Notes on Midnight Mass

It wasn't planned, but Christmas Eve found my brother and I bleary-eyed and watching Midnight Mass. There's something soothing about the soft-glowing candles, the rhythmic camera fades, placid slow-pans, rich choruses and pageantry of this most holy of services. But while it began as a mere tranquilizer—something gently cupping me in my food-induced somnolence—my interest spiked when my brother told me that the Pope had been tackled earlier in the ceremony.

Having my computer nearby I looked up the incident online. Sure enough, Captian Frailty himself was downed by a red-hooded villain—a "mentally unstable" woman as it was uncommunicatively reported.

With renewed interest, I tuned back to the service on CTV.

The Pope did indeed appear shaken (as the news had stated) but he continued to look deeply despondent as the procession wore on. This solemnness was hard not to notice. It hung like a dark cloud over the ceremony leading up to and into his pope-ly address, which consisted of a predictably luddite and regretful appraisal of modernity and the impediments it poses on the path to righteousness. Basically, the speech was an appeal to the people of the world to open their minds and their hearts to God, or as he put it "Lord, open the eyes of our hearts."

Now, I don't have much experience observing Popes—I know them as slow-moving and decrepit creatures, with special transportation needs. But it would seem that if a Pope should be one thing, it's joyful. Joyful in the knowledge that they have truth, love and God on their side and everlasting life to look forward to. Benedict looked anything but. If there was passion in him, it was completely unavailable this Christmas Eve.

So where's the joy, Bene-boy? You're supposed to be a model of the endowment of religious faith, filled with Christ-love. People should look to you and think, what's his secret? how does he get along so well? But you looked like the embodiment of doubt and regret, cast of compressed resin from the bottom of Mother Teresa's guilt-stricken subconscious. I must say it didn't bode well. My advice to you would be to be a lot more like a really likable Grandpa-like figure. Draw people in with your radiance and make them feel that they too could achieve such a glow.

To avoid being any meaner to an old man who has just been accosted, allow me to continue in a different direction.

It occurred to me somewhere in my watching that if there's one thing uniting all religions at present, it's ensuring the stop-loss of wavering faithfuls and the corresponding rise of secularism. All Abrahamic religions, for example, despair at the ebbing away of the shared memes that keep their institutions vital (and subsidized!—god knows it costs a lot of money to clean the high-vaulted ceilings of the Vatican!)

In this sense, religion is engaged in an era of maintenance—stuck in a bid to convince a new generation of followers that faith is desirable to begin with. In this disparaging battle, even warring sects find common ground. Of course, if they do succeed in reversing the trend toward secularization, the fight over which doctrine should be adopted and which God worshiped will surely resume in earnest.

As it stands though—and this is evidenced by the defeated tone of Pope Benedictus' Christmas sermon (maybe too by the tackling incident)—these are hostile times for religion; we live in a markedly secular age, despite the supposed billion-odd Catholics bespeckling the earth.



Tackling incident:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/8430406.stm

Midnight Mass in full:

http://vod.vatican.va/messa24122009.mov

Santa Claus: Gateway to skepticism

Photo: Alan Strakey

For many of us westerners, Santa Claus—along with the Easter Bunny—represent two archetypal disillusionments we must suffer on our path from credulity to greater enlightenment. After this of course it's all downhill, and the universe becomes a place increasingly void of fantastical entities, be they paternal or bunny-like.

Still, if you've maintained as I haven't, the notion that Santa maybe really does exist, or you're simply interested in witnessing the spectacle of truth-manufacturing—oh, and you live in Brooklyn—then don't miss tonight's lecture "Beyond Belief: A Philosophical Proof of Santa Claus," presented by Open City Dialogue, at Pete's Candy Shop in Williamsburg.

Sure to employ much truthiness, the interactive lecture aims to "restore the idea of Santa Claus to those who have suffered its loss. Using historical fact, ontological argument, and inductive reasoning, we will prove the existence of Santa Claus in a passion play for the non-believer."

Petty Friday: Don't knock it till you've tried it...

I followed a link that landed me at a slick propaganda machine courtesy of Scientology.org. Next thing I know, I'm about four informational videos deep being thoroughly overwhelmed by details of the life accomplishments of church founder, L. Ron Hubbard.

Proportionately underwhelmed, however, by the church's pie-in-the-sky precepts:

see Scientology.org's "Video Channel."

Postulating Hell's thermodaynamics

This gem comes (via my dad!) from that bastion of uncle humor, The Edge—no, not that Edge. I thought it worthy of dissemination. Of course, I'm also an uncle now...

Below is an actual response given on a University of Arizona chemistry midterm (so sayeth the Internet!)

Bonus question: Is hell exothermic (gives off heat) or endothermic (absorbs heat)?

One student's answer:

First, we need to know how the mass of hell is changing in time. So we need to know the rate at which souls are moving into hell and the rate at which they are leaving, which is unlikely. I think that we can safely assume that once a soul gets to hell, it will not leave. Therefore, no souls are leaving.
As for how many souls are entering hell, let's look at the different religions that exist in the world today.

Most of these religions state that if you are not a member of their religion, you will go to hell. Since there is more than one of these religions and since people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that all souls go to hell. With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of souls in hell to increase exponentially.

Now, we look at the rate of change of the volume in hell because Boyle's Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in hell to stay the same, the volume of hell has to expand proportionately as souls are added.

This gives two possibilities:

1. If hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter hell, then the temperature and pressure in hell will increase until all hell breaks loose.

2. If hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase of souls in hell, then the temperature and pressure will drop until hell freezes over.

So which is it?

If we accept the postulate given to me by Teresa during my freshman year that, "It will be a cold day in hell before I sleep with you," and take into account the fact that I slept with her last night, then No. 2 must be true, and thus I am sure that hell is exothermic and has already frozen over. The corollary of this theory is that since hell has frozen over, it follows that it is not accepting any more souls and is therefore, extinct ... leaving only heaven, thereby proving the existence of a divine being which explains why, last night, Teresa kept shouting, "Oh, my God."

And on the 7th day, he decided to post...

I've never been fanatical about comics. A few grabbed my interest in my pre-teen years, but I think that's just because they offered a slightly more explicit exhibition of female anatomy than did She-Ra. Suffice it to say, I would not consider myself particularly in the loop when it comes to comics, or graphic novels for that matter.

Supposedly, I should read Blankets, but I fear my biological window has closed on that opportunity, as I imagine throwing-up all over its saccharine contents. Plus it's a tome! Might as well start in on Hegel's Phenomenology if I'm gonna devote that kind of time (I know, I know, Blankets is mostly pictures...).

I've even managed to elude the Watchmen, which trusted sources tells me is well worth the read (and plenty philosophical).

All that being the case, it's no surprise that this, the most recent effort by artist/illustrator, Robert Crumb (known widely as R. Crumb), fell under my radar. It's a comic book version of Genesis—one that doesn't shy away from the "graphic nature" of the original. This means you can expect to see Eve in all her bare-chested glory, as well as Adam's you-know-whatsy.

Apparently, the removal of the proverbial fig leaf is accompanied with the insertion of a subtle layer of subterfuge on the part of Crumb, as he seems to have upset many conservatives with what they view to be a snide mistreatment of their sacred text.

Whatever his motivations, Crumb succeeds in breathing new life into the age-old fable, giving eyes and ears everywhere a chance to reacquaint themselves with the absurdity of it all.

In a way, it bears some resemblances to She-Ra's story.

Petty Friday: New Testaments (Nu/Used)

It's funny to see popular design styles appropriated in bible production. Why should a text of such eminent authority have to evolve?


Discovery: New Testament (Good News for Modern Man)
© American Bible Society 1966, 1971
This groovy bible was clearly a product of its era. The copyright info page features a stamp-like insignia that reads: "GOD'S WORD FOR A NEW AGE"


The Modern Language New Testament
© Zondervan Publishing House 1969, 1970
The Modern Language New Testament or simply, "MLNT," was a popular translation apparently. It has since evolved into the The Modern Language Bible, or "MLB." Not to be confused with the New International Version, or "NIV." All three, I presume, differ considerably with the "KJV."


The Answer New Testament
© Tyndale House Publishers, Inc 1997
Copping an arty Bauhaus aesthetic.