Mind the gaffe…
April 14, 2008, 1:34 pm
Posted by Grant Gallicho
The New York Times is assembling an impressive amount of coverage for the papal visit, but its diagram of the Communion-distribution plan for Yankee Stadium contained an amusing gaffe. Can you find it?
“Symbolically” transustantiated hosts? Isn’t that a logical impossibility?
The hosts will be transubstantiated by the Holy Spirit whom the Pope will invoke. The more obvious gaffe is the adverb “symbolically”. But I think the problem is theological rather than logical. If one believed that Christ was only going to be symbolically present, I supppose one could speak of a symbolic transubstantiation.
I see “Source: Archdiocese of New York” on the figure. Does that mean they really supply this text? Or was it edited/interpreted by the Times?
Shouldn’t he have doffed his mitre while doing this symbolic transubstantiating?
It’s a cute graphic, actually. The Times has a better one on how they can distribute it all in 15 mins, as per Vatican regs. Pope Ben does not want wafers wandering about. Watch when folks receive communion from the Pope–the minders make sure they consume right there. Too many folks want to walk home with the ultimate papal souvenir.
Should he call the wafer-cartoon the Blessed Sacrament after the consecration-cartoon? (Guess that’s not a gaffe, because the author of the article is probably not Catholic.)
I noticed that myself, but also wondered if you might be referring to the fact that the hosts that they are using from Corpus Christi in the Bronx are–if the first and second drawings are to be believed–apparently ten feet tall.
This will make distributing them quite difficult, I think.
If truth be told we should all protest this flagrant, baroque, Cecil De Mille spectacle farce. Commentators are going to crow about how beautiful it all is and paid religious commentators will say “Holy Father” and Holy Father that. Most who will publicly ooing and aweing will go quickly go back to the rat race and cringe about how much they had to lie in public.
Why no one protests this shows how we have become inured to farce and show business religion. I can understand if some of us are too afraid or intimidated to more visibly protest the serious shortcomings of this pope. But we should all agree that stuff like this must stop.
In the days of Paul and some of the saints people truly gravitated towards those who led us. Now it is staged, managed, manufactured and pretentious. It is sound and fury signifying what?
It seems more and more providential that the ranks of the ordained are rapidly dwindling with few replacements. 530 priests will distribute communion and three thousand more priests and deacons will assist. In just a few decades those numbers will be impossible to match.
Maybe then there will be better ways to see true rebirth of people who will follow Jesus of Nazareth.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/12/nyregion/12pope.html?_r=1&ref=nyregion&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin
There is a Leni Riefenstahl quality to all of this, mutatis mutandis.
Hey Joe, comparing the Holy Father’s ceremony to Nazi propaganda: way to go, buddy! Now I know why I keep coming back to this blog; its so inspirational. This is where its at, this is a happening blog. And with my favorite resident scold Bill Mazzella into the bargain. Such a deal…
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