Category: [Religion & esoterica]

Someone just lost the Catholic vote…

So Mushroom Cock posted an AI picture of himself to his social media and, well, wow. Lots of people suddenly very angry with him that weren’t until now, even apparently non-Catholics. There seems to be some debate about whether or not he’s just trolling or does he actually think he should be Pope (wouldn’t be surprised to find that he does, obviously), and there’s equal debate about whether or not people should be offended either way or are they just being snowflakes, etc. And I do agree with Mr Hogan here:

Everything about him is an insult to someone or other, really. As a non-believer I’m finding it hard to be overly bothered by this, it just seems kind of par for the course with the dickhead, and if he hadn’t posted it one of his minions would’ve done. But at any rate he’s earning wrath and I’m all for wrath being aimed at him, including the wrath of the New York bishops’ conference… which is headed by one Timothy Dolan, who Trump himself more seriously suggested could actually be the Pope instead of him, and who is enough of a Trumpeter that he actually said Mushroom Cock “takes his Christian faith seriously” (and I’d love to know just what great reward he was paid to say that about someone who everyone paying attention knows believes in nothing except himself and money. And maybe tariffs). I think, however, this is going to strain the friendship… but then again, Dampnut will always have this clown:

Good Catholic, hey.

Here come the crotch-stepper

Last year I posted some old paintings of Jesus after his resurrection. A bit late for this Easter, I think I’ve found a new favourite via Bluesky:

“This initial from the 15th-century Chichele Breviary shows Christ rising from his tomb with the guards asleep around him. He appears triumphant, yet he still bears the wounds from his crucifixion. [MS 69 f. 118v]”

Also sprach the Lambeth Public Library Bluesky account. Christ not only appears triumphant, he also looks like he’s about to stand on the crotch of the dozy bastard on the ground. THAT would’ve been a rude awakening…

Non habemus papam

Well shit, RIP Frank. Not exactly a surprise, I know, and yet… somehow it is, despite that. He seemed to be doing well after getting out of hospital, well enough to do his Easter business just yesterday. Suppose his timing was good if nothing else. Maybe the thought of having to deal with J. Divans was what finished him off.

I am, alas, inclined to agree with Father Nathan here:

Yeah. With the general rightwards shift going on around the world, I can easily imagine the church doing the same. Not that I think it’s ever been a force for progress as such, but I think old Jorge was more forward-looking than most, and there’s going to be plenty of people in the Vatican who’ll be glad to see the back of him so they can let the Vatican slide backwards…

Tariffs for the Vatican!

Pope Ghosts JD Vance at Vatican, Sends Top Cardinal to Lecture VP on Compassion

Vice President JD Vance flew to Rome hoping to meet with Pope Francis. Instead, the Pope skipped the meeting entirely—and sent his top cardinal to deliver a pointed message about compassion and care for the vulnerable.
Vance was greeted not by the pontiff, but by Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican’s Secretary of State. In a statement, the Vatican said the meeting covered global conflicts, political unrest, and “difficult humanitarian situations,” with a clear focus on “migrants, refugees, and prisoners.”
The conversation sounded more like a lecture than a diplomatic exchange. And the Pope’s absence was hard to ignore.
While Sky News reported that Vance had a brief, private encounter with the Pope at his residence, there were no details, no photos, and no official mention. The real meeting—the one on the schedule—never happened.
The message? Clear enough: the Pope isn’t backing down from his public criticism of the Trump administration’s immigration agenda.

Old Frank was in hospital for a while there but, as the article notes, he’s out now and doing his public duties and met Charles and Camilla recently, so this is a very deliberate snub, meeting the leader of the opposition but not one of his highest-profile converts. Obviously the Catholic church still leaves much to be desired, but still nice to see. I suspect Mushroom Cock would declare the US to now be sedevacantist with regards to the church for this insult, if only he knew how to spell it…

Now Barabbas was hungry

This appears to be three men in loincloths on crosses next to what looks like a shopping centre parking lot with two Macca’s signs, and a fourth man in a loincloth hanging out at some tent to the side. I have absolutely no idea what this is otherwise about; obviously I know it’s a crucifixion scene, I’m not that dense, but… what really is going on? Were the dudes on the crosses doing it in shifts? Is the fourth guy supposed to be Barabbas? Is he taking his lunch break or something? Why is it taking place… there, wherever there is? I mean, I think the idea of staging the crucifixion like this is odd enough, but in that setting it seems more than usually incongruous.

Mid-air madness

That’s not really a combination of words I often see…

Less than a minute after an American Airlines flight took off from Savannah, Ga., for Miami on Monday night, a passenger began yelling and shaking. Flight attendants initially thought he was having a seizure.
But it turned out he was struggling because he believed a demonic spirit had invaded the cabin — and, at some point during the flight, began swallowing rosary beads to ward that spirit off.
As attendants approached the man, Delange Augustin, 31, he kicked one of them in the chest so hard that the attendant tumbled across the aisle and into a window on the other side of the plane, according to an arrest affidavit.
That’s when the cabin crew realized that Mr. Augustin, who was traveling with his sister, was not having a medical emergency. “Augustin’s choices appeared purposeful, though difficult to describe,” Savannah Solomon, a special agent with the F.B.I., wrote in the affidavit filed in the United States District Court in Chatham County.

Since the flight had only just started, it was easy enough for the pilots to turn around immediately and head back where it came from, but the guy kept freaking out:

In the detention center, Mr. Augustin’s sister told the authorities that they had been traveling to Haiti to “flee religious attacks of a spiritual nature,” according to the affidavit.
Mr. Augustin had told his sister “to close her eyes and pray because Satan’s disciple(s) had followed them onto the plane and the legion did not want the Augustins to make it to Haiti,” it said. He swallowed the rosary beads “because they are a weapon of strength in the spiritual warfare,” Mr. Augustin’s sister told Ms. Solomon.

I would question the bit about him not having a medical emergency; indeed I’d say BOTH of them are having one. And why would you fly to Haiti to escape from spiritual attacks? You’re going to the homeland of voodoo; if Satan is personally targeting you for some reason, wouldn’t he be even more likely to do it there? I see another article claiming the two are actually Haitians themselves, though, so maybe they were going there to use the, er, local knowledge? I don’t know, the whole thing is weird. I wonder what Satan’s putative agent made of it…

Unclean!

I saw this rather extraordinary image on Tumblr earlier today:

I was going to make some crack about the past being a foreign country and how different the medieval mind was to the modern one, but for some reason I couldn’t leave it at that. The original poster simply captioned it “Manuscript painting depicting a man expelling an amphibious creature”, and that clearly wasn’t enough. Who painted this thing and when and why? What was the amphibious creature doing?

Well, still not sure exactly who (it may or may not have been someone called Stephanus Garsia) but at least I have a better idea of why, cos this is only a detail from a bigger picture:

A bit of digging led me to this 8th century Spanish monk, Beatus of Liebana, whose major work was this thing:

The Commentary on the Apocalypse (Commentaria in Apocalypsin) is a Latin commentary on the biblical Book of Revelation written around 776 by the Spanish monk and theologian Beatus of Liébana (c. 730–after 785). The surviving texts differ somewhat, and the work is mainly famous for the spectacular illustrations in a group of illustrated manuscripts, mostly produced on the Iberian Peninsula over the following five centuries. There are 29 surviving illustrated manuscripts (many incomplete or fragments) dating from the 9th to the 13th centuries, as well as other unillustrated and later manuscripts. Significant copies include the Morgan, Saint-Sever, Gerona, Osma, Madrid (Vitr 14-1), and Tábara Beatus codices.
Most unusually for a theological work, the imagery seems to have been included from the start, and is considered to be the work of Beatus himself, although the earliest surviving manuscripts date from about a century after he wrote the book. After about another century, around 950, the size and number of illustrations was expanded. Manuscripts of the work are typically referred to just as a Beatus. They included a Beatus map, a version of the medieval type of world map called the T and O map with added details; this is supposed to have been created by Beatus. It has only survived in some copies.

This particular image hails from the Saint-Sever manuscript, produced some time in the mid-eleventh century, and depicts the unclean spirits coming out of the beast, the dragon, and the false prophet in Rev. 16:13, the text of which describes them as looking like frogs. Slightly more than just “amphibious creatures”, I’d say.

I’m puzzled as to why the original poster put the abbreviated version of the picture up with so little further info, though. I mean, it could very well be this is the only version of it they have or that they know, but… were they never curious about its origin like I was? It only took me a few minutes to find all this out, considerably less than it’s taken me to write about it… Whatever. At least I now know it’s not just the artist being wilfully weird, it was the drug abuser who wrote Revelation in the first place…