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The Catholic Matrix
Ha ha ha. It embarrasses me to hear stories like this.
An edgy poster showing a somber Catholic priest in full black cassock and sunglasses posed like “The Matrix” star Keanu Reeves is proving so popular that the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has snapped up 5,000 of them. […]
“If we can get high-school youth to hang a picture of a priest in their room, that’s huge in helping young men to answer the call to the priesthood,” the cleric said. “Anyone who is a ‘Matrix’ guru looks at the picture and automatically gets it.”
Crucifix in hand, Father Meyer posed for the poster, rated R for “restricted to those radically in love with Jesus Christ.” Running time is “all eternity,” and its title reads, “The Catholic priesthood: The answer is out there … and it’s calling you.”
Need I say again… HA HA HA! I only wish to God that this article had an accompanying graphic so I could thoroughly piss myself. Since when are Catholic priests even remotely like Matrix-style warriors? If anything they are technicians, enforcers or maintenance men for the Matrix. They have a fucking Pope! They ARE the Empire; they don’t boldly defy it, at least not in my eyes.
This article also claims that celibacy is “hip” which is fucking hilarious:
“The idea that a celibate priesthood could be heroic is alien to our culture, but the Jedi knights were celibate,” he said. “Most seminarians loved that first ‘Spider-Man’ movie; the idea he had to make a sacrifice, could not have a relationship with M.J., his girlfriend, because it would put her in danger.
Wait a second… the Jedi weren’t celibate. Wasn’t the whole flimsy plotline of Revenge of the Sith based around Anakin trying to save the babies he’d impregnated his wife with? And didn’t in the second Spiderman he end up getting together with M.J.? Fucking shit man. If you’re going to stomp all over pop culture like this, at least get your facts straight.
Anyway, it’s also funny because if you look into the history of celibacy in the Church, it wasn’t always like this. I’d have to look up the details, but for the first several centuries, priests were allowed to have families. Some claim that it was only outlawed because Church wealth was being lost when priests died and their families legally inherited Church property. And then of course after that many many historical popes were noted for their sexual exploits, mistresses and illegitimate children. Hell, I’ve even heard (possibly speculative) shit about certain nunneries being used as brothels way back in the bad old days.
Anyway, so how is being a Catholic priest similar to the Matrix again?
[via Off the Beaten Track]
UPDATE!
Here’s the graphic:
These fucking guys! Hilarious!
- The Catholic Matrix: Reloaded
- Ascii
- Matrix and the Tarot
- In the Matrix
- Architect and the Mechanistic Universe
- Prev: Remote Controlled Humans
- Next: Lose Weight Now!
August 18th, 2005 at 12:57 am
I don’t know, I was talking to a Priest a while back about the presence of some ’spirit’ or demon, and he said next time to talk to it. I was thinking no way, a priest actually said to TALK to it! lol. He also admitted that the bible was incomplete and had omitted books and contradictions. I was talking to him about becoming a priest, I don’t go to church or anything, though when I was a baby I was baptized Catholic because of my family, I mostly want to join in order to find out all the dark stuff that the order knows and never talks about and maybe seeing into the vatican’s treasure of stuff. Though I’d need to learn to read a few languages for the writings in the vaults. I’m not sure, my job sucks so I may look into a parish. *shrug* I just don’t want to be a church preacher and all that, I’d be in the library researching stuff.
Jedi couldn’t marry and have kids, kind of like some gnostic sects, and I suspect for similar reasons. I was doing some Tai Chi breathing exercises at work, and I noticed it spreading my energies more evenly throughout my body and I wasn’t so horny and I only did it for a couple days for a few minutes at a time. So I can see how practitioners of these kind of meditations can go a long while without getting any. All that energy builds up at the genitals, and needs a form of release, usually through sexual means. But with this breathing exercise it moved the energy from the genitals throughout basically giving the body more energy to work with. If you’re a priest and you have to remain celibate without any form of release, then you NEED meditation techniques like this to get by, they need to teach this as part of the priestly training.
I don’t know if you’ve looked into it, but I think that Tai Chi trained ‘jedi’ here on our planet. Not sissy grandma Tai Chi, the ancient pure teachings. I have a book called ‘Tai Chi classics’ by Waysun Liao, Shambala. It talks about turning chi (living internal energy) into jing (internal power). Think of Chi as the ‘force’ and Jing as the practical use of the force for various purposes. Bruce Lee used his jing to knock an opponent back with his famous 3 inch punch, or was it 1 inch, can’t remember. He visualized all his energy going through his opponent.
August 18th, 2005 at 1:13 am
I know what you’re saying, but what’s wrong with being horny? Why is that something that would be spiritually beneficial to avoid?
I’m also not saying there’s necessarily anything wrong with being a priest, but I think it’s pretty inaccurate to try to connect it to the Matrix.
August 18th, 2005 at 1:25 am
Well, being horny and in public and while working isn’t really a good thing, unless you’re a porn star. Seeing scantily clad chicks all day and being able to control your thoughts and body for whatever purpose can be benificial depending on what you need done, say your Austin Powers and you get surrounded by Sexbots.
Some ascetics avoid the sexual temptation, well they avoid most things. Sex like any other habit can take up time that could be used for other things. The accumulation of sexual energy, stay celibate for brief periods of time, can increase the power of a shaman for various purposes. There is a time when storing sexual energy is necessary for spiritual/magical purposes. I know that if I remain celibate long enough, I can have awesome lucid sex dreams. And my lucid dreams in general are better. You could go the tantric way and find the divine in the orgasm, which is always good.
August 18th, 2005 at 1:26 am
Oh and connecting priests to the matrix is like saying Neo is Jesus, which he’s not.
August 18th, 2005 at 1:28 am
that’s hilarious!
so what kind of people are they trying to attract to the priesthood? boys with pictures of priests on their bedroom walls?
the more things change…
August 18th, 2005 at 1:32 am
Yeah thanks for bringing that quote to light Carlos. It’s truly the stupid center-piece of this whole thing. Why would a boy put a probably poorly done picture of a priest dressed in Matrix gear in their bedroom when they could simply put up a poster of the actual Matrix? It’s just so out of touch with how culture really works, while simultaneously trying to speak the language
August 18th, 2005 at 8:14 am
The Christian Post and Catholic Online include a copy of the graphic in their reportage.
It’s actually kind of lame.
August 18th, 2005 at 8:17 am
I also want to thank Carlos for pointing out the getting “high-school youth to hang a picture of a priest in their room” quote. As soon as I read that, I thought: Hmmmm … that seems downright … disturbing.
August 18th, 2005 at 9:09 am
They should have one of these posters for McDonalds. A guy in cool Matrix shades and a uniform holding a spatula like a badass. It makes about as much sense!
August 18th, 2005 at 9:30 am
Stupid as it may be, I want one of those posters. It’s too funny. It would make a great conversation piece.
August 18th, 2005 at 9:31 am
The Jedi were celibate. Anakin fell away from his training out of love for Padme. The reason is simple - redirecting sexual energy allows it to be used for other spiritual purposes. Chi Kung and Yogic practices both teach this. Master Mantak Chia’s books are an excellent Chi Kung/Taoist description of the process, and http://www.aypsite.com/MainDirectory.html this website provides simple yet increasingly advanced methods for practicing inner work.
August 18th, 2005 at 10:10 am
I painted a machine gun in the loving hands of the nonviolent Jesus, and then handed this perverse picture to the world as truth. I sang “Praise the Lord” and passed the ammunition. As Catholic chaplain for the 509th Composite Group, I was the final channel that communicated this fraudulent image of Christ to the crews of the Enola Gay and the Boxcar.
All I can say today is that I was wrong.
Today we are worshipping the gods of metal, the bomb. We are putting our trust in physical power, militarism, and nationalism.
It is a lie to say that the spirit that moves the trigger of a flamethrower is the Holy Spirit of Jesus Christ. It is a lie to say that learning to kill is learning to be Christ-like. It is a lie to say that learning to drive a bayonet into the heart of another is motivated from having put on the mind of Christ. Militarized Christianity is a lie. It is radically out of conformity with the teaching, life, and spirit of Jesus.
http://www.godspy.com/reviews/Blessing-the-Bombs-by-George-Zabelka.cfm
August 18th, 2005 at 11:17 am
That’s a great quote Zal, thanks!
For everyone else, you needn’t try to explain to me the purpose of celibacy in spiritual practice. I fully understand it and was merely asking a rhetorical question. I personally see a danger in it as well. What happens when you deny the body and it’s impulses? Some good things maybe, but many bad things as well. Asceticism has no appeal to me where I’m at. What I’m interested in right now is being grounded and fully expressing all of life’s possibilities.
August 18th, 2005 at 12:37 pm
i think the image of the priest in the matrix poster is a valid as saying neo is christ. the church was astute in realising the christ-like attitide of neo throughout the movie. i was struck with the spiritual attitide throughout neo`s adventures, especially his discussion with the woman on the bench. piety. that`s the word i was looking for. and christ as a warrior. absolutely. the radical rabbi was a “terrorist”,from the roman standpoint at least.
we may see the poster as corny and laughable but to a young man in a catholic environment that image is psychically powerful and radicalised to a pornographic level. i would hazzard a guess that it would be offensive to some older european catholics and perfectly sexy to teenage boys.
August 18th, 2005 at 12:43 pm
Ha, well I was raised in a very Catholic environment, and I would have laughed this into the ground even as a teenager. When you’re a kid you can smell a mile away when people are trying to manipulate you with pop culture, especially religious people because they inherently lack some fundamental understanding of pop culture and what makes it what it is.
August 18th, 2005 at 1:07 pm
but you lack the nievity of many within the church. i also debate whether people “understand” pop culture. i think pop culture is like water to fish, it goes in and through and sustains and gives life and meaning without question or debate. question and debate is a ground state that you and i are familiar with that most are unfamiliar with, whether they are catholic or baptist or agnostic. the distinctions we make as a matter of course are invisible to most, much like the industry behind brittney spears or the dukes of hazzard.
i don`t think religious people lack a fundamental understanding of pop culture in the sense that such an understanding is unnecessary to be played by it. people, religious or not, are asleep to the machinations of media manipulations, deep within the somnambulistic march towards death.
catholicisism never made you doze off. something woke you up to a spasm of inquiry. you are the boy who wont be quiet, so the image would seem laughable. to you it`s quite obvious that the emporor has no clothes. it`s both a blessing and a curse.
August 18th, 2005 at 3:58 pm
This site: http://www.unomaha.edu/jrf/gnostic.htm has a good article about the christian elements among others the Wachowski brothers mined for the storyline of the Matrix. Seems only fair now that the Catholic Church cashes in on some of it. Of course there is the whole matter of where they mined it from in the first place.
August 19th, 2005 at 12:09 pm
No, no and no. This is a classic rape of our consumer culture. Publicity. No different from Camel cigarettes marketing Joe Cool the Camel to kiddies way back when. Friends don’t let friends go to church.
August 19th, 2005 at 12:31 pm
Where did you get the graphic of the poster? Is there a larger version of it? If there is could you send it to me? I dont think the picture itself is that big of a stretch. Anyone whose seen the trilogy has noticed all the religious overtones cast throughout the movie. Especially at the end where Neo “accends” into the “machine” thus ending the war!
August 20th, 2005 at 6:12 pm
[…] o popular that the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has snapped up 5,000 of them. More here. Posted in Funny Comments: No C […]
August 20th, 2005 at 7:49 pm
I’ve been thoroughly enjoying your site for a while, Tim, but I have to comment as this is really funny. Thanks for posting it. More evidence (as if any is needed) of how clueless the Roman Church is.
Or maybe not. I think the problem with the Matrix is that Neo never really got out. In the second movie, when he goes to see the Oracle, she offers him a piece of candy, which he refuses. If you look closely, the sweet looks like one of those red pills. After that, the conversation lapses, the Oracle leaves, and Agent Smith arrives for the big battle — which completely violates the illusion of reality.
I think it means Neo blew his chance to “wake up”, and neither he nor anyone else actually escape the Matrix. Thus Neo as a Roman Catholic priest makes perfect sense — as a servant of the false Demiurge. Or am I stretching it a bit?
August 20th, 2005 at 8:14 pm
Shit, I totally missed that Jay. Maybe I should watch those again. I only remember them very dimly, but somehow that reading of the movies throws it all into a useful perspective for me, because I was just so disappointed with the second two movies and where they went…
August 21st, 2005 at 11:54 pm
Weird, somebody on this site wrote the following about the comments left on this post:
I guess that’s sort of a compliment, although none of the comments seemed all that bizarre to me. But then, maybe I’m not the best judge of what’s bizarre…
August 21st, 2005 at 11:57 pm
Jordan Stratford also has another totally different take on it: namely, that this poster represents a positive change in Catholicism because it promotes people “hacking into” the system to change reality, and possibly even changing the Church in the process.
August 29th, 2005 at 11:52 am
[…] ix: Reloaded
I got an email from somebody loosely connected to the making of that Catholic Matrix poster that we talked about a few days ago. If you donR […]