The Vatican is doing NFTs for some reason

Here in Australia it’s election time, and while election campaigns are frequently annoying, consider: At least the church in your area doesn’t elect its officials via a party political contest. That is unless you are in Sweden, in which case it absolutely does.

I find this extremely weird, but I can’t really talk. My own church’s governance structure is so unusual I’m pretty sure they made up a word to describe it. Anyone know what ‘interconciliar’ means? Here’s “a brief overview” that goes for nearly six pages lmao.

While on the subject of elections with religious consequences, I found this article about Sinn Féin’s win in Northern Ireland very helpful.

The Vatican is doing NFTs now

A bunch of places are reporting that the Vatican is launching a line of NFTs, which seems weird but is apparently true.

Sensorium, a VR company, is partnering with Humanity 2.0, a Vatican-led nonprofit working toward “human flourishing”. Together, they’re making an NFT gallery of art stored in the Vatican museum.

Humanity 2.0 chair Fr Philip Larrey told ARTnews they are exploring ways to “democratise art, making it more widely available to people around the world regardless of their socio-economic and geographical limitations.” But introducing artificial scarcity by making the artworks NFTs seems like a weird way to do that. Apparently the NFTs “won’t be used to sell products or objects”, so part of me wonders if we’re even talking about NFTs at all.

Why would they have to be NFTs? Couldn’t you just do a virtual gallery and use VR goggles to look at all the artworks without having to involve the blockchain? A Vatican representative told ARTnews “NFTs don’t necessary [sic] have to come in a form of artworks, but can also include tickets and other objects.” So what are we talking about here?

Motherboard tried to find out, but Fr Larrey effectively withdrew his offer of an interview with them. The whole thing is extremely weird!

I can’t get into the Vatican Minecraft server

The NFT thing reminded me of how in 2019, Jesuit priest and tech reviewer Fr Robert Ballecer set up a Vatican Minecraft server. I believe it’s still running but it suffered a lot of griefing and spam, so the mods have set up a lot of hurdles to gain access.

This link to the DigitalJesuit Discord server works, but I can’t work out how to actually request permission to post in any of the channels because the #start-here channel is also locked! Let me through those blocky gates!

It isn’t turtles all the way down there’s just the God Turtle

The meerkats in The Lion King are Jewish

Do not ask me why or how a mongoose can be one of God’s chosen people, but Vulture writer Rebecca Alter confirmed with the director while writing this piece about The Lion King 1 ½ that the meerkats in the Lion King are Jewish.

It’s not a matter of the character being modelled after the voice actor either. Nathan Lane, who voiced Timon, comes from an Irish Catholic family and is named after his uncle, a Jesuit priest.

This all came to light downthread of her good joke about Jewish mice never celebrating Shavuot.

Vibe with Aquinas

I told you about Uighur lofi hip hop chill music, now there’s vibes with aquinas - beats to relax/study to. The music isn’t very Catholic, but the animation is cute. Regardless, we need lofi beats from every tradition.

h/t @tim_elmo and @douglaschu_ for tweeting about this.

**Frantically flips through my Bible**

“He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty” and don’t you forget it!!

Two queens stand before me

Your competitor was a sheep… but you my dear were the G.O.A.T.

I love this shirt but don’t buy it for me

I can never fit everything I want in these emails!

• Pope wins “my brother in Christ” meme
• The Weird Medieval Guys Twitter is really good and gets better when you remember these medieval shitphosts were probably scribed by monks
• “I've lived long enough to see most of the Sonic family come to Christ”
• Biblically accurate fork