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It seems like His Beatitude didn't like stand, I hope?
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Oct 31, 2016 00:03
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Oh, he liked the stand very much.
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Oct 31, 2016 00:22
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System Metternich posted:This papal trip is really cool and I'm actually looking forward to the 500 year anniversary next year, but what I decidedly didn't like was the horrible fanfic I read in one of Germany's most prestigious weeklies today about the Pope getting rid of transsubstantiation to reconcile the churches which was good because he abandoned this “medieval superstition“ but also bad because it gave Benedict the opportunity to declare himself antipope my dad (my actual dad irl) is really excited about this, because he supports reconciliation between the two churches. even if it's just a gesture, it's still a really nice gesture
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Oct 31, 2016 01:49
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System Metternich posted:I'm actually looking forward to the 500 year anniversary next year edit: i have been informed that i meant 2018 HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 02:15 on Oct 31, 2016 |
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Oct 31, 2016 01:50
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Gonna celebrate the anniversary with a nice game of Europa Universalis
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Oct 31, 2016 01:54
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Every year I re-read Luther's theses, and each time I can't but smile at how much he defends the Pope as the Vicar of Christ in them.
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Oct 31, 2016 03:09
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The college Lutherans in town used to nail the theses to my church's door but they wimped out past couple years
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Oct 31, 2016 03:23
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In less Lutheran news, the Ecumenical Patriarch put out this letter commemorating his 25th anniversary, which my priest (and I suppose any priest under the EP) read in full during the Liturgy today. Which meant I got to hear my parish priest utter the phrase "space debris."
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Oct 31, 2016 04:30
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The Gospel at Mass posted:Luke 19:1–10 So this was the reading today at Mass. Because of health issues, I have had to go to the 10pm student mass at a local university. The priest said that in the reading he always sees Zacchaeus as George Costanza, and I howled in laughter. Unfortunately, because almost everyone in the room was under 22, I was just about the only person who laughed. 
Thirteen Orphans fucked around with this message at 08:35 on Oct 31, 2016 |
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Oct 31, 2016 04:39
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And not to lose face, I had to give half of my possessions to the poor, Jeremiah! Half of my possessions!
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Oct 31, 2016 05:13
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Paladinus posted:And not to lose face, I had to give half of my possessions to the poor, Jeremiah! Half of my possessions! 
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Oct 31, 2016 05:28
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Ya know, this is a really random question, but it's prompted by the volunteering I intermittently do with the red cross, the 4th anniversary of Sandy (and me being where Sandy hit), etc. Liturgigoons (and others), how much does your church/denomination prepare for disaster/catastrophe? I'm not just talking "our parish hall is a shelter for the red cross", but "We do in fact have Plans prepared for if someone tries to blow up the diocesan chancery or otherwise decapitate us as an organization, and we could survive that"? (Actually, Orthodox and Catholic goons, that's a good question - are we screwed if someone blows up the diocesan chancery and takes out the records of, say, baptismal certificates not held by a parish?) Not that I see such scenarios as likely or even probable, but events in, eg, Hong Kong make me wonder - how prepared would our faith communities really be for disasters, both natural and man-made? (Hong Kong comes up because I'm wondering what any of the liturgical denominations would do if the Chinese revoked one country two systems.) (There's also the reality that preparing for unlikely man-made scenarios puts you in pretty good stead for the various natural disasters, too.)
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Oct 31, 2016 14:11
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Happy 499th Reformation Day, Protestant goons!  Today is a holiday in most Protestant states in Germany (but it nearly always falls into the holidays surrounding All Saints' Day in Bavaria, so whatever), but for the 500th anniversary next year all states have agreed to designate it a national holiday for 2017 only, which is a really neat gesture imoLutha Mahtin posted:my dad (my actual dad irl) is really excited about this, because he supports reconciliation between the two churches. even if it's just a gesture, it's still a really nice gesture I totally agree, and I'm actually somewhat sad that my brother (who lives in Weimar atm, like 50m away from the Herderkirche where Luther gave sermons, Bach frequently played and where he had two of his children baptised and where Johann Gottfried Herder worked and lived for 30 years as pastor) probably will have moved away from there before October 2017 because you just know that they will party it up there! It's just that the upcoming anniversary apparently also gives rise to a certain sort of German-Protestant "chauvinism" which I thought had died off for good after WW2, where I'm suddenly reading lots of pieces about Luther and the Reformation which are pretty much propaganda. In those texts Protestantism apparently still defines itself through a decidely anti-Catholic lens, and the authors just can't help themselves to drop petty digs against Catholicism (just today I read about "the supposed grave of the supposed Peter" in Rome, which isn't just pointless dissing but also makes no sense at all  ) and act like you can only be a modern and proper German when you're Protestant or at least Protestant-influenced. Did you know that Luther invented modern human rights? Me neither  It's actually quite fascinating, because some of the stuff I've read during the last couple days (in highly renowned national papers, no less) almost reads like anti-Catholic pamphlets from 1870s Prussia. That might be a uniquely German thing though (and hopefully will have run its course soon), idkBut other than these weird guys suddenly popping up I'm pretty stoked for 2017 (and 2018 too, don't you worry Heygal  ), especially the museum exhibitions will be a treatSpacewolf posted:Ya know, this is a really random question, but it's prompted by the volunteering I intermittently do with the red cross, the 4th anniversary of Sandy (and me being where Sandy hit), etc. That's an interesting question! I actually have no idea, though that might also be because natural disasters like earthquakes or hurricanes are more or less unheard of in (southern) Germany - the only possible disaster we have been facing throughout much of the last 65 years or so was the Cold War going hot with Germany as the frontline, and it's not like anything would have been left standing around here in this case, preparation or no e: in honour of the upcoming 500 year anniversary of the Reformation, have this portrait of young Martin Luther sporting a giant neckbeard:  (that's when he was hiding at Wartburg Castle in 1521/22 under the pseudonym of "Junker Jörg"  )
System Metternich fucked around with this message at 14:45 on Oct 31, 2016 |
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Oct 31, 2016 14:41
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Junker George
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Oct 31, 2016 15:29
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I don't really have an answer but the question made me want to reread A Canticle for Leibowitz.
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Oct 31, 2016 15:58
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System Metternich posted:I just wanted to direct your attention to this work of art I saw recently in one of my parish's churches: That does it, I'm converting. Great piece of religious art there.
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Oct 31, 2016 16:43
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Spacewolf posted:Liturgigoons (and others), how much does your church/denomination prepare for disaster/catastrophe? I'm not just talking "our parish hall is a shelter for the red cross", but "We do in fact have Plans prepared for if someone tries to blow up the diocesan chancery or otherwise decapitate us as an organization, and we could survive that"? After the terror attacks in Paris there were some rumblings in the Vatican that we needed a contingency plan just in case the pope and all the cardinals under the age of eighty were all killed at the same time. Catholics would be left with no ability to select a new pope, to nominate new cardinals or to call an ecumenical council to change the current rules for the papal conclave process. I don't know if anything ever came of that, though.
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Oct 31, 2016 18:28
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This seems like a good place to ask about faith. I'd like to know about faith, in general, and how one comes to develop it from a position of no faith (or a position of doubt in one's faith). Faith is something I don't honestly think I've ever experienced, in a religious sense, and so it's a bit baffling to me. So, if one feels inclined towards religious belief, but cannot find a way to rationalize it, how does faith occur and grow? Does the Spinoza definition of God count for purposes of faith? Any recommendations for reading material on the topic, or personal input, would be awesome.
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Oct 31, 2016 18:43
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cerror posted:This seems like a good place to ask about faith. I'd like to know about faith, in general, and how one comes to develop it from a position of no faith (or a position of doubt in one's faith). Faith is something I don't honestly think I've ever experienced, in a religious sense, and so it's a bit baffling to me. So, if one feels inclined towards religious belief, but cannot find a way to rationalize it, how does faith occur and grow? Does the Spinoza definition of God count for purposes of faith? I came to faith from no faith. Basically, I prayed for willingness to believe in my (divinity of choice), and for signs of their help in my daily life. The signs came, in the shape of a miracolous recovery from a disease I have, and I have tried to strengthen and develop the relationship from there.
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Oct 31, 2016 19:27
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What do you do when you can't love your enemy? (if you're into trigger warnings, then consider one from here on out. Also let me say I know how self-absorbed it is to make a horrible crime all about my own angst.) What prompted me to ask this is a case that's currently being tried in Hong Kong, where a banker tortured and killed two women (the facts aren't in contention, the trial is over whether he was fully responsible, given his alcohol and drug use). The perpetrator was someone I knew, quite a few years ago (no internet detectiving please). He wasn't someone I was close with, and I can't actually remember a single conversation I ever had with him, but for a period I was frequently in a group that included him. I honestly have no memory of thinking anything positive or negative about him. When I first read about the crime, I was horrified, but was also able to summon up some vague distant compassion for him, as a clearly very disturbed and unhappy person. Then I forgot about it until today, when I read some details from the court case. These were in a very explicit article in a UK tabloid. I really don't advise anyone to look for it, as they were very disturbing. Other news sources skimmed over or skipped some of the most macabre details. Basically one of the people killed was tortured, in multiple ways specifically designed to sexually humiliate her and remove her dignity as a human. The other was killed quicker, but not before she sent some gut-wrenchingly sad texts for help. It seems impossible to feel any compassion for the killer. I don't want to hurt him, but I hope he gets removed from society, and dropped down a hole so nobody ever has to think about his face or name again. But I'm horribly aware that that same instinct, to see other humans as objects that can be got rid of when they get inconvenient, is exactly how he treated both his victims. He's not going to vanish when he gets convicted, but will go on being a human, who is presumably just as in need of Jesus' love as everyone else. And yet to feel pity for him seems incredibly disrespectful to the people he hurt so badly. Particularly as he was enormously privileged, and the two people he killed were migrant sex workers, a type of person who have often been treated as somehow less worthy of dignity and compassion. tl;dr I've somehow managed to live my life so far without noticing that "love thy neighbour" is a hard command to follow.
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Oct 31, 2016 23:10
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Mr Enderby posted:And yet to feel pity for him seems incredibly disrespectful to the people he hurt so badly. Particularly as he was enormously privileged, and the two people he killed were migrant sex workers, a type of person who have often been treated as somehow less worthy of dignity and compassion. That's not the same as saying "Okay, he was justified"; it's saying "God has reasons to be furious at all of us, and if I get mercy, so does he." And yeah, I have sure not perfected it. I keep promising not to hate anybody in the current American political campaigns, and I keep doing it anyway. Not hating isn't a one-time struggle that you win, it's a lifelong battle, at least for me.
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Nov 1, 2016 01:25
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The Golden Rule is not a fire-and-brimstone edict that requires you to, always and at all times, have in your heart the love emotion toward all humans on the planet. It is more a teaching that everyone is human, and that you should open your mind and heart toward the Earthly reality that is outside yourself.
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Nov 1, 2016 01:30
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System Metternich posted:In those texts Protestantism apparently still defines itself through a decidely anti-Catholic lens, and the authors just can't help themselves to drop petty digs against The thing is, both of these statements are kind of true. To a degree. Sort of. At the least, they are related to actual historical trends. The first thing I quoted is easy, because the word "Protestant" pretty much says it all. It is a movement of people who were protesting about something. And the something that they were protesting was Catholicism, or at least parts of it. So when your founding myths and early thinkers often defined themselves as what they weren't, not just what they were, this colors how later generations think. And also I think it's important to point out that this is not solely a Protestant phenomenon. In every church you will find people hating on other churches. A saying I have often heard is that the Devil works hardest within the church, which I myself don't take literally, but it's something to keep in mind. The human rights thing is a bit of a stretch to connect directly to Luther. However I think it is inaccurate to exclude him and other church reformers from Western history when it comes to the rights of common people. Many movements for human and civil rights can be traced back (at least partly) to the Reformation. People being jerks about it is not good though, of course
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Nov 1, 2016 01:51
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Mr Enderby, I know how you feel. I have a former friend who joined ISIS. I suppose a big difference is that in her case, I actually do feel incredible pity for her. The article goes into great detail about her struggles in life and her desperate search for meaning and identity. But even beyond that, I always think back to the friend I remember, the cheerful and passionate activist who was in my writing group. I also remember one of our last conversations--mostly that it was, ironically, a positive and illuminating chat about religion, after her conversion to Islam. All I can really do is pray for her, in the hope that God can lead her to some kind of repentance, or bring some good out of her evil.
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Nov 1, 2016 02:05
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Mr Enderby posted:tl;dr I've somehow managed to live my life so far without noticing that "love thy neighbour" is a hard command to follow. As I've said so often when these things come up, spiritually we humans are imperfect beings. Striving towards following the command is all we are ever capable of, but if we choose to strive, we attain spiritual growth. Spiritual perfection is for saints and angels, but we shall become found by searching for it. And I'm not coming from some high and mighty grasp of things either, I judge other people harshly every single day - but I know that I must work towards loving them, and in knowing I become better at it with time.
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Nov 1, 2016 10:33
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Lutha Mahtin posted:The thing is, both of these statements are kind of true. To a degree. Sort of. At the least, they are related to actual historical trends. Oh, I totally agree, but see: you began your post with some qualifiers. The texts I'm ranting about don't tend to do that (And there totally is a subsection of, say, Catholics, who still delight in calling Protestants dirty heretics, of course, but those rarely make it into prestigious national papers around here)
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Nov 1, 2016 11:00
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Tias, what evil pagan rituals have you been up to recently? Facebook has been spamming me with suggestions that I might be interested in attending Midgardsblot. Am I going to have to check my
my dad fucked around with this message at 11:19 on Nov 1, 2016 |
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Nov 1, 2016 11:13
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my dad posted:Tias, what evil pagan rituals have you been up to recently? No such thing, I'm afraid. The next blot is Vinterblot in the middle of December. I have been praying that you all are well, though, so maybe getting crunk on mjód and praising the old gods is just in G-rocks plan for you?
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Nov 1, 2016 11:33
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Tias posted:No such thing, I'm afraid. The next blot is Vinterblot in the middle of December. I have been praying that you all are well, though, so maybe getting crunk on mjód and praising the old gods is just in G-rocks plan for you? Huh. After some googling, turns out it's just a metal festival in Norway. Oops, sorry for the false alarm. It's not like I can afford to travel anywhere, anyway.
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Nov 1, 2016 12:21
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Mr Enderby posted:It seems impossible to feel any compassion for the killer. I don't want to hurt him, but I hope he gets removed from society, and dropped down a hole so nobody ever has to think about his face or name again. But I'm horribly aware that that same instinct, to see other humans as objects that can be got rid of when they get inconvenient, is exactly how he treated both his victims. He's not going to vanish when he gets convicted, but will go on being a human, who is presumably just as in need of Jesus' love as everyone else. Now I'm a layman in every sense of the word but I always assumed forgiveness was not given freely but that one had to seek it out through a genuine desire for it and a guilt at past sins. I always found the most heartwarming display of faith to be forgiveness and not repentance personally because we all have done things to wrong someone that we regret but how many of us have the strength to truly forgive someone who has destroyed something we hold dear and welcome back with open arms someone who burned all their bridges with us? I don't think I do.
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Nov 1, 2016 12:28
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Man Whore posted:Has he even sought repentance or forgiveness? :protestantsay: side remark, if it's allowed: Forgiveness is 100% free and actually already earned for everyone but it's not forced on those who don't want it. Basically the same thing you said but as a person who often struggles with feelings of inadequateness and outright guilt I find the phrasing important. Asking for forgiveness is hard when you (rightly) feel you don't deserve it.
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Nov 1, 2016 14:05
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Valiantman posted::protestantsay: side remark, if it's allowed: Forgiveness is 100% free and actually already earned for everyone but it's not forced on those who don't want it. A good protestantsay! We should not wreck ourselves with our poor self-worth, because God probably doesn't.
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Nov 1, 2016 14:07
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Valiantman posted::protestantsay: side remark, if it's allowed: Forgiveness is 100% free and actually already earned for everyone but it's not forced on those who don't want it. And forgiving someone else is not necessarily about welcoming them back with open arms, it's about letting go of the hurt and desire for vengeance and moving on. Rather than stewing in your bitterness and letting your hatred of the person ruin the rest of your life, you move the incident to the "poo poo happens" box and get on with living. As you said, the hardest part is when I'm the perpetrator = accepting forgiveness and moving on with my own life, rather than beating up on myself for being a schmuck. We have to pick up the pieces and keep striving to be better, while remembering but not dwelling on the past.
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Nov 1, 2016 14:23
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Man Whore posted:Has he even sought repentance or forgiveness? My own take is that *I* don't have to forgive [insert serial killer]; that's up to God and the people s/he directly wronged. Forgiveness is not mine to give or deny. Christ just said I shouldn't judge their sins, and that I have to love them. Thus my rationale is that I can leave the forgiveness up to God, while focusing on the task that is my own duty: to love. Which, again, is hard and a daily struggle and I mostly suck at.
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Nov 1, 2016 16:20
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I suppose this discussion is as good a time as any to mention that Calvary is a great film and that you should watch it if you haven't already.
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Nov 1, 2016 16:42
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Anyone here going to the AAR meeting this year?
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Nov 1, 2016 18:25
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Samuel Clemens posted:I suppose this discussion is as good a time as any to mention that Calvary is a great film and that you should watch it if you haven't already. Seconding this. It's pretty harrowing, but it's a fantastic movie.
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Nov 1, 2016 18:47
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oh man it has Brendan Gleeson in it, that's going on my watchlist
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Nov 1, 2016 19:25
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System Metternich posted:Oh, I totally agree, but see: you began your post with some qualifiers. The texts I'm ranting about don't tend to do that Don't worry, now that we have a lot of non-religious people in Western society, we have newspaper editorials that are equally tone-deaf and offensive whether you're Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu...
Lutha Mahtin fucked around with this message at 20:33 on Nov 1, 2016 |
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Nov 1, 2016 20:17
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Lutha Mahtin posted:Don't worry, the rise of non-religious people in Western society means that a lot of newspaper editorials are equally tone-deaf and offensive whether you're Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu... Reading 2015 piece by John Gray about the radicalisation of New Atheism (a fascinating read btw which I can only recommend) made me think about the bolded part of your post. Gray claims that the teleological rationalism of the New Atheism movement is now confronted with a resurgence of religion and religiously-motivated politics throughout the world. Looking at the Western world, this obviously rings false; looking at church membership statistics would be enough to lay doubt on that notion (again, only concerning the Western world, seeing as, say, the Islamic revival is very much a thing). On the other hand I'm wondering: is it truly the case that Western society as a whole grows less religious? I suspect that this only really works when you a) see religiosity only through the lens of being a member of an established religious subgroup and b) don't account for the strong historical influence by (organised) religion on society and culture fading away. Things like this survey in the UK that says that quote:[E]ight out of 10 people polled agreed with the statement that “there are things in life that we simply cannot explain through science or any other means.” make me think that "religiosity", when seen as a belief in the supernatural, as vaguely defined as it may be, isn't actually going anywhere. Or is it? I'm not too sure on this subject, maybe one of you guys can tell me more about the future of belief in the Western world.
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Nov 1, 2016 20:36
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