Papabile: Papal predictions thread

[Malthus]

I'm kind of curious how he managed to do it and manage to not be fired by the congregation.

Well, as long as he doesn't pull a full Jim Morrison and actually demonstrate said organ ... I just assume everyone in the audience was tuning out whatever he had to say and so didn't get the reference. 

[Caliga]

Is Cal ever going to stop remembering extra things his grandpa did ?   

I think I may have it all now, actually:

* throw water on babies
* talk to people about getting married
* marry people
* comfort old people scared of death
* funerals
* write sermons and copy other guys' sermons
* meals on wheels
* Sunday services

[Caliga]

Well, as long as he doesn't pull a full Jim Morrison and actually demonstrate said organ ... I just assume everyone in the audience was tuning out whatever he had to say and so didn't get the reference. 

I remember being bored out of my mind during his sermons.   I used to memorize the maps in the back of the Bible since I've always loved geography.   He had a good speaking voice--very booming and authoritative--but was a pretty bad singer and Lutheran pastors have to sing as well as speak during services.

[mongers]

Is Cal ever going to stop remembering extra things his grandpa did ?   

I think I may have it all now, actually:

* throw water on babies
* talk to people about getting married
* marry people
* comfort old people scared of death
* funerals
* write sermons and copy other guys' sermons
* meals on wheels
* Sunday services

So now Forest Gump-like activities, you might have forgotten to tell us about.   

[Admiral Yi]

@ Cal: Like during the hymns, or are there parts of the service that need to be chanted/sung?

[Caliga]

*checks* Christ, I'm wrong... he's still a pastor emeritus.  He told me he was gonna retire from that once he hit 90.

[Malthus]

Well, as long as he doesn't pull a full Jim Morrison and actually demonstrate said organ ... I just assume everyone in the audience was tuning out whatever he had to say and so didn't get the reference. 

I remember being bored out of my mind during his sermons.   I used to memorize the maps in the back of the Bible since I've always loved geography.   He had a good speaking voice--very booming and authoritative--but was a pretty bad singer and Lutheran pastors have to sing as well as speak during services.

There is nothing quite like the Jewish ceremonies my mom made me attend as a kid - 3 solid hours long (or longer), conducted almost entirely in a language nobody understood (namely, Hebrew).

The only thing keeping me sane was reading the Bibles they had in the pews. I got a very good Biblical education out of it. To this day, I'm pretty good with OT biblical references. 

[Caliga]

@ Cal: Like during the hymns, or are there parts of the service that need to be chanted/sung?

My memory of how Lutheran services work is kinda fuzzy.  My mother was raised a Methodist and my dad refused to go to a Lutheran church, so we went to Presbyterian and Methodist churches when I was a kid.  That said, all Protestant services are broadly similar except for some outliers like the Quakers (  ).  I want to say Lutheran services tend to be more conservative and Catholic-like in that there is a lot of standing up, sitting down, kneeling, etc. and yes, there are these weird recital things between readings and hymns that are sort of like long prayers that are sung.  For the actual hymns, Gramps would sit down and let the music person lead the choir, but for the half-and-half things, he would lead that song himself, and since he had a microphone his tone-deafness was totally apparent to everyone.  But his whitebread, yet still James-Earl-Jones-like voice probably caused people to overlook his lack of singing talent.

[Valmy]

There is nothing quite like the Jewish ceremonies my mom made me attend as a kid - 3 solid hours long (or longer), conducted almost entirely in a language nobody understood (namely, Hebrew).

The only thing keeping me sane was reading the Bibles they had in the pews. I got a very good Biblical education out of it. To this day, I'm pretty good with OT biblical references. 

Man that is a novel way to get kids to read the Bible.  I guess in Israel they get to enjoy ceremonies in their own language.

[Caliga]

Actually now that Malthus mentioned that, I seem to remember that some of the singing prayer shit in the Lutheran church was in Latin, which is kind of strange given Martin Luther's thoughts on Christianity and the vernacular.

[mongers]

Well, as long as he doesn't pull a full Jim Morrison and actually demonstrate said organ ... I just assume everyone in the audience was tuning out whatever he had to say and so didn't get the reference. 

I remember being bored out of my mind during his sermons.   I used to memorize the maps in the back of the Bible since I've always loved geography.   He had a good speaking voice--very booming and authoritative--but was a pretty bad singer and Lutheran pastors have to sing as well as speak during services.

There is nothing quite like the Jewish ceremonies my mom made me attend as a kid - 3 solid hours long (or longer), conducted almost entirely in a language nobody understood (namely, Hebrew).

The only thing keeping me sane was reading the Bibles they had in the pews. I got a very good Biblical education out of it. To this day, I'm pretty good with OT biblical references. 

Kinda odd really, what were you parents thinking ?  It couldn't have been to instil the faith in you, as it seem predetermined to bore you.

And the culture is a given, so maybe they wanted you to be Not a religiously observant person ?

[Malthus]

There is nothing quite like the Jewish ceremonies my mom made me attend as a kid - 3 solid hours long (or longer), conducted almost entirely in a language nobody understood (namely, Hebrew).

The only thing keeping me sane was reading the Bibles they had in the pews. I got a very good Biblical education out of it. To this day, I'm pretty good with OT biblical references. 

Man that is a novel way to get kids to read the Bible.  I guess in Israel they get to enjoy ceremonies in their own language.

Fun fact: I was watching Museum Secrets yesterday and they did an episode on the Israeli National Museum - one story-segement was on the Mr. Spock Vulcan handsign-Cohenim thing.

The strange part: they found one of the very earliest written Hebrew religious texts on a small, rolled-up metallic amulet. When it was (painstakingly) unrolled and translated, it read the Cohenim priestly benediction, essentally if loosely translated as: "live long and prosper". 

[Malthus]

Kinda odd really, what were you parents thinking ?  It couldn't have been to instil the faith in you, as it seem predetermined to bore you.

And the culture is a given, so maybe they wanted you to be Not a religiously observant person ?

Nope. Judaism isn't really as big on faith, as on doing the stuff you should be doing. You are "observant" if you do the right rituals, never mind WTF you actually believe. Hence, reading the right mumbo-jumbo is cool, even if no-one understands it. Presumably God understands it, and your attendance is noted, if not my him personally, given he's the figment of the early Iron Age imagination, at least by everyone else in the community.

In any event, translating it doesn't make it any more edifying. It is mostly various blessings on the diety and rituals of appeasement, repeated ad nauseum. God, you are great, king of the universe, thank you for creating bread. God, you are great, king of the universe, thank you for creating wine ...

[mongers]

Kinda odd really, what were you parents thinking ?  It couldn't have been to instil the faith in you, as it seem predetermined to bore you.

And the culture is a given, so maybe they wanted you to be Not a religiously observant person ?

Nope. Judaism isn't really as big on faith, as on doing the stuff you should be doing. You are "observant" if you do the right rituals, never mind WTF you actually believe. Hence, reading the right mumbo-jumbo is cool, even if no-one understands it. Presumably God understands it, and your attendance is noted, if not my him personally, given he's the figment of the early Iron Age imagination, at least by everyone else in the community.

In any event, translating it doesn't make it any more edifying. It is mostly various blessings on the diety and rituals of appeasement, repeated ad nauseum. God, you are great, king of the universe, thank you for creating bread. God, you are great, king of the universe, thank you for creating wine ...

But you aren't particularly observant are you. 

Odd, the way you describe it, one of Judaism son/daughter religions seems to have latched to how you describe the rituals in quite a big way. 

[Malthus]

But you aren't particularly observant are you. 

Neither was my mother. Both my parents (my dad in theory being Christian) thought religion was nonsense, except for socially. So did both sets of grandparents. 

In my own strange way, I'm more religious than literally generations of my family, both sides.

Odd, the way you describe it, one of Judaism son/daughter religions seems to have latched to how you describe the rituals in quite a big way.

You mean that whole Christian thing about Judaism being a bunch of empty rituals?

In one sense it's a fair cop - Judaism is simply more focused on ritual that (at least early) Christianity.

However, that has nothing to do with the ethical content of Judaism, which exists quite apart from the ritual stuff, and has always, at least to some thinkers, been linked to the ethic or reciprocity (that is, the "Golden Rule").

There is a famous anecdote told of Rabbi Hillel (who lived roughly contemporary with Jesus - well, within a century or so). A non-Jew asked him to describe the teachings of the Torah, but with this restrction: he had to do it during the time he could stand on one foot.

His answer was something like "do not do to others what you would not want to have done to yourself. That's the whole of the teachings and the law; the rest is commentaries. Go and learn".

The key to understanding Judaism is that it is, in fact, and extremely well-thought-out religious and philosophical system that has been elaborated and refined by some of the world's great intellects over centuries  - but that just happens to be based on a religion invented by a bunch of vicious, illiterate, sheep-herding early Iron Age bedouin types, featuring a deity who, in the earliest stories about him, acts just like a powerful, angry, paranoid tribal chieftan.