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Entry: Sake and the Latin Mass Link: http://www.takimag.com/site/article/sake_and_the_latin_mass#2134 Post contents: Hey, John Zmirak! My fellow "Franciscan" holy fool (in spirit anyway - and I forget the Latin phrase for this, something like "Christian animaliter spiritus-something", ie, an old Latin phrase which means "a Christian in spirit even if not in outward appearance"... ...yeah well, in a similar way, Zmirak, you and I are both like "Franciscans" in spirit, God's Fools, even if we don't wear or practice formal Franciscan habits. And I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that in his own way, Taki is very much like a Franciscan too... ;-) I'll go even further and suggest that Taki started this magazine in the same spirit as Francis of Assisi did when he, as another wealthy nobleman, decided to devote his worldly powers to God and to all creatures great and small. Taki is not an ascetic - and neither am I - but I do see a lot of the spirit of St Francis in what Taki is doing now, in his gifts and endeavours such as this one... ANYway! Zmirak! Dude! Just three days ago I arrived in Australia, after spending five straight bloody years in the atheist and anti-Christian People's Republic of China. So I think I can augment this article of yours: I wonder, DID you know - or do any of our other friends know - that most of the underground Chinese Christians (both Catholic and Protestant) REFUSE to receive any smuggled Bibles other than the King James Bible? Let me tell ya why: (gloss: The Bible is STILL outlawed in China, except for a small number of Bibles which are officially approved by the Communist Party. That's why the Chinese Christians still need Bibles to be smuggled into China, illegally. Because it's illegal to publish any Bible in China, except for versions which have been approved by the Communist Party.) So, ya get it now? Most Chinese Christians are VERY picky about what kind of smuggled Bibles they use - because they want to be VERY careful to avoid using any Bibles which have been corrupted by Communist Party editors. That's why most Chinese Christians (including many Chinese Catholics), prefer to stick to using smuggled King James Bibles (and then translating them into Chinese) - because they are all so desperate to have some kind of reliable Bible to use, untainted by any Communist Party editing. This is the real condition of Chinese Christianity today. Both Protestants and Catholics, in Communist China, are just DESPERATE to find some reliable traditional Christian media - some authentic connection with Christ and his Apostles - to cling to, while the Communist Party tries so hard to corrupt and to twist and to contaminate any and all expressions of the Gospel in China. Funny thing is, that although I'm a Catholic, my experience in China over the past five years has given me a far greater respect for the Protestants' especial emphasis on the Bible. Because, you see, for the besieged Christians of China, both Protestant AND Catholic, having access to an AUTHENTIC Bible is their only lifeline to Christ. This experience, in China, has given me a lot more respect for the Protestants' way of revering the Bible as their direct connection to the words of Jesus. Anyway. As for sake: I can tell you that it's a Japanese improvement over a very barbarian Chinese liquor. As in so many other ways, the Japanese adapted an old Chinese custom and improved upon it. Sake is great - but the Chinese kind of rice wine from which it was derived, is shit. Chinese rice wine is like turpentine; and a good analogy would be, German Marxism is to Chinese Communism, like mediocre German wine is to the shittiest kind of Chinese liquor. European Marxism sucks, even though it's potable and slightly pleasing, but Chinese Marxism is poisonous. But, mutatis mutandis: The very bitterness of the experience of Chinese Christians, and the poisons of the Chinese Communist Party which afflict them almost to death, alchemically create a peculiar potion of Chinese Christianity which is a uniquely elegant, exquisite variety of the Blood of Christ. As wretched and toxic as all Chinese liquors are, the wine of Christ's blood in China is all the more exquisite, because all the more rare and so hardly fermented... ...like I am happily fermented right now - three days after I left China - with a glass of Australian "Cascade Premium Lager" with a picture of a Tasmanian Devil on the label, as I write now in a free and officially Christian country, under the Southern Cross. :-) Here endeth the lesson. But seriously, please spare a few thoughts, or more, for the conditions of China's besieged Christians of today... Sent at: 2008 11 23