The Official Beatification of John Paul II

[Count Chocula]

I said kissing the coffin is specifically creepy, not the fact that John Paul II will get a sarcophagus or a mausoleum - there'd be nothing wrong with that. Of course, considering the mausoleum tradition comes from the predominantly Islamic east, I could see how such simple displays of respect could put off a Christian like you.

I was wondering just why people are kissing the burial place of a dead person, that is all. Mausolea are not places bestowed with some sort of mystic power, you know.

Simple displays of respect don't put me off...I've been to more than a couple of open casket funerals here, religion optional. We usually pay our respects to our dead then bury or burn them in the US. Kissing NOT the burial place, but the coffin, of JPII is I suppose an especially devout way to pay your respects. What we don't do in the West is put our honored dead on display in state for decades. That's creepy to us, we find it much more palatable to make statues out of them or put representations of them in wax museums or on tapestries (I'm thinking Elvis, here).

[K. A. Pital]

Simple displays of respect don't put me off...I've been to more than a couple of open casket funerals here, religion optional. We usually pay our respects to our dead then bury or burn them in the US. Kissing NOT the burial place, but the coffin, of JPII is I suppose an especially devout way to pay your respects. What we don't do in the West is put our honored dead on display in state for decades. That's creepy to us, we find it much more palatable to make statues out of them or put representations of them in wax museums or on tapestries (I'm thinking Elvis, here).

Yeah, I know, though some heads of state (e.g. Lincoln) got a mausoleum and also a memorial with a statue. Hmm. Our commenters made it seem as if JP II remains were "holy" or something. In the Orthodox version of Christianity you can actually pray to the remains of dead saints (yeah, I know that's crazy). Which is why I was kind of shocked.

[Count Chocula]

Pray to the remains of saints? Eewww. I'll take the symbolism any day of the week.

By the way, what ARE you guys going to do with Lenin? You voted 70% for on his burial. Plant the sucker already!

[Molyneux]

And an amazing outcry went up from the people, ringing from the heavens:
"WHO GIVES A SHIT?"

[K. A. Pital]

Pray to the remains of saints? Eewww. I'll take the symbolism any day of the week.

No holy remains in the RCC? Well, I guess you got point one. Saint Jerome was loads smarter than our own idiots.

By the way, what ARE you guys going to do with Lenin? You voted 70% for on his burial. Plant the sucker already!

I didn't vote. I don't know who voted and where. The real dynamics last checked by FOM are as follows:

Blue line are supporters, green line are against and red line are undecided. FOM stopped checking the burial question since 2006, but there's a April 2011 poll on the population's opinon on Lenin, which is 40% claiming Lenin had a positive impact versus 18% claiming he had a negative impact. Perhaps Medvedev's Omnipowerful Orthodox Oligarchy United Russia made their own poll, among, uh... I don't know... members of "United Russia"? *laughs* Then again, many people simply call for the burial of Lenin because the Russian Orthodox Church wants this to happen. If you ask me, the ROC who are literally praying to remains of the dead (as well as carrying those remains around from church to church), have no right to demand anything of the sort.

[Pelranius]

Didn't Lenin want to be buried next to his mother?

Mao and Ho both wanted the same thing too (being buried that is).

[K. A. Pital]

Didn't Lenin want to be buried next to his mother?

No. No one found any documents that would corroborate that. On the other hand, his wife insisted on his burial near the Kremlin walls, instead of the Mausoleum. However, the ROC claiming that mausoleums or glass coffins are uncommon for slavic culture are just bullshitting. Scientists and war heroes often get this honor.

Mao and Ho both wanted the same thing too (being buried that is).

Quite reasonable, but asiatic cultures are more prone to building mausolea, which is a paradox, because many of them also pay lots of importance to people being properly buried in their own home soil (e.g. China's obsession with putting the Chinese to rest in China).

[Metahive]

Can we please decide that any "X is OK because Y is worse" style arguments are immediately filed under "intellectually bancrupt" and ignored? So what if Lenin (or Stalin or Hitler or Billy the Kid or whoever) was a worse person than JPII? Shouldn't God's Power on Earth set the bars for its acceptable personal behaviour high instead of low?

[Cecelia5578]

Pray to the remains of saints? Eewww. I'll take the symbolism any day of the week.

By the way, what ARE you guys going to do with Lenin? You voted 70% for on his burial. Plant the sucker already!

See, its your watered down post-Vatican II style American Catholicism that makes you say that. If you lived 50 years ago, or in just about any other part of the world, you'd know that the veneration of relics is extremely common throughout Catholicism.

[Metahive]

It also is still common within Europe, Vatican II didn't really change much about that. If some church claims to have a category I relic, enough pilgrims can be expected to arrive and try obtain some of its holy mojo.

[Phantasee]

At least we got out right from under the main crush. The streets around Vatican were closed off to traffic, St. Peter's Square was accessible only through airport type security check points (metal detectors, all bags x-rayed).

As far as I know they've had that all the time for a number of years. It is a border crossing, after all. I remember the metal detectors and bag x-rays from my visit in 2006.

I've been to Rome several times and while the equipment is there, it is not in use most of the time. Only on occasions when a huge number of people are expected, such as on major holy days like Easter or special events like the John Paul II Beatification.

You do get the security treatment every time when going inside the cathedral, but not normally simply when entering the square.

Benedict was creating 14 cardinals that day so I imagine that was the reason for the security, then.

[Edi]

I've been to Rome several times and while the equipment is there, it is not in use most of the time. Only on occasions when a huge number of people are expected, such as on major holy days like Easter or special events like the John Paul II Beatification.

You do get the security treatment every time when going inside the cathedral, but not normally simply when entering the square.

Benedict was creating 14 cardinals that day so I imagine that was the reason for the security, then.

No doubt. Not that it matters, I've seen the Vatican a few times already, so it was not a major disappointment.