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Showing posts with label religion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label religion. Show all posts
ReadWriteWeb is one of my favorite sites, ever. From yesterday:
In light of this news, the author rightfully asks, "Who's next? The President of the US, the Pope, who isn't on YouTube these days?"
Indeed. Maybe the Pope can start tweeting papal bulls from home.
I am reminded of the chapter in Miller & Slater's The Internet: An Ethnographic Approach(2000) where Catholic priests in Trinidad suggested that "spiritual journeys" via IRC may be more effective at solving holistic problems of the mind, body, spirit and matter than the offline equivalent.
At any rate, the Internet is a haven for proselytizing hoards of all varieties, religious or otherwise, so I'm just surprised that it has taken the Vatican so long to hop on board. But checking out YouTube, it's easy to find plenty of thesheep flock doing the grassroots production work for them.
Ah, I'm smiling now because I just remembered how, when I was an undergraduate, I wrote an experimental essay for an original and incredibly fun course entitled Ritual and Belief, run by one of my doctoral supervisors (who has just retired). In it, I questioned to what extent the Internet itself had religious elements, and somehow weaved in the hypothesis that the ludic nature of online behavior such as IRC and RP made the web an immaterial, liminal realm inhabited by millenarian obsessives who wish to surrender themselves to an eternal state of Turner's communitas ( "mutual confrontation of human beings stripped of status role characteristics") . I may even have suggested that all Internet users are themselves like Gods, having achieved a certain form of utopia akin to the Christian concept of heaven in their transcendence of offline, physical limitations and failings. I really hope someone is still running that course. It was good fun.
I am full of nostalgia for the years when I could write something ridiculous and receive decent credit for creativity without the tedium of peer revision and substantive criticism. Oh - besides blogging!
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Pope in a Box: The Vatican Comes to YouTube
Pope Benedict XVI made a big jump into the world of social networking today, making public statements about Facebook and MySpace and launching an official Vatican channel on YouTube. [read full article, I highly recommend it]
In light of this news, the author rightfully asks, "Who's next? The President of the US, the Pope, who isn't on YouTube these days?"
Indeed. Maybe the Pope can start tweeting papal bulls from home.
I am reminded of the chapter in Miller & Slater's The Internet: An Ethnographic Approach(2000) where Catholic priests in Trinidad suggested that "spiritual journeys" via IRC may be more effective at solving holistic problems of the mind, body, spirit and matter than the offline equivalent.
At any rate, the Internet is a haven for proselytizing hoards of all varieties, religious or otherwise, so I'm just surprised that it has taken the Vatican so long to hop on board. But checking out YouTube, it's easy to find plenty of the
Ah, I'm smiling now because I just remembered how, when I was an undergraduate, I wrote an experimental essay for an original and incredibly fun course entitled Ritual and Belief, run by one of my doctoral supervisors (who has just retired). In it, I questioned to what extent the Internet itself had religious elements, and somehow weaved in the hypothesis that the ludic nature of online behavior such as IRC and RP made the web an immaterial, liminal realm inhabited by millenarian obsessives who wish to surrender themselves to an eternal state of Turner's communitas ( "mutual confrontation of human beings stripped of status role characteristics") . I may even have suggested that all Internet users are themselves like Gods, having achieved a certain form of utopia akin to the Christian concept of heaven in their transcendence of offline, physical limitations and failings. I really hope someone is still running that course. It was good fun.
I am full of nostalgia for the years when I could write something ridiculous and receive decent credit for creativity without the tedium of peer revision and substantive criticism. Oh - besides blogging!
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The significance of human nourishment (or lack thereof).
Parish stages hunger strike to back priest
Members of a Spanish village parish have gone on hunger strike in protest at the transfer of their much-loved priest to another church, the newspaper El Pais reported Monday. Eighteen members of a parish in Albunol in the southern province of Granada have refused to eat in protest at the transfer of Gabriel Castillo, and 200 parishioners have locked themselves in the church in an attempt to keep him as their priest. But Castillo's transfer has been brought forward, El Pais said on its Web site, as the protests continue.
The youthful Castillo is popular with parishioners because he has involved himself with local social issues such as immigration and poverty. The protesters say Castillo is being transferred because his ideas clash with a group of local nuns, who since his arrival have been hearing mass in a nearby village. [source]
PNG apologises for eating Fiji missionaries
The descendants of cannibals who killed and ate four Fijian missionaries in 1878 have apologised for their forefathers' actions, the Australian Associated Press reported Thursday. Fiji's High Commissioner to Papua New Guinea, Ratu Isoa Tikoca, accepted the apologies at a reconciliation ceremony attended by thousands of people near Rabaul in East New Britain province on Wednesday. "We at this juncture are deeply touched and wish you the greatest joy of forgiveness as we finally end this record disagreement," Tikoca said. PNG's Governor-General Paulias Matane told the crowd he appreciated the work of the early Fijian missionaries in spreading Christianity, AAP said.
The ceremony marked 132 years since Methodist ministers and teachers from Fiji arrived in the New Guinea islands region in 1875 headed by Englishman George Brown. In April 1878, a Fijian minister and three teachers were killed and eaten by Tolai tribespeople on the Gazelle Peninsula. Brown directed and took part in a punitive expedition that resulted in a number of Tolais being killed and several villages burnt down. His actions caused a storm of protest in the Methodist Church in Australia and elsewhere. Official investigations by British colonial authorities in the Pacific cleared him of criminal charges. [source]
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Parish stages hunger strike to back priest
Members of a Spanish village parish have gone on hunger strike in protest at the transfer of their much-loved priest to another church, the newspaper El Pais reported Monday. Eighteen members of a parish in Albunol in the southern province of Granada have refused to eat in protest at the transfer of Gabriel Castillo, and 200 parishioners have locked themselves in the church in an attempt to keep him as their priest. But Castillo's transfer has been brought forward, El Pais said on its Web site, as the protests continue.
The youthful Castillo is popular with parishioners because he has involved himself with local social issues such as immigration and poverty. The protesters say Castillo is being transferred because his ideas clash with a group of local nuns, who since his arrival have been hearing mass in a nearby village. [source]
PNG apologises for eating Fiji missionaries
The descendants of cannibals who killed and ate four Fijian missionaries in 1878 have apologised for their forefathers' actions, the Australian Associated Press reported Thursday. Fiji's High Commissioner to Papua New Guinea, Ratu Isoa Tikoca, accepted the apologies at a reconciliation ceremony attended by thousands of people near Rabaul in East New Britain province on Wednesday. "We at this juncture are deeply touched and wish you the greatest joy of forgiveness as we finally end this record disagreement," Tikoca said. PNG's Governor-General Paulias Matane told the crowd he appreciated the work of the early Fijian missionaries in spreading Christianity, AAP said.
The ceremony marked 132 years since Methodist ministers and teachers from Fiji arrived in the New Guinea islands region in 1875 headed by Englishman George Brown. In April 1878, a Fijian minister and three teachers were killed and eaten by Tolai tribespeople on the Gazelle Peninsula. Brown directed and took part in a punitive expedition that resulted in a number of Tolais being killed and several villages burnt down. His actions caused a storm of protest in the Methodist Church in Australia and elsewhere. Official investigations by British colonial authorities in the Pacific cleared him of criminal charges. [source]
.
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Filed under:
anthropology,
Anthropology of Food,
awareness,
cannibalism,
eating,
Fiji,
history,
hunger,
nourishment,
PNG,
priest,
religion,
Spain,
strike
Nuns get into the Internet habit
Cloistered nuns at a convent in Sicily have decided that their vow of silence may rule out gossiping with locals or telephoning old friends, but it does not exclude going online to swap emails. The 12 Cistercian nuns of the 13th-century Santo Spirito convent in Agrigento have set up a website and are happy to take questions about what it is like to pray for hours in silence every day. The sisters, who speak to visitors, if pushed, through a grille, are being bombarded with inquiries at santospiritoag.com, said Sister Maria, who agreed to answer questions over the phone. Would-be nuns can receive advice from Santo Spirito's novices on the lifestyle they might expect, said Maria.
"We also wanted to set up the site so that people could email to ask us to say prayers for them, as well as to show the world what our mission is here," she said. "We hope to show that there is some good on the internet and not just bad things." Although criticised as a distraction by parents and bosses, the internet is not interfering with the nuns' prayer routine, which starts at 4.30am, said Maria. "There are no limits on internet time, but discretion is required," she said. The nuns are now in regular contact with fellow Cistercians in the US and France via email, said Maria, while the site also has a pop-up box allowing users to reserve a guest room. [source]
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Cloistered nuns at a convent in Sicily have decided that their vow of silence may rule out gossiping with locals or telephoning old friends, but it does not exclude going online to swap emails. The 12 Cistercian nuns of the 13th-century Santo Spirito convent in Agrigento have set up a website and are happy to take questions about what it is like to pray for hours in silence every day. The sisters, who speak to visitors, if pushed, through a grille, are being bombarded with inquiries at santospiritoag.com, said Sister Maria, who agreed to answer questions over the phone. Would-be nuns can receive advice from Santo Spirito's novices on the lifestyle they might expect, said Maria.
"We also wanted to set up the site so that people could email to ask us to say prayers for them, as well as to show the world what our mission is here," she said. "We hope to show that there is some good on the internet and not just bad things." Although criticised as a distraction by parents and bosses, the internet is not interfering with the nuns' prayer routine, which starts at 4.30am, said Maria. "There are no limits on internet time, but discretion is required," she said. The nuns are now in regular contact with fellow Cistercians in the US and France via email, said Maria, while the site also has a pop-up box allowing users to reserve a guest room. [source]
Just another example of the pragmatic nature of the Internet. This is also not the first time it has been shown to be a tool for organized religion. Is there something about the Internet which makes it particularly attractive as a medium for religious or spiritual activities? Another way of looking at this story is that it emphasizes the distinctions between 'real' speech, face-to-face interaction and computer-mediated communication. Some say such distinctions are weakening. But are they?
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MADRID (Reuters) - A religious order in Spain has banned two women from carrying shrines during Easter week to prevent any "uncomfortable" brush with the opposite sex under cover of the massive floats. (more)
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