A colloquy between Dean Ericksen and Pope Francis

By Jack Brummet, Religion Ed.

 My Brother-in-law and friend Dean Ericksen  chatted with Pope Francis last night.  "Pope Francis sent me an instant message last night. Here’s the transcript:"

Pope: Hey, Dean.
Dean: Hey, Pope - how is DC?
Pope: Good - did you see the Fiat?
Dean: Yep. Product placement?
Pope: I’ll forget you said that. Did you catch Empire?
Dean: Nope. I’m always late to these things. Still haven’t finished Breaking Bad. You?
Pope: Tivo. Had to talk with Boehner tonight. That guy …
Dean: He’s a cryer.
Pope: He cries about the wrong things. Anyway - Declan moved into the dorm yet?
Dean: Friday. Time moves on. You’re not coming to Seattle - right?
Pope: Not planning on it, but I have some flexibility. Did you see Xi?
Dean: <smirk> Yesterday. High strung. Probably the jet lag. We stopped by the new Paseo, up from your church on 15th.
Pope: What happened to the old Paseo? Wait - north of St Alphonsus?
Dean: Yes. Long story. The con-gusto is still decent.
Pope: Good. Hey … have you thought again about converting?
Dean: Converting from what? To what? Let’s not talk about this. It’s late.
Pope: Come on - have you seen the church lately? Kick the tires, it’s a new ride.
Dean: Same deal on contraception, women, gays, etc. Kudos on the other stuff though. Nice work.
Pope: Alright. Blessings to Mary and the Kids. Buenas Noches.
Dean: Good night. Enjoy NYC.

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Papa Francisco a/ka Pope Francis's one man mission to spread love, compassion, and inclusion

By Jack Brummet, RC Church Ed.

Some on his list are obvious, but still sweet and thoughtful. I'm not a Catolico (about 150 people in my family are), and thus have no real standing to speak of, but it feels Il Papa is pushing the church into Century 21 with a holy turbo bulldozer.

With the wars, and elections, and distractions (e.g., Too Many Cooks), we sometimes miss this one-man revolution. Every other day he comes down on the right side of things and cajoles his church--and the rest of us--to step up. This Holy Man is for real. The Papacy has slumbered since Pope John left in 1963; it's making up for lost time at a furious pace. inclusion, forgiveness, Inclusion, love and compassion, INCLUSION. ¡Excelsior Papa Francisco! Long may you run.

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A Priest calls Jesus's miracles "BS"

By Jack Brummet, Religions Ed.

I met a priest in Spokane this weekend, who surprised me.  He was the warmest, and undoubtedly the funniest priest I've ever met (I'm not RC. so I haven't met that many).  He radiated his love of and concern for his parishioners.

He got to talking about Jesus's miracles, calling at least two of them (changing water into wine and walking on water on the Sea of Galilee ) "bullshit," alluding that they were just parlor tricks (he didn't use that phrase, just "BS") to get people's attention.  I go to thinking about what else would qualify--Lazarus, the fishes and loaves, etc.

As unconventional as he was, he drew it back in the end by saying the only trick that counted was getting up on that cross; the rest was just razzle dazzle.  Wow.

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Andy Warhol greets Pope John Paul II/a note on Andy's religion

By Mona Goldwater, Religions Ed.

No one really thought of Andy Warhol as being especially religious when he was alive.  He did, however, attend church regularly.

In an interview with Lee Radziwill, conducted by Warhol and Fred Hughes for the March 1975 Interview magazine, Andy talked about going to church regularly and taking communion "sometimes."

From the piece "Warhol at Home" in Sacred Monsters, Sacred Masters by John Richardson (published by Pimlico in England in 2001), page 247:

"To believe the envious Truman Capote, Andy was a Sphinx without a secret. In fact, he did have a secret, one that the kept dark from all but his closest friends: he was exceedingly devout - so much so that he made daily visits to the church of Saint Vincent Ferrer on the Upper East Side of Manhattan... Although famously thrifty, he was also secretly charitable. Besides giving financial support, he often spent evenings working in a shelter for the homeless run by the Church of the Heavenly Rest. It was not soppy social consciousness or guilt that prompted Andy's good works; it was atavism as personified by his adored and adoring mother, the pious Julia."

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The new Pope's first public appearance

Welcome to Pope Christopher I

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Ex-Pope Benedict XVI and Maxwell's Silver Hammer

By Jack Brummet, ATIT Religion Ed.

A most fascinating facet of the abdication of Pope Benedict XVI is hearing stories of the silver hammer, and the destruction of the Papal ring.   And the awesome fact that the deliberations and voting by the Cardinals for the new Pope occur in The Sistine Chapel.  "At the deathbed of the pope the camerlengo takes a silver hammer and lightly taps on the pope's forehead three times, calling him by his Christian name. When there is no reply, he announces to those present that the pope is dead. The camerlengo also removes the Fisherman's Ring from the Pope's finger. At the first meeting of the Sacred College the ring and papal seals are broken." The camerlengo is the chamberlain of the church, who takes over the administration of the RC church in the interregnum between popes.  The expired Pope's staff are immediately shuffled out of office, powerless and out of the loop.

It was only tonight that I put two and two together and realized that this Roman Catholic ritual was [probably] what inspired The Beatles's song "Maxwell's Silver Hammer":

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St. Catherine's head

By Jack Brummet, European Travel Editor

When I was traveling in Italy in the mid-80's, I was curious  interested  fascinated obsessed with the reliquaries and other collections of people's physical remains.  And if you went to a lot of museums, churches, and basilicas, you would bump into various collections of what I called Shards of Saints and Parts of Popes.  But my friend Nick nailed it one night over a few glasses of lovely Tuscan wine, when he called them The Papal Giblets [1]. 


Rome’s Capuchin Crypt lies beneath the Santa Maria della Immacolata Concezione dei Cappuccini church in Rome. It's not a crypt in the same sense as the Paris catacombs or the crypts beneath the Vatican, but the walls of this series of chapels are entirely decorated with the bones of deceased Capuchin monks.

Rome’s Capuchin Crypt

There is a chapel in Rome—the church of Saints Vincenzo and Anastasio—very close to Trevi Fountain (and near the very site where St. Paul was beheaded)  that contains the hearts of almost thirty popes, from Sixtus V (d. 1590) to Leo XIII (d.1903). When a Pope was embalmed, it was a custom to remove their heart, which was placed into an urn. This church keeps those urns because it is the official parish church of the Quirinal Palace which the Popes used as their summer home since the 16th century.

St. Catherine's head

A trip to Sienna requires absolutely requires at visit to the mummified head, and finger, of St. Catherine at the Church of San Dominico [2]. It was one of the most memorable things I saw in Italy.  She is the patron saint of both Italy and fire prevention (she was reportedly fireproof).

Saint Catherine of Sienna once received a vision that Jesus gave her a wedding finger made of his own holy foreskin. She "wore" thing ring her entire life, although no one else could see it.  She would whip herself to dampen the unholy urges she sometimes felt.  At the age of 16, her family attempted to marry her off, but she wasn't buying that.  She cut off all her hair and scalded herself in a hot springs in order to make herself flat out too ugly to marry.  
























St. Catherine experienced stigmata—when she was 28, five red rays shot out of the crucifix she was praying to and pierced her hands, feet and heart.  She had visions, and lived on nothing but the Blessed Sacrament (a sip of wine and a cracker).  It is also said that she could spontaneously heal, was impervious to flames (she was fireproof!), and had the ability to levitate.  

The Church of San Dominico

She died of stroke in Rome in 1380 at the age of 33. The people of Sienna wanted her body back. They couldn't steal her whole body, so they cut off her head and put it in a sack.  Legend says that guards stopped the thieves but when they checked the sack, only found hundreds of rose petals in the bag.  When they returned to Sienna, the head had re-materialized.To this day, the head is still on display in Sienna, along with Saint Catherine’s dismembered thumb [3].  For some reason, her foot is in Venice. 

St. Catherine's finger

[1] [Ed's note: *Sidebar* There is a rumored Papal Phallus repository squirreled away in some shrine or crypt. And drifting even further off topic, I believe, that Lord Byron's pride and joy actually merited its own urn when it came to disposing of his body. If that is true, and if the relic did survive into the third millennium, All This Is That can't find it.]

[2] Although not nearly as strange as the trial of Pope Formosus. In the ninth century, "a successor of Pope Formosus (891-896) exhumed his 9-months-dead body and put it on trial for perjury and other crimes. As Notre Dame scholar Richard P. McBrien recounts in 'Lives of the Popes,' Formosus' cadaver was 'propped up on a throne in full pontifical vestments' for the trial, and after his conviction, 'three fingers of his right hand (by which he swore oaths and gave blessings) were cut off.' " (From the St. Louis Post Dispatch).

[3] St. Catherine's head, being many centuries old now, is not so nearly well-preserved as say, Lenin's, or Mao Zedong'a, or even the body of Sylvester, the mummified corpse that stands in a display case in Seattle's Ye Olde Curiosity Shoppe.

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ATIT Reheated: Foot Washing Baptists & The Catholic Devils

By Jack Brummet, Comparative Religions Editor
[reprinted from All This Is That, January 6, 2005]

My friend, Doc, recently detailed his involvement in the Rama cult (he didn't jump the rails, but his former guru, Rama, did). [1] He also wrote a couple other interesting pieces on Rama earlier in the week. Rama sounds a little like Marjo Gortner, Jimmy Swaggart, or any other charlatan with a good rap. He was prodigiously good at extracting cash from the flock. Interestingly, he hooked in a lot of software developers just at the moment when many software businesses were cranking up their acts and starting to make boatloads of money.  [Ed's note: see: http://drstephencw.blogspot.com/2005/01/take-me-for-ride.html; http://drstephencw.blogspot.com/2005/01/rama-in-wired.html; http://drstephencw.blogspot.com/2005/01/rama-lama-ding-dong-home-page.html]

Thinking about cults reminded me of my Baptist roots. We were American Baptists. I'm not sure about the other Protestant sects, but our church had definite opinions on the other churches. The Jewish faith was well-regarded, since it was the cornerstone of the Protestant religions. I didn't hear much about the Lutherans, Methodists, Presbyterians, Churches of Christ, Grace Fellowship, Reformed Protestant, United Brethren, First Christian Church, Church of the Nazarene, Pentecostal, or even the Menonite, Quaker, Episcopal, Amish, Shaker, or Evangelical Covenant churches.

The Catholic Church was regularly and savagely excoriated. I remember preachers railing against "The Cult of Mary." "THEY FORSAKE OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST FOR HIS VIRGIN MOTHER AND CONDEMN THEMSELVES TO PERISH IN THE FIRES OF THE GREAT DECEIVER!"

In our church, the crucifix was empty, but in the Catholic Church, Jesus eternally suffered, nailed to the cross. "THEY CELEBRATE THE AGONY AND MURDER OF OUR LORD IN THEIR STATIONS OF THE CROSS!! THIS CHURCH CELEBRATES THE RESURRECTION OF THE CHRIST TO HEAVEN."

"THEY DO NOT EVEN READ THE BIBLE! THEY IGNORE THE GOOD BOOK! THE NEW TESTAMENT OF CHRIST OUR LORD IS IGNORED!"

Confession was an excuse to sin even more--a free pass to perdition! Our ministers ranted against The Priests, The Nuns, The Brothers, The Bishops, and Cardinals. Most of all, they railed about the devil incarnate: His Holiness, The Pope, in his gilded palace, The Vatican.

The Reverend bemoaned "THE ABOMINATION OF THE EUCHARIST," the foul and damning Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation and its perversion of what was clearly intended by Our Lord to be symbolic. Jack Chick, the infamous creator of religious tracts, would later designate the Eucharist as "the death cookie."

"THE CATHOLICS WERE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE OUTRAGES OF THE SAINT BARTHOLOMEW'S DAY MASSACRE IN WHICH FIFTY THOUSAND OF GOD'S PRECIOUS CHILDREN WERE MURDERED! THE CATHOLICS RAN THE INQUISITION!"

There were, of course, also degrees of weirdness within our own denomination. The Southern Baptists with their prohibitions against makeup and dancing among other things, were considered a hopeless bunch of joyless prunes (even in our church, that went so far as to use Welch's Grape Juice for communion). Looked even further down upon were the Immersion Baptists--who took you to the river for baptisms, even in January. We did that only in the summer, but it was more ceremonial that doctrinaire. Still further down the line were the Foot Washing Baptists. At last you come to the Snake Handling Baptists, who were so out there that they did indeed feel like a cult. There is probably another splinter sect of Baptists somewhere, performing even wackier acts in the name of religion.

When does a cult become mainstream? When does a cult jump on the rail and become a church, or religion? I'm not really sure. Clearly, the Church of Latter Day Saints has transcended cult status and gone on to become the fastest growing church in the world (I think Orthodox Judaism is the second fastest growing).

[1] check out the links in the articles there--one to Wired and one to a whole (free) book on the Project Gutenberg site).

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All This Is That Re-heated (from January 2005): Foot Washing Baptists & The Catholic Devils

By Jack Brummet
Social Mores Editor

My friend, Doc, (http://drstephencw.blogspot.com/) today details his involvement in the Rama cult (he didn't jump the rails, but his former guru, Rama, did). [1] He also wrote a couple other interesting pieces on Rama earlier in the week. Rama sounds a little like Marjo Gortner, Jimmy Swaggart, or any other charlatan with a good rap. He was prodigiously good at extracting cash from the flock. Interestingly, he hooked in a lot of software developers just at the moment when many software businesses were cranking up their acts and starting to make boatloads of money.

Thinking about cults reminded me of my Baptist roots. We were American Baptists. I'm not sure about the other Protestant sects, but our church had definite opinions on the other churches. The Jewish faith was well-regarded, since it was the cornerstone of the Protestant religions. I didn't hear much about the Lutherans, Methodists, Presbyterians, Churches of Christ, Grace Fellowship, Reformed Protestant, United Brethren, First Christian Church, Church of the Nazarene, Pentecostal, or even the Menonite, Quaker, Episcopal, Amish, Shaker, or Evangelical Covenant churches.

The Catholic Church was regularly and savagely excoriated. I remember preachers railing against "The Cult of Mary." "THEY FORSAKE OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST FOR HIS VIRGIN MOTHER AND CONDEMN THEMSELVES TO PERISH IN THE FIRES OF THE GREAT DECEIVER!" In our church, the crucifix was empty, but in the Catholic Church, Jesus eternally suffered, nailed to the cross. "THEY CELEBRATE THE AGONY AND MURDER OF OUR LORD IN THEIR STATIONS OF THE CROSS!! THIS CHURCH CELEBRATES THE RESURRECTION OF THE CHRIST TO HEAVEN."

"THEY DO NOT EVEN READ THE BIBLE! THEY IGNORE THE GOOD BOOK! THE NEW TESTAMENT OF CHRIST OUR LORD IS IGNORED!" Confession was an excuse to sin even more--a free pass to perdition! Our ministers ranted against The Priests, The Nuns, The Brothers, The Bishops, and Cardinals. Most of all, they railed about the devil incarnate: His Holiness, The Pope, in his gilded palace, The Vatican.

The Reverend bemoaned "THE ABOMINATION OF THE EUCHARIST," the foul and damning Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation and its perversion of what was clearly intended by Our Lord to be symbolic.

"THE CATHOLICS WERE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE OUTRAGES OF THE SAINT BARTHOLOMEW'S DAY MASSACRE IN WHICH FIFTY THOUSAND OF GOD'S PRECIOUS CHILDREN WERE MURDERED! THE CATHOLICS RAN THE INQUISITION!"

There were, of course, also degrees of weirdness within our own denomination. The Southern Baptists with their prohibitions against makeup and dancing among other things, were considered a hopeless bunch of joyless prunes (even in our church, which went so far as to use Welch's Grape Juice for communion). Looked even further down upon were the Immersion Baptists--who took you to the river for baptisms, even in January. We did that only in the summer, but it was more ceremonial that doctrinaire. Still further down the line were the Foot Washing Baptists. At last you come to the Snake Handling Baptists, who were so out there that they did indeed feel like a cult. There is probably another splinter sect of Baptists somewhere, performing even wackier acts in the name of religion.

When does a cult become mainstream? When does a cult jump on the rail and become a church, or religion? I'm not really sure. Clearly, the Church of Latter Day Saints has transcended cult status and gone on to become the fastest growing church in the world (I think Orthodox Judaism is the second fastest growing).

[1] check out the links in the articles there--one to Wired and one to a whole (free) book on the Project Gutenberg site).

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Priest Sentenced For Jogging Naked In Colorado

Father Whipkey will now become a registered sex offender. The lowdown is here.
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Alien Lore No. 128 - The Vatican Says Aliens Are God's Children Too

According to an Associated Press article yesterday, datelined from The Vatican, "The Vatican's chief astronomer says that believing in aliens does not contradict faith in God."

The Rev. Jose Gabriel Funes, director of the Vatican Observatory, says the vastness of the universe means it is possible there may be other forms of life outside Earth--even intelligent ones.

In an interview published Tuesday by Vatican's L'Osservatore Romano, Funes says that such a notion "doesn't contradict our faith" because aliens would still be God's creatures.

The astronomer said that ruling out the possibility of aliens would be like "putting limits" on God's creative freedom.

Thanks to Jeff Clinton for the tip on this fine article...

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Noted Sex Expert Pope Benedict XVI says that "sex can become like a drug"

My friend Daryle Conners meets the Pope shortly before
she interviewed him for her Vatican II documentary

Pope Benedict XVI admitted on Saturday that the Vatican's teaching against birth control was difficult as he praised a 1968 Church document that condemned contraception.

In a speech marking the 40th anniversary of the document, Benedict reiterated the Church's ban against artificial birth control as well as more recent teaching against using artificial procreation methods.

"What was true yesterday remains true even today [Pope Paul VI's 1968 "Humanae vitae]. The truth expressed in 'Humanae vitae' doesn't change; on the contrary, in the light of new scientific discoveries, it is ever more up to date," the pope added. "No mechanical technique can substitute the act of love that two married people exchange as a sign of a greater mystery," Benedict said.

Il Papa expressed concern that human life risks losing its value in today's culture and worried that sex could "transform itself into a drug" that one partner had to have even against the will of the other. Did he learn this from studies, or from the histories of his minions, the Priests?
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Pope to eliminate modern music from the Vatican

click to enlarge

The Pope is about to overhaul the Vatican to enforce a return to traditional music.

Now that the Pope has reintroduced the Latin Tridentine Mass, he wants His church to go back to the Gregorian chant and baroque sacred music. In an speech to bishops and priests at St. Peter's Basilica, he said the church needs "continuity with tradition" in their prayers and music.

He referred to "the time of St Gregory the Great", the pope for whom the Gregorian chant is named. The Gregorian chant has become the prevalent form of singing by the new choir director of St Peter's, Father Pierre Paul.

The Pope has also ended the tradition, started by John Paul II, of having a choir drawn from churches all over the world, to sing Mass in St Peter's.

The International Church Music Review recently criticised the choir, saying: "The singers wanted to overshout each other, they were frequently out of tune, the sound uneven, the conducting without any artistic power, the organ and organ playing like in a second-rank country parish church."

Monsignor Valentin Miserachs Grau, the director of the Pontifical Institute of Sacred Music, which trains church musicians, said that there had been serious "deviations" in the performance of sacred music. "How far we are from the true spirit of sacred music. How can we stand it that such a wave of inconsistent, arrogant and ridiculous profanities have so easily gained a stamp of approval in our celebrations?"

The Pope favoured the idea of a watchdog for church music when he was the cardinal in charge of safeguarding Catholic doctrine.

According to my friend Daryle Conners, who produced a documentary on The Vatican, Cardinal Ratzinger, as he was known then, was referred to as Darth Vader by Vatican insiders. I believe it! I wonder if anyone has even had the heart to tell Pope Darth that in America we have such perversions as folk-rock masses? Or that I have heard folk music, gamelon, rock and roll, and jazz in the sacred confines of his sanctuaries in the states?
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