Vatican condemns Sunday lunchtime football kickoffs

Priorities. The Vatican has some.

“I consider this a truly harmful development,” said Monsignor Carlo Mazza in Tuttosport.

“Putting people in front of the television screen at 12.30, when they are having lunch with their families, to me seems like a ‘pitch invasion’ on life.

“Family time is a very important institution and we cannot ‘sell it off’ to other events.”

I guess it interferes with the destruction of lives and families by pedophile priests.

A resident of the glass house...

Tries to tell us all about "moral disorder".

If I might add to Alison's very succinct post, there is no individual serving in the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church who can point at any other person's behaviour or actions and pass any form or moral judgement on them.

An organization which shelters known pedophiles, rapists and child-abusers, and which operates in a manner approximating a racketeering mob has no moral foundation from which to speak about the behaviour of others.

None.

In short, Cardinal, piss off. Your opinion isn't worth the powder to blow it to Hell.

This would be the time for the July snowball fight

I never thought I would find myself in a position defending Stevie. The worst part is, it's either him or them, and he wins.

Honestly, can anybody realistically call this an issue?

Prime Minister Stephen Harper should not have accepted communion at Roméo LeBlanc's state funeral in Memramcook, N.B., the archbishop of Moncton said Wednesday.

Msgr. André Richard said the church law is clear, but he is not looking for any apologies or explanations from Harper or the Prime Minister's Office.

Cameras were rolling when communion hosts were offered to people attending the funeral for the former governor general on July 3.

Harper, who is an evangelical Protestant, accepted the host but appeared to put it in his program or his pocket, according to some onlookers.

Big, hairy, fucking, deal.
The Catholic church is in a position to ask anybody for an apology or an explanation, even if they don't expect one? They employ pedophiles!

Harper does not subscribe to the Roman Catholic religion. He has no clue as to their strange rites and superstitious ceremonies. Hell, I might have done exactly the same thing as he is being accused of. What the fuck do I do with this tasteless wafer... made in Italy?

Practically, he clearly didn't need the extra calories. Click on the picture for a WIDER view.

If I have a complaint it is with his office. A real PMO would have briefed the boss on protocol. But they didn't bother. They're too busy generating attack ads on the opposition. The duly elected opposition.

That, I care about.

I don't give a red rats ass what Harper did with a tasteless piece of bread with a superstitious meaning attached. That's not important. The man clearly wasn't hungry. Look at him ferchrissakes.

This stuff is important.

The kewl kids in the PMO would love to see everybody wrapped up in some ridiculous sanctity of the one true church controversy. It gives them room.

They don't deserve it.

Focus, people. And keep digging. Harper can fill his pockets with saltines for all I care (and apparently, he'll eventually eat them) but it's what he does when he's not at superstitioun-riddled events outside his bubble that counts.

Focus. This is a ridiculous blur.

PZ Myers, world famous cracker disposal expert, is on the case. The comments make a long stay worth every minute.

The enemy of my religious dogma is my friend

Or, it's difficult to accept that a Roman Catholic would actually accept anything stated by the church of Henry VIII.

Geez, SUZANNE, the truth is, if you really wanted to be a man, with all the privileges your religion grants that gender, you could be. It is, after all, a choice. All you have to do is change and become one.

It's that easy.

There are some days when "Christians" really make me want to piss on their shoes.

More, and better, at Montreal Simon.

Tony Blair. Joiner... and stupid.

The guy disagreed with the Catholic church on a number of issues while prime minister. Now he can't hold back about its "virtues":

Mr Blair, in the famous words of his spokesman, Alastair Campbell, did not "do God" while he was in Downing Street. He later admitted that he feared he would be labelled a "nutter" if he spoke publicly about his religious convictions.

But he has since converted to Roman Catholicism and set up the Tony Blair Faith Foundation to "promote respect and understanding about the world's major religions".

In an interview published in the Church of England Newspaper , Mr Blair said: "Sometimes I think we as Christians are more sensitive than we should be although I say that as someone who when I was in office, although I was perfectly open about my Christianity, nonetheless kept it within certain boundaries that were restricted in terms of what I said publicly. The position of prime minister puts you in a unique category

"But in general terms in British society there is a risk that people see faith as a personal eccentricity."

That's because it is a personal eccentricity. Most... no all religion is superstition and the Roman Catholic church is steeped in beliefs, rites and trappings which have nothing at all to do with the supposed teachings of Jesus of Nazareth.

He admitted that conflict is "inevitable" between traditional religions and the new liberal doctrine of human rights.

But he went on: "The real test of a religion is whether in an age of aggressive secularism it has the confidence to go out and make its case by persuasion."

There is no conflict, particularly in the case of the Roman Catholic church. I haven't seen a case to support any invisible god and I can't imagine the Roman Catholic church is going to "persuade" any rational, thinking human being to join their ranks after this latest episode.

The fact that Blair, after engaging in an acrimonious pig-fight with the Roman Catholic church over same-sex adoption rights (among other issues), still saw fit to run off to Catechism classes as soon as he was out of 10 Downing Street is nothing short of astounding.

OB spells it out perfectly:

Why do I frown upon Blair's adult-onset Catholicism? Why do I think it's reprehensible for informed adults to join the Catholic church? Because the Catholic church is a reactionary cruel woman-hating bullying organization run by men and based on mythology, that's why. If you join the Catholic church as a reasoning adult, then you are signing up to and endorsing that organization, just as if you joined a neo-Nazi party or the Taliban or any other organization. It makes no sense to disagree with many of its most vehement and public positions and yet join it anyway. Jimmy Carter, to his credit, left The Southern Baptist Convention when it announced a new woman-subordinating stance; if he gets credit for that then Blair gets uncredit for joining the unregenerate Church of Peter.

And while we're at it, I don't believe Blair when he tells us that his religious convictions didn't influence his function as prime minister. He was spinning the same web with that preposterous excuse for a US president who rode an orchestrated religious vote to the oval office and who claimed to be "one of them".

OB caps it nicely.

Grown-up reasonable people have no business joining such an outfit. In fact they ought to be leaving it in disgust, not stumbling along to join it.