Antiquitopia

I just saw this site that shows the inside of the Sistine Chapel in 360. You can use your mouse to look at different parts and to zoom in and out. All without having to be guided in like cattle with all the other tourists. It's pretty cool.

According to the London Times , the Spanish Catholic Church with the backing of the Vatican has come out completely against the celebration of Halloween. The article quotes an earlier, more lenient position taken by the Vatican as follows: The Vatican appeared previously to take a more lenient position. Father Gabriele Amorth, the Vatican’s chief exorcist, once said: “If English and American children like to dress up as witches and devils on one night of the year, that’s not a problem. If it is just a game, there is no harm.” But the Spanish hierarchy begs to differ. Wearing skeleton suits, dressing up as vampires, witches or goblins or slapping on fake blood is not far removed from communing with the Devil, according to the country’s bishops. However, the bishops, with Vatican backing, have reserved their venom for the millions of parents who allowed their children to celebrate this “pagan” festival. Father Joan María Canals, the director of the Spanish Bishops Conference Committee o...

According to the NYTimes : The Vatican is quietly conducting two sweeping investigations of American nuns, a development that has startled and dismayed nuns who fear they are the targets of a doctrinal inquisition. Nuns were the often-unsung workers who helped build the Roman Catholic Church in this country, planting schools and hospitals and keeping parishes humming. But for the last three decades, their numbers have been declining — to 60,000 today from 180,000 in 1965. While some nuns say they are grateful that the Vatican is finally paying attention to their dwindling communities, many fear that the real motivation is to reel in American nuns who have reinterpreted their calling for the modern world. In the last four decades since the reforms of the Second Vatican Council, many American nuns stopped wearing religious habits, left convents to live independently and went into new lines of work: academia and other professions, social and political advocacy and grass-roots organization...

Do you believe in miracles? People in Colwich Kansas do . A boy survives a potentially fatal pole vaulting accident. In the process, the community prayed to the soul of a potentially martyred army chaplain in the Korean War, and the boy recovered. The Vatican has taken notice and is going to investigate whether or not this is, indeed, a miracle to be attributed to this chaplain, who is being investigated for sainthood. I know this is way outside of the land of antiquity, but it does raise interest (not just as a human interest story) since martyrdom, miracles, sainthood, and the intermediation of those saints is an important characteristic of early Christianity that persists today in nearly every Christian tradition (except Protestant ones).

The recently reinstated Holocaust-denying bishop has been asked to recant by the Pope. The Vatican, it seems, is responding to international pressure, especially in the Pope's native Germany, where Chancellor Angela Merkel stated that the Pope's recently stated positions on the Holocaust were not sufficiently clear or just weren't sufficient. The NYTimes reports: February 5, 2009 Vatican Demands Holocaust Denier Publicly Recant By RACHEL DONADIO ROME — Responding to global outrage, especially in Pope Benedict XVI’s native Germany, the Vatican for the first time on Wednesday called on a recently rehabilitated bishop to take back his statements denying the Holocaust. Late last month, the pope revoked the excommunication of four schismatic bishops, including British-born Richard Williamson, who in an interview broadcast last month denied the existence of the Nazi gas chambers. A statement issued on Wednesday by the Vatican Secretariat of State said that Bishop Williamson “mu...

I recently commented on the reinstatement of a Holocaust- (and 9/11-) denying bishop by the Vatican. Now the Vatican has issued a statement that says that the reinstatement does not mean that it agrees with the bishop's views. For text and commentary, see Rebecca Lesses at Mystical Politics .