poliphilo

Thanks.

Even Popes should have romper rooms.

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I don't think it's possible.

And the moral of the story is we shouldn't give people that sort of power.

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dakegra.livejournal.com

oddly as I read this I've got my mix cd playing.

peter sellers, doing A HArd Day's Night, as Olivier playing Hamlet.

spooky

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There's something indelible about Sellers. I haven't heard that track in decades and yet it's as fresh in my mind as if I last heard it yesterday.

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One of the things that struck me about all the post-death reportage about JPII is how easily he wore his humanity. I don't remember seeing much of his sense of humor myself, but it seems that the most unlikely people have a JPII story or two, and they will crack you up.

I don't know who his friends were, but I believe that he had them.

As for doubts, all of his private papers are going to be burned. What do you think?

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"All his private papers are going to be burned". That's sad. More than sad, it's an act of cultural and historical vandalism- but I suppose it's what he wanted.

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I had the same reaction you did (act of vandalism), but while I believe JPII was truly human, the office requires infallibility (in matters of faith and morals).

If JPII had doubts, he probably wrote about them, and I can see that he wouldn't want his thoughts to be miscontrued, or taken as the word of the church when it was just him exploring.

I loved the stories that people told about him, from the stories about him giving hints about their catechism questions to the kids he was confirming, to the story about him saying to Bryant Gumbel, who had brought him something from Warsaw, "You don't look like you're from Warsaw." Not politically correct, but funny.

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Do you think the Dalai Lama is inhuman?

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And yet everyone who ever had even the briefest of moments with him said that he was the most compassionate, caring man they ever met. I think he was more human than most.

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On the contrary, I have a feeling he was constantly vulnerable. He was far more human/e, I believe, than many. I think it is because he never let the "power" of his job consume him. I do not remember who (I believe it was one of the cardinals) said that despite who he became, he remained at heart a priest, and he was always willing and always had the desire to help people. Maybe that's one of the ways he remained connected.

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I've been hearing that the Pope had a great sense of humor, that one very nervous fourteen-year-old boy was presented to him and he meant to kiss the Pope's ring and forgot and instead fervently shook his hand. The Pope smiled broadly then cuffed him on the back of the head gently.

Also, it was reported in Time Magazine that the Pope could be heard talking in prayer, sometimes with great emotion.

Jung once said that it is possible to live out an archetype, that that is what Saints do, and what Jesus did. I suppose the Pope lived out the archetype of Pope.

But that is beyond me to understand, really. I must say I have learned more from John Paul II in the past week than in his entire reign, because I never thought of him as other than a conservative man who was clinging to the past.

Now I see him as someone who tried really hard to live a good life. I have been very moved by the events of last week.

(I wish he could have been silly, had fun--but he did go hiking and skiing once, remember?

He did seem to love people.

My mother remembers the old pope who was carried on a chair so that his feet would not touch the ground, and John Paul II brought himself back to earth a bit more than that!

I watched a little of the Wedding this morning and noticed how everyone stood until Princess Anne sat down. I thought, how odd, to think she is so important, when she is just the Queen's sister--and then the Queen brought them to their feet again...and they curtseyed as she walked by, all those pretty women in their hats.

I realized what an American I am--I would feel very odd curtseying to anyone, although I often find the Buddhist way of bowing to another very graceful and meaningful, and wish we all did that.

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I really don't know.

The Dalai Lama doesn't wield the same sort of power as the Pope. And he doesn't carry the burden of infallibility.

All the same it must be very hard to keep your feet on the ground when millions of people regard you as a conduit of divine wisdom.

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He's a head of state; I think he wields an enormous amount of power. He doesn't bear the burden of infallibility, but lots of people listen to what he says.

I do think that the Pope and the DL have the same sort of incredible humanity--and that's why they are great, not because of their divine wisdom.

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I think that whole infallibility thing is/was a horrendous mistake.

And a mistake of fairly recent origin. Unless I'm mis-remembering what I was taught in theological college, the notion that the Pope speaking ex cathedra is infallible was only accorded dogmatic status during the reign of the extremely reactionary Pius IX- who was Pope from 1846-78.

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craftyailz.livejournal.com

er hum Princess Anne is the Queen's daughter Princess Margaret - dead was her sister. Princess Anne - who doesn't use her title and whose children aren't prince and princess is also Princess Royal which in a way makes her next to the queen

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I'm suspicious of all power. I hold through thick and thin to Lord Acton's saying that "power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely."

How horrible that one human being should be expected to kiss the ring worn by another.

I admire the pope's bravery in the last weeks of his life, but that doesn't change my rooted opposition to most of what he stood for.

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He may have been pleasant to meet, but I don't find his policies on contraception, AIDS etc in the least bit compassionate.

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My quarrel is less with the man than with the office. I think it is wrong that one man- no matter how wise and priestly and human- should lay down the law on matters of personal morality.

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I've been reading Spong, Tony, and he says the Church must change, or die.

The Pope tried to save the Church as he knew it, but in the very long view his views are archaic.

He died beautifully, no doubt about it, saying he was happy.

In one hundred years, the Church will be different, I think. Perhaps blended.

My daughter-in-law, an orthodox Anglican who believes as the Pope does, thinks the American Anglican church and the Roman Catholic Church may be able to merge, with some tweaking that follows the opening doors of the Pope.

I read Spong, and he offers me no personal God. That is very hard for me.

Spong also offers a new view of the Church, but it is hard to care, if there is Nothing to look at me and See me.

...

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morrison-maiden.livejournal.com

I haven't seen many of Peter Sellers' films- just Being There and Lolita. In the former, I love the way he plays the death of his friend. He doesn't really cry and he doesn't seem unaffected, but you can see the teariness in his eyes, and he's sort of numb for a few moments. His character was so endearing in that one.

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If your quarrel is with the office, then why are you expressing what you think is wrong in terms of "one man". Why not "one office"?

In essence, I think this is a large part of why Quakers have committees.

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I'm with Spong.

On the whole.

I believe in a God who is everything and nothing, personal and impersonal. We are in God and God is in us.

The Vatican model is that God is up there somewhere and the Church hierarchy acts as the speaking trumpet through which He communicates with the masses. I find this wrong, plain wrong- and the sooner we get rid of it the better.

The Pope died heroically, but I find it hard to forgive him his views on gender and sex. A great many people have died needlessly because of the Vatican line on contraception.

The only kind of Church I think I could be happy to belong to these days would be something along the line of the Society of Friends- a non-hierarchical church with an ethos of listening rather than sounding forth.

Perhaps I should become a Friend.

It's a new, surprising and happy thought......

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Those are two of his very best performances. I love those movies.

Sellers appeared in a lot of crummy films (sometimes they were crummy because he wrecked them with his off-screen power-tripping) but those two are classics.

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The two are so closely identified. The office is a man and a man is the office.

I'm drawn to the Quaker model. I think it shows more respect to the doctrine of the Holy Spirit.

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Listening-yes: that is where I most find answers.

Karen attends Friends' Meetings.

Yes, I can imagine you there very easily.

As for Spong, I am still reading.

He says, "Can a person claim with integrity to be a Christian and at the same time dismiss, as I have done, so much of what has traditionally definied the content of the Christian faith? ... My problem has never been my faith. It has always been the literal way human beings have chosen to articulate that faith.

"I continue to insist that I am a Christian. I hold steadfastly to the truth of the assertian first made by Paul that 'God was in Christ.'

"I call the church to a radical shift from the way in which it has traditionally proclaimed its message...the Reformation dealt primarily with issues of authority and order. The new Reformation will be profoundly theological, challenging every aspect of our faith-story...Christianity postulates a theistic God...the time has come when all of us must move beyond the deconstruction of these inadequate...symbols...and chart a vision...of the timless God-experience, [as differentiated from] the time-warped God-explanations of the past."

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Listening-yes: that is where I most find answers.

Karen attends Friends' Meetings.

Yes, I can imagine you there very easily.

As for Spong, I am still reading.

He says, "Can a person claim with integrity to be a Christian and at the same time dismiss, as I have done, so much of what has traditionally definied the content of the Christian faith? ... My problem has never been my faith. It has always been the literal way human beings have chosen to articulate that faith.

"I continue to insist that I am a Christian. I hold steadfastly to the truth of the assertian first made by Paul that 'God was in Christ.'

"I call the church to a radical shift from the way in which it has traditionally proclaimed its message...the Reformation dealt primarily with issues of authority and order. The new Reformation will be profoundly theological, challenging every aspect of our faith-story...Christianity postulates a theistic God...the time has come when all of us must move beyond the deconstruction of these inadequate...symbols...and chart a vision...of the timless God-experience, [as differentiated from] the time-warped God-explanations of the past."
<i-A New Christianity for a New World, John Shelby Spong</i>

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Interestingly enough, you will find - in Catholic churches at least - a great deal more talk about how Jesus is within each of us, and that we are acting on his behalf, that we are his eyes and hands and hearts. Also, I've never found that the Church says the only way to communicate with God is through it - if this were the case, then personal prayer would be meaningless, and that's certainly not something the Church teaches.

This is not to say that there aren't issues at which I am at odds with my Church, and about which I fervently hope that the Church will someday change its policies. There are times when I am very, very angry at my Church.

I should probably also mention that as far as religion goes, I think everyone should do whatever works best for them. smile I myself was a pagan for ten years, and I have friends who are pagans of various sorts, agnostics, atheists, Hindi, Buddhist, Muslim, various Christian sects, etc.

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Aye, and those are the opinions and policies that I hope someday, will change.

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I think the issues is really complex. I may be speaking heretically here (hopefully, my Church won't come and burn me at the stake if this is the case), but here's the way I see the Pope.

He is, first and foremost, human. However, in matters of spirituality, he is divinely guided to the right decision by the Holy Spirit and is thus, infallible provided he actually listens to what he is being told. Our pastor gave a very interesting sermon last week where he talked about how the Holy Spirit guides the Church and how He has to work through impefect instruments.

Essentially, the Pope has the potential to be infallible in spiritual matters if he chooses (remember, there is always free will) to be guided by the Holy Spirit.

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We are in God and God is in us.

This much I wholeheartedly believe.

(I think it was Stephen Hawking in A Brief History of Time who said something like: God created and then entered into our universe and therefore is fully inside and subject to its laws; that God in that sense is wholly us and we wholly God.)

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Perhaps I should become a Friend.

I highly recommend it.:)

I admire this the most: Friends look at unpleasant realities with clear eyes.

I stopped going to Catholic church as soon as I went home, and never met a religion I liked after that, until I went to Quaker meeting. But Quakerism is a way of being more than a religion, and it's a way that I like very much.

One of the members of my meeting spoke once about how we don't really know the other people in meeting. In some sense that's true, but in another sense, I know them more intimately than most people probably do. I have seldom been in a room with people and felt that I liked each one of them, but that's how I feel about my meeting. Even the intrinsically annoying people have demonstrated redeeming qualities.

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I agree with you on the first point--I didn't look it up, but I think you're right on the 2nd point, too, that it's recent.

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The two are so closely identified. The office is a man and a man is the office.

I'm going to disagree with you yet again. Maybe this is an American thing, but people talk about loathing George Bush but respecting the Presidency. I think this is no different. (Well, it's the opposite--liking JPII, but disliking the papacy.)

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I'm not quite sure what he means by a "theistic God". I presume he means something like "a God who is thought of as a personality." The problem with Spong's position is that it's hard to see- when God has been converted into "a timeless God experience"- why we should still need a church to mediate Him to us.

This, anyway, is the conclusion I have drawn. I can experience God by looking out the window, by talking to people on LJ, by doing any number of things, so why should I also turn up at Church and sing hymns- unless of course I have a taste for it (which I don't and never really have done.)

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If Jesus is within each of us, why do we still need the church hierarchy?

The Vatican, it seems to me, is a historical hangover. The Reformation (which has worked its work inside the Catholic Church as well as outside it) has rendered it largely redundant. And of course many, perhaps a majority, of Western catholics treat it as such and disregard the Pope's teachings on personal morality.

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I have Quaker ancestors.

My Allen great aunts were staunch pacifists and went on "ban the bomb" marches in the 50s and 60s. I'm very proud of them.

I have always, I rather think, been something of a Quaker manque.

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I went and checked.

The dogma of papal infallibility was promulgated in 1870.

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The American Presidency is part of a wonderfully contrived system of checks and balances. The Papacy doesn't have these.

Just about the only check on a Pope is his own mortality.

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But how do you ascertain the Will of the Spirit?

This has always been a problem. The Biblical test is along the lines of "by their fruits shall ye know them." Or, in other words, "wait and see."

The Pope's supposed infallibility makes it tricky for the Church to reverse what a Pope has taught- even when the results of that teaching fail the Biblical test and are plainly disastrous.

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Why does any religion create "Church?" It's not just the monotheistic faiths that do it - Hindus have temples, as do Buddhists...pagans form covens and churches as well.

Part of it, certainly, is fellowship. The pleasure and joy we get when we gather with others who have the same beliefs we do. That fellowship leads to a sense of belonging, which most humans crave. "I belong here. These people are like me." Not that we want to completely lose our sense of individuality, but most of us want to feel like there are others out there with whom we have at least something in common.

Another part is, like it or not, anarchy in any form just doesn't work all that well. Churches provide governance and guidance. Otherwise, we might have a lot more people committing heinous acts, saying "Well, Jesus spoke to me and told me to do it." Or "My religion requires me to sacrifice a virgin each month on the full moon." And so forth.

Is it perfect? No. Do Churches make terrible mistakes, commit violence themselves? Yes. But I don't think anarchy is the answer to that.

Did any of that make any sense?

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How do any of us ascertain the Will of the Spirit? You advocate no churches at all, instead letting each person listen to the will of God themselves. How do any of us know if we are truly listening?

I don't have the answer to that. I have met people who are good at listening. Me....well, I'm not so good. There must be a stubborn, recalcitrant part of me that still wants to do what I want, and not what He wills.

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Yes, I know what you mean.

"Churches" aren't going to go away any time soon. We need them.

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This was what happened at the Reformation. The Church broke apart and all these seers and prophets started up their own sects. Some of them were a good thing and some of them were crazy and some were downright vicious.

No, individuals are no less fallible than institutions.

I guess what it comes down to is that I'd rather make my own mistakes than be complicit in someone else's.

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four-thorns.livejournal.com

he did have a will, though- or some sort of paper that he wrote annual entries in (during lent, i believe) that spans all his years as pope- in the news here, they mentioned some of what was in it, the most significant apparently being that in 2000 (as his illness progessed) he considered retiring. also, only two people are mentioned by name in the paper: his personal secretary and/or best friend, stanislaw whatnot, and someone else that i can't recall at the moment.

also, regarding kissing the pope's ring-- i find that an utterly disgusting expectation as well. there was a priest at my church that refused to sit in the celebrant's chair when he led mass. instead, he sat in a regular chair at the side of the altar. i respected him a great deal for that. i wish we had a pope who had the humility to refuse some of the trappings of his office.

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Why have you been manque?

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