Friday, March 5, 2010

The Mother of all Religion


One can't vouch for Protestants, but Catholicism is hardly a patriarchical religion. Catholics worship Mother Mary. Jesus is simply "God-as-Dumbfuck".

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3 comments:

ellin barret said...

oh, come on. Look at the abuse scandals. Children and women do not count against the need to preserve the hierarchy of the church from criticism or controversy. It's unbelievable that the Church cannot apologize to the victims, but instead accuses them of mounting an attack on Catholicism. Outrageous.
Leave the Mary- worship out of this and think about the church leaders, all men. The priests do not worship Mary as the people do.. in Santiago they have moved her to the side, (She for whom the chapel was built on top of a mountain in worship!), and replaced her on the "main stage" with a gory replica of the bleeding christ carrying his cross.

Chipster said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Chipster said...

Uh.... The post was made in the context of your remark that there were no goddesses in Christianity. Perhaps for Protestants, but Catholics and Orthodox have always worshipped Mary -- at least since the goddesses of Rome went out of business.

The impetus for Mariolatry arose by popular demand, most strongly in Spain which is still very ostensibly Marian in its worship, as we have just witnessed in Seville during Holy Week. As for the "Emperatriz de las Américas" no further comment is needed.

Mariology is found in the earliest of Church Fathers [sic] and the popular clamor on behalf of Mary was so persistent that her Immaculate Conception (absolute freedom from sin) was declared a mandatory dogma in 1854 and her Assumption (bodily into Heaven) was declared an Article of Faith in 1950, by that most patriarchal [sic] and conservative of holinesses, Pope Pius XII.

You can't get more godammn goddess-like than being conceived without sin and getting raised bodily into Olympus, Heaven or whatever Eternal Wherever; and you can't get more matriarchal than worshipping and praying to the *Mother* of God.

As for all them supposedly women-hating priests removing a statue of Mary from an altar, I am unfamiliar with episode; but throughout the Catholic world there are thousands of retablos depicting Mary in one form or another.

Von Balthasar's"aesthetic" theology revolves around Mary and his "dramatic" theology is built on Christ's Crucifixion. I have no way of knowing whether the clergy worship Mary differently from "the people" and I wonder how anyone would tell the difference.

Uta Ranke-Heinemann, who back in the 1950's was the first Catholic woman in modern times to obtain a professorial chair in theology, had this to say, "Quite frankly, John Paul II was tedious without end. I couldn't stand it any more. He was obsessed with Mary. "Mary, Mary, Mary," he repeated over and over and over. I mean, I feel much for Mary myself, because she lost her son... But none of us, including Ratzinger, were excessive Marians.
How Ratzinger's views on Mary developed later on with John Paul II, who spoke non-stop spoke about Mary-I cannot understand it, and I regret it."

It's a little much to ascribe the removal of a goddess from an altar to misogyny from a bunch of patriarchal eunuchs.

I suspect the issue probably focused over a removal of the Crucifix from the altar. That is not possible, because the altar represents and reincarnates the Last Supper and Christ's sacrifice and death on the Cross. Perhaps among some sects, the altar is simply the back drop to a lecture podium; not in Catholicism.

The Crucifix is bloody and gory because life is full of not very pretty suffering. The Resurrection, supposing it occurred at all, is meaningless without the antecedent, passion, suffering,rejection, and despair. Catholics do not sanitize the affair into an accounting device or symbol for clean and sober living.

The so-called pedophilia scandal has nothing to do with this issue, except in the minds and mouths of activists, agitators and the NYT, all of which have their own questionable agendas.

The Church has apologized numerous times to the victims.

As for that neo liberal, zionist smut rag out of New York, they are so concerned about sexual and non-sexual child abuse around the world that, daily, there is a story about starving kids sniffing glue in Lima and Rio, about child labor in Pakistan, about abuse in Romanian or Protestant orphanages, about child prostitutes in Thailand or about the white slave trade run out of (gasp!!) Tel Aviv. And of course, we all get to read about the peculiar rituals at Eton and Harrow. Puleeze.

Oh...and by the way, after John Paul II excommunicated Ranke-Heinemann for *denying* the Virgin Birth, "Ratzinger was the only one, of all those bishops and cardinals, to write to me in a friendly way, offering support."