useful when they enable sick and injured people to be rescued..."

So the Pontifical Council for Migrants and Itinerant People informs us in writing that people drive in cars in order to go to work, that there's a lot of traffic nowadays, that goods are transported from place to place over the roads, that driving is more dangerous at night than during the day, and that it's really good that sick and injured people can be transported over the roads to hospital. Try, if you can, to write down five or six sentences as fatuously banal as each of these, and you'll find it's not easy. [...]

"The Smell of Hell: Does Satan reek of rotten eggs?"

My brother used to tell visiting Jehovah's Witnesses that he was an Indian Muslim (he is olive-skinned and used to have a bushy beard), buttressed by statements such as "George Bush, he is the devil, sir". Of course, that meant Bush the First. You know, the guy who had UN Security Council approval before he attacked Saddam, which meant everyone in the world supported Gulf War Round I and made it a stunning victory with almost zero blowback.

Anyway, the below may be of interest, particularly for the similarities it shows between "al-Shaitan" in Islam, "ha-Satan" in Judaism, "Lucifer" in Catholicism, "The Dark Man" in New England Puritanism, and "The Peterjensen" in Orange Catholic Gregorianism.

"The Smell of Hell: Does Satan reek of rotten eggs?"
By Daniel Engber
Slate (22 September 2006)
URL: < http://www.slate.com/id/2150170/>

Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez compared George Bush to the Antichrist < http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/21/world/21speeches.html> in a speech at the United Nations on Wednesday. "The devil came here yesterday, right here," he said. "It smells of sulfur still today, this table that I am now standing in front of." When did Satan start smelling like sulfur?

About a century or two before the birth of Christ. Satan almost certainly gets his rotten scent from his underworld lair, described in the Book of Revelation as a "lake of burning sulfur < http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=revelation%2020:10;&version=31 ;>." Hell as such doesn't appear in the Old Testament, but the book of Genesis does recount how God "rained down burning sulfur on Sodom and Gomorrah < http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=GEN%2019:23-29&version=31;9 ;>." The idea of a sulfurous Hell ruled by an archvillain called Satan seems to have arisen at some point in the period between when the two sacred texts were written - probably in the first or second centuries BC. The Apocryphal Books of Enoch < http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=384&letter=E >, for example, talk about a place of punishment with "rivers of fire" and "a smell of sulfur < http://www.exodus2006.com/11NOAH.htm>."

It didn't take long for the devil to take on the stench of his kingdom. By the 400s, the Councils of Toledo < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Councils_of_Toledo> would describe him as a horned beast with cloven hooves, a huge phallus, and a sulfurous smell.

Tradition placed hell as far as possible from God and heaven. The Bible uses the word "Gehenna," which means the "Valley of Hinnom < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gehenna>" and refers to a garbage dump on the outskirts of ancient Jerusalem. Hinnom stood in for the underworld because of its topography - as the lowest point in the area, it served as the spiritual counterpoint for the high ground of the temple mount. The same sort of reasoning imagined hell at the very center of the Earth, in a fiery and sulfurous pit.

This isn't an unreasonable description. Underground volcanic activity can release plumes of sulfurous gas, as rocks heat up in the absence of significant oxygen. Sulfur doesn't always smell bad - given enough oxygen, it generally takes the form of an inoffensive sulfate < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulfate>. But when sulfur is given off from these hot underground sources, it comes in the stinky, rotten-eggs varieties of hydrogen sulfide < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_sulfide> or pure sulfur gas. (Think of a smelly, bubbling hot spring.) Gregory I < http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06780a.htm>, who became pope in 590 C.E., made the connection between volcanoes and hell more explicit. In his Dialogues, he describes a sinner "thrown into Vulcan's gulph < http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/gregory_04_dialogues_book4.htm >" on one of the volcanic islands north of Sicily.

The idea that Satan had a strong odor is consistent with ancient attitudes about smells. A connection between sweet, dry smells and the divine goes back to the Greek epics, and it shows up in precise terms in the Old Testament: The Lord tells Moses to prepare an anointing oil "blended as by the perfumer < http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Exodus%2030:22-33&version=47 ;>" consisting of liquid myrrh, cinnamon, cassia, and olive oil. Rotten-smelling gases like hydrogen sulfide would have been associated with moral corruption.

Got a question about today's news? Ask the Explainer < mailto:ask_the_explainer@yahoo.com>.

Explainer thanks Alan Bernstein of the University of Arizona, David Butterfield of the Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, Susan Ashbrook Harvey of Brown University, and Gregory Mobley of Andover Newton Theological School.

Daniel Engber is a regular contributor to Slate.