2/14/2007

This Just In: Batman is one of us, and the parrot is dead.

All Anglican eyes are on Tanzania and the meeting of the Primates, but it is hard to know just what is going on there at the moment. This is frustrating, but it is also good. Many Anglicans had not the slightest notion that there was a place called Dar Es Salaam or that there were such meetings until the recent "troubles." Trouble hath its joys. But some eyes are resting elsewhere and they see without veiled sight, and their offerings are a joy indeed.

For reasons best left unexplored, I was over at Ship of Fools and from there got redirected to The Religious Affiliation of Comic Book Characters, where I was delighted to find that Batman is an Episcopalian or perhaps a combo lapsed Catholic and mostly lapsed Episcopalian. From extensive research that would make textual critics green with envy, it has been discovered that almost beyond doubt his mother was Catholic and his father Episcopalian. The whole thing, with great graphics, is well worth the read, particularly as the news from far Dar trickles out.

Again, rummaging around the blogsphere I happened onto BabyBlueonline and there found her post today, titled, "What Anglican Communion Crisis?" The file for this blog entry is "will the primates face reality." The video is a wonderful and very funny skit about a dead parrot. One of the very peculiar problems of the torn fabric of things in the church is that people with delightful senses of humor, great reflective insights (sometimes) and highly creative abilities are to be found "across the way." Thanks to BabyBlue for a fine moment on a dark and stormy night.

And, of course, no day is complete without a quick visit to The Mad Priest, who is without doubt quite mad. His Valentine entry is wonderful, titled, tamely enough, "14th February, St. Valentine." Go take a look.

Got to go back to cruising the blog for info.

Oh, by the way: If the Primates Meeting falls apart, it is not the end of the Anglican Communion or the Episcopal Church's part in it. If the Primates explode, no more Primates Meetings, one less "instrument of communion," and Primates can stay home and do their work where they are. Still, one can hope that will not happen. It would appear that the Archbishop of Canterbury is not done, or done in, yet.

Hope is always there. For example, I can hope that this miserable rain here in Delaware will cease.


6 comments:

  1. On a tangential note, I have long thought there was an article to be written about Monty Python's Flying Circus as Anglican theologians....

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  2. That's the nice thing about Anglican crises and the commentators thereon: they force us to pull out our atlases and locate places like Dar Es Salaam where the sun always shines and Delaware where, apparently, it does not.

    As I type in my word verification this morning I notice that the word is 'onpiboos'. That's the capital of Delaware, no?

    RR
    In Scotland where the sun shone all day yesterday

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  3. Great! The Methodists get a psychologically healthy superhero in Superman, and we have the dark psychotic Batman, who stopped going to the Episcopal church a long time ago anyway. I notice that Lex Luthor is also a lapsed Episcopalian. How nice.

    Perhaps someone could slip some money under the table and get Marvel Comics to state that Captain America goes to an Episcopal church every Sunday? Of course, the conservative Captain America would probably end up a reasserter. Never mind.

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  4. rb...actually I felt OK about Batman. The brooding figure of Batman sometimes feels to me like the Episcopal Church. We make changes, we do superhero things, but we wonder about the meaning of it all, if we were working from right motives, right intent, etc, and don't actually celebrate the good things we do.

    About Lex Luthor... that is interesting - who plays him?

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  5. Mark,

    Lex Luthor may be hard to cast, he has a sense of humor which would disqualify him as a reaserter bishop.

    hmmmm.....


    FWIW
    jimB

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  6. You forgot Johnny Storm & Sue Reid of the Fantastic Four! Also the Beast & Angel of the original X-Men (I had the first X-Men comic -- if I still had it & if it were in mint condition ...ah, with enough "ifs" you can put Paris in a bottle).

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