A Medieval post, in three parts...

[felis_ultharus]

Heere bigynneth the post

To my D&D group -- I intend, at some point this busy week, to post a brief summary of our adventures. After so many weeks idle, it'll be necessary.

I intend to continue the campaign without interruption at least through to the end December, if you all are still interested :)

As for the winter semester, I'll see -- I'll be back up to two classes then.

Sequitur pars secunda

More funny gleanings from Boswell:

About fifty years later efforts were made to interest another pope -- Urban II, the reformer who launched the first crusade -- in the case of high-ranking prelates who were well-known to be involved in homosexual activities. This effort, although mounted by one of the prominent churchmen of the day, Ivo of Chartres, failed even more completely that Peter Damian's. Ivo informed the papal legate and the pope himself that Ralph [!?], the archbishop of Tours, had prevailed upon king of France to install as bishop of Orléans a certain John, whom Ivo knew to be the archbishop's lover (and to have had sexual relations with the king, since the latter boasted of it to Ivo). In fact, John had also shared his favors with the previous bishop of Orléans (Ralph's brother) and was generally so accomodating with his person that he was generally known as Flora, in reference to a celebrated courtesan of the day.

Sequitur pars tercia

Today, as they announced the new pope, I was reading Boswell's version of the attack on the Cathars. The Cathars were a heretical sect. Most of what we know about them comes from Catholic propaganda, which claimed that they all homosexual. There may be some truth to the notion they were queer-positive: they were probably Manicheans, which would mean they likely saw the production of children as a great evil (as it entraps the soul in flesh).

Anyway, the Cathars were wiped out, and Catholic propaganda in the 13th Century cemented the connection between homosexuality and heresy so thoroughly, that a French word for one kind of heresy -- bougrerie -- entered English as buggery.

Meanwhile, the cardinals elected as their new pope the man who was the driving force between the church's antigay, anti-safe-sex crusade. So we can expect another several years of using the church's money and influence to hold back human progress.

And did anyone else immediately notice he's a dead ringer for Emperor Palpatine?

Comments

re: emperor palpatine

[ubergreenkat.livejournal.com]

YES!

*shivers and is glad that she's not catholic*

(but he's 78, he'll be dead in a few years)

and just thought i'd say, though i haven't always commented, i'm really enjoying the boswellian posts :)

Re: emperor palpatine

[felis-ultharus.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I figured, but thank you.

I don't always respond to your stuff, but I do enjoy it. I'm learning a lot about the theatre from your LJ :)

[foi-nefaste.livejournal.com]

D&D group-wise... I MIGHT be able to get a later ride to Granby (aka the next day), and thus be able to make it on Saturday!

That won't be an issue for you, will it?

[felis-ultharus.livejournal.com]

Cool.

Don't worry about it. I've had the adventure plannedfor four months now. It's just a matter of refreshing my memory.

I think we may have a full house, there, except for laurange, but I doubt she'll be able to make it anytime in the near future.

[seal7.livejournal.com]

As I said somewhere before,
http://www.francesco.biz/papa.jpg !
That is all.

The worst part is all the German kids going 'whee we won how great'... uninformed idiot brats -_-

[felis-ultharus.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I was wondering what things were like out there, since he's bayerisch, and all.

But even here, our news stations are all going gaga because there's a new pope. Only the CBC -- our government station -- and the gay news stations are admitting how bad John Paul II could be. And from what I'm hearing now, Ratzinger is worse...?

[seal7.livejournal.com]

Yeah well, all tv stations immediately interrupted their program to simultaneously tell us...
And of course the newspapers were stock full of it today. Everyone's ecstatic -_-
Ratzinger is said to be worse, yes. Apparently, in his youth, he was full of ideals and wanted to change church... but then he got appointed into an office where he had to protect the traditional values actively, ie. opposing women bishops, etc. If I heard correctly the pregnancy advice service church had established here went down under him as well (could be wrong here though)... he's said to be extremely, extremely conservative; people who don't believe he'll be worse than John Paul say 'he spent a lot of time with John Paul' in his defense... -_- how ironic.
And yeah. Well.
Everyone going gaga. As you said.

[jc2004.livejournal.com]

The new pope kind of looks like a diabolical supervillain who is past his prime. What was really funny was a feature on the news where they showed a group of pope hopefuls all up for nomination, standing around excitedly. It reminded me of that stupid reality show, Pop Stars, except they were pope stars. They all looked as alike as the pop stars though. A couple of the popefuls looked kind of nice, like they might actually put their energies as much toward helping the poor as oppressing everyone else. Too bad they chose the shittiest one. I can't believe a guy who was a member of Hitler Youth could be named pope -- well, sadly, I actually can but it still sucks.

[infinitecomplex.livejournal.com]

The Catholic Church has got to be one of the few institutions of power in the world that wouldn't consider his membership of Hitler Youth important when electing him to rule it. Apparently he's known as "God's Rottweiler" in Vatican City, which is marginally more catchy than "God's tool" (George W. Bush) but infinitely more disturbing.

[felis-ultharus.livejournal.com]

Well, they're saying he was drafted, and did everything he could to get out of it, including going AWOL. But given the Catholic Church's record for honesty, I'm taking everything I hear with a grain of salt.

I'm more worried about what he'll do in the future, though. He's got the power, the money, and the will to bring gay rights and safe-sex campaigns to a halt in a lot of country. Even he had a squeaky-clean past, I still wouldn't want him having access to that money and power.

(You know, the organization he used to run? It's called the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and it was set up originally to coordinate the activities of the Inquisition all over Europe. He's the world's Chief Inquisitor -- though it's not called that anymore. His job was stop dissent at all costs.)

[seal7.livejournal.com]

He can be accused of a lot of things, but not of being a Nazi. Hitler youth was like boy scouts, just way, way worse. You couldn't possibly have gotten out of it. Neither could you get out of being drafted, and as much as I'm not in favour of this guy, it makes me pretty sick people are screaming 'omg Nazi' already... it's just not true.

[felis-ultharus.livejournal.com]

Okay. I trust your word on the matter. We don't get much information out here that isn't very biased one way or the other, so it's hard to know what's true. And most of what we're getting so far is biased in his favour, which is why, I think, we're all so suspicious.

He still scares me, though. If half of what I hear about what he believes is true, he's not the kind of person who should be in a position of power. As you said, he's said to be extremely, extremely conservative