Tuesday 14 February 2017

CEASE AND DESIST

I was sorting through some stuff today and found a small velvet pouch with some rosary beads inside.
These were my mother's and I bought them for her many years ago in Rome, inside Saint Peter's courtyard outside The Vatican.

The religious collectibles emporium (I'm sure that there is a special name for it) stocked exclusively Catholic odds and sods so good luck with trying to buy a Buddha statue or a bur-qua but there you go.
The rosary beads are quite nicely made from some ruby lookalike glass. The vendor who looked a bit like a gypsy assured me that they had been blessed by the pope. I thought "yeah right" and would have been a bit more convinced had they been sold to me by a nun or a cardinal.

I was a bit surprised that the stuff on offer was all a bit tatty. I wasn't exactly expecting the Book of Kells or the actual cross that Jesus humped around but it was Saint Peter's after all.




There were a lot of crucifixes, all in various degrees of garishness. Why on earth do Christians (I guess mainly Catholics) like to have these things in their homes and in churches, particularly the ones with painted on blood seeping from open wounds. Horrible.




Maybe Robert can enlighten me.

Mind you, he's more likely to tell me that I'm the Anti-Christ and that his god will punish me.


2 comments:

Robert and the Catholics said...

Suppose I'd better give my two pennies worth.
1.As usual a very enjoyable post.
2.The older I get the more I look to a global all encompassing perspective of Christianity and an awareness of a relationship with the invisible entity that "signed my soul" (Zacharias) after it brought me into existence.
3. An antichrist (in Greek meaning evidently "other than Christ") is a bit of an over used concept. It probably only occurs in two of St John's epistle. As I have mentioned in my blogs Revelation talks not of antichrists but rather the returning of the Christ with a triumphant note.

THE CURMUDGEON said...

Ummm, thanks. I think. But I could be wrong.