Pity me, oh Lord

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Pity me, oh Lord

... for I must translate the works of your insane servant, St. Augustine, for this one Latin translation class. This is totally a bummer, Lord God, for he references your great might frequently, peppering his inane dialogue with scripture. Not that the inane dialogue should be left to stand on its own, my protector and Lord, my God, seeing as it just took me two hours to translate something about how he used to go to the theatre, and thought his enjoyment thereof was wicked in Your sight. The man writes like a stoner fascinated with bowling.

Seriously, Lord, what were You thinking in Your Drunken Haze, that the most boring of uncles at a family reunion would be your choice as founder of Your Great Church?

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One of the sickest fuckers

One of the sickest fuckers going, that creep. Here's where he exonerates David's "adultery" on the grounds that the hypocritical lecher "king" had god on his side, thereby unleashing centuries of "priests behaving badly" on unsuspecting children and females whose tormentors could scurry back to the comfort of St Augustine's reassurance that everything is ok if you say sorry to the hairy one:

 

" ...when this same king, carried away by the heat of passion and by temporal prosperity, had taken unlawful possession of one woman, whose husband also he ordered to be put to death, he was accused of his crime by a prophet, who, when he had come to show him his sin, set before him the parable of the poor man who had but one ewe-lamb, and whose neighbor, though he had many, yet when a guest came to him spared to take of his own flock, but set his poor neighbor's one lamb before his guest to eat. And David's anger being kindled against the man, he commanded that he should be put to death, and the lamb restored fourfold to the poor man; thus unwittingly condemning the sin he had wittingly committed. And when he had been shown this, and God's punishment had been denounced against him, he wiped out his sin in deep penitence."

 

Check out the record of this megalomaniac: one rape, one murder, one attempted murder, one saved sheep. All quite ok, according to Augustine, since it was only a passing phase and he said sorry to god afterwards. Solomon on the other hand, who lusted after women a lot but had a deplorable kill ratio (and an equally deplorable say-sorry-to-god ratio) compared to the sling-king, was a right godless bugger according to Gussie.

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 Have you got to the bit

 Have you got to the bit where he goes on for a chapter and a half about how he stole some apples when he was eight years old?

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DamnDirtyApe wrote: Have

DamnDirtyApe wrote:

 Have you got to the bit where he goes on for a chapter and a half about how he stole some apples when he was eight years old?

 

Wait a sec!  He was a thief?  What does that tell us about his reply to Alexandar the Great when he caught a pirate?

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DamnDirtyApe wrote: Have

DamnDirtyApe wrote:

 Have you got to the bit where he goes on for a chapter and a half about how he stole some apples when he was eight years old?

No, we're doing the translations in bits all out of order. I'm so happy I have something to look forward to, though. Great.

Holy shit the guy goes on. He's completely incapable of expressing himself plainly. In Latin, it's even more painful than in English (that is, once you decipher his style). Brain ... melting ...

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Nordmann wrote:Check out the

Nordmann wrote:

Check out the record of this megalomaniac: one rape, one murder, one attempted murder, one saved sheep. All quite ok, according to Augustine, since it was only a passing phase and he said sorry to god afterwards.

Yeah, and in the weirdest way possible. Augustine has to be the most confused human being ever to walk the earth. He comes off as a defense lawyer for the insane.

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HisWillness wrote:Yeah, and

HisWillness wrote:

Yeah, and in the weirdest way possible. Augustine has to be the most confused human being ever to walk the earth.

Nope. I vote for Kierkegaard for that.

Sorry. Off-topic. Ignore.

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Will...really, now...

...WHY are you putting yourself through this?

 

Conor


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Nordmann wrote:

"Check out the record of this megalomaniac: one rape, one murder, one attempted murder, one saved sheep."

 

My $0.02: Don't forget the boyfriend he had, growing up.  Oh, wait...we're supposed to forget that, aren't we?  (Predictable chorus of response from various Christians: "THEY WERE JUST GOOD FRIENDS, DAMMIT!&quotEye-wink

 

Palace sex scandals are such a pain...

 

Conor


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Conor Wilson wrote:...WHY

Conor Wilson wrote:

...WHY are you putting yourself through this?

I know, I know. It's because I need the practice translating. Otherwise I wouldn't take the course. If I take a semester off from Latin, I forget everything.

It's better now that I've decided to plough through without trying to actually understand what's being said. The Aeneid was way more fun to do, though. Waaay more fun.

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darth_josh wrote:HisWillness

darth_josh wrote:

HisWillness wrote:

Yeah, and in the weirdest way possible. Augustine has to be the most confused human being ever to walk the earth.

Nope. I vote for Kierkegaard for that.

You may have me there. I feel your pain if you were ever forced to read ... that.

darth_josh wrote:
Sorry. Off-topic. Ignore.

I don't think you can be off-topic in a whining thread. And we're talking about Augustine, so examples of people who have been more confused is relevant in that they'd be pretty notable. At least we don't have to do the philosophy section, where Augustine talks about his conception of space and time. It's like ... blogging. I think that's the only comparison I could make. Find the most ignorant son of a bitch blogging on the nature of space and time, all the while impressed with himself beyond reason. That's what Augustine is like.

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You poor guy...

...I took one year of Latin while I was in a minor seminary in high school.  And yes...Latin is eminently forgettable.

 

Ah, well...*try* to have fun, anyway.

 

Conor


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HisWillness

HisWillness wrote:

 Augustine has to be the most confused human being ever to walk the earth. He comes off as a defense lawyer for the insane.

As was his teacher Ambrose who was yet another warped father of the Church. Both considered force was within their right to use to maintain theology and beliefs.

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I've been drinking, so ...

I've been drinking, so ... anything that sounds offensive is meant to be entertaining.

Conor Wilson wrote:
...I took one year of Latin while I was in a minor seminary in high school.

Is this a pun? Because I'm seeing "minor", "seminary" and "high school", and I'm fully accepting (and I've dabbled, so you know this is without judgement) that you prefer the cock. But I can't figure out what the hell "minor seminary" means otherwise.

Conor Wilson wrote:
Ah, well...*try* to have fun, anyway.

I'm giving it the old college try. I keep imagining that I'm translating something awesome (like the aforementioned Aeneid). It's not until I open my eyes and realize that I'm in bed with the wrong kind of rhetoric that my pen rests limp on the paper.

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pauljohntheskeptic wrote:As

pauljohntheskeptic wrote:
As was his teacher Ambrose who was yet another warped father of the Church. Both considered force was within their right to use to maintain theology and beliefs.

Thus proving themselves completely unworthy of brain ownership. If there were a God, and this God had good ideas, one of them would have been to make these idiots illiterate and unable to spread their insanity.

No, I'm not bitter at all. No bitterness here.

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Will, some religious orders...

...have high-school level seminaries.  Bear in mind that a seminary does basically  two things: 1) give students an education, and 2) provide a place for them to consider whether or not they wish to become Catholic priests.  (I don't know of any diocese that has a minor seminary; they are all major seminaries--as far as I know, any way--and as such they educate at the *college* level.)  The seminary I was at was run by an order called the Society of the Most Precious Blood, and they had a curriculum that involved four years of foreign language, two of them concurrent. (Two years were of Latin, sophomore and junior years, and two of a modern language.  This caused some controversy, as before I went there, the "other language" would have been French, but in the middle of the year there circumstances forced the seminary to change to Spanish.)  Anyway, that seminary is no longer in operation; the last I heard, the building had been converted to a nursing home.

 

So...no pun involved, Will.  (And just for the record: no offense taken.)

 

Conor

 

EDIT: Idiot me...I just realized that I never clearly defined what a minor seminary is, although I think the folks around here are generally smart enough to infer what I meant.  In any event, a "minor seminary" is a seminary that educates at the high-school level, vice the college level of a major seminary.


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HisWillness wrote:  

HisWillness wrote:

 

I've been drinking, so ... anything that sounds offensive is meant to be entertaining.

 

Conor Wilson wrote:
...I took one year of Latin while I was in a minor seminary in high school.

 

Is this a pun? Because I'm seeing "minor", "seminary" and "high school", and I'm fully accepting (and I've dabbled, so you know this is without judgement) that you prefer the cock. But I can't figure out what the hell "minor seminary" means otherwise.

 

Gee Will, I am drinking too, so take this in the same way.

 

First off, I seem to recall that Conor has already admitted that he “prefers the company of gentlemen”.

 

Even so, I find that there is an apparent connection to seminary and minors and cock. Just hit up google news for that bit.

 

Why that is so is an odd thing. In my mind, one becomes a catholic priest not because the vow of celibacy make the urges go away but rather because one is willing to sublimate the urges in pursuit of some sort of higher calling. The urges should still be there but one chooses to get past them for a larger purpose. This is retarded in my world view but I am not the person who decides what other people ought to do.

 

That said, I would assume that there are pedophile priests who do not dabble in the butt holes of choir boys. They have that urge but they take the vow that they have made seriously, so they do not engage in such activity. In all honesty, if someone has the desire to stick it up little boy poopers and they decide that they have a higher calling, I do not see where there is a huge problem.

 

Where I do see a problem is when people have some specific sexual desire and they join the clergy because they think that the desire will automagically go away. That just breeds trouble. The catholic church has pedophile priests but the protestant churches have priests who can marry and yet they commit adultery.

 

Basically, the symptom is different but the disease is the same. If you are becoming a priest/pastor/elder, then you need to not do certain things. If you are going to do certain things, then don't think that taking some special vow is going to govern your behavior.

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Answers in Gene Simmons wrote:

"Where I do see a problem is when people have some specific sexual desire and they join the clergy because they think that the desire will automagically go away. That just breeds trouble."

 

I see your point.  I just wish that I had seen it years earlier than what I actually did.  (Once again, to all concerned, brace yourself for incoming irrationality.)  Catholic theology teaches several things of interest, here.  One is the doctrine of free will.  Another is the doctrine of grace which, in this instance, basically reduces to God being interested in getting folks to Heaven, and as such, will assist them with the "help from on high" that they need in order to be good.  These graces are available to the believer in the sacraments of the Church, of which ordination is one.

 

Now...take all those ideas, put them into the mind of...oh...anyone with any kind of sexual difficulty and imagine what happens.  (I'm sorry to say, I fell into exactly this kind of mental trap, myself.)  You can imagine the nightmare of prayer (to be a good person) seeking sacraments (like ordination, for the "extra help" they're supposed to bring,) and feeling guilty when the inevitable failure occurs (because of course, there can't be any fault on God's part, so it must be a lack of faith, or some other flaw on the part of the believer.)  Welcome to Sex And Catholicism 101.

 

Conor

 

EDIT: A few other tidbits I left off are:

 

1. There is no parvity of matter in the area of sexual sin.  In other words, there is no such thing as a "small" (technical term: venial) sexual sin.  *All* such sins are considered "mortal," which means that if you do such a thing deliberately, even if only once, you have earned yourself a one-way ticket to a very *hot* afterlife.

 

2. *Any* seeking or acceptance of even the smallest degree of venereal pleasure is just such a sin.  Orgasm is not necessary for such a sin to occur.  Which means that all of those wrestlers on Youtube are Hellbound.  Yes, you read that right.

 

3. Oh...I didn't define "free will," above.  But it pretty much means what you'd expect: we have the capacity to choose just about anything we want to do.  This is sometimes cited, for example, as a reason that Catholic priests with an alcoholism problem often don't get treated: they believe, as a religious doctrine, that they can handle their problem all by themselves.

 

4. Re: God can't be at fault.  This expressly includes a hypothetical failure on God's part to give grace.  God, of course, *never* so fails.  So the blame is squarely in your lap.  Just so you know.

 

Okay.  I'm done.  Again.

 

I think.

 

Conor


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Answers in Gene Simmons

Answers in Gene Simmons wrote:
That said, I would assume that there are pedophile priests who do not dabble in the butt holes of choir boys. They have that urge but they take the vow that they have made seriously, so they do not engage in such activity. In all honesty, if someone has the desire to stick it up little boy poopers and they decide that they have a higher calling, I do not see where there is a huge problem.

I have a huge problem with pedophiles, full stop. I just can't treat the subject objectively. Incidentally, the "seminary" part that I was including in that pun was probably less obvious than the connection with priests. In my inebriated state, I figured the only explanation for putting all those words together was some vaguely poetic explanation of gay formative high school experiences.

Keep in mind I spend most of my time translating from Latin and - you guessed it - Greek. So once I'm drunk (which so rarely happens that I think each episode is documented on this site), pretty much everything looks like poetry. "Seminary, eh, Conor? Don't get any in your eye! *hic*"

And that's why I rarely drink. 'Cause I'm the biggest jackass ever.

 

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HisWillness wrote:I

HisWillness wrote:
I have a huge problem with pedophiles, full stop.

 

As do I.

 

However, what seems to be operative here is people taking holy vows to behave in a certain way and then breaking those vows. Now it does not get much press but protestants have an issue with priests who commit adultery. Even though that might not seem to be in the same league with catholic priests, it is similar.

 

Basically, there are people who have certain sexual preferences and they think that taking a holy vow will make them go away. Bullshit!

 

The catholics form an agreement to not have orgasms at all. The protestants agree not to have orgasms in certain ways. Whatever. The basic idea is not that the desire will not go away but that one has agreed not to act on the desire.

 

So fill out the vow and do what you must. If you like little boys, then don't even beat off thinking about them. I am still not cool with the wholetheism thing but at least you are holding to what you promised

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 Quote:And that's why I

 

Quote:
And that's why I rarely drink. 'Cause I'm the biggest jackass ever.

And that's why I never post while drinking...

 

...

 

Ok... in all seriousness, I have a bourbon and ginger, but I just started it... seriously.

 

 

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Answers in Gene Simmons wrote:

"Basically, there are people who have certain sexual preferences and they think that taking a holy vow will make them go away. Bullshit!"

 

My $0.02: Yes.  Exactly.  Especially that last word.  Unfortunately, Catholics:

   A) believe in miracles,

   B) believe in "sacramental graces," which I discussed earlier, and

   C) believe that sin is under the control of the individual's "free will."

 

Thus, do you have heterosexual priests who...ahem..."experiment with their sexuality," sometimes finding a way to pay for an abortion; you have homosexual priests who end up dying of AIDS; and, of course, the pedophiles/ephebophiliacs who...well...we know what they do.  And as you might imagine, there's a world of hurt that results for everyone involved.

 

This is why I think the Church is having a hard time getting anyone to pay attention to their sexual doctrine.  Certainly nobody has an easy time of it; many, perhaps even most folks, find it difficult to obey those rules that they can obey; the rules they *can't* obey lead them to believe that they are Hellbound; and the Church doesn't seem to have any advice for them beyond "Go to Mass, go to Confession, and pray your Rosary."  Then the laity discover events like those I just mentioned among their own clergy, and not only is there a certain "Et tu?" going on, but also the laity's efforts to get the facts are met with episcopal coverups, and then the blame is laid at the door of "modern society," which basically means the laity themselves. 

 

Sometimes I think it's a wonder that anybody shows up for Mass, at all.

 

Conor


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Hambydammit wrote:Ok... in

Hambydammit wrote:

Ok... in all seriousness, I have a bourbon and ginger, but I just started it... seriously.

Hehe. That doesn't count at all. I was hosed when I was posting that shit at Paisley, capo-something, and that idiot who thinks its important how many people died in the holocaust. I think my entreaty to Paisley to join the land of the living stands as a personal best.

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Answers in Gene Simmons

Answers in Gene Simmons wrote:

So fill out the vow and do what you must. If you like little boys, then don't even beat off thinking about them. I am still not cool with the wholetheism thing but at least you are holding to what you promised

 

It's the inevitability of breaking that promise that makes me cringe, though. How long can you keep away from what your biology screams at you every day? I don't think pedophiles are "wrong" in their attraction to minors, but they are permanently emotionally destructive if they act on those impulses, and they will most likely eventually give in and do so. They need counselling, and not (as you said earlier) just a vow and an outfit to hide behind.

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I feel ya,,..

I have been taking Latin for 4 years and am in for a whole year of the Aeneid. Lots of translation. Lots of religion, though not Christianity (thankfully).


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TheMuse wrote:I have been

TheMuse wrote:

I have been taking Latin for 4 years and am in for a whole year of the Aeneid. Lots of translation. Lots of religion, though not Christianity (thankfully).

The Aeneid is awesome. I did a ton of that last year - book four, I think. The part where Aeneas gets caught trying to sneak off, and basically says, "Look, lady, I don't know where you got the idea that we were married, but I just gotta roam free." Priceless. What a bastard. Sometimes I think the real unifying theme in classical mythology is the abuse of women.

Take Io (in Ovid's Metamorphoses): Jupiter wants to get something on the side, so he rapes Io, and then hides her from Juno by turning her into a cow. Juno demands the cow as a present, then makes the cow roam the world insane for years. Great. Then, when everybody has cried about it, Jupiter finally turns her into the goddess Isis, basically giving her a job. Thanks for coming out, guys. Gods are such jerks.

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