October 2007 Archives

Memorabilia, or rather genuine relics of contemporary secular heroes, and the way in which they are so fervently collected, reveals how we may once again create a genuine fervour for both reliquiae and pilgrimage. Memorabilia is so popular because its objects have a tangible connection to the hero in question, they are one-off originals not copies, and they can be possessed by the purchaser, and maintained in veneration within their home. These qualities of possession and singularity inspire intense zeal in collectors, and fill auction houses around the world with devoted pilgrims.

We propose to utilise this union of the strength of both souvenir and artefact, by creating a new order of relic which may be possessed by the faithful. New relics will be gathered from Publimartyrs, Saints, Hermits, Bishops, Abbots, Abbesses and Matrons, using as much ingenuity as the secular world finds in its selling of famous people’s used tooth brushes and old cars. And just as people travel on pilgrimage to participate in the processions of untouchable relics, so let them travel on pilgrimage to participate in the ceremonial auctioning of original -if minor- holy, and therefore miraculous, relics. Money will not be used in bidding, but rather promissory notes for ever-increasing services to the church, community and god; and the relics will remain in possession of the winning bidder only so long as they reside with the living, after which time the item will return into the church’s possession.

We propose the rite of HolyAuction.

These pathetic tragedians are the direct opposites of our saints, martyrs and hermits. Their sacrifice and suffering, when conveyed to the community, provided exemplary models of virtue in the face of which any man could not help but feel unworthy. The stories of our martyrs would affirm the incredible potential inherent in every person; they were the material with which society would remind itself that there are those elevated beyond the quotidian.

We wish to re-balance man’s view of himself, to once again offer him examples of human extraordinariness rather than mediocrity. Rather than only tell stories about martyrs who die in distant lands (often many years ago), rather than only speak of hermits who have renounced the pleasures of the world in some unknown desert; rather than just this, let us bring lofty piety into man’s vision, so that he may watch it in real-time, and be as transfixed with sublime sacrifice as he is with pitiful buffoonery. Let us use absolute exhibitionism to reveal strength and flawlessness, rather than greed and stupidity.

We propose the creation of a new order of living martyr, whose life shall be one of public suffering and sacrifice. They will be immolated in the public gaze, and be hereby known as Publimartyrs.

It is currently required that an ordained priest must hear, in person, the confessions of each individual. Two reasons have led the committee to propose a new approach to, and requirements for, this sacrament of absolution:

First is a matter of financial and demographic necessity. In our current state, the number of our clergy is at pitiable levels in relation to the population we seek to serve. This has led to local priests being unable to allocate the time needed to hear the daily confessions of each of their parish members.

Second is the rising sentiment in society that absolution can be gained through a generalised sharing of one’s faults. From personal internet diaries to newspaper tell-alls, man has become accustomed to the idea that so long as one confesses to one’s peers and is not denounced, then a kind of penance has been undertaken, and absolution attained.

We seek both to remedy the first point and utilise the potential of the second. The Church strongly recommends and encourages the practice of frequent confession, and to this effect we propose that for the hearing of Venial sins, man be brought together in a group of penitential voices. He will divulge his sins to his immediate brethren in Christ’s community, and following this he will hear the atonements of those to whom he has just confessed. As a final act he will bestow his forgiveness on those who have forgiven him by proclaiming the following: “God the Father of mercies, through the death and resurrection of his Son, has reconciled the world to himself and sent the Holy Spirit among us for the forgiveness of sins; through the ministry of the Church may God give you all pardon and peace, and I absolve you from your sins as you have absolved me, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”

The community will expiate itself in a shared fervour for penance, and will absolve itself in a sea of earnest mutterings. We propose Mutual Confession.

At the heart of our mass is the great daily miracle of transubstantiation and communion with God; all else is the mere form, and method, for joining together the group in a shared experience, and maintaining their recurrent participation. In this arena the world has evolved away from us. We have resolutely clung to the outward form of our service, while it no longer seizes the imagination of the masses; we have tenaciously maintained the repetitiveness of a ritual designed for men whose everyday lives did not contain spectacle, did not contain anything of the incredible. Now man is surrounded on all sides by spectacular form, his eyes and ears are kept perpetually wondering at the inventive magic of films, bands, videos, shows, adverts, sport; he is swept up in communal fervour as he attends concerts or films where there is no higher aim than to venerate the novelty of sounds or display. Man’s participation is ensured both by coruscating display, but also by the illusion of choice. The sheer variety of event that is available at any given time, the hit-list in which each individual may have his own personal favourite, which he will then choose to go and venerate, this apparent wealth of options serves to hide the fact that it is all only outward form. There is no core meaning, no higher content than the generation of wealth.

We -the Church- are surrounded by cultic and spectacular rituals which manage to engage man, but engage him for no higher purpose. We are surrounded by the lessons of spectacular form and yet continue to fill our churches with a mass that speaks to people who died long ago. Let us separate the essential core of our liturgy from its outmoded form and instead communicate it through the continuous novelty and variety which so captivates today’s audiences. We propose a Liturgical tautology of spectacle; the essential heart, the message of liturgy will remain always the same, only it will be communicated in as many ways as there are bands on MySpace.

We propose Spectacular Mass.

When waking with the sun and then ploughing fields or tending to sheep or sweating in the smithy all day until the sun set was the breadth of man’s horizon;

When the written word was a mystical cypher of which man knew nothing;

When Nature was vast, terrifying, dangerous and inexplicable;

When death wasn’t only an idea -something one knew would happen one day- but was a smell to be avoided in the streets;

When the body was so often a burden of pain to be suffered and from which there was no respite;

When life was such a narrow path of tedium peppered with horror and misery, the Church proclaimed the transcendence of every individual beyond his sores and abscesses; the Church placed man’s life and his death within an inimitable and beautiful plan of salvation beyond the stink of corpses; the Church extracted man from his narrow and incessant toil to celebrate creation and existence, which, rather than being cursed for its hardship, was glorified and illuminated in ceremony and stone. Man was overwhelmed by the intoxicating mixture of liturgy, icon, statue and story; he was convinced through the mysteries of the Church and their representations that life indeed did have meaning, that indeed there was something magical and profound about existence, about life, and also about pain and suffering.

But now that the rising of the sun has little significance, man wakes as he pleases, where he pleases, and knows that during the coming day his horizons may extend to embrace the globe;

Now that knowledge clings to each man as thickly as an odour, as thickly as a smell that emanates from the autopsy table on which lies the dissected, analysed, categorised and preserved remnants of Nature’s mysteries;

Now that death and pain have been marginalised to the periphery of vision, to specially quarantined buildings;

Now that the body is so often a collection of parts to be perfected or changed at will;

Now that magic and representation have haemorrhaged into every corner of the Real, and stand for nothing but distraction;

Now that life is such a vast landscape of endless choice peppered with information, opportunity and answers, the Church must proclaim the transcendence of every individual beyond the boredom of perfection; the Church must place man’s boundless freedom and his unlimited emptiness back within a plan of salvation beyond the cadaver of mystery. The Church must rediscover and reclaim the magic of representation and re-inject it with an amazement of existence. The Church must plunge itself into the contemporary world to find the raw material, the techniques with which it can once again convince man that indeed life does have meaning, that indeed there is something magical and profound about existence: that man’s great plague -the blight of meaninglessness- is no different today than it was when pain and suffering ruled, only now it is impossible to seduce man into belief with only ceremony and stone.

A lot more is needed, man is waiting, and to that effect, on the eve of my election I am announcing the convention of the Third Vatican Council. The Grand Conciglio will no doubt continue to examine our faith in great depth for many years to come, and beyond my time in the pontificate. Taking this into consideration I will be focusing my efforts on the formation of a sub-council which will endeavour to re-engage the laity through a direct, and possibly radical reconstruction of our tangible presence in their lives. In order that the ideas and decisions of this sub-council do not remain as exciting intention imprisoned on paper, in order that from the first steps of this Grand Council we will lead by concrete example, in order that the laity may engage with us while we are proceeding, in order for these things to happen I have set aside a parcel of land in this very city, the heart of our faith, so that it may become the physical register of our will to change.

I hereby convene the Third Vatican Council, convene and chair the First Committee for the Architecture of Ecclesiastical Engagement, and I hereby initiate the founding of the Church of Perpetual Experimentation.

Lolo Ferrari, born Eve Valois (March 4, 1962 - March 5, 2000) was a French dancer and actress billed as "the woman with the largest breasts in the world", though their size was artificially achieved.

Encouraged by her husband, Ferrari underwent numerous plastic surgery operations to create a 180-cm (71-inch) silicone-enhanced bust (22 enlargements, a Guinness world record) and to alter her facial appearance making her resemble a cross between Pamela Anderson and Brigitte Bardot. The Guinness Book of Records says each of her breasts weighed 2.8 kg (6 lb 2 oz) and contained 3 litres of serum. She had to wear a specially engineered brassiere size 54 J, and as a result of her many surgeries she suffered from a number of medical afflictions and lived with a heavy regimen of drugs.

Procedures had by Ferrari were said to have included:

6 rhinoplasties

4 surgeries on her mouth

Silicone injections to her forehead

Silicone injections to both cheeks

Silicone injections to the mouth

10–15 breast augmentations (implants)

On the morning of March 5, 2000, the day following her 38th birthday, Ferrari was found dead at her home in Grasse in the Alpes-Maritimes département on the French Riviera, apparently the victim of a self-induced prescription drug overdose. According to statements made by Eric Vigne, her husband, who had found her body, she had been planning her own funeral, and a few days prior to her death had visited an undertaker and picked out a white coffin, saying she wished to be buried in a pink ballroom gown, with her favourite white teddy-bear.

Shortly before her death, Ferrari is said to have expressed interest in having her implants removed.

Now -just as when we elevated the initiation of Baptism to the level where it had its own buildings- we are at a point in our own heartland where the majority of people are not truly within the fold. We feel that the sacraments of initiation are no longer properly conveyed by an act which refers to a release from bodily dirt.

Today man’s body itself has shattered. Advertising’s use of the body part -and its imperfection- as a point of departure for purchase, has fragmented the container for our souls into an index of impossible goals. This list of irresolvable inadequacies (as one is perfected, the next in the inventory simply pops up) creates an anxiety that is as ever present, as tangible, and as unpleasant as was the pain and discomfort brought about by filth and disease.

With the express aim of updating the initiatory sacraments, we propose to alter their form so that they may be transformative on a literal, and a spiritual level for contemporary man. Initiates will discard their broken bodies. They will be cleansed of anxiety and be reborn into complete, Christian vessels whose role is as a container for the soul. Fragmented Man will be reborn with a unified body and a contiguous soul.

We propose Recorporation as the evolution of Baptism.