Digital Vatican

You may or may not be aware, the Vatican is digitizing its collections.

Think about this a moment.

There are things in the Vatican collections which are entirely unique. Hundreds of years old. Fascinating and beautiful and even, dare I say, education and/or informational. And they're digitizing it. I cannot begin to describe my joy. 4000 manuscripts. It's too much to ever get to, I'm sure, but it's there and I'm happy. It's one of those things I think about sometimes; the Vatican contains so much history, which hardly anybody is able to scratch the surface of. Access is limited (though I confess I don't know the full details of this. I'm sure scholars are permitted to do research there. I'm sure showing up at the Vatican and saying "let me in, I'm Catholic!" though true, would not just let me in.)

The Oxford library (the Bodlein Library specifically) has also made some of its super old manuscripts available online, for free.

Another fantastically amazing religious book which is available to view online now is the Gigas Codex, which translates to "Giant Book", but is also referred to colloquially as the Devil's Bible. It's the "real" Bible, as it were, in Latin [of varying dialects], but also contains a big huge picture of the devil, and then other non-Christian-Bible style documents. Oh yeah, and legend has it that it was written by a monk who traded his soul to the Devil so the book would be finished in one night, like some kind of fucked up Christmas Carol. National Geographic did a neat documentary on it, and it really is a huge book. Like, coffee table sized.

Pope Francis actually puts quite a lot of emphasis on the Devil, mentioning him in speeches fairly frequently. I confess I haven't really paid attention to prior popes' speeches, so I'm not familiar with all of the content. It could be that secular media are just blown away that we Catholics still believe in such things, I don't know. This year in May was the 9th annual Exorcism and Prayer for Liberation conference in Rome, and Pope Francis has only been pope since 2013, so clearly the Devil has still been in mind.

Though I don't think you need me to tell you I think Pope Francis is a rock star. Calling out a Bishop for spending millions on his official residence? Not picking up the red leather shoes the former Pope Benedict had made for him? Auctioning his own Harley (and leather jacket) for charity?

Demon, Out

They say the pope performed an exorcism on some guy from Mexico. Just out there, in front of God and everyone (heh), whilst walking through St. Peter's Square. I don't think he did.

Not because I don't believe in exorcisms, mind you. But because I believe if the pope is in fact an exorcist, he would not be so irresponsible as to carry one out off the cuff in public, without any level of preparation. I'm fairly confident in saying that no exorcist worth his salt would do such a thing. 

 Also, evidently, the man who the pope prayed for says he's still possessed, and will be so long as abortion is legal in Mexico City.

Now, far be it for me to think I know more about demonic possession than the guy who's demonically possessed, but if you say you're possessed by demons because God wants to send the world a message about sinners passing an abortion law......well, yeah. I mean sure, it's possible to really read into the book of Job and think of Satan as doing God's works (I guess he has to be, if God made him in the first place), or you're probably actually say, schizophrenic or some other mental illness. "I have a message that only God says I can give, with X condition".

This is actually an important facet of modern exorcism (to the Catholic church, anyway): it is necessary to determine that the patient is not, in fact, simply mentally ill. This is one reason (I think) people in movies and things always have such a terrible time getting the Church to help them. If just anybody who was all "lol, possession" could get an exorcism, it diminishes the weight of the matter. The Bart Simpsons of the world would amuse themselves by filling out the web form and getting priests to come to their house. It's also an unfortunate facet of some peoples' mental illness that they think God is punishing them, or the Devil is speaking to them, or has done something to their children.

People of other religious affiliation are apparently not so fastidious, as we hear tales of autistic children dying at the hands of misbegotten exorcists. These are not, I will hasten to point out, Catholic exorcisms, but rather Born Again flavored instead. This isn't to say that there has never been a death in a Catholic exorcism; the case of Anneliese Michel comes to mind. The movie The Exorcism of Emily Rose is based on her case, and really what got me interested in the niceties of all this to begin with. See, I am Catholic, but grew up in the 80's. Mass was not in Latin, and Sunday School was, regrettably, a little more like Catholic Arts and Crafts other than the years where we were taking a sacrament. They didn't tell us a whole lot of the "good stuff" (not unlike history class in school, really). I can make a nice rosary, at least.

The Things We Carry

To date, I've enjoyed Tim O'Brien's book The Things They Carried the best so far as Vietnam writings go. I'm not sure if it could be properly called a novel, or essays, but I tend to read things as fiction anyway, so it doesn't bother me any. It's some of the finest prose pertaining to wartime situation that I've read, though not all of the stories contained happen in the Jungle, but a serious book too in its somewhat dreaminess, not like Catch-22 (which was about World War II but still somehow funny) or Matterhorn (which got too big for its britches and was equal parts too serious and too slangy), or The Short Timers (if you've watched "Full Metal Jacket", you know The Short Timers) or Generation Kill (book and miniseries are about equivalent).

The title is both literal and figurative. What I've been thinking about is the same way.