Be Excellent To Each Other

I'm quite looking forward to the Papal visit in a few days. Receiving God's Representative on Earth coming to the UK on a state visit is pretty pro, however, according to the Torygraph, 10,000 tickets remain to be sold, but at £25 a go, maybe out of reach of most of the devout. Some people have gotten cross at the alleged £10,000,000 cost for the four day visit, but the host country always bears the cost of state visits, so no biggie.

I'm a bit disturbed that prominent twat-face Peter Tatchell is planning to protest but somewhat reassured he's said he wont' disturb any Papal Events, but I wouldn't be surprised if some Dawkins worshipping hippy tries to do something. I'm beginning to think that Religion is fast becoming an easy target for fools, with followers of a faith often bullied through social media, such as this twitter post, made by some fucking moron:



It's abuse that borders on racism but it seems it's acceptable, trendy and quite cool to bash faith. I'm not convinced at all that it is a good thing, and more alarmed that people that are normally not like that at all seem to think it is an acceptable way to behave in modern society.

Hrmn. While I agree with the sentiment you put across, the Pope and the Catholic church as a whole has behaved unbelievably appallingly with respect to the whole priests buggering kids thing. Comparing it as being a sin on a par with ordaining women, for example. There should be uproar in the church, and the Pope should be out on his ear. But that's not the case.

I just hope he gives Notch his 5% back.

Subtle. Like.

Religion affects me in the same way that Minecraft affects Zardoz.

I'd imagine it's a biggie to non-Catholics. I can imagine it's certainly not cheap to organise something like this though.

I generally stay out of religious discussion though. To me, he's not 'God's Representative on Earth' - he's a scary-looking bloke in a funny-shaped car.


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SPELLCASTING... £25 please

Disagree. This is a visit by the head of the catholic church. If it was a visit by The Pope in his role of head of Vatican City, it would be a state visit.

I kept reading it like that, too.

I was wondering that. Is the Pope pretty much the only person who would have a 'state visit' that isn't actually a head of state? Vatican City doesn't count.

Gold.

Hmm, there's a fine line between bashing faith and debating it in just the same was as anything else.

I often cross over into bashing when I'm 'baiting.

Only because religion makes it so easy. Otherwise it'd just be a target for the intelligent.
No, it isn't. This is a ridiculous thing to say. Race is not a matter of choice, religion is. Religion is a choice to believe in, live by and support a set of principles and a whole organisation. And it's also a choice that has an effect on others.

And in the case of the Catholic Church (my old team, by the way), it's a choice to adhere to the tenets of an organisation that has systematically behaved fucking appallingly in so many different ways. There isn't enough bashing that one could do to them.

I'm genuinely surprised at you here, as I'm pretty sure this isn't just a "MaliA says something controversial for fun", and is instead something you actually think.

EDIT - also, I think, given the definition of bullying, it's impossible for some wee sad wank on a social networking site to bully an organisation of a billion members.

Apparently it isn't a state visit when the Dalai Lama or head of other church comes to play.

I have been reading about the guy who is going to be beatified in Birmingham, who set up the Birmingham Oratory. The circumstances whereby his first 'miracle' are deemed to have occured are interesting, to say the least.

He's just the leader of a big club, why on earth would it cost £10000000 to have him here.

Not in the larger part of the World, it isn't. Out there, religion is closely linked to ethnicity, which is why you cannot just claim that arguments about "racism" (which should be "racial discrimination" anyway, if you really want to be pedantic) automatically don't apply when talking about religious groupings.

Yeah, but we're talking about British Catholics here.

He is obviously being quite confrontational about it, but I think the apathy and seemingly complete lack of uproar within the Church itself regarding all these cases of child abuse has rather shocked and dismayed a lot of non-catholics. It really does make you wonder.

Also, Stop The Press: someone on the internet is a bit of a dick about something.

I appreciate that a lot of Catholics are indoctrinated with their faith by their parents (I was - my mum's an Irish Catholic), and so there can in certain areas be a strong correlation between ethnicity and religion. However, you can stop being Catholic. You can't stop being black or Asian or Caucasian.

Fundamentally it's a difference between (1) discriminating against someone on the basis of a physical attribute and (2) having a go at people who (from the other's point of view) believe stupid things and support bad organisations in the face of all sense. The two are not even remotely comparable. If we're going to say (2) is bad, then where does that stop? We can't have a go at people for their political beliefs? Their taste in music?

Thinking more about it, though, it's a bit like saying the lack of reaction among muslims against terror bombs makes you wonder if they all support it, which would be ridiculous. So I guess things just don't work like that, when we're dealing with groups millions of people, even if it is easy to react that way.

There have been significantly more responses from muslim groups condemning terror attacks than there have been from catholic groups condemning priestly buggery.

Killing many thousands of people is a bit worse than buggering a few hundred of them, isn't it?

You can't compare the actions of the extremist few on the lunatic fringes of one religion with the en masse actions of the rank and file of another.

Quite. So are you saying that the rank and file of Catholicism are buggering people en masse?

Yes. But tacitly condoning buggary is worse than condemning murder.

I think the implication is that by silently sweeping it under the carpet they are complicit in it & I'd agree with that.

There are significantly more Catholic priests and nuns abusing children than there are Imams blowing shit up.

Yeah, but it's a lot easier to deny or ignore child abuse than things blowing up. I guess I'm saying that I wouldn't particularly expect any religious organisation to behave properly and launch a full and frank investigation into anything that they had a chance of just ignoring in the hope that it would go away.

Which takes us back full circle - anyone complicit in the actions of child-buggaring priests or supressing those actions is a complete cunt. And any congregation that turns a blind eye to it while simultaneously upholding their leader and church as paragons of holiness are displaying the worst kind of doublethink.

Anyone see Panorama last night? Interesting comments from some guys in the Catholic hierarchy to the effect that the previous Pope naively seemed to think that child abuse wasn't a serious problem. And a lot of abusers were sent for therapy to try to cure them, rather than expelling them. All extremely naive and ill advised, it seems.

If one wishes to apply a very, very charitable and naive interpretation to the situation, yes.

Disagree strongly. I can no more decide not to believe in it than you could just decide to believe in it. You could choose to follow it, but I'd imagine you'd find that as distasteful as the idea of not doing so wouldn't sit well with me.

I'm sure there's an element of truth there. With a lot of cognitive dissonance going on too, I'm quite sure a lot of them just couldn't bring themselves to accept what was going on in their church and so chose to believe instead that it was the subject of exaggeration and false allegations.

But people do change their minds on it, all the time. So it is entirely true to say that it is not an immutable part of someone's character.

You, of course, can avoid any discrimiation by not telling people your beliefs. Black people living in the South in the 60s didn't have that escape route.

You may not be able to cease to believe, but I did. I also know people who have in later life decided to start believing in it.

Neither of us can ever change the fact we're Caucasian, and Vin Diesel can't stop being bleck.

Indeed. I think a lot of them are just kidding themselves. However they interpret it, they need to clean up their act and remove abusers from positions where they have the opportunity to continue their abuse.

Just jumping in. Why is it that these people seem so predisposed to fucking kids? Is it something to do with celibacy, or is it simply the case that they're just as likely to abuse kids as anyone else, it just looks more common because the abusers all happen to be part of the same group?

I would expect that being in a position of respect and authority, molesting kids is both easy and easy to cover up.

It is of course possible to remain a Christian while severing your ties with the Catholic church.

Also - you just don't know what's going to happen in the future. You may have a crisis of faith in your 50s. I certainly never anticipated not being a Catholic while I was a practising one.

However, I do know for a fact I'm not going to stop being Caucasian.

I dunno. I wonder if it's that they always had those urges and chose celibacy and priesthood as a way to try to 'fix' themselves and it failed.

Quite. The protests against the Pope's visit are quite clearly directed at the Pope and Catholic Church's horrific attitudes towards child abuse, contraception (particularly in developing countries), homosexuality, and women clergy. Not against the Christian faith or its tenets.

There are probably quite a lot more priests and so on than you realise, and quite a lot more non-priestal abusers than are reported.

Yeah this crossed my mind as a possibility as well. But does this, worryingly, mean that a lot more people would be paedos given the opportunity?

But so what if it were?

And bear in mind their attitudes to contraception, gays, women clergy etc etc etc are directly as a result of their faith.

SHHHHH! Or Channel 4 will get an idea for a new version of Big Brother.