"Contrast the way UFO belief operates with historical celestial apparitions, such as the aerial phenomena associated with the Virgin Mary in Fátima, Portugal..."

"... on October, 13, 1917. On that day, approximately 70,000 people reported witnessing a variety of celestial phenomena. The people ranged from devout Catholics to atheists and skeptics who were there to disprove the testimonies of witnesses. But the institutional church influenced the interpretation of that event, and the devout welcomed their interpretation. The UFO community is not as trusting. It is characterized by suspicion of conventional authority, be that the Catholic Church or the U.S. government. Rather than being defined by a hierarchy, UFO belief has been shaped by pop culture. For decades, films and television series such as 'Star Trek' and 'Star Wars' offered cosmologies populated with advanced intelligences. These stories did not create belief in UFOs, but they helped establish a cultural vocabulary through which anomalous experiences could be understood. Most significantly, 'The X Files' popularized the idea that governments conceal knowledge about nonhuman intelligence.... Each new file release, leaked testimony or declassified video generates further interpretation rather than closure. The two most famous catchphrases from 'The X Files' — 'I want to believe' and 'the truth is out there' — express this perfectly...."

From "The UFO files reveal a hidden truth about a growing religion/Belief in alien life is on the rise — fueled by declining trust in institutions" (WaPo).

Look what they've done to the Virgin of the Macarena.

Here's the article, in the London Times.

Comments from the Brotherhood of the Macarena: “This isn’t her; this isn’t the Virgin of Seville. It’s sad. My heart is about to burst out... They should have left her as she was.” And: “I came to see her because everyone in my family has been crying all day about it.”

I know, you're thinking about that dance, the Macarena. Or are you thinking about the "Monkey Christ"?

50 years ago today: "ROME, MAY 21—Michelangelo's Pieta, one of the world's most celebrated sculptures, was severely damaged today when a man attacked it with a hammer in St. Peter's Basilica."

"Hundreds of Whitsunday worshipers, pilgrims and tourists watched in horror as a young man with long reddish hair and a beard pushed into the side chapel to the right of the main entrance to St. Peter's, where the Pieta is on display over, an altar. He climbed over a marble balustrade, went up the stairs to the platform on which the sculpture rests, pulled out a hammer from under a raincoat he had over his arm and started battering the marble, shouting, 'I'm Jesus Christ.' The blows shattered the left arm of the figure of the Virgin Mary in the marble group and also chipped the nose, the left eye and the veil covering the hair... The assailant, who was identified as Laszlo Toth, 33 years old, of Sydney, Australia, was able to strike four or five hammer blows amid the gasps and shouts of the crowd before an Italian fireman ran up to him and pulled him down by his hair.... A Vatican spokesman said later that Mr. Toth had told Archbishop Benelli in English: 'If you kill me, so much the better, because I'll go straight to heaven.' The Hungarian‐born Mr. Toth had been living in Rome for some time and had acquired some notoriety for bizarre conduct. In an interview last November, II Messaggero of Rome presented him as a 'local character of sorts,' quoting Mr. Toth as saying that he was a geologist and had left Australia two years ago to return to Europe because 'I have seven mysteries to reveal.'"

The NYT reported, 50 years ago.

We're told that Pope Paul inspected the damage, knelt and prayed in front of it, and was overheard saying "Also most serious moral damage."

cc Stanislav Traykov.

ADDED: "Lazlo Toth" was used as a pen name by the comedian Don Novello (who played Father Guido Sarducci on "Saturday Night Live").

In the 1970s, Novello started to write letters to famous people under the pen name of Lazlo Toth (after Laszlo Toth, a deranged man who vandalized Michelangelo's Pietà in Rome). The letters, written to suggest a serious but misinformed and obtuse correspondent, were designed to tweak the noses of politicians and corporations. Many of them received serious responses; Novello sometimes continued the charade correspondence at length, with humorous results. The letters and responses were published in the books The Lazlo Letters, Citizen Lazlo!, and From Bush to Bush: The Lazlo Toth Letters.

Here's the Wikipedia article for Lazlo Toth, the vandal: 

He was not charged with a criminal offence after the incident, but was hospitalized in Italy for two years. On his release, he was immediately deported to Australia.... In June 1971 he moved to Rome, Italy, knowing no Italian, intending to become recognized as Christ.

The correct spelling of the name is Laszlo Toth.

Toth is on Wikipedia's "List of people claimed to be Jesus."

"He was coming from another planet. He was reporting from something no one was seeing."

"Out of a group of idiosyncratic people, he was the most idiosyncratic. He was so interior that he made comics grow up.” 

Said Art Spiegelman, quoted in "Justin Green, Who Put Himself Into His Underground Cartoons, Dies at 76/'Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary, his epic autobiographical story of Catholic guilt and neurosis, 'made comics grow up,' a colleague said" (NYT). 

The first page of Mr. Green’s book shows Binky naked, his hands bound and his feet shackled, confessing: “O, my readers, the saga of Binky Brown is not intended solely for your entertainment, but also to purge myself of the compulsive neurosis which I have serviced since I officially left Catholicism on Halloween, 1958.” 

Binky’s misadventures begin when, as a boy, he breaks a statue of the Virgin Mary while playing baseball inside his house. The book takes him through young manhood, as he deals with bullies, nuns (“fascistic penguins,” in his words), priests, fears stoked by supernatural church doctrines that are “asserted as empirical fact,” his impure thoughts and his sexuality.

It's just by chance that I've begun the day writing about the Weather Underground and underground comics. To mark this accidental theme, I'll show you this definition of "underground" from the OED:

In Spain, 3 women face charges of "crimes against religious sentiment" for carrying an image of female genitalia on a platform in a procession through the streets of Seville in the style of religious processions carrying an image of the Virgin Mary.

The idea — by the "Sisterhood of the blessed rebellious vagina to the exploitation of precariousness" (Hermandad del Sagrado Coño Insumiso a la Explotación a la Precariedad) — was to protest sex discrmination in the workplace.

The case will be heard by a Seville magistrate after a previous ruling in favour of the protesters was overturned on appeal by the Association of Christian lawyers (AEAC). The AEAC said in a statement that the action was "vexatious". It claimed that the group shouted slogans such as "the Virgin Mary can abort too" and that it used prayers such as the Creed or the Hail Mary, replacing lines with "sexual, rude and abusive" expressions....

In the original hearing a judge ruled that "not believing in the dogmas of a religion and manifesting it publicly falls under the freedom of expression." But that ruling has been overturned on appeal after a judge found this week that there was evidence the group had deliberately set out to insult the "religious sentiments of Catholics" by making "a mockery of the Easter procession" using "rude and offences slogans", said magistrate Luis Gonzaga de Oro-Pulido.

As in the United States, it's not enough to have a right to freedom of speech. You also need courts that won't say — as the Spanish court did — that the right "is not absolute, but has its limits... including ideological and religious freedom." That is, the freedom to speak is viewed as limited by the "freedom" of other people not to be offended. Maybe some of the Americans who like to say things like that can be moved to rethink it by looking this case in Spain.

Can state law require that churches permit women to breastfeed openly — with no covering — in the congregation during a service?

Virginia has a law that gives women a right to breastfeed wherever they are "lawfully present." I can see why laws like this get passed, and I feel sympathy for this woman who was embarrassed to be told she can't breastfeed in the manner she presumably believed was okay (especially after the government has purported to enshrine this right in the law)...


But I think privately owned places — especially religious institutions — should be allowed to impose their own standards of modesty. There's a big difference between being deprived of the freedom to  breastfeed wherever you are and being required to drape a light cloth over the exposed breast.

This WaPo report on the subject completely takes the perspective of the woman and makes the churchgoers seem prudish and ignorant of the law:

A woman promptly asked the Dumfries mother to decamp to a private room, she said. Peguero declined and was later told that the church does not allow breast-feeding without a cover because it could make men, teenagers or new churchgoers “uncomfortable,” she said. One woman told her the sermon was being live-streamed and that she would not want Peguero to be seen breast-feeding....

It is also a legally protected right in Virginia, where the legislature passed a 2015 law that says women have a right to breast-feed anywhere they have a legal right to be....

The woman, Annie Peguero, is described as a "42-year-old personal trainer and fitness and nutrition specialist" and — these are her words — a “hippie mama."

It seems to me that churches — and other religious organizations — have rules about how covered up you need to be in the building or during a service. And the last time I looked, Virginia has a Religious Freedom Preservation Act, § 57-2.02:

No government entity shall substantially burden a person's free exercise of religion even if the burden results from a rule of general applicability unless it demonstrates that application of the burden to the person is (i) essential to further a compelling governmental interest and (ii) the least restrictive means of furthering that compelling governmental interest.

Quite aside from whether Peguero has a statutory right to breastfeed uncovered in church (and I don't think she does), as a matter of etiquette and caring for others, she should have willingly covered her breast as soon as she noticed the exposure distracted or bothered anybody.

Here's the highest-rated comment at WaPo:

As someone who has lived all over the world, I can assure you America is the only place on earth where people get hysterical seeing mothers breastfeed their babies.

Exactly what is it about a breast that has you guys upset? It is not a sex organ. It was made for women to feed their babies. The fact that it has been sexualized by men does not make it a sex organ.

Here's the second-highest-rated:

I get the whole "it's natural" thing, but have a little consideration for those around you. You still cannot walk around nude freely in our society. And, it does make people uncomfortable ... which is also "natural". Use a blanket or step out of the room. Why is that such a huge deal?

 ADDED: I'd originally misread a sentence in the article that said: "Now Peguero, and an attorney, are pressing church leaders to issue a statement and reverse their policy." I've corrected the post.

IN THE COMMENTS: I Have Misplaced My Pants said:

Haha. Women who make a fuss about this are almost always attention seekers best ignored.

I am on my fourth breastfed-into-toddlerhood child over 15 years (didn't breastfeed the adopted one, alas) and I have always nursed wherever I happen to be and no one has ever once given me so much as the stink-eye, let alone approached me and been an ass. Of course I've been discreet when appropriate, finding a quiet corner if it seemed like the thing to do, but I have never nursed under a drape or cover of any kind and I have never nursed in a bathroom.

The whole "zomg men sexualize the breast waah waah waah" thing is a hoax. Again, in 15 years of off and on public breastfeeding and hanging out with other public breastfeeders I have never had a man be anything but polite. I'm calling bullshit.

Policraticus said...

You know, I'm all for modesty and things having a time and place. I am sure the mother in question could have been a little more discreet.

But... the reaction of the church officials crosses over into the absurd. The idea that a woman breastfeeding a child should hardly be shocking. The image of Maria Lactans is ubiquitous in Christian art and you can find images of Mary breastfeeding the infant Jesus pretty much everywhere you look. Irony. It can be pretty ironic sometimes.

Good point (though I think the images of Mary are not so common among protestants). Here's an example:



There's also Lactatio Bernardi, where Mary squirts some milk sideways onto Saint Bernard:

"A height of some fifty feet above the roofs of Rome gives me all the advantages that I could get from fifty miles of distance."

"The air so exhilarates my spirits, that sometimes I feel half inclined to attempt a flight from the top of my tower, in the faith that I should float upward," said Hilda.

"O, pray don’t try it!" said Miriam laughing. "If it should turn out that you are less than an angel, you would find the stones of the Roman pavement very hard; and if an angel, indeed, I am afraid you would never come down among us again.” 

This young American girl was an example of the freedom of life which it is possible for a female artist to enjoy at Rome. She dwelt in her tower, as free to descend into the corrupted atmosphere of the city beneath, as one of her companion doves to fly downward into the street;— all alone, perfectly independent, under her own sole guardianship, unless watched over by the Virgin, whose shrine she tended; doing what she liked without a suspicion or a shadow upon the snowy whiteness of her fame. The customs of artist life bestow such liberty upon the sex, which is elsewhere restricted within so much narrower limits; and it is perhaps an indication that, whenever we admit women to a wider scope of pursuits and professions, we must also remove the shackles of our present conventional rules, which would then become an insufferable restraint on either maid or wife.

From Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Marble Faun."

"I am wary of a solution that can be reduced to a kind of 'female machismo,' because a woman has a different make-up than a man."

"But what I hear about the role of women is often inspired by an ideology of machismo," said Pope Francis.

Women are asking deep questions that must be addressed. The church cannot be herself without the woman and her role. The woman is essential for the church. Mary, a woman, is more important than the bishops. I say this because we must not confuse the function with the dignity. We must therefore investigate further the role of women in the church. We have to work harder to develop a profound theology of the woman. Only by making this step will it be possible to better reflect on their function within the church. The feminine genius is needed wherever we make important decisions. The challenge today is this: to think about the specific place of women also in those places where the authority of the church is exercised for various areas of the church.

This is guarded and abstruse. The key word seems to be "function," as if it's all about the usefulness of women. Obviously, he's not talking about formal equality. If he's a feminist, he's a difference feminist. A lot of deep thinking is needed about what women are for.

What is woman's place, her specific place in those places of the various areas?

Does anyone in the Bible ever say "hello"?

It's all translation, if it's in English, and "hello" is a pretty recent English word. (The OED puts its earliest use in the year 1827.) I spent some time with the various translations at BibleGateway, and I found at least one that has "hello" — the Contemporary English Version, within which "hello" appears exactly twice:

Job 17:14 Then I could greet the grave as my father and say to the worms, “Hello, mother and sisters!”

Matthew 26:49 Judas walked right up to Jesus and said, “Hello, teacher.” Then Judas kissed him.

Great material! Job and Judas come across as a couple of darkly edgy comedians.

Why was I looking for "hello" in the Bible? I got caught up — after writing this post — in the meaning of "hail" in "Hail Mary." I was puzzling over whether or not there should be a comma between "hail" and "Mary," which I was reading to mean basically "Hello, Mary." But the Contemporary English Version of the Bible doesn't use "Hello, Mary" in the relevant verse (which is Luke 1:28). (It has: "The angel greeted Mary and said, 'You are truly blessed! The Lord is with you.'")

A common alternative word for "hail" in that verse is "rejoice." I'm also seeing "Greetings!" which seems pretty close to Hello. I thought about other uses of "hail." Meade — who grew up in West Lafayette, home of Purdue — brought up "Hail Purdue." That made me, an alumna of the University of Michigan, think of "Hail! to the victors valiant." And then there's "Hail to the Chief" and "Hail to thee, blithe spirit!" (beginning Shelley's "To a Skylark").

What does "hail" mean beyond "hello"?

"Heil Hitler" is translated as "Hail Hitler." It's not "Hello Hitler," which seems edgily absurd. You could sing it to the tune of "Hello, Dolly," which has a comma, I might note, unlike Hello Kitty.

"She talks kinda lazy/And people say she she's crazy/And her life's a mystery..."

"Oh, but Love grows where my Rosemary goes/And nobody knows like me...."

At Meadhouse this morning, we danced to "Love Grows (Where My Rosemary Goes)" right after we said our "Hail, Mary"... Hail Mary, full of (a conversation about) grace....

Are you keeping up with the tweeting of the Pope?

I started "following" him, but then there were no tweets, and I check Twitter so rarely, that I hadn't read any of his tweets. Then, I read in Vanity Fair: "Pope Starts Tweeting, Can’t Stop Tweeting, Is Called a 'Huge Bummer." Wow. Okay. So, I'll check what the Pope is tweeting. (I am not Catholic, so I'm under no obligation!)

Mary is filled with joy on learning that she is to be the mother of Jesus, God’s Son made man.True joy comes from union with God
— Benedict XVI (@Pontifex) December 19, 2012

Going for the embed code, I get to see everyone who's replying to that:

@pontifex dear Pope, we can read it in Bible, Twitter is for posting something trendy. Try it please.
— Jānis Palkavnieks (@Palkavnieks) December 19, 2012

. @pontifex Who is this 'God' you keep talking about?
— Carl Maxim (@carlmaxim) December 19, 2012

"Who is to blame for the performance at the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour and for our being put on trial after the concert? The authoritarian political system is to blame. What Pussy Riot does is oppositional art or politics."

"Who is to blame for the performance at the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour and for our being put on trial after the concert?"

Political argument in defense at the criminal trial of Pussy Riot in Russia. Also: "To my deepest regret, this mock trial is close to the standards of the Stalinist troikas."

The protesters got a 2-year sentence for "hooliganism." They've gotten a lot of international support, because the government seems to be coming after them for their free speech and their music, but — as the NYT puts it — they "have never released a song or an album, and they do not seem to have any serious aspirations to do so." And the prosecution accused them of acting out of "religious hatred" (as well as "committing 'moral harm' and even of practicing Satanism"). They did "prance around in front of the golden Holy Doors leading into the altar, dancing, chanting and lip-syncing for what would later become a music video of a profane song in which they beseeched the Virgin Mary to rid Russia of Mr. Putin."

Why the early Christians did not celebrate Christmas.

Rev. Brian D. Blacker explains:

It was strongly felt that the celebrating of any day or date – be they birthdays or anniversaries of an event – was a custom of the pagans. By the word ‘pagans’ they meant irreligious people who still live in the darkness of superstition. In an effort to divest themselves of all pagan practices, therefore, they did not even set aside or note down the date of their Saviour’s birth....

Most scholars agree that the birth of the Redeemer did not take place in the month of December at all. In fact, the 25th of December was not even chosen by the Christians, but by the Romans – the traditional arch enemies of the early church...

[The Romans had begun] to celebrate the “Feast of the Sol Invictus” (the Unconquerable Sun) on December 25. Soon many Christians began to join in this pagan festival and the various celebrations that went with it. Their faith wasn’t vibrant enough (or real enough) to stand against the strong pull of the festivity and celebration around them. They drifted with the crowd.

Thus, in order to keep the Christians away from all the pagan rituals that was part of this worship of the sun, Bishop Liberius of Rome declared, in 354 A.D., that all Christians everywhere should celebrate the birth of our Lord on December 25...

We must recognise a parallel in what took place in church history and what is taking place in this day and age....

Uh oh. Here comes the sermon. You can go to the link if you want to see what lessons Rev. Blacker draws from this sequence of events. It seems to me there are quite a few different lessons you might teach with that intro, and I believe the conversation we have right here will be more interesting and enlightening than what Rev. Blacker says.

And then there's the separate question whether the Feast of the Sol Invictus theory of Christmas is even correct. Joseph Ratzinger, who is now Pope Benedict XVI, has observed that December 25 is simply 9 months after March 25, and March 25 was the date of the Annunciation, that is the date of Jesus' conception.

Getting the date right matters far less than the question whether we should be doing annual celebrations on a particular date — including all kinds of birthdays, death-days, and anniversaries — and which days should be the ones that we single out as the biggest occasions. Even if you're a Christian, you could decline to celebrate Christmas and even then, it could be for one of a number of reasons: 1. because it's less important than other days within Christianity, 2. because celebrating birthdays and anniversaries is not what Christianity should be, 3. because it's too closely associated with the pagan festivities having to do with the sun, or (least convincing reason) 4. because December 25th is the wrong day.

ADDED:  Sorry, but I'm going to argue with the Pope. Doctors calculate the length of pregnancy from the first day of the woman's last period, not the date of conception. If Mary conceived on March 25, then the first day of her last period — I've never before in my life thought about Mary's periods! — was  March 11th or thereabouts. (I'm assuming Mary had 28-day periods and conception occurred on the day of ovulation, 2 weeks later.) If the first day of Mary's last period was indeed March 11th, using the standard calculation, the predicted due date is December 17th. I can't believe it was so easy to point out a hole in a Pope's argument!

"It is my high priority to find a new venue —and bring the Surfing Madonna and her important message of 'Save The Ocean' — back into public view in our community as soon as possible."

The unauthorized mosaic is "uniting the Latino community, surfers, ocean-lovers, environmentalists, and promoting ocean awareness in a way that's playful."

The Virgin Mary in Wisconsin.

Officially validated by the Roman Catholic Church.

In 1859, the year after Mary is said to have appeared in Lourdes, a Belgian immigrant here named Adele Brise said she was visited three times by Mary, who hovered between two trees in a bright light, clothed in dazzling white with a yellow sash around her waist and a crown of stars above her flowing blond locks. As instructed, Ms. Brise devoted her life to teaching Catholic beliefs to children.

"'Jesus's face' spotted on the toilet door in Ikea Glasgow."

Oh, yeah?

Well, I found Mary on that rock in Blue Mounds.

IN THE COMMENTS : bagoh20 said:

Heresy! Ikea? He was a carpenter, for his sake!

"Law clerk John Mize claimed that a pair of Funyuns, an onion-flavored snack food, resembled the Virgin Mary holding baby Jesus."

"He auctioned the food off on eBay and the winning bidder offered $609."

"Who painted it?" asked Hillary Clinton, unaware that "the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe was miraculously imprinted by Mary."

Our Secretary of State got an in-your-face answer: "God!"

Leaving the basilica half an hour later, Mrs. Clinton told some of the Mexicans gathered outside to greet her, “you have a marvelous virgin!”

The linked article, from the Catholic News Agency ends with this pregnant paragraph:

This evening Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is set to receive the highest award given by Planned Parenthood Federation of America — the Margaret Sanger Award, named for the organization's founder, a noted eugenicist. The award will be presented at a gala event in Houston, Texas.

CNA does not like the Secretary of State.

***

There is a lot of commentary on this story, and I won't clutter this post with all the details. It follows a predictable right/left split. Either Hillary is an idiot not to know the story of the miracle or it's a faux gaffe trumped up by Hillary haters.

I'll say that I didn't know this story myself, but I do think that if I was representing our country and visiting any cultural site, I'd have somebody telling me what I needed to know not to look stupid from the perspective of those whose respect I wanted.

Anyway, think how much worse it could have gone. I'm picturing this:

Who painted it?

God!

Ha ha ha. No really. Who painted it?

God!

Ha ha ha. You people kill me. Come on. Seriously.

God!

Look. I have seen paintings that were done by ordinary mortals. Leonardo. Raphael. Michelangelo. If God were going to suddenly make a painting, wouldn't it be... uh... you know... better?

"Virgin conception would be more plausible if Mary was a man."

"Could testicular feminisation offer an explanation for the mystery of Jesus Christ's virgin birth, wonders Aarathi Prasad."

***

What are you wondering about?

"You painters do harm, and if you knew the resulting scandal you wouldn’t paint figures such as these, filling our churches with human vanity."

"Do you really think the Virgin Mary went around dressed as you depict her? I assure you she dressed like a poor girl, simply and modestly, and was so well-covered that all you could see were her eyes....”

IN THE COMMENTS: Sir Archy, our 250+ years-dead ghost, makes an appearance.