Jun 18, 2012 -- 8:38PM, Nino0814 wrote:

Thank God for priests like Father John McNeill.  It makes me hopeful!  ncronline.org/blogs/grace-margins/new-do...

Yes indeed.

I'd like to know:  in what ways has TEC issued a warm, substantive invitation to those abused and marginalized and expelled by the RCC?   It seems to me that so many find their way through our red doors by happenstance.  We must be more publicly affirmative, more pro-active in our welcoming.  Nicht wahr?

OBTW, has anyone noticed that Vatican documents, especially the condemnatory sort, are characterized by a particularly fusty, miasmic, language?  The document expelling Fr. McNeil from the OTC used the term "pertenacious".   Pertenacious !!! I haven't seen that term in print or used verbally since I was in college. 

Utterly scorbutic !

How about that ?

Jun 19, 2012 -- 10:07AM, Spokang wrote:

 "Pertinacious disobedience" and spoken in Latin, no less!  That's the stuff of which exorcisms are made.  

That surely is characteristic of the RCC.

The Vatican has a training school for exorcists, headed by Fr. Gabrielle Amorth.  They meet in secret (of course "in secret"; that's how Vatican business is conducted) every two years.  From reports, Fr. Amorth believes that most everything since the invention of the waffle iron has a demonic underpinning.

Ah well.

Jun 19, 2012 -- 4:00PM, Nino0814 wrote:

Jun 19, 2012 -- 1:55PM, Spokang wrote:

 People in Peru that I talked with are quite proud of the fact that they practice an amalgam of Christianity and the old Inca religions.  Lines are blurred between God/Christ/Mary and the Incan deities, especially reguarding Mary and the Pachama, the mother god of the mountains! The condor, serpent and puma. They have even resurrected and annual Incan festival, including the sacrifice of a llama, all with the approving gaze of the church.  They can worship a llama turd on a stick for all I care, but if His Holiness is so intent upon whipping the faithful back into orthodoxy, why are these caring nuns, and McNeill, the object of his chastening ire? 

Jim

Jim,

Rome watches these groups very closely ["keep your friends close and your enemies closer"].  I recall the watchful "eye" of the RC "Charismatic" when I was  one in the early 1980s.  

As long as the group does not question the authority and dogma of Rome, they will be allowed their "local" religious "expression".

Niño, 

Just got back from being butch and camping in the wilderness of northern Idaho.

So..., I do understand not questioning the authority of Rome, but in this case has not Rome deliberately made the nun's stance on social actions a point of doctrinal/dogma confrontation, citing it as being contrary to the teachings of the church? It sems to me that the veneration of non-Christian deities is distinctly heterodoxy, and contrary to the teachings of the Church? From my cursory encounter with the SA RCC, what I saw went far from being just local tradition.

Jim

Jun 25, 2012 -- 7:07PM, Dutch777 wrote:

 

 
 It sems to me that the veneration of non-Christian deities is distinctly heterodoxy,Jim

Ah well, Jim, the RCC is sitting on it's own little secret.  When the people of the pagan Graeco-Roman world began entering the Church is large numbers, they brought their own Olympian Deities with them.  That's just how the crow flies, so why fight it?

As German theologian Adolph von Harnack indicated ca. 1900, Zeus became Christian Sky God; Cybele in her many local manifestations became the BVM in her equally numerous manifestations (e.g. Our Lady of Prague, OL of Warsaw, OL of Guadaloupe, and the various Our Ladies appearing on grilled cheese sandwiches).  The demi-gods overseeing good health, good harvests, wine, fortune, cheesemaking, safe navigation, etc., etc. were replaced by the more acceptable "patron saints".

The big difference is that the pagan pantheon incorporated into European Christianity originated on Mt. Olympus.  The pagan deities incorporated into South American Catholicism originated on some equally sacred Inca and Aztec turf.  Rome is remarkably, admirably, tolerant of local deities being baptized and re-packaged as saints --- just so long as the power-structure of the Institution is glutialosculated, funded and obeyed.

I'm about to grill a couple of toasted cheese sandwiches.  I wonder if I'll be vouchsafed a Marian pictoral visitation ?

Yes,  I understand about the stand-in demigods--but ours are Western and European and sorta warm, cuddly, look like us. When I get my photos posted on FB, I'll send you a link to a few of the Mary Pachmamas for your enjoyment. Some are quite beautiful -- others would claw your eyes out if you cross them.

I'll be looking for Zeus in my lamb and olive stew tonight.

Jim