Bring out your dead!
Religion in all its many forms - - Posted on April, 25 at 3:16 pm by Ken L
I wrote a few days ago about the Roman Catholic church’s attempt to inspire the youth of the world by digging up a corpse and transporting it to Randwick racecourse. I have to say I was impressed with the maturity of commenters and glad I hadn’t written some of the things I was tempted to, like how they were going to put the corpse in a line up with selected Vatican dignitaries and give a prize to people who could tell the difference, and other juvenile stuff like that.
But blow me down here’s another Roman Catholic corpse story:
Thousands flock to exhumed body of saint Padre Pio
Posted Fri Apr 25, 2008 12:28am AEST
Updated Fri Apr 25, 2008 12:25am AESTThe exhumed body of Padre Pio, a saint considered a miracle worker by his devotees, attracted thousands of pilgrims when it went on display 40 years after his death.
…
The economy of this southern town revolves around the cult of Padre Pio and heaving crowds waited to see his body, displayed in a crystal, marble and silver sepulchre in the crypt of the monastery where he spent most of his life.
I reckon I’d be heaving too if i saw a 40 year old body. I wonder if they go to see the stiff or the crystal, marble and silver sepulchre? I bet they can’t think of a better use for the coins they put in the collection every Sunday.
The body of the bearded Capuchin monk was exhumed from a crypt on March 3 and found to be in “fair condition” after 40 years.
Since then a team of medical examiners and biochemists has worked to preserve and reconstruct the corpse.
In the sepulchre, he was dressed in a brown Capuchin habit and wore fingerless gloves he used to absorb blood from wounds on his hands. The mask was made by a London company which makes life-like sculpted figures for museums.
Isn’t this interesting? Oh if you’re puzzled by the bit about the wounds on his hands:
Padre Pio is one of the Catholic Church’s most popular saints and during his lifetime the Italian monk was said to have had the stigmata, the bleeding wounds of Jesus’ crucifixion on his hands and feet.
Now imagine if the corpse started to bleed!!! Shouldn’t be too difficult to manage with a few tubes and an electric pump.
Anyway I think the RCs are really on to something with this necrophilia and I reckon other organisations would be smart to start doing the same thing. Alexander Downer would be well advised to borrow the body of Queen Victoria and take it around the cities and towns. Six months of that would put an end to any more of this republican nonsense.
Sporting bodies could do the same. I hope Bradman was buried not cremated, because he could come in handy soon. And Tennis Australia officials will be circling impatiently waiting for Ken Rosewall and Rod Laver to kick the bucket while in the interim they make do with a reconstituted Lew Hoad.
But the place with the biggest potential is the alternative government. The next federal Liberal Party conference could only be improved if the imposing body of Sir Robert was positioned where all could see him during their deliberations - dressed, I suggest, in the robes of the Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports to remind the faithful of better times when their leaders gathered suitable honours (unlike now when they can’t even crack a Garter Knighthood).
Posted in Religion in all its many forms |
April 25th, 2008 at 4:28 pm
Good stuff Ken…but how would the Libs justify Menzies not enlisting for the COUGH COUGH “Great War” COUGH on a day like today?”
When World War I began Menzies was 19 and held a commission in the university’s militia unit. Menzies resigned his commission at the very time others of his age and class clamoured to be allowed to enlist. It was later stated that since the family has made enough of a sacrifice to the war with the enlistment of these brothers, Menzies should stay to finish his studies. However, Menzies himself never explained the reason why he chose not to enlist.
In September 1939, with Britain’s declaration of war against Nazi Germany, Menzies found himself a wartime Prime Minister. He did his best to rally the country, but the bitter memories of the disillusionment which followed the First World War made this difficult, and the fact that Menzies had not served in that war and that as Attorney General and Deputy Prime Minister, Menzies had made an official visit to Germany in 1938 and had expressed his admiration for the regime undermined his credibility.
(Wiki)
Remind you of anyone?:
When Cheney became eligible for the draft, he was a supporter of the Vietnam War but did not serve in the military. Instead, he applied for and received five draft deferments.
(Wiki)
and
As CEO of Halliburton, Mr. Cheney lobbied the Clinton administration to ease sanctions on Libya and Iran, according to various news reports. “I think we’d be better off if we, in fact, backed off those sanctions [on Iran], didn’t try to impose secondary boycotts on companies .. trying to do business there,” Cheney told an Australian television interviewer in April 1998.
(Halliburton Watch)
http://www.halliburtonwatch.org/about_hal/iran.html
build ‘em up…& then knock ‘em down…
April 25th, 2008 at 5:06 pm
Easy to see why the Rodent missed the cut. No mention of track-suits.
April 25th, 2008 at 6:49 pm
Hate to point out the bloody obvious…..Ruddock!
April 25th, 2008 at 7:51 pm
What is it with the Roman Catholic church, the Soviets, and corpses?
The Soviets put Lenin’s pickled body on display for over half a century.
One of my favorite Blackadder episodes involves Blackadder being elevated to the Archbishop of Canterbury. One of his underlings gets all excited about a saint’s finger bone that the underling had purchased and rushes to find Blackadder, who’s in a storeroom. Blackadder states (as I loosely recall), “You’ve been had. I could have gotten you a complete set of ten “saint’s fingers” for that price.” Blackadder then holds up a box containing ten “saint’s fingers,” taking it from a stack of boxes containing “authentic” saint’s fingers…really. (One has to wonder how many graves have been robbed over the centuries to supply con artists with “authentic” saint’s fingers to sell to gullible people).
Another note: several years ago I read that over on Communist mainland China shrines were cropping up in rural areas to Mao Tse-tung, with his photo on an altar, with Chinese citizens praying to Mao…which made me wonder if this was how other “Gods” got their start, ending up being deified in some ancient story.
Anyway, the moral of this post? Conservatives around the world, throughout history, are all the same…and they are always looking for someone or something to worship…as well as someone or something to censor. (And conservatives always censor the same things, no matter what society, no matter what age, no matter what umbrella ideology they cower under).
April 25th, 2008 at 8:25 pm
Ha de ha Ken! And yes Lang, the Liberals have been trailing an exhumed corpse around for most of their last few terms in the form of Ruddock.
But Bradman, a notorious sectarian anti-Catholic, would be turning in his grave if he were forced to be part of some terrible RC practice re veneration of remains. Err…perhaps ‘turning in his grave’ wasn’t the phrase I was looking for
April 25th, 2008 at 9:14 pm
Menzies liked koalas ,so there! And why are you so elitist about sports Ken! What about all those garbologist sports and championships that were regular events,while the massed bands of commentary and cartoonists kept pointing out the stow-machs of workers often.And I grew up and saw bottloes and their rattling trucks with long-neck beer bottles. And for years,ad-nauseum, the cry of the loss of the working class,would bring nostalgia back,and rattling bottloes speeding to recycle land and breweries. Verily I say unto you,there may still be heard in the echoes of unbashed early rising sons of war vets…the sound of a bottlo and his cry.Whilst their own pain has to give way,to that memory, a greater pain emerges… Even if their Dad’s and themselves were totally accepting Catholics..And, we cry again,as youth sometimes doesnt understand…and neither does our distant Holy What!?
April 25th, 2008 at 9:31 pm
Ken said: Anyway I think the RCs are really on to something with this necrophilia and I reckon other organisations would be smart to start doing the same thing.
Perhaps the CIA could roll out Willian J. Casey:
Notably he oversaw covert assistance to the mujahadeen resistance in Afghanistan, with a budget of over $1 billion by working closely with Akhtar Abdur Rahman (the Director General of ISI of Pakistan), the Solidarity movement in Poland, and a number of coups and attempted coups in South- and Central America.
According to a 600-page report by the CIA inspector general, Frederick Hitz, the CIA under Casey was complicit in the Contras’ massive narco-trafficking operation which resulted in the crack epidemic.[5]
Casey was also the principal architect of the arms-for-hostages deal that became known as the Iran-Contra affair.
Hours before Casey was scheduled to testify before Congress about his knowledge of Iran-Contra, he was reported to have been rendered incapable of speech, and was later hospitalized.
(wiki)
——
crikey, and they wonder why the people have lost TRUST in their govts.
Considering today’s events…the 8 month late unveilling of another WMD scare by the Busheviks…nicely timed for the election…this article is worth checking out…mentions Casey:
http://www.counterpunch.com/lamb04242008.html
More things change….
April 25th, 2008 at 10:01 pm
Shit, Nasking, you’ve got a real talent to be able to shift a post about Padre Pio into a detailed indictment of Bill Casey’s crimes. People throw the word “troll” around in the intertubes but I’ve never been quite sure what it means.
April 25th, 2008 at 10:20 pm
PIO was known for his (carbolic acid) stigmata but, like all those hysterics over the centuries, the divine wounds appeared in the palms of the hands, because this was how art & tradition had always portrayed them. In the 70s a doctor tried crucifying corpses and found, as he expected, nails through the palms could not support the weight of the body, even in the ankles were also nailed. Crucifiction, as a roman pasttime, put the nails through the wrists to support the torso.
ABout 10 years later the news got through to the benighted and the first stigmata began appearing on wrists.
Pio was also claimed to indulge in translocation, appearing in two or more places at once.
April 25th, 2008 at 10:28 pm
Anthony, I thought the point of the thread was to “bring out the dead”…:)
I’ve been called plenty of things, but rarely a TROLL…but thinkin’ about it…i haven’t had a haircut in awhile:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Theodor_Kittelsen_-_Skogtroll%2C_1906_%28Forest_Troll%29.jpg
April 25th, 2008 at 11:11 pm
Genuinely, Nasking, I’m not sure what a ‘troll’ is in the context of these ether-type discussions, so as an amateur I’m asking for clarification. I just find it interesting how far a topic thread can be derailed. But of course you don’t think you’ve derailed it. Fair enough. If this were an old fashioned discussion you and I could exit stage left and workshop these matters of etiquette and misunderstanding (which, I’m sure, would mean putting me straight) before returning to the debate proper.
By the way, I agree that Bill Casey was loathsome vermin fit only for extermination - and I mean that in a loving, caring way.
April 25th, 2008 at 11:31 pm
lol…i’m not really sure what a troll is either Anthony…apart from the mythical type, and those pesky Howard supporters who used to hit here during the election period and say completely “baffling” things in an attempt to distract us etc.
Perhaps I “derail” & don’t realise it…i do have an odd way of looking at the World…or so my beloved wife tells me now & then.
I guess these days my worry about the “state of things” sometimes gets me fixated on topics & i work them into the discussion…too much of a worry wart sometimes. I’ll try & turn that habit off, if possible. Kinda runs in the family…:)
“Save the cheerleader, save the World”
(Heroes)
now if i could only work out who the freakin’ cheerleader is…:)
April 26th, 2008 at 9:56 pm
I learnt not long ago that the awe inspiring Canadian musical project (band) ‘Godspeed You Black Emperor’ was no longer…w/ saddened heart i mourned their passing.
Then, like a shaft of LIGHT striking Silver Mt. Zion, some of its atoms exploded forth into this…repeating the sound of distant GODS…REPEATER s of echoes from a distant future:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVCWI0XJ3hc
(Live at Brighton Concorde 2, playing with members of Fugazi, Goddspeed! and A Silver mt zion)
Necromancers summoning across the Universe…as we SWIRL on the edge of the ABYSS.
April 27th, 2008 at 1:14 pm
Poor Padre Pio - “a crystal, marble and silver sepulchre”. What the hell is the use of that? What we need is a series of (crystal, marble and silver?) trailers. Fit the Popemobile up with a good Aussie-designed towbar and have all these dead wonders pulled behind it in glass cases mounted on trailers. What a spectacle for World Yoof Day. What a spectacle for any day. Can you imagine how wonderful the Pope’s regular balcony appearances in Rome would be if all these dead guys were wheeled out first, with the Pope coming out last, a bit like introducing the team of the century?
Time for my medication.
April 27th, 2008 at 3:03 pm
Russ, I like it. The Popes double ‘B’.
Anthony, Nask is sort of like RTS’s own national treasure, now I have to ask, what exactly is a national treasure?.
Joining Russ in medication,make mine a Canadian Blond,oh, and a beer.
April 27th, 2008 at 8:20 pm
Russ, i used to get that feeling everytime i looked at Howard’s frontbench…wondered if the Laborites could smell the stench of Formaldehyde…but i realise now the Coalition were just being left to rot under the media/blog spotlight…the Formaldehyde was being kept for caravans & lockups. Any idea when they’re going to remove some of those bloated carcasses from the Coalition backbench?…bloody waste of space…& hard on the eyes…not to mention the taxpayer’s purse.
thnx LM…but i hope i’m slightly more interesting than that dire Disney film…:)
I’m drinking an iced coffee right now to your “down-to-Earth” charm & eccentric wit… goes down a treat.
April 28th, 2008 at 4:47 pm
Over at Broken Left Leg blog there’s a fellow who would not agree on the charm and wit part. It’s been bloody funny,wish I could stir more but enoughs enough.