by designs 9 Replies latest social current
Francis I is pulling out all the stops to keep his Church relevant. A first ever public display of Saint Peter's bones is drawing pilgrims from all over the world as the "Year of Faith" concludes.
http://news.yahoo.com/saint-peters-bones-display-first-time-001517448.html
Since Peter is boss hog they should get a fresh cadaver and dip the dead man finger in the box and see if he comes back to life
They don't know if they have Peter's bones. I saw a tour of the Vatican on the History Channel. It was interesting b/c low level priests would keep referring to the Vatican treasures as the bones of Peter, Veronica's x, Mark's z. Cardinals, however, kept talking to the documentary crew in terms such as "bones dating back to the first century that legend attributes to Peter."
I am disappointed in Francis. One of the Vatican treasures I saw when I visited was St. Helena's stairs. They are supposedly (a big supposedly) stairs that Jesus walked during the Passion. They are hard stone. Poor, old peasant women, dressed in black,, were kneeling on them and reciting rosaries. No man did the stairs. No person below 70.
How do Peter's bones promote spirituality or belief? Many scholars doubt that Peter was ever in Rome.
I wonder if the ritual and veneration of objects is symptomatic of a deep human desire to make contact with a spiritual dimension that eludes them.
Just in case anyone wants to look up st helenas stairs i belie e they are called the scala sancta. I had teouble looking them up
Venerated Objects seem to fascinate we humans, hey I got a thrill visiting Jim Morrison's grave in Paris.
This should keep the faithful shoveling money to Vatican coffers for years to come.
It's history, a link to the past, even if they're not his bones. Nothing wrong with it. It's like going to the Museum of Natural History and checking out dinosaur bones.
precisely! While I was there, I was either swept away with tears at the architecture, MIchelangelo, DaVinci, Raphael. It felt spirtitual in the best sense. Next, I saw all those hokey stuff, designed to bleed money, from the poor and ignorant. It was bizarre seeing it at the same time. The Roman Catholic Church, the bastion of Christianity and history, and then, to be honest, the WT Roman Catholicism. What beauty!
I loved seeing the catacombs to get a sense of early Christianity.
When people were illiterate, scientifically illiterate, uneducated and poor, things they could see were all they had. The church realized that and built spectacular buildings with lots of symbols to tell stories. It makes sense that physical remains of a special person would take on even greater significance than it does today.
If that person never really existed, then making remains solidifies the myth.
When I was in school there was a rumor that the Smithsonian had John Dillinger's dong on display.
