Posted by Amanda Marcotte December 24, 2007 in Uncategorized, Images
49 Responses to “More evidence that authorial intent is not that great an interpretative tool”
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Here’s a fun one I saw on my Philly housing hunt last week:
http://roxanne.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/2007/12/19/phillychurch.jpg
Well, cheaper than diamonds, anyhow.
*snerk*
Synchronicity, because I just received the box set of Arrested Development.
“Get rid of the Seaward.”
“I’ll leave when I’m good and ready!”
Hah. Brilliant. Simply brilliant. Reading it, my immediate thought really wasn’t “Christmas.” I love it just as much as I hate the stupid sayings they put on signboards at churches.
The two signs that have most remainedi n my memory:
Outside a small church one Easter:
REJOICE! FOR HE IS RESIN
And outside a store in Nashville, listing their current sales:
NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS
HOME PREGNANCY TEST
Are they instructing us to go inside the church and use the “c” word in reference to the people who put up those stupid signs? That could be done.
“Cauliflower.” There. I said it, and I don’t care who heard me. The sign gave me the courage. Huzzah!
Roxanne, I was enduring one of my twice-yearly masses so as not to upset-the-grandmother while at home, and of course the homily topic was repentance and confession, and returning to the Church, no matter how long you’d been away.
I sat there thinking, this is the reason I have to call myself a ‘former Catholic’ and not an ‘ex-Catholic.’ Like the Marines, you can never manage to completely cut the ties.
Bwah hah hah hah hah!
Very merry to you and yours, Amanda!
Roxanne, even that sign was backwards; you’re supposed to go to confession before Mass.
oh, em, you could always help an abortion be performed. i may be mistaken but i think that gets you an automatic excommunication even if the pope doesn’t do the writing-you-a-letter rigmarole — and ex(communicated)-catholic is about as ex-catholic as you can get, i figure.
it’s funny, this is the first time i ponder the idea in quite a while — since before i started working at the clinic, actually — so i guess all this time i’ve probably been excommunicated without even having given thought to it. that’s pretty handy i guess.
oh, well, there’s also “apostasy, heresy or schism”. that’s pretty easy.
“oh, em, you could always help an abortion be performed.”
Interesting. Can you get excommunicated for killing an actual person?
Can you get excommunicated for killing an actual person?
i don’t think so, actually. the various places i’ve tried to find out are all a little vague, but i’ve seen hardcore anti’s warn other catholics against reframing abortion as “‘just murder’ and thus not an excommunicable sin”.
unfortunately i just found “The excommunicant is still considered Christian and a Catholic as the character imparted by baptism is held to be indelible”. so i guess they DON’T “kick you out”, you just can’t do any catholic things like get communion or other sacraments until your excommunication is “lifted” by a bishop or his trustee. officially excommunication isn’t punitive but meant to get you to repent / “correct” your position because you want to be brought back into the fold. so this wasn’t as easy as i thought, sorry.
grumble.
hehe, blaspheme indeed!
re: Roxanne
I’m not in the Christian circle so I missed the injoke, or is it because mass is almost like ass?
re: Blanko
I think a fetus is considered more innocent than a person who has the original sin or something, like, once it pass through a woman’s vagina into the world it collects the sin instead of $200 or something.
Happy Dies Natalis Solis Invicti!
Your argument is good enough for me! I’m going to talk about cookies more this holiday season.
Merry Cuntmas, y’all!
You know, something tells me that’d be a fun holiday. Somebody should found it.
Wikipedia sez…meh, I’ll just link to it. It appears that, yes, you do have to be born before original sin kicks in and which side of the aforementioned cunt you are on makes all the difference in whether you have sin attached or not. Supposedly. *sigh*
Joyous Cuntmas! Blessed Cuntmas!
I’d read the Vagina Monologues but found it hard to believe I could reclaim a word I’ve only once heard in a non-hostile fashion. But how pleasant it sounds in this context. Merry Cuntmas– this is my flesh, eat of me.
… re: orginal sin. No WONDER cesareans are getting so popular.
Oh, this is where I got the Original Sin link: see August’s “Denial” thread for where it led me.
Io Cuntmas!
Now that’s some real Old-Time Religion that can have me down on my knees, worshiping with blissful and passionate devotion.
Real real old-time…Blessed Be!
(I know that’s how I would feel…)
But, um, Rob, what passages in the Wiki thing on Original Sin lead you to say that any particular denominations or Christian orthodoxy in general distinguishes between fetuses and born babies in the matter of OS? The Bible Logic they use (which is of course not generally much like our Earth Logic) would seem to apply to offspring at any stage of development; there’s nothing in the doctrine privileging (or more aptly in this case, penalizing) the born over the pre- or un-born. The point is, depending on which exact denominational reasoning one follows, is that The Fall means that people come into being in a fallen world, in which we allegedly do not enjoy (depending on who’s your favorite Church Father) either the full natural endowment of human abilities we were allegedly created with, or special graces God supposedly would have extended to the natural children of unfallen humans. It is an indictment of nature itself, at any rate human nature, as it exists today, and therefore these physical, mental, spiritual, and moral disabilities exist at all stages of development. There is no authority in any Christian tradition for the notion that unborn fetuses are an exception.
However I will say that for the past few decades at least I’ve observed Catholics, at any rate, making that very assumption, in flagrant contradiction to the doctrine. For instance when I was confronting one of my numerous reactionary relatives at a family holiday gathering, I think 15 years ago, I wanted to know why if abortion was such a terrible evil why it was OK to fight wars in the gung-ho manner we were accustomed to (this uncle, like my Dad, was in the USAF at the time–right after the 1991 Gulf War) or to go around not only executing convicted criminals but keeping police forces that kill a certain number of people every year without due process. He made the very point OS denies, that the unborn are somehow perfectly innocent whereas born people include lots of bad guys.
So it hasn’t worked its way into formal doctrine yet, but that does seem to be where they are headed.
Can’t believe that anybody is running around claiming officially that Original Sin kicks in at birth - because without it, someone who dies goes straight to heaven, which would seriously downgrade any complaints regarding abortion.
Not that internal consistency within a given argument is critical to a lot of Christians, but that would make your average Jesuit’s head explode.
Can you get excommunicated for killing an actual person?
No. Male dominance is far, far, far more important than human life. The Catholic Church doesn’t even try to pretend they’re not a misogynist organization, unlike the more Protestant anti-choicers who whine and wail about how abortion rights hurt women.
I think a fetus is considered more innocent than a person who has the original sin or something, like, once it pass through a woman’s vagina into the world it collects the sin instead of $200 or something.
It’s true. If you touch a cunt, you’re dirty. Nothing misogynist about that. I’m not sure if the Catholic Church spares you if you are born through C-section. Maybe if you’re good enough to kill your filthy cunt beast, er, mother while getting cut out of her?
Amanda wrote:
I’m sure that y’all know that the Church holds that an unborn child is an “actual person,” and that the church holds that the sanctity of life should be inviolable from conception to natural death.
It’s true. If you touch a cunt, you’re dirty. Nothing misogynist about that. I’m not sure if the Catholic Church spares you if you are born through C-section. Maybe if you’re good enough to kill your filthy cunt beast, er, mother while getting cut out of her?
Chances are, you touched a cunt somewhere, if not on the way out, then more than likely on the way in.
I’m sure that y’all know that the Church holds that an unborn child is an “actual person,” and that the church holds that the sanctity of life should be inviolable from conception to natural death.
And yet, Dana, you get excommunicated for abortion but not for murder. Funny that.
“And yet, Dana, you get excommunicated for abortion but not for murder. Funny that.”
It’s very simple, actually: Love the conceptual, ignore the actual…
If the Church thinks fetuses are “people”, then, it’s clear that they think women are not people. But we already knew that.
This holiday is sounding better and better all the time!
Hell yes.
A-HA! A loophole! Nicely done, Samantha…
Or maybe not, now that I’m reading Mark’s post. I admit that I got bored reading the entry, and just skimmed the top part (which was actually above the “disputes” section I linked to) where I saw the phrase “…Western Christian tradition regards it as the general condition of sinfulness (lack of holiness) into which human beings are born…” I stopped there.
The thing he apparently didn’t consider is that whether or not somebody’s a “bad guy” or not isn’t about which side of a border they’re on, or which continent, or whether they’ve got a criminal record. Hell, Jesus had a criminal record (or whatever they called it back then) if we’re going by that. So if somebody said “killing people in war is more justified than abortion because some of the people getting killed are bad”, and believed it, they’d supposedly be in favor of blowing up a random city within the U.S….you know, because bad people would be getting killed. Along with good people and animals, sure, but it would be worth it (I say sarcastically), just like in a war.
Yeah, and that’s something that I’ve never been able to even entertain the possibility of. If a fetus looked, walked, and quacked like a baby (so to speak) I can understand why one would consider it a baby. But a zygote? Er, no.
Well actually, let me amend that. I believe a zygote is alive, sure. I also believe that grass is alive. But in the case of both…intelligent? A person? No.
Hmm, good point.
That…is…fucked.
Amanda wrote:
No, that’s your interpretation of what you think they must think, because it fits your arguments. The Church holds that all of us are living human beings, from the moment of conception to natural death.
The reason that the Church holds abortion to incur automatic excommunication is given in the Catechism, §2272:
The murderer leaves evidence, and is frequently caught by the authorities; his interaction with the Church at that point can be more easily sought. The latae sententiae excommunication is intended to convey to those who seek an abortion the seriousness of the offense contemplated, as a means of persuading them not to go through with it.
The murderer has committed a mortal sin; while not technically excommunicated, he cannot receive the sacrament of the Eucharist until he goes through confession, penance and absolution. The person who procures an abortion has to go through the same thing; while it requires the action of the local bishop to lift the excommunication, in practice most bishops have fully deputized the parish priests to lift the excommunication.
Mr Foxwell wrote:
I’d point out here that the Church opposed the first Persian Gulf War (the one in 1991, to which Mr Foxwell referred) as well as the current one, and that she opposes capital punishment.
“The murderer has committed a mortal sin; while not technically excommunicated, he cannot receive the sacrament of the Eucharist until he goes through confession, penance and absolution.”
It’s nice to know that even if you murder a living, breathing human being, excommunication is not automatic. Truly god (or his emissaries on earth) is forgiving…
“The person who procures an abortion has to go through the same thing;”
…plus being automatically excommunicated. Cool…
“…while it requires the action of the local bishop to lift the excommunication, in practice most bishops have fully deputized the parish priests to lift the excommunication.”
…so if you’re lucky enough to have a bishop who has handed the reclamation of sinners off to his priests, then all you have to do is confess your sin and beg your priest to let you off. Otherwise…?
OTOH, Dana, this certainly seems like a large loophole, don’t you think? I mean, why should some abortionist and their patients/victims get off (potentially) so easy?
Seems to me that Pope Ratzy the Magnificent needs to step up and further limit the possibilities for redemption. That seems to be what he does best after all…
I for one won’t deny that they’re right about some things, like the ones you mentioned. I think John Paul II also forgave a guy who tried to kill him, which is commendable.
But there’s a lot of stuff that they get wrong, and that can have serious consequences. The good deeds don’t cancel out the bad.
That’s something that frustrated me about many forms of Christianity, MikeEss. The idea that because everybody is some kind of sinner, everybody has to ask forgiveness from either a priest or from Jesus or God.
If true, this means that somebody could lead an exemplary life and still wind up sentenced to an eternity of torment because they didn’t go through the formality of asking forgiveness. It also means that a really evil person could get into heaven as long as they said “I’m sorry, please forgive me.” And while I would never wish eternal suffering on anybody, that’s still getting off pretty easy.
With Catholicism it’s worse, because as I understand it you can have a priest who might say “You know what? I don’t think I’ll absolve you. You’ve been too bad. You’re going to hell.” That’s a terrible thing to hold over somebody’s head.
Io Cuntmas! Now that’s some real Old-Time Religion that can have me down on my knees, worshiping with blissful and passionate devotion.
Mark, I don’t think you’ve got quite the right idea about this “speaking in tongues” bit…
“The murderer has committed a mortal sin; while not technically excommunicated, he cannot receive the sacrament of the Eucharist until he goes through confession, penance and absolution.”
Yeah, well, according to my nephew’s priest, my husband ( while not excommunicated) could not receive the sacrament of the Eucharist until he went through confession, penance and absolution for having married me in a non-approved fashion The priest gave the family a choice between Allan confessing to living in sin with me (we were legally married)– repenting and doing penance for it (WTF?! )– or no longer being permitted to be his nephew’s godfather.
Allan gave his brother his regrets and his permission to find a new godfather.
Mr Ess and Rob the Gerunder:
The Church is in the forgiving business: I have never known or even heard of a priest who denied absolution to a penitant.
The penitant is supposed to be seeking absolution with a genuinely contrite heart: he must actually be sorry for the sins he has come to confess. I suppose there are some instances where a penitant might be so obviously not contrite that a priest would deny absolution, tell him to re-examine his conscience, and return later, but I’ve never heard of such an event.
The Gerunder wrote:
Again, that depends upon whether the contrition is genuine. To ask for forgiveness for sins and not be genuinely sorry for them is considered a sin in itself, as blasphemy, and the absolution doesn’t hold.
Thing is, a “really evil person” couldn’t make a valid confession and be genuinely contrite; to be able to do so would indicate that he has reformed and is no longer an evil person. That’s part of the nature of conversion and forgiveness.
Mrs Vimes: What does “having married (you) in a non-approved fashion” mean? If it means a civil marriage, that seems a rather strange interpretation for the priest to have made. In Catholic doctrine, the ministers of the sacrament of matrimony are the two people marrying each other, not the officiating priest. If it means that one or both of you was previously married and divorced, without an annulment, the priest was right.
There are a couple of regulations Catholics are supposed to follow. If you are Catholic, but your betrothed is of another denomination, and you marry in the other church, the Catholic member is supposed to to get a dispensation from his parish priest (a pro forma thing) for the Protestant minister to perform the ceremony. Failure to do so may wind up in a lack of recognition of the marriage by the Church, and is actually grounds for a “lack of form” annulment, should it ever come to that. A married convert to Catholicism doesn’t need to go through anything special to have his marriage recognized.
Some of the lights were out on the local Rite Aid Pharmacy last Halloween, so it read “Rite Aid haracy”.
Ah, get your satanic ritual gear here! Aids for your rites of devil worship!
No, that’s your interpretation of what you think they must think, because it fits your arguments.
Actually, it’s scientific in the sense that you can sculpt a prediction based on how behavior from a certain set of standards would follow. If they thought women were people and fetuses were not, they would consider banning abortion a sin that would require excommunication. But if they think women were debased, subhuman really, they would sculpt their bullshit theology towards the aim of subjugating women to our biological functions, making our very biology (giving birth, having sex, menstruating) sinful as a justification. Perhaps they would come up with a myth insinuating that women are the source of all evil, and imply that it’s something specific to women, like our sexuality.
They certainly wouldn’t make flushing your uterus of a brainless clump of cells a bigger sin than shooting a woman in cold blood or bombing a clinic to kill people for the high sin of NOT thinking of women as subhuman animals who should be punishedpunishedpunished for living their lives as if they were free and worthy people.
But don’t take my word for it; here’s a chart.
Interestingly, the Bible forbids lying infinitely more than it forbids abortion, but Dana has zero problem providing false testimony on this blog about the motivations of Christians. In fact, using this kind of actions-speak-louder-than-words strategy, I must scientifically conclude that Dana’s real religion is the patriarchy, because he’d pick it over anything Jesus or Moses said any day.
My favorite lately — from a church marquee that was clearly missing a letter:
PRAISE THE LORD FOR HE IS GOO
So the “S” must have dropped off, eh?
God is a girl and Her name is Eris! I knew it!
Io Cuntmas!
Oh, *I* see. Those dirty little whores would think they could get away with it, what with medical privacy and all.
Why does this thread have to be all about Dana and his uterus-blocking desires? I thought it was going to be about cockroaches.
“Why does this thread have to be all about Dana and his uterus-blocking desires? I thought it was going to be about cockroaches.”
junk, isn’t that self-contradictory?…
I suppose our friend does have more in common with the noble cockroach than I realized. Filthy, pestilent, adept at being where he’s not wanted, and probably likely to survive nuclear war.