Category: The Fringe

I must have missed this bit of religious silliness when it first hit the net and generated controversy: a charismatic community in Brazil, the “Shalom” Community, engages in dance as an evangelistic art form. They did this at a conference:

It really is impressive how fast the priest takes off at the start of the dance.
There is sincere piety here, as far as I can tell, but the whole thing looks like an act from the L.A. Religious Ed Congress. What isn’t clear to me is this: when people start whistling from the “audience”, are they praising or protesting the spectacle?

An artificial intelligence researcher predicts that robots will eventually simulate human appearance and personality so well that people will fall in love with them and marry them. It figures that he predicts Massachusetts will legalize this first.
This may prove appealing to a couple of the Mythbusters guys, but I can’t imagine this would appeal to many women.

Sometimes people invent substitute rituals to use in place of conventional Christian funeral ceremonies: probably because they have little faith in Christ or have not been instructed well so as to appreciate the gift of His Resurrection. But some of the rituals people propose don’t quite make sense to me yet.
As a case in point, I can understand people wanting to have their bodily remains shot into space, into the sun or wherever, as a Romantic gesture of oneness with the universe. That’s a statement of belief — belief of some sort. But now it turns out that the customers of the first space-shot “burial” didn’t even get that for their ticket price. They only ended up taking what the travel biz calls a Cruise to Nowhere: go out, ride around, but don’t stop anywhere: just go back – back home, back where you started.
So their rocket came back to earth after 4 minutes and parachuted into the mountains of New Mexico. Uh, was there a point to all that?

It must be hard to keep track of all the stuff going on in Catholic facilities. It seems that a local Spiritualist minister is holding weekly classes in meditation and healing in a conference room at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital.

Held on Friday evening @ 7:00pm This class focuses on helping every individual to connect to the Divine Within. Experiment with many forms of meditation from visualization to chanting to drumming…. Many roads lead within! The Laying on of Hands Healing is practiced each week along with a Healing Circle of Light – spreading light throughout the world! Open to All! […]
Where: at St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center, 736 Cambridge St., Brighton/St. Margaret’s Building, Conference Rooms 3 and 4. Parking in Garage B.
SPECIAL EVENT: FRIDAY, JAN. 26TH 7 pm-
Special video viewing of “ANGELS AROUND US” presented by NATURES SPIRITUAL EXPRESSIONS followed by a guided meditation “Meet your Angels” with Rev. Mary…

Well, open to anyone with ten bucks per session. Usually, my guardian angel doesn’t charge me to talk to him, but maybe things are different in the Big City.
I would write to the Archdiocese about this, but I’ve already sent the Cardinal a letter about another issue, and they’re “carefully looking into” that matter already. Any other Bostonians want to take up this one?

Abp. Milingo’s attempt to bring married ex-clergy into his Moon-financed anti-celibacy project is not meeting with the success he expected:

Organizers said on Wednesday that 200 married priests have registered to attend the convention — about one-third the number predicted by Milingo at a press conference last week.
“The hope was to have many more,” said Peter Paul Brennan, of West Hempstead, N.Y., one of the four men Milingo ordained as bishops in September.

Existing groups for dissident ex-clergy seem to be snubbing the loopy, but compared to them relatively more orthodox, archbishop.
(HT: CWN)