No work again today
Today is yet another holiday here in Portugal.This holiday is common to all Catholic countries: it celebrates the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary.
Or, translating for all those who didn’t have a Catholic education, the fact that the mother of Jesus, herself a virgin according to the Roman Catholic Church, was conceived without the Original Sin.
Supposedly Eve tempted Adam thus creating the original sin and all of us who were born out of the sex between our parents are tainted with that sin too.
Until baptism that is, baptism cleans our souls of the sex our parents had.
This reminds me of the babies born with the aid of science and without sex… can it be possible that such babies are saints as of birth?
Oh well, guess I am venturing a dangerous path here… one funny thing though is that the dogma (undeniable truth uttered by the Pope) regarding Mary’s Immaculate Conception dates from the XIX century, this always made me think that there were some sex issues the church was trying to address, either in lay society on within the church itself, and that those issues were supposed to be suppressed with this dogma (that is the main practical reason for issuing a new dogma: make something incontestable).
For me the day started with some heavy work: unloading, carting and stacking firewood.
I was almost running out of firewood, but now I have enough to last the entire winter.
We just love the comfort of a friendly fire to warm up our evenings, there is something magic about it, something comforting that can’t be emulated by an electric heater or by air-conditioning.
This sounds a bit pagan, as does some “original sin” by the fireside, but feels soooo good…
posted by DCveR at 11:17 AM
20 Comments:
What do you mean, my parents had sex!
Wash your mouth with soap!
lol:))
cream: Sorry... didn't meant to offend nobody. Huummm... does that mean you're a "test tube child"? Never met any that I knew of...
dcver i think cream is trying to say that he is a SAINT :)
and dcver i think you should give yourself ten lashes accoss the back for the whole fireplace sinning!!
I didn't realize Catholics considered the 'original sin' to be sexual. I used to be a basically protestant children's pastor and, in my admittedly limited thoelogical training, we were taught that 'original sin' was simply disobeying God, as in, "Don't eat of the tree of the knowlege of good and evil."
Not looking for a debate here, just food for thought.
Yeah... Sin by the fire is much nicer than sin by the electric heater...
As for original sin... there's just something unsettling about a religion that labels us all guilty by birth...
isis: Let us just say there is something about having a fireplace, two people in love, a nice thick blanket on the floor or a nice rug, some quiet music, nice drinks and some finger food... well, doesn't this ring a bell for you too?
ale: If you knew all that is going unsaid you'd probably say 100 lashes... but we'll leave it at that.
chill daddy: Literally you are absolutely right. But what does that apple mean? What is that search for knowledge, that search for power? What is the ultimate power? The power of life and death. Killing is easy, the ultimate power is the 'knowledge' to create life. The proper explanation would take a long time, but the original sex has a sexual connotation according to the Roman theology.
viking: Now that you mention it, that part never troubled me: for the most part they were right to consider me guilty all along. Let us face it, as soon as we humans taste sin we want more and more of it, whereas it is sex, good food, making money, having power... Take a look at the deadly sins, lust, glutony, envy, pride, greed, sloth, anger. Who among us has never tried at least one of these? So it's Hell for the lot of us, right? So what if we were found guilty at birth? They would find us guilty sooner or later just the same...
Hey, for a spiritual person, I have a great deal of difficulty with the whole idea of sin, whether original or not. Perhaps for me, the difficulty is in that whole "reaping and sowing" policy God seems to be so damn fond of. Trust me, I've got mine! And I don't mean that in the "original sin" sense of getting it! :)
tall glass: Touché. But we do love curling by the fire... and we also love good food, so your plan B is not bad either.
bunny jo: Are you guys all queueing there? Have you planned to comment all at the same time? You know, the whole sin concept comes from the need for obedience. Have you ever noticed that in the Old Testament God is a punishing God, even Angels are violent. Later, when people are used to the idea of punishment, the concept of sin is stressed as a mark for later punishment, this keeps people in fear, regardless of the fact they have never seen the two she-bears tearing apart the fifty odd children.
In my readings of the Bible, I've never found one reference to sex being a sin unless it's outside of holy matrimony. In fact, there are a few verses which many feel encourage physical relationships between spouses.
I'm a praying man, and I have a HEALTHY marriage, and I've never once felt convicted for anything I've done with my wife. Beside a fire or otherwise.
My God isn't trying to make me miserable.
tacit: You got me there, I really don't know. I mean, in Sunday School they would say it is a sin to waste the said seed, but if someone uses it to fertilize an egg it doesn't get waisted.
Great, now I can't get the Monty Python song out of my head. Every sperm is sacred, every sperm is good, every sperm is needed in the neighborhood...
tall glass: The test tube is just like a pit stop, I think, I mean it's like purgatory, not quite heaven not quite hell...
chill daddy: From all that you've said, according to the Roman Catholic Church and to its Pope Fuhrer Rat YOU will burn in Hell, because there is no salvation outside the Roman Catholic Church!!! This said, sex is just a itsy bitsy detail and really doesn't add anything to your sentence.
Saint Cream? hahaha.
Not all religions say we're guilty at birth. Some say babies are innocent. Yay.
Dcver, how many holidays does Portugal has for the whole year?
GG: We have 14 National Holidays, adding to that every Municipality has it's own Municipal Holiday. We also have a tradition of "bridging" holidays, like I am doing today: when a holiday falls on a Thursday or a Tuesday you "bridge" it to the weekend, taking the Monday or the Friday that got "bridged" as a day off.
you know what they say... its NOT a sin if you would feel comfortable doing it in God's presence.... so if you're comfortable with Him watching... well then there ain't no stoppin' you--
This post and all these comments just remind me why Religion and I don't get along...
Ale, thank you for elevating me to Sainthood! Lashing, Whipping Cream!
GG, St.Cream!
"I am not a saint, unless you think of a saint as a sinner who keeps on trying!" Nelson Mandela.
DC, I chewed my way out of the test tube.
quote from viking :"Yeah... Sin by the fire is much nicer than sin by the electric heater..."
if there is no sin, there is no human so to say??
I too was raised Catholic and dc, you have reminded me of all of those things we were fed that we believed as fact. It sounds like such bunk now!
Didn't the children of the world who didn't get baptized end up in purgatory? Since it wasn't their fault I mean. When you think of all the guilt the Catholics put around sex, it makes it all the more appalling that so many priests were found to have abused children.
We "baptized" the boys ourselves at the beach when they were two weeks old, blessing them to go forward and do good things with their lives.
starlet: I guess not, but the truth is I am not really worried about my sins.
kris: Yup, purgatory for the lot. Basically the church ends up sending a message of "it's not what you do that counts, it's how low you bow".
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