Angels, Jesuits, and going to the bathroom (was Chapter 45: Angels)

[Terrance]

A duck a ghost  a machine  a Jesuit and the Pope were taking a Bath and
playing Bridge in the New York Times on Monday. 

The notion that a man is a soul contained in a body is a false idea that
comes from
Plato, who viewed the body as the prison of the soul. We occasionally
speak of the
body in this way (2 Cor. 5:1-4), but this language is not to be pressed.
The
twentieth-century philosopher Gilbert Ryle was wrong when he said
Christians view
man as "a ghost in a machine." It would have been more accurate to say
man is a
ghost and a machine. 

This makes it clear that expressions of pop culture that imply men can
become
angels, such as the songs "Johnny Angel" and "Teen Angel" or the movie
"It's a
Wonderful Life," are misleading on this point, whatever their other
merits may be. 

I think Pynchon's angels are essentially Catholic. 




Paul Mackin wrote:
> 
> On Wednesday 10 April 2002 09:56 am, David Morris wrote:
> 
> > Do people become angels after they die?  Does a bell ring every time an
> > angel earns his/her/its wings?  How many can dance on the head of a pin?
> 
> Hard to answer such questions about noncorporeal beings. As an architect,
> David, you may have heard the story of the Jesuit Seminary at Woodstock,
> Maryland. It seems the architect whom they employed forgot to include
> bathrooms in the design and the imposing stone structure was built entirely
> without them.   When the Pope eventually received his courtesy copy of the
> plans (too late)  he immediately sent a one line telegram to the Jesuit in
> charge:  "Are you angels there?" (in Latin of course)
> 
> A WC per floor was eventually tacked onto to the outside of the building
> resulting in a slightly strange appearance. Still a nice looking building
> however. No longer used as a Jesuit Seminary. Was rather famous in the 60s
> for antiwar dissent.
> 
> P.