You Might Not Have Known: Today is Mary Magdalene Day



If today, July 22 is Mary Magdalene Day in the Catholic denomination and you are a Catholic, you have an obligation to go to church. The Catholic denomination has some cleaver marketing. It comes up with reasons you should spend your time and money supporting the denomination. 

When I was a young person I lived in Catholic Puerto Rico for a year. There were so many holidays based on Catholic saints an outsider could not keep track of them. I suppose each of these was a reason to demand Catholics attend church. More religious days crowded out other interests. The Catholics are still playing the saint card.

"Mary Magdalene" is in the Bible, allegedly present at the death of Jesus. She was said to be a woman of ill repute but brought back from her sin to be briefly big in the Easter story. She disappeared from Bible tales so what became of her was not of interest to the men who wrote the Bible. Her big contribution was that is gave Catholic executives a reason to have a day dedicated to her and thus a reason to demand the faithful show up in church. 

 Various characters appear in Bible stories who are mysterious and the reason they are there is never fully discussed. Some like Mary Magdalene move up to become Saints. Other just drift off to nowhere. One of the latter is "Simon the Tanner." Christian parody sites have lots of fun with Simon the Tanner. Since it is implied in the Bible Simon was both wealthy and single, parody writers go further and say he was a gay man who dressed in tight leather. This is all the more tantalizing when in Acts 10:16 we learn St. Peter, also single, lived with Simon the Tanner for some time. 

Eventually, Peter made it to the rank of Saint. Simon the Tanner did not. The latter is unfortunate because Catholics could today celebrate a Saint Simon the Tanner Day when everyone wears leather.  

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Talarico Looks Like an Obama II

Image
We all have our ideas about what is good or smart politics. I'm no different. Those who read this blog have to hear mine. My thinking is millions of voters will go to the polls in the next two elections for the specific purpose of voting against Trump. Most of these voters, however, will not admit that is why or how they are voting. They will have convinced themselves they are voting for some reason more idealistic and loftier. An example of what they might say to themselves is, "I'm voting for a better country." The job of Democrats, Libertarians, Socialists and whomever is to give those voters something that ends the sentence, "I'm voting for someone other than a Republican because..."  The sentence will not end in "...I hate Trump." It will be something else. That is what Texas Govitorial Candidate Talarico is doing so well.   Talarico is telling Texans their state is too big and too important to yield to the narrow views of the far right. T...
Read more

Will We Ever Know How Accurate Current Bibles Are

Image
When I discuss the many times the Bible was copied and recopied by scribes over a couple of thousand years, the reply is often, "I have a book by this (or that) expert who says the Bible is 99% accurate to its original writers." The 99% claim appears in various places defending the Bible. There is one thing we know absolutely: There is no surviving original copy of the Bible. Even the oldest surviving material is a generation or two after the time some of the Bible was written. This means no one can claim he has, or ever will, compare the current Bible to the original Bible and find the two are 99% the same. We cannot claim either that it is not 99% accurate. For the sake of discussion, however, assume the current Bible is 99% accurate. That would mean the one word out of every 100 was inaccurate. It could still mean an important misreading of the original text. An example is the passage referring to punishment for a man who kills a fetus. In the oldest know materia...
Read more

Ancient God, Bel (Baal), the Main Character in an Ancient Play

Image
In a British museum is a preserved stone tablet from Babylon. It dates to about 2,000 BCE. Someone labored patiently to inscribe an entire passion play featuring the god Bel. I reiterate this is a stone tablet, not a recopied papyrus. The play begins with the god Bel arrested by soldiers and taken off the stage. He reappears at a trial in the Hall of Judgement. Bel is innocent but is sentenced to death. In the next scene Bel is accosted by a mob. He is despised and rejected. The actor playing Bel is then taken by guard to a hilltop in a sacred grove. Two criminals are taken with him. One of these is released. The the audience then leaves the theater and follows the actor Bel and his guards to the top of a hill where the death scene is enacted by hanging from a tree. The audience returns to the theater for the dramatic final scenes. The dead Bel is stripped and prepared for burial. On a theatrical hill to the side of the stage is a tomb where the body is placed. A stone is rolle...
Read more