MEDJUGORJE ORG
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC - THE CULT OF MARY
I was disappointed in this Documentary from National Geographic, but maybe it's because I expected a broader meaning of the world CULT. This one focused on a particular cult associated with the years long visions of Mary and devotion to her in Medjugorgie. Now, I'm afraid of cults because I've known people who got into them and never seemed to get out. It was clear they had gone through some sort of dramatic change in which they turned their backs on everything they used to believe. However, while the particular group that this film focused on does seem to have cult features, most likely what came first is a person's utter devotion to Blessed Mother of Jesus, Mary. Some people are concerned that since Mary is not considered divine, that this is displaced loyalty, since the focus should be Jesus.
That said, consider all the people in the world who are not Christians of any sort and how weird they must think Christians are. It's easy for Non-Catholic Christians to condemn any sort of saint worship. There are those who think that even Jesus is a small player in the Great scheme of things, that prayer is to go directly to his Father, GOD.
Ah well, this cult is tame compared to what you've read about Scientology. People give up everything they own and are to spend most of their days in the worship of Mary, along with some every day work, just like so many orders of Nuns, Priests, Sisters, Monks, Monastics.
There is a long tradition of that. The people are not locked up. They can drive away. They don't. So what we're talking about is not wanting to or fearing it.
So why didn't national Geographic properly title this DVD to be something like "A Blessed Mother Cult in Medjugorgie." because this is NOT a film about the worship of Mary throughout Catholicism, nor does it discuss other cults, or other Holy Orders who have spent much of their time in prayer, meditation, or Gregorian chants.
As a side, there is also a film bonus called "The Secret Lives of Jesus." I'm not one to think that if Jesus did spend time in India learning from Hindus or Buddhists there before he began his preaching at age 30, that it's a bad thing. However, after the Dan Brown fiction novels that so many Catholic haters have referenced, thinking the fiction is fact, I'm sensitive to the issue of Catholic's being understood accurately.
C 2016 All Rights Reserved
My young, Hungarian neighbor recently showed me on his cell phone a clip that was shared between a group of Hungarians in America (soon to become citizens) and people in Hungary as the Hungarian soccer team won. How amazing this is, to be able to do it, and how different today's immigrants have it from those who came in the 1800's and early 1900's. To be able to see each other's faces, to be part of a celebration so very long distance, by cell phone, and to keep that memory in the cell phone (for as long as the phone lasts, or for as long as it takes to move that clip to some other storage system), it's a visit, it's almost as if they are not half a world a way at all.
And I must say, be they here in California, or there in Hungary, the people looked alike, dressed in their soccer sportsmanship and fan finery.
When I was growing up, I used to hear adults say, "Nothing's New Under the Sun, there's always Death and Taxes." But there is Something New Under the Sun All the Time; TECHNOLOGY that these people, who died years ago, COULD NEVER IMAGINE is our reality.
With the technology comes updates and glitches.
Consider that a cell phone I bought a year ago suddenly lost it's news app. and wiped out my bookmarks. I went to the store to see what might be done, and the salesperson simply said "That's a TWO YEAR OLD PHONE. They design them to stop functioning. You can call customer service... but... YOU SHOULD EXPECT THAT ONE DAY THE INTERNET JUST WON'T FUNCTION.
Well, how was I to know I was buying a phone ALREADY ONE YEAR OLD? ( Hey, Thanks for telling me before I bought it. The reason I have the low monthly rate I do now was that I bought the PREVIOUS phone for a couple hundred bucks with the promise that my rates would go down. That phone felt like a miracle for a few months anyway.)
When it comes to cell phones, I've learned that some of them are recycled to be FREE GOVERNMENT PHONES. But I do wonder about the HUGE TECHNOLOGICAL TRASH HEAP/LAND FILL (or is that OCEAN DUMPING) that must be somewhere full of useless defunct cell phones.
As for this Blog, which I'm dedicated to, let's just say downloading GOOGLE CHROME just made using GOOGLE BLOGGER worse. It seems to be throwing up all sorts of useless excess code between paragraphs, for instance. So I'm back-peddling to Internet Explorer.
When I was growing up, on television, they used to say "STAY TUNED FOR A WORD FROM OUR SPONSOR...Stay tuned to this BlogSpot until I can upgrade it!
