Religious visions

[YankeyMCC]

So in the drive into work this morning I'm listening to an interview of one of the faithful who waited in line to see the body of PJP2. He flew in from Spain the day before and stood in line, praying, for 17 hours.

Imagine being in a line, awake for the most part (I don't know how fast the line is moving but I imagine you couldn't get more than a few seconds of eye closure at a time), probably on your feet for most of that time, probably not eating or drinking very much, in close quarters with other people.

By the time you get into see the body you're probably in a state to hallucinate and have "visions". So this experience could hardly do anything but reinforce the religious fervor of people going through this.

It's like sitting in a sweat lodge or something. (disclaimer: I don't mean to offend anyone who follows Native American religions I know nothing about them I'm just making a layman's analogy.)

[eek MD]

1. 17hrs in line for concert tickets is one thing....17hrs to see a corpse is

Well....umm....bizarre. It's too bad museums don't have 17 hour lines to go see fossil remains. :)

[beam me up scottie]

3. I think fossils would smell better too.

:evilgrin:
nt

[GOPFighter]

2. When are they going to catch on?

All this devoutness, all this religious fervor, worldwide - and it's been going on for centuries! - and what's the result? World peace, an end to hatred, elimination of poverty and suffering? Just what are they getting in return for all that energy? After a few centuries don't you think the faithful would get a tiny bit skeptical.

If their God is so benevolent, and answers prayer, you would think the church would target a major disaster in the making and urge the faithful to pray for God to intervene. A 4-year drought in central Africa and the population facing mass-starvation? Pray to God to send rain! Problem solved, right?

[LisaLynne]

5. So true it hurts.

When people start talking all that "god's kingdom" balony, I like to remind them that religion -- Christianity itself -- has held a lot of sway in the world at various periods of time and yet ... no perfect world in sight.

[onager]

4. Wow! Just like when Eva Peron died!

:evilgrin:

Huge lines of fans queued up to see the corpse, deaths in line, bizarre religious visions and claims of miracle healings, etc. etc.

[onager]

6. Another good break from Pope-A-Looza...

Dammit, responding to my own posts again. But I had a book in mind earlier and couldn't remember the author.

Anyway, you might enjoy the novel Santa Evita by the Argentine writer Tomas Eloy Martinez. (He wrote most of his books in exile from Argentina...for fairly obvious reasons.) There are a lot of parallels between the Current Papal Corpse and the weirdness in Argentina when Eva Peron died.

Santa Evita is the black-comedy story of a hapless Argentine military officer, under orders to track down the wandering and well-preserved corpse of Eva Peron.

Martinez based his fiction in reality. In hopes of creating a shrine to Peronism, Juan Peron planned to plant Eva's body in a monument 3 times higher than the Statue Of Liberty. A Spanish pathologist, Dr. Pedro Ara, spent 2 years embalming her with internal organs intact.

Unfortunately, Peron was deposed and Evita's body ended up buried under a false name in Milan, Italy. Fourteen years later Peron slimed back into power and they dug her up. Eva still looked as fresh as an embalmed daisy. Hadn't decomposed a bit!