Some people are still avoiding crowds because of the Invisible Magic Friend’s Holy Virus. Pope Frankie didn’t have a crowd this Easter. Jesus had a crowd though.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/11H87QiztZjhytlmi4VeqnY0IHaXL2qMS/view?usp=sharing
Some people are still avoiding crowds because of the Invisible Magic Friend’s Holy Virus. Pope Frankie didn’t have a crowd this Easter. Jesus had a crowd though.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/11H87QiztZjhytlmi4VeqnY0IHaXL2qMS/view?usp=sharing
Platitude of the Day 
I think she did make reference to Pope Frankie’s massive virtual crowd. As with all the other religious bloviators she was noticeably incurious about her god-creature’s purpose in creating the Holy Virus which forced the Vatican to take such extreme measures.
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The content and delivery of this would have patronised a reception class.
What drivel.
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The Ven Liz offered nothing this morning but whie she was speaking I was reading my Radio Times and noticed a much more interesting thought reading the Viewpoint by the Bishop of Ripon, the Rt Rev Dr Helen-Ann Hartley. The piece askes for MORE discussion of religious views on the BBC as she is “far more motivated by programmes that explore the big questions in life” than watching religious rituals. This ties in with our discussion just the other day. The bit that made me splutter was her praise of the brilliant Its a Sin. “It gave me hope” she opines, “but delivered a blast of reality, too”. I bet it did. In 1996 one of her predecessors the Rt Rev David Young dismissed one of his assistant bishops, the retired, and openly gay, Rt Rev Derek Rawcliffe, for blessing gay couples. Young said “It is clear to me that my understanding of the episcopal role in this diocese and Bishop Derek’s understanding cannot be reconciled. It is therefore right that he should cease to have my commission.”
The Rt Rev Hartley has clearly taken on the secular belief that gay rights are OK nowadays but it took her church over 2000 years to come to that opinion, and many in the church still probably disagree with that change.
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“More discussion of religious views on the BBC”. Well, bring it on! Let’s have a discussion of the origins of the Israelites’ beliefs about their IMF, and how they mutated into the beliefs that were current in first-century Palestine. Let’s have a history-led discussion about the origins of Christianity, and what the evidence really is for the human existence of Jesus Christ. Let’s have a head-to-head discussion on that subject between Justin Welby and, say, Richard Carrier (I’d watch that!) While we’re at it, let’s have a documentary about what the Christians did to Greek and Roman philosophy, learning, science and culture once they got their hands on the levers of power.
Think there’s any chance that either the BBC or the Bishop of Ripon might have anything of the sort in mind? Me neither.
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‘Crowds can be fun, joyful, full of protestors, in danger of swiftly becoming a baying mob; may be supportive, hostile, standing up for rights, deluded. Crowds are (a) great when they support Jesus or (b) sinister and dodgy when they condemn him….. er, that’s it, really.’
The Archdeacon touched on Pope Frankie’s Easter Day message, but only mentioned 6 candelabra surrounding him. Perhaps it would have taken more than her allotted time to assess the pomp and wealth that surrounded him in the form of the major basilica, its art treasures. all those costly bejewelled liturgical robes; the statuary, relics, and attendant beaurocracy, real estate et al, and just exactly how that might sit with the philosophy of a first century middle-eastern prophet and preacher who (if the writings about him are even faintly true) advocated giving against piling up wealth; service rather than the pursuit of power and status; and selflessness in a life of community in which none go hungry or short of life’s essentials. She might also have asked herself why so many other people ‘follow’ this Pope and his church blindly and also without question.
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There aren’t many contemporary historians of first-century Palestine whose writings have survived, but there are a few. It’s strange that not one of them makes a single reference to the enormous crowds that Jesus is supposed to have attracted during his ministry, or to his disturbance of the Passover moneylenders in the Temple, or to his completely illegal and unprecedented examination by the Chief Priest on the eve of Passover, or to the release of a convicted murderer (an event without parallel in Roman-administered Judaea) instead of him, or to the earthquake and three-hour eclipse of the sun that took place at the time of his death.
It’s almost as though he didn’t actually exist, and all these things were made up some forty years or more later.
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