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| http://emmock.com/2011/01/01/bible-blog-335/ |
The Church struggles to get a full house on this day although there is a bonus when it falls on a Sunday as has happened this year.
In good old Catholic Tradition this day was known as the Feast of the Circumcision of the Lord. Yes, it is the only Catholic feast for a medical procedure. As with all great Biblical accounts there is a picture gallery available on google.
Circumcision gets some pretty good press in the Scriptures as a popular practice and metaphor. By the time you have worked through the Hebrew Scriptures and made your way to some of Paul's letters you get to the most cutting of his statements: "Beware of the cutters," (Ph.3:2). So, there you have it, time to stop infant circumcision!! If Paul was around today he would probably join one of the Facebook pages against infant circumcision.
Thanks to this feast we also have a great new word for scrabble: prepuce. The Holy Prepuce or the story of the foreskin relics is another contribution of Catholicism to the religious entertainment industry. It seems that we can also learn ab it from Michelangelo about this practice.
The United Nations Theme for 2012: The International Year of Cooperatives
In Australia we will celebrate The National Year of Reading
1 comments:
As an intactivist it had come to my attention that it was the day of Christ's circumcision. Often, Christians (more often, American Christians) believe that male genital mutilation ("circumcision") is part of their religion, whereas as you... discuss Christian theology looks to a "circumcision of the heart".
It's also worth mentioning that the circumcision Jesus received would bare no resemblence to circumcision as we know it today. Judaic circumcision today comprises three ritual acts on the body - the initial incision, the complete excision of the entire prepuce (and usually some shaft skin), and a final blood removal. Christ would only have received the far less radical initial trimming of the tip of the foreskin.
Because in Helenic and other ancient times it was deemed crude for the glans to be showing (i.e. because it signaled arousal in public, e.g. at the Olympic games) many jews who wished to participate in public life would put a clip on their remaining foreskin to keep to pulled forward over the glans. Those who did this regularly basically regrew the length of foreskin required to permanently cover the glans - the first foreskin restorers. The jewish theologists worried that this confused or "hid" the religion of the jewish men who did it, so the more radical form of circumcision was mandated to completely remove the entire prepuce.
While the original, more conservative circumcision would have left the glans better protected and avoided keritonisation and desensitisation, it still would have removed the ridged band of highly sensitive nerve endings that runs from the frenulum around the foreskin's appature/opening, severely decreasing sexual pleasure. Until modern times no secret was made of the fact that one of the main "benefits" of circumcision was the oblation or "taming" or sexual pleasure.
Many jews now perform alternative welcoming ceremonies for their baby boys to allow them to keep their whole penis. You may be interested to google "Beyond The Bris". While circumcision for consenting adults is an interesting and sometimes meaningful body modification, inflicting it on children is, without hyperbole, plainly barbaric and callous, and radically infringes the right to bodily integrity and autonomy of those boys, and the men they become. It IS rightly called male genital mutilation, it is rightly compared to the removal of the clitoral hood in females, and in those who can't give their informed consent, it's morally abhorrent.
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