Magic Statistics

Robert Machray, Archbishop of Rupert's Land, Prelate of the Order of St Michael and St George, first Primate of the Anglican Church of Canada, died on 9 March 1904. In his memory, Todd Granger posted this brief biography and collect at The Confessing Reader.

Born in Scotland in 1831, Robert Machray was educated at King’s College in Aberdeen and at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge where he studied mathematics, philosophy and theology. He was ordained in the Church of England in 1855 and served parishes in that country, eventually serving as Dean of Sidney Sussex College. In 1865 he became bishop of the ecclesiastical province of Rupert’s Land (in Canada), becoming archbishop in 1875. At the first General Synod of the Anglican Church of Canada in 1893 he was unanimously elected the first primate of that Church, serving until his death on March 9, 1904.

God of love, shepherd of your people, we thank you for your servant Robert Machray, who was faithful in the care and nurture of your flock. Taught by the example of his holy life, may we by grace grow into the full stature of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

A much longer biography of Abp Machray, written by his nephew Robert Machray, is posted here.

In the past three weeks, student newspapers at two Canadian universities have distinguished themselves, and not in a good way, by publishing cartoons ridiculing Jesus. First, it was The Strand at the University of Toronto with a cartoon showing Jesus kissing Mohammed in "The Tunnel of Tolerance". The cartoon, which you see by following this link (because I don't want to copy it here), struck me as juvenile and lame.

Since then, The Sheaf, a student newspaper at the University of Saskatchewan, has outdone The Strand by running a cartoon that can fairly be described as vile and loathsome. (Since I won't post The Strand's, you know I won't post The Sheaf's.) You can see it here or here.

My friend John at Verum Serum has several posts about the two cartoons. You can find more information from him here and here and here.  At the latter is posted a response John received from The Sheaf cartoonist, Jeff MacDonald, who sounds like he has a wild imagination.

That's a long-winded introduction to a reminder that crude drawings mocking our Lord have been around for a very long time: they began to appear in the first century. The drawing shown here is of a plaster grafitto, known as the Alexamenos Graffito, believed to originate in first-century Rome. It shows Jesus, with the head of an ass, on the cross.

This description of the grafitto is by Rodolfo Lanciani from his Ancient Rome in the Light of Recent Discoveries (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1898), ch. 5, "The Palace of the Caesars".

But by far the most interesting and most widely celebrated graffito of the whole set is the one discovered at the beginning of the year 1857 in the fourth room on the left of the entrance, removed soon after to the Kircherian Museum at the Collegio Romano, where it is still to be seen. This graffito . . . contains a blasphemous caricature of our Lord Jesus Christ, - a caricature designed only a few years after the first preaching of the gospel in Rome by the Apostles. . . . Our Lord is represented with the head of a donkey, tied to the cross, with the feet resting on a horizontal piece of board. To the left of the cross there is the figure of the Christian youth Alexamenos, with arms raised in adoration of his crucified God, and the whole composition is illustrated and explained by the legend, "Alexamenos worships (his) God."

I found the drawing and text here via Albertanicus.