More from the SMH (10/07/08)

Land of the yobbo

Len Green Rose Bay

------

If, as Lee Borkman suggests, "Australians are not an inherently respectful people", I fear any joy I might have experienced as a Catholic next week will be vastly overshadowed by my embarrassment at being Australian.

Michael McIntosh Brighton Le Sands

------------------

Gus: All this brouhaha would not have occurred had the NSW government made only modest favours to the Catholic Church and not created laws that would make Idi Amin proud (is he still alive?). Olympic Park as a venue would have been swell...

To all the Catholics out there, have great time. And if we take the piss out of it all, may you have the last laugh in paradise. Sincerely atheistically yours.

Yobbo? me?...

The sorry sport of Pope bashing

Gerard Henderson
July 15, 2008

....

Nowadays sectarianism in Western democracies is fuelled by what Michael Burleigh terms the "sneering secularists". In his book Sacred Causes Burleigh writes that "much of the European liberal elite regard religious people as if they come from Mars" except when they advance such left-liberal fashionable causes as nuclear disarmament.

The sneering secularists in our midst oppose all the Judeo-Christian beliefs. However, Catholicism cops much of the ridicule because it is universal and the strongest of the Christian faiths. In Australia the sneering secularists - a combination of proselytising atheists and Green Left Weekly reading leftists - have indicated their opposition to the Pope on the occasion of his visit to Australia for World Youth Day. Hence the formation of the NoToPope Coalition.

So far the award for the leading sneerer goes to The Age columnist Catherine Deveny. Writing on June 18, she declared: "It's official. The Catholic Church is fully sick. And so is George Pell." Apparently this was some kind of joke. She depicted World Youth Day as a "week of prayer, trust exercises and rosary bead trading". And Deveny went on to advise that, since the Pope will be celebrating Mass at Randwick racecourse, "all the Bernadettes and Gerards will be able to chill out with The Main Dude". It is inconceivable that The Age would have run a similar article mocking Islam and slagging off all the Aishas and Muhammads.

Although a professing agnostic, I was brought up a Catholic and attended a Catholic school where I received a fine education. Like all organisations, it had its strengths and weaknesses. Yet I retain admiration for the priests involved in my upbringing. Most were fine, intelligent men who gave up material pleasures - including sex and family life - for the God in which they believed. I readily acknowledge that some of the cleverest men and women I have met, or read about, were believers in one of the great religions. They do not warrant mockery.

------------------
Gus: I agree... Alleluyah... No mockery please. Just exposure.
Like Gerard, I was also raised in one of these nurseries to propegate believers in the power of eternal snake oil... Intellectual or simpletonic verbal Pope bashing is not a sport. It is a scientific duty or a lazy-bum pass-time... And the same goes for the Muslim mullahs. But in the same breath as I wish the World Youth Day participants to have a nice day, a nice week and a great pilgrimage, I do not feel compelled not to express opposing views even if: "it is appropriate for others to say a warm thank you for what the Catholic religious have done in educating the young, looking after the sick and caring for the dying here and overseas. You will not hear such praise from the sneering secularists. Nor will you find a school or hospice in a foreign land that is run by the Green Left Weekly or the New Left Review."

That is below the belt, Gerard. On this one you would know bloody well the US government since day one has made sure that no school of leftist tendency would ever be built. You know it's the Commo bashing stuff... This anti-commo stuff, unlike a pope bashing that is quite light hearted, has been demonically vicious.

The Green left and the New Left Review do not get the same amount of subsidies from governments as do most fully fledged religious organisation. I would believe they'd receive close to zero... And yet, their weak voices might actually be the only one to save the planet from becoming hell.

And I am quite independent on this one. For a few years, I have participated in the nightly relaxation of priests where a little tipple of Rum and "nice music" was enjoyed. The geckos used to fall off the walls when fed spoonful of "hot" rum... And the little beasts came back every night for more... To give Il Papa a kitten for entertainment is sick. Cats are killers of wildlife in this country. "my moggy never killed a bird" you will hear cat lover claim... Delusion of the highest order, even in the thickest of cities.

Pope and George Bush

Methodists, Politics, and Bush's Library

The fact that George W. Bush wants to build a library, any library, is cause for celebration. So why are my beloved United Methodists still fighting about whether Southern Methodist University should host such an improbable institution? Actually, it’s not the library they object to so much as the policy institute that comes with it -- and the policies that precede it.

“The placement of the George W. Bush library and the establishment of an institute to promote the policies of this president at SMU would be a tragedy," retired Bishop William Boyd Grove of West Virginia told frontpagemag.com. "The policies of the Bush administration are in direct conflict with the Social Principles of The United Methodist Church on issues of war and peace, civil liberties and human rights, care for the environment, and health care."

The sectarian battle over the Bush library might seem like a silly and even petty skirmish, especially given the continuing woes of the world. But it reflects a larger conflict within Methodism and other denominations among people who are trying to hold the church to the Sermon-on-the-Mount heights of gospel standards.

Just about every Methodist from George Bush to George McGovern agrees that Methodists are called to follow those standards. They just can't agree on how.

Some Methodists think the war in Iraq is just and righteous. Others find it illegal, immoral and unwise. Some think we are called to protect God’s creation from global warming and other man-made ecological woes. Others think we have rightful dominion over all of creation. Some oppose abortion but support the death penalty. Others do just the opposite. Some say God rewards the holy with spiritual riches. Others say we’re also entitled to material wealth in the deal. Some say health care is a God-given right. Others say it’s a privilege that must be earned. Some say vote Democrat, others say you can't be a Democrat and a Christian.

read more at the Washington Post...

-------------------

Gus: Popefeist's sex apologies, Anglican division about gay bishops and women priests, and now the methodist's dilemma about the library of Dubya's glorious sins... Don't they know the earth is in good hands with George's bedtime stories..

Beauty personified on our streets

Miranda Devine
July 24, 2008

For those who had been to previous World Youth Days in Rome, Manila, Toronto and Cologne, the unqualified success of Sydney's turn was no surprise. The joy and sweetness of thousands of young Catholic pilgrims who flooded into the city, in the words of Cardinal George Pell, simply "overwhelmed" the rancid negativity of sections of our sex-fixated media, and those aggressive secularists who regard religion as an irrational threat to their way of living.

In the end, pilgrims from across the globe melted a cynical city's heart, from the bus drivers who finished their shifts and then took it on themselves to ferry home nuns and others they spotted stranded near Central station one cold night, to the suburban families who spontaneously offered their showers to visitors camping in local schools.

Catholic or not, most people want love and goodness in their lives and the contrast between the radiant faces of the pilgrims and the strained masks of their most strident condom-waving detractors was striking. Beauty was not just in the eye of the beholder.
----------------
Gus: And so it should have been... The NSW Government paid enough money and created some stupid laws that had to be repealed, for this event to go very smoothly. One can be enlightened to the max but when nature calls ones needs a portaloo. That is called relativism.
-----------------
More popular concerns with which the secular and religious worlds find agreement, the Pope said - such as non-violence, sustainable development, justice and peace, and care for our environment - "are of vital importance for humanity. They cannot, however, be understood apart from a profound reflection upon the innate dignity of every human life from conception to natural death."
-----------------
Gus: That was very secular for the Pope to say this — in fact that was very relativistic and wholistic. And we would all agree with him. So why did his Popiness go to Amerika, to have a jolly good yarn with Mr War Himself, Dubya Bushit, the man who has destroyed more of the Earth in 8 years than any other leader before him, on all fronts from environmental damage to economic and moral values? Why would they meet at a US military air-base — the optimum in might of destruction-ism should one not toe the Yankee line.?.
--------------------
Living in an era when faith and reason, art and mathematics, were inextricably linked, Renaissance artists would regard modern relativistic notions of beauty as ludicrous.

The idea there is no absolute beauty or absolute truth was as alien to the devout 23-year-old genius who carved the Pieta and later painted the roof of the Sistine Chapel, as we hope it is to the new World Youth Day generation.
---------------
Gus: putting these words into Michelangelo's philosophical understanding is a bit glib. Even then, some of the greatest theologians were dicing with doubt and variant forms of scepticism. Genius is not just driven by faith alone. And Michelangelo was paid handsomely for his enlightenment.

Joy and sweetness are "magic", but sometimes (often) not enough in events of such magnitude as WYDs. Talk to the priests!... Especially those who supervise the youths, up to the bishops... You would discover they have some tricks up their sleeves to lower hanky-panky to the minimum. For example Randwick sleep-over was a cinch because the night was bloody cold and the "sleeping bags' were too tight to fit two of a kind inside. Not even an extra Papal kitten. In similar gatherings overseas, when the weather is hot, the clergy makes sure the lights stay on all night in sleeping quarters. Better make sure temptation is minimised.

But one cannot deny the friendliness of this city and its people. The "rancid' negativity" was not rancid if a raucous counterpoint like Fred Nile would display against the Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras... It is dispensed and accepted in "good spirit", making sure that "Life … is a search for the true, the good and the beautiful" — on all fronts, not just for the spiritually devoted. And some of us, beautiful relativistic beasts, find solace in the lower evolutionary echelons of the "search"...

May the youths that participated in the Sydney WYD — who obviously never sinned — never ever sin ever-more. That would be an absolute success... But then the 1947 Scout Jamboree had a similar "joy and lively spirit", with the participants rolling a huge 80 foot inflated globe above their heads to symbolise their sharing of spirit in the world. Then, everyone had to bring their own enamelled plate and cutlery for some communal fodder — unlike the cold bake beans, the soggy pies and the sweet hot dogs plus the sugary bars of the SYDWYD... The clean up at Randwick was a model of Divine precision...

And for those (Pope Benedict XVI?) who can remember, the "Hitler Youth Movement" had the same enthusiasm and dedication. I believe that the young people performing for the Chinese Olympic ceremony will have the same dedication to sheer joy and enthusiasm. But in our enlightened sarcasm, we will call it blind faith, while the WYD...

And Sydney is a good City of good people, WYD or not.

The plans for the extension of the MCA (Musem of Contermporary Art, Sydney) are a super-fantastic reminder of Sydney — from the beginning of the exciting container terminal to the recent demise of the "working harbour" era — when all container paraphernalia got moved to Botany Bay, for good reasons.

All the MCA board has to do now is organise sign-writers to paint "mersk" or "hamburg" and "anl" in capital letters on the drab Lego block stack to complete the illusion. "Trompe-l'oeil" artist can also paint ripples with dark and light shading, unless the builders use galvo for primal cladding.

Yes, it appears to my simplistic artistic mind that the architect grew up in the era of Lego cubes, rather than during the serious architectural times of the Egyptians, the church builders, the castle extravaganzas, the "art nouveau", the modern style, the Bauhaus and the Sydney opera house... Thus all this historical momentum was thrown out in the dustbin to satisfy a kiddy at play, with plastic bits representing containers, precariously stacked, which, following their elimination from the harbour, all of us do pine for nostalgically... Er... not really.

And of all things, the concept of blocks such as these used in architecture is not new. In my mind, it dates back to the revolutionary 1960s — a time that also invented the orange plastic folding doors, the white brick-house with the black tuck-pointing, the fake granite melamine table tops, all revolting stuff on the way to mission brown feature beams on crooked ceilings and some mass produced ugly ovenproof glassware... The Atomium in Brussels (built 1957-8) was a much better thingy than this stack of containers — a bit "passé" — proposed for Sydney's MCA...

Yep, another architectural project in Sydney gone to the dogs of awol creativity, with no high value style attached...And if this bugger gets built, it's going to be ugly for a very long time... till it's pulled down, with relief from the inabitants living across Circular Quay.

My opinion for what it's worth...

See toon at top if you feel like it...

Roman Catholic churchgoers are being urged to help meet a shortfall of more than £3m pounds in funding for Pope Benedict's visit to the UK.

The Church has asked them to put at least £1m in Sunday's collection - largely to pay for three big open air masses at which the Pope will preside.

Because this is a state visit by Pope Benedict XVI, the bulk of the cost is being borne by the UK government.

The Papal visit will cost £15m, not including extra policing and security.

The Church's share of the cost is £7m, and with slightly less than half of it raised, congregations are being asked to contribute via the collection plate.

----------------------

Gus: if I am not mistaken, the Poms are getting off lightly... Last time the pope visited Sydney, it may have cost the state about 145 million dollars — or about 75 millions pounds...