Comments on: The Catholic Matrix

By: Conclave » The Catholic Matrix: Reloaded

Conclave » The Catholic Matrix: Reloaded — Mon, 29 Aug 2005 15:52:52 +0000

[...] 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 [...]

By: Tim Boucher

Tim Boucher — Mon, 22 Aug 2005 03:57:38 +0000

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.

By: Tim Boucher

Tim Boucher — Mon, 22 Aug 2005 03:54:18 +0000

Weird, somebody on this site wrote the following about the comments left on this post:

the comments from readers are so bizzare as to be as entertaining as the article

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…

By: Tim Boucher

Tim Boucher — Sun, 21 Aug 2005 00:14:48 +0000

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…

By: Jay Nelson

Jay Nelson — Sat, 20 Aug 2005 23:49:48 +0000

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?

By: Mental Shed - Your daily source of SMUT and WTF for three years and running! Plus almost illegal girl fight videos!

Sat, 20 Aug 2005 22:12:57 +0000

[...] 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 [...]

By: Shepard

Shepard — Fri, 19 Aug 2005 16:31:14 +0000

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!

By: Sabian

Sabian — Fri, 19 Aug 2005 16:09:12 +0000

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.

By: brekin

brekin — Thu, 18 Aug 2005 19:58:17 +0000

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.

By: alistair

alistair — Thu, 18 Aug 2005 17:07:15 +0000

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.

By: Tim Boucher

Tim Boucher — Thu, 18 Aug 2005 16:43:54 +0000

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.

By: alistair

alistair — Thu, 18 Aug 2005 16:37:58 +0000

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.

By: Tim Boucher

Tim Boucher — Thu, 18 Aug 2005 15:17:17 +0000

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.

By: Zal

Zal — Thu, 18 Aug 2005 14:10:02 +0000

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

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 18 Aug 2005 13:31:37 +0000

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.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Thu, 18 Aug 2005 13:30:42 +0000

Stupid as it may be, I want one of those posters. It’s too funny. It would make a great conversation piece.

By: Daddy Peacebucks

Daddy Peacebucks — Thu, 18 Aug 2005 13:09:54 +0000

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!

By: brainwise

brainwise — Thu, 18 Aug 2005 12:17:26 +0000

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.

By: brainwise

brainwise — Thu, 18 Aug 2005 12:14:23 +0000

The Christian Post and Catholic Online include a copy of the graphic in their reportage.

It’s actually kind of lame.

By: Tim Boucher

Tim Boucher — Thu, 18 Aug 2005 05:32:36 +0000

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

By: carlos

carlos — Thu, 18 Aug 2005 05:28:10 +0000

that’s hilarious!

If we can get high-school youth to hang a picture of a priest in their room, thatâ€™s huge in helping young men to answer the call to the priesthood.

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 changeâ€¦

By: Daniel

Daniel — Thu, 18 Aug 2005 05:26:41 +0000

Oh and connecting priests to the matrix is like saying Neo is Jesus, which he’s not.

By: Daniel

Daniel — Thu, 18 Aug 2005 05:25:46 +0000

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.

By: Tim Boucher

Tim Boucher — Thu, 18 Aug 2005 05:13:41 +0000

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.

By: Daniel

Daniel — Thu, 18 Aug 2005 04:57:40 +0000

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.