Signs and wonders
Religion in all its many forms - - Posted on May, 10 at 1:31 pm by Ken L
As a confirmed atheist, I try not to cause needless offence to people of a religious persuasion. Each to his own is my motto, as long as they don’t try and impose their values and belief systems on others.
The Roman Catholic Church would, however, try the patience of, well, a saint. Recently we’ve had reported two cases of corpse-worship and now we’re getting more information about the medieval jiggery-pokery that is going to feature at the forthcoming, mendaciously-labelled World Yoof Day.
SACRED Catholic rituals will come to Sydney’s streets when temporary confessional booths are set up in Darling Harbour, Hyde Park, the Opera House and Randwick Racecourse for World Youth Day pilgrims.
The act of confession would be made available to thousands of pilgrims at two sites at the Sydney Convention Centre and Hyde Park at scheduled times and in multiple languages, said the World Youth Day director of liturgy, Peter Williams.
Confessions will also be heard at the sites of the stations of the cross, including the Domain, the Opera House and Darling Park.
Booths will have a partition between priest and the confessor and heavy curtains for privacy. At other World Youth Day events, confession has often been informal, with the priest hearing them on an outdoor chair.
See? Our World Yoof Day confessionals will be soooo much nicer than those other cities’.
And of course no Catholic get-together is complete without that holiest of rituals where they convince themselves they are eating bits of a dead Jew:
Father Williams said: “As I see it, Mass was not designed to be celebrated with 500,000 people. There are challenges, but they are not insurmountable.”
Not included in the online story, but mentioned in the hard copy version, is the fact that the communicants will have to get by on this occasion without a swig of the Saviour’s blood. That seems a bit rough. Can’t the AHA organise a truckload of donations? Must be some goonie somewhere past its use by date.
I guess if people are determined to act like superstitious peasants from the Dark Ages they should be allowed to but it pisses me off that the rest of us are forking out tens of millions of dollars to subsidise them. Not only that but the entire apparatus of the NSW government seems to be enthusiastically cheering the affair on; up near the Queensland border a huge RTA sign has stopped telling us to slow down and now tells us with breathless excitement how many days left to Yoof Day. What happened to the separation of church and state?
However I guess it will all be worthwhile if, on the final day, the pope declares in charmingly broken English that it’s been ‘the best World Yoof Day ever’. Australians just love hosting global events presided over by authoritarian geriatric Europeans.
Posted in Religion in all its many forms |
May 10th, 2008 at 2:15 pm
I think,every thing you say is correct,and the governments involved,are doing all this to assert a need for government,faith,law and order last.They,the N.S.W. government have been taken over by events,and that series of events is everyone who dislikes the governments we get in power are known,name age,address occupation,sex life medical and other conditions debt,and any bloody thing else they want to know.They use this as a series of prongs around everyone.Notice at election time,you are asked to vote for the future,Pearly Gates with Internet I suppose.Because Government today cannot mind its own business,because no-one really accepts their claims of doing government well,they are doing two things at once,continuing to make the populace decide all reason resides in and of Government and those who will use its processes.And b. the rest is either enemy,criminal or something to parasite off.The Confession Box as the harbinger of a spiritual revival,a sense of community,can only come from the nonsenses,that will not face up to the fact,they never solve anyone\’s problems on this earth,but pass the buck to others to be concerned.Most of government legislation today,has nothing even to do with a house owner,let alone the rest of civilisation outside of that.The Catholic Church,hasn\’t got a homogenity that thinks and behaves exactly to the Words of God\’s Law from Rome.Pell an ex-Anglican from Ballarat has cursed this land,of one of the only things that made it worthwhile.And that was the other use of the word catholic.Some individuals had both meanings and enjoyed the great outdoors,honesty about anything human,and the simple and unreconstucted evaluations,that go along with a sense of place as being on earth and the stars at night.. as heaven.But Pell,in the Daily Telegraph perpetuated some amazing fraudelent fact and understandings about comparisons between the U.S.A. and Australia.These present Catholic leaders ,are but criminals engaging in the surface values of honesty.Along with people like Nile,and hundreds of other booster rockets,who get the right to fly off the handle in a moral sense about others.They are worse than the cow dung problem Australia once had.I have never been able to grasp why Christianity seems to make people over-bearingly confident in this nation,when,the story of Christ,could not of been for these people as they brown eye one\’s sense of reason for their own,with added quotes sometimes.The only time you get any respect from them,if they are driven Catholics Christians everyday,is when you are larger than life,an idol to maybe criticize and bring back to the word.So even drug addled musicians will get a rightful funeral in either Catholic or Anglican Sin City land,and the Kylie Minogues will be a crying.The richest woman of types in…..England.So with all these ,and ,other forms or artificiality,parading as the pointers to where the Chosen One will emanate through..it is simply no wonder Iemma a Icon of a name,if you know its meaning,has stuck his arse out and has equipped himself as a booster rocket for Catholicism.Yes fly by your pants in a way to heaven,whilst the political system Privatises the booster assisted rocket science of career expanding about 5 years,and socialise the parachute of lost savings inconvenience,whilst the Good Sheperd looks after one in Retirement.Iemma Amenna!
May 10th, 2008 at 7:20 pm
Gimme anyday Steve Kilbey’s naturally high inducing words & music, accompanied by mesmerising images by David Duchow, over a quickie purge in a mobile confession box.
Good place to catch a virus I reckon.
Music motivates me to sweat the doubts & fears from the pores of my mind…w/out the need for absolution by a gatherer of secrets.
Great for blackmail I imagine.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olj2GuBwkuw
(Freaky Conclusions - Steve Kilbey)
May 10th, 2008 at 9:45 pm
I am almost out of breathe.I have been working part-time at Torbit’s Crematorium for Pets,and my employer a good Catholic from Sydney before he went to the U.S.A. had a problem with bodies of American War dead. He didn’t want to be a dingo about it,he just left that to the CIA NSA Echelon Satellite to make me write this piece.So as the only resident dingo there,when the bodies were being cremated,I was reminded of the time I assisted Philip Barker QC just down from the road where everyone does a bit of surfing for Security.You Know! Pine Gap! The Sheep station.Well I was assisting Phil at the time,by laying low after I had a bit of a taste of a Seven Day Adventist. Not that I wouldn’t of chosen an old RC. Saint’s bone if it had of been lying around.I will cut that story short to tell you,well they had a Officer come in,and he looked askance,he saw me sitting on what I thought was a tucker box! It gets that way sometimes when you miss Australia. I didnt know what the guy’s problem was because everything went up as charcoal as normal.And then it struck me like,how people think dingoes will piss on trees like other dogs. His Chief In Command was once a member of Skull and Bones,and what I had done sitting on the charcoal box,was reverse every symbol that is sacred to the American Elite. Frankly,I immediately apologised,and ran for my life,like a large tree goanna was after me,and I wasnt known for climbing flagpoles to escape the damned things. So I decided to come back quick and report here,because, they might confuse me with other dingoes from Asia.I’LL stay free though because,Phil will protect my rights!And Road to Surfdom readers have the full inside story.And seeing the old bones of Saints will arrive soon in Australia,then I can convert to Catholicism before the bones arrive!And as Americans are always using dog tags with the eye on the top of the pyramid, dingoes will not be blamed,and this officer who saw me sitting on the Tuckerbox,sorry,will probably get round to confusing what type of dog it was,and, the DNA on dog urine will be incomplete,so they’ll probably think,it was a spotty of a dog.See you at the next Sheep run!
May 11th, 2008 at 12:15 am
Speaking of breathlessness, signs & wonders:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZY2Yt1ATm4c
(Rendezvous with Rama short film)
May 11th, 2008 at 11:09 am
Maybe they should use some of those porta-confessionals for the child molesting industry. After all, they’re the world champions and have been at it for centuries.
If they all confess, the queues will stretch from Sydney up to that RTA sign on the NSW north coast.
May 11th, 2008 at 1:05 pm
These RTA road signs are now, like an infestation of cane toads, all over Sydney. Maybe for the first time I can shoot lotsa holes in road signs with some rightful justification.
May 12th, 2008 at 2:15 am
Christianity is a scam based on two lies. The first is the existence of God and the second is the existence of Jesus. Nearly $100m of our money is being used to promote this scam, thanks to Turnbull and Iemma, two superstitious thugs from the same side of politics - the Catholic Right.
May 12th, 2008 at 1:32 pm
So they’re taking over the Convention Centre, Hyde Park, the Domain, the Opera House, Darling Park, and Randwick Racecourse (so far) for these porta-confessionals (nice expression, Virgin Mary). What’s a good agnostic to do? I reckon all non-believers should join the queue, get in there and tell ém something like “Bless me Father, for last week I rooted a really ugly woman”. Maybe then they’ll stop before they go blind.
May 12th, 2008 at 6:07 pm
Well, at least it’s just the Catholics, altho the Pope met Bush a couple of times so he might have picked up the VIRUS…or perhaps he’s just a jolly old soul who think the masses need to be led & morally guided using archaic languages (just to add to the confusion…& mysteriousness of the moment) whilst he enjoys sipping on Christ’s vino in the golden Vat.
Neo-Cons also have views on how handy religion is as a tool…Mr. Leo Strauss (Mars brought him up on another thread) gets a mention here:
According to Drury, Strauss had a “huge contempt” for secular democracy. Nazism, he believed, was a nihilistic reaction to the irreligious and liberal nature of the Weimar Republic. Among other neoconservatives, Irving Kristol has long argued for a much greater role for religion in the public sphere, even suggesting that the Founding Fathers of the American Republic made a major mistake by insisting on the separation of church and state. And why? Because Strauss viewed religion as absolutely essential in order to impose moral law on the masses who otherwise would be out of control.
At the same time, he stressed that religion was for the masses alone; the rulers need not be bound by it. Indeed, it would be absurd if they were, since the truths proclaimed by religion were “a pious fraud.” As Ronald Bailey, science correspondent for Reason magazine points out, “Neoconservatives are pro-religion even though they themselves may not be believers.”
“Secular society in their view is the worst possible thing,” Drury says, because it leads to individualism, liberalism, and relativism, precisely those traits that may promote dissent that in turn could dangerously weaken society’s ability to cope with external threats. Bailey argues that it is this firm belief in the political utility of religion as an “opiate of the masses” that helps explain why secular Jews like Kristol in ‘Commentary’ magazine and other neoconservative journals have allied themselves with the Christian Right and even taken on Darwin’s theory of evolution.
(Leo Strauss’ Philosophy of Deception,
By Jim Lobe, AlterNet. Posted May 19, 2003)
———–
Isn’t this info so “old hat”? One wonders why it doesn’t make the mainstream media grade?
So, are they going to call me “jackboot nasking” because i’m none too happy about the
use of religion & the accompanying myths and moral lessons to manufacture & perpetuate myopic war-mongering & Corporate/Dynasty “raking in of money hand over big stick and fist”???
Strange, I can’t remember ever owning a manual that tells me to whip my own nation into a FEVER by way of flag waving, turning dicey campaigns into victories, constructing & showing Islamic hate films that compete w/ ‘Jude Suss’ for grotesqueness & distortion…nor do i think i promote xenophobia (rather i dig exposing the face under MASKS & saboteurs who infiltrate Democracy like viruses)…nor do i go to beer hall and sing rapturous songs…or wear slick, M&S uniforms (i imagine the NAZIs would have called me a “fat slob” or “Swein” who has no pride in the “Fartsland”…nor do i condone taking that fooled & mobilised VOLK and crashing them into other sovereign nation-states for the sake of Corporatism, nepotism & resource grabbing.
pfffttt….probably forgot to use the spell check…& use tortured syntax…whip me baby whip me!!!…in the scheme of things it all matters…less than we think…when lives are at stake.
Well I do confess…it’s a wonderful world.
May 12th, 2008 at 6:18 pm
make that S&M…wouldn’t want to confuse that w/ Marks & Sparks now they’re going all green energy & looking behind labels. Teacakes could be made ar HOME tho….eh Ken?…:)
May 12th, 2008 at 6:28 pm
should be Schwein…as in PIG. The things we sometimes befriend…but also kill lots of. Kinda look like us. Wonder if we’re like the platypus? Could be another Huxley/Wilberforce debate coming up. Cool. Some scientists reckon pigs are/could be medically useful. RATIONAL scientists know best.
Run BABE run!!! Hide in the confession box. You know how compassionate Catholics are.
Next stop SANE WORLD…three million light years past PRAGMATISM W/OUT A CONSCIENCE WORLD.
May 14th, 2008 at 11:19 pm
I liked Ratzinger’s brilliant balm to those hurt by kiddy-fiddling priests in amerika recently - secret prayer meetings with the abused.
Surely that’s how the trouble started in the first place…?