V--2nd, Chapter 11 p.324 A room is all that is the case

[rich]

I do like those religious church paintings

On Thu, Nov 18, 2010 at 10:41 AM, Joe Allonby <joeallonby at gmail.com> wrote:
> As another recovering Catholic, I made note in the past of the
> difference in Catholics and Protestants. We were part of a vast
> intercessionary network that connected us to God. Protestants had a
> personal savior. But Catholicism connected entire neighborhoods (in my
> experience either Irish or Italian) as part of a shared experience.
> Despite the patriarchal nature of the church, the enforcement was
> matriarchal. Your mother made you go to confession. The old ladies
> carried the sword of culpability. The nuns were the disciplinarians.
> All this connected to what was originally a state religion, the ROMAN
> Catholic church. My paternal grandparents were Anglican - the English
> version but also a state religion. Both co opted the power of religion
> to not only reduce its threat to the state but to also validate the
> state. The king is anointed by God.
>
> Protestants didn't go to confession. You were damned unless you were
> saved, once again by a personal relationship with Jesus. The minister
> and the organization backing him were not required for your
> forgiveness, redemption, and salvation. He had more of an advisory
> role. I wonder how much this is changing with megachurches and
> evangelical political activism. "When fascism comes to America it will
> be wrapped in a flag and carrying a cross".
>
>
> On Thu, Nov 18, 2010 at 5:11 AM, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
>> Michael writes:
>> But I think there is a fundamental need for something like confession.
>> You can get sanity checks from your friends and family, and that's
>> valuable.  If you're in school, the feedback from your teachers helps
>> you figure out some of the tough questions and so forth.
>>
>>
>> Someone commenting psychologically on Catholicism I once read
>> said it fulfilled our need to confess, to be heard about our weaknesses
>> by authority we respected. As MB writes. (this writer also said Catholicism
>> was real good about the aesthetic experience of an externalized communal
>> ritual---the Mass.)
>>
>> Whatever. Anyway, I was raised Catholic and I can remember lots emotionally.
>> One memory relevant here is a high school one where for some reason---surely
>> to force goodness on the bad kids--we all had to attend confession one school
>> day. Some kind of retreat in place, I guess.I remember feeling like a wit--not
>> that
>> common to me--when, after we were all back from confession I ad libbed using
>> the old Zest commercial "How does it feel to be really clean?"....Got big laughs
>> yet, now, I would say I had the witticism because I FELT that---really clean---
>> cause I was an earnest good boy who just had impure thoughts and might not even
>> have
>> been playing with myself yet, can't remember, who took confession seriously.
>>
>> I might suggest that the experience of confession, internalized, led, after
>> discovering Freud and jung
>>  to Pynchon's wonderful offhand truth about self-criticism---it wouldn't seem to
>> work but it does.
>>
>> I always thought the Protestants---I knew no Jews nor people of any other
>> religions---
>> had it easy. It was all between them and their God one-on-one.
>> My earliest crisis-of-faith went like this: Some people feel even their little
>> sins more than
>> others, so those insensitive buggers, if they don't even think of what they've
>> done, can't
>> feel guilty so what is there to be 'forgiven'?....Sociopathic bastards, I might
>> say now jokingly.
>>
>> Augustine's Confessions, as Alice cites, must have been read by intellectual
>> Catholic Tom.
>> I can't relate it to this chapter, maybe cause I never read it all....I feel
>> Adams strained through
>> Pynchon's added vision via a confessional as influence, but  I would now.
>>
>>
>> ----- Original Message ----
>> From: Michael Bailey <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com>
>> To: P-list <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>> Sent: Wed, November 17, 2010 9:09:43 PM
>> Subject: Re: V--2nd, Chapter 11 p.324 A room is all that is the case
>>
>> alice wellintown  wrote:
>>> Grant sez to check out Alaine Robbe-Grillet. Makes sense to me.
>>>
>>
>> I was just trying to think of his name.
>>
>> Also the confessional angle: a bird, or maybe a gargoyle, has perched
>> on my shoulder and keeps telling me this is an important theme in the
>> book: Godolphin, Stencil, Eigenvalue, and now poor Fausto.
>>
>> Not being brought up Catholic, it's always held a certain amount of
>> fascination for me.  I remember asking one of my buddies as a teenager
>> about it.  He didn't seem nearly as interested in it as I was: he said
>> you just say something like "forgive me Father, I have sinned," and
>> they tell you to say some Hail Marys.
>>
>> Then of course I got into riffing on blessed is the Fruit of the Loom,
>> and I think he was, not exactly offended, but put off.
>>
>> But I still imagine sitting in a confessional and telling all the
>> stuff I feel bad about, and what would the priest do?  I guess it's a
>> little more formalized than that, and there are people waiting in line
>> behind you.
>>
>> But I think there is a fundamental need for something like confession.
>> You can get sanity checks from your friends and family, and that's
>> valuable.  If you're in school, the feedback from your teachers helps
>> you figure out some of the tough questions and so forth.
>>
>> So the formal church confession could be a prototype of this sort of
>> action - deconstructed to a form of primate grooming even, if we are
>> into that sort of not-very-flattering analogy.
>>
>> Stencil's father confessed into his journal, I guess - and there's
>> some kind of mutuality intended.  My friend's feeling about it sounded
>> to me (although I realize he was probably downplaying it) like the
>> interplay of gravity between a person and the earth: I jump up and the
>> earth's gravity pulls me down/he confesses and feels better - in
>> return, when I land, the earth is jogged a zillionth of a
>> centimeter/and the Church feels a minuscule outpouring of grace (about
>> as much as the world is moved by my mass when I jump) -- or so I
>> pictured it and maybe still do...
>>
>> Whereas, Fausto confesses to Paola and I think that is actually
>> efficacious upon her to some degree, causing her to act differently
>> going forward.
>>
>> But, again, this is a long, detailed confession.
>>
>> And written, if that makes a difference...???
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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