For Holy Days of Obligation they should have a "I went to Mass" sticker like the "I Voted" sticker.
— ➡️Curt Jester⬅️ (@CurtJester) October 31, 2012
While I Tweeted this rather jokingly, it actually might be a rather cool idea to help remind other Catholics.
VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – If anyone thinks the Vatican newspaper is still a staid broadsheet that publishes only religious news and harsh papal edicts, consider this: On Tuesday it ran not one but five articles about the new James Bond film.
“Skyfall” gets a rave review in l’Osservatore Romano, which calls it one of the best of the 23 James Bond films made over the past 50 years.
In the main article, titled “007 License to Cry,” the newspaper says the latest incarnation of the world’s most famous spy is a rather good one because it makes him less of a cliché, and “more human, capable of being moved and of crying: in a word, more real”. [Source]
Can I have a License to Cry that l’Osservatore Romano published five articles on the new Bond film? I like engaging the culture but it can go overboard.
After the l’Osservatore Romano recommended some of the best rock albums I previously created this.
You may never be able to try lembas — a fictional bread that Frodo subsisted on through part of his journey to Mordor in the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy — but Denny’s thinks it might have the next best thing. The company is about to roll out a Middle-Earth-inspired menu as part of a tie-in with “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.”
…Menu items include 11 breakfast, lunch and dinner items such as “Hobbit Hole Breakfast,” “Frodo’s Pot Roast Skillet,” “Gandalf’s Gobble Melt” and the “Build Your Own Hobbit Slam,” which includes limited-time items such as “Shire Sausage.”[Source]
A menu that will increase your “Middle Girth.” Now as someone who has read Tolkien’s books multiple time, this menu will not entice me out of my Hobbit hole. Could they have come up with worst names? Where’s the Coney stew, the Ent-Draught, the Cram – Denny’s should at least have the Grand Cram? Now I can certainly understand the Hobbit tie-in with their propensity for multiple breakfasts but I won’t be eating there for first or second breakfast.
Now as to not being able to ever try lemmas.
The lembas has a virtue without which they would long ago have lain down to die. It did not satisfy desire, and at times Sam’s mind was filled with the memories of food, and the longing for simple bread and meats. And yet this way bread of the Elves had a potency that increased as travellers relied on it alone and did not mingle it with other foods. It fed the will, and it gave strength to endure, and to master sinew and limb beyond the measure of mortal kind. — “Return of the King” J.R.R. Tolkien.
Many will certainly see an echo of the Eucharist here and Tolkien’s love of the Eucharist is well known.
Tolkien rejected attempts to find Catholic symbolism in his work because he detested “allegory in all its manifestations.” Indeed he frequently chided Lewis for trying to dress Christ up in the lion-suit of Aslan in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. For Tolkien, to look for such correspondences is to miss the point of Middle-earth, which is meant to be a real place and not just some amalgam of historical and religious debris.
Still, Tolkien acknowledged that his Catholic sensibilities unconsciously inspired characters and objects in his imaginative world. In a 1952 letter to Rev. Robert Murray (grandson of the founder of the Oxford English Dictionary and a family friend), he readily admitted that the Virgin Mary forms the basis for all of his “small perception of beauty both in majesty and simplicity.” It is not surprising, he admits, that the character of Galadriel — a created being endowed with radiant beauty, impeccable virtue, and powers of healing — resonates with the character of our Blessed Mother.
Nor could Tolkien deny that the Holy Eucharist appears in The Lord of the Rings as the waybread (lembas), given by the elves to the hobbits to eat on their journey. The lembas reinforces the hobbits’ wills and provides them with physical sustenance in the dark and barren lands on the way to Mount Doom. As the Church teaches, while the Eucharist still tastes and looks like bread and wine, our sensations shroud a deeper mystery: The Eucharist is truly Christ’s body and blood. So in The Lord of the Rings the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Eucharist appear shrouded in the mysterious elements of Middle-earth. The best way to understand this is to see such examples of Catholic symbolism as literary “accidents.” To leave them out would have diminished the story; they are parts of Tolkien’s effort to make his world complete, true for all times and places.
As an author, Tolkien believed that his stories did in a limited and literary way what a priest does at the consecration: They present us with Christ and the entire story of creation and redemption through common elements of the world — in this case Middle-earth — which is shot through with the Truth of all Truths. [Source]
Now as to Lord of the Rings related food humor, here is something I did some years ago.
There has been a lot of media attention regarding VatiLeaks and the conviction of the “Pope’s Butler.” Just being able to use the words “Pope’s Butler” is a lot of fun for the media or really for everyone. Though I always wonder what he duties actually were and if his duties really came down to being the Pope’s Valet. But of course “Popes Valet” doesn’t have the same spin for use.
Now I also wonder does the Pope now have someone else filling the position? I ask this being a great fan of P.G. Wodehouse and the Bertie and Jeeves novels. What if Pope Benedict XVI hired a Jeeves type character? Though the Pope is pretty much the antithesis of a Bertie Wooster. Still I can imagine a semi Bertie-Jeeves conversation with Jeeves cast as a more progressive figure. A kind of Bertie-Jeeves reversal.
“Pardon me, sir, but are you proposing to enter Saint Peter Square in that mitre?”
“Eye of the Tiber” is a fairly new Catholic humor blog and this is going in my RSS feed immediately. Very funny and today’s post is classic.
San Fransisco, CA––The new Archbishop of San Francisco, Salvatore Cordileone, said Thursday after his installation, that he was overjoyed to see that the city had such a devotion to God’s covenant with Noah. “Who knew there could be so many rainbows in one place?” he said, happily, to reporters that had gathered after Mass. The 56 year old Archbishop who was recently appointed by Pope Benedict XVI to replace George Niederauer, hopes to work with San Franciscans and all those devoted to the Old Testament pre-deluge patriarch in the ceasing California’s gay marriage initiative.
Hat tip to Fr. Erik Richtsteig via Facebook
Saw this headline today:
Vatican confirms talks with traditionalists dead
Being that this is October with Halloween upcoming my first odd thought was that the Vatican had confirmed talks with rad trad zombies or some other dead (undead) traditionalists. Makes me though ponder on the concept of rad trad zombies walking around crying “Latin” instead of “Brains”. Hey I could join in with them on that.
Though the progressive zombie is what is apt to give me nightmares as evidenced from one of my previous posts.
But Zombies already walk and talk among us. There are plenty of dissident Catholics and dissident religious orders that are nothing but Zombie Catholics. The Zombie religious orders have no postulants and an aging community. These orders are truly dead since they don’t grow and are full of providing dead theology and the corpse of aging heresies. Yet at the same time appear to be living animated things fooling some into believing that there words have life. The truth will set you free which is why Zombie Catholics will concentrate on one truth while ignoring others leaving them trapped in the world of the undead.
Outside of religious communities there are also plenty of Zombie professors in Catholic institutions. Now it would be nice if these Zombies would physically rot so that you could see the source of the corruption they teach. Unfortunately these undead often look just like everybody else. Though Zombie priests and religious sometimes can be identified because they will wear anything but a Roman collar or a habit. They can often be identified because they teach from the “Culture of the Undead.” Zombie Catholics might seem quite comical, but don’t ever forget that they are quite dangerous to those they convince. They teach of death in two ways – physical and spiritual . You can hear them promoting abortion or relativizing it. Creating reasons for why it alright to withdraw medical treatment from someone who is not dying. Justifying sacrificing embryos on the altar of science. When it comes to spiritual death the Zombie Catholics proclaim how a sin is not a sin and in fact something to be actively accepted. Whether it is the advocacy of homosexual acts, contraception, or any other normalization of sin; it is all a part of the Culture of the Undead.
When Spanish octogenarian Cecilia Giménez botched the restoration of a famous, century-old mural by painter Elías García Martínez, she hardly expected the “restored” image (which at present looks sort of like a teddy bear, or a very hairy monkey) to become a meme that would blow up on reddit, 4Chan, and Twitter. But ever since late August, Ecce Homo has become a tourist attraction, bringing scores of Internet jokers to the Santuario de Misericordia Church in Borja, Spain. These tourists are bringing all of their euros, and now Giménez, who earlier claimed she was having anxiety attacks from allthe press coverage, wants a cut.
According to the northern Spain newspaper El Correo cited by TechDirt(which was tipped off by Twitter user @sinkdeep), tourists started flocking to the church, but weren’t leaving any donations. So to prevent the disruptive hordes from overtaking the church, the Santi Spiritus Hospital Foundation, which owns the sanctuary, started charging a fee to visitors wanting to see Ecce Mono, or Behold the Monkey as it’s now jokingly dubbed. In just 4 days, the Foundation made €2,000, (or about $2,600).
El Correo says this has angered Giménez and her family, and they’ve sought lawyers to win royalties for her work, which epically ruined a prized fresco of Jesus Christ. It seems the Santuario de Misericordia Church intends to defend its earnings as well, and has retained lawyers. Luckily, though, Giménez is not charging the millions of Internet users who have shared and spoofed her painting all over the world with copyright abuse.
Via Ars Technica
Yes it is Talk Like a Pirate Day once again and the Ironic Catholic has released a new translation Psalm 42, New Revised Pirate Version.
As one of my favorite Psalms here is a taste of the translation.
1 As th’ jolly roger longs fer streams o’ water,
so me soul thirsts pants fer ye, me God.
2 Me soul thirsts fer God, fer th’ liv’n God.
When can I go an’ meet wi’ God?
3 Me tears have b’n me burgoo day an’ night,
while people say t’ me all day long, “Where be your bleedin’ God, bucko?”
To join in the fun I tweeted:
How does a Pirate become a Catholic? Via ArrrCIA
— ➡️Curt Jester⬅️ (@CurtJester) September 19, 2012
What do you call a Pirate who rejects the humanity of Christ? An Arrrian.
— ➡️Curt Jester⬅️ (@CurtJester) September 19, 2012
What language is used for the Pirate translation of the Bible? Arrramaic.
— ➡️Curt Jester⬅️ (@CurtJester) September 19, 2012
"What is truth?", Talk like a Pilate Day
— ➡️Curt Jester⬅️ (@CurtJester) September 19, 2012
My job is too big for one man, says Archbishop of Canterbury
Pope Benedict XVI says “Tell me more about how a church with 80 million members and shrinking is too big for one man.”
