Sacrilege
On the train on Thursday evening, when I went for a drink in Hampstead, the young lady next to me was highlighting texts in her bible with a pink fluorescent market pen.
In my view to deface any book in such a way is sacrilege.
How to be Really Penitent
Penitents like to crawl up to the Panagía Evangelístria church at the top of this hill on Tinos.
The Climb to the Panagía Evangelístria
Note the rubber carpet to help their knees.
The church is rather grand, although I didn’t go in.
The Panagía Evangelístria
The climb was worth it though for the view alone.
Hope Street
When I was in Liverpool in the sixties, there was much more religious tension than there is today.
Part of the reason, was the leadership of the two great churchmen; David Sheppard and Derek Worlock. They are commemorated in this joint statue in Hope Street.
The Sheppard-Worlock Statue
Note how you can see the Anglian Cathedral in the picture. From behind, you can see the Roman Catholic one at other end of Hope Street.
The Sheppard-Worlock Statue from Behind
Incidentally, Derek Worlock was a coeliac. I have a feeling that rulings by the current Pope would mean that he couldn’t be ordained as a Catholic priest today. Religion should be about inclusion and tolerance and not the reverse.
The Holy Rosenbergs
This looks like a play worth seeing.
The Pope Sets A Good Moral Example
This was said in this week’s Popbitch.
The Pope, apparently, smokes Marlboro Red
So smoking is OK to give you cancer, but using condoms to stop sexually transmitted diseases is wrong.
But then I did read it in Popbitch, which may mean it’s just a rumour. So if it isn’t true, we might see the Pope suing for defamation.
Now that would be fun!
Pope to be Exhumed
When I read that Pope John Paul II was going to be exhumed and the coffin put on display, I thought it was a joke. But it’s here on Reuters.
It just proves to me that I want nothing to do with religion. Except of course with the basic principle of trying to do the best for the greater good of everybody.
Confessions on the iPope
Well not quite, but there is now an iPhone app to help with confession.
Described as “the perfect aid for every penitent”, it offers users tips and guidelines to help them with the sacrament.
Now senior church officials in both the UK and US have given it their seal of approval, in what is thought to be a first.
The app takes users through the sacrament – in which Catholics admit their wrongdoings – and allows them to keep track of their sins.
It also allows them to examine their conscience based on personalised factors such as age, sex and marital status – but it is not intended to replace traditional confession entirely.
Instead, it encourages users to understand their actions and then visit their priest for absolution.
I have a few questions.
- Does the app search your e-mail to see whether you’ve been hinting of doing things that of which the Catholic Church would not approve? This would probably need a Bayesian filter and the Reverend Bayes wasn’t a Catholic.
- Does it look at all of the pictures you’ve downloaded to your phone and react accordingly?
- Does it check that the app associated with your football club is the right colour?
- Could the app be connected to add-on hardware that gives you a prick or an electric shock if you think naughty thoughts?
The possibilities are endless. And obviously the more serious the religion, the more serious the app!
It would also have added a whole new dimension to Clochemerle.
Ex-Wife Exorcises Peer
This headline was in The Times today and concerns the ex-wife of Lord Taylor of Warwick.
It probably shows you should keep religion and politcs separate. In fact religion should be kept separate from everything.
My Fourth Christmas Alone
That sounds bad, but the previous three were very good. In the first I actually helped out with the pensioners’ Christmas Dinner in Bury St. Edmunds and I think, if I’d been here a month or so, I’d have done something similar this year. In the intervening two years, I’ve spent it with either friends or family and today I shall be having lunch with my son and his friends.
One thing C and I always used to dread over Christmas was waking up to some really bad news, like the invasion of Afghanistan by the Russians, Cyclone Tracy, Taeyokale Hotel fire in Seoul or the Indian Ocean tsunami. The last was Boxing Day, but you get my jist.
So today we wake up to the news that a suicide bomber has killed dozens in an aid queue in Pakistan. As he died, the bastard who did it, didn’t even get any satisfaction to know that he done what he intended. But if that is what religion is about, then, I’m on a better track in saying that outside of the humanity and downright goodness shown by most of the world’s great religions, the rest is all about bigotry and hate and is best avoided and certainly to be actively discouraged.
I think in part C and I’s apprehension about Christmas were caused by some of our own little disasters. I think we ran out of gas at least twice, as we forgot to order it and on one Christmas the electric AGA died. That won’t happen this year, as if my son’s cooker fails, he can put everything in a car and get here in ten minutes. He claims to know how my cooker works and I can muddle through, so dinner might be late but it will happen.
We did have a couple of frosty Christmases though concerning C’s mother, who at times could be a bit difficult. I think I appreciate her problems more now, that I’m widowed myself. One Christmas she was staying with us and the film on Christmas Eve was Five Easy Pieces. She didn’t speak to us for forty-eight hours after that! She was also with us when the AGA failed and that had a similar result.
The best Christmas in some ways we had with C’s mother was when she collapsed in our flat in the Barbican with heart trouble. We felt really guilty, as she was taken into Bart’s Hospital, where they did a great job in sorting her out and giving her perhaps another ten years more of life, than she would have got otherwise. She also enjoyed being in Hospital over Christmas, as they looked after her so well and she could tell everybody about all of the myriad medical problems she’d suffered with in her life.
The Anonymous Widower 