Bashing
Time for a little religion-bashing. (A former acquaintance once kindly informed me that he didn’t like B&W because of the religion-bashing. Ruined my day. Or month, or year.) This bishop again. I want to look at what’s worrying him, once more.
The seven “sacraments” of their secular culture are abortion, buggery, contraception, divorce, euthanasia, feminism of the radical type, and genetic experimentation and mutilation…The toleration of sexual perversions among inverts, widespread contraception, easy access to “no fault” divorce, the killing of the elderly, radical feminism, embryonic stem cell research…
I want to look at the remarkable, and rather shameless, distortion of some of those. Especially that “the killing of the elderly.” The…killing of the elderly? Libbruls and Democrats want a new law to mandate the execution of everyone over 80? 70? 60? Funny – I wasn’t aware of that campaign. I read the Nation, The American Prospect, Dissent, Harper’s, the Progressive regularly and I’ve never seen a word about that campaign. That of course would be because it don’t exist. The episcopal bastard means (of course) laws that would permit voluntary euthanasia or assisted suicide (with many safeguards) for people who are terminally ill and suffering and want to end it – and for no one else. They have nothing to do with the elderly: here’s why: terminal illnesses are not restricted to elderly people, and not all elderly people get terminal illnesses, and those who do don’t always suffer much, and those who do don’t necessarily want to end it. So – what’s the bishop doing calling voluntary assisted suicide “the killing of the elderly”? He’s violating one of the ten commandments, that’s what. I won’t say which one, in case he’s a litigious bastard as well as a [coughcoughcough] one.
The other striking thing is how agitated he is about embryonic stem cell research and abortion and contraception. Why do bishops and popes and priests get so agitated about cells and leave much of suffering existing human beings unmentioned? Why do they spend so much energy and discourse on cells instead of on actual people? Why the disproportion? Why the fretting over trivia? It’s a top-down thing, I gather; the Vatican sets the tone and the priests and bishops follow, but why is the Vatican so worried about trivia? I don’t know, but I suspect. (What? Oh, that it’s basically about keeping women down. If embryos become all-important, women become incubators; that kind of thing.)
There. Yet another reason to dislike B&W.
I have it upon reliable authority that not all homosexual couples engage in buggery. Where does he do his research?
Yeah that was another one, but I had to rush off so didn’t get to it.
Where does he do his research? Back files of the Obscurantist Medieval Gazette, of course.
Mutilation? Where did that come from?
1. The 11th Commandment: Thou shalt not engage in factual relativism (that is, unless you are protecting your flock against evil liberals and feminists!)
2. (Note for Wonkette: She and the Bishop may get along. They both dislike “feminism of the radical type.”)
3. The Bishop missed his calling. He should have been a B-movie director. Can’t you just imagine the great movies he could have made: “Buggering Feminists and the Mutilations of Planet Librul-Seven”!
Oh, you know, mutilation is whatever those horrible scary secular doctors do to the poor cute sweet darling cuddly little cells.
I just thought I should mention that I LIKE the religion bashing.
I’m no big fan of radical feminists, either, but I think what the bishop means by “radical feminists” and what I mean are very different. I get annoyed when physics books are called rape manuals, but I cheer when women get to make their own decisions about their lives.
I’d just like to say how impressed I am that the bishop took the trouble to arrange his seven sacraments in alphabetical order. So often these days we find ethical injunctions thrown together any old how. It’s refreshing to see a respect for old-fashioned norms of orderly presentation.
I’m very tempted to use the word that gets people exited here – you know, the one that begins with “L”.
I think I might have to try to write to the bish or the paper, since I’m a miltant agnostic, and secularist, and I don’t think secularists have “sacraments” to start with, never mind the othe flat untrue statement, made in what he is reported as saying.
It’s like the ID-iots, and the Cretinists, you have to refute every single false staement, and it is such an effort.
OB, yeah the religion bashing is SO unnecessary.
After all, here, a Bishop is merely asserting that slaughter in “Afghanistan, in Iraq, in Somalia, in Darfur, in Bosnia, in Madrid, in London, in Baghdad, in Beirut, in Washington, in New York” is down to atheist liberals promoting the violence of abortion.
Why don’t you just take your lumps and accept you’re going to burn ?
The bishop is fretful about “radical feminism”, which suggests that he has no problem with plain old standard feminism… which seems highly unlikely. I suspect he throws in “radical” to make it sound unreasonable and dangerous. It would be interesting – well, not interesting, but vaguely intriguing – to know what sort of feminism he deems ok.
I shared the Bishop’s article with my wife. This is her response:
“So, what’s the appropriate gift to give a 13 year old participating
for the 1st time in the sacrament of buggery? It’s not in my Emily
Post (liberal edition).”
I don’t know, IanB. I’m guessing the Bishop would have absolutely no problems whatsoever with the kind of radical feminism practiced by the Prairie Muffins. :) As long as said practitioners come home to the infallible Mother Church, that is.
Thank you, PZ – I like the religion bashing too! (Yours and mine.) No accounting for tastes, is there.
Your wife is a wit, Ian. Thassa good one.
Oh and the divorce is of the mark also. Make sure its as messy as possible or ban it altogether and make it a virtual prison for millions.
Or it will be devalued as people seek happiness by remaining married but taking lovers or just suffer in silence.
Ian, pass my LOL on to your lovely wife.
But ask youself seriously now, what IS the right gift to give a child being buggered for the first time?
Vaseline, as every schoolboy knows. The mere word was enough to raise a snigger amongst my 12-yr-old contemporaries. Innocent days, before we had learned of the risks of petroleum-based lubricants… ;-)
Interestingly, from the Rockford diocese’s own website, the bish is on the following committees:
– Mixed Commission to revise the “Essential Norms” for Diocesan/Eparchial Policies Dealing with Allegations of Sexual Abuse of Minors by Priests or Deacons
– Commission on Science and Human Values
– Committee on Women in Society and in the Church
– Common Ground Initiative
(info as of 2005)
so clearly he’s an expert on: buggery (especially when carried out by men in black dresses), evil stem cell researchers, “women, know your place!”, and how to reach out to everyone else…
:-)
ChrisPer,
I don’t know about everyone else, but I think the Catholics hand out communion wafers.
Communist wafers.. call up Joe McCarthy!!
Okay. [twirls basher]
(Another thing I don’t like is all the bad arguments that keep being recycled. I bash those. Bash bash.)