Somebody must protect the dead Pope.

[Cleopatra]

I am completely and totally shocked from what I have been witnessing for the last days on TV.

Millions of people waiting to see the dead Pope. Most of them are holding cameras or cells phones with cameras. As BBC broadcasts most of the pilgrims want to take a picture of themselves in front of the corpse.

If those images were broadcasted from, Greece or Middle East the same channels that broadcast from Vatican right now they would talk about the Eastern Fundamentalists. How must we name this spectacle?

Why nobody protects the body of the Pope from this humiliation?

[Brown]

I don't understand this mindset, either.

If you want to get a picture of yourself with JP2, go to Madame Tassaud's and have your picture taken with the lifeless image of him there. At least you'll look like you're his pal, not like a gawker at his carcass.

[webfusion]

Even the Presidents got into the act:
http://a.abcnews.com/images/Politics/VAT10104062104.jpeg
© AP/Osservatore Romano
Pictured from left, wife of US President George W. Bush Laura, President W. Bush, his father former President George H.W. Bush, former President Bill Clinton and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, pay their respects to late Pope John Paul II as he lies in state inside St. Peter's Baslica, at the Vatican, Wednesday, April 6, 2005.

[The Fool]

What do they stuff them with? Its the best he's looked for years.

[sophia8]

"Looking good"? I dunno - he's looking extremely not-alive to me. In fact, I'm glad we haven't got Smell-o-Vision - he must surely be getting a bit wiffy by now.

[The Fool]

Originally posted by sophia8
"Looking good"? I dunno - he's looking extremely not-alive to me. In fact, I'm glad we haven't got Smell-o-Vision - he must surely be getting a bit wiffy by now.
well....his condition has gone from critical to stable. Isn't that normally a good thing?

[Giz]

Originally posted by The Fool
well....his condition has gone from critical to stable. Isn't that normally a good thing?

Checking, still no brain activity. He is cleared to resume religious duties!

[MRC_Hans]

Originally posted by Cleopatra
*snip*
How must we name this spectacle?

How about "Tasteless"?

Why nobody protects the body of the Pope from this humiliation?

Perhaps those that could protect it have an equally poor taste? After all, isn't this the same church which keeps and worships various pieces of bodies of dead saints?

Hans

[Cleopatra]

Originally posted by Brown
I don't understand this mindset, either.

If you want to get a picture of yourself with JP2, go to Madame Tassaud's and have your picture taken with the lifeless image of him there. At least you'll look like you're his pal, not like a gawker at his carcass.

Yes indeed. It's as Hans said, tasteless. I remember that some years ago when we opened the new subway. A huge part of the central station is a real museum, depicting the "city under the city" and one of the exhibits is a tomb that was found intact and in situ. The arcaheological service has been posting announcements in the press for a week pointing out that the skeleton inside is copy replacing the original one that has been removed out of respect for the dead.

Perhaps those that could protect it have an equally poor taste? After all, isn't this the same church which keeps and worships various pieces of bodies of dead saints?

I don't think that there isn't the same because in this case the corpse isn't worshipped it's perceived as an attraction for the tourists. Regardless of what the Church authorities doing I wondered about the people.

[Cleopatra]

Originally posted by sophia8
"Looking good"? I dunno - he's looking extremely not-alive to me. In fact, I'm glad we haven't got Smell-o-Vision - he must surely be getting a bit wiffy by now.

Regarding this issue there is a slight controversy.

Has the Pope been embalmed? (http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2005-04-05-pope-body_x.htm)

[richardm]

He's on a refrigerated plinth (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4417155.stm), apparently.

Re: Tourists. It was taking 12-14 hours to get from the end of the queue to the Basilica yesterday. I can't see many gawpers putting up with that, to be honest; those people want to be there for better reasons, surely?. And frankly if I'd stood for that length of time in a mob like that I'd be wanting pictures to prove it too!

Edited to add: I don't find myself turning away from the screen out of respect when the BBC repeatedly show his picture. So for me it would be a bit hypocritical to complain when people want their own personal copy.

[varwoche]

Originally posted by Cleopatra
I am completely and totally shocked from what I have been witnessing for the last days on TV. Idiotic? Sure. Shocking? Hardly. For religous people to engage in this sort of activity is completely par for the course.

[DaChew]

Oh man. What a dissapointment. I thought this thread was going to be about the Swiss guards and those cool little pocket knives.

[pgwenthold]

Originally posted by DaChew
Oh man. What a dissapointment. I thought this thread was going to be about the Swiss guards and those cool little pocket knives.

Only the army gets those.

[Cleopatra]

Originally posted by richardm
He's on a refrigerated plinth (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4417155.stm), apparently.

Ahhh. It makes sense.

Edited to add: I don't find myself turning away from the screen out of respect when the BBC repeatedly show his picture. So for me it would be a bit hypocritical to complain when people want their own personal copy. I believe that now you describe two different things. The whole story appeared in the news and as such is discussed here.

varwoche:
Idiotic? Sure. Shocking? Hardly. For religous people to engage in this sort of activity is completely par for the course.
Really? I am surprized you say that because I live in a very religious country and I have witnessed the death of a popular Archibishop and nobody mentioned anything about pilgrims taking pictures of themselves in front of the dead but that period of the year-- Greece doesn't host many tourists.
Have you experienced something like that before?
Also, I really doubt that those of the pilgrims who were involved in such activity in Rome were religious. I believe that they were curious mostly and attracted by THE event of the week.

[sackett]

There's no reason to be surprised at this necrophiliac carnival. The Roman "Catholic"* church rolls in dead things like a dog. Talk about a culture of death!

* You see, Cleo? I know enough to make a distinction between the Roman pretenders and the Real True Honest-to-Pete Catholic Church of Byzantium.

[Cleopatra]

Originally posted by sackett
There's no reason to be surprised at this necrophiliac carnival. The Roman "Catholic"* church rolls in dead things like a dog. Talk about a culture of death!

* You see, Cleo? I know enough to make a distinction between the Roman pretenders and the Real True Honest-to-Pete Catholic Church of Byzantium.

:D

Thus said sackett the mysterious archaeologist.

Of course the Pope is the Devil but even the Devil deserves some respect when dead.

[Mercutio]

It puts me in mind of Khomeini's funeral procession--I hope my recollection is wrong, but didn't mourners in that case actually try to get pieces of the body itself? (Dave Barry wrote that they "reduced his body to corpse McNuggets")

[Bishop (takes Pawn)]

Wait a minute. Maybe these people just want to prove to their airlines that they had to attend a funeral and the family doctor wouldn't give them a death certificate.

Or was that an episode of Seinfeld ?

[MRC_Hans]

About exhibitions: In Denmark, we have skeletons and corpses on exhibition both in museums and in situ, don't most countries? I think the "respect for the dead" line is mainly drawn as a time-line; that is, if the corpse is sufficiently old (several centuries) it is considered OK to put it on exhibition. I really don't know how much sense that makes, but there you go. Also, there is more reluctance to show the remains of a named person. That makes a bit more sense, IMHO.

Hans

[asthmatic camel]

The whole thing is creepy. Even if I were religious, and accepted the Pope as my spiritual leader, I'd rather die than go and look at his corpse. What's the point? Impress your mates with a snap of you and a dead bloke? Tell your grandchildren that you went to Rome once, queued for 14 hours and looked at a corpse?

I'm even more bewildered than usual.



:(

[Giz]

Originally posted by MRC_Hans
About exhibitions: In Denmark, we have skeletons and corpses on exhibition both in museums and in situ, don't most countries? I think the "respect for the dead" line is mainly drawn as a time-line; that is, if the corpse is sufficiently old (several centuries) it is considered OK to put it on exhibition. I really don't know how much sense that makes, but there you go. Also, there is more reluctance to show the remains of a named person. That makes a bit more sense, IMHO.

Hans

I remember going round the mummy room in the Egyptian Museum and feeling that I was intruding, that it was somehow disrespectful to have dug up the ancient Kings & Queens and have them on show for the hoi-polloi to gawk at while shambling past in shorts and hawaian shirts.

Strange, I don't usually sympathise with royalty. Maybe they're better when they're dead. Or maybe the proliferation of hawaian shirts temporarily dispelled my egalitarian impulses.

Anyway, queing for 12-14 hours to see a corpse? Not likely. And I bet the coversations in the queue must be pretty morbid as well.

[Kerberos]

Originally posted by Giz
I remember going round the mummy room in the Egyptian Museum and feeling that I was intruding, that it was somehow disrespectful to have dug up the ancient Kings & Queens and have them on show for the hoi-polloi to gawk at while shambling past in shorts and hawaian shirts.
Don't worry, they don't mind.:p

[Cleopatra]

BBC has an interesting article on the issue.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/4415947.stm

Different responses come down to cultural difference, says Catholic Herald reporter Freddy Gray.

"British people often don't understand the Italian or Spanish attitude towards death," he says.

"They have a different mindset, they don't fear a dead body. In Britain today death is treated the same way sex was in Victorian times. It is not talked about and when it is we use phrases like 'passed over'."

I don't understand what the lack of fear for a dead body has to do with respect but anyway.

So far the only time I have violated the Law is when my grandfather died and he died at home. I asked the doctor to report the death a day after so we have the opportunity to mourn him at home as civilized people and not as modernized citizens.The family and close friends paid their visit at home to say goodbuy and the coffin was closed at the funeral( my grandpa was well known in the public and somebody had the "bright" idea we leave the coffin open at the church before the ceremony).
If an ancient Greek witnessed what the body of the Pope suffered these days he would say that at the end, John Paul II wasn't a happy man.

[sackett]

If a New Guinea highlander saw the pope being cemented into a tomb and left to decay, he'd say that the poor man's relatives were treating him with barbarous indignity. The proper and respectful way to deal with his body is to smoke-dry it for half a year in a seated posture, then dress it in plumes and beads (not forgetting the cassowary bone through his nose) and set it up in an open niche on a hillside, so that he could keep watch over future generations, bow and arrows in hand.

But Cleo: What can you expect from a bunch of Latin-babbling schismatics?