Today brings us a fresh Space Pope Blog post, and, as per usual, we're pairing it up with the latest Vaticanews:
Vaticanews 04/26/09
BULLETINS:
"Unlock the Secrets of How Men Become Pope" (All it takes are a few rolls of the dice)
If Oregon Trail II taught us anything (other than the details of everyday life on the Oregon Trail) it's that educational games based on the real-life struggles of other people are just more fun. Enter VATICAN The Board Game, a collection of cards, dice, and tiny paper cardinals which simulates the actual career challenges any papal hopeful must face to become elected. Virtually everything's included, from taking a stand on controversial issues to dealing with the complexities of an actual papal election process. Created in 2006 by Dr. Stephen Haliczer, a history professor, VATICAN has each of its players select a cardinal and then compete against each other for position on the board. Then, when the old Pope dies, players further compete against each other to be elected in his place. Sound like a complicated headache in a box? Well, nobody said becoming Pope was easy, but Dr. Haliczer says it can be fun.
source= VATICAN The Board Game
Matters of Size
Cardinal Antonio Maria Rouco Varela has a big dream, a 25,000-square-meters dream, and that dream's name is "The Mini-Vatican". Or, some people are calling it that, anyway. Varela plans to construct an enormous clerical complex in Madrid, complete with a three-storey residence and 200 priest-exclusive parking spaces, sometime in the next few years. The problem? He wants to build it on one of the few remaining large green spaces in Spain's capital, and as is typically the case when somebody wants to start a giant construction project like this, many of the city's residents are against it. In a city which already has many churches and suffers from lack of housing and parking, a new religious complex on top of centuries-old gardens is not, some claim, entirely necessary. But because the city council and the church are both in favor of the project thus far, chances are it's going to happen. To steal a closing sentiment from our source article: the only move opponents of the "Mini-Vatican" have left is to pray for some kind of miracle.
source=Monsters and Critics
HEADLINES:
It's Funny Because it Isn't True at All
In recent headlines, the Vatican, as a political body, has come off as something of a snob. The most recent and extreme example came out earlier this week and claimed that, as a backhanded sort of gift for Prince Charles, Pope Benedict would give him a "luxury facsimile" of a 1530 appeal by Pope Clement VII as a reminder of the church's disapproval of divorce and of marrying divorcees. Charles is himself a divorcee, as is his wife, Camilla.
The thing is, this story is actually a lie, and the Vatican had it retracted the day it went into print. Apparently, the blame in this case falls on a writer for the UK Times named Richard Owen, who evidently has a reputation for reporting unfounded stories which might occur, and occasionally, through sheer probability, he ends up predicting the truth. A sort of Miss Cleo for the Vatican press corps.
Owen is an extreme example of a common problem, however. English-language news media don't often assign reporters to the Vatican, which means most news stories written in English actually come from Italian translations, and things can get quite muddled. Also, because of how lightly papal news is taken, the reporters who do write about it are very rarely the most skilled or detail-oriented, and are often actually quite unskilled liars and miscreants which, again, leads to muddling.
What lesson is to be gained from this mass media misstep? Perhaps it serves as a microcosmic example of the larger problem with modern-day news and its need for sensationalism and scandal trumping its supposed devotion to accuracy more and more. Or perhaps it can simply remind us all that Vaticanews, right here in front of your eyes on the 6 or 7 Popes blog, is the most reliable source of Pope info in the known universe, a shimmering lazer-guided wonderboat amidst a fleet of kayaks with busted oars and blind one-armed rowers. Stay on board, folks. There's a lot of ocean left to traverse.
source= National Post
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