Monthly Archives: December 2011

Don we now our bright apparel

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From here:

Kids at a school in Traverse, Mich., are once again singing “Don we now our gay apparel” after a teacher made national headlines trying to take the line out of the traditional Christmas carol “Deck the Halls.”

Students at Cherry Knoll couldn’t make it through the line without giggling, the teacher said, so she substituted the word “bright” for “gay.”

“There had been students that had been snickering at the lyrics in ‘Deck the Halls’ and she had attempted to get them back on track quite a few times,” Principal Chris Parker told UpNorthLive.

This is interesting from at least two perspectives. First, it goes to show that hijacking a word that belongs to someone else can backfire and second, no matter how much you invest in social engineering, homosexuality will still be seen as an aberration whose mechanics are intrinsically comical. Except in the Anglican Church of Canada, of course, where homosexuality is the norm, heterosexuality the aberration and the church itself the archetype of high farce.

Fred Hiltz goes to Lambeth to discuss the Anglican Covenant

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From here:

Over the next few hours, they discussed several matters, among them the Anglican Covenant and the educational guide posted last summer on the website of the Anglican Church of Canada. “Archbishop Williams had obviously read our material, and he seemed appreciative that Canada was giving the covenant a fair hearing,” says Feheley.

I had no idea that Paul Feheley had a sense of humour.

Jesus wasn’t a “super-good” person according to Rowan Williams

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From here:

Jesus would spend Christmas with the St Paul’s Cathedral protesters, the Archbishop of Canterbury said yesterday.

Dr Rowan Williams declared that Christ would be ‘there, sharing the risks, not just taking sides.’

He said in an article aimed at the huge audience of buyers of the Christmas edition of the Radio Times that Jesus ‘is somebody who constantly asks awkward questions’.

The Archbishop said: ‘Christmas doesn’t commemorate the birth of a super-good person who shows us how to get it right every time, but the arrival in the world of someone who tells us that everything could be different.’

If Jesus wasn’t “super-good”, does that mean the Archbishop of Canterbury thinks Jesus was slightly bad, that he sinned? If he doesn’t show us how “to get it right every time”, does that mean Jesus sometimes got it wrong? Does Rowan Williams believe that Jesus is the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father? It doesn’t sound like it.

Dr Williams said in his article: ‘One of the slogans on the posters and banners in front of St Paul’s Cathedral has been “What would Jesus do?”

‘This started life in the US some years ago, with people wearing wristbands with WWJD on them. It’s one of those things that looks wonderfully obvious, a quick way to the right answer.’

He added that when Jesus said ‘give Caesar what belongs to Caesar’, he meant to ask ‘what’s the exact point at which involvement in the empire of capitalist economy compromises you fatally?’

That must be one of the things Jesus didn’t get quite right: when he said ‘give Caesar what belongs to Caesar’, what he really meant to say was that you should ‘give Caesar what belongs to Caesar’ unless, instead of being a ruthless tyrant,  Caesar happens to be a capitalist, in which case, don’t giving him anything since capitalists are more corrupting than the devil himself.

Nativity scene removed from Montreal Town Hall

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Canada is a country whose culture, laws and traditions have been indelibly shaped by Christianity. It is not a “Christian country” in the sense that everyone who lives in Canada is a Christian, but it is a part of Christendom, a part of an imperfect hodgepodge of political and individual freedoms rooted in the notion that man was created in the image of God and  that 2000 years ago God became Incarnate and was the inspiration for a civilisation.

That is why Canada should celebrate Christmas, why prayers to the Triune God should be said in public meetings, why schools should not shrink from Christian  education and why those who can’t live with that should live somewhere else.

From here:

MONTREAL – A posh Montreal suburb has decided to remove a nativity scene and menorah from town hall rather than acquiesce to demands from a Muslim group to erect Islamic religious symbols.

The decision by the Town of Mount Royal upsets a Christian resident who says the town is abandoning an established tradition under pressure from a tiny religious minority.

Town councillors of several different religions unanimously decided to remove the Christian and Jewish items.

They had been displayed in front of the municipal building for the past 15 years.

“We asked ourselves if we were willing to display (symbols of) the five major religions,” said Mayor Philippe Roy.

“This is not the role of the city, which is a secular public institution.”

The decision comes amid a larger debate about the place of religion in public institutions.

Quebec’s highest court has agreed to hear an appeal of a ruling that barred councillors in Saguenay, Que., from praying before their meetings.

Saguenay Mayor Jean Tremblay has been spearheading a legal, financial and public-relations crusade to support his right to lead the short prayer.

The battle has pitted Tremblay against the province’s human rights tribunal as well as the Quebec Secular Movement.

Carla Mariano, a Christian resident of Mount Royal, tells QMI Agency that her town’s decision to remove the manger is an affront to Canada’s Judeo-Christian heritage.

 

Amnesty International still suffering from BDS

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Amnesty International still wants George W Bush to be arrested for “allegedly violating international torture laws”:

Amnesty International on Thursday continued its campaign urging nations around the world to arrest George W. Bush for allegedly violating international torture laws. This time they specifically targeted Ethiopia, Tanzania and Zambia where the former U.S. president is touring this week.

Bush began going through the countries on Monday to promote efforts to fight cervical and breast cancers, and Amnesty said the three nations have an obligation to arrest him under international law.

The extent of Amnesty’s Bush Derangement Syndrome malaise is emphasised by the fact that Ethiopia is one of the countries that they would like to arrest Bush. Of course, Ethiopia’s human rights record is a model of how torture is done properly, a paradigm from which more modest abusers – and the U.S. cannot even aspire to the status of modest abuser – have a lot to learn.

To compound the irony, Ethiopia’s record is found on Amnesty’s own site:

In November of 2005, Ethiopian police killed 6 and wounded as many as 24 civilians in a march protesting the recently released election results. There have been numerous reports of government opponents being taken from their homes in the aftermath of this incident. There have also been reports of widespread arbitrary detention, torture, “disappearances”, harsh prison conditions, and use of excessive force by police and soldiers against anyone suspected of supporting the armed opposition groups. No one responsible for a 2003 killing that left 63 Anuak people dead (witnesses and unofficial estimates put the number at several hundred) has been brought to justice.

Occupiers attack Barack Obama’s inner Bush

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The Occupy mob has come to the conclusion that the shade of George Bush has possessed Barack Obama and made him, on rare occasions, act like a U.S. president even though he continues to talk like a dopey liberal who never left the campaign trail.

From here:

Demonstrators held signs that leveled some of the Occupy protest’s most pointed criticism to date of the president. “Obama is a corporate puppet,” one said. “War crimes must be stopped, no matter who does them,” read another, beside head shots of President George W. Bush and President Obama.

One man, wearing a mask of the president’s face and holding a cigar, carried a sign that read, “I sold out!”

Don’t Ask don’t Tell: The Next Generation

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We all knew that the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell wasn’t the end of the military’s ever onward march towards sexual enlightenment: soon it will be legal for soldiers to have sex with animals. Consensual sex, of course.

Churches will be able to offer liturgical solemnisation of human-beast partnerships as a generous pastoral response for those who seek to live in mutual love and faithfulness in a stable, long-term committed relationship with their camels.

From here:

The Senate on Thursday evening voted 93-7 to approve a defense authorization bill that includes a provision which not only repeals the military law on sodomy, it also repeals the military ban on sex with animals–or bestiality.

On Nov. 15, the Senate Armed Services Committee had unanimously approved S. 1867, the National Defense Authorization Act, which includes a provision to repeal Article 125 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ).

Article 125 of the UCMJ makes it illegal to engage in both sodomy with humans and sex with animals.

[…]

Former Army Col. Bob Maginnis said some military lawyers have indicated that bestiality may be prosecutable under another section of the military code of justice – the “catch-all” Article 134 for offenses against “good military order and discipline.”

But don’t count on that, he said.

“If we have a soldier who engages in sodomy with an animal – whether a government animal or a non-government animal – is it, in fact, a chargeable offense under the Uniform Code? I think that’s in question,” Maginnis told CNSNews.com.

The question is, will non-government animals still receive survivor benefits?

The Ten Commandments: please attempt five

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The editor of the Diocese of Toronto’s paper, Stuart Mann, thinks that the Ten Commandments are too judgemental: they are not there to keep us on the “straight and narrow” but are there to make us “free.’

The problem is, if God is not “judgemental”, if he doesn’t pass judgement on evil and sin, then there was no reason for Jesus to take our punishment by dying a horrible death on the cross. There is no reason to believe that we need Jesus in order to be saved, no reason to call ourselves Christians and no reason to attend a Christian church.

If a church teaches this, then people will stop attending and the church will die. And that is what is happening to the Anglican Church of Canada.

From here (page 5):

“You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol.

You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God. Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy.

Honour your father and your mother. You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery.

You shall not steal. You shall not bear false witness.

You shall not covet your neighbour’s house, your neighbour’s wife or anything that belongs to your neighbour.”

When I was younger, I would have recoiled at such a passage. It seems so harsh and judgemental, like a parent scolding a child. But I’m beginning to look at it in a different way. Rather than keeping his people on the straight and narrow, perhaps God is telling them how to be free.

When you add up all the complications that arise from some of the things God is warning us about—greed, envy, false gods, lust, lying— is it any wonder people are stressed out these days? Even if we kept half of God’s commandments, we would lead simpler—and happier— lives. It would free us up to think and dream and enjoy each other’s company—in short, to be closer to God.

The 10 commandments have been much maligned and ridiculed over the years, but there is great wisdom in them. Can we keep some of those commandments?

I think we can. You could probably cross a few off the list right now.

Survey finds that atheists are perceived as untrustworthy as rapists

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From here:

Atheists are almost universally perceived as untrustworthy, and only rapists rate as low, a new study has found.

“Where there are religious majorities — that is, in most of the world — atheists are among the least trusted people,” said lead author Will Gervais, a doctoral student in psychology at the University of British Columbia. “With more than half a billion atheists worldwide, this prejudice has the potential to affect a substantial number of people.”

The study, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, combines information collected from six different surveys.

This should not come as a surprise.

After all, if atheists are correct and there is no God, then trustworthiness is merely a genetic accident which would generally be overridden by the callous self-interest that inevitably results from natural selection – and who better to indulge callous self-interest than those who wholeheartedly embrace this view.

If atheists are not correct and there is a God, why trust a group of people who base their entire lives and behaviour on a monumental error of judgement?