BEg2 chapter 10 dipping into the Windust dossier

[Joseph Tracy]

I was raised an Irish catholic,(quit at around  age 17-18) and have often worked for catholics in my conservation work. It seems to me to be a place of congeniality  and formal gathering, social moral obligation, but very little interpersonal interaction required to fit in unless you are in a service committees or education system. Much of the closer connections have nothing to do with religion and much to do with alcohol, football games, ethnic community events. TRP had some interest in catholicism despite a puritan leaning background.  I think his take on this makes good sense. Also closer alignments within the church at this time were often dangerous and secretive with the rise of liberation theology.

> On Jan 1, 2022, at 3:13 AM, Michael Bailey <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> [Windust] met, courted, and married—as his nameless biographers put it,
> “deployed into a spousal scenario with”—a very young local girl named
> Xiomara.
> For a minute Maxine imagines a wedding sequence out in the jungle, with
> pyramids, native Mayan rituals, psychedelics. But no, instead it was in the
> sacristy at the local Catholic church, everyone there already or about to
> become strangers . . .
> 
> 
> 
> I’m beguiled and stumped - “in the sacristy at the local Catholic church,
> everyone there already or about to become strangers…”
> 
> Already or about to become strangers?
> 
> Not being technically Catholic myself (though I think they claim
> everybody,) I sometimes wonder about  what I’m missing.
> At best I think of something like that Pink Floyd line, “calls the faithful
> to their knees, to hear the softly spoken magic spell”
> 
> Related to that would the Windust nups be such a sacrilege as to estrange
> everyone there - and from whom? Each other? Themselves?
> https://youtu.be/b_-YfmyXlMo
> 
> 
> Or would the disjunctions perpetrated by the neoliberal fever dream cause
> the estrangement, despite Windust’s attempt to observe the forms, which in
> and of itself - wasn’t so evil?
> 
> There’s a tenet that even a wicked priest can confer sacraments &
> blessings, right?
> 
> But can an unholy recipient receive grace?
> 
> Even I know there’s stipulations.
> 
> 
> Tangential or related -
> https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2001/06/09/4-men-convicted-in-murder-of-guatemalan-bishop/52d264b1-4d98-4df7-bb6a-edefce8441a5/
> --
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