If it’s so bad, why don’t you do something useful and not be an American consumer? There are plenty of places in the world where a person who isn’t afraid of a little discomfort can do a lot of good. There is a lot of long-term low-reward projects out there that can make the world a much better place and could desperately use someone with a sense of committment.
But instead, he chooses this religious masterbation.
I’m sorry, there is holy or good about intentional mortification. When girls do it, it’s called “cutting” and freaks everyone out. It’s a coping device. A way to have control in a world whe you feel out of control. Popular among people who have experienced sexual abuse. Dressing it up in religious trappings doesn’t take away the fact that this issue is best addressed with therapy.
I’ve got my beefs with celibacy, too. But that’s another story.
Anyway, if this stuff is you need to do to make sense of your life, go for it. But be honest with yourself.
Now I’m sure that there are some pretty normal Opus Dei members (though I find the concept a little backrupt- all the smugness of a monostary, but without any of the pesky devoting-life-to-god-and-doing-good-works stuff). But this guy isn’t one of them. This guy is a headcase, and probably not a great candidate for showing how normal Opus Dei is.
Very good summation. Sure, it’s his business if he wants to do this. But I’m not going to pretend that it’s legitimate or reasonable, or really anything but the manifestation of deep-down craziness.
There’s an interesting history in the Church of symbolically suffering with the poor while not doing all that much about the problem in the first place, now that I start to think about it.
I used to have a problem with veganism because it is stupid and makes no sense. I guess if there’s one thing I’ve gotten from this board it’s that pretty much all closely held beleifs are really stupid and make no sense if you look at them hard enough.
I suppose pointing out and ridiculing someone else’s nonsensical beliefs gives one a certain feeling of superiority (it works for me,) but really, it just makes you an asshole.
And really, as a great man once said: There are three kinds of people in this world. Pussies, assholes and dicks. Pussies get pissed off at dicks cause they are always getting fucked by them, and dicks are just always fucking everything up. Assholes just want to shit over everything. The dicks need to calm down, and the pussies need to get along with the dicks, because (and this is the important part) Dicks also fuck assholes.
So, if you have a problem with these guys practicing their version of Christianity, you’re an asshole so get fucked.
As a completely non-religious person, I think most religious practices are nutty. Or, they would be for me. I try not to be judgemental, though, since one man’s weird rite is another man’s holy of holies. So yeah, this guy is odd, and maybe he’s a repressed homosexual, but what’s pit-worthy about that?
I think even sven hit it best in terms of any criticism that can be leveled against the guy. Worried about the suffering of the poor? Then do something to lessen their suffering! Increasing your own suffering just adds to the suffering in this world, and don’t we have enough of that already?
What the fuck is going on in this thread? What the fucking fuck?
This guy is doing something he believes in sincerely, something that harms no one and obviously provides him with spiritual comfort, and all you sneering fuckheads can do is speculate about his sexuality?
Who the fuck cares? This guy finds spiritual edification in the denial of physical pleasure (which, as has been pretty well established for thousands of years, is one gateway to spiritual enlightenment); and being confronted with something you don’t understand, your only response is “He likes to suck cock; I just know it!” or “He’s got something to prove to his father!” or some other bullshit means of comforting yourselves that you are ear-pluggingly right, right, right, and there’s nothing more complicated in the world than the things you already believe: Yes, Virginia, there is no Santa Claus.
Yeah, there’s no chance at all that he might be following what he sincerely believes to be a path to a higher understanding of the world, right? No, of course not; of course a bunch of self-righteous slackers who spend too much time at the computer know better than a guy who shows his dedication for two hours of daily pain, right?
This is the one aspect of this board that pisses me off to no end: The prevailing wisdom that, once a few members agree on something, it’s established fact and fair game for thoughtless ridicule.
Oh, yeah, there’s more normal Opus Dei members out there, what about that guy who was a big CIA spy … Aldrich Ames. Or what about its founder … OK, so he supported the fascists in the Spanish Civil War …
Yeah, Opus Dei, a secretive religious organization of normalcy …
If it’s nonsensical, it’s nonsensical; superiority doesn’t enter into it. This guy is as sexually fucked up as your average Victorian. He’s not hurting anyone, but he’s not near as “holy” as he thinks he is.
I just have a few problems with this thread. Firstly, does he have to be gay? Asexuality movements are becoming more and more prominent these days, and more accepted.
The self-flagellation is not recommended to be used to draw blood, although there will always be those who take things too far to prove something. Same with the cilice - it’s supposed to be the discomfort which reminds one of the pain the Christ went through to save “our souls.” Done a lot of reading on this.
Self-mortification of the flesh is as old as the practices of the church, but has been condemned by the Vatican as an unnecessary step to profess ones faith. Kinda like they made it OK to eat fish on Friday again, women don’t have to wear hats to church, and the masses are no longer solely in Latin.
There are a set of Mystery books that are really quite fascinating in that they also go into the history of Ireland, the church in Ireland, and the strong division between differing factions within the church. They’re the Sister Fidelma Mysteries, and I’ve learned more from these historically accurate books that it has led me to learn more on my own.
I am in no way an apologist for the church, but I do think that some of the broad stokes on this i canvas should be thinned out by a little knowledge to gt a clearer picture.
I do get it, and I very much understand his views about comfort. (I like to think that I can understand the reasoning behind an idea even if I think it’s stupid.) I’m trying not to be too critical because I understand that everybody has his own way of trying to keep things in perspective. But Fortunato creates the charity/cilice comment with the “inadequate and patronizing” comment, and that bothers me.
Given only the two options, I would prefer to patronize someone in need while trying to help rather than feed them a Bill Clintonesque “I feel your pain” line of bullshit that they would see right through. “I feel solidarity with people who are poor and homeless and suffering and dying of wars and AIDS and natural disasters because I can sit around in an air-conditioned home or a cafe while wear a spiked belt on my thigh?” Isn’t that pretty patronizing on its own? It’s pretending, when you get down to it. It’s the religious answer to limousine liberalism.
And if a girl makes superficial cuts on herself in order to get spiritual comfort, people want her medicated or locked in an institution until she’s ‘better.’
Asexuality, or at the very least sexuality that is strictly controlled by the person in power has been a hallmark of more than one cult. The Branch Davidians’ sex lives were controlled by David Koresh, who even told married couples if and when they were allowed to have sex. I believe it was the Heaven’s Gate cult that went so far as castration and breast binding in order to make everyone look as androgynous as possible while maintaining strict asexuality.
Human beings are not, by and large, asexual by nature. Asexuality is far, far different from celibacy. Celibacy involves knowing that you have sexual desires and are a sexual person, but not acting on those desires. Asexuality is the denial of having sexual desires or that you are in any way sexual.
Well, Jesus did say, “The poor will always be with us.” Given that, how hard is a good Christian going to work to eradicate poverty? If you eradicate poverty, you make a liar out of Jesus.
Because there is a large difference between self-mortification and taking a knife to one’s wrist to get attention, which is widely regarded as a precursor to suicide. I assume that this is what you are alluding to, if not would you clarify?
Have you ever denied yourself something just to prove to yourself that you could? I lived for years without a TV; I could have afforded one, but I chose not to, to prove to myself that I could live without one. (I was incredibly productive during those years.) I also spent several Memphis summers without air-conditioning, for the same reason: To make very clear to myself the difference between “want” and “need.”
I don’t wear a painful metal device for two hours a day, but I can understand the drive to do so, to keep one’s mind focused on spiritual, intellectual, or generally higher matters than one’s own physical comfort. The world is too much with us; voluntary physical deprivation can help us maintain perspective.
As for teenage girls cutting themselves, this is a completely different issue. Teenage girls cut themselves to relieve emotional pressures, acting on impulses they don’t fully understand. A priest voluntarily donning a cilice, or choosing celibacy, a vow of silence or poverty, or any other voluntarily adopted physical hardship is a conscious decision to turn away from the physical world in order to focus one’s mind more clearly on higher matters. I find it really difficult to believe that you don’t see a difference.
Hmm… I’m religious, and I think self-mortification is seriously wrong. Otherwise, I think people are reading too much into his words. Unless I’m mistaken, he doesn’t say that doing so actually makes him a great and holy person. As long as we’re getting into farfetched armchair psychology, I might as well claim that some of the people here are threatened by the way he lives because it makes them feel inadequate.
