Some Wandering Ponderings

First, this one has been around for a few weeks, but there are new developments:

VITERBO, Italy (AP) -- An Italian judge heard arguments Friday on whether a small-town parish priest should stand trial for asserting that Jesus Christ existed.

The priest's atheist accuser, Luigi Cascioli, says the Roman Catholic Church has been deceiving people for 2,000 years with a fable that Christ existed, and that the Rev. Enrico Righi violated two Italian laws by reasserting the claim.
--Associated Press

It seems there is a law in Italy about "abuse of popular belief" that makes it a crime to benefit (make gains from) fraudulently deceiving people. Not being a lawyer (or Italian) I'm not sure where it all comes from or why, but I have a hunch that in Italy, at least, no court would rule that the Roman Catholic Church has been defrauding people for 2000 years.

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A smile and a wave will do. From Richard at Connexions, a bit of news about the passing of the time-honored passing of the peace.

A Londonderry priest has given parishioners the choice of whether or not to shake hands with others at Mass.

The parish priest in Ballymagroarty has said he has had a letter from a Mass-goer worried that the traditional “sign of peace” could spread germs.

Father Patrick O’Kane suggested that if people are concerned they should just nod and smile at their neighbour.
--link to BBC story

Actually, over the years I have had people refuse to do what we call the "right hand of fellowship" during the cold and flu season for the same reasons. So we would just smile at each other.

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A few more to add to the million little pieces of Oprah and James, this from Jeff Jarvis at Buzz Machine:

Well, I’m glad that Oprah has been brought down a few notches… by Oprah. I don’t know who annointed Oprah the arbiter of culture, ethics, and behavior in America. Well, actually, I do know who did that: Oprah. So now she had to confess her mistake annointing James Frey. But in typical Oprah fashion, she didn’t really take the fall herself. She pilloried Frey in the process. We already knew he was a liar of Glassian/Blairian proportion. But what this was about was really whether we can trust Oprah. That’s what her empire is built upon.
--link to Buzz Machine

Yes, perhaps there's another addiction at work in this whole story- the addiction to fame and power and control over an empire. As a media empire, you would have thought that there would have been some research done on the book in the first place, not just accepting it as face value. Especially with the extreme stories that are in the book. Anyway, props to Jeff who has taken some flack in his comments for having negatives to say about an icon.

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Next- a sort of mea culpa, from pmPilgrim. As I thought some more about what I have written about James Frey's "mischaracterizations" of himself I realized that it could be taken as saying it's okay to lie because he's

• an addict and therefore can't tell the truth---
• told an important story so facts be damned---
• just done what all addicts do in their drunkalogues.

If that is what comes across, I don't mean that. I wholeheartedly agree that memoirs should be truthful and information stated as facts should be facts. I wholeheartedly agree that James was guilty of misrepresenting himself in the book when he decided to sell it as a memoir. Just because nobody would publish it as fiction is not a reason to repackage it as truth.

To work a program of sobriety one must maintain some semblance of real honesty. That is a non-negotiable since the addicted and alcoholic brain doesn't know how to do that at first. But after 13 years, honesty should be second-nature, not self-aggrandizement.

Perhaps the blame also goes on the rest of us, like this pmPilgrim, who have become so used to getting our news from The Daily Show or our real commentary from The Colbert Report that we forget how to deal with reality. We believe everything and nothing all in the same breath. We are not wise consumers while being skeptics of everything. Is that a paradox? You bet it is. It is part of the paradox of the postmodern mind. Oprah is a product of that as much as Howard Stern, James Frey as much as reporters Glass and Blair.

Perhaps in the end when all is entertainment, truth is the victim.

I am glad I have read James Frey's book. It is powerful and will hopefully tell people that change and recovery is possible. I just wish he hadn't played all of us for suckers.

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And finally to put this whole thing in persepctive..

Democrats and Republicans alike are adept at making decisions without letting the facts get in the way, a new study shows.

And they get quite a rush from ignoring information that's contrary to their point of view.
--MSNBC link.

Maybe it all has to do with how the brain works. None of us likes to accept as truth anything we don't want to believe. Which means the reverse is true, we will always believe anything we want to believe is true. I will probably write more about that idea in the near future (since I am reading an excellent book on The Big Bang.)

Perhaps, then, ignoring the truth and getting the facts wrong is truly the ultimate high? That sure would explain why we spend so much time with politics!