Hide the booze and little boys - the Catholics are coming! The Catholics are coming! Sorry for the cheap shot, but anyway, Mongolian Catholics will be pleased to know that the Land of the Great Blue Sky now has its very own bishop. According to Yahoo! News:
ULAN BATOR, Mongolia - A Filipino priest was installed Friday as Mongolia’s first Roman Catholic bishop, leading a Catholic community of less than 200 people in a largely Buddhist nation regarded as important to Vatican missionary work in Asia.
Bishop Wenceslaw Padilla, who has been a missionary in Mongolia since 1992, was installed in a ceremony attended by about 1,000 people in the Mongolian capital’s new cathedral ?€” a circular building in the shape of a traditional Mongol tent.
Note to self - getting married in a church that looks like a yurt (ger for nationalistic-minded Mongolians readers) might seem goofy, but it sure beats the hell out of this.
Anyway, His Holiness apparently would like to make a visit to the Central Asian nation as well:
“The Holy Father loves Mongolia and hopes to make a visit here whenever this is possible,” [Cardinal Crescenzio] Sepe said during the ceremony, referring to Mongolia’s “small yet vibrant community of believers.”
Well, better late than never:
The Vatican has preserved the reply [to an envoy sent to the Mongol court by Pope Innocent IV in 1245] of the khan. The Pope was ordered to present himself at the Mongol court at the head of all his kings. “[I]f you disregard the command of God and disobey Our instructions, We shall look upon you as Our enemy. Whoever recognizes and submits to the Son of God and Lord of the World, the Great Khan, will be saved, whoever refuses submission will be wiped out.”
Oh, and for all you with a keen interest in Mongolia’s history of interaction with the West, may I suggest that you pay a visit to the Society for Medieval Military History’s “The Mongols in the West,” which makes for a great read. For something a lot more recent (with some great pics of fat Mongolian kids in New Jersey), pop by the Kalmyk American Society’s homepage.
6 Comments
The little boys are already hidden in plain sight.
Check out Jesus’ encounter with the Centurion.
Then take in this little fact:
Centurions used boy slaves for sex.
That is something to consider…
Well I see it’s open season on Catholics, we can be mocked, insulted, mistreated, etc. and we have to keep an educated smile on our faces right? I wish I could run into the likes of you anti-Catholic fascists around me here in my country. I will teach you no social group should be abused. I will teach you a little respect.
When you got the Church virtually declaring war on gay marriage (no social group should be abused, eh?), but at the same time going easy on known child molesters, guess what - they are going to be mocked. And until the Church leadership figures this out, be prepared for more mocking.
Besides, everyone gets mocked around here. I’m an equal opportunity mocker.
Miguel,
I hardly see how relating a historical fact is an attack on the church. Unless it is your church which is not following in the footsteps of it’s founder.
Now I’m in no way condoning the use of little boys as sex slaves.
What I am saying is that the bias of the church agaist homosexuals does not match the tolerance evidenced by the church’s founder.
My take from the Jesus and the Centurion incident is that the Centurion did something almost unheard of in his day among the Romans. He showed love for his slave.
The Jewish laws on slavery were much gentler than those of almost any other nation of the era. Jews were required to treat slaves as fellow humans. Not so the Romans. For them slaves were property. End of story.
I think the world would be a lot better off if Jesus was placed in the context of his day rather than interpreted through 21st Century eyes. He comes off as a much more interesting figure.
In addition it is possible that the Jewish authorities of the day may have been trying to protect Jesus from the Romans rather than rushing to hand him over. They were looking for a way out of the chrisis.
http://www.historicaljesusghost.com/
We need to look at Christianity from a historical point of view without all the clouding and overlays added by subsequent generations of the church founders for political reasons.
Perhaps it is time that Christians got back to the old time religion and started celebrating the Jewish holidays Jesus did (those that can be celebrated without a Temple any way).
It has always amused me that the church has done so much to separate Christiands from the life and rituals of the church’s founder.
Going back to the Mosaic traditions may well be a good thing for Christianity.