Sakirin Mosque, Istanbul

Sakirin Mosque, Istanbul

Architect, Hüsrev Tayla

Interior Design, Zeynep Fadillioglu

Mosque designed by a Woman

Fred Flintstone Endorses Michele Bachmann for Presidency

(Des Moines) Fred Flintstone, his stage name, a local actor, is endorsing Representative Michele Bachmann’s GOP bid for the Presidency.

Fred, who describes himself as an expert Fossil Reenactor, was recently laid off at a local Creationist Museum because of the economy.  He currently does children’s birthday parties and occasionally performs at home schools.

“I do the method acting thing. Really get into my subject of being a caveman who knows how to interact with dinosaurs and is of course waiting for the Savior to be born.  It’s a specialty that calls for a certain amount of dedication and consecration. 

When asked why he was endorsing Bachmann he replied.

“Well she is like Shakespeare when she says things like ‘A grain of wheat plus a starfish does not equal a dog, and that this is what evolutionists are teaching in our schools’.

“We can’t let the government shut down home schools and force kids to learn godless science.  Besides, home schools right now account for close to half this actor’s bread and butter. 

John Corapi - Judas Priest?

Innocent or guilty, I have formed an opinion of this matter burning up keyboards on the Catholic blogosphere.

Father Corapi, until recently a living saint, has apparently taken the money and run so to speak.

There were allegations of sexual amusement (with women) and drug addiction.

FYI The Ongoing Story 

I saw him a few times on EWTN, haven’t watched it in years, with his aggressive defense of the RC catechism and all things RC. I was not impressed.

His speech seemed to be impeded by badly fitting dentures as he seemed to spit a lot when making a point. 

Quite popular with devout middle aged catholic babes.  There is a great wailing and gnashing of teeth since his departure from the official catholic airwaves on the very huge rosary, middle aged catholic babe blog circuit. 

In a sense, he has gone over to the other side.  His Santa Cruz Media seems to be in his for-profit name and not in name of his religious order or any greedy diocese.   Get the deed.  Keep the deed.  Screw everybody else. Catholic rock stars don’t need a conscience.

Screw the ecclesiastic courts set up to investigate abuse.  Set up shop in God’s country, Montana, praise the lord and pass the ammunition – and keep the profits on DVDs, pamphlets, inspirational books etc.  And let’s not forget the lecture circuit.  Great deal.

And now a second planned career to out church corruption.  Caiaphas lives!

The Catholic church has gone to hell – surely and truly gone to hell.

Jimmy Swaggert move over. 

Good News of Miriam - Novel - Chapter 17

Having a precious jewel in one’s possession sounds great, the problem is holding onto the jewel.

Unfortunately, after I spent some quality time with Jesus that day, I kept running into what I will call the committee.

Those surrounding Jesus were a mixed bunch of people. There was an outer core of James, his brother, Mary (another Mary), his mother along with assorted cousins and half brothers and half sisters. There was also this Simon person. They also called him Rocky or Peter as a nickname, perhaps as an invention of sarcasm. It takes intelligence to understand and appreciate the dark humor of sarcasm.  I learned that well from my Greek plays, especially the more formal comedies.  In any case, sarcasm was completely lost on this Simon person.  And lost on James too as well I might add. These were the original ones of his hard core Galilee base.

This outer core, with the exception of Rocky, were all family. This family did not seem to be a very close family that I could see.

The closest circle were what I called the worldly ones. They were Matthew the tax collector, and two brothers James (another James) and John.

James and John, the brothers, were called the “sons of thunder”. Whenever they were around, their loudness and boyish enthusiasm centered all attention about themselves and the subjects that they were to talk about or address.

When one brother spoke or preached, the other usually joined in to accent a point of conversation or start a play on words.  And there were many words to choose from with many local dialects.  In a way, if James got silence on any given line of a preaching idea and it went dead in the faces of the local native, it was John that then threw in an assortment of words, local, Hebrew, Greek, Latin or even Persian to finally get a response on the faces of those being preached to.

If I had not known differently I would have thought these two were theatre folk doing short comedies and using plays on words as comedic technique to emphasize some fact stated.  That and using their gesture of the hands waving or slapping each other in the chest as each made points to a story or a debate within a story.  They had the talent but not the polish of the theatre people I had recently met and associated with. 

All in all, the best of them, this Jesus crowd, had a country bumpkin air about them.  Even if the sophisticated Jerusalem urban types would see this country cousin veneer, some could see through to the strength, self confidence and even arrogance of the northern Galilee local culture in these two brothers.

Even Jesus with his charisma could not compete with their energy and this horsing around of James and John once it was ignited. The only time I saw Jesus laugh was when James and John got together into their verbal mischief and childish pranks.  It was they who went ahead of the group and scouted out any town or village that would be willing to welcome Jesus as a visiting preacher.

This Matthew, James and John sub-committee were also the one time followers of the martyred John the Baptist figure.

I have heard lately that Jesus was supposed to have been a cousin of this Baptist fellow. I heard no such thing when I first encountered Jesus.

The next layer surrounding Jesus had to do with the rabbis and scholarly crowd.

It was here that Jesus was most successful. His knowledge of most of the Jewish sacred and semi-sacred texts was phenomenal. He had a perfect memory.

I understood from my old friend Hiram that there were many sacred Jewish texts floating around. Some cults were focused on one or two ancient books. Only a handful of scholars had any idea what the true inventory of sacred books was in the Jewish culture.

There was something Jesus had once disclosed to me. As a recognized child prodigy with a perfect memory, he was made to recite volume after volume of Jewish law. In fact, Jesus looked back with regret. His name and fame as a child was that of someone more like a freak going from town to town and from synagogue to synagogue for a small fee or donation.

Jesus wept. He felt that he had been denied a childhood because of his talents.  And like many children denied a childhood, he had seen too much of the complex and many times corrupt workings of the adult world.

Let us get back to the committee…

For more sample chapters:

Good News of Miriam

Sanctuary of the Heart - Albert Ketelbey

I ran into this old fashioned sentimental music of Albert Ketelbey.  He was a very successful British composer very popular in the early part of the twentieth century.

Music was designed as an accompaniment to vaudeville, music halls and silent films.  He also broke the million mark on at least one of his records.

I find it quite relaxing to listen to.  In this complicated scurrying age, it is nice to look back on the tastes of the past and share them briefly in the present.

Goodness in Grace

The Serapis Flag – Flag Day USA

John Paul Jones gets his ship shot out from under him, the Bonhomme Richard (1779), and he boards his prize, the British ship HMS Serapis.

Jones lands in a Dutch port for repairs and supplies. The Dutch were supposedly neutral. The Brit diplomats say that Jones is a Pirate, in that he has no recognizable national flag on his captured vessel.

The Dutch recognize the United States as a legitimate political entity and with some digging, letters from diplomats Franklin and Adams to the Dutch with a description of what the official American flag is supposed to look like, Jones on his ship comes up with the first Navy ensign, the Serapis Flag.

The Dutch, by diplomatic reason and or bribe (probably bribe from Dutch bankers already banking on the Americans backed by the French) slips a sketch of Jones’ improvised flag retroactively into the Dutch records.  They recognize the Serapis flag as the official flag of the USA.

Voila! The HMS Sepapis is then a legitimate prize of war by a legitimate nation. It goes to show you how with the Serapis American flag, how too many cooks can spoil any broth.

And so it goes. Or so it went.

Sam Harris – Journey to Atheism

Perhaps the old definitions of God, being obsolete, has created a gap, called the present atheism, leading to a possible future redefinition of that past idea and or concept – by a first modern generation, of not touched by past religion, atheists.

Sam Harris – on Islam

Sam Harris

Baptized in the Oneness of Feeling

I ran into the above quote and was taken by the poetry of the words -"baptized in the oneness of feeling", a Friend’s description of the atmosphere at Abington Pa. regarding a meeting with Nicolas Waln as speaker, 1797

Apparently after this guy gave a very inspirational sermon, the assembly did not want to leave the building and it continued for a short time trying to come down from a spiritual high.

Funny how the use of words like “baptized in” is used as metaphor in that Quakers don’t do baptism.

I was doing some historic research using old maps of Philadelphia on the Internet.  I was looking up spaces I grew up in sections of Philly that might be labeled as Tacony or Frankford.

I did some further research after I realized that a lot of colonial mansions and summer homes had once existed, and disappeared, long before I came along and co-existed with factories and national trucking firms on massive lots. 

The most deciding factor that changed everything, from rural to inner city and industrial was with the railroads starting about 1860 and or the Civil War era.  War does make jobs and progress of sorts somewhere, sometimes or it used to.

Looking for a defunct borough of White Hall led to a White Hall mansion on old maps across the street from the old Frankford Arsenal where my grandfather had once worked as a “millwright” whatever that is.  Have to look that one up.  Oral family history said he was a “rigger”.   Whatever.

The White Hall mansion led me to the Waln family, one of the founding Quaker families of the Philadelphia area.  Starting with a thousand acre grant from William Penn as incentive to uproot form England and religious persecution. 

One of the reasons another Quaker in England spent seven years in jail there was because he refused to pay a tax or assessment for the rebuilding of the local COE church’s steeple.  Thank God for separation of church and state here these days.  Small favors.  Buy me a ticket to the new world – fast.

Well anyway, I did not want to do too much research on this Quaker family.  I was curious to a point but not obsessed. Not much material on the Net in any case.  No doubt a lot of papers and diaries exist at Quakers colleges, libraries and archives but are not as yet digitalized etc.  

You can see and or wonder how in less than a hundred years, a virgin forest got chopped up, turned into farms and or plantations, mills, roads and in time to give all four foot eleven inches (150 cm) of George III a pain in his royal ass. 

Amazing stuff.  Some of these Quakers built small ships, brigantines, out of their forests.  Farming, trading, mills, foundries, and all in just a few generations.

From this background came Nicolas Waln, itinerate Quaker preacher.

Nicholas Waln 

"...He was a lawyer of some repute… He also had a dry wit. For instance:

"One time Nicholas Waln was visiting one of his sick friends who said to him, ‘Nicholas, I am very sick, I think I am about to die.'

Nicholas was a great joker and, no doubt to distract his friend's attention, replied, ”Yes, I think though wilt and when thou gets to heaven, please ask the Apostle Paul to return to earth and explain some of the hard things in his letters."..."

Waln - 254 S. Second St.

"Waln began his career as a lawyer, but as the following antidote illustrates he soon became disillusioned with the profession. When traveling home from trying a case in Bucks County, Waln stopped by his friend's country home and is reported to have said, "I did the best that I could for my client, gained the case for him, and thereby defrauded an honest man out of his just due. " After this he never practiced law again and instead became a Quaker minister..."

Apparently some of that old fashioned Quaker religion rubbed off on him.  A victim of conscience – pangs of it – walking away from a profession at the top of his form but one which he suddenly lost his passion for.  “What does it profit a man…”

Further research sees that the name of Waln has disappeared locally in the phone book. The name Waln still exists, as a minor historic footnote, on a small stretch of a back street in Frankford near a still existing Quaker meeting house.

The idea of following your conscience might explain why there are fewer Quakers these days than might be expected given their head start from Billy Penn.   Apparently the Quaker push for the abolition of slavery took its toll internally and nationally. Their ranks were thinned in border states like Maryland as an example where many Quakers joined mainstream Protestant sects.  This, in order to keep their property and still go to church on Sunday without hearing anything favoring the abolition of property. 

And so it goes.  Or went. 

Search for Spirituality - Peter Kennedy

Thumbnail Sketch of Jesus

Perhaps in one of my long standing prayers to somehow meet Jesus, I think I briefly channeled into an image of him – sort of  – a thumbnail image – just before I awoke this morning.


The conversation was something like he needed a driver with a license to drive his pick up truck.  (Apparently he did not have a license? I am not sure.)


He needed to drive over to his aunt’s church (parish?) (aunt? What was his aunt’s name?) to help hand out food to the poor.


Before I realized who he was, had been, he had turned away from me and was walking over to some nearby spot. I was searching dream memory for an image of the person I had just been speaking to in a dream and I came up blank. (I did not see his face though I knew it was him.)


Walking away in jeans and a denim shirt he had almost shoulder length unkept hair.  He carried himself like some aging has been rock star who after being on a binge or two knew that he was needed elsewhere other than in his own present self pity.  


In a way, a human Jesus is all we aspire to meeting.  The gold, the glitz, the hype, the groupies of some long gone old day history tours was long faded. 


But the spark and the talent is still there.

Lady Gaga – Judas – Lebanon – Censorship

“I am in love with Judas.” (lyric)

Lady Gaga's Born This Way banned in Lebanon

“ - Lebanese officials have reportedly banned Lady Gaga's new album, deeming it "offensive to Christianity". Police have impounded copies of Born This Way, currently No 1 from London to Tokyo. Its recent single, Judas, has been criticised by Catholic groups and was banned from Lebanese radio in April. … - “



BTW I have gone to the trouble to view the Lady Gaga Judas video three times. The lyrics are a bit ambiguous. On a visual level I get ambigous stuff too. But I see on one level, Gaga, if a Mary Magdalene figure, driving a wedge between bosom buddies Jesus and Judas and on another level I see Gaga speaking in a metaphoric feminine voice for the person of Jesus. Quite brilliant. She is not as talented at Madonna IMHO but give her time to evolve.

In any case, with 52 million hits on YouTube, anybody in Lebanon on the Internet can have the freedom of choice to view and hear this wonderful song.

Censorship in a free global world be damned!

If the video or the lyrics seems vulgar, well this is the age of vulgarity, a step toward evolution in society to another, hopefully higher, more mature level, in an evolved global society and or the near ending of a decaying dying civilization. I vote for the former.

I am reminded of the scandal and feigned alarm from the church fat cats about Madonna’s Like a Prayer in 1989. That is tame today and Judas by Lady Gaga will be considered tame too in time. If anything, these lazy dogmatic church types should be glad that Jesus, Judas or anything in the obsolete Christianity even gets a mention in the MSM even if by way of a back door. Etc.

I would show that Madonna video but it is blocked on You Tube. Instead a rendition of Like a Prayer from the mainstream TV show Glee – cannot get more tame, contemporary or gayer than that.



Have a cool day dudes and dudettes!
Warning: (Please do not take yourself and or somebody else’s lyrics too seriously.)




Happy Belated Birthday Jefferson Davis

I missed it.  Jefferson Davis’ birthday.  Yesterday?

Yesterday was an excuse for lazy state workers in Alabama and Florida to cheat taxpayers out of a day’s work in favor of a fake Monday, three day weekend holiday. 

He was actually born on June 3 which was Friday.  Tennessee has its official state holiday on June 3 and Mississippi celebrates Jeff’s birthday on the last Monday of May – Last Monday of May?  Memorial Day?  I thought Memorial Day was for all the dead of the Civil War.  And don’t give me the revisionist title “war between the states” bullshit. 

I have stopped trying to research this fake messiah birthday item state by state in the old southern states of the Confederacy.  Why bother?

I, did while researching, run into a blatant lie in of all places a government web site on the U.S. Senate.

January 21, 1861 Jefferson Davis' Farewell

“Tall, slender, and gaunt at the age of 52, Davis had been confined to his bed for more than a week….”

Tall?  Tall?  He was a shrimp! (Sorry)

Forty years ago I saw the “dress” he was captured in, in a display case at the Civil War Museum in Philadelphia.  It was not a dress but a silk paisley dressing gown.  How metrosexual for the times guys!  Did I mention how small this article of clothing was?  Like when I first saw it.  I thought it was for a child, the gown was so petite.

 (click on photo to enlarge image)

I researched it.  He was five foot four inches tall (162 cm).  I guess he was tall in the Senate and compared to the other senators?  Perhaps if he were alive today, Jeff would be driving or have one of his slaves driving him in a Hummer to offset psychological physical short comings if you know what I mean etc.

As I have stated before in this or some other blog, Jefferson Davis, as one time Secretary of War had the blueprints and plans for a southern route of a national transcontinental railroad, the projected moon shot space project of its day, to be financed by the federal government.

The lawyer for the northern railroads and the northern railroad transcontinental route lobby groups in the form of Abraham Lincoln signaled the end of the expansion of slavery on the continent.  Davis’ plans to build the southern route with cheap slave labor would have given him a shot at becoming the nation’s first billionaire.

 

How many dead darkies per mile would it have taken to make Jeff and his cronies’ multi multi millionaires building this dream of a southern railroad cash cow to the Pacific? Who would care?

Strange thing is that most “Christians” don’t really know their neighbors let alone love them as commanded by one long forgotten mystic and seer. 

Odd thing was that Jeff was educated in a Catholic school along the way, even though not catholic.  Which is why I think Pope Pius IX had such a fondness for Jeff, and his brave stance defending the honorable age old institution of slavery. Whatever.

With the Gadsden Purchase in hand for a southern railroad Pacific route, the business men of the old south went their way into their brave new world of the Confederacy. With lots and lots of nut cases running around the planet like pro-slavery southern freebooter William Walker taking over countries like Nicaragua, funded by Vanderbilt types, the future seemed bright to fuel the future slave republics of Mexico and Central America in league with the Confederacy.

All Jeff Davis had to do was build the south’s railroad to the Pacific Ocean to be king of the world. 

I am not exaggerating these facts.  Greedy men with ego problems like Jeff Davis have and continue to plague and ruin the world to this day for the rest of humanity, slave or not. 

If you want to have cake with slave master dictators in the old south y’all, go right ahead.  Enjoy.

Have a nice day.

The Gospels and Sarah Palin

Lame Stream Media grifter Sarah Palin got caught the other day by a reporter who asked her what she thought of her tour of Paul Revere’s House in Boston.  She then went on in casual campaign chit chat to describe how Paul Revere had warned the British with shots and bells or something to that effect.  Her fans then went into Wikipedia to hack the story of Paul Revere to match Saint Sarah’s view of what I believe is sacred American History. 

Well anyway her boss, Roger Ailes, inventor of Lame Stream Media Fox News, in his bulletproof, bombproof office, in fear of gays and or blacks, has sent her on a Vacation to Nowhere on a bus leaving a huge carbon footprint in perhaps the hope that one of her insane stalkers gets off a few rounds of sacred second amendment sacramentals, that she of course survives, wonder woman, saint, and he can have Cheney’s old office during Sarah’s first term as Prez.

This is not the America I grew up in.  The nuts are running the insane asylum. 

I have to think, wonder, how the gospels possibly got distorted in similar fashion after they were verbally transmitted and then in writing transcribed to suit the decade and or the ego of the current saint in charge of the Jesus cult. 

“and on this nitwit (Sarah Palin) I will build my whats-sha-ma-call-it”.(Roger Ailes)

HMOG!?

Have a nice day.

Lois Kibbee - Actress and Writer

I personally do not believe in reincarnation.  The numbers, odds, are far too great that I come back as anything animal, vegetable or mineral.

But sometimes I have to think about it and when I do, the following memory always pops into my mental view.

I made a brief acquaintance with a famous TV actress, the late Lois Kibbee.  TV actress, I say, and or long term soap opera star on the Edge of Night as character Geraldine Whitney Saxon.  I use the word actress instead of actor as is so common these days in the lexicon.  And I made the effort on one or two occasions to watch that soap to see her as a screen actress.  Didn’t know who she was when I first met her.

Ms. Kibbee was a friend of a distant relative that introduced me to her back then in the 80s after I first came to NYC. Lois was also a writer and had very kindly read one of my plays and commented. She had also been a producer over her long career in the theatre of off Broadway type plays as well as being the igniting and maintaining spark of community theatre companies over the years.  

She didn’t like my play, thought it was too vulgar.  I may have been ahead of the curve on America’s taste back then but she was kind in pointing out its strengths and weaknesses.  It still is in the drawer waiting for a third rewrite.  She did use that old cliché a lot about how “there is no such thing as write.  It is all rewrite.” 

One of her books, as a ghost writer, was The Autobiography of Christine Jorgensen.  It is June and LGBT pride month, so I thought I might mention that.  Story is that Lois never got paid for a book that became a perennial bestseller over the years in the paperback category.  Oh well.  Formal contracts are sometimes better than handshakes.

Of course she was the daughter of and niece of very famous, prolific character actors, Milton and Guy Kibbee, from the heyday of Hollywood in the 1930s and 40s.  She had a long family history of show people on her mother’s side, the Wilsons, as well.  All and all something of a royal theatrical blood line ran through her veins and psyche. She had that kind of presence.

Subject I started out with is reincarnation.  Well here is the strange thing.  I was in her Manhattan apartment once and its walls were covered with famous people’s photos, autographed by living movie stars and writers in her day as well as classical prints and signatures of people long dead like Charles Dickens and Edwin Booth, cannot remember the others etc.  The apartment had a dramatic ambiance like a stage setting. 

Lois, in her private life, had a theatrical image of herself in the form of the famous character Harlequin.  There were various prints and images of Harlequin on the wall.  Apparently there is an old theatrical style of performance called Commedia dell’ arte, comedy of the (acting) class.  It is a standard look at life through a handful of characters common to everyone’s life.  Three standard characters of this improvised acting style are Harlequin, Columbine and a clown.  In a way the cliché of Hollywood film making – boy meets girl – boy loses girl – boy fights to win girl back – is a centuries old scenario found in traveling theatres, operas, stage dramas, movies, TV etc.

A variation of the Harlequinade style has puppets such as Punch and Judy going through the standard Harlequin Columbine farce.   The intermediate clown acts as protagonist.

Well anyway, in Lois’s apartment was this ambiance, atmosphere that I somehow reacted to, being in love with the autographs of Dickens and others.  It was as if there was a genuine energy connection from those mostly dead personalities by their pictures and signatures on the walls.  I do have a vivid imagination.

Lois also was an opera buff.  One other piece of historic paraphernalia she had on the wall of the her living room was a rather large piece of gold damask curtain, framed and behind glass, from the old New York Metropolitan Opera House torn down in 1967.

Over the years, I have come to know many opera buffs and I have to say the majority of the ones I have met have said that they believed in reincarnation.  Some believe that opera is a staged version of life, in its many aspects, and more tragic than comedic.  That life, no matter how many times you live, the content of the play rarely changes.  Whatever.

So a question ran into my head when I first saw this artifact from the old Met.  I just popped it out without thinking. 

“Do you believe in reincarnation Lois?”

To which she replied simply “I don’t disbelieve in it.”

Good answer. 

End of story. 

Mea Culpa - Enigma - Othodox Version

(click on screen to enlarge image)

Cistercian Brothel/Hotel in Rome shut down

Pope ousts 'loose living' monks of Rome's Santa Croce monastery

… a renowned monastery in Rome where monks staged concerts featuring a lap-dancer-turned-nun and opened a hotel with a 24-hour limousine service has been shut down by the pope.

As part of Benedict XVI's crackdown on "loose living" within the Catholic church, 20 or so Cistercian monks are now being evicted from the monastery at the basilica of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, …

"An inquiry found evidence of liturgical and financial irregularities as well as lifestyles that were probably not in keeping with that of a monk," said Father Ciro Benedettini, a Vatican spokesman. "The church remains open but the monks are awaiting transfer."

Reports saying the monks amassed large debts have also emerged, but Benedettini declined to give further details of the Vatican report, which was signed off in March.

The monks' days have been numbered since 2009, when the Vatican sacked their flamboyant abbot, Father Simone Fioraso, a former fashion designer who built up a cult following among Rome's fashionable aristocratic crowd as well as show business worshippers such as Madonna, who prayed at the church in 2008.

…In 2009 Anna Nobili, a nightclub dancer who became a nun, was invited to perform her "holy dance" before an audience including archbishop Gianfranco Ravasi, head of the Vatican's cultural department. For her performance Nobili, who says she uses dance as a form of prayer, lies spread-eagled in front of the altar clutching a crucifix or twists and turns as in pole-dancing routines…

You cannot make this kind of shit up!

Madonna praying in the presence of all of St. Helena’s Rodeo Drive style boutique relics ( quite chic and fashionably nice ). ??????????????

They use every other word in the dictionary other than brothel, the MSM does, in their kid glove treatment of cleric abuse, right under the nose of Joe the Pope, aka the local bishop.

( BTW the monks take master card, visa and american express for your anonymous stay in holy luxury and a relic in every bedroom for your kinky pleasure! ) ( do IT just the the Borgias did IT! – Tee hee hee )

Hotel, Limousine 24/7, Lap Dances by a Nun – Holy Chris!t! – Luther, as metaphor, has come back to life to witness the debauchery of the Church of Rome all over again five centuries later.

These truly are the end times of the RC church as we have known it.

And then again maybe this is being all blown out of proportion.

A simple bed and breakfast at an old monastery to earn a few shekels, with a taxi service available to tourists? Yeah right!

“Jesus, Mary and Joseph!” as one of my many sainted Aunt Marys used to say.

You can’t really, really make this kind of shit up!

HMOG! (sic). ETC.

Itinerate Lay RC Preacher Michael Voris

I guess when local newscaster types, past their prime, need to find a niche market to sell MSM stuff; why not try to sell the old religion and chotsky stuff.

I ran into this right wing traditionalist speaker on You Tube. I tried to find a full bio on him which is hard even with the Internet. This is one of the least offensive You Tubes I found. Full of Pride and the Old Traditionalist Catholic spirit that I have not seen in generations.

The only saving grace in his YT video chotskies are the limited number of hits this crap gets.

I have not heard so much medieval clap trap since my youth in the RC church. The church militant can be quite offensive. No?

Apparently there is a traditionalist Catholic out there who also questions the credentials of such a glibbed tongue itinerate media prophet. From his blog:

Staten Island Catholic

I have no reason to distrust him, but I'm finding it increasingly odd that I have not been able to find one single piece of independent information about this man on the internet, except for what he himself has revealed. And all of the various websites that rave about him are simply repeating the facts he's provided in his own biography and interviews. I have no solid reason to be suspicious, but I'd like to know a bit more about the man before I'm comfortable seeing him elevated to the position of orthodox Catholicism's public face in America. Where was he born? Who are his parents? Where did he go to school? Why did he leave seminary? Is he now or was he ever married? Does he have children? Are there any skeletons in his closet that could potentially embarrass the Church and the faithful should they be revealed?...

It was kind of odd to see a layman up there preaching the Gospel from the altar, with a priest sitting meekly in the first row. It made me sad that the clergy has so abdicated their responsibility to preach the Gospel with the power of the Spirit that we need a layman to get up there and give us spiritual meat. I for one have never in my entire life heard a priest speak with such passion and inspiration. I'm sure it was a novel experience for most of the people there as well. Still, I couldn't help feeling ashamed for the Church that a layman from Michigan had to come all the way to Staten Island, NY so we could be inspired with the Gospel message. This parish has multiple priests in residence. Why aren't they giving lectures and inspirational sermons on Friday nights? Why aren't they evangelizing? Why aren't they tending to the spiritual needs of the flock? Why did they need to bring in Michael Voris? (no offense to him).

More thoughts on this later on.

Book of Revelation, the Anti-Gospel

Comedienne Harold Camping of recent cancelled Rapture fame is being called a false prophet by many other fundamentalist preachers. Of course their condemnation does not have the same amount of venom they spewed toward Rob Bell. Their condemnation has more of hidden admiration. Something like “Hot damn! Why didn’t I think of that one first?" Or “Hell I could have pocketed part of the 100 million same as dear old Harold supposedly spent on the PR campaign and retired.” Etc.

Indeed, the lack of prosecution for fraud on dear old Harold is evidence of the timidity that now shows when up against the new reality of the powerful and moneyed lunatic classes of church and Wall Street. Money makes right. It is the new secular might. Whatever.

Let me go back to my favorite theme and that is that the Book of Revelation does not belong in the NT; that it is a Greek play styled narrative to promote the new Christianity thing. As such, with its awful injectures (yes, it’s a new word - urban) to die a horrible death here and in the hereafter if you do not join the Christian thingy. Sounds more like a Roman Army recruitment spiel “Join the army mate or get crucified.” (no joke).

As such, and amidst the absolute chaos and tailspin of these last days of Christianity, and perhaps civilization as well, let me once again label this poor piece of doped up writing that Harold Camping is getting his jollies with at age 89.

The Book of Revelation is not so much the anti-Christ as it is the Anti-Gospel.

If you start off with Love your Neighbor in Matthew, Mark, Luke and end up with Damn you Infidels and the violent End of the World shit for your neighbors, then it is reasonable to assume that this ending chapter of the user manual for the Christian church says a great deal about the insanity of the species when it comes to the category of religion.





Secret Solis Dei Cult – the Vatican

Nothing in Catholic church architecture to left to chance. Everything has a place and a reason for its placement in RC churches (and with a meaning, overt or otherwise). What is out in the open under the umbrella term of Sacred Tradition might surprise some.

Something occurs to me looking at both the floor plans of the old St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome with the Disneyesque RC mandated Baroque fun house – the new St. Peter’s Basilica. After the Reformation, Roman Catholicism got turned into smoke and mirrors. Got turned into PR rhetoric propaganda and not substance.

Few realize that St. Peter’s is not a Cathedral or chair or a bishop as in the bishop of Rome. The bishop of Rome’s seat is in the cathedral of St. John Lateran, a building, or its foundations, that is as old as Constantine’s religion itself.

And Constantine, was perhaps one of the first or earliest of many Universalists of history, following Akhenaten, Amranmosis (mosis – son of - Amran or just plain Moses), Saul of Tarsus and maybe even Jesus of Nazareth as well.

What caught my eye was the Chair of Peter thingy in both the old and the new St. Peter’s. Not much historical detail or paintings of the old St. Peter’s. But the new St. Peter’s has the smoke and mirror stained glass window of a dove surrounded by a sunburst above this mythical chair of Peter. Why all this emphasis on the power of Peter? He is not even buried there. He was buried in Jerusalem and never traveled outside of Palestine in his entire life?

The problem with a Universalist agenda then was that you had to tie all the strings together, just like string theory theology these days in the new secular religion of science.

Well back to placement of Significant Statues surrounding the main altar at the new St. Peter’s where there are two rather curious statues out of four.

One of course is of St. Helena, Constantine’s mom. It was mom’s lap pet religion of Christianity that caught his eye in terms of consolidating and merging all religions in the Roman Empire into one. It was mom who did the big Asian tour to Palestine and decided on which antiques from Rodeo Drive type antique shops she visited that became the official relics of her pet religion, now trading up under sonny’s growing patronage.

It was the bones, partial skeleton, which St. Helena signed off on, on Vatican Hill that became the present bones of “St. Peter” under the high altar at St. Peter's Baroque theme park/church.

But the one Statue, the first one at the right, facing forward towards the Chair of Peter Bronze sculpture below the sunburst stained glass window is St. Longinus. St. Longinus - all fifteen odd feet of him in height and gazing into the oculus.

St. Longinus is one of those verbal tradition things that you have to blindly believe in as a RC. Longinus is the so-called Roman soldier who pierced the side of Jesus on the cross.

No name mentioned of him in the NT but it is a tradition thingy.

If I were to analyze a myth, I would have to say that the statue of whomever (St. Longinus) carrying a long lance (and or of a ray of light) in his right hand gesturing in the direction of the chair of Peter below the Oculus stained glass window (the sun god), that statue is also guarding the stairway down into the grotto where ancient Romans like Constantine worshipped his sun god, Roman army cult god Mithra, born December 25.

More on this centuries old, sacred, secret global Solis Dei cult later on.

Whatever.

The old and new Pantheons in Rome

I love architecture. Everybody knows about the Pantheon in Rome. It is almost two thousand years old and it is virtually intact.

It is the only intact ancient Roman, still functioning, original building in existence.

The Pantheon and the name imply was a home or a temple to all the gods of Rome.

It of course got turned into a church somewhere along the way. The pagan idols got scraped away and replaced with Christian idols of the saints etc. It also got an interior face lift during the Renaissance with a lot of marble and design and whatever.

The most important feature of the Pantheon is the Oculus, the eye open to the sky in the center of a vaulted circular concrete ceiling/roof.

Hadrian designed the Pantheon to be a solar calendar. Indeed the sun, through the oculus, goes through the front door on the June 21st Solstice.

The only thing that saved this pagan temple from destruction was its construction, very hard to destroy, and its being dedicated to the catholic earth goddess Mary in 609 by bishop/pope whomever.

What I find interesting is that when it got its Renaissance makeover was that Rome’s Pantheon moved across the Tiber River to the new Saint Peter’s being built.

Of course you are going to say that Saint Peter’s is filled with statue after statue of Christian saints and not pagan idols.

If a second century Roman got swept up into a UFO and was frozen and came back to today, deposited back onto the streets of Rome in his toga and he saw the present church of Mary and the Martyrs, he might wonder what had happened to the gods.

If our ancient visitor might by chance catch a glimpse of the one of the tallest structures in Rome today, if he walked there into present day St. Peter’s he would cry and realize that they moved the Pantheon across the river to Vatican Hill.

Whatever.

Francis Spellman - Patron Saint of Closeted Clergy

Looking at the agony of some closeted clergy who can’t leave their job and or vocation, they have no job skills. And quite frankly they have never touched a child or adolescent in the rounds of their duties.

Looking at the heartbreak of young men who cannot lie to themselves about their natural sexuality, who cannot pretend that they are not homosexual in their life outlook or deny their birthright. They do not want to be clergy living a lie. That is one reason the clergy is dying. For centuries it has always been the "odd" son that got foisted off the family meal ticket and into Holy Orders.

Looking for an image to match the hypocrisy of the self serving American Bishops, trying for close to a decade now, to keep throwing shit against the wall in hopes that it will stick and find a sufficient scapegoat, to blame the clergy child sex abuse scandal on, nothing sticks except the truth.

Mismanagement and not caring about humanity has marked the American Catholic Hierarchy for decades.

The magisterium of the RC church has always been trickle down from the top. Arch-conservatives such as Francis Cardinal Spellman set the tone of things to come, failure, in the American Catholic church when he said “Change will not get past the Statue of Liberty” at Vatican II to his cronies.

When the John Jay College/USCCB whitewash talks about priests not properly trained in the 1940s and 1950s and not being able to function, they only scratch the surface of ten more needed studies on human sexuality and the repressed state of it in the RC church.

“Researchers at John Jay College of Criminal Justice said most of the abusive priests were ordained in the 1940s and 50s and were not properly trained to confront the social upheavals of the 1960s.”

Interesting point. But who was in charge of the American Catholic Church in the 40s, 50s and 60s or set the tone for the whole nation. None other than Francis Cardinal Spellman of New York, first among equals among American Catholic clergy and very clever and very ambitious to push that church’s foreign born agenda.

“Franny” was the success role model of every Irish Catholic boy in the Seminary who wanted to be rich, respected and powerful. And yeah there was that ritual and Jesus thing too. But the real power was in raising money from rich friends to build schools, hospitals, universities and churches too.

The baby boom of post WWII meant that you had to crank up the seminary machine and spit hundreds and thousands of new priests out on an annual basis to maintain all that new church property, schools, hospitals, universities and churches too.

On that point, the John Jay College report may be right. But then again what the Vatican is presently embracing with pandering to the right wing SSPX party in the church is probably a mistake and an unintended cup of hemlock.

Grinding out priests out of makeshift seminaries in South America, Africa and Asia is setting the stage for the final refuge of the RC church and also the final death throes of that church using the Spellman model of church business success to sell the product. It is a defective dysfunctional model of that product, because child abuse among untrained and sexually repressed, closeted, celibate clergy will produce the same results in the rest of world that it has done here in America in the past half century.

I remember attending the Army Navy Game in 1967 with my father in Philly. The loud speaker made the announcement that Francis Cardinal Spellman, Vicar General of the Armed Forces, had died. The crowd was momentarily silent and then went back to its business.

I asked my father who Cardinal Spellman was. He gave me that “don’t ask” non verbal Irish look. It was also the look you might get when asking about uncle Fred who you never met. It was that don’t ask about your crazy queer uncle in the attic look. I shut up.

Indeed, Cardinal Spellman’s taste for chorus boys was no secret amongst Irish Catholics it would seem. The MSM complied with the conspiracy to keep quiet as well on the subject of the biggest queen in America, red dress and all, living in the Bishop’s Palace at 50th St. and Madison Avenue in New York City on the grounds of St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

Perhaps the present political culture wars started in the thirties when people like Joseph P. Kennedy, Eugenio Pacelli (Pius XII) and Franny Spellman sat down to dinner in Boston to plot the silence of radio populist Father Charles Coughlin and plot other political strategy for the 1936 re-election of FDR. But this is not really a history lesson, is it?

An aside, I don’t think that J. Edgar Hoover was as big a queen as Francis, as some say. J. might have been a closeted gay and maybe even asexual. I don’t think that he wore dresses. I think those stories about J. Edgar are exaggerated and revenge after that blackmailing bureaucratic snake went to his eternal reward and have been perpetuated by his many, many, many enemies.

Indeed, the dysfunction of recent American culture seems to stem from the McCarthy era. Everybody knows that Joe McCarthy was a tortured repressed closet gay and only married to have a beard wife. Another crony of Joe Kennedy, former gangster and bootlegger, and father of a future Catholic (first and only, thank God) U.S. President.

The overtone of the present culture war is not so much about gay or suppressed gay sexuality as it is about suppressed sexuality among Christians who have a mindset that all sex is dirty. It is an immature view that the rest of the world is not aware of from a distance. But if the American Empire falls tomorrow and people, future historians, ask why. One primary reason was that honest discourse in the public arena had to always talk around the elephant in the room, and that is the Christian distorted view of human sexuality. Laws against women, laws against gays, they are all laws against God’s gift to humanity – sexuality.

In a sense there was one great conspiracy among the RCs or the Irish Catholics in general to get a RC and or Irish Catholic into the White House. And if that meant covering up everybody’s personal flaws - of McCarthy, Kennedy, Spellman, well it worked. Don’t ask, don’t tell worked quite well for centuries among the rich and the elites of governments and church hierarchies.

There is an incredible amount of silence and lack of published documentation about Franny Spellman’s open secret sexuality. Even the New York Times kept silent. Now that was power to be feared for the NYT to be silenced back then when that paper still had a backbone.

So when the present hierarchy of the American Catholic Church want to blame child abuse on the 40s, 50s and 60s, let’s also have an open discussion about celibacy and closeted clergy and the patron saint of closeted “celibate” clergy, let’s start talking about Saint Franny, our gay uncle in America’s history attic. The truth could set you free.





Saint Francis Xavier NYC - Gay Pride

june 2010

“Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.” That’s me a fool. And a fool too sometimes for the sack of a metaphoric Christ – anointed and or mark of a theoretical perfect evolutionary spirit or being. Anyway, the quote is a cliché and I don’t even want to waste the time looking up the source/author of the original quote.

I may be butting my nose in here but here I love to comment on things that touch my inner spirit or energy.

I ran into this story and it is old. I write it in thought to make a comment of people reacting in face of possible institutional hate or reacting gracefully in the face of moral or spiritual adversity.

It is not at all as serious as that but here is the link below. I guess I am back on my defense of Gays thing in response to what I see as unreasonable misunderstanding, anger and hatred against homosexuals and or their alternate life style (another cliché?). In any case it might be my retracing the steps of my life and or inherited and held onto homophobia over the years. Time to clean up some karma for this or any possible future life? Etc.

A couple of things connected for me with this article related to the New York city Gay Pride Parade last June 2010.

New York church maintains Gay Pride presence, but with blank banner
 
Apparently there is something of a somewhat independent parish, a Jesuit property on the edge of Greenwich Village. I have passed St Francis Xavier Church hundreds of times over the decades either on foot or viewed from the window of the old “6” bus going north up Sixth Avenue. Never been inside. A lot of steps, way high up from the sidewalk as I recall.

There is or at least was a Gay Outreach ministry at Xavier’s last year. The spies, the catholic purists, more catholic than the pope, more holy than Jesus, got hold of some video of Archbishop Dolan rededicating the altar there and the video showed at least that verbal credit was given to various ministries including the gay ministry. Dolan did not say anything. His body gestures, since he did not storm out of the church, have been interpreted as some sort of sacrilege or break in church canon law, not withstanding that Gays can and do conform to Catholic teaching and receive sacraments etc.

The purists, the fanatics turned some CNN interviews with some gay and lesbian members of the parish into proof that the RC church, this particular parish was in sin for being too “gay friendly”. One thing led to another and the “Cheesehead” archbishop known for sacrilege during mass – i.e. the Cheesehead scandal when he briefly donned a cheesehead hat for a few seconds of a homily in 2002 on a critical Packers game day, Sunday – had to do his bureaucratic duty regarding this Xavier matter. (And it is the purists and not me critical of Dolan for a stage prop on his head, but the pure Catholic blogosphere that has not forgiven him to this day – for being human.)

It had been pointed out to the archbishop from letters delivered by Vatican carrier pigeons (real modern communications stuff) of distress among the purists here in the colonies and the archbishop had to act to cover his ass.

The gay ministry had been marching for several years in the Gay Pride parade behind a banner announcing the Gay outreach program at St. Francis Xavier’s and handing out leaflets, not condoms, along the parade route per my research.

The archbishop had to act very quickly because of a time factor and forbade the St. Francis Xavier’s banner from being used in the parade and from being used by the fanatics with video cameras trying to turn a mole hill into a mountain of misery. The church could not be seen to endorse the Gay Pride parade in any way shape or form.

The gay community at St, Francis Xavier’s had to comply or lose their peripheral outreach ministry at the church.

The gay marchers chose instead to march under a blank banner. This is really all a tempest in a teapot kind of thing. I find it outrageous that people wanting spiritual comfort in the belief system of their youth have to be beaten down for the sake of mean spirited rule book carrying catholics. It reminds me of SMX – St. Mary’s in Exile in Brisbane Australia where a statue of Buddha on the property and use of modern language to describe Constantine’s Trinity invention were the basis of throwing a whole parish out into the street there.

Why are some catholics so unchristian, inhumane and nasty? Why would they rather see people thrown into the street instead of embracing them with love, the kind of love that the radical Jesus in his day preached?

Whatever.

Have a nice day.

june 2007