If you want to be serious for a moment (why?) it's also a great example of people who know a religion only as a text, not a habitus, telling people what the religion really means.
The pope would probably say "tradition" or "apostolic succession" instead of "habitus."
Surely the Twitter goofball is working from within a religious tradition as venerable as that of the Pope himself, and his text backs up that tradition:
"I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.This is a sentiment that has animated Christianity for a couple of millenia, even if the Catholics have recently gone soft.
Is there an e missing from the title of the post?
LB's right, the correct Latin would be Non Mansplainir.
Really it's about ethics in conversion journalism.
2: Also, a quite old (though not as old) tradition of telling the Pope he doesn't know a darn thing about the Bible.
I knew the title didn't look right, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it.
4: You're saying there's an extra e and LB thought there was one missing.
I thought Mansplainir was the legendary sword with which Beowulf slew Grendel's mother.
Sure, thats where the word comes from
I like to call the people ogged refers to as "armchair theologians."
The pope is an Ex cathedra theologian.
I had to read that three times before I parsed it correctly. Wait, who does ogged refer to as "armchair theologians" and why are you calling them? Is it like how librarians have to answer all your dumb questions and look stuff up for you?
11: no no, it's a magical orb that you stare into to learn things you already know.
no no well actually it's a magical orb that you stare into to learn things you already know.
Pons Mansplainir is what it's called when the mansplaining part of your brain gets so big it affects your ability to accuracy to perceive the world, especially when women are talking.
Mons Mansplainir is the mythical mountain community where the men are always right and the women and children are seen and not heard
The people who read all about a particular religion on Wikipedia and think they can explain what it is *really* like are armchair theologians.
Oh hey, ogged, have you read William Gibson's The Peripheral? It hits the notes you're talking about -- moves right along, non-craven worldbuilding, smart female protagonist sketched competently enough -- and is generally his best in a while. It might have some deeper meaning lurking somewhere in there but it's buried deep. It does have the Gibson style of throwing you right into jargon-y future-things with minimal exposition, which turns some people off, but which I happily just roll with.
Being an armchair theologian makes perfect sense to me. It's the armchair auto mechanics or armchair revolutionary leaders that I find to be a little silly.
This whole thread is making me laugh.
23: Not "smartphone theologian"? You could check wikipedia on your phone while walking down the street, after all.
One plausible reading of (much of) the Gospels could be summed as, basically, don't be like Twitter.
23. Sadly, no wikipedia entry for Unfogged. Not even a mention on the page of notable blogs.
There is a very large overlap between armchair theologians and armchair constitutional scholars. (E.g., "JESUS WOULD FIGHT FOR OUR SECOND AMENDMENT")
I'm a little confused by this bit: people who know a religion only as a text.
There are certainly people who meet this description, but is there a reason to think this van den Hoorn guy is one of them, aside from being dickish to the pope? It could be different in Europe but at least in America it seems to me that hating on non-Christians because of what the bible says is absolutely part of the habitus of plenty of the Christian sects out there.
Meanwhile, I like "Why don't you ask Mumslims to convert?"
"It's an honor to meet you, your Holiness."
"No no, the honor is mine."
"Thank you for coming."
"I appreciate your hospitality. By the way, would you like to convert to Christianity?"
"Uh, no thank you. Would you like to convert to Islam?"
"Oh no, not at all. Now, to business?"
Potato, tomato clamato.
18 is seriously great.
I can't read "Mumslims" without thinking "You've come a long way, baby."
bifrons mansplainir is the earl of hell, commander of demons, enemy of christ and sexist as fuck.
dons manplainir is the collective noun for a group of oxbridge professors.
aeons mansplainir is one of aquinas' lesser works, unfortunately.
Well, if Pope Frankie is going to put himself out there with a Twitter account, of course he is going to hear from random dudes on social media who want to relive and replay the theological battles of the Reformation.
Can I just say that "Pontifex" is possibly the most awesome Twitter handle ever?
Also: Francis can more than bear the weight of biblical-literalist criticism, which probably strikes him as crude and naive pamphleteering. This guy is a Jesuit, after all.
I honestly did think the link would go to something about Luther. How depressing that it's just taken for granted on Twitter that OF COURSE the Pope is the best Christian in the world and it's silly to suggest he might have got something wrong.
I thought 11 was even funnier than 18 but dare not explain why
The link in 31, on the other hand ... come, friendly asteroids
40: Maybe a series of religious wars is just what Africa needs.
40. I don't think anybody is taking for granted that the Pope is the best Christian in the world, merely that he's probably familiar with the foundational texts of the religion he's head of.
45: He seems very nice, as pontiffs go.
40: The response was just so stupid. "Please read John 14:6". It's probably one of the ten most famous passages in the entire Bible. The Pope has never read it, or thought about it? It would be like if I started explaining constitutional arrangements in the UK to you, or something else I know you know perfectly well.
That's why ogged violated everything he ever believed in and made the analogy to mansplaining. Mansplaining is not disagreeing, it's explaining something like the other person has never heard of it or thought about it, when they obviously have.
46. He's a guy I'd probably enjoy spending an evening with in a pub, but I don't regard him as infallible, even ex cathedra.
Lots of Protestants, not just American ones, believe that Catholics (and especially the Pope!) don't know or care about the Bible, because obviously if they did they'd become Protestants.
I got plenty of that in Sunday School as a lad. Since then the Presbyterians have gone soft, soft, soft.
47.1: It even frequently comes up in the Catholic liturgy.
||From a job application "Objective: To help enhance my job skills as I hone in on my career choices."
Automatic disqualification, right? |>
52: That alone is not enough, but are plenty of other reasons to disqualify Ben Carson.
Let's have only good wishes to people applying for jobs today.
49 is the tradition in which I was raised. No wiggle room allowed. You're born again or you're hell bound.
It could be different in Europe but at least in America it seems to me that hating on non-Christians because of what the bible says is absolutely part of the habitus of plenty of the Christian sects out there.
In Europe it's more popular to hate on Christians because of what the bible says. Hey guys did you ever look at this so-called "Old" Testament? God is a jerk! Why has no one ever noticed this before?
53: I'm also sending out interview requests. You got yours, right?
I'm preaching to the choir here, but it always astonishes me that these people exist when you can get different versions of the good book free! on the internets! I mean, I know a guy who keeps dozens of different ones on his computer because he did a PhD on the history of the Bible. And he's a minister! HUR HUR NO GOD DICTATED THIS EXACT TEXT YES DAMN RIGHT IN ENGLISH
Depending on the variety of Christian, he probably grew up hearing that Catholics weren't Christian or didn't read the Bible. Maybe it goes all the way to the top?
59: And you're posting? Nice demonstration of your ability to multitask. Good luck!
Nobody is talking with me just now. Thanks.
57: There are sub-sects of the Baptist tradition I grew up in that believe the King James Bible is absolutely correct in all details due to God overseeing the translation. All other translations are suspect.
I kind of like the King James because it has that old-timey feel and lots of poetic turns of phrase. The Revised Standard Version was the one adopted by my parent's church and it sucks. I don't know about the quality of the translation but the language is just pedestrian.
Also, a book recommendation: The Unauthorized Version, by Robin Lane Fox. It's fascinating stuff, at least it was for me. It does not meet Ogged's criteria but it's a page-turner nonetheless.
grew up hearing that Catholics weren't Christian or didn't read the Bible
Right. When I moved to the south where being Catholic was mildly exotic, I got all sorts of weird questions:
-How come you don't read the Bible?
-Why do you worship the Pope like he's God?
-Do you think the Pope is God?
-Why do you worship all the saints like they're gods?
-Do you really think the wine turns to blood? Wouldn't it taste like blood if it were really blood?
***
In fact, I think Togolosh has a funny story along these lines, regarding the first time he (or someone?) saw a nun.
How much snooping through files is allowed when you are waiting?
63.last: My dad. He asked her to remove her hat so he could see her horns. Mortified his mom.
62: *Everybody* loves the King James version! I can almost see where your sect was coming from there.
Automatic disqualification, right?
Does the job require a near-native fluency in meaningless corporate jargon?
Douay-Rheims (Challoner Revision) or get out
We put the marked up version of the Bishops's Bible (the one that eventually became the King James) on-line a while ago.
The exhibition website, and the section where you can compare versions, is here:
http://www.manifoldgreatness.org/index.php/making/compare-translations/
It's interesting, although the KJV is based on the Bishops' Bible, how much more poetic and elegant the KJ phrasing is.
The sense is sometimes interestingly varied, too, as in:
http://www.manifoldgreatness.org/index.php/2010/10/we-see-through-a-glass-darkly/
63: It's very weird getting this from Mormons.
Modern translations often try to clarify the meaning of "through a glass, darkly,"
Most Roman glass is barely translucent, let alone transparent. I doubt the meaning was obscure to Paul's correspondents.
Well, most of them. ydneW is right in 51.
While we're at it, isn't it kind of weird that these churches that take the King James Bible so literally or profess to take it literally (LOPTTIL) don't think highly of the Anglican/Episcopalian church? And/or weird that the Anglican/Episcopalian church isn't one of the ones that takes it LOPTTIL?
I mean, it's not like that's the biggest logical stretch involved, but it just occurred to me.
I've got to testify that I grew up as a fairly pious protestant, was taught the history of the Reformation from our point of view and how to unpack the Westminster Catechism. But I was never taught nor do I remember it being insinuated in my religious instruction that Catholics weren't Christians.
When I did encounter versions of that notion, in the form recounted above, I remember thinking it ignorant and superstitious.
I read the o.p. term in Canadian French, as mans-plen-yay!
It's not obviously silly to think that the Pope might be ignoring fairly fundamental and obvious bits of the Bible. That's a big part of the Reformation, with regard to the Second Commandment and Christ's teaching on poverty, to pick a couple of obvious ones.
75. Not that weird. The Puritans were originally a faction within the Church of England, and the pilgrim's generation would have been mostly familiar with the KJV; and the (English) Baptists emerged around the same time, about when the KJV was published. It was the state of the art translation at the time.
The obvious alternative would have been the Geneva Bible, which a lot of extreme Protestants preferred, and I've no idea why this isn't the version that has become idolised- probably ignorance, since there weren't many copies around after 1700.
76
What was your point of view? As a Lutheran I learned about the Reformation from our point of view, which was Luther's sensible reforms opened a floodgate for any sort of asshole quack to come up with his own version of Christianity *cough* Calvin *cough* I remember learning about the wrongness of Presbyterianism more so than the wrongness of Catholicism.
When I went to Christmas Mass at the local Roman Catholic church during the time of JP2, the Priest stands up and the first words out of his mouth were, "As Martin Luther says,..." I was like, "do 500 years of schism mean nothing to you??"
Under Benedict, I was at a different Christmas Mass, and the (Polish immigrant) priest gave a sermon on the evils of secular humanism and how much Catholics who show up once a year on Christmas suck. I was a little surprised (bland suburban Church), but I admired his willingness to insult his audience and reject this whole "nonjudgmental" movement among mainstream Christianity.
This year I'll probably have to go to another Catholic Christmas Mass, and given the current pope I expect there will be tambourines and kumbaya singing.
Something like 78 is kind of the armchair theology described above.
80:
Calvinism, but a portrait of Calvin that emphasized his orthodoxy, how much he drew from Augustine, etc. Luther was taught as a hero, embarked on the same road, not some sort of antagonist.
The takeaway was that none of these ideas were new, even in the Reformation, and had often been expressed before.
Negativity, our or anybody's superiority was not very foregrounded nor insisted upon.
Now I was primed to see it that way by my family to be sure, but all the same wasn't confronted with the opposite in religious instruction. That others were explains a lot about their disdain for their religious upbringing, which just wasn't my experience.
But I find more often it's Catholics who are like, "We have this strange religious practice totally alien to anything protestant-like. We have a processional, and then this thing called liturgy, which we chant, and sing hymns and have a sermon." And I'm like, "dude, I was raised high church Lutheran, we do all the same things you do, with slightly less incense."* And then they look shocked that like, we don't handle snakes or something.
*In fact, in the wild and hippy 80s, both the Catholic church and the ELCA hired Mar/ty Hau/gen to redo the liturgical music. He did slightly different versions, but it's a similar style.
I can remember conversations on both sides of my family that respected piety and sincerity from whatever faith and disdained its absence. Their universe in small-town Canada was the various Protestant denominations, Catholics and, occasionally, Jews. They never met Hindus, Muslims or Buddhists, although they'd have been aware of their existence.
Lionel Trilling devoted a series of lectures to the process by which sincerity, as a social and personal ideal had steadily lost ground in modern times to authenticity.
My folks were all about sincerity.
I read Sincerity and Authenticity while commuting on BART and that might have something to do with the fact that I now can't remember what the difference between sincerity and authenticity was.
Besides predestination, we mainly just learned that Calvin was an uptight judgmental dick and the reason Americans are prudish sex and don't believe in the welfare state.
That's ironic because Luther for all his wonderful virtues was probably one of the most world-class judgmental dicks in history, at least when he got mad.
See, e.g. I find some of the rage congenial, except for the murderous anti-Semitism part.
Thanks to Calvin I've faked every orgasm.
How much of a scholar was C. S. Lewis? He has one of his muslim-analogues go to heaven in the last of the Narnia novels.
Things I have learned. They really do call Yuengling "lager", goggle maps tries to get people lost by not keeping north in the same end of your phone, and walking 10,000 steps in dress shoes is a whole different deal than doing it in regular shoes.
96. You should use Google Maps instead. The little diamond on the screen toggles among several views, including "keep north at the top."
Waze may have the same feature buried in its somewhat idiosyncratic UI.
How creepy is it to pop a blister in your toe in public? Say while waiting for a flight? Asking for a friend. Also, where can you buy a needle and rubbing alcohol in an airport.
I think standard etiquette requires that you use your teeth.
98: It's possible they sell hydrocolloid-style band-aids (like this) at the airport. They're magic. So much better than regular band-aids.
That's a big part of the Reformation, with regard to the Second Commandment
That's the part where Jesus told his followers to arm themselves, right?
I just found out (relearned?) this weekend that my dad was raised in a holy roller-type church. Now I can't recall the specifics, like whether it was a name brand or something more like a storefront church. I've always known that his parents left the Catholic Church because of some hassle wrt getting married*, but I never understood that the form of Protestantism was very much anti-Catholic. I've known for awhile that my mom was one of those who didn't go to Mass until she had kids; come to think of it, I just remembered that my dad said we didn't become (regular) churchgoers until they switched my sister to Catholic school, after 4th grade (IIRC they closed PS 26, and PS 15 sucked, so they left after one year; tales of Mrs. Lipson, her awful teacher, were legion). This would have happened when I was not quite 5, so I have no memory of not attending.
All of which makes it remarkable that we four basically never missed Mass for the rest of my upbringing. My dad attended dutifully, but never took Communion, while my mom never gave any hint of being less than devoted. So strange. It does help explain why so much of the cultural aspects of Catholicism (guilt, mysticism, strong opinions about Protestants) are completely alien to me.
*it was always hazy, and it wasn't clear if it was a shotgun situation or something to do with the war. I don't actually know what his parents' anniversary was. But my gramps never forgave the Church, while my gram returned late in life, averring that she thought God had kept her alive (through decades of MS) long enough for that to happen
102
My grandfather was a super hardcore atheist* who had a falling out with the church some time when I was a baby. After that, he'd drive my grandmother to church (she couldn't drive because of health issues), and sit in the car while she attended. When my sister was born, my grandmother + parents wanted him to attend the baptism, but he refused. It became this huge fight, and about a week before, my grandmother ran away from home. My grandfather looked everywhere for her and even made up missing person fliers. After about a week, my grandmother came back without mentioning where she went or even acknowledging that she'd been gone at all, and my grandfather agreed to attend the baptism. After that point, my sister, who became his favorite grandchild, could occasionally coax him to attend church for special occasions.
*When I was a kid (8ish?), he'd take me aside and tell me that everything I learned about heaven was a lie, because there was no God and no afterlife and we just rotted in the ground after death.
After about a week, my grandmother came back without mentioning where she went or even acknowledging that she'd been gone at all, and my grandfather agreed to attend the baptism.
Wow.