You stupid cat, you left the iPad at home.
This week our "Mystery Worshipper" attended the church of Blogfen, in which every parishioner is a distinguished blogger.
What was the name of the service? Mass v. 1962.
Did anyone welcome you personally? Yes, when I arrived, they said: "We haven't seen you here before. What blog do you write? What's it about? I explained that I wrote the spiritually nourishing Eccles blog, and they let me enter.
Who conducted the service? Fr Tim Finigan, one of the famous "Finigan and Finnegan" team of priestly bloggers.
Fr Finigan discusses a question of hermeneutics with Fr Finnegan.
How would you describe the pre-service atmosphere? People were piously consulting their iPads. Looking at my neighbour, I could see that she was drafting a post for her blog eccentric.visitors.blogfen.com, although she hid the screen when I tried to read it.
What books did the congregation use during the service? No books! They all had iPads, smartphones, or laptops. One more traditionalist worshipper insisted on using an older computer.
A traditionalist worshipper, refusing to use a post-Vatican II computer.
In a nutshell, what was the sermon about? Fr F. explained the Hermeneutic of Rupture, which meant that, although worship was best conducted in line with traditional methods, it was necessary to reject some old-fashioned technology (here he glared at the blogger pictured above, who was now feeding a paper tape into his IBM mainframe).
The women all wore traditional mantillas at Mass.
Did anything distract you? Yes, there were some children present. They were mostly blogging away piously throughout the service, but occasionally they hit each other with their iPads.
A young blogger learns about bytes.
How would you describe the after-service coffee? In fact, full details were being written up for coffee.blogfen.com even as I drank it. We were served Musket Monk coffee, which had been sent as a present from a blogging priest in the USA whose name I didn't catch.
Coming soon - we visit a totally different kind of service.
You forgot to comment on the opening words of the service, Eccles. This is an essential part of the Boat of Fools critique. Never mind.
ReplyDeleteWhile Vatican II crazies are closing the Windows to the Holy Spirit, it is good to see that Blogfen is turning the big cats of the Mac loose in the blogging Colosseum. Powerful stuff.
Does you have any suggestoins, bruvver rabit? My blogg is startin to resembule Damain Thopmson's - some of de comments underneath is better dan de blogg itself.
DeleteI think the opening words are something about asparagus.
DeleteEcclies, I think most readers of your blog now are sure you have outclassed Damain Thomspoon, but we are still waiting for a sign. A proper scoop.
DeleteMaybe if you were to go to Rome and interview a very portant cardinal, giving the reasons why Vinny has not got a red hat? That is what we need here now. The big FACTS.
And another thing. Is that really your brother Bosco on Jessica's blog? Has he been drinking pints of Largactyl?
Here are the opening words :
Delete"010010010110111000100000011011101111001001101101011010010110111001100101001000000101000001100001011101000111001001101001011100110010110000100000011001010111010000100000010001101110110001101100011010010110100100101100001000000110010101110100001000000101001101110000111011000111001001101001011101000111010101110011001000000101001101100001011011100110001101110100011010010010111000001101000010100000110100001010010001110111001011100000011101000110100101100001001000000100010011110010011011010110100101101110011010010010000001101110011011110111001101110100011100100110100100100000010010100110010101110011011101010010000001000011011010000111001001101001011100110111010001101001001011000010000001100101011101000010000001100011111000000111001001101001011101000110000101110011001000000100010001100101011010010010110000100000011001010111010000100000011000110110111101101101011011010111010101101110011010010110001111100000011101000110100101101111001000000101001101100001011011100110001101110100011010010010000001010011011100001110110001110010011010010111010001110101011100110010000001110011011010010111010000100000011000110111010101101101001000001111001001101101011011100110100101100010011101010111001100100000011101100110111101100010011010010111001100101110"
One note about the opening words -- they are written using the V II.0 of the programming language, and (given the ecumenical nature of the ceremony) the non-localised iteration has been deployed onto the server, so as to ensure maximum intercompatibility with the hardware and software solutions utilised by the Faithful during eucharistic I/O operations.
DeleteThis is also a safeguard against the introduction of malicious code into the local copy of the Ritual by such hacker groups as the Irish Anonymous Blogging Priests, as it is a trivial task to simply reboot the basic configuration of the Mass using the original CD-ROM -- whereas localised configurations tailored to the requests of some more heavily localised Parish deployment choices can often be problematic to recode in cases of catastrophic systems failure, as well as the question of future compatibility with standardised configuration protocols requested by the software publisher.
The Parish Liturgical Development Team is also satisfied that it is fully prepared for the introduction of the forthcoming 2013 Service Pack for the V II Operating System, to be released later this year by the software publisher in Rome, and looks forward with excitement to the many revised features and optimisation and standardisation modules that have been announced with this new version -- though we cannot guarantee that full compatibility with all congregational client systems will be realised without additional configuration tasks on each individual machine and its potentially faulty UI protocols.
Surely VII.0 is the version that *is* localised?
DeleteCertainly brother Simon, V II.0 is almost always deployed in such localised iterations as V II.0.EN, V II.0.FR, V II.0.IT, and so on ... but the basic software package has been created on the basis of the older version T I.0, and uses the same programming language.
DeleteLocalisation itself is a feature that was introduced with the V II.0 version, and whilst the software developer has remained firm in its support for this feature, it has had a detrimental effect on the overall stability of the software, and it is often exploited by hackers wishing to introduce malicious code into local systems.
Hopefully, the forthcoming Service Pack will address these ongoing stability issues with V II.0 localisation.
Darn it. I had just bought a jacquard loom and have been spending the winter evenings hand etching a set of punch cards in Algol 58, in anticipation of my own trip to Blogfen on Ash Wednesday. I previously got three quarters of the way through constrcucting a copy of the Babbage Counting machine in the shed, but Phil sold it to a set of travelling Romanian scrap metal dealers. Now I see from your report that a Blogfen parishioner has out-traddied me.
ReplyDeleteI suppose I could sit at the back and do a spare set of rose vestments for Fr F in time for Laetare Sunday, so my labours are not entirely wasted.
I see from your last photo that you have obtained rare footage of Fr Pau attempting to board "the Saucy Seascout", berthed in the nave of Plywood Cathedral, where it awaits repairs after being holed in the plimsoll line by Farver Arfur, after an unfortunate attempt to re-order the interior. I believe it remains in good standing, though it doesn't actually float.
Here in failing Catholic Spain, it would be hard to find a priest who knows the correct password to open the tabernacle.
DeleteSay "the black" and press the red button.
DeleteThanks, Jadis, but to be honest, I would not want to give our priest any help. He can't really tell the difference between the tabernacle and the sacristy broom cupboard anyway. This is liberal Catholic Spain and it needs a complete sweep out.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteTypos !Mike Cliffson29 January 2013 22:50
DeleteJadis :I LOVE "outtraddied me" - thanks !Made my day!
I was labelled- Spain, too!- as something very similar when publicly defending the return of the capital of (a Catholic and pretridentine, naturally) England to Winchester.
"Tradicionalista extremo" they said - and for lack of this handy verb I replied that "como tradicionalista, ¡que no me gane nadie!" (that noone beat me)
I should add that The offical name for the Carlists (three or four nineteenth century civil wars in Spain, on the "nacionals" side in the last, and forcibly incorporated into Francos umbrella "movimiento") is/was tradicionlista.
"to outtrad somebody" Pace M.Python, it's verbs like that that make a
dictionary worthwhile.
Winchester? Are you one of those johnny-come-lately Saxons?
DeleteOwch! I bin outraddied again! wasn't expecting that Angle.
DeleteThe first words of the Sunday Mass are, 'Asperges me,' and we have special iUmbrellas to keep our iPads dry.
ReplyDeleteposted from my iPad.
Fanks for dem enlightning comments, Jaddis.
ReplyDeleteFarver Finagain has his own account of my visit to Blogfen.
http://the-hermeneutic-of-continuity.blogspot.com/2013/01/boat-of-fools-blogfen-review.html
And perhaps you is right, rabit, I needs to take over de blob-crazed ferrit job from Damain.
"What books did the congregation use during the service? No books! They all had iPads, smartphones, or laptops."
ReplyDeletePhew - no Tablets!
FrankE
I is being swamped by spamm, so I has turned on muddleration for any comments on blosts more than 10 days old.
ReplyDeleteWell,,Everyone gets an A++ tonite. Very good. Now does anyone know who wrote that famous poem Wynken,Blynken and Blog about going out in the little boat ? It was Bruvver Eccles ? Yes,,Yes . Very good...
ReplyDeletedarling eccles, thank you so much for your lovely mention of my blog on the tweety pie thing. I am giving Bosco board and lodging in return - xx Jess
ReplyDeleteThanks Jess, your blogg is very luvvly.
DeleteDo look after Bosco, and don't give him too many dog bisciuts as they only excite him.
Eccles, You is de best. So naturally you attract de best pussons.
ReplyDelete