Castle Aching

[Annie]

3 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

Yes, and that's a problem, isn't it, because a message that simple doesn't leave room for hierarchy and control, which is why suggesting it is liable to get you nailed to a tree.

 

All churches have these, back-to-basics revivals from time to time, but the Higher Ups tend to view them with suspicion and need to find ways to assimilate or control.  I spent sometime studying the suppression of the Spiritual Franciscans - the background to Umberto Eco's novel, Name of the Rose - the point was that there was nothing really wrong with what they said or believed, but it represented a challenge to Papal authority.

Oh yes, and also the Doctrine of the Free Spirit and as well as that more than a few mystics had to be very careful not to attract the attention of the Inquisition.  All very much a challenge to the power of the church and they certainly weren't going to stand for that.  Fortunately in these modern times my simple pre-Nicene type of Christianity is tolerated within the church and nobody is bothered by it.  I haven't read 'Name of the Rose', perhaps I should see if I can find a copy.

[Edwardian]

9 minutes ago, monkeysarefun said:

Being Australian the last few pages have gone over my head a bit, so here's an advertisement for grease.

 

Well, that leaves me speechless.  

 

9 minutes ago, monkeysarefun said:

I've always  laboured under the assumption that avatars are based on peoples actual appearance

 

 

 

Well, let's hope not, for your sake.

[RedGemAlchemist]

17 minutes ago, monkeysarefun said:

(I've always  laboured under the assumption that avatars are based on peoples actual appearance...)

i must have a pretty screwed-up face then.

[monkeysarefun]

10 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

 

Well, that leaves me speechless.  

 

 

Well, let's hope not, for your sake.

You don't like the bowtie?

 

[Nearholmer]

Well, I've been grumpy and contrary all day, having done a lot of travelling yesterday, surviving on junk food and black coffee, which then kept me awake half the night, but the grease advert has temporarily lifted all clouds (as did Northroader's advert in my thread earlier)......... every feature about it is strange and bizarre, in a strange and bizarre way.

 

The garage-grease-bloke actually bears a more than passing resemblance to the younger of my two brothers, which means that he looks slightly stouter, and a few years younger than I.

 

 

 

 

Edited November 21, 2019 by Nearholmer

[phil_sutters]

I shan't be able to hear the term 'grease nipple' in future without thinking of that advert.

[Donw]

2 hours ago, St Enodoc said:

We won't know until it's too late for any of us to do anything about it...

 

Also, being pedantic, both the Church of England and the Church of Rome are Catholic churches.

 

Indeed if you pay attention to the credo which you say in the communion service of the Anglican Church you will state your belief in the Catholic Church. Basically the same words as the Roman Catholic church.  The Credo in either church is a statement of the key elelments of the faith said before God.

 

For those Christians who love to dig up quotes from the bible to throw at you, I like to ask them what they think. of a god who sent bears to rip children to bits for poking fun at one of his prophets ( I forget which one now, of course it may have differently translated in the new bible). Please do not think I am anti Christian, those who like to tell others what they should do and think are countered by many who I have met who try to lead good lives as they understand it and encourage others by example 

 

Don

[St Enodoc]

1 hour ago, Nearholmer said:

every feature about it is strange and bizarre, in a strange and bizarre way.

How true. I was impressed by the early appearance of airbags, long before they were in common use, and by the way the little black upright thingy stayed erect for so long.

 

The only thing that wasn't bizarre is that she was driving a proper job car.

 

C. Kimber

[St Enodoc]

3 minutes ago, Donw said:

Indeed if you pay attention to the credo which you say in the communion service of the Anglican Church you will state your belief in the Catholic Church. Basically the same words as the Roman Catholic church. 

Exactly my point Don! 

 

Et unam, sanctam, catholicam et apostolicam Ecclesiam

[Donw]

9 minutes ago, St Enodoc said:

Exactly my point Don! 

 

Et unam, sanctam, catholicam et apostolicam Ecclesiam

 

I did realise that I was just pointing out that churchgoers regularly declare their belief in the words..

 

Don

[Regularity]

27 minutes ago, Donw said:

 

I did realise that I was just pointing out that churchgoers regularly declare their belief in the words..

I am not sure that all of them understand some of the words, or believe all of what they are saying.

[Malcolm 0-6-0]

23 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

As for the Salvation Army, I suppose one might ask why the fundamentalists should have all the best tunes?

 

Although, apparently, William Booth never said what he is supposed to have said.

 

 

It's to drum up support in the demographic that best suits all obscurantist belief systems. The Taliban would have used good tunes also except they took it a little too far and banned music. 

 

[Malcolm 0-6-0]

14 hours ago, wagonman said:

 

Indeed, many were accommodated – in Australia mostly.

 

 

 

We were lucky in Australia - we only got the criminals, while the Yanks got the bizarre religious sects which created the devil's paradise of the bible belt and the depressing desire to prove they are all people of faith by being creationists.

 

On balance give me a productive crook over a bible basher any time.  

[Edwardian]

Morning All,

 

Yes, the good honest loaf-stealing felon has much to recommend him over the religious fundamentalist.

 

We suffer from the curse of the literally minded, who cannot grasp the essence of a religion (the love and light stuff) because they prefer to dig out selected portions of a text written in different times and circumstances and use them to justify disliking certain groups in our society.  Gives religion a bad name.

 

I always understood that the Anglican position, as reflected in the use of the Nicene Creed ("one holy Catholic and Apostolic Church"), is that the Church of England is the Church in England, that reformed part of the one true church established in England.

 

Of course, the Papacy did not accept this, which brings us back to the preoccupation of organised religion with unity, which tends to mean "control". 

[Hroth]

7 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

I always understood that the Anglican position, as reflected in the use of the Nicene Creed ("one holy Catholic and Apostolic Church"), is that the Church of England is the Church in England, that reformed part of the one true church established in England.

 

Of course, the Papacy did not accept this, which brings us back to the preoccupation of organised religion with unity, which tends to mean "control". 

 

We could always view it as a 16th Century form of Brexit. Though it wouldn't be "Brexit", more Enexit...

[Compound2632]

7 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

which brings us back to the preoccupation of organised religion with unity, which tends to mean "control". 

 

... and, eventually, to the whole music, railways, and clergymen thing - the creative tension between reason and romance: systems bound by a rigid set of rules and yet capable of creating the deepest feelings of the heart.

[Hroth]

9 hours ago, monkeysarefun said:

Being Australian the last few pages have gone over my head a bit, so here's an advertisement for grease.

 

 

Thats a rather nice MGA!

 

 

[Edwardian]

6 minutes ago, Hroth said:

 

We could always view it as a 16th Century form of Brexit. Though it wouldn't be "Brexit", more Enexit...

 

Indeed.  We've touched on the remarkable resilience of anti (Roman) Catholic sentiment in parts of the UK (including England),  An object lesson, perhaps, in the profound and long-term divisiveness of such upheavals. The idea that our current divisions will be settled by the fact of Brexit in due course is the worst delusion of all.  Our Great Grand Children will still be arguing about this! 

[Edwardian]

10 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

 

... and, eventually, to the whole music, railways, and clergymen thing - the creative tension between reason and romance: systems bound by a rigid set of rules and yet capable of creating the deepest feelings of the heart.

 

The BBC script writer who adapted the Barchester Chronicles for TV gave us a rather good line in response to the Evangelical Bishop's ban of liturgical music in the Cathedral: "where there is no music, there is no mystery.  Where there is no mystery, there is no God".

[Malcolm 0-6-0]

27 minutes ago, Hroth said:

That's a rather nice MGA!

 

Yep you don't get many of them to a pound 

 

 

Edited November 22, 2019 by Malcolm 0-6-0

[Donw]

I had a brief stay at Prinash Abbey where the church is arranged such that the monks are not in view of any lay persons attending. The singing of the monks particularly in the evening service when it was dark outside was most atmospheric. The singing was abviously full of passion but with no view of the monks it did feel like a heavenly choir.

 

Don

[webbcompound]

As a pagan I have been following the discourse on Christianity with some amused interest. what knots people get tied up in. The christians destroyed our sacred sites, co-opted our gods and goddesses as saints when they couldn't get rid of them, promoted a purely male divine family (well two males and a gender neutral spirit) and in the end had to reinvent a mother goddess who is probably more revered than the chaps. If you have to have religion just embrace polytheism. You know that is where you get to in the end. And for railway relevance one of the senior engineers on the Queensland Railways was a Pagan (-  (for those who never knew the world pre-emoji this is the keyboard symbol for "tongue in cheek")

[Compound2632]

28 minutes ago, webbcompound said:

As a pagan I have been following the discourse on Christianity with some amused interest. what knots people get tied up in. The christians destroyed our sacred sites, co-opted our gods and goddesses as saints when they couldn't get rid of them, promoted a purely male divine family (well two males and a gender neutral spirit) and in the end had to reinvent a mother goddess who is probably more revered than the chaps. If you have to have religion just embrace polytheism. You know that is where you get to in the end. And for railway relevance one of the senior engineers on the Queensland Railways was a Pagan (-  (for those who never knew the world pre-emoji this is the keyboard symbol for "tongue in cheek")

 

 

"Our" presumes continuity of belief. One thing "we" didn't do was to attempt to Christianise the months of the year or the days of the week*, which are stubbornly pre-Christian in romance, germanic, and slavonic languages. I hope we all had a Jovial time on Thor's day but now we should be of a more amorous disposition, it being Freya's Day today (despite yesterday's reports to the contrary). Which conveniently takes us back to @Edwardian's landlord and Edwardian social tensions.

 

*The French Revolution failed on this point too.

Edited November 22, 2019 by Compound2632
months not moths.

[TheQ]

3 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

 

"Our" presumes continuity of belief. One thing "we" didn't do was to attempt to Christianise the moths of the year or the days of the week*, which are stubbornly pre-Christian in romance, germanic, and slavonic languages. I hope we all had a Jovial time on Thor's day but now we should be of a more amorous disposition, it being Freya's Day today (despite yesterday's reports to the contrary). Which conveniently takes us back to @Edwardian's landlord and Edwardian social tensions.

 

*The French Revolution failed on this point too.

I must admit trying to Christianise moths was probably not on the mind of The Monks..

[Edwardian]

12 minutes ago, webbcompound said:

As a pagan I have been following the discourse on Christianity with some amused interest. what knots people get tied up in. The christians destroyed our sacred sites, co-opted our gods and goddesses as saints when they couldn't get rid of them, promoted a purely male divine family (well two males and a gender neutral spirit) and in the end had to reinvent a mother goddess who is probably more revered than the chaps. If you have to have religion just embrace polytheism. You know that is where you get to in the end. And for railway relevance one of the senior engineers on the Queensland Railways was a Pagan (-  (for those who never knew the world pre-emoji this is the keyboard symbol for "tongue in cheek")

 

You see, images like that speak to centuries of conditioning.

 

I deplore the wreck of our English churches by the white washers and statue breakers; I view these iconoclasts much as I do the Taliban for their bigoted destruction of ancient art, or as Annie must view the Gauge Commission of 1846!  

 

So I can, or course, admire a religious painting or statue, stained glass or a richly decorated church interior, and I can admire it as an expression of faith and as a religious communication, as well as as a piece of art and part my rich cultural heritage.

 

This, though - plaster saints and reliquaries - give me the heebie-geebies and a sense of voodoo superstition.  The thought of pilgrim trains to the shrine of Our Lady of Wolfringham leaves me vaguely uncomfortable, though I can discern no rational objection to them. Thus, I am forced to acknowledge that, to some extent at least, the Reformation has left me with a Protestant soul! 

 

The art, the music and the mysticism are as important as the Word, but, it turns out, centuries of conditioning of the sensibilities of English church-goers means that I have definite feelings about where the point of balance should be!

 

Often, understanding why you think and feel as you do is halfway to the cure!