Grilled Cheesed Mary

[Tyciol]

This is somewhat interesting, while not Christian myself I was wondering what some of you Christians thought of this...

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=5535890757

[Nick]

At the current bid, anyone paying that much for a moldy sandwich had better have some divine intervention, pronto!  

[Tyciol]

I'm supposing it's an organization/church. That or some rich guy. I lean to the former as most rich people just pretend to be Christian, they aren't really Christian.

[Leo Volont]

There is a greater point to be made here...

'Mary' in a sense 'resonates' to the popular Religious nerves of the common people.  This, at the same time as there have been numeous Marian Apparitions to multiple Seers and even to large crowds.

Every Great Civilization has gotten its start in some form of Goddess Worship.  So we may conjecture that Spirituality and Civilization are in Partnership.

Before dismissing Mary as a mere subjective fetish among uneducated Catholics (and is this not how Catholics are considered by the Non-Catholic World?) you should examine Catholic Iconology -- Mary is considered Queen of Angels and Patroness of all Saints.  The Catholic Church was brought by force of arms to surrender any notion that Mary Herself is a Goddess, but the Offices She holds and the Powers that She wields more or less speak for themselves.  

So, really, if you truly look about, the only Living and True Religion left in the World today is Marianism.  Nobody else's Face is seen in grilled cheese sandwiches, are they?

[Palehorse]

I was wondering what some of you Christians thought of this...

I'm not sure what's worse: taking something you really believe is a miraculous gift from God and trying to make a quick buck off it... or not really believing it, but trying to cash in on the faith of people who do.

Cynical?  Me?  Neeeever.

[Tyciol]

Actually I think there are just as many sitings of the Messiah as his Mother Mary, like in that cloak they thought he wore or something.

[Leo Volont]

I was wondering what some of you Christians thought of this...

I'm not sure what's worse: taking something you really believe is a miraculous gift from God and trying to make a quick buck off it... or not really believing it, but trying to cash in on the faith of people who do.

Cynical?  Me?  Neeeever.

It is possible to be too cynical.  Money, afterall, can be very important in its way.  For instance, I knew of one Catholic Diocese that was in somewhat of a jam because it was having trouble meeting its payroll -- the hospital and school employees could not be paid because the Bishop had been too lenient with the child-molester Priest of thirty some years before.  Anyway, the particular problem the Diocese had was with jewelry... a valuable necklace had been left to the Diocese... it had been appraised for a certain value, but when actually placed for sale, nobody was offering quite that much.  The Priests simply did not know what to do in that case.... they felt it was irresponsible to sell for less than the appraisal.  My advice to them was that any object is worth only what somebody would be willing to pay for it in cold hard cash... that an appraisal was good for establishing its value for insurance, or even for collateral against a loan, but in their present straights NOBODY would be willing to pay the Catholic Church full market value for ANYTHING, knowing that they would now be quite desparate for cash.  So I recommended they place their item for sale again, but pretend to be a secular organization, and NOT affiliated with the Catholic Church.  It sold within the week.

So, you see, it goes both ways, or, indeed, worldly people prove to be even more vile and base than Religious People.  Worldly people prove even more willing to let hospitals and schools close, if they think they can squeeze another 10% out of a purchase from a Church.

So, in a world where silly incoherent Fab Art can claim Six Figures per canvass, I don't think it is entirely out of line to pay $20,000 for a Work of Art from God.  The money will probably be spent no worse.

[Palehorse]

It is possible to be too cynical.

Yeah, but I don't think I'm there quite yet.  Pretty damn close, but not quite.  

(snip Catholic church story)

So, you see, it goes both ways, or, indeed, worldly people prove to be even more vile and base than Religious People. Worldly people prove even more willing to let hospitals and schools close, if they think they can squeeze another 10% out of a purchase from a Church.

Eh, to me it's not quite so simple in this case.  While it's certainly an admirable goal to keep hospitals and schools up and running, does that justify tricking people into unknowingly giving their money to a religious organization that they might not otherwise?  

Secondly, the RCC itself got itself into this mess, and it has more than enough funds to cover expenses during the times when donations are down.  Given that fact, if a Catholic school or a hospital should be forced to shut down, then no one bears ethical responsibility except the higher-ups in the church itself.  I realize that not a whole lot of the church's unfathomable wealth ever finds its way down to the individual diocese, but that's not really the fault of anyone other than those who control it.  So no, I can't really bring myself to feel sorry for the Catholic church when people opt not to give them money.

All things considered, I'd say one is probably better off donating to a secular hospital anyway... one whose livelihood won't stand or fall based on the Catholic church's latest scandal.

So, in a world where silly incoherent Fab Art can claim Six Figures per canvass, I don't think it is entirely out of line to pay $20,000 for a Work of Art from God. The money will probably be spent no worse.

People do lots of silly things, but putting a religious front on it doesn't make it any less silly... or wasteful.  From a biblical perspective, the motives behind this thing are essentially upside-down.  The woman is selling this 10 year old sandwich with the implied premise that it has helped her win lots of money, and it can help YOU too (though I doubt that someone who can throw down $20k for a sandwich is starving to begin with).  In addition to being a rather dubious claim, the whole thing is a money making scheme on both ends, which doesn't exactly have much in common with Christ's commands about how money should be managed.  

Your line of reasoning just seems rather inconsistent, in that you're condemning non-Catholics for not forking their money over to the richest church on earth so it can pay the bills, then defending a woman who's asking $20,000 for a petrified sandwich that is supposed to help you win big in casinos.  I mean, just think what a school or a hospital could do with that 20 grand.  

[Leo Volont]

...the RCC itself got itself into this mess, and it has more than enough funds to cover expenses during the times when donations are down.  Given that fact, if a Catholic school or a hospital should be forced to shut down, then no one bears ethical responsibility except the higher-ups in the church itself.

You know, I hope you get very sick someday, and that there are no hospitals to see you because they are all shut down while the sundry "higher ups" are taking their various responsibilities.

It is disgusting how brainwashed people are, and how justified they feel, in hating the Catholic Church.  It never occurs to them to examine to whom power is transferred as the Catholic Church is progressively deminished.

But people should be reminded that if not for the Catholic Church, the West would not have a single Saint.  Without the Catholic Church, the West would have not a single valid Spiritual Tradition.  Without the Catholic Church, the spiritual aspirants of the world would be stuck with a virtual monopoly of silly Gurus from India.

[Palehorse]

You know, I hope you get very sick someday, and that there are no hospitals to see you because they are all shut down while the sundry "higher ups" are taking their various responsibilities.

If they did, then I wouldn't have that problem now, would I?

But I love you too, Leo.  

It is disgusting how brainwashed people are, and how justified they feel, in hating the Catholic Church. It never occurs to them to examine to whom power is transferred as the Catholic Church is progressively deminished.

I don't hate the Catholic church.  I see it as an organization run by human beings, with all the faults humans have, especially when they posess inordinate amounts of money and power.  I don't think they're especially evil or anything like that; I just think that they have too much money, power and too little accountability for their own good.  I wouldn't consider myself brainwashed either, as I've studied Church history from Catholic, Protestant and secular sources, and drawn my own conclusions.  I see just as many faults within Protestantism... it's just that they're too fragmented and decentralized to be able to do much damage on the world scene.  Protestants have been guilty of all the same atrocities, albeit on a much smaller scale, and I have little doubt that if they ever had as much power, we'd probably see the Dark Ages version 2.0.  The Eastern Orthodox might have the best record from what I can tell... though it could be that I just haven't studied them as much.  Anyway, I have a lot of good things to say about the Catholic church too -- their mystical tradition is awesome, they've produced some excellent theologians, and they really have done a lot of good charity work around the world.

But people should be reminded that if not for the Catholic Church, the West would not have a single Saint.

Non-Catholic Christians who view all Christians as "saints," and non-Christians who don't care about saints either way, probably wouldn't see that as a problem.  IMO that's a pretty speculative claim though.  For one thing, there were prominent and well known Christians running around long before Rome became a major Christian center with its own bishop.  Secondly, if Christianity hadn't become a major world religion, there would probably be some other major western religion with its own set of saints.

Without the Catholic Church, the West would have not a single valid Spiritual Tradition.

If you're defining "valid" as "Roman Catholic," then sure.  

Otherwise, Judaism and Islam are both considered western religions, though I suppose Islam might not have risen without all the Christian influence it contains.  Anyway, I think a good case can be made that pre-Catholic Christianity would have continued to thrive as it had for 4 centuries, even if Constantine hadn't made it the official state religion of the empire.  Or, maybe a completely different religion would have become a world religion instead.  It's really kind of pointless to speculate about what *could* have happened... that is, unless you've perfected the ability to astral project to alternate timelines.  Which would just be bloody awesome.

Without the Catholic Church, the spiritual aspirants of the world would be stuck with a virtual monopoly of silly Gurus from India.

Without the Catholic church, a whole lot of writings from Christians whose beliefs and practices differed with what eventually came to be the RCC's "orthodoxy" might have survived to us today.  Origen of Alexandria is probably the best example I can think of offhand.  During his time (early-mid 2nd century) he was *the* most prolific writer, famous teacher and defender of the faith against Pagan critics.  Well, several centuries after his death (5th century IIRC) some of his ideas were condemned as heresy and so many of his writings were destroyed.  As Origen was almost solely responsible for turning Christianity into a complete philosophical and logically consistent worldview that could be taken seriously by the intellectuals of his day, I'd say that's just a bit unfair, not to mention detrimental to the Church's subsequent development.  He never deviated from the Church in his lifetime... the Church deviated from *him.*

But yeah, the point is that I'm going to have to disagree with your claim that the Roman Catholic church is the sole contributor and defender of "valid" Western spirituality.

I might also counter with the fact that if the RCC had remained as powerful as it once was, we wouldn't have had Western democracy, either.  As I learned in a class last semester, the RCC was quite adamant in its opposition to the new governmental/social order, and tried to keep their members from emigrating here, as their view was, in the words of the Pope, that "error has no rights."  And btw, the professor for that class was (very) Catholic.