What makes you happy ?

The Church of England has launched a campaign to advise people in debt.

The assets of the C of E amount to £5.3 billion so the very first thing you should stop doing is giving the Church anything. After all, if you look after your pennies they’ll turn into your pounds.

Teachers banned a nine-year-old schoolboy from attending his class Christmas party – because of his lack of religious beliefs. … His parents were told he wasn’t welcome at the celebration because they had pulled him out of religious eduction earlier in the year. Daily Mail

I do not believe that a 9 year old child can actually believe in anything as nebulous as a religion. They can make all the right noises but belief? No. People leave their kids in RE not because they are god-fearing people but because they cannot be bothered to do anything else, because they don’t actually care because the subject doesn’t really have any results for most kids. It’s the path of least resistance.

Richard Dawkins has it right:

There is no such thing as a Christian child, there is only a child of Christian parents. Whenever you hear the phrase Christian child or Muslim child or Protestant child or Catholic child, the phrase should grate like fingernails on a blackboard.

Pope Benedict XVI has authorised special indulgences … which the Church teaches can reduce time in purgatory. BBC

A plenary indulgence offers full pardon of the temporal punishment (suffering in this life or the next) due to sins already forgiven in confession

So you can rape and murder, get the nod from the holy guy and waltz into heaven. Nice.

Purgatory is a kind of spiritual waiting room – for people who do not go directly to paradise or hell after death – to purify souls of residual sin before they enter heaven

And here was me thinking St Peter did all that. So why are there gates at the entrance to heaven? If no-one wants to be in purgatory, if the bad (that’ll be everyone who does not worship the pope) go straight to hell then why the gates? Maybe it’s to keep people in… And who decides who goes straight to Satan’s side and who gets to float around in purgatory? You die and there is some sort of conference? Do you have to pass a ‘Sorryness’ test? How residual do they go? Is this a Heavenly CSI? Do they have Readers Digest in there?

And the reason for purgatory? To give hope to the bad and to scare the crap out of the good. Read as “Keeping people in line”. Nonsense.

And what’s with the special offer? I could understand it if the stupendously rich Vatican decided it needed even more money and said “Pay for quicker redemption” and asked for cash, but as they are not, and as this bonus scheme is time limited, why? Why not just make it permanent? Because the pope wants his power, that’s why.

From today

BBC. The leader of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales has condemned plans to make it easier for lesbian couples to use IVF to become parents.The leader of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales has condemned plans to make it easier for lesbian couples to use IVF to become parents. … “This radically undermines the place of the father in a child’s life, and makes the natural rights of the child subordinate to the desires of the couple.

“It is profoundly wrong.”

From 2005

BBC. It emerged that he had failed to act when a priest, Fr Michael Hill, became known to him as a paedophile. … Instead of informing the police of the allegations against Hill … He argued that at the time, little was understood of the compulsive nature of paedophilia by the Church, the police and the judiciary.

It would appear that not only did children have no natural rights in 2005 but also that what happened was also not profoundly wrong. He is using them in both arguments to support his sick and twisted ideas.

What matters for a child is that they are loved and protected. Gay men and women are of course perfectly able to do this just as any heterosexual couple or single parent. And given the choice between the “protection” of the church and any parents, the child will choose the parents and so should any decent-minded person. All the church has given children is violence and degradation.

I mentioned a couple of days ago the latest Church of England child abuse case and that in the statement they made that did not say Sorry. I said “Rowan Williams says nothing about this. And yet he cares? Seems not.” Well, he has deigned to speak with a Press Release:

Dr Rowan Williams, has spoken of his deep sorrow over the suffering experienced in child abuse cases involving the church.

Whose suffering? The person being abused or your bunch for being found out?

Dr Williams said that the church had developed greater awareness and expertise, and had stringent procedures in place, but that vigilance was crucial.

Awareness and expertise in what? Not being found out?
Vigilance? That is nothing without action.

Any case in which the Church has failed to prove itself a safe place for children is deplorable.

He got close there … but that 5 letter word didn’t get said.

The principle that the welfare of the child must always take priority has sometimes been misunderstood to mean that a child should not be put through the distress of public legal procedures.

Not that this was ever used by your church members as a way of covering tracks?

the Church – like other public bodies – has developed greater expertise and far more stringent procedures. This does not help victims of an earlier era, but the awareness of the cost they have borne is something that underlines the imperative need to keep all our procedures in the strictest working order

But what are they? For all anyone knows, you could have just told them to not be found out.

Mr Williams – do the decent thing. Say that YOU are sorry. YOU. You are the head of the church, you get the kudos, the trappings that go with the role so you carry the can too.
But then maybe you aren’t – and that would not be surprising.

BBC: The Church of England has been accused of covering up child sex abuse carried out by a former choirmaster.

Why is this surprising?

In a statement, the Church of England said it was committed to the safeguarding, care and nurture of the children within the Church community.

That’s a lie. Why? Because there will be other cases yet to be found by the authorities.

I bet they just do the confessional thing and expect their god to have forgiven them.

How people trust or even believe a word those people say is way beyond me.

Note carefully – Rowan Williams apologises for the Slave trade. Rowan Williams says nothing about this. And yet he cares? Seems not.

And in the first link – find the word ‘sorry’.

A child kicks a football which flies into a neighbour’s greenhouse. The neighbour demands that the damage be paid for. “But” says the child, “How can any money I pay possibly repair the damage I did to that piece of glass? How can my money put it back together as it was? How can it compensate for the damage the falling glass did? How can it make your feelings of anger at me for doing that damage go away? In fact there may be no reason to even give you any money for the damage I did.”

The Church of England is considering whether it should pay reparations for its role in the slave trade ……. “While it sounds simple to say all right so we should pass on the reparation that was received [when the slaves were freed], exactly to whom?” “Exactly where does it go? And exactly how does it differ from the various ways in which we try to interact now with the effects of that in terms of aid and development and so forth?

The Church of England did what it did in the name of their god. No doubt they saw it as their mission to educate the slaves in The Way Of The Lord and in doing this “Anglicans needed to acknowledge that they belonged to an institution partly shaped “by terrible things that our forbears did“. And yet IF they give money I have not the slightest doubt it will be to ‘educate’ more people in The Way Of The Lord. So it moves from slavery to economic measures.
This is better?

Inane.

I’m an atheist. You are born, you live, you die. That’s the totality of life for me. There are some spiritual leanings but they are slight. The tagline above hints at that. But I absolutely do not believe in a God. Richard Dawkins doesn’t either – and here are some brilliant quotes.

The film Uncle Buck is on and I just happened to glance at it. It’s a great film and I’ve seen it many times.
When Buck goes to the school there is a scene with his niece Maisie. She is sat in the classroom and when she answers a question the young male teacher brandishes a ruler and says “Blasphemer“. They cut it. Why?
That means they put that word on the same level as ‘Fuck’. On the same level as nudity, sex.
But isn’t the word ‘Blasphemer’ something that applies to all religions? So a Muslim could use it as readily as a Catholic? So it is a multi-religion word, a multi-religion concept…….. except when it is used in a family film and the word is being applied to the Christian god. In such a case it requires censorship. Bizarre. Pathetic. And indicative of a terrified corporation who dare not offend anyone. Except Christians.