Recognitions ch 2 on Sacre Coeur

[Paul Mackin]

On 4/16/2011 1:59 AM, edmoorester at gmail.com wrote:
> the photo on the link below shows the building discussed on p66 
> 93penguin edition
>
> http://www.thetravelingscholar.com/2010/02/hotels-check/sacre-coeur-paris/ 
>
>
> "Above the thing itelf towered exotic and uninvited, affording the 
> consolation of the grotesque: that dead white Byzantine-Romanesque 
> surprise which was heaped in bulbiferous pyramids atop the Hill of the 
> Martyrs in the late nineteenth century, soon after the city had 
> finished installing a comprehensive new sewage system. It was a 
> monument (the church) not, as many had it, to the French victory over 
> Prussia, but to the Jesuit victory over France"
I am glad he included mention of the Paris sewers.  It was reminiscent 
of the famous  movie "Seventh Heaven" starring James Stewart as a 
despised sewer worker aspiring to be a street cleaner and Simone Simon 
as the prostitute he falls for.  The story occurs in the poor district 
at the foot of the famous church and within the church itself.  Chico, 
Dianne, Heaven.  That's beside the point of course.  We are reminded 
that France was far from done with religion after 1789.   But I am 
curious about "Jesuit victory."  I thought religion and especially the 
Jesuits got thoroughly slapped down by the Republic.  Perhaps Stephen 
Moore has something to say about this.  Will try to remember to look.

>
> and then later in that same paragraph finally the term "recognition" 
> (know it again for the first time)
>
> p66 ". . .Pope Pius IX was assailed with a petition asking highest 
> recognition for the Sacred Heart"
>
> but now the theme of counterfeits/forgery pops up p 67
> ". . .insinuated that the Society had plagiarized the Sacred Heart 
> from England's leading philosphe, William Goodwin, who thought of it 
> first."
>
> So there is not so much discussion of the bible in particular but more 
> of the Catholic church which the narrator finds riddled with 
> nauseating tales (fistula lachrymalis . . .a hole into a tear duct) of 
> the "miracles" which enable the Sacre Coeur to get acknowledged as a 
> "center" of religious innovation when it just seems to be the same 
> stuff reinventing itself.
>
> Is that the impression you guys get?

I'm repeating myself but isn't Gaddis a little over-reactive about the 
Whore of Babylon.  What is he, a Protestant or something?  That kind of 
thing would sound a little shrill today.  Over-kill at the very least. 
Religion is in the throes of enough current trouble so as to obviate 
dwelling on the more superstitious past.


>
> Also did anyone notice the description of Paris as a woman? (possibly 
> a deceptive hooker? putas means whore in Spanish)

More kindly than Joyce's depiction of Ireland--sow that devours its young???

P.
>
> ed