The Hazards of Belief

gaynorvader

the_eman wrote: »

This may help you understand how something constructed with divine help is better, stronger and lasts longer. (please... no toilet paper references...)


Two mysteries surround the spiral staircase in the Loretto Chapel: the identity of its builder and the physics of its construction.

When the Loretto Chapel was completed in 1878, there was no way to access the choir loft twenty-two feet above. Carpenters were called in to address the problem, but they all concluded access to the loft would have to be via ladder as a staircase would interfere with the interior space of the small Chapel.

Legend says that to find a solution to the seating problem, the Sisters of the Chapel made a novena to St. Joseph, the patron saint of carpenters. On the ninth and final day of prayer, a man appeared at the Chapel with a donkey and a toolbox looking for work. Months later, the elegant circular staircase was completed, and the carpenter disappeared without pay or thanks. After searching for the man (an ad even ran in the local newspaper) and finding no trace of him, some concluded that he was St. Joseph himself, having come in answer to the sisters' prayers.

The stairway's carpenter, whoever he was, built a magnificent structure. The design was innovative for the time and some of the design considerations still perplex experts today.

The staircase has two 360 degree turns and no visible means of support. Also, it is said that the staircase was built without nails—only wooden pegs. Questions also surround the number of stair risers relative to the height of the choir loft and about the types of wood and other materials used in the stairway's construction.

Over the years many have flocked to the Loretto Chapel to see the Miraculous Staircase. The staircase has been the subject of many articles, TV specials, and movies including "Unsolved Mysteries" and the television movie titled "The Staircase."


http://www.lorettochapel.com/staircase.html


For some video on this FF to 23:45 in this.
{...}

33 steps...

http://www.snopes.com/horrors/ghosts/loretto.asp

Brian Shanahan

the_eman wrote: »

<snipping out a lot of bat guano>

The oldest spiral staircase people can climb is around Trajan's Column, and there are ruins of older ones (citation). So no it isn't innovative. And re the wooden pegs, what do you think carpenters have been using for thousands of years?

Turtwig

eman,this isn't your own personal soapbox thread. Any further attempts to directly derail this thread in only God knows what will be deleted. Cards may follow

robindch

A network of ‘homes’, where children’s happiness was relentlessly destroyed

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/social-affairs/a-network-of-homes-where-children-s-happiness-was-relentlessly-destroyed-1.1672331

Irish Times wrote:

When I was nine or 10 my mother decided to try to make us one of these rosary families. We managed for months before surliness crept in and the project was abandoned. While it lasted, every decade was said for a particular intention, for success in an exam, recovery from illness, the repose of the soul of a relative or neighbour, occasionally for the souls of Hitler or Stalin or the Black and Tans on the grounds that some of these villains might be in purgatory rather than in hell and they needed the prayers more than anybody else.

But always, the fifth decade was for: “The home boys, God help them.” The home was St Joseph’s, Termonbacca, just outside the Brandywell area, run by the Nazareth nuns. This week, some of the boys have begun to give evidence in Banbridge to the inquiry under retired crown court judge Sir Anthony Hart. The inquiry – the largest-ever into child abuse in the UK – will hear from about 300 former residents at Termonbacca and other church-run institutions.

The stories to be told echo the accounts of the suffering of children in church-run homes in the South and have gotten under way in the week of the European court’s judgment in the case brought by Louise O’Keeffe. Some aspects of our society have always been all-Ireland.
Even in conversation in the house or at the door, the home boys were spoken of in whispers. I recall it said that the home boys would find ease in heaven because they had assuredly done their purgatory on Earth. You’d occasionally see the home boys, about 40 at a time walking two by two, en route to or from school. “Ah, the poor crayturs.” Everybody knew. But the idea of “speaking out” didn’t occur. You didn’t talk back to the church.

Twenty years ago, I interviewed for the Sunday Tribune one of those now scheduled to testify, by then in a management position with a State enterprise in Dublin. He described the physical abuse, the constant atmosphere of terror, the despair that would descend when you wet the bed and had to lie awake, sodden, waiting for the ritual humiliation of the morning. “Nobody ever put their arm around you and said, ‘You are a good kid.’ Everything that was done was done to keep you subservient “The bishop used to come once a year, at Christmas, which meant that from October we would be up until 11 at night rehearsing for his concert. Everything had to be perfect: songs, hymns, the Christmas crib. I dreaded it. Then he would come in all his splendour and we would all line up and kiss his ring, calling him ‘My lord’. The nuns pampered the bishop right, left and centre.”

Worst of all was deprivation of family. All his siblings, too, had been “taken into care” when he was a toddler. He had since discovered that his sisters had been held in the girls’ home, Nazareth House, where he’d gone in convoy to infants’ school. “At some time I must have been sitting in the same classroom as one or more of them, but I was never told. When you put that alongside all the talk now of charity, of keeping families together, it doesn’t seem to bear thinking about.” He had found some of them since, one in a mental institution. Most he never found.

Girls held in Nazareth House fared no better. Peggy Gibson was shipped to Australia, aged eight. She was told on the way that her name was now Margaret Teresa and that she had no brothers or sisters. But she remembered her older brother, Pat, who had been taken to Termonbacca. “I remember the way I would wait for him on Sundays to come and take me out. He would take me on a walk out the Letterkenny Road and lift me up and sit me on a wall, a wall that is still there to this day. He had bright red hair.” From Australia, she searched for him for years. In 1978 she came back to Derry, knocked on the doors of Nazareth House and the bishops’ residence, but was told there were no records that might help in her search.

She hired a private detective who located him in Ballybay in 1992, six months too late. He had lived alone and kept himself apart, worked as a farm labourer. “I had all these papers to show him, all the letters I had written and records of the people I had spoken to . . . I wanted to be able to say, ‘Look, see, there, I never gave up on you.”

Stories of this sort will tumble out to the inquiry over the next 18 months, making it plain that the network of “homes” where children’s happiness had relentlessly, deliberately, systematically been destroyed, this archipelago of Catholic evil, had covered the entire island.
These things should be kept in mind when next we hear it said that the social ills of today can be explained by reference to loss of faith in the traditional institutions of moral authority. This is the reverse of the truth and an insult to the victims of an unforgiveable sin.

robindch

Thirty years ago today, Annie Lovett, a 15-year-old girl gave birth on her own to a boy in a grotto in Granard, Co Longford. Within hours, both were dead.

Gay Byrne, in probably his finest hour, chose to devote one episode of his radio show to reading out the letters he'd received from women who'd been in similar situations. It's harrowing stuff.

http://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/people/the-ann-lovett-letters-sorrow-shame-anger-and-indignation-1.1673920

Cabaal

robindch wrote: »

Gay Byrne, in probably his finest hour, chose to devote one episode of his radio show to reading out the letters he'd received from women who'd been in similar situations. It's harrowing stuff.

http://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/people/the-ann-lovett-letters-sorrow-shame-anger-and-indignation-1.1673920

It really is upsetting stuff to read,
Countless people's lives ruined because of this backwards ****ed up way of thinking when it came to unmarried girls/women and pregnancy.

So much suffering caused by it :mad:

Sarky

F*ck me, those extracts are harrowing reading. There's an awful lot of the '80's I must have shielded from. Or that the locals Just Didn't Talk About.

Sarky

But they weren't misogynists and they'll sue you if you say it.

robindch

Sarky wrote: »

F*ck me, those extracts are harrowing reading. There's an awful lot of the '80's I must have shielded from. Or that the locals Just Didn't Talk About.

Both, I'd say.

In my own school, a friend of mine who did history, tells of the day following Lovett's death, when the history teacher, a monk and priest himself, arrived into the class as usual, sat down, abandoned his class plan immediately and delivered a stinging rebuke to the church and the country which he remembers to this day. I remember speaking with the same monk perhaps 15 years later about Lovett and it was the only time in the 35 years I knew him that I'd seen him entirely lose his cool, urbane and very generous demenour.

Cabaal

http://www.rte.ie/radio1/doconone/documentary-podcast-letter-ann-lovett-gay-byrne-granard-tribune.html

Documentary from 1990's about the letters, they are going to read them out again tomorrow at 6pm

http://www.thejournal.ie/rte-to-rebroadcast-ann-lovett-letters-1292348-Jan2014/

The Black Oil

I listened to that documentary a few years ago, powerful. At least one person wasn't too keen to talk and told the journalist to f/ck off.

Brian Shanahan

Cabaal wrote: »

Countless people's lives ruined because of this backwards ****ed up way of thinking when it came to unmarried girls/women and pregnancy.

Countless lives are still being ruined, because the same backwards ****ed up thinking still has too much influence.

Look at the kind of obseqious behaviour that occurs every time an Iona idiot goes on RTE.

PopePalpatine

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSYepuXEwCw

This despicable video reminds me of SoulandForm whining about anti-bullying measures making our children "softer". What a bitch.

Hotblack Desiato

Pope John Paul ll blood-soaked relic found in Italy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjjZGyYcH9E

Hotblack Desiato

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/education/a-lesson-in-abortion-1.1675360

A rape victim can’t become pregnant. Abortion damages a woman’s internal organs. Abortion destroys a woman’s mental health. These are among the messages that have been given to secondary-school students in Ireland by teachers and outside agencies such as Life Pregnancy Care and Family & Life.

At secondary level, where, including vocational schools and community colleges, students generally range from 11 to 19, a number of anti-abortion organisations provide talks and presentations. Schools are not obliged to tell parents about the talks, and the Department of Education says it does not routinely record the names of external facilitators during school inspections.

....

One of the students, whose name we have changed to Sarah, sat through a Life Pregnancy Care talk at her girls’ school in Munster last year. The teacher was not in the room for the talk, contrary to the Department of Education’s best-practice guidelines. According to Sarah, the speaker told the class that a woman who has had an abortion may feel that she is being punished if, in later pregnancies, she suffers a miscarriage. She says the speaker also told them that women can feel suicidal and may harm themselves after abortions.

How the hell is this allowed to happen? :mad:

kylith

ninja900 wrote: »

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/education/a-lesson-in-abortion-1.1675360



How the hell is this allowed to happen? :mad:

My class was shown an ultrasound video of an abortion without any parents being consulted. I have, retroactively, gone ape-poo about it.

Turtwig

Same here was shown some really graphic sh*t about abortions.

PopePalpatine

I got lucky in secondary school, I guess. The most bull**** I ever endured was 30 minutes of Pam Stenzel.

Turtwig

PopePalpatine wrote: »

I got lucky in secondary school, I guess. The most bull**** I ever endured was 30 minutes of Pam Stenzel.

Now, she was special.

PopePalpatine

Well, there wasn't much enduring to be done, I often kept my head down and did my homework during religion class. Pam's J C-lite-grade bull**** went in one ear and out the other.

obplayer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQBE3odp6Q0

obplayer

http://www.chicagonow.com/portrait-of-an-adoption/2014/02/11-yr-old-boy-bullied-for-being-a-brony-fighting-for-life-after-suicide-attempt-how-you-can-help/?fb_action_ids=10202321917262967&fb_action_types=og.likes&fb_source=other_multiline&action_object_map=%5B1452517354964455%5D&action_type_map=%5B%22og.likes%22%5D&action_ref_map=%5B%5D

'Nobody stood up for Michael, but he seemed to be doing okay'. “Michael is deeply religious, and he turned to his faith. He asked to start taking confirmation classes, and he carried a little Bible with him everywhere. He told us that he would sit at a table at lunchtime and recite Bible verses to himself, and it brought him great joy,” Suttle said.

Reciting Bible verses brought him such joy he tried to kill himself.

norrie rugger

It is possible to be happy and full of joy, while suffering from depression

Cabaal

norrie rugger wrote: »

It is possible to be happy and full of joy, while suffering from depression

I don't think so to be honest,

Sarky

It's possible. Not easy, and it's only ever fleeting, but possible.

recedite

The trick is to only select the bible verses you like, and then recite them aloud.
Unfortunately, bullies, gay-bashers, slavetraders etc. can do the same with the verses that they like.

obplayer

Cabaal wrote: »

I don't think so to be honest,

Nor do I and I can't help thinking that the time spent reading verses from an ancient book might have been better used learning some communication and coping techniques.

Bannasidhe

kylith wrote: »

My class was shown an ultrasound video of an abortion without any parents being consulted. I have, retroactively, gone ape-poo about it.

Jernal wrote: »

Same here was shown some really graphic sh*t about abortions.

I am very old so we had a tape recording - I went ape**** at the time. Right in the middle of the tape. Part of me is still laughing at the gobsmacked look on the Singing Nun's face. Most of me is still furious.

I really did lose the plot but I am one of those people who gets 'white cold' angry - so I was articulate, factual and reasoned in a cold but furious way.

The ironic thing was as I went to a secular schools these retreat thingys were voluntary and I had gone the year before as it was a doss day in a convent with really really old retired nuns back from the Missions who were barking mad and great crack. Suddenly - we had a Fr Trendy and his side kick the Singing Nun all happy clappy spouting crappy. :mad:

After complaints from Fr Trendy my school and I agreed that I would never go on a retreat, any religion's retreat, ever again. They also stopped all religious retreats on official school days and apologised to our class for the tape being played and told us our lives, our bodies and our consciences were our own. A powerful message to give 15/16 year old girls in the late 70s

norrie rugger

Cabaal wrote: »

I don't think so to be honest,

Personal experience

Hotblack Desiato

Sex on the syllabus: what are our children taught?

Too often, either nothing or religiously inspired lies.

On Track was written by three people linked to Youth Defence: Linda Gorman, Carolyn O’Meara and Susan Scanlan. In April 2007, Gorman and Scanlan wrote in Youth Defence’s Solas Magazine that the RSE programme was “a waste of money . . . basically flawed in its fundamentals, and essentially a completely disastrous way of teaching our young people about sexuality and sexual responsibility. It teaches that sexual responsibility involves knowing about contraception, how to avoid sexually transmitted diseases, promotion of homosexuality, and a complete lack of a moral framework.”