Hat tip to Annie for this one. A somewhat crazed woman wrote a paean to the sartorial style of the departing pope. It has paragraphs like this:
My own fashion sense is nearly nonexistent, but that only makes me more appreciative of Benedict's. Some highlights: Benedict saying Mass in 2008 at Washington's Nationals Park stadium in a billowing scarlet satin chasuble (a priest's outermost liturgical garment) trimmed with crimson velvet and delicate gold piping. Benedict greeting worshipers in Rome, his chasuble this time woven of emerald-green watered silk with a pattern of golden stars. Benedict on Oct. 21 canonizing Kateri Tekakwitha, the first Native American saint, while attired in a fanon, a gold-and-white striped shoulder covering, dating to the 8th century, that only popes may wear.Oh yeah? Well, I'm gonna get me one o' them fanons today at Amazon. As to why I say the writer is somewhat crazed, see the paragraph below. She seems quite comfortable using Bill Donohue-style "logic" to make her point.
It is especially fitting for our time that the pope has chosen his own liturgical apparel as an aesthetic medium. In the world of what passes for sophisticated culture these days, beauty and art have become nearly unmoored from each other. Art is supposed to be transgressive, while beauty is judged merely ornamental. Paint a Madonna, and you've got calendar kitsch. Paint a Madonna, and add some elephant dung and pictures of female genitalia cut out from porn magazines, and you've got a work to be exhibited in an exclusive gallery. Only in the decorative and useful arts — jewelry, fabrics, home furnishings, clothing, the design of cars, machines, and even humble objects — are beauty and fine craftsmanship still the criteria by which we judge value.She knows lots more words than Donohue but the same crazy is there. Only this woman, Giuliani and Donohue are still bitter over the poop madonna. And she didn't have to bring up Andrew Sullivan to suggest that this pope is gay. This pope is gay. Get over it.
