How to critique a Pope.

I came across this amusing little event from the Papal visit: http://liveshots.blogs.foxnews.com/2010/09/19/one-protester-the-pope-would-have-liked/  It gave a shrewd (if belated) idea about what should have been put on the outside wall of God's Drawing Room.  Take your triptych on the wall, put a bearded, married Eastern orthodox cleric in the St John the Evangelist position with a red tick under it, do the same in the BVM position with a female cleric in Anglican choir dress and have da Holy Fadda in the middle with and big red "X" underneath and "Drop the Filoque!" as a superscription.  It's clever, mildly amusing and subtly delivers a triple critique: Rome is out of step on married clergy, women clergy AND Trinitarian Doctrine!!  Hindsight is, of course wonderful!

I rather enjoyed the Rowan Williams dig at Benedict: "I have 2 things in common with the Holy Father: I love cats and I'm hospitably inclined towards Anglican clergy." Very gentle, but rather funny.  Nice one RW!

Religious stuff - as per usual!

Saturday was spent doing a little but long overdue visit to the historic Rosslyn Chapel -or Collegiate Church of St Matthew, Roslin - one of the few medieval building then SEC has in use.  Which is (of course) much more important than all that Da Vinci code stuff! It was quite interesting, but frankly £7.50 is a bit steep to get in.  Don't blame the Church though - it is a private Chapel and the fees are set by the Trust.  I took a wee picnic with me (chicken Caesar salad, nice healthy yoghurt with fruit clusters, lemon and lime spring water - and a triple choc donut!!) and basked in the sunshine in Roslin Glen whilst tackling the Times Jumbo crossword, getting all but 2 clues!

This morning involved the usual trip to Spiky Mike's then a wee trip downtown to enjoy the continuing sunshine.  As I passed St John's Episcopal Drawing Room Princes Street, I took note of the new mural they have painted on their wall to make Pope Benny feel welcome to Embra. On two of the 3 panels they have Copernicus and Galileo with big red crosses ("wrong" crosses like they used to put in my Math's jotter at skool) underneath them and below that the comment "Oops!".  The centre panel is a woman in a dog collar elevating a host and chalice with a big red cross underneath with the crossed silver and gold keys of  the Papal Insignia inset.  I really don't approve.  Legitimate protest is one thing but the internal affairs of the RC church are their own business, not ours and if CWO (Catholic Women's Ordination) want to do it, let them take out a billboard on some neutral space and do so.  Also, it looked rather puerile and the woman wasn't even properly vested!  Bad manners, unecumenical and rather childish. St John's run a Festival of Spirituality and peace devoted to respectful dialogue between opposing viewpoints.  this hardly reflects that ideal. Liberals, like Aunts, aren't Gentlemen, Jeeves!

Thus narked, I headed to the RC Cathedral to pray (I felt some Reparation was called for).  Sadly I arrived in the midst of some modern devotion to something called The Divine Mercy.  I say sadly, as it was liturgical ghastliness incarnate.  The monstrance was off centre (sloppy and distracting), there was a 20ft high painting of the DM next to the altar (making it utterly impossible to focus on the sacrament in the titchy monstrance - if Jesus is out, don't stick another devotion in there at the same time - it's totally contray to the principles of liturgical devotion).  There was an OHP (not a Whitby nun, but a peice of kit beloved of 70's charismatics) projecting hymns and texts in English and Polish (looks awful - use Powerpoint).  The hymns were trite modern, banal and badly sung by a duo who couldn't sing in harmony together ("Wan singer, Wan song" as they say in the West!).  The best bit was when the cats duet went quiet ,they switched off the projector and let us simply adore the Blessed Sacrament in silence. I like the Roman Church, but we Piskys do Catholicism so much better!

In the evening I went to a reasonably interesting talk on praying with icons in a Presby church given by the local Greek Orthodox priest.  A fairly diverse day indeed!

Wee Free whining.

The weel kent Wee Free theologian Donald MacLeod has had a wee pop at the Papal visit in a rather crabby way. I snaffled this from the Edinburgh Evening Snooze:

"In his weekly column in the West Highland Free Press, Professor Macleod said: "On the face of things the forthcoming papal visit to Britain should be an unqualified publicity triumph, offering a heady mixture of theatre, religion and politics.

"It is hard to avoid the conclusion that the event was deliberately timed to clash with the 450th anniversary of the Scottish Reformation.

"Ironically the spoiling tactic has turned out to be entirely unnecessary. Our SNP Government has no intention whatever of acknowledging Scotland's debt to the Reformation, and even less of honouring John Knox, the greatest of all our nation-builders, but now safely airbrushed out of our history.

"That he saved us from national economic ruin, laid the foundation of our national system of education and fired us with an aversion to tyranny, now counts for nothing. Our Government is in Knox-denial

"Why does secular, humanist Scotland so warmly entertain Catholicism, with all its authoritarianism, and yet register terror at the mere mention of the religion of Knox?

"Is it just that we're suckers for funny costumes, and love to see old men dressed in ancient Roman togas?"

No, Donald, it's just that you can't have much of a party with crabbit, dour Calvinists who whine about their loss of dominance over a nation and culture they did much to twist into a superlapsarian parody of the Gospel of Grace. At least Benny's boys affirmed culture like Mozart et al and not just whiny Gaelic psalmody or dreich paraphrases. And, by the way, the religion of Knox included decent liturgical order in the Book of Common Order and regular communion, not dull ministerial monologues-cum-hymn-sandwiches with a quarterly sacrament. And a Kirk that wears Geneva gowns can scarcely carp about funny costumes. PS the chasuble is based on the outdoor cloak known as the paenula, not on the toga. Where were you Professor again? Oh, the Free Church College - not a real University!