- Most pernicious
- Be careful what you wish for...
- New Page
- New Page
- Homeric hymn to Pan
- New Page
- Home
- What the hell. I have nothing to lose
- My Adventures
- My Story
-
Essentials
- The earth is not flat
- The abolition of mind
- Things that only need saying once-one e tel
- Manners makyth man
- Coal in the bath and the victim culture
- The withdrawal of love and forcing oneself on others
- So some guys had the really freaky idea that we should love one another
- Jesus!
- 'Judge not that ye be not judged'
- Goo
- The way we were: Anglican England
- 'Avatars of living grace'
- Ditching the theology of love
- Reality >
- PANTHER: the argument
- Moi
- The new Marxism
- Dill's World (blog)
- New Page
- The collapse of education
- The Anile Heir
- For Katie: Harry Secombe: 'The Lord is my Shepherd'
- For Katie: He who would valiant be
-
'And now Amanda is seriously ill.'
- Otting
- THAT AM I >
- Medicine: the joke
- It's like this, Doc >
- Medicine: the continuing joke
- 'By Tummel and Loch Rannoch'
- The laughing-stock of the civilized world
- And be damned to you
- In the garden with Mummy
- Transforming the Na-Mhoram's Grim
- Blair: the icing on the cake
- Expecto patronam
- Scarlet battalions
- My family: any colour so long as it's red
- Back to the freaking juniper-tree (1)
- Back to the freaking juniper-tree (2)
- Our grandfather who art in heaven (though I doubt it), Howard be thy name
- So you have a problem with my family, fucker?
- 'Jew-Communists'
- Margaret, my great-grandmother, an Irish tart
- The FUQs
- Dear Wannabe Nemesis
- Shall we try again, Bobbles my sweet?
- Evil
- Dixi (that's Latin, you know, Father)
- The cultural use of the lamp-post
- A home from home
- All times are now (1)
- All times are now (2)
- For Katie: All times are now (3)
- For Katie: All times are now (4)
- For Katie; All times are now (5)
- For Katie: All times are now (6)
- Non serviam
- This colour doesn't run
- The balance
- Civilization - the balance
-
Gallery
- And be damned to you
- Catholic Encyclopaedia 1912: Obedience
- Voltaire and Jesus
- Tertullian, Women in Canon Law (1912) and Mulieris Dignitatem (1988)
- Padding through the Vatican archives
- The Vatican State
- Extra ecclesiam nulla salus: go to hell, go directly to hell, do not pass 'Go'
- A short history lesson
- A phrase-book for monkey-nuts
- Summary: the abode of the loon
-
Translations from Voltaire (mine): Concerning the Church of England
>
- Bukharin and Preobrazhensky: Communism and Religion
- Translations from Voltaire (mine): Freedom of Thought
- Translations from Voltaire (mine): Transubstantiation
- Thomas Paine: The Age of Reason
- Lenin: Socialism and Religion
- Marx: 'So much for the social principles of Christianity'
- The Horcruxes and the illusion of power
- 'And death shall have no dominion'
- Led Zep: Kashmir
- Buddhist meditation music: Zen Garden
- Karula
- Summary: the love way or the power way
- Flashtest
- The worst university in the country
- Just finishing off, Dolores
- Miss Smila's feeling for snow
- Death of an expert witness
- Interesting, those trips to Moscow
- 'His single hand portrayed it'
- Of course no-one pays any attention to poets
- The desire of the moth for the flame
- The Hospital
- The ghost in the machine was riled
- I am the very model of a medical practitioner
- I am the very model of a modern faith apologist: reprise
- I am of course reminded of a little list (of a little list)
- In the garden with Mummy when the Nine turned up
- Grow the fuck up, comrades
- Thin red line
- 'The Party', 'The Regiment'
- Once upon a time there was a big red giant
- Britain's not very secret weapon
- The headlines
- The waning of the age of aquarium
- Letter to MI5: Playing The Patriot Game
- Those in peril on the sea
- The Patriot Game (song)
- Country matters: 'Elf and Safety
- The Matter of Britain
- Marianne
- Riders on the storm with soundtrack
- The rat-catchers
- 'And gentleman in England, now a-bed, shall think themselves accurs'd...'
- The evidence no-one asks for
- England
- My father when young 2
- A few of my books
- The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism and Capitalism
- Barry's book-plate (evil grin)
- Barry: 'demob' if only from the MOI and redeployment at JWT
- Barry: publishing contracts with Curtis Brown
- Barry's funeral service
- Family album
- Barbara's 100th birthday
- And Nigel's funeral: read by Saul on the whale-backed Downs
- Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
- Class mum lives in a field with Dinge: the intellectual Left
- Within you, without you
- Because the world is round, it turns me on
- More Lattic and other incredibly cool stuff
- Hass and Venga
- The Lover of Jalaluddin Rumi and some things you never wanted to know about translation
- Love IS the law
- Shahriar's sites for sore eyes
- Islamic art and civilization
- Abu Nuwas
- Fisking Warsi
- Harry's Place v. Scumbag College
- Henrietta wondered if HP was too soft on Sparte-Smythe
- Koorosh Modarresi of the Worker-Communist Party of Iran
- Rumy Hasan of the Birmingham Socialist Alliance
- Sharia socialists
- ComSymp, ShariaSymp: plus ca change....
- Illustrations of the Rubaiyat
- Hell, objectively speaking: St Catherine of Genoa
- Joe Stote
- Katy Kianush
- 'Brothers, if you hear...'
- L'Internationale
- A Lioness's Quest
- The Battle of Evermore
- Rosa Luxemburg
- Love in a time of cholera
- TEKEL: Religious, guys? Doesn't that mean shit?
- Please do not feed the god. He really doesn't appreciate it.
- Instead of God eating people, people eat God. Seems a good swap
- Herstory
- Ultramontanism
- Multiverse defined by the sexual equipment of the human male
- Civis romana sum?
- Sunday School, 1913: 'THE GATES WILL BE OPEN TO ALL MANKIND'
- Huxley
- Consciousness 101
- Jesus Christ the apple-tree
- WE DO NOT KNOW
- Trial before Pilate
- 'For the sake of the nation, this Jesus must die!'
- Much how I feel about doctors and other forms of intellectual pollution in the University, really
- Jesus, a human being
- By all means get us wrong, Father
- 'They turned to Rome to sentence Nazareth'
- Buddhism: frightful threat to the Church, you know
- Dharma the Cat and the Barefoot Doctor
- Non-duality
- Exo, eso, balance, Balrogs et le Parti Communiste Francais 1939-1945
- ComSymp, ShariaSymp: Fit the Second
- Printing and the Reformation
- Glossary
- Early chess: more, er, gentlemen (and ladies)
- The Crusades: it's good to look at dates
- Richard and Saladin: perspectives
- Richard and Saladin: perspectives
- Nathan the Wise
- Portly and the Piper at the Gates of Dawn
- Otters return to Thames (maybe)
- The Ottery, TW9
- Spring: rain and shine
- Problems with numeracy: cardinals, generals and rock 'n' roll
- Franny and Zooey
- The tail does not wag the dog
- Try again? I think not: finale
- How many deaths does it take till they know that too many British Muslim women have died
- Who killed Banaz
- Sexism, racism, Islamophobia, Marxophobia and a rather interesting school
- Aaargh! The Terrible Tonge-Monster!
- Just hammering the stake a little further in
- A second English Civil War: women against women
- The vorpal sword goes snicker-snack
- You were saying...
- Of course I've slain the bloody Jabberwock
- Chapter One - Stalinism is just so yesterday
- The rightful heir, the usurper and the usurper's bloody wife
- Wiping excrement off the sole of one's boo
- Fascism victorious, gloating and spurious - for the moment, certainly
- Six counties (sob, the horror of it) lie under John Bull's tyranny
- Calling Lord Haw-Haw
- Cool Britannia
- 'Hell is just as properly proper as Greenwich or as Bath or Joppa'
- 'Any old iron, any old iron, any, any old iron...'
- The Front Line
- Taking it from the top...
- Happy birthday to m
- Extract from The Anile Heir including Lattic
- My body my self
- Culluket, Kastanessen and of course Coulter
- The Girl Who Talked to Otters
- Notes, some of which are Caroline's
- Our revels now are ended
- Pallas Athene
- More notes
- Pan pipes - conclusions - allegory
- Shit, man, they won't even state their problem in the Agora
- Those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad
- Poetry in motion
- Ain't no use in looking down!/Ain't no discharge on the ground!
- Queen - We will rock you!
- Queen - Killer Queen
- The wrong shaped body, inferior product
- What a friend they have in evil, all their sins and griefs to bear
- In sum
- 'Building a remedy for Kruschev and Kennedy'
- Classic Islamoballs (and of course pure Stalinism)
- Deja vu
- Really, there are more important things to think about....
- Sleeping Pan by InertiaK
- Hymn to Pan by Faun
- Pan pipes
- Dirty old men
- For Katie: 'And death shall have no dominion'
- The Stone Table cracked
- 10 intellectual frauds of the orthodox religious and their slaves
- A Miracle of Exmoor: a Christmas masque
- WE DO NOT KNOW
- Intelligent women
- 'Tales of brave Ulysses'
- Coursera
- Free
- Milburn
- A fifth column
- Ain't there nuffink wrong with my back, apes?
- Gunfight at OK Corral
- Gunfight at OK Corral: the movie
- Harmonica and Frank
- Captain's Log: Star-Date Whatever
- Women, the US election, the President of the United States and other cool stuf
- The fury of a woman who has been raped
- "Are all American officers so ill-mannered?"
- The grand-daughter of not-quite-the-founder of the Labour Party
- Meanwhile...the lamp-post
- 'Sarat's little joke': the Economic Liaison Officer to the Anile Throne
- Where have all the SovSymps gone, long time passing...
- Roots and reductionism
- 'At anchor here I ride...'
- 'Against all things ending'
- New Page
- Verstehen Sie?
- Memoirs of London medicine
- 28th August 2010
- Irreducible evil
- Irreducible evil
- Just for you: Anthea Turner - and the python
- Goose-stepping morons should try reading books not burning them
- Just call me Serafina Pekkala, or possibly Lady Godiva
- A few reminders
- More? You want more?
- Grand finale
- It even has a pretty cover
- Bambi
- C'est nous qu'on ose mediter/De rendre a l'antique esclavage!
- A reminder of who is Marianne
- Voici Noel!
- Vicar of Bray
- Spanish Ladies
- Meanwhile back in Scilly....Song of the Western Men
- Twenty years behind enemy lines
- Family tree
- Pavarotti: Little Drummer Boy
- Walking in the air
- 'So you think you can love me and spit in my eye/So you think you can love me and leave me to die'
- Aw, come on, Doc, you're such an academic
- Je suis allee voir dans sa tete
- 16 chants de Noel
- 16 chants de Noel
- Talking of sheep...
- The distancing of Jesus from the churches
- So this is how it is to be
- And....And Stafford....And
- A limp prick and no balls
- Excuse me while I dress my hair with vine leaves
- Excuse me while I dress my hair with vine leaves
- Other notes
- Other notes
- Blair
- No?
- 'Are you still laughing, Sarat?' Pt One
- 'Are you still laughing, Sarat?' Pt Two
- If you're going to Acton Vale, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair
- The truth about medicine
- Getting nowhere fast
- Bird in the bloody wilderness
- As I have so tiresomely repetitively said
- Untitled
- That which sustains
- Therefore, Vice-Chancellor
- The lies they tell and the drivel they spout
- Rising above the evil reptilian kitten-eaters
- We too do not do cowering
- What the papers say
- The closed (sealed/wounded/stunted/practically non-existent) mind
- Dust and sparkles: child of Dust and Light and Lenin
- Just screaming
- More ridiculous womanish screaming
- Look, children, do look, it's a Five-Year Plan
- Fictionally speaking...The House that Keir built
- The heavy mob moves in: "We're Ancient Greeks. We do reason. And of course democracy."
- What did New Labour achieve?
- Apollo speaks
- Physician, heal thyself - or not
- Wholly unnecessary footnote
- Ah, the dirty underbelly of medicine
- Artemis' arrows
- Dear Apollo, I think the mind-itch needs to be stronger
- A few hymns
- Rhinoceros!
- Begging them to sue me for 15 years
- 'Now that I lie here/My body all holes/I think of the traitors/Who bargained and sold'
- Of course, if anyone has a spare atom bomb
- Whatever it takes
- Shit on the sole of my boot
- Shit on the sole of my boot
- You will see me dead rather than support me
- Vultures waiting for the flesh that dies
- Would you like to see the state of my mattress?
- 'When you've shouted "Rule, Britannia!"...
- 'I vow to thee, my country...' Aw, come on, you know it makes your skin crawl
- The Fixers
- The prince, the cardinal, the duke, the politician and the professor
- The Enforcers
- Me charm. You just strange
- So what exactly am I saying here?
- Pussy Riot: Yet another day in the destruction of Ivana Denisovich
- Untitled
- Pussy Riot (2): no pasaran
- Just smile for the camera, fuckers
- PANTHER: the animations, though not yet the videos
- Theme music
- So-o-o
- Just a stupid woman screaming
- Just a reminder of the Miracle of Exmoor
- Mess with the best. Die like the rest
- The essential paradigm
- No-one wants me to survive. No-one wants me to succeed
- "Are you still laughing, Sarat?"
- You have heard of the University, Doctor?
- PANTHER: The Manual, out now on Scribd
- Going back to work tomorrow
- The gift of speech
- Point counterpoint
- To cut a long story short, therefore
- To cut a long story even shorter
- A few things you need to note
- Death rather than dishonour
- In brief, therefore
- Start of first draft - what do you think of it so far?
- Let me tell you a story, Jackanory, Jackanory...
- Phase II
- Thus we see the great esteem in which London medicine holds the University
- Washed down the drain
- Raped, butchered, destroyed means what?
- "I invoke Artemis"
- I invoke Artemis (II)
- The closing-down sale. Everything must go
- Murder by remote control
- Insufferable
- Befehl ist Befehl
- Order of play
- The Broadmoor annexe
- I say, don't they shoot collaborators?
- You pay them
- Dear British Public
- Graphically speaking.....
- I have taken a lead
- Endsum
- The good news and the bad news
- The education suitable to the masses prescribed by the C19th industrialist, therefore
- 'Are you still laughing, Sarat?/Medicine: the joke
- I shit on you daily
- It is fact
- A new continuum...Watch this space not
- Lady Sybil's swamp-dragons (footnote to the above)
- The Age of Aquarius
- But of course your usual Christmas present, little sick-bags
- 'Sing as you raise your bow, shoot straighter than before'
- There's just one huge and enormous difference, isn't there
- Shall we just highlight that bit?
- Untitled
- Untitled
- Off to see the Wizard, the wonderful Wizard of Oz
- Untitled
- 'Don despicable, don of death' Could I leave it out?
- Finish with a summary of the facts
- Roll bloody up for the greatest show on earth
- Just thought to start to make a couple of videos
- Killer Queen
- It is concluded
- A short note
- I need help
- Get out of my university, animals
- Bluestockings
- Oh, when is this going to end?
- Go for it, fuckers, go for it
- Fnords, Jesus and the gerund
- Corsin and coradium
- TAH: Chapter One
- The cancer that is medicine
- The Petri dish
- Hanging them is good. Exposing them is better
- Lattic....
- Female = non-person
- That which sustains reprise
- Faun: Unda. To that which sustains, we can add...
- Non, c'est pas ca
- Quod erat demonstrandum
- To move on, therefore
- So there you have it
- The script
- Ars longa vita brevis
- PANTHER: the movie
- Animal Farm: the midden
- The word is psychopath
- If you prefer, a septic tank
- And the rest
- Twin cores
- Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit
- Here the matter rests at present
- So just what is this bloody nonsense?
- My knowledge of Photoshop has increased by leaps and bounds
- Question One
- Words and pictures
- Etched in acid
- Dear fucking world
- More
- Caniba and Hokabi
- I think - class (Lancashire A, puh-lease, rhymes with gas)
- What is the point of what you are saying? What is it intended to achieve?
- PANTHER was created in 2008
- Happy Samhain
- Profound concern
- The Road to the Isles
- And of course Andy Stewart
- 'Banks on every finger'
- Don't tread on me
- A Miracle of Exmoor: a Christmas masque
- Untitled
- Pretty much a classic, wouldn't you say
- Goose-stepping morons should try reading books not burning them (2)
- There is no reasoning with them
- A little give and take
- Extraordinary irresistible find
- Music
- So there it is, part solution, mostly not
- Reprise: 'Are you still laughing, Sarat?'/Medicine: the joke
- Mireille
- Espèce de pute!
- Etched in stone
- Hate Fal the most?
- Or Shav?
- Or is it Dill?
- Or is it Dill?
- Reminder: Ars longa vita brevis
- Reminder: PANTHER: the movie
- 'If you cannot make up rhymes/There are always the columns of The Times'
- Jarring blast: letter to my father 19th February 2012
- Vermin made simple
- You were saying
- And so, dear MI5, dear Labour Party, dear University...
- I who might as well be fucking dead
- Death rather than dishonour
- Strands
- Dolls on music-boxes wound up by a key
- Beyond death
- You can fit a lot into a five-minute video
- Je suis Charlie
- Marble Arch? The Brandenburg Gate? The Colosseum?
- Sort of cross between Athena and Artemis, really
- OK, lemme be rational
- Meanwhile...
- Meanwhile...
- As if: cui bono?
- Dark satanic mills
- Work in progress
- Welcome to sewer NHS
- Over my dead body
- Beam them up to the Great Prick in the Sky
- So there it is, part solution, mostly not
- That which sustains finale
- Messing about on the River: Lattic, Sarat and Shavli too
- Christ, it's a mad monkey
- Lots of nuffink
- Led Zep: Kashmir (2)
- The pillars of the West/By all means get us wrong, Father
- Evil reptilian kitten-eater
- Cockroach Protection League
- Happy Easter
- The very models of a medical practitioner
- The Act of Desecration
- No is the answer. What is the question? Loony alert, therefore
- The Grand Plan
- Go for it
- Waste of oxygen
- Prologue
- Intermezzo
- Just the time for a brief reminder
- Mess with the best - die like the rest
- Wailings of sick Trots not
- Heavy metal
- 'Allow me to introduce myself...'
- Freddie and Peter
- How to depict one of the most powerful men in the world
- Moog
- Anyone for tennis?
- Hair
- Hairier?
- Hairiest?
- Untitled
- Python and Allen
- Prepared for any eventuality
- Bad moon rising with soundtrack
- Riders on the storm with soundtrack
- 'Sing as you raise your bow, shoot straighter than before' encore une fois
- Not one foul animal among them will uphold freedom and democracy
- Flower power
- Meanwhile there's really only one song for Ardeshna (and Blair)
- Thin red line - the third of the set
- PANTHER: the movie - nealy there
- Do you like my channel art?
- Couple more soundbites to choke on
- Home movie
- Damaged goods
- How is Virginia these days?
- The Hunger Games
- Now on YouTube
- Second vid
- The Mutts
- The Mutt Pit
- The video I shall make
- Kindly therefore display all the wit, creaivity, intellect, education and intelligence you don't have
- The last picture show
- Faun: Unda. To that which sustains, we can add...
- Faun: Unda. To that which sustains, we can add...
- Faun: Unda. To that which sustains, we can add...
- The Last Picture Show 2: female eunuchs
- In tg
- New Page
- New Page
- New Page
- In
- In the heat of the night
- In the heat of the night
- Not a complicated image
- Vermin
- 'It is a slave's lot thou describest, to refrain from uttering what one thinks'
- Won't that be fun, Fitter?
- New Page
- Nous sommes tous P:aris
- Meanwhile back at the ranch
- You may remember the Squelch?
- DIXI
- I laugh at you daily
- The end
- Fuck your lies, your cowardice, your hypocrisy, vermin
- Got it all sewn up
- I am Dill
- PANTHER: the movie - a reminder
- And of course the manual
- They deploy
- New Page
- Traitors and would be murderers
- And the other video
- Yes, there are, aren't there.
- Zopiclone
- Hell
- No answer is a very clear answer
- For Katie: All times are now (1)
- For Katie: The Lord of the Dance
- For Katie and m: The heart will go on
- If it's the last thing I ever do, whcih I suppose it might well be
- My fine body twisted, all battered and lame
- Reflections
- For Katie: The trumpet shall sound
- For Katie: Hallelujah Chorus
- For Katie
- The service
- Reading from 'Burnt Norton'
- Going Back
- or in other words
- I need help
- Time past and time future
- Tomorrow
- How many other lives have you destroyed?
- Arundel
- After such knowledge, what forgiveness
- Let it be said - it will be said
- Information governance
- So----
- Sitting in their tin cans far above the world...
- Another shit-filled weekend
- The Cull
- Society has the right to require of avery public agent an account of his administration
- The laughing stock
- 'Sing while you raise your bow...'
- Simple questions
- For fuck's sake they're all vermin
- Functionally illiterate
- Of no significance to me whatever
- The best story
- Mess with the best. Die like the rest
- The visible difference
- Drop the dead donkey: UCH imploding
- It remains the case
- Oh, and it remains the case
- What matters
- Salvat regina!
- Nancy Wake
- Nancy Wake 2
- 2016: your annual treat - A Miracle of Exmoor
- Dunscreaming (shortly, anyhow)
- Any normal person
- Malice
- Keep your loving brother happy
- Surprised by joy
- University Challenge
- Meanwhile back at the lamp-post
- Except to speak of the absolute horror
- And in particular
- Because I screamed I needed help
- QED
- Sredni Vashtar
- The wild and wacky world of the Waffen SS
- Think I'm a bloody servant, do you
- Irrationality
- Literate, literary, educated, intellectual England
- Refinements
- Doesn't the University see the joke?
- The Piper at the Gates of Dawn
- On the whole, I think....
- Ain't taking it from a woman
- A great and mighty wonder I'm still standing
- The zenith of human possibility
- ' pilot of the storm who leaves no trace'
- 'Sing while you raise your bow. Shoot straighter than before'
- In the face of the evidence
- Watch this space
- Brennt Paris?
- 'I vow to thee, my country...' Aw, come on, you know it makes your skin crawl
- Within you, without you - especially without you
- Ain't I got no respet
- Goose-stepping morons should try reading books not burning them
- The Matter of Kadun: physics and metaphysics
- Cartoons
- Over-arching significance not
- They just wouldn't list
- 'And now that I lie here/My body all holes'
- Photoshoot
- I saved about half the books
- I just don't understand
- Fnords
- Pigs in clover
- See you in hell, fuckers
- Attempted murder
- Bog-rats
- Person or persons unknown but very guessable
- All you need is love
- One more time
- More
- Depict them in bondage
- In sum, Mr Benn's questions
- 'Arnold Lane/Had a strange/Hobby...'
- '...Doors bang/Chain-gang...'
- Etx
- Shoot straighter than before
- My moon and my wand
- My college, my university
- Inevitable and not
- painfully slow on the uptake
- This too you may stuff up your arse
- And of course this
- Pout
- TTFN
- Wiping excrement off the sole of my boot
- A West End comedy, perhaps
- Fascism
- I really don't think so, no
- For Katie: He who would valiant be
- For Katie: He who would valiant be
- For Barry: Danny Boy
- Epitaph: it's your funeral
- Yea, though I work in the Land of the Valley of the Shadow of Death
- Do learn to read, Doctor
- The crooked road the English drunkard made
- By Oak and Ash and Thorn
- Can't un read plain words of English
- I get the gist, I surely do
- The world of perversion
- The Ottery has moved to the banks of the Arun
- Snapping my claws at the foeman''s chants
- Yes, the crash of the waves on the foreshore
- The even longer march of Everywoman
- You tried so desperately hard to destroy me
- Evil reptilian kitten-eaters
- The five most evil men in England
- Love does not drown in corruption)
- Like something out of Hieronymus Bosch
- Harry Secombe: The Old Rugged Cross
- The Drivellers
- Insolence is so very vexing, is it not
- Protected by the faith of my fore-fathers
- Lost causes
- Solid Soviet steel
- 1
- Murderous vermin who jeer at disability
- Clarity
- De profundis clamavi
- Reprise: Nancy Wake 2
- Generals gather in their masses...
- Cry foul and bloody murder
- Tumour
- New Page
- Ludicrous
- I think I said get me out of there
- This is not life
- All bets off, fuckers
- New Page
- Dearest darling Katie and Barry
- You think you impress me?
- Manners, ladies and gentlemen, puh-lease
- I suppose the exact charge would be
- No-o-o I don't thik you should forget about Lattic
- Boys having a bit of a larf
- I thnk, you know, dear Artemis...
- Sttill drooling, are you
- 'Thou shallt not suffer a witch to live.;
- My YouTube channel
- Education is what is left
- New Page
- To su
- To sum up
- The endless road traversed (nearly)
- It's a mandala, stupid
- Happy New Year
- Keep your loving brother happy
- Not with a bang but a whimper
- I, however, have outstanding questions
- Feline groovy
- Suitable cases for treatment
- I have spoken
- Nothing taxing to the sane
- I have of course the utmost...
- Doctors and nurses cannot cope with quantum physics
- Addended: Etched in acid and have been for years
- The psychology of medicine
- No outcry
- A very simple question
- To which task I shall now..
- RIP the Labour Party
- First things first
- I a woman
- The Howard lion
- Lest we forget: I don't
- New Page
- Pat me on the head and tell mee not to be a silly little girl
- I a woman of over 60
- A hanging matter
- The gross falsification of history
- 'The writers by their presence...'
- One more time just for the hell of it
- Lastly...
- The answer is no
- So that was the Universiity that was
- Hey you, get off of my cloud...
- Off. off, off of my cloud...
- A right waste of make-up
- So what?
- Footnotes to the above
- So where - ?
- What is the name of - and can't they - ?
- The glorious first of June
- Why has the door not been smashed down/?
- Your professors, Vice-Chancellor
- Anti-dialogue
- Shall we finish with a quick...
- They don't want the Jabberwock slain
- ABOVE THE LAW?
- So - I think -
- "Sentence first = verdict afterwards."
- DA and TM
- Post mortem
- Everywhere I go people are collecting bloody food
- how many people are on PAYE?
- I am naturallly reminded...
- Where was I?
- Where was I (2)?
- Welcome to the NHS
- Let's play doctors and nurses
- 'Senior members of the University'
- These are {{DOCTORS}}} and {{{NURSES}}}
- The girl who talked to otters
- How you hate intelligence
- And you always get away with it, don't you
- And you always get away with it, don't you
- The Hundred Flowers Movement
- New Page
- In one line
- Belloc, Apollo and May
- While readiing The Four Men
- Golgotha, place of a skull
- Troll toes
- So go for it
- PUT-DOWN
- New Page
- The required result
- Sex and mind
- Their mommas told them...
- Greece or Rome
- The new normal
- Isn't this interesting?
- New Page
- Ruthless vicious evil old men
- The charge is atteempted murder
- The C-List
- Q&A
- Ludicrous propositions
- Chained to the oars
- Footnotes
- 1095 and all that
- The Anglican garden
- Or of course a Kabbalist
- I have some time ago...
- Cult, Death-Eaters
- Not forgetting Nathan the Wise
- Cultural exchange
- And of course not forgetting...
- In short, in my young day...
- Contemplating this Matter of Kadun
- Nearly there
- I detect, therefore
- 'That government by the people, for the people, shall not perish from this earth.'
- Tingle
- Follow-up
- Cave-meen
- Not ancient history
- I have indeed graphically
- 'By their deeds'
- So maybe you'll also like this bit
- Just to be exact
- Which?
- Oh, all right, just for you
- Left something out, didn't I
- Didn't quite finish that off
- Ciletij
- Ritawa
- Shav and Zik
- The party
- Spetzi
- senoki
- Punching the pixels
- Reality
- More tails from the riverbank
- The Sarat and Maya Show
- Perverts
- If we may now...
- In short
- progress
- A national joke
- The Spetzi Effect
- Quanta
- Who owns me if I do not own myself? Reprise
- Who owns me if I do not own myself? Reprise
- Boys having a bit of a larf
- You really have....
- And they all just sit there
- So exactly what - ?
- Hostile fascist foreign powers
- Personal, very
- Rubber dolly
- Essentially
- Fana
- LLLLOLLLL
- Unnatural, innit
- It's over, monkeys, over
- You might learn something but probably not
- So now Blair will tell us all
- Spetzi and Qine
- RL
- Qine and Spetzi
- Fucktards united
- Capital
- Well, didn't I just hand myself the short straw
- Do they actually understand?
- Quotable quotes
- 3D printing
- Ah, but can you print fluffy cushions?
- Taking an intelligent interest
- Vaudos 1
- Vaudos 2
- Vaudos 2.75
- New Page
- Anniversary Waltz
- Automation: ostrich land
- The Kirit and Micaela Show
- New Page
- Cookery time
- What are they like!
- Until we meet on camera...
- And just because I know you love Homeric hymns
- New Page
- Dear Artemis, Athena, Apollo and Pan
- Baz and Paw on the loose in Van-Senok
- Back to the fermions
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer
- A crude, vulgar, ugly, insolent, mad and evil little man
- RIP English Christianity
- And the outstanding question is...
- Foxes, fruit, fermions and fuck you where you breathe
- Varna's Wall
- Particularly working on
- From the Shrine to the Viledeen
- Spring
- Fisking Welby
- New Page
- And how is the great penis in the sky tonight?
- After-thoughts: don't forget Isis and her pal Sobek
- The cat I don't yet have
- The Greater and Lesser Lunacies
- To whom it may concern....
- New Page
- Frank
- Cock-suckers
- Should you not be a movie buff...
- Marked as property
- Questions, questions....
- You will publicly answer those questions
- And this was Margaret
- Reprise: Our grandfather who art in heaven (though I doubt it), Howard be thy name
- To remind you...
- England the poem
- Back to the Viledeen
- Come on, I just want you to...
- So this is the story
- New Page
- Theme from The Water Margin
- Turn off the bloody Horst Wessel Lied
- Is it -10 yet?
- Chesterton - and Belloc
- New Page
- So what have I proved?
- Mock you incessantly
- No problem, no problem at all
- They have only one interest
- Misa and ban-Razit
- Rowley and Saunders
- HARD WIRING
- Bad science
- Dereliction of duty here, comrades
- Taking it from the top..
- New Page
- Dot the i. Cross the t
- More Fal
- Maya's assassination
- So-o-o
- Well, hi there, Sar-fenan
- And the third reason
- Ysabel Belinda Felicity Jehan Howard
- 'And now that I lie here...'
- Ain't they really
- And so
- 'Of course she has to do this on her own.'
- Who the fuck are Bonnie and Clyde
- How the cards fall
- And don't forget Dill
- And Shav and Dill
- Squishy, Archchancellor: not a healthy diet
- Back to you, Sar-Fenan
- This is not a physics textbook
- e=mc2
- A NON-EVENT
- woo hoo
- Her story
- Oi, you, Sar-fenan!
- Bloody kitten-eaters
- HHGG 1
- HHGG 4
- HHGG 2
- Reprise: It reallly is...
- Dave Allen
- Some psycho schizoid freak
- So absolutely insolently irreducibly evil
- This site
- Under the block
- Do you not understand?
- Gee, it's so wonderful to know
- Parameters
- I might go so far as to say
- I might''ve finished losing my temper
- Archaeopteryx flew like a pheasant
- I am not a child. Children are under 16
- New Page
- Blair, Corbyn, WCPI
- Smile for the camera
- 'Labour'
- Nothing you won't surrender
- HTF do I hitch a lift to Betelgeuse?
- "We are the Daleks."
- Back as ever to the Viledeen
- Scream quietly or the neighbours will hear
- The products rejected out of hand
- ComSymp ShariaSymp Fit the Third
- How to defend England
- If you cannot get rid of the people who govern you...
- National Museum Wales
- Why is this continuing?
- My mission I seem to have been landed with
- Dixi
- Go it alone, suffer alone, what's new
- Deep breaths
- New Page
- Gratis
- Justt to complete the set
- About that grave
- Damn!
- About that clock
- Oh pilot of the storm that leaves no trace
- Last but by no means least
- After which
- Or in short
- Notification...
- I think perhaps tomorrow...
- C17th England
- Je suis comme je suis
- Whatever you do, take pride...
- Selfies
- There remains of course my mind
- If you failed to get the gist
- Alice's Left Hip Esquire
- Limp pricks and no balls
- New Page
- Never ask them to strip
- You, off my planet
- If they absolutely won't...
- Achilles' heel
- Oh just do begone
- No-one on Planet Normal
- Welcome to Labour's England
- Democracy...
- New Page
- Bringing back the dark
- The best story
- Is there one single point?
- To come up to date
- Evil
- The destruction of the intellectual basis of the free world
- The mad relations in the rafters
- Let this be my contentment
- Results
- None of which of course
- A purely indigenous evil
- Here the matter rests at present
- New Page
- New Page
- A toss-up
- Blair
- New Page
- Reality 105
- The wearing of the green
- Recently come to light
- Growly snarly wolf
- New Page
- Five years later...
- Bobbles
- OK, assume.
- A flight of fancy
- So long as we understand each other
- Footnote
- Fisking Warsi reprise
- Why was nothing done?
- Job well done, filth
- Being a galactic mail from me to Zaphod
- Beyond evil
- In the 61st minute of the final hour
- Doo-be, doo-be, do
- English Christianity until....
- New Page
- 'I AM KING AND GOD AND LAW#
- So I get this
- Bad mood
- Another book for you, Blair
- One should always write things down - in some form or another
- All cleared up in five minutes
- Of course I have worn such a hat
- Thus, bloody thus
- No pasaran
- I continued...
- You prefer Misa and Ban-razit
- The 3D printer in the town centre
- Labour's apotheosis
- Selling women by the pound
- Why, my own mother and father wouldn't recognize me
- And the punchline is
- Do just go and fuck yourselves
- Fruit Loop
- Only one interest
- The price of a woman's body
- Eris
- Just can't hear you
- VR
- Not as exciting as Hokabi
- 'Unfortunate'
- Oh look what they're saying about me
- Should one really not...
- I am intelligent.
- From the archives: fisking Warsi
- Do MPs entirely grasp what they're there for?
- Our servants not our masters
- New Page
- Or you could say the reverse
- The problem is that there is no problem
- Irrelevant
- From the archives: who killed Banaz
- From the archives: ooh, we are so sensitive
- From the archives: wondrous multiculturalism
- From the archives: Banaz' sister spoke out
- Neither right nor honourable nor gentlemen
- The carrion chorus
- And so
- New Page
- Can hear you from here, animal
- Forgot it at Christmas
- 'Blinder motions bounded in a shallower brain'
- So golly gosh
- And I laugh (2)
- What else can we talk about
- Thus
- Spare ribs
- Mene mene tekel upharsin
- And of course...
- Matthew 7: 3
- Blair
- This exchange
- Because it's a horrible way to die
- Peter
- Those convictions
- A purely pernicious twist
- The open mind
- They took away the post-its
- First part of Fal 2
- Sarat at the Shrine 1
- Sarat at the Shrine 2
- To continue...
- Contemplating this Matter of Kadun 1
- 2. Contemplating this Matter of Kadun 2
- Shav, Petrush and this Matter of Kadun
- Shav, Petrush and this Matter of Kadun
- Dill and this Matter of Kadun
- Of course
- Ridiculous and viie
- From the archives: obedience (1912)
- I should imagine...
- From the archives: And who kept this bubbling?
- From the archives: Voltaire on the CofE
- From the archives: Extra ecclesiam nulla salus
- From the archives: The Vatican archives 1
- From the archives: the Vatian archives 2
- From the archives: The Vatican archives 3
- 2000 years making most of it up
- Proud Archbishop of York conducts his own daughter's wedding ceremony
- New Page
- Nothing may be said. Nothing may be done.
- It seemed a good idea at th e time
- Sarat, Maya, Cioulis, Spetzi,Ritawa reprise
- Aren't they gorgeous?
- A precedent has been set
- Something else for the animals to gloat over
- Let's play doctors and nurses
- Women beware women
- How best may we accommodate you, o master
- The Agora
- New Page
- Violence power coercion desecration
- BOURGEOIS MORALITY
- New Page
- Once more from the top
- So what do I think?
- First part of Fal
- Fal 2 2021
- Fal and Tet
- To conclude: to whom it may concern
- Sarat and Hass
- THis is what I look like, Vice-Chancellor
- Sonderkommando
- The balance of probability
- Can I keep this up for ever?
- How you hate intelligence 2
- Et freaking cetera
- Honestly, darling, that mantilla
- The prince, the duke, the cardinal, the politician and the professor
- The Fixers
- The Enforcers
- By the balls of Apollo!
- Cernunnos
- Burunda
- Solidarity
- About that new sofa I printed...
- A position it is entirely easy to understand
- Yes. Yes, you are ridiculous
- Yes. Yes, everything I have said about you is an understatement
- Meanwhile back at the ottery
- The flawed concept of Islamophobia
- Oh rats!
- The revolving door
- Ah yes, my future
- Explicit liber
- So now....
- Deep breaths
- Thanks awfully for the suggestion, old boy
- A list, therefore
- Previous reflections
- Ah, culture
- Ah, here you have the nub
- New Page
- Tropes
- Letter to my dead parents
- New Page
- These they left me
- Don't forget Lattic
- Is it a bird? Is it a plane?
- Song of the Western Men
- The new national anthem
- Wanna see the Deeds
- New Page
- Another very fine song
- Shamima Begum
- The perfect citizens of a fascist state
- Grease
- Love, Serafina Pekkala
- To whom it may concern
- First part of Fal
- Fal 2
- Also to whom it may concern
- So what happened then?
- New Page
- New Page
- Who has no authority in England
- I shall now potter off
- La trahison des clercs
- 'Those who cannot remember the past...'
- A little intellectual exercise...
- The view of the Labour leadership
- Take it from the top, Karl
- Is Abbott a feminist? We shall see
- Ooh, we are so sensitive
- Death before dishonour
- Listen very carefully. I shall say this only once
- Of course certain lines here
- Hide the Secret. Hide the Weakness
- The very model of a modern faith apologist
- Models of modern health practitioners
- Meanderings
- Negation
- Bloody certifiable
- Convert, comrades, convert!
- Found the articles
- Dangerous animals
- I name you the Duke of Plaza-Toro
- New Page
- New Page
- Christchurch 1
- New Page
- New Page
- To May, whom it concerns
- Shouts and whispers
- Hic jacet
- Hyde Park, London, England
- Condition of the Working-Class in England 1845
- Thus ComSymp ShariaSymp
- Ooh, you guessed
- You are so obvious
- In detail
- Hard wiring
- If mind does not exist., democracy is unnecessary
- Th Age of Reason, 1794
- Fisking Cantuar
- Danger: profoundly esoteric image
- The seer and that which he sees are one.
- Meanwhile hats off to the Guardian
- Letter to MI5 in case you missed it.
- Fucking Pollyanna
- The Greta Garbo Home for Wayward Boys and Girls
- Perhaps in five year old English
- Non serviam
- The 7 principles of public life. Pix too
- Tor and Tonge
- Barking moonbats
- Herr Hitler, I presume
- A rich joke, Blair
- Eire in the 1950s?
- Cold shower
- By definition 'God' has to know what a lepton is
- Ah, the Yorkshire Ripper
- Parallel government
- New Page
- You will not look at them
- The magic migraine
- From about a year ago
- La nausee
- Yes, it's Operation Mindfuck
- Book review
- Happy bloody Easter
- A little quiet attempted murder
- Fal 2
- The curse of the killer zombies
- So the next logical step would be...
- Don't my silly little arts degree mean nuffink?
- Oh dear I have upset someone(s)
- New Page
- A few questions
- There are no great ones
- Gets so horribly in the way
- Violence against women, it's what you pay your taxes for
- 'Bring me the head of Alfreddo Garcia'
- Just don't forget Lattic
- The House of the Rising Sun
- The initiation of force
- Yes, that's right, I said Bentley
- Turning now to this Matter of Kadun I
- Shav, Petrush and this Matter of Kadun
- Shav, Petrush and the Matter of Kadun 2
- Do admire your handiwork
- Marche funebre
- Misogyny
- On this 75th anniversary...
- The Enchanted Forest
- If you should confront these filth
- Encore une fois
- Impertinent evil filth
- A successful outcome
- Therefore...
- Which end is up
- I shall create it
- PANTHER: The Manual, out now on Scribd
- Sarat, Maya, Cioulis, Spetzi,Ritawa
- First part of Fal
- Fal 2
- Indeed there are many interesting people to talk to in my mind
- Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof
- To dig a little deeper
- Of food-banks and reprographics
- No dark
- Just remembered another spectacular waste of money
- More about Tories
- And more...
- This and that and some of the other
- Or in short
- Don't forget The House That Keir Built
- Memo to the Senate of the University of London
- Turning now to this Matter of Kadun I
- Shav, Petrush and this Matter of Kadun
- The fur does settle...
- Models of medical practitioners
- HARD WIRING 2
- Strange things happen in the quantum universe
- Strange things happen in the quantum world
- "Are you still laughing, Sarat?"
- Falsity
- Je ne regrette rien
- Of course you could always check the facts
- 'Do you recall what was the deal/The day the music died.'
- The family handbook
- Goose-stepping morons
- Riidiculous
- Welcome to the diverse and plural real world
- Does it not sound sweet?
- This half-wit waving her degree...
- O tempora! O mores! O mayhem!
- Sexism is a crime
- ''I can't be treated like this.'
- And here the matter rests at present
- J'ai vecu
- Extreme unction
- The free movement of peoples
- The rules
- The witch must burn in hell, he trumpeted,
- You can always ask Google
- Monsters
- Just think, then you can add murder to your CVs
- New Page
- No dark
- In sum
- Give them everything they ask for
- Good for a laugh
- The end. Full stop.
- Just grow a pair
- Bad moon rose
- To whom it may concern
- And?
- And don't forget Lattic
- The Hall of Mirrors
- Because of course
- How to murder a woman
- Bwahaha
- They gave them time
- My big brown eyes
- A n all-party statement from the House of Commons
- Fat pig
- Always remember...
- Always remember...
- The whole lot of them
- Clear and present danger
- Note to Jackson, Hughes and Ardeshna
- So...
- Oy, you
- They did not like the New Marxism at all
- Irritable Owl Syndrome
- The drivel show
- Oh, you know, Woodstock
- Aqiuarius
- One more time and once again...
- Anglican England
- Since I feel bloody annoying
- At cock crow
- Civilized behaviour
- New Page
- 'Thirty pieces of silver'
- 'I look for truth and find that I get damned'
- Found the quote
- Carrion
- Books
- Singer to my clan in that dim red dawn of man
- Five Prime Ministers
- The victory of the Tuatha de Danaan
- A briefer response
- Bonfire Night
- Conjecture
- Or as I said more lucidly...
- They really didn't like my poems at all
- Denis Diderot
- The Age of Reason
- Some years later...
- We the people
- Side-dishes
- So do tell
- Facts
- Reality
- Because I know you hate it even more
- So perhaps
- Termites
- So you go right on..
- I even told them about the SOE
- Transforming the Na-Mhoram's Grim
- Oh and this
- I think Hafiz would have liked Bunyan's hymn
- Fisking Warsi
- Welcome to Brighton, a plural and diverse community
- An 'All Party Parliamentary Group'
- Oh, when will this end?
- QEbloodyD
- To return to civilization.
- Fal continued
- Fal and Tet
- Dill and this Matter of Kadun
- Shav, Petrush and this Matter of Kadun
- Maya's assassination
- They stripped
- For monkey-nuts: dixi
- Fisking Malik: Preamble
- Melodrama
- Fisking Malik: Part One
- The end is Nye
- Aberfan
- New York Mining Disaster 1941
- Resonances
- Don't talk to me about the law
- And so...
- And the other thing...
- you so love lies, don't you
- Writing things down
- I am the very model of a medical practitioner
- PAINLESS BUT PERMANENT
- Love from Serafina Pekkala
- A difference of opinion
- Just a theory
- What the hell do you think I am, you ridiculous little pieces of shit
- This will do for the time being
- This colour doesn't run
- The desired result
- No balls, 'Frank', just no balls
- Just call me Harmonica
- Hokabi
- In his tin can, far above the world
- Bloody psychopaths, in short
- Berchtesgaden, 1935
- You are so obvious, Blair
- So what happens next?
- So what is the matter with you
- End of the road
- Happy New Year
- Meaningless
- Kinky boys
- A sick joke
- So:
- Bottom-feeders
- New Page
- So why are you here?
- There, isn't that just so cute
- The Lizard of Oz
- And stuff this...
- And they have never heard of...
- Of course I'm a fucking witch
- Just getting out my tunic of skins
- Erudite, that's me
- In short...
- First part of Fal
- Fal 2
- So, as ever
- It is a slave's lot thou describest
- Shav, Petrush and this Matter of Kadun
- Medicine: the joke
- Are you five-year-olds?
- The Directorate
- Murderers and traitors
- Books....
- Books, filth, books
- Since I have no intention...
- Oh, how they stripped.
- Indeed, it is like this, Doc
- Thus...
- And the fuss is about what?
- This and that
- And don't forget Lattic
- Lemme set the scene
- Diversity
- This matter of Kadun: (inner and eso) 1
- The matter of Kadun (inner and eso) 2
- They are the Daleks. They are Masters of the Universe
- I however do not remotely think that
- 'See how I die. Just watch me die.'
- A simple case of attempted murder
- The final act
- Our story
- So why did they not support PANTHER?
- Love drowned in Corruption
- All times are now (1)
- Transforming the Na-Mhoram's Grim
- 'The Father took from him the Keys and the Sword'
- 'That government by the people....'
- Ir's a fucking doddle
- The smoking gun
- Read all abaht it
- Woo-hoo, it's a full moon.
- Carrion
- 'All you need is love'
- Just not macho
- So what precisely - ?
- so when England's answer to Indiana Jones...
- And you filth at UCH
- 'When Julius Fabricius, Sub-Prefect of the Weald...'
- More history (after a bit)
- Exodus 32 (well, loosely)
- A 99% confidence rating
- Something of the kind..
- Come to my funeral, Blair?
- Do anything for them, anything to feed them
- Forgot to repeat the Bobbles letters
- England in the C21st and the C12th
- In the event of.
- My head held firmly under water
- The most basic standards
- Miscellany
- The primate pecking order
- Cancer Ward
- Locke, Hume, Kant, Mill, is there anyone they didn't ban
- Farce
- The Tories' own quest for ideological purity
- 'opium of the people'
- Blair's New Model England
- In English not Latin or Arabic
- Because no-one stops them
- The thin end of the wedge
- Intellectually sickening
- And don't forget Lattic
- Sickboy
- From the Shrine to the Viledeen
- The company of civilized people
- The care of the penis
- So you're happy now
- Unlikely
- I hope...
- So very much more interesting
- Astronomy for Kids of all ages
- Dill and this Matter of Kadun
- In sum....
- Shit
- And I laugh
- Feeesh
- And be damned to you.
- Avatars of perfection
- New Page
- Marked for extermination from the start
- i'm helpless and desperate and alone so just fuck you
- So just go and
- Wouldn't it be lovely to be in hospital
- Alice's adventure in hospital
- The NHS does not live by bread alone
- Just say cheese
- Clear and present danger to women
- There are those who despise being able to spell....
- I remain, yours sincerely
- Do you think I don't know what you are
- Thus troll toes
- Achilles
- Complete barbarians
- Bloody rings of power
- Lady Sybil's exploding dragons
- Mesdames, messieurs, faites vos jeux
- A societal archetype....
- Sascha doing his renowned impression of a baby zebra
- Pog ma thoin!
- The continuum
- Good to see the young people out in the fresh air enjoying themselves
- Look once again at spite-ridden lower-middle-class women
- So the hell with you
- Mr Morgan, Mr Paxman
- Ah, you're going to sue me?
- Or perhaps
- So which particular set of ludicrous and obscene lies?
- The opium of the people
- Throw them my body, throw them my life. Can't do enough for them
- The hell with all of you
- First part of Fal
- Fal 2
- Fal and Tet
- All any of them want, my destruction, the destruction of democracy, destruction of the University
- Maya's assassination
- Sarat, Maya, Cioulis, Spetzi,Ritawa
- Vultures
- They had one chance
- Monsters
- So the fuss is about what?
- Unrectifiable harm done with malice aforethought
- There was, you will recall, a bad moon rising
- Cool stuff
- Just what is your fucking problem?
- So now Emglishwomen are destroyed at the command of sadists
- Aggravating factors: adding insult to injury
- Selfies
- Evidence
- Bonnie and Clyde
- Chinese whispers
- Beyond evil
- Evidence
- They jumped from 40,000 feet without a parachute
- Kindle and things
- Bloody Operation Mindfuck
- What to do when they push Chinese writing under the door
- The word you seek is brainwashed
- The bloody cosmic laughter.
- I thought you might like to see...
- Women's bodies break easily
- They were told and they were told and they were told
- Not on the whole given to Schadenfreude
- Do they actually have IQs or do they flatline?
- Wouldn;'t it be funny if Bobbles were Francis
- All times are now, yet again
- Shame
- What you need to do...
- So all of it a right bloody waste of make-up
- 'There is nothing you can't buy'
- And of course I told them what would happen
- The sub-species woman
- Le quatorze juillet
- Oh and this bit, comrades
- 'Tell all the boys I'm back in the city...'
- Time for a wash and brush-up
- And, and, and
- Verse 5 of the Red Flag and don't forget Lattic
- New Page
- But of course
- Fill in a few gaps
- Merit
- Homo sapiens sapiens stands erect
- Bunch of boobs
- The required result
- Lower than vermin, much lower
- And another one
- The Wizard of Oz
- And the only outstanding question
- Cooking the books
- so come on....
- Hell and tarnation
- You did go to school, Blair?
- New Page
- New Page
- Sick-boys
- Pscyho-sexual cripples
- Understanding
- Oh and because I know you're thick...
- Another scalp for the sick-boys
- So, pig-bitch
- Pig-bitch 2
- Pig-bitch 3
- Functionally illiterate
- How you hate human
- The ghost in the machine was riled
- Dear MI5 person
- Or perhaps Linch and Goldstone prefer...
- Yes
- First part of Fal
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- You, Blair
- This site will self-destruct...
- Left out repeating the juicy bit
- Hi to the University of Witwatersrand or wherever
- You are really very funny
- You are really very funny
- How very funny
- As if
- If...
- Can it be more obvious>
- Conclusion
- The initiation of force
- A busted flush
- Shall we have that again?
- The sum of the ravings
- This meanwhile
- But of course
- Point-blank rejection of the governing system of the country
- What part of fuck off does the Vatican not understand?
- Please save the crackling
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- This bit's fun too
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- As if
- NHS bureaucracy strikes again
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- New Page
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- HARD WIRING A
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- And of course they ain't fucking illitrit
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- New Page
- Jesus, look at them!
- So take a walk on the wild side
- But your Achilles' heel remains
- Addressing an empty crisp packet
- Empty crisp packets
- So here's to you, criminal vermin
- Only 4000 variants
- So they sat there jerking themselves off
- And on no account forget Lattic
- So, Mr Benn's questions
- The contents of the septic tank
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- Hic jacet 2
- New Page
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- First part of Fal 2021
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- Dixi@ I have spokwn
- And govenment is for what?
- And here is picture of Jesus with his beloved pet ferret
- Your Christmas favourite
- Peter
- And this is what happened
- Les Eleutheromanes
- I repeat, just for the hell of it.
- So I'll just go on thinking my own thoughts
- All times are now (1)
- All times are now (3)
- 'Be careful with that axe, Eugene'
- La Ballade des Pendus
- We do not know
- Banal
- The wrong kind of snow
- Oy, monkey-nuts
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- And of course they all know too
- Fiver in the Death Warren
- And lo it came to pass
- One way to deal with sexual fuxk-ups
- Dill and this Matter of Kadun 2021
- Frauds
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- Today satirized as
- Dill, the bit in the middle
- Question
- Ah, but
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- And this is the state of my body
- Absolutely insolent, absolutely evil, absolutely degenerate
- Dangerous wild beasts
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- Farce
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- So we go through it all again
- The empty swimming-pool
- So I have questions
- One more bloody time
- It remains the best way
- Get real
- Two to the power of 75000 to one against and falling
- Along with Oolon Colluphid
- Head honcho
- So why - ?
- Civilized behaviour
- 'Be careful with that axe,Eugene' (2)
- Deep Thought
- England in the C21st
- So what's next?
- I do understand
- Right bloody waste of make-up
- An aggressive cancer
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- McDonnell's little friends in Iran
- Ah, yes, McDonnell
- Everything was perfectly normal
- Blog
- So when did you hear - ?
- Time for a wash and brush-up
- Time for a wash and brush-up (2)
- So calming
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- WHen everything fails
- Jackson
- Thus
- Tsk, tsk, tsk
- If I may translate...
- Perhaps you prefer - ?
- Roast aurochs
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- Just doesn't matter, does it
- Base details
- History, should there be any
- Libro de los juegos
- Yuck! Kitten-eaters!
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- So do just tell
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- Aw, Dimitri!
- Yes? And?
- Ah, bon, les putes
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- Poor Mr Sunak
- Falsity
- RL
- Untitled
- The D-word
- Nye, wouldst that thou wert living at this hour!
- Sp gp fpr ot
- Fortunately there are more elevated things to do than contemplate infected shit
- The parable of the respirator
- Arbeit macht frei
- Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness
- It's the grapes that come from Chile
- Untitled
- The actual social principles of Christianity
- The social principles of Christianity as observed by Marx
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- Gilead
- Spinal tap
- Purr
- An atypical population
- New Page
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- RTFM
- The ceding of democratic control
- I shit on you daily
- The ceding of democratic control pt 2
- Fortunately there are civilized people to talk to
- This is how to deal with pervert monkeys
- Pink stars and burquas
- Ditching the theology of love: reprise
- A happy communist life
- Or you prefer Nigel?
- Our papa
- My turf, bubba
- Guarding the pigs
- Just a little obvious
- New Page
- BDSM
- The deeds, Naylor, the deeds
- So Sarat, Maya, Cioulis, Spetzi,Ritawa
- And the hunt continues
- Jesus!
- Question for those with daughters
- So what has happened to Jesus?
- New Page
- All on prime-time television
- Lest we forget: I don't
- You know, like at Hokabi and Caniba and so on
- Until they learn
- Vaudos 1: so it's a walking fence
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- Vaudos 2.75
- First part of Fal
- Fal 2 2021
- Fal and Tet
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- Don't forget they ain't fucking illitrit
- There when it gets shitty
- Luke 23:46
- Of course he argued with himself about it.
- Democracy: a system devised to cage and contain power
- If there are any future historians
- What to, the Higgs boson?
- Maya's assassination
- Dill and this Matter of Kadun 2021
- 1. Shav, Petrush and this Matter of Kadun
- Astronomy for Kids of all ages
- 1. Contemplating this Matter of Kadun 1
- 2. Contemplating this Matter of Kadun 2
- 2. Shav, Petrush and the Matter of Kadun 2
- Who are pensioners?
- Party political broadcast...
- Look at all the little lungfish
- Unfit to govern
- Protozoa capering in the primeval soup
- Have you managed to be human?
- Life in a fact-free world
- And of course our dear friends the anti-vaxxers
- The wrong kind of Muggle
- Just put this on Twitter too
- Precisely how - ?
- Aroint thee, Muse!
- Death by government
- Cruel and unusual punishment
- It is, I think, the creation of Vernon and Marge
- Gee, isn't it just the market?
- There would not therefore seem to be an real difference
- The goose that laid the golden eggs
- The gifts that kept on giving
- Only 37.9 million tourists a year
- The Big Squeeze
- All the same gig
- Lolling insolent evil
- So now I walk with a rollator
- So, I deem
- Terror-tactics against a medically vulnerable woman
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- Me
- The issues facing my grand-parents
- Don't forget the house that Keir built
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- Bit late for me and my steed...
- Art is individualism
- Magdalene laundries
- I told you not to put all the stars out
- Indeed the animals have a big problem with my family
- In the garden with Mummy
- ComSymp
- Chanctonbury Ring
- Doubtless too busy
- Light reading
- Reality 102: reprise
- Reality 103: reprise
- Reality 103a: reprise
- Reality 104: reprise
- Religious census of 1851
- Mortal sin
- If Twitter is anything to go by...
- The 1945 Labour landslide
- So just look at them all, Vice-Chancellor
- And of course an offence to UCL
- Time for a wash and brush-up
- The new Marxism
- Coal in the bath and the victim culture (2)
- Nice bit of bedtime reading
- Christ, you are so boring!
- First part of Fal
- Fal 2 2021
- And of course this
- Just don't forget Lattic
- Thus Bobbles
- Fal and Tet
- Mr Benn's questions.
- Mr Benn's questions. A good clear message. The IRA
- Just so - so - so
- None of this of course is subject to discussion
- Therefore, ain't I got no respect
- Nor do I tug my forelock
- Book of Common Prayer
- 'I know that my Redeemer liveth'
- Meanwhile an offal-fest on Twitter'
- Spine
- This is what they expected me to push
- What? Oh, the picture Jesus mentioned
- Our servants not our masters (2)
- His Majesty's the model of a modern major-general
- The withdrawal of love and forcing oneself on others (2)
- Sarat, Maya, Cioulis, Spetzi,Ritawa reprise
- Journey to the edge of the universe
- Oh they do get so antsy
- I am the very model of a medical practitioner: reprise
- I am the very model of a modern faith apologist: reprise
- Quid agas
- Balrogs
- C10th architects
- Truss and Braverman
- Imbeciles
- As for the rest of it...
- So:
- Totally ordinary Brits
- The corruption of history
- 'Imagination has seized power!'
- So, you, Blair
- Without fear or favour
- So a special round of applause for
- The Anglican garden: reprise
- It is remarkably tedious
- All times are now (1) reprise
- All times are now (2) reprise
- All times are now (3): reprise
- All times are now (4): reprise
- All times are now (5): reprise
- All times are now (6)
- Maya's assassination: reprise
- Lizard-men: reprise
- Doth it not say in the Book of Pious Crap
- That government by the corrupt and inane for the corrupt and inane shall not perish from this earth
- And answer Mr Benn's questions
- Thus the dirty shit-filled hierarchical fascist brains
- PANTHER...
- 'And now Amanda is seriously ill.'
- You might also enjoy Sredni Vashtar
- Girls. You were saying? About girls?
- 'And gentlemen in England, now a-bed, shall think themselves accurs'd...'
- This happened in RL
- Ooh
- HMQ
- How to lose operations other than war
- There, isn't that just so cute:reprise
- Ah, the sub-species woman
- How do you dare?
- Oh look what they're saying about me: reprise
- 'Blinder motions bounded in a shallower brain': reprise
- A lemur speaks!
- Welcome to London, Mr President
- HMQ (2)
- Gee, guys, what might have happened
- Neither benefiting from nor obsesssed by
- In sum, then
- The succession that matters
- In sum, therefore
- It has therefore been established
- And be damned to you: reprise
- Who did impose on a subject of Her Britannic Majesty
- How the cards fell
- Prefer high crimes and misdeameanours
- Time for something else
- Couldn't finish without your favourite song
- The Abbey
- The end of the world is nigh: reprise
- Men don't get it
- 'In order to rightly judge these efforts known as the "woman movement"'
- I'm sure Mr Kwarteng believes in equality
- Get real fast
- Roast aurochs: reprise
- It didn't work last time, peeps
- Doctors
- Ants
- Bellatrix
- Vaudos 1: so it's a walking fence
- Vaudos 2
- Vaudos 2.75
- It's like this, Nurses
- Letter to MI5: reprise
- And you do not make me into a porter
- I do so understand
- How you hate intelligence
- How you hate intelligence; reprise
- So how many people has Medicine destroyed?
- Don't you like my DNA?
- So you're going to sue me?
- I understand
- Hmm, so I guess...
- Yes I understand
- This is how it should be? Reallyy?
- Special mentions
- The wayside
- My country. Took seizin
- To whom it may concern
- Do tell
- A blank wall
- Democracy is so yesterday
- Nothing is too low
- https://www.coursera.org/learn/our-earth?
- No interest to me, old boy. No interest whatever
- Burn the witch at the stake! How much money we shall make!
- One quick question
- And something for Bobbles
- If...
- 'MI5's mission is to keep the country safe.'
- Reality reprise
- Reality reprise 2
- Your life in their hands, Episode 923452
- New Page
- New Page
- Never trust, never assume sanity will prevail
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- So in short
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- Narrow focus
- The absolute insolence, therefore
- In shorter
- Same old
- Same old (2)
- So there it is
- So they just couldn't possibly
- Ringleaders
- Encore une fois the manual
- Butchers and would-be murderers
- Nor of course response to my vid
- Or the second one
- The closed (sealed/wounded/stunted/practically non-existent) mind (20
- Please don't forget The House That Keir Built
- Sarat, Maya, Cioulis, Spetzi,Ritawa
- First part of Fal
- Fal 2 2021
- Fal and Tet
- So who knows
- As if I were capable of caring
- Above the law
- Depict them therefore in bondage
- Money talking
- Pure BDSM
- Please don't forget Lattic
- Meeee
- 'There is no dark'
- Hellenismos, tau-neutrinos, hanging
- Vita brevis ars longa
- True targets
- I a woman
- Boring
- Therefore, Vice-Chancellor
- Thus I refer you to...
- Break the stupid cunt's back
- So there it is
- irreducible evil
- Oversight
- Mock, yes, crawl, no
- All the things you haven't changed
- Cute family picture
- You can check it out on the DTIC site
- Eagles are rare in WC1
- High crimes and midemeanour
ncle Joe and the Na-Mhoram’s Grim
HARD WIRING
Nothing can eliminate the hard-wiring, the instinct of the little hairless ape to be ruled by fear, to surrender to a larger baboon beating its chest: the primate pecking order. The ape brain does not require speech and reason, only obedience and submission.
But the little hairless is also a heart and a mind, the little hairless ape is free to over-ride the hard-wiring; it is also human. It can be set free to be human. Being human can be protected and upheld. The little hairless ape can make reason mainstream in its societies, as did the Ancient Greeks. The little hairless ape can be insufficiently terrorized and continue to function independently, deem the dicta of the head monkey irrational ravings, deem criminal and vile the simply homely custom of the head monkey of torturing or murdering any who challenge it, insist on equality of rights, insist it has an equal right to its own views and an equal right to utter them; demand the head monkey deploy language and reason, not merely its club, and give rational justification for its conduct.
Or of course it can be outlawed, defined as insanity or evil. Thus Stalinism, thus Catholicism, thus Islam, All three fundamentally equally foetid death-cults of obedience enthusiastically injected into mainstream England with the intent of course of poisoning it by the so-called Labour Party
A small hairless monkey on the third rock from the sun. Its problem is it likes being a monkey until it learns to be human. Consequently it is self-obsessed, greedy and vicious. Crawling to bigger monkeys is in its comfort zone, it feels safe, a good monkey, which lots of very bad monkeys have of course manipulated. It has spent its time on this planet killing other monkeys who don’t look the same as it or think the same as it or do the same as it together with doing its utmost to wipe out other life-forms on the planet and finally to make the planet itself uninhabitable. That among other things is on target to be the final result of all its ridiculous praying and primitive rites. They have not improved humanity, only some individual humans. Lots of people have transcended being a monkey and taught that being a monkey isn’t a very clever thing to be and it’s more fun being a human with a heart and a mind, you can love people, you can think, but the idea has not caught on species-wide not least due to the baying of the baboon bad monkeys who have built entire empires, spiritual or literal, on controlling smaller monkeys and who decry and condemn being a human, say being human is really evil. It is given that smaller monkeys are controlled by being overpowered by smaller monkeys, being hurt, hit, tortured killed, in this life or the next. It’s not the brightest or bravest of monkeys and it can be persuaded to believe that it will be tortured for eternity if it fails to obey the commands of bigger monkeys.
The first thing they ditched was the theology of love, all the stuff that people of my age grew up with, irrespective of whether we believed it.
Of those who know anything about these things, it may I think be said we know what Jesus taught, and we know what Buddha taught. We are more familiar with the Noble Eightfold Path than with the Old Testament - and all the dribble about 'Abrahamic faiths' connects nowhere. ________________________________________________________________________________
So we'll just side-line Jesus, right, guys? More formally, what is being ditched is the theology of love, which probably most people would think the heart of Christianity. After all, Jesus thought it the heart of his teaching.
'God is love' is an abstract proposition not susceptible of literal interpretation. It was also central to the CofE's summary of what it means to be a Christian - until they changed the Website. Assuming they have not abandoned this pernicious concept entirely, it is not wholly far-fetched to expect the CofE to uphold it..
Nor, for that matter, is it far-fetched, post Sprong and Honest to God, to expect it to be able to speak to people about concepts of God that do not relate to an old guy in the sky. That any suggestion that there weren't wise men, shepherds and so on causes those who regard themselves as the backbone of Anglicanism to come out in hives and the ABC to be accused of atheism is actually not another matter.
There are interesting things going on in the CofE, people who are actually Christians. Inclusive Church is one. Affirming Catholicism is one. One of my local vicars is another.
7 Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God.
8 He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.
9 In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him.
10 Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another.
12 No man hath seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us.
13 Hereby know we that we dwell in him, and he in us, because he hath given us of his Spirit.
14 And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world.
15 Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him, and he in God.
16 And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.
17 Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment: because as he is, so are we in this world.
18 There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love.
19 We love him, because he first loved us.
20 If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?
21 And this commandment have we from him, That he who loveth God love his brother also
1 John 4
PANTHER -> Site news -> Repost: So some guys had this really freaky idea that everyone should love one another...
by Ysabel Howard - Saturday, 17 December 2011, 06:54 PM
Oh and this:
Galatians 5:14 For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this; Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself
I do not strike myself as the first person whose thought tends to the direction that the idea is greater than the dogma - and that love trumps all other commandments. If there is no love, it goes.
37 Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.
38 This is the first and great commandment.
39 And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
40 On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.
Mark 12:30 And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment.
31 And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these.
Some part of that is hard to understand? It may often be hard to do, but to understand? Love thy neighbour, thy black neighbour, thy white neighbour, thy brown neighbour, thy gay neighbour, thy female neighbour, thy rich neighbour, thy poor neighbour, even, even...thy evolutionary biologist neighbour. (Dawkins in The God Delusion argues that loving thy neighbour meant loving thy fellow Jew, not what we think it to mean, but I think he's wrong, as below*, and in any case it's what we think it means that has shaped western society.) *Leviticus 19:34 But the stranger that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself; for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God.
As thy self. Not more than. Not less than. Skip two thousand years or so and you get to a society of which it is the foundation. I'm not saying we're good at it.
Historically, obviously, notoriously, Christian leaderships have had enormous problems with it and still do, such that it required a couple of revolutions and a secular framework.
Historically, obviously, famously, many Christians have not.
Because of the historical, obvious and notorious, there is an ambiguity over women and gays not shared by the majority of us, an unwillingness to insist we really matter. After all it's in the Bible and the Qu'ran that we don't as much as perfect heterosexual male selves, different rules apply.
There is no reason why anyone should have to accept the totality of these books because in their time they were accepted as the Word of God and there has been an unpleasant insistence that they must be for the whole of time.
Let us suppose that the CofE started (ridiculous thought!) to uphold Christianity and preached that we should love God and our neighbour. This does not entail accepting Jesus as the Son of God, so who is going to have a problem with it? Atheists would find the first part kooky and intellectually objectionable, but we can hardly find it morally objectionable because of the second part: what this god they are saying people should believe in wants you to do is love everyone. (Whoops, there I go forgetting the holy have a monopoly on 'morally objectionable').
Who is going to have major, major problems with loving all neighbours as their selves is a little obvious.
Thus the clergy move the goal-posts. What is wrong with us and there has to be something wrong with us since we do not all flock each Sunday to fill the pews and there cannot be anything wrong with them, is not that we do not love but we do not have faith.
There is deliberate obfuscation between faith and morality or in other words faith and love, the nasty nonsense that one is in some way morally defective if one does not believe in God. Believe me, o men of God, it does not go down well with harmless necessary atheists who do their best to treat everyone well to have you chaps sneering that we have no proper foundation for moral behaviour and are inferior to those who behave like skunks.
Just what was Cantuar getting at in his objection to the notion of belief as a matter of choice?
There is a lot of fluff in this arena. Let me try to blow some of it away.
Belief in a deity is morally and indeed intellectually neutral. It says nothing about the nature of the god and so either what it wants you to do or if it actually wants you to do anything and the existence of some form of being or mind called 'God' can't be disproved.
This being so, people have variously thought their god wanted a society underpinned by slavery or a society in which slavery had been abolished.
What I think the Archbishop was evading saying is the view that if your holy book tells you to mistreat other people, then you have to do it, you can't see how you can't do it.
Except millions of other people manage. Except that is the mind-set of the drones of the Chinese Communist Party and the Nazi Party. Befehl' sind Befehl'. This 'faith' he vaunts is thus an excuse for the closure of debate. One mustn't criticize the behaviour of the religious because they have no choice over it. Nasty, isn't it.
Still nastier, of course, is the underlying proposition that the faithful are less than human, that the content of their minds is not theirs but that which has been put in place of their minds, instilled in them.
Galatians 3:23 But before faith came, we were kept under the law, shut up unto the faith which should afterwards be revealed. 24 Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith. 25 But after that faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster. 26 For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. 27 For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ. 28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus. 29 And if ye be Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise.
Rather obsess about gays and women priests than do what Jesus bloody well told them to do.
What among other things is the New Testament? One of the greatest mystic texts ever penned. So of course it had to be crushed, caged: God is up there, out there, and there is no question, do we understand, no question of any inner journey, inner change, the inside is simply to be imprinted with the commands of the god and to be inert. Brighter crayons in the box haven’t seen it like that.
I sent my Soul through the Invisible,
Some letter of that After-life to spell:
And by and by my Soul return’d to me,
And answer’d “I Myself am Heav’n and Hell :”
Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
20 And when he was demanded of the Pharisees, when the kingdom of God should come, he answered them and said, The kingdom of God cometh not with observation: 21 Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.
Luke 17
The Vedas are the sacred scriptures of Hindus and the Upanishads are the culmination of the Vedic search for Truth or Reality. The Upanishads reveal the ultimate experience of God in which a person can declare ‘’I am Brahman," or " I am God," which is described as nondualistic (advaita) experience or ontological nonduality. The Vedic tradition reveals a progressive growth of divine-human relationship in four stages: relationship through poetry (Samhithas), relationship through ritual or sacrifices (brahmanas), relationship through meditations in the forest (aranyakas) and finally self-realization (Upanishads).
The Upanishads speak of four levels of consciousness, which again show the progressive growth in divine-human relationship: waking consciousness, dreaming consciousness, deep sleep consciousness and the thuriya, which means the fourth. In waking consciousness one identifies with one’s physical body and lives to satisfy one’s physical desires and ambitions. In the dreaming consciousness one identifies with ideals and ideal persons taken from the past or memory and tries to follow and imitate them. Here a person might say I am a Hindu, Christian, and Muslim etc. In the deep sleep one is freed from the personal and collective ideals and ideal persons of the past (time) and enters into the realm of originality and creativity (eternity) and becomes an original and creative person and is able to say, "I am." In the thuriya or the fourth state, one realizes one’s identity with God and says "I am Brahman." The utterance, "I am Brahman," may appear to be a statement of spiritual arrogance but in reality it is an experience of profound humility. In this state, only Brahman remains. To say that "I am God" does not mean that a human being becomes God but affirms that God is the only Reality. There are four or five mahavakyas connected to this ultimate experience: I am Brahman (ahambrahmasmi), you are that-Brahman (tatvamasi), Atman is Brahman (ayatmanbrahma), all this is Brahman (sarvametatbrahma) and Brahman is nondual (prajnanambrahma). These mahavakhyas are different ways of expressing the same advaitic experience. The Vedas should not be seen as systematic treatises of philosophy but as a collection of the various philosophical discoveries and experiences of the seekers of Truth or God. Nonduality in the Vedic and Biblical traditions, John Martin
Indeed at this level 'God', 'Truth' and 'Reality' are treated as synonymous. The following extracts from Ibn Arabi (The Bezels of Wisdom and The Treatise on Being) are taken from a long discussion on the Islamica Community Forum over what is a Sufi, whether Sufism is part of Islam and what is a real Sufi:
The Cosmos is His form. The forms of the Cosmos are the manifest Reality, He being the manifest. He is also their inner essence, being also the unmanifest. He is the first, since He was when they were not, and also the Last, since in their manifestation He is the Essence. [BW X]
The eye perceives naught but Him. We are in His presence at all times, in all states. [BW X]
God is essentially all things. He permeates through all beings created and originated. [BW X]
He is Being itself, the Essence of Being, He is the Preserver of all. In preserving all things, He is preserving His form, lest anything should assume a form other than His Form, which is not possible. [BW X]
The existence of all created things is His existence. Thou dost not see, in this world or the next, anything beside God. [TB]
God is observer and observed.
He is the observer in the observer, and the observed in the observed. [BW X]
None sees Him, save Himself. None perceives Him, save Himself. By Himself he sees Himself, and by Himself he knows Himself. His Veil is part of his Oneness; nothing veils other than he. . . His Prophet is he, and his sending is He, and His word is He.[TB]
The knower and that which he knows are both one, and he who unites and that with which he unites are one, and seer and seen are one. [TB]
Identity of self and God.
Thou art not thou: thou art He. Thou never wast nor wilt be, Thou art neither ceasing to be nor still existing. Thou art He. [TB]
Thou art not what is beside God. Thou art thine own end and thine own object in thy search after thy Lord. [TB]
He who knows himself understands that his existence is not his own existence, but his existence is the existence of God
Sufism (mysticism): Haraam or Halaal?
PANTHER -> Site news -> Extra ecclesiam nulla salus: Go to hell, go directly to hell, do not pass 'Go'.
by Ysabel Howard - Saturday, 22 October 2011, 02:43 PM
There is no salvation outside the Church. I cannot imagine why I doubt this interesting perspective is vigorously shared in all those cosy little chats between persons of faith, with particular reference to the very specific terms in which the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (formerly known as the Inquisition and headed by a certain Herr Ratzinger) condemned (in 2001, not a long time ago, or anything) the work of Father Jacques Dupuis. People say some Muslims are brain-washed, but few can be as brain-washed as fruitcake politicians who think Rome should represent the modern Christian world. The notification is summarized below. The original is here. I have a really good time in the Vatican archives. Scholarly, you know.
The Feb. 26 Vatican censure, known as a "notification," came from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
The notification lauds Dupuis for raising new questions and for his "attempt to remain within the limit of orthodoxy." Nevertheless, it cites "notable ambiguities or difficulties" in the book, and lists several points that theologians must uphold. Those points are:
Jesus Christ is the "sole and universal mediator of salvation for all humanity";
The revelation offered in Jesus offers everything necessary for salvation and has no need of completion by other religions;
Elements of truth in other religions derive from Jesus;
The Word of God and the Holy Spirit are not agents of salvation apart from Jesus Christ;
Different religions are not ways of salvation complementary to the Catholic church;
Followers of other religions are called to be part of the Catholic church;
In themselves, other religions are not means of salvation because they "contain omissions, insufficiencies and errors." Theologian Dupuis says he’s free at last – John L Allen Jr, National Catholic Reporter, March 9th 2001
I trust that has the merit of clarity.
Extra ecclesiam nulla salus. Outside the Church there is no salvation. Okey-dokey, 58 million out of 60 million Brits are kafirs, with just a little humming and hawing, which amounts to it's what they believe but since they've been in democracies longer than Muslims they're more reticent about saying it. This is not an institution that should be let anywhere near a modern plural society.
Father De Mello was just the sort of wise, sainty, sage old guy most people would think of as the best of the Roman Catholic Church. Unfortunately he stepped outside the cage. At least he’d been dead for nine years before Ratzinger’s Inquisition condemned his writings:
...Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) was busy tightening up and closing down. First came the extension of "almost-infallible" to disputed questions like women's ordination and Anglican orders. Then, by means of a procedural ruling, came the effective nullification of the teaching power of regional and national bishops' conferences - and more depressing still, the acquiescence of the bishops in the status of office boy. After a brief run, it seems that episcopal collegiality has now been relegated to the department of obsolescent terms in the holy Roman church.
The final blow came on August 23 with a CDF "notification" that the writings of Father Anthony de Mello have been examined and in part found wanting - "incompatible with the Catholic faith" and a cause of "grave harm." As one Jesuit wag put it, going after de Mello, the very popular Indian Jesuit retreat master who died suddenly of a heart attack at age fifty-six in 1987, is a little like condemning Dr. Seuss!
In my judgment, Father de Mello's Sadhana: A Way to God (Doubleday) remains the best Catholic "how to" book for someone looking for instruction in methods of prayer. Some of de Mello's early texts, the CDF acknowledges, "can be helpful in achieving self-mastery, in breaking the bonds and feelings that keep us from being free, and in approaching with serenity the various vicissitudes of life." But overall de Mello's writings are said to exhibit a "progressive distancing from the essential contents of the Christian faith." Particularly objectionable, it is alleged, are his concept of the unknowability and cosmic impersonality of God, his sense of Jesus "as a master alongside others," a preference for "enlightenment," criticism of the church, and an excessive focus on this life rather than life after death. Bishops were ordered to ensure that the offending texts are withdrawn from sale and not reprinted.
The Vatican is bewildered by de Mello's emphasis on "awareness" and "interior enlightenment" over against Scripture, doctrine, and belief - and puts the worst possible construction on de Mello's awkward formulations. His stress on awareness, I would say, tries to get at the difference between theory and experience, external conformity and interiorized faith, or the letter of the law versus the spirit...
The man was a mesmerizing storyteller, of course, and could have made it as a standup comic in the Catskills. (He also should have been sued for violating copyright laws, for the stories he "borrowed," without credit, from others.) But what I most remember is his image of God - beyond words yes, but boundless in generosity, love, and forgiveness. What I found, in other words, was the gospel, and the very orthodox spirituality of the fourteenth-century classic, The Cloud of Unknowing - a God who is incomprehensible to intellect but knowable to love and to love alone. De Mello used an odd principle to get at the unfathomable goodness of God - the idea that God couldn't be worse than you and I, but had to be at least as good as we are at our best. What came out of that pedestrian principle was a radical doctrine of divine abundance and grace.
Dr. Seuss condemned: grinches go after de Mello. (Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith's rejection of Father Anthony de Mello's writings), Commonweal, Oct 23, 1998, by David Toolan)
Some Catholics are quite as mad as some Muslims:
The Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary are a Congregation of religious brothers and sisters dedicated to a two-fold Crusade: the propagation and defense of Catholic dogma — especially extra ecclesiam nulla salus — and the conversion of America to the one, true Church.
Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary
"Outside the Church there is no salvation" is a doctrine of the Catholic Faith that was taught By Jesus Christ to His Apostles, preached by the Fathers, defined by popes and councils and piously believed by the faithful in every age of the Church. Here is how the Popes defined it:
"There is but one universal Church of the faithful, outside which no one at all is saved." (Pope Innocent III, Fourth Lateran Council, 1215.)
"We declare, say, define, and pronounce that it is absolutely necessary for the salvation of every human creature to be subject to the Roman Pontiff." (Pope Boniface VIII, the Bull Unam Sanctam, 1302.)
"The most Holy Roman Church firmly believes, professes and preaches that none of those existing outside the Catholic Church, not only pagans, but also Jews and heretics and schismatics, can have a share in life eternal; but that they will go into the eternal fire which was prepared for the devil and his angels, unless before death they are joined with Her; and that so important is the unity of this ecclesiastical body that only those remaining within this unity can profit by the sacraments of the Church unto salvation, and they alone can receive an eternal recompense for their fasts, their almsgivings, their other works of Christian piety and the duties of a Christian soldier. No one, let his almsgiving be as great as it may, no one, even if he pour out his blood for the Name of Christ, can be saved, unless he remain within the bosom and the unity of the Catholic Church." (Pope Eugene IV, the Bull Cantate Domino, 1441.)
But man, following the example of his natural father, Adam, often disobeys the authority of God. The fact that the doctrine had to be thrice defined itself proves the Church's paternal solicitude in correcting her erring children who fall into indifferentism. The first goal of Saint Benedict Center is to defend this doctrine. We present here a selection of various articles written for that end.
Outside the Church there is no salvation
Indeed they do. But what, I hear you cry, does the Catechism have to say in the modern age?
838 "The Church knows that she is joined in many ways to the baptized who are honored by the name of Christian, but do not profess the Catholic faith in its entirety or have not preserved unity or communion under the successor of Peter."322 Those "who believe in Christ and have been properly baptized are put in a certain, although imperfect, communion with the Catholic Church."323 With the Orthodox Churches, this communion is so profound "that it lacks little to attain the fullness that would permit a common celebration of the Lord's Eucharist."324
The Church and non-Christians
839 "Those who have not yet received the Gospel are related to the People of God in various ways."325
The relationship of the Church with the Jewish People. When she delves into her own mystery, the Church, the People of God in the New Covenant, discovers her link with the Jewish People,326 "the first to hear the Word of God."327 The Jewish faith, unlike other non-Christian religions, is already a response to God's revelation in the Old Covenant. To the Jews "belong the sonship, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises; to them belong the patriarchs, and of their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ",328 "for the gifts and the call of God are irrevocable."329
840 And when one considers the future, God's People of the Old Covenant and the new People of God tend towards similar goals: expectation of the coming (or the return) of the Messiah. But one awaits the return of the Messiah who died and rose from the dead and is recognized as Lord and Son of God; the other awaits the coming of a Messiah, whose features remain hidden till the end of time; and the latter waiting is accompanied by the drama of not knowing or of misunderstanding Christ Jesus.
841 The Church's relationship with the Muslims. "The plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the Creator, in the first place amongst whom are the Muslims; these profess to hold the faith of Abraham, and together with us they adore the one, merciful God, mankind's judge on the last day."330
842 The Church's bond with non-Christian religions is in the first place the common origin and end of the human race:
All nations form but one community. This is so because all stem from the one stock which God created to people the entire earth, and also because all share a common destiny, namely God. His providence, evident goodness, and saving designs extend to all against the day when the elect are gathered together in the holy city. . .331
843 The Catholic Church recognizes in other religions that search, among shadows and images, for the God who is unknown yet near since he gives life and breath and all things and wants all men to be saved. Thus, the Church considers all goodness and truth found in these religions as "a preparation for the Gospel and given by him who enlightens all men that they may at length have life."332
844 In their religious behavior, however, men also display the limits and errors that disfigure the image of God in them:
Very often, deceived by the Evil One, men have become vain in their reasonings, and have exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and served the creature rather than the Creator. Or else, living and dying in this world without God, they are exposed to ultimate despair.333
845 To reunite all his children, scattered and led astray by sin, the Father willed to call the whole of humanity together into his Son's Church. The Church is the place where humanity must rediscover its unity and salvation. The Church is "the world reconciled." She is that bark which "in the full sail of the Lord's cross, by the breath of the Holy Spirit, navigates safely in this world." According to another image dear to the Church Fathers, she is prefigured by Noah's ark, which alone saves from the flood.334
"Outside the Church there is no salvation"
846 How are we to understand this affirmation, often repeated by the Church Fathers?335 Re-formulated positively, it means that all salvation comes from Christ the Head through the Church which is his Body:
Basing itself on Scripture and Tradition, the Council teaches that the Church, a pilgrim now on earth, is necessary for salvation: the one Christ is the mediator and the way of salvation; he is present to us in his body which is the Church. He himself explicitly asserted the necessity of faith and Baptism, and thereby affirmed at the same time the necessity of the Church which men enter through Baptism as through a door. Hence they could not be saved who, knowing that the Catholic Church was founded as necessary by God through Christ, would refuse either to enter it or to remain in it.336
847 This affirmation is not aimed at those who, through no fault of their own, do not know Christ and his Church:
Those who, through no fault of their own, do not know the Gospel of Christ or his Church, but who nevertheless seek God with a sincere heart, and, moved by grace, try in their actions to do his will as they know it through the dictates of their conscience - those too may achieve eternal salvation.337
848 "Although in ways known to himself God can lead those who, through no fault of their own, are ignorant of the Gospel, to that faith without which it is impossible to please him, the Church still has the obligation and also the sacred right to evangelize all men."338
Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1997
Truly, one could spend the whole of eternity arguing with St Peter over whether one is ignorant, no, not merely of the Gospel of Christ - did one not, after all, attend RE? - but ignorant of knowing that 'the Catholic Church was founded as necessary by God through Christ'. I think, Peter, old boy, the first question has to be did Jesus really give you the keys.
The Catholic Church is the only Church that was given the authority to interpret sacred scripture and to teach on matters of faith and morals without error. From its foundation on St. Peter up through the current Pope, John Paul II, the ultimate authority of the "Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven" given by Jesus Christ have rested with the Catholic Church - and nowhere else!
Una Fides – Apologetics for Catholics and other Christians
That is what they say and that is what they mean or how come the CDF could censure Dupuis?
Let me share with you what the Reformation was. The Reformation was an expansion of thought beyond the entirely arbitrary limits set by the Vatican, the invented reality of the minds of humans, as the Enlightenment and so the present day are expansions of thought beyond the bounds set by Christianity. Minds can go anywhere. The guys in mental cages are going to have to grasp how incredibly pathetic they have been, are, and ever shall be, world without end, amen, when they try to cage everyone else.
http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20010124_dupuis_en.html
PANTHER -> Site news -> 'The Vatican exists first and foremost to preserve its own power.'
by Ysabel Howard - Wednesday, 13 July 2011, 08:50 PM
One paradox of the Polish pope is that while he is rightly revered for helping bring down the godless Communists, he has replicated something very like the old Communist Party in his church. Karol Wojtyla has shaped a hierarchy that is intolerant of dissent, unaccountable to its members, secretive in the extreme and willfully clueless about how people live. The Communists mouthed pieties about "social justice" and the rule of the working class while creating a corrupt dictatorship of bureaucrats. Russians boiled this down to a cynical adage: We pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us. For American Catholics, the counterpart is: They pretend to lead, and we pretend to follow.
Like the Communist Party circa Leonid Brezhnev, the Vatican exists first and foremost to preserve its own power.
Pope John Paul II turns 82 this month, and he looks more mortal by the day. In his photo op with the American cardinals last week, he was so infirm and unintelligible that you wanted to avert your eyes out of pity. But let's not. The uncomfortable and largely unspoken truth is that the current turmoil in the Roman Catholic Church is not just a sad footnote to the life of a beloved figure. This is a crisis of the pope's making.
I do not mean that the pope condones child abuse, although his zeal to combat it ranks right down with that of, say, Cardinal Bernard Law, the pedophile-juggling head of the Boston archdiocese. Despite what you may have read, the pope has not apologized for anything, nor has he acknowledged anything amiss in the hierarchy's decades of dissembling — or, as he dismissively put it, the way church leaders "are perceived to have acted." The fact that the pope's passing reference to the rape of children as a "crime" was treated as a bolt of divine enlightenment reflects just how eager we are to let him off the hook.
It should be clear by now that this scandal is only incidentally about forcing sex on minors. There is no evidence so far that predator priests are more common than predator teachers or predator doctors or predator journalists. The scandal is the persistent failure of the church hierarchy to comprehend, to care and to protect. The Boy Scouts, not an organization in the vanguard of sexual enlightenment, adopted a clear, firm policy to protect children from molestation 19 years ago. The Catholic bishops and their Vatican handlers, meanwhile, are still parsing the rhetorical fine points of "zero tolerance," which is at best an empty slogan (does anyone favor "10 percent tolerance"?) and at worst a way of abdicating responsibility.
The pope lamented last week that the child abuse scandal is eroding trust in the church. But that is rather backward. American Catholics have reacted so explosively to this sordid affair precisely because they felt so little trust to begin with. The distrust is the legacy of Pope John Paul II.
One paradox of the Polish pope is that while he is rightly revered for helping bring down the godless Communists, he has replicated something very like the old Communist Party in his church. Karol Wojtyla has shaped a hierarchy that is intolerant of dissent, unaccountable to its members, secretive in the extreme and willfully clueless about how people live. The Communists mouthed pieties about "social justice" and the rule of the working class while creating a corrupt dictatorship of bureaucrats. Russians boiled this down to a cynical adage: We pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us. For American Catholics, the counterpart is: They pretend to lead, and we pretend to follow.
Like the Communist Party circa Leonid Brezhnev, the Vatican exists first and foremost to preserve its own power. This is disheartening for the many good Catholics who hope this crisis will provoke a renaissance in their church. Nobody quite says it this way, but one reason many Catholics see the moment as ripe for reform is that this pope is on his last legs. Soon, the hope goes, a vigorous new leader may emerge.
Maybe so. But like the Communists, John Paul has carefully constructed a Kremlin that will be inhospitable to a reformer. He has strengthened the Vatican equivalent of the party Central Committee, called the Curia, and populated it with reactionaries. He has put a stamp of papal infallibility on the issue of ordaining women, making it more difficult for a successor to come to terms with the issue. He has trained bishops that the path of advancement is obsequious obedience to himself. Alarmed by priests who showed too much populist sympathy for their parishioners, the pope, according to the Notre Dame historian R. Scott Appleby, has turned seminaries into factories of conformity, begetting a generation of inflexible young priests who have no idea how to talk to real-life Catholics.
Next month, after years of resistance, the American church is supposed to begin requiring that theologians teaching in Catholic universities accept a "mandatum" from their bishops, a pledge of allegiance to doctrinal orthodoxy. The American bishops fear this will stifle intellectual discussion, but the pope insists. No glasnost on his watch.
Nor is the pope about to let America's uppity laity exploit the current crisis to claim a greater voice in their own affairs. The American policy on handling sexual abuse is to be dictated by Rome. And while a large majority of Catholics want leaders who mishandled marauding priests to resign, the culpability of bishops is not even on the Vatican's agenda. It now seems clear that the pope declined to let Cardinal Law resign because he feared it might give the laity the idea their opinion mattered. Cardinal Law promptly marched home and quashed efforts by restive Boston Catholics to organize an association of parish councils. How Soviet is that?
What reform might mean in the church is something I leave to Catholics who care more than I do. I am what a friend calls a "collapsed Catholic" — well beyond lapsed — and therefore claim no voice in whom the church ordains or how it prays or what it chooses to call a sin.
But the struggle within the church is interesting as part of a larger struggle within the human race, between the forces of tolerance and absolutism. That is a struggle that has given rise to great migrations (including the one that created this country) and great wars (including one we are fighting this moment against a most virulent strain of intolerance).
The Catholic Church has not, over the centuries, been a stronghold of small-c catholic values, which my dictionary defines as "broad in sympathies, tastes, or understanding; liberal." This is, after all, the church that gave us the Crusades and the Inquisition.
That seemed destined to change after the Second Vatican Council of 1962-65, which relaxed the grip of the papal apparat and elevated the importance of individual conscience. The Vatican II spirit of a more open and dynamic church invigorated American Catholic support for civil rights and other liberal causes. But it soon ran smack-dab into the sexual revolution.
Probably no institution run by a fraternity of aging celibates was going to reconcile easily with a movement that embraced the equality of women, abortion on demand and gay rights. It is possible, though, to imagine a leadership that would have given it a try. In fact, Pope Paul VI indicated some interest in adopting a more lenient view of birth control, and he handpicked a committee of prominent Catholics who endorsed the idea almost by acclamation. The pope agonized, and then astonished Catholics by reaffirming the old ban.
"If you want to look for where credibility on human sexuality got lost, it got lost there," said the Catholic University sociologist William D'Antonio.
There is some reason to believe the man who changed that pope's mind on birth control was the Polish cardinal who would succeed him. Whether or not that is true, once Cardinal Wojtyla ascended to the papacy he adhered to the most austere, doctrinaire view of sexual ethics, and the most hierarchical concept of church governance.
Implored by Catholics to consider, at least, the lifesaving power of condoms in the age of AIDS, John Paul II was unyielding. He actually grouped contraception with genocide in a litany of "intrinsically evil" acts that condemn sinners to hell for eternity. "The vast majority of Catholic married couples, that is, stand on the wrong side of the abyss with Hitler and Pol Pot," as Charles R. Morris observed in his splendid history of American Catholicism.
In America most Catholics ignore the pope on this, as they do on divorce and remarriage, abortion, sex out of wedlock, homosexuality and many other things Rome condemns as violations of natural law. It seems fair to say that a church that was not so estranged from its own members on subjects of sex and gender, a more collegial church, would have handled the issue of child abuse earlier and better.
There is a dwindling population of older Catholic conservatives who say, in effect, the pope's the man, love it or leave it. And there is a growing population of American Catholics who are doing just that — withdrawing tacitly from Rome while keeping the faith in their own parishes, if they happen to have accommodating clergy, or in their own hearts. Whether the church will reform, or fracture, or continue this continental drift, I have no way of knowing, but I wonder how long faith withstands such a corrosive rain of hypocrisy.
Is the Pope Catholic? by Bill Keller, May 4th 2002
The Church of Rome -> Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, 24 June 1998
by Ysabel Howard - Sunday, 31 May 2009, 12:36 AM
NOTIFICATION
CONCERNING THE WRITINGS OF
FATHER ANTHONY DE MELLO, SJ
The Indian Jesuit priest, Father Anthony de Mello (1931-1987) is well known due to his numerous publications which, translated into various languages, have been widely circulated in many countries of the world, though not all of these texts were authorized by him for publication. His works, which almost always take the form of brief stories, contain some valid elements of oriental wisdom. These can be helpful in achieving self-mastery, in breaking the bonds and feelings that keep us from being free, and in approaching with serenity the various vicissitudes of life. Especially in his early writings, Father de Mello, while revealing the influence of Buddhist and Taoist spiritual currents, remained within the lines of Christian spirituality. In these books, he treats the different kinds of prayer: petition, intercession and praise, as well as contemplation of the mysteries of the life of Christ, etc.
But already in certain passages in these early works and to a greater degree in his later publications, one notices a progressive distancing from the essential contents of the Christian faith. In place of the revelation which has come in the person of Jesus Christ, he substitutes an intuition of God without form or image, to the point of speaking of God as a pure void. To see God it is enough to look directly at the world. Nothing can be said about God; the only knowing is unknowing. To pose the question of his existence is already nonsense. This radical apophaticism leads even to a denial that the Bible contains valid statements about God. The words of Scripture are indications which serve only to lead a person to silence. In other passages, the judgment on sacred religious texts, not excluding the Bible, becomes even more severe: they are said to prevent people from following their own common sense and cause them to become obtuse and cruel. Religions, including Christianity, are one of the major obstacles to the discovery of truth. This truth, however, is never defined by the author in its precise contents. For him, to think that the God of one's own religion is the only one is simply fanaticism. "God" is considered as a cosmic reality, vague and omnipresent; the personal nature of God is ignored and in practice denied.
Father de Mello demonstrates an appreciation for Jesus, of whom he declares himself to be a "disciple." But he considers Jesus as a master alongside others. The only difference from other men is that Jesus is "awake" and fully free, while others are not. Jesus is not recognized as the Son of God, but simply as the one who teaches us that all people are children of God. In addition, the author's statements on the final destiny of man give rise to perplexity. At one point, he speaks of a "dissolving" into the impersonal God, as salt dissolves in water. On various occasions, the question of destiny after death is declared to be irrelevant; only the present life should be of interest. With respect to this life, since evil is simply ignorance, there are no objective rules of morality. Good and evil are simply mental evaluations imposed upon reality.
Consistent with what has been presented, one can understand how, according to the author, any belief or profession of faith whether in God or in Christ cannot but impede one's personal access to truth. The Church, making the word of God in Holy Scripture into an idol, has ended up banishing God from the temple. She has consequently lost the authority to teach in the name of Christ.
With the present Notification, in order to protect the good of the Christian faithful, this Congregation declares that the above-mentioned positions are incompatible with the Catholic faith and can cause grave harm.
The Sovereign Pontiff John Paul II, at the Audience granted to the undersigned Cardinal Prefect, approved the present Notification, adopted in the Ordinary Session of this Congregation, and ordered its publication.
Rome, from the offices of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, June 24, 1998, the Solemnity of the Birth of John the Baptist.
+ Joseph Card. Ratzinger
Prefect
+ Tarcisio Bertone, S.D.B.
Archbishop Emeritus of Vercelli
Secretary
Edit | Delete
See this post in context
PANTHER -> The Church of Rome -> Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, 13 December 2004
by Ysabel Howard - Sunday, 31 May 2009, 12:33 AM
Notification on the book
"Jesus Symbol of God"
by Father Roger Haight S.J.
Introduction
The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, after careful study, has judged that the book Jesus Symbol of God (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1999), by Father Roger Haight S.J., contains serious doctrinal errors regarding certain fundamental truths of faith. It was therefore decided to publish this Notification in its regard, which concludes the relevant procedure for doctrinal examination.
After an initial evaluation by experts, it was decided to entrust the matter directly to the Author’s Ordinary. On February 14, 2000, a series of Observations was sent to Father Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, General Superior of the Society of Jesus, with the request that he bring the errors in the book to the Author’s attention, asking him to submit the necessary clarifications and corrections to the judgment of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (cf. Regulations for Doctrinal Examination, Ch. II).
The response of Father Roger Haight S.J., submitted on June 28, 2000, failed to either clarify or correct the errors brought to his attention. For this reason, and in light of the book’s considerable circulation, it was decided to proceed with a doctrinal examination (cf. Regulations for Doctrinal Examination, Ch. III), with particular attention given to the Author’s theological method.
After an examination by the theological Consultors of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Ordinary Session of February 13, 2002, confirmed that Jesus Symbol of God contains erroneous assertions, the dissemination of which is of grave harm to the faithful. It was decided therefore to follow the procedure for an “examination in cases of urgency”( cf. Regulations for Doctrinal Examination, Ch. IV).
In this regard, in accordance with Art. 26 of the Regulations for Doctrinal Examination, on July 22, 2002, the General Superior of the Society of Jesus was sent a list of the book’s erroneous positions and a general evaluation of its hermeneutical approach, asking him to request that Father Roger Haight S.J. submit, within two canonical months, a clarification of his methodological approach and a correction, faithful to the teachings of the Church, of the errors contained in his book.
The Author’s reply, submitted on March 31, 2003, was examined by the Ordinary Session of the Congregation, on October 8, 2003. The literary form of this reply was such as to raise doubts about its authenticity, that is, if it was truly the personal response of Father Roger Haight S.J.; he was therefore asked to submit a signed response.
A signed response was submitted on January 7, 2004. The Ordinary Session of the Congregation, on May 5, 2004, examined this response and reaffirmed the fact that the book Jesus Symbol of God contains statements contrary to truths of divine and catholic faith that pertain to the first paragraph of the Professio fidei, concerning the pre-existence of the Word, the divinity of Jesus, the Trinity, the salvific value of the death of Jesus, the unicity and universality of the salvific mediation of Jesus and of the Church, and the resurrection of Jesus. The negative critique included also the use of an inappropriate theological method. It was therefore deemed necessary to publish a Notification on the matter.
I. Theological method
In the Preface of his book Jesus Symbol of God, the Author explains that today theology must be done in dialogue with the postmodern world, but it also “must remain faithful to its originating revelation and consistent tradition” (p. xii), in the sense that the data of the faith constitute the norm and criteria for a theological hermeneutic. He also asserts that it is necessary to establish a “critical correlation” (cf. pp. 40-47) between these data and the modes and qualities of postmodern thought, characterized in part by a radical historical and pluralistic consciousness (cf. pp. 24, 330-334): “The tradition must be critically received into the present situation” (p. 46).
This “critical correlation”, however, results, in fact, in a subordination of the content of faith to its plausibility and intelligibility in postmodern culture (cf. pp. 49-50, 127, 195, 241, 273-274, 278-282, 330-334). It is stated, for example, that because of the contemporary pluralistic consciousness, “one can no longer claim [...] Christianity as the superior religion, or Christ as the absolute center to which all other historical mediations are relative. [...] It is impossible in postmodern culture to think [...] that one religion can claim to inhabit the center into which all others are to be drawn” (p. 333).
With particular regard to the validity of dogmatic, especially christological formulations in a postmodern cultural and linguistic context, which is different from the one in which they were composed, the Author states that these formulations should not be ignored, but neither should they be uncritically repeated, “because they do not have the same meaning in our culture as they did when they were formulated [...]. Therefore, one has no choice but to engage the classical councils and to explicitly interpret them for our own period” (p. 16). This interpretation, however, does not in fact result in doctrinal proposals that convey the immutable meaning of the dogmas as understood by the faith of the Church, nor does it clarify their meaning, enhancing understanding. The Author’s interpretation results instead in a reading that is not only different from but also contrary to the true meaning of the dogmas.
With specific reference to christology, the Author states that, in order to transcend a “naive revelational positivism” (p. 173, n. 65), it should be set within the context of a “general theory of religion in terms of religious epistemology” (p. 188). A fundamental element of this theory is the symbol as a concrete historical medium: a created reality (for example, a person, an object, or an event) that makes known and present another reality, such as the transcendent reality of God, which is at the same time part of and distinct from the medium itself, and to which the medium points (cf. pp. 196-198). Symbolic language, which is structurally poetic, imaginative and figurative (cf. pp. 177, 256), expresses and produces a certain experience of God (cf. p. 11), but does not provide objective information about God himself (cf. pp. 9, 210, 282, 471).
These methodological positions lead to a seriously reductive and misleading interpretation of the doctrines of the faith, resulting in erroneous propositions. In particular, the epistemological choice of the theory of symbol, as it is understood by the Author, undermines the basis of christological dogma, which from the New Testament onwards proclaims that Jesus of Nazareth is the Person of the divine Son/Word who became man.[1]
II. The pre-existence of the Word
In accord with his hermeneutical approach, the Author does not accept that there is a basis for the doctrine of the pre-existence of the Word in the New Testament, not even in the prologue of the Gospel of St. John (cf. pp. 155-178), where, he asserts, the Logos is to be understood in a purely metaphorical sense (cf. p. 177). Moreover, he regards the pronouncements of the Council of Nicaea as intending only to assert that “no less than God was and is present and at work in Jesus” (p. 284; cf. p. 438), maintaining that recourse to the symbol “Logos” is to be understood simply as taken for granted,[2] and therefore not the object of the definition, nor plausible in a postmodern culture (cf. pp. 281, 485). The Council of Nicaea, states the Author, “employs scripture in a way that is not acceptable today”, that is, as providing “a source of directly representative information, like facts or objective data, about transcendent reality” (p. 279). The dogma of Nicaea does not teach, therefore, that the eternally pre-existent Son or Logos is consubstantial with and eternally begotten of the Father. The Author proposes “an incarnational christology in which the created human being or person Jesus of Nazareth is the concrete symbol expressing the presence in history of God as Logos” (p. 439).
This interpretation is not in accord with the dogma of Nicaea, which intentionally affirms, even contrary to the cultural vision of the time, the true pre-existence of the Son/Logos of the Father, who became man, in time, for the salvation of humanity.[3]
III. The divinity of Jesus
The Author’s erroneous position on the pre-existence of the Son/Logos of God is consistent with his likewise erroneous understanding of the doctrine on the divinity of Jesus. It is true that he uses expressions such as “Jesus must be considered divine” (p. 283) and “Jesus Christ [...] must be true God” (p. 284). These statements must be understood however in light of his assertions regarding Jesus as a symbolic medium: Jesus is “a finite person” (p. 205), “a human person” (p. 296), “a human being like us” (p. 205; cf. p. 428). The formula “true man and true God” is therefore reinterpreted by the Author in the sense that “true man” means that Jesus is “a human being like all others” (p. 295), “a finite human being and creature” (p. 262); whereas “true God” means that the man Jesus, as a concrete symbol, is or mediates the saving presence of God in history (cf. pp. 262, 295): only in this sense is Jesus to be considered as “truly divine or consubstantial with the God” (p. 295). The “postmodern situation in christology”, says the Author, “entails a change of viewpoint that leaves the Chalcedonian problematic behind” (p. 290), precisely in the sense that the hypostatic union, or “enhypostatic” union, would be understood as “the union of no less than God as Word with the human person Jesus” (p. 442).
This interpretation of the divinity of Jesus is contrary to the faith of the Church that believes in Jesus Christ, eternal Son of God, who became man, as has been proclaimed repeatedly in various ecumenical councils and in the constant preaching of the Church.[4]
IV. The Holy Trinity
Coherent with his interpretation of the identity of Jesus Christ, the Author develops an erroneous Trinitarian doctrine. In his judgment the “later doctrines of an immanent Trinity [should] not be allowed to be read into New Testament teaching” (p. 474). These are to be considered as the outcome of a subsequent inculturation, which led to the hypostatization of the symbols “Logos” and “Spirit”, that is to say, to considering them as “real entities” in God (cf. p. 481). As “religious symbols”, “Logos” and “Spirit” represent two different historical, salvific mediations of the one God: one external, historical, in and through the symbol Jesus; the other internal, dynamic, accomplished by God’s communication of self as Spirit (cf. p. 484). Such a view, which corresponds to the general theory of religious experience, leads the Author to abandon a correct understanding of the Trinity itself “that construes it as a description of a differentiated inner life of God” (p. 484). Consequently, he asserts that “notions of God as a community, ideas of hypostatizing the differentiations within God and calling them persons in such a way that they are in dialogical intercommunication with each other, militate against the first point of the doctrine itself” (p. 483), that is, “that God is single and one” (p. 482).
This interpretation of Trinitarian doctrine is erroneous and contrary to the faith regarding the oneness of God in the Trinity of Persons that the Church has proclaimed and confirmed in numerous and authoritative documents.[5]
V. The salvific value of the death of Jesus
In the book Jesus Symbol of God the Author asserts that “the prophetic interpretation” explains best the death of Jesus (cf. p. 86, n. 105). He also states that it is not necessary “that Jesus thought of himself as universal savior” (p. 211), and that the idea of the death of Jesus as “a sacrificial death, an atoning death, a redeeming death” is merely the result of a gradual interpretation by his followers in light of the Old Testament (cf. p. 85). It is also asserted that the traditional ecclesiastical language “of Jesus suffering for us, of being a sacrifice to God, of absorbing punishment for sin in our place, of being required to die to render satisfaction to God, hardly communicates meaningfully to our age” (p. 241). Such language is to be abandoned because “the images associated with this talk offend and even repulse postmodern sensibility and thereby form a barrier to a salutary appreciation of Jesus Christ” (p. 241).
The Author’s position is in reality contrary to the doctrine of the Church, which has always held that Jesus intended his death to be for the sake of universal redemption. The Church sees in the New Testament references to salvation, in particular the words of the institution of the Eucharist, a norm of faith regarding the universal salvific value of the sacrifice of the Cross.[6]
VI. The unicity and universality of the salvific mediation of Jesus and of the Church
With regard to the universality of the salvific mission of Jesus, the Author states that Jesus is “normative” for Christians, but “non-constitutive” for other religious mediations (cf. p. 403). Moreover, he asserts that “God alone effects salvation and Jesus’ universal mediation is not necessary” (p. 405); indeed, “God acts in the lives of human beings in a plurality of ways outside of Jesus and the Christian sphere” (p. 412). The Author insists on the necessity of moving beyond christocentrism to theocentrism, which “cuts the necessity of binding God’s salvation to Jesus of Nazareth alone” (p. 417). With regard to the universal mission of the Church, he maintains that is necessary to have “the ability to recognize other religions as mediators of God’s salvation on a par with Christianity” (p. 415). Moreover, for the Author it “is impossible in postmodern culture to think that [...] one religion can claim to inhabit the center into which all others are to be drawn. These myths or metanarratives are simply gone” (p. 333).
This theological position fundamentally denies the universal salvific mission of Jesus Christ (cf. Acts 4:12; 1 Tim 2:4-6; Jn 14:6) and, as a consequence, the mission of the Church to announce and communicate the gift of Christ the Saviour to all humanity (cf. Mt 28:19; Mk 16:15; Eph 3:8-11), both of which are given clear witness in the New Testament and have always been proclaimed as the faith of the Church, even in recent documents.[7]
VII. The resurrection of Jesus
The Author’s presentation of the resurrection of Jesus is guided by his understanding of theological and biblical language as “symbolic of experience that is historically mediated” (p.131), as well as by the principle that “one should ordinarily not expect to have happened in the past what is presumed or proven impossible today” (p.127). Understood in this way, the resurrection is described as the affirmation that “Jesus is ontologically alive as an individual within the sphere of God [...], God’s declaration that Jesus’ life is a true revelation of God and an authentic human existence” (p. 151; cf. p. 124); it is a “transcendent reality that can only be appreciated by faith-hope” (p. 126). The disciples, after the death of Jesus, remembered and reflected upon his life and message, in particular his revelation of God as good, loving, concerned about human existence, and saving. This remembering – that “what God begins in love, because of the complete boundlessness of that love, continues to exist in that love, thus overcoming the power and finality of death” (p. 147) – coupled with an initiative of God as Spirit, gradually gave birth to this new belief in the resurrection, that is, that Jesus was alive and exalted within God’s saving power (cf. 146). Moreover, according to the Author’s interpretation, “the historicity of the empty tomb and appearance narratives is not essential to resurrection faith-hope” (p. 147, n. 54; cf. pp. 124, 134). Rather, these stories “are ways of expressing and teaching the content of a faith already formed” (p. 145).
The Author’s interpretation leads to a position which is incompatible with the Church’s doctrine. It is advanced on the basis of erroneous assumptions, and not on the witness of the New Testament, according to which the appearances of the Risen Lord and the empty tomb are the foundation of the faith of the disciples in the resurrection of Christ, and not vice versa.
Conclusion
In publishing this Notification, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is obliged to declare that the above-mentioned assertions contained in the book Jesus Symbol of God by Father Roger Haight S.J. are judged to be serious doctrinal errors contrary to the divine and catholic faith of the Church. As a consequence, until such time as his positions are corrected to be in complete conformity with the doctrine of the Church, the Author may not teach Catholic theology.
The Supreme Pontiff John Paul II, at the Audience granted to the undersigned Cardinal Prefect, approved this Notification, adopted in the Ordinary Session of this Congregation, and ordered it to be published.
Rome, from the Offices of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, December 13, 2004, the Memorial of Saint Lucy, Virgin and Martyr.
Joseph Card. Ratzinger
Prefect
Angelo Amato, S.D.B.
Titular Archbishop of Sila
Secretary
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[1] Cf. Concilium Nicaenum, Professio fidei: DH 125; Concilium Chalcedonense, Professio fidei: DH 301, 302; Concilium Costantinopolitanum II, Canones: DH 424, 426.
[2] The Author speaks of the “hypostatization” and of the “hypostasis” of the Logos and of the Spirit, which he understands as referring to how, in the language of the hellenistic Church, these two biblical metaphors had subsequently become real entities (cf. p. 475).
[3] Cf. Concilium Nicaenum, Professio fidei: DH 125. The Nicene confession, confirmed at other ecumenical councils (cf. Concilium Constantinopolitanum I, Professio fidei: DH 150; Concilium Chalcedonense, Professio fidei: DH 301, 302), constitutes the foundation of the professions of faith of all the different Christian denominations.
[4] Cf. Concilium Nicaenum, Professio fidei: DH 125; Concilium Constantinopolitanum I, Professio fidei: DH 150; Concilium Chalcedonense, Professio fidei: DH 301, 302.
[5] Cf. Concilium Constantinopolitanum I, Professio fidei: DH 150; Quicumque: DH 75; Synodus Toletana XI, Professio fidei: DH 525-532; Synodus Toletana XVI, Professio fidei: DH 568-573; Concilium Lateranense IV, Professio fidei: DH 803-805; Concilium Florentinum, Decretum pro Iacobitis: DH 1330-1331; Concilium Vaticanum II, Const. Dogm. Lumen gentium, nn. 2-4.
[6] Cf. Concilium Nicaenum, Professio fidei: DH 125; Concilium Tridentinum, Decretum de iustificatione: DH 1522, 1523; De poenitentia: DH 1690; De Sacrificio Missae: DH 1740; Concilium Vaticanum II, Const. Dogm. Lumen gentium, nn. 3, 5, 9; Const. Pastor. Gaudium et spes, n. 22; Ioannes Paulus II, Litt. Encycl. Ecclesia de Eucharistia, n. 12.
[7] Cf. Innocentius XI, Const. Cum occasione, n. 5: DH 2005; Sanctum Officium, Decr. Errores Iansenistarum, n. 4: DH 2304; Concilium Vaticanum II, Const. Dogm. Lumen gentium, n. 8; Const. Pastor. Gaudium et spes, n. 22 ; Decr. Ad gentes, n. 3 ; Ioannes Paulus II, Litt. Encycl. Redemptoris missio, nn. 4-6; Congregatio pro Doctrina Fidei, Decl. Dominus Iesus, nn. 13-15. With regard to the universality of the mission of the Church, cf. Lumen gentium, nn. 13, 17; Ad gentes, n. 7; Redemptoris missio, nn. 9-11; Dominus Iesus, nn. 20-22.
http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20041213_notification-fr-haight_en.html
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PANTHER -> The Church of Rome -> Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, 26 November 2006
by Ysabel Howard - Sunday, 31 May 2009, 12:27 AM
NOTIFICATION
on the works of Father Jon SOBRINO, SJ:
Jesucristo liberador. Lectura histórico-teológica de Jesús de Nazaret (Madrid, 1991)[1]
and La fe en Jesucristo. Ensayo desde las víctimas (San Slavador, 1999)[2]
Introduction
1. After a preliminary examination of the books Jesucristo liberador. Lectura histórico-teológica de Jesús de Nazaret (Jesus the Liberator) and La fe en Jesucristo. Ensayo desde las víctimas (Christ the Liberator) by Father Jon Sobrino, SJ, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, because of certain imprecisions and errors found in them, decided to proceed to a more thorough study of these works in October 2001. Given the wide distribution of these writings and their use in seminaries and other centers of study, particularly in Latin America, it was decided to employ the “urgent examination” as regulated by articles 23-27 of Agendi Ratio in Doctrinarum Examine.
As a result of this examination, in July 2004 a list of erroneous or dangerous propositions found in the abovementioned books was sent to the Author through the Reverend Father Peter Hans Kolvenbach, SJ, Superior General of the Society of Jesus.
In March of 2005, Father Jon Sobrino sent a Response to the text of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to the Congregation. This Response was studied in the Ordinary Session of the Congregation on 23 November 2005. It was determined that, although the author had modified his thought somewhat on several points, the Response did not prove satisfactory since, in substance, the errors already cited in the list of erroneous propositions still remained in this text. Although the preoccupation of the Author for the plight of the poor is admirable, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has the obligation to indicate that the aforementioned works of Father Sobrino contain notable discrepancies with the faith of the Church.
For this reason, it was decided to publish this Notification, in order to offer the faithful a secure criterion, founded upon the doctrine of the Church, by which to judge the affirmations contained in these books or in other publications of the Author. One must note that on some occasions the erroneous propositions are situated within the context of other expressions which would seem to contradict them[3], but this is not sufficient to justify these propositions. The Congregation does not intend to judge the subjective intentions of the Author, but rather has the duty to call to attention to certain propositions which are not in conformity with the doctrine of the Church. These propositions regard: 1) the methodological presuppositions on which the Author bases his theological reflection, 2) the Divinity of Jesus Christ, 3) the Incarnation of the Son of God, 4) the relationship between Jesus Christ and the Kingdom of God, 5) the Self-consciousness of Jesus, and 6) the salvific value of his Death.
I. Methodological Presuppositions
2. In his book Jesus the Liberator: A Historical-Theological View, Father Sobrino affirms: “Latin American Christology…identifies its setting, in the sense of a real situation, as the poor of this world, and this situation is what must be present in and permeate any particular setting in which Christology is done” (Jesus the Liberator, 28). Further, “the poor in the community question Christological faith and give it its fundamental direction” (Ibidem, 30), and “the Church of the poor…is the ecclesial setting of Christology because it is a world shaped by the poor” (Ibidem, 31). “The social setting is thus the most crucial for the faith, the most crucial in shaping the thought pattern of Christology, and what requires and encourages the epistemological break” (Ibidem).
While such a preoccupation for the poor and oppressed is admirable, in these quotations the “Church of the poor” assumes the fundamental position which properly belongs to the faith of the Church. It is only in this ecclesial faith that all other theological foundations find their correct epistemological setting.
The ecclesial foundation of Christology may not be identified with “the Church of the poor”, but is found rather in the apostolic faith transmitted through the Church for all generations. The theologian, in his particular vocation in the Church, must continually bear in mind that theology is the science of the faith. Other points of departure for theological work run the risk of arbitrariness and end in a misrepresentation of the same faith.[4]
3. Although the Author affirms that he considers the theological fonts “normative”, the lack of due attention that he pays to them gives rise to concrete problems in his theology which we will discuss below. In particular, the New Testament affirmations concerning the divinity of Christ, his filial consciousness and the salvific value of his death, do not in fact always receive the attention due them. The sections below will treat these specific questions.
The manner in which the author treats the major Councils of the early Church is equally notable, for according to him, these Councils have moved progressively away from the contents of the New Testament. For example, he affirms: “While these texts are useful theologically, besides being normative, they are also limited and even dangerous, as is widely recognized today” (Christ the Liberator, 221). Certainly, it is necessary to recognize the limited character of dogmatic formulations, which do not express nor are able to express everything contained in the mystery of faith, and must be interpreted in the light of Sacred Scripture and Tradition. But there is no foundation for calling these formulas dangerous, since they are authentic interpretations of Revelation.
Father Sobrino considers the dogmatic development of the first centuries of the Church including the great Councils to be ambiguous and even negative. Although he does not deny the normative character of the dogmatic formulations, neither does he recognize in them any value except in the cultural milieu in which these formulations were developed. He does not take into account the fact that the transtemporal subject of the faith is the believing Church, and that the pronouncements of the first Councils have been accepted and lived by the entire ecclesial community. The Church continues to profess the Creed which arose from the Councils of Nicea (AD 325) and Constantinople I (AD 381). The first four Ecumenical Councils are accepted by the great majority of Churches and Ecclesial Communities in both the East and West. If these Councils used the terminology and concepts expressive of the culture of the time, it was not in order to be conformed to it. The Councils do not signify a hellenization of Christianity but rather the contrary. Through the inculturation of the Christian message, Greek culture itself underwent a transformation from within and was able to be used as an instrument for the expression and defense of biblical truth.
II. The Divinity of Jesus Christ
4. A number of Father Sobrino’s affirmations tend to diminish the breadth of the New Testament passages which affirm that Jesus is God: “[The New Testament] makes clear that he was intimately bound up with God, which meant that his reality had to be expressed in some way as a reality that is of God (cf. Jn 20:28)” (Christ the Liberator, 115). In reference to John 1:1, he affirms: “Strictly speaking, this logos is not yet said to be God (consubstantial with the Father), but something is claimed for him that will have great importance for reaching this conclusion: his preexistence. This does not signify something purely temporal but relates him to the creation and links the logos with action specific to the divinity” (Christ the Liberator, 257). According to the Author, the New Testament does not clearly affirm the divinity of Jesus, but merely establishes the presuppositions for it: “The New Testament…contains expressions that contain the seed of what will produce confession of the divinity of Christ in the strict sense” (Ibidem). “All this means that at the outset Jesus was not spoken of as God, nor was divinity a term applied to him; this happened only after a considerable interval of believing explication, almost certainly after the fall of Jerusalem” (Ibidem, 114).
To maintain that John 20:28 affirms that Jesus is “of God” is clearly erroneous, in as much as the passage itself refers to Jesus as “Lord” and “God.” Similarly, John 1:1 says that the Word is God. Many other texts speak of Jesus as Son and as Lord.[5] The divinity of Jesus has been the object of the Church’s faith from the beginning, long before his consubstantiality with the Father was proclaimed by the Council of Nicea. The fact that this term was not used does not mean that the divinity of Jesus was not affirmed in the strict sense, contrary to what the Author seems to imply.
Father Sobrino does not deny the divinity of Jesus when he proposes that it is found in the New Testament only “in seed” and was formulated dogmatically only after many years of believing reflection. Nevertheless he fails to affirm Jesus’ divinity with sufficient clarity. This reticence gives credence to the suspicion that the historical development of dogma, which Sobrino describes as ambiguous, has arrived at the formulation of Jesus’ divinity without a clear continuity with the New Testament.
But the divinity of Jesus is clearly attested to in the passages of the New Testament to which we have referred. The numerous Conciliar declarations in this regard[6] are in continuity with that which the New Testament affirms explicitly and not only “in seed”. The confession of the divinity of Jesus Christ has been an absolutely essential part of the faith of the Church since her origins. It is explicitly witnessed to since the New Testament.
III. The Incarnation of the Son of God
5. Father Sobrino writes: “From a dogmatic point of view, we have to say, without any reservation, that the Son (the second person of the Trinity) took on the whole reality of Jesus and, although the dogmatic formula never explains the manner of this being affected by the human dimension, the thesis is radical. The Son experienced Jesus’ humanity, existence in history, life, destiny, and death” (Jesus the Liberator, 242).
In this passage, the Author introduces a distinction between the Son and Jesus which suggests to the reader the presence of two subjects in Christ: the Son assumes the reality of Jesus; the Son experiences the humanity, the life, the destiny, and the death of Jesus. It is not clear that the Son is Jesus and that Jesus is the Son. In a literal reading of these passages, Father Sobrino reflects the so-called theology of the homo assumptus, which is incompatible with the Catholic faith which affirms the unity of the person of Jesus Christ in two natures, divine and human, according to the formulations of the Council of Ephesus,[7] and above all of the Council of Chalcedon which said: “…we unanimously teach and confess one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, the same perfect in divinity and perfect in humanity, the same truly God and truly man composed of rational soul and body, the same one in being with the Father as to the divinity and one in being with us as to the humanity, like us in all things but sin (cf. Heb 4:15). The same was begotten from the Father before the ages as to the divinity and in the latter days for us and our salvation was born as to His humanity from Mary the Virgin Mother of God; one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, only-begotten, acknowledged in two natures which undergo no confusion, no change, no division, no separation”.[8] Similarly, Pope Pius XII declared in his encyclical Sempiternus Rex: “… the council of Chalcedon in full accord with that of Ephesus, clearly asserts that both natures are united in 'One Person and subsistence', and rules out the placing of two individuals in Christ, as if some one man, completely autonomous in himself, had been taken up and placed by the side of the Word”.[9]
6. Another difficulty with the Christological view of Father Sobrino arises from an insufficient comprehension of the communicatio idiomatum, which he describes in the following way: “the limited human is predicated of God, but the unlimited divine is not predicated of Jesus” (Christ the Liberator, 223, cf. 332-333).
In reality, the phrase communicatio idiomatum, that is, the possibility of referring the properties of divinity to humanity and vice versa, is the immediate consequence of the unity of the person of Christ “in two natures” affirmed by the Council of Chalcedon. By virtue of this possibility, the Council of Ephesus has already defined that Mary was Theotokos: “If anyone does not confess that Emmanuel is truly God and, therefore, that the holy Virgin is the Mother of God (theotokos) since she begot according to the flesh the Word of God made flesh, let him be anathema”.[10] “If anyone ascribes separately to two persons or hypostases the words which in the evangelical and apostolic writings are either spoken of Christ by the saints or are used by Christ about Himself, and applies some to a man considered by himself, apart from the Word, and others, because they befit God, solely to the Word who is from God the Father, let him be anathema”.[11] As can easily be deduced from these texts, the communicatio idiomatum is applied in both senses: the human is predicated of God and the divine of man. Already the New Testament affirms that Jesus is Lord,[12] and that all things are created through him.[13] In Christian terminology, it is possible to say that Jesus is God, who is creator and omnipotent. The Council of Ephesus sanctioned the use of calling Mary Mother of God. It is therefore incorrect to maintain that “the unlimited divine” is not predicated of Jesus. Sobrino’s affirmation to the contrary is understandable only within the context of a homo assumptus Christology in which the unity of the person of Jesus is not clear, and therefore it would be impossible to predicate divine attributes of a human person. However, this Christology is in no way compatible with the teaching of the Councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon on the unity of the person in two natures. Thus, the understanding of the communicatio idiomatum which the Author presents reveals an erroneous conception of the mystery of the Incarnation and of the unity of the person of Jesus Christ.
IV. Jesus Christ and the Kingdom of God
7. Father Sobrino advances a peculiar view of the relationship between Jesus and the Kingdom of God. This is a point of special interest in his works. According to the Author, the person of Jesus as mediator cannot be absolutized, but must be contemplated in his relatedness to the Kingdom of God, which is apparently considered to be something distinct from Jesus himself:
“I shall analyze this historical relatedness in detail later, but I want to say here that this reminder is important because of the consequences […] when Christ the mediator is made absolute and there is no sense of his constitutive relatedness to what is mediated, the Kingdom of God” (Jesus the Liberator, 16).
“We must first distinguish between the mediator and the mediation of God. The Kingdom of God, formally speaking, is nothing other than the accomplishment of God’s will for this world, which we call mediation. This mediation […] is associated with a person (or group) who proclaims it and initiates it: this we call the mediator. In this sense we can and must say, according to faith, that the definitive, ultimate, and eschatological mediator of the Kingdom of God has already appeared: Jesus. […] From this standpoint, we can also appreciate Origen’s fine definition of Christ as the autobasileia of God, the Kingdom of God in person: important words that well describe the finality of the personal mediator of the Kingdom, but dangerous if they equate Christ with the reality of the Kingdom” (Jesus the Liberator, 108).
“Mediation and mediator are, then, essentially related, but they are not the same thing. There is always a Moses and a promised land, and Archbishop Romero and a dream of justice. Both things, together, express the whole of the will of God, while remaining two distinct things” ( Ibidem).
On the other hand, Jesus’ condition as mediator comes solely from the fact of his humanity: “Christ does not, then, derive his possibility of being mediator from anything added to his humanity; it belongs to him by his practice of being human” (Christ the Liberator, 135).
The Author certainly affirms a special relationship between Jesus (mediator) and the Kingdom of God (that which is mediated), in as far as Jesus is the definitive, ultimate, and eschatological mediator of the Kingdom. But, in these cited passages, Jesus and the Kingdom are distinguished in a way that the link between them is deprived of its unique and particular content. It does not correctly explain the essential nexus that exists between mediator and mediation, to use his words. In addition, by affirming that the possibility of being mediator belongs to Christ from the exercise of his humanity, he excludes the fact that his condition as Son of God has relevance for Jesus’ mediatory mission.
It is insufficient to speak of an intimate connection, or of a constitutive relatedness between Jesus and the Kingdom, or of the finality of the mediator [ultimidad del mediador], if this suggests something that is distinct from Jesus himself. In a certain sense, Jesus Christ and the Kingdom are identified: in the person of Jesus the Kingdom has already been made present. This identity has been placed in relief since the patristic period.[14] In his encyclical Redemptoris Missio, Pope John Paul II affirms: “The preaching of the early Church was centered on the proclamation of Jesus Christ, with whom the kingdom was identified”.[15] “Christ not only proclaimed the kingdom, but in him the kingdom itself became present and was fulfilled”.[16] “The kingdom of God is not a concept, a doctrine, or a program […], but it is before all else a person with the face and name of Jesus of Nazareth, the image of the invisible God. If the kingdom is separated from Jesus, it is no longer the kingdom of God which he revealed”.[17]
On the other hand, the singularity and the unicity of the mediation of Christ has always been affirmed by the Church. On account of his condition as the “only begotten Son of God”, Jesus is the “definitive self-revelation of God”.[18] For that reason, his mediation is unique, singular, universal, and insuperable: “…one can and must say that Jesus Christ has a significance and a value for the human race and its history, which are unique and singular, proper to him alone, exclusive, universal, and absolute. Jesus is, in fact, the Word of God made man for the salvation of all”.[19]
V. The Self-consciousness of Jesus
8. Citing Leonardo Boff, Father Sobrino affirms that “Jesus was an extraordinary believer and had faith. Faith was Jesus’ mode of being” (Jesus the Liberator, 154). And for his own part he adds: “This faith describes the totality of the life of Jesus” (Ibidem, 157). The Author justifies his position citing the text of Hebrews 12:2: “Tersely and with a clarity unparalleled in the New Testament, the letter says that Jesus was related to the mystery of God in faith. Jesus is the one who has first and most fully lived faith (12:2)” (Christ the Liberator, 136-137). He further adds: “With regard to faith, Jesus in his life is presented as a believer like ourselves, our brother in relation to God, since he was not spared having to pass through faith. But he is also presented as an elder brother because he lived faith as its ‘pioneer and perfecter’ (12:2). He is the model, the one on whom we have to keep our eyes fixed in order to live out our own faith” (Ibidem, 138).
These citations do not clearly show the unique singularity of the filial relationship of Jesus with the Father; indeed they tend to exclude it. Considering the whole of the New Testament it is not possible to sustain that Jesus was “a believer like ourselves”. The Gospel of John speaks of Jesus’ “vision” of the Father: “Not that anyone has seen the Father except the one who is from God; he has seen the Father”.[20] This unique and singular intimacy between Jesus and the Father is equally evident in the Synoptic Gospels.[21]
The filial and messianic consciousness of Jesus is the direct consequence of his ontology as Son of God made man. If Jesus were a believer like ourselves, albeit in an exemplary manner, he would not be able to be the true Revealer showing us the face of the Father. This point has an evident connection both with what is said above in number IV concerning the relationship between Jesus and the Kingdom, and what will be said in VI below concerning the salvific value that Jesus attributed to his death. For Father Sobrino, in fact, the unique character of the mediation and revelation of Jesus disappears: he is thus reduced to the condition of “revealer” that we can attribute to the prophets and mystics.
Jesus, the Incarnate Son of God, enjoys an intimate and immediate knowledge of his Father, a “vision” that certainly goes beyond the vision of faith. The hypostatic union and Jesus’ mission of revelation and redemption require the vision of the Father and the knowledge of his plan of salvation. This is what is indicated in the Gospel texts cited above.
Various recent magisterial texts have expressed this doctrine: “But the knowledge and love of our Divine Redeemer, of which we were the object from the first moment of His Incarnation, exceed all that the human intellect can hope to grasp. For hardly was He conceived in the womb of the Mother of God when He began to enjoy the Beatific Vision”.[22]
Though in somewhat different terminology, Pope John Paul II insists on this vision of the Father: “His [Jesus’] eyes remain fixed on the Father. Precisely because of the knowledge and experience of the Father which he alone has, even at this moment of darkness he sees clearly the gravity of sin and suffers because of it. He alone, who sees the Father and rejoices fully in him, can understand completely what it means to resist the Father's love by sin”.[23]
Likewise, the Catechism of the Catholic Church speaks of the immediate knowledge which Jesus has of the Father: “Such is first of all the case with the intimate and immediate knowledge that the Son of God made man has of his Father”.[24] “By its union to the divine wisdom in the person of the Word incarnate, Christ enjoyed in his human knowledge the fullness of understanding of the eternal plans he had come to reveal”.[25]
The relationship between Jesus and God is not correctly expressed by saying Jesus was a believer like us. On the contrary, it is precisely the intimacy and the direct and immediate knowledge which he has of the Father that allows Jesus to reveal to men the mystery of divine love. Only in this way can Jesus bring us into divine love.
VI. The Salvific Value of the Death of Jesus
9. In some texts some assertions of Father Sobrino make one think that, for him, Jesus did not attribute a salvific value to his own death: “Let it be said from the start that the historical Jesus did not interpret his death in terms of salvation, in terms of soteriological models later developed by the New Testament, such as expiatory sacrifice or vicarious satisfaction […]. In other words, there are no grounds for thinking that Jesus attributed an absolute transcendent meaning to his own death, as the New Testament did later” (Jesus the Liberator, 201). “In the Gospel texts it is impossible to find an unequivocal statement of the meaning Jesus attached to his own death” (Ibidem, 202). “…Jesus went to his death with confidence and saw it as a final act of service, more in the manner of an effective example that would motivate others than as a mechanism of salvation for others. To be faithful to the end is what it means to be human” (Ibidem, 204).
This affirmation of Father Sobrino seems, at first glance, limited to the idea that Jesus did not attribute a salvific value to his death using the categories that the New Testament later employed. But later he affirms that there is in fact no data to suggest that Jesus granted an absolute transcendent sense to his own death. The Author maintains only that Jesus went to his death confidently, and attributed to it an exemplary value for others. In this way, the numerous passages in the New Testament which speak of the salvific value of the death of Christ are deprived of any reference to the consciousness of Christ during his earthly life.[26] Gospel passages in which Jesus attributes to his death a significance for salvation are not adequately taken into account; in particular, Mark 10:45,[27] “the Son of Man did not comes to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many”; and the words of the institution of the Eucharist: “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many”.[28] Here again, the difficulty about Father Sobrino’s use of the New Testament appears. In his writing, the New Testament data gives way to a hypothetical historical reconstruction that is erroneous.
10. The problem, however, is not simply confined to Jesus’ consciousness about his death or the significance he gave to it. Father Sobrino also advances his point of view about the soteriological significance that should be attributed to the death of Christ: “[I]ts importance for salvation consists in the fact that what God wants human beings to be has appeared on earth […]. The Jesus who is faithful even to the cross is salvation, then, at least in this sense: he is the revelation of the homo verus, the true and complete human being, not only of the vere homo, that is of a human being in whom, as a matter of fact, all the characteristics of a true human nature are present […]. The very fact that true humanity has been revealed, contrary to all expectations, is in itself good news and therefore is already in itself salvation […]. On this principle, Jesus’ cross as the culmination of his whole life can be understood as bringing salvation. This saving efficacy is shown more in the form of an exemplary cause than of an efficient cause. But this does not mean that it is not effective […]. It is not efficient causality, but symbolic causality” [causalidad ejemplar] (Jesus the Liberator, 229-230).
Of course there is great value in the efficacious example of Christ, as is mentioned explicitly in the New Testament.[29] This is a dimension of soteriology which should not be forgotten. At the same time, however, it is not possible to reduce the efficacy of the death of Jesus to that of an example or, in the words of the Author, to the appearance of the homo verus, faithful to God even unto the cross. In the cited text, Father Sobrino uses phrases such as “at least in this sense” and “is shown more in the form,” which seem to leave the door open to other considerations. However, in the end this door is closed with an explicit negation: “it is not efficient causality but symbolic causality” [causalidad ejemplar]. Redemption thus seems reduced to the appearance of the homo verus, manifested in fidelity unto death. The death of Christ is exemplum and not sacramentum (gift). This reduces redemption to moralism. The Christological difficulties already noted in the discussion of the mystery of the Incarnation and the relationship with the Kingdom appear here anew. Only Jesus’ humanity comes into play, not the Son of God made man for us and for our salvation. The affirmations of the New Testament, Tradition, and the Magisterium of the Church concerning the efficacy of the redemption and salvation brought about by Christ cannot be reduced to the good example that Jesus gives us. The mystery of the Incarnation, Death and Resurrection of Jesus, the Son of God become man, is the unique and inexhaustible font of the redemption of humanity, made efficacious in the Church through the sacraments.
The Council of Trent, in its Decree on Justification, states: “When the blessed ‘fullness of time’ had come (Eph 1:10; Gal 4:4), the heavenly Father, ‘the Father of all mercies and the God of all comfort’ (2 Cor 1:3), sent his own Son Jesus Christ to mankind ... to redeem the Jews, who are under the Law, and the Gentiles ‘who were not pursuing righteousness’ (Rom 9:30), that all ‘might receive adoption as sons’ (Gal 4:5). God has ‘put Him forward as an expiation by His Blood, to be received by faith’ (Rom 3:25), for our sins and ‘not for our sins only, but also for the sins of the whole world’ (1 Jn 2:2)”.[30]
This same decree affirms that the meritorious cause of justification is Jesus, the only Son of God, “who, ‘while we were still sinners’ (Rom 5:10), ‘out of the great love with which He loved us’ (Eph 2:4) merited for us justification by His most holy passion and the wood of the cross, and made satisfaction for us to God the Father”.[31]
The Second Vatican Council teaches: “In the human nature united to Himself the Son of God, by overcoming death through His own death and resurrection, redeemed man and re-molded him into a new creation (cf. Gal 6:15; 2 Cor 5:17). By communicating His Spirit, Christ made His brothers, called together from all nations, mystically the components of His own Body. In that Body the life of Christ is poured into the believers who, through the sacraments, are united in a hidden and real way to Christ who suffered and was glorified”.[32]
On this point, the Catechism of the Catholic Church says: “The Scriptures had foretold this divine plan of salvation through the putting to death of ‘the righteous one, my Servant’ as a mystery of universal redemption, that is, as the ransom that would free men from the slavery of sin. Citing a confession of faith that he himself had ‘received’, St. Paul professes that ‘Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures’ (1 Cor 15:3). In particular Jesus' redemptive death fulfils Isaiah's prophecy of the suffering Servant. Indeed Jesus himself explained the meaning of his life and death in the light of God's suffering Servant”.[33]
Conclusion
11. Theology arises from obedience to the impulse of truth which seeks to be communicated, and from the love that desires to know ever better the One who loves – God himself - whose goodness we have recognized in the act of faith.[34] For this reason, theological reflection cannot have a foundation other than the faith of the Church. Only starting from ecclesial faith, in communion with the Magisterium, can the theologian acquire a deeper understanding of the Word of God contained in Scripture and transmitted by the living Tradition of the Church.[35]
Thus the truth revealed by God himself in Jesus Christ, and transmitted by the Church, constitutes the ultimate normative principle of theology.[36] Nothing else may surpass it. In its constant reference to this perennial spring, theology is a font of authentic newness and light for people of good will.
Theological investigation will bear ever more abundant fruit for the good of the whole People of God and all humanity, the more it draws from the living stream which – thanks to the action of the Holy Spirit – proceeds from the Apostles and has been enriched by the faithful reflection of past generations. It is the Holy Spirit who leads the Church into the fullness of truth,[37] and it is only through docility to this “gift from above” that theology is truly ecclesial and in service to the truth.
The purpose of this Notification is precisely to make known to all the faithful the fruitfulness of theological reflection that does not fear being developed from within the living stream of ecclesial Tradition.
The Supreme Pontiff Benedict XVI, at the Audience granted to the undersigned Cardinal Prefect on October 13, 2006, approved this Notification, adopted in the Ordinary Session of this Congregation, and ordered it to be published.
Rome, from the Offices of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, November 26, 2006, the Feast of Christ, King of the Universe.
William Cardinal Levada
Prefect
Angelo Amato, S.D.B.
Titular Archbishop of Sila
Secretary
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[1] The English translation of Jesucristo liberador is: Jesus the Liberator: A Historical-Theological View, (Orbis Books, New York, 1993, 2003). All citations will be taken from the English version.
[2] The English translation of La fe en Jesucristo is: Christ the Liberator: A View from the Victims, (Orbis Books, New York, 2001). All citations will be taken from the English version.
[3] Cf., for example, infra n. 6.
[4] Cf. Second Vatican Council Decree Optatam Totius, 16; John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Fides et Ratio, 65: AAS 91 (1999), 5-88.
[5] Cf. 1 Thes 1:10; Phil 2:5-11; 1 Cor 12:3; Rom 1:3-4, 10:9; Col 2:9, etc.
[6] Cf. Councils of Nicea, DH 125; Constantinople, DH 150; Ephesus, DH 250-263; Chalcedon, DH 301-302.
[7] Cf. DH 252-263.
[8] Chalcedon, Symbolum Chalcedonense, DH 301.
[9] Pius XII, Encyclical Letter Sempiternus Rex: AAS 43 (1951), 638; DH 3905.
[10] Council of Ephesus, Anathematismi Cyrilli Alex.,DH 252.
[11] Ibidem, DH 255.
[12] Cf. 1 Cor 12:3; Phil 2:11.
[13] Cf. 1 Cor 8:6.
[14] Cf. Origen, In Mt. Hom., 14:7; Tertulian, Adv. Marcionem, IV 8; Hilary of Poitiers, Com. in Mt. 12:17.
[15] John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Redemptoris Missio, 16: AAS 83 (1991), 249-340.
[16] Ibidem, 18.
[17] Ibidem.
[18] Ibidem, 5.
[19] Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Declaration Dominus Iesus, 15: AAS 92 (2000), 742-765.
[20] Jn 6:46; Cf. also Jn 1:18.
[21] Cf. Mt 11:25-27; Lk 10:21-22.
[22] Pius XII, Encyclical Letter Mystici Corporis, 75: AAS (1943) 230; DH 3812.
[23] John Paul II, Apostolic Letter Novo Millennio Ineunte, 26: AAS 93 (2001), 266-309.
[24] Catechism of the Catholic Church, 473.
[25] Catechism of the Catholic Church, 474.
[26] Cf., for example, Rom 3:25; 2 Cor 5:21; 1 Jn 2:2, etc.
[27] Cf. also Mt 20:28.
[28] Mk 14:24; cf. Mt 26:28; Lk 22:20.
[29] Cf. Jn 13:15; 1 Pt 2:21.
[30] Council of Trent, Decree De justificatione, DH 1522.
[31] Ibidem, DH1529; cf. DH 1560.
[32] Second Vatican Council, Dogmatic Constitution Lumen Gentium, 7.
[33] Catechism of the Catholic Church, 601.
[34] Cf. Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Instruction Donum Veritatis, 7: AAS 82 (1990), 1550-1570.
[35] Ibidem, 6.
[36] Ibidem, 10.
[37] Cf. Jn 16:13.
Oh pout, all my research in the Vatican archives wasted.
PANTHER -> Site news -> Instead of God eating people, people eat God. Seems a good swap
by Ysabel Howard - Sunday, 18 December 2011, 12:36 AM
And so the story continued to its inevitable hideous ending, and it is a very good story, and which particular dimwits, as with the Qu'ran, decided that everyone had to take it all literally, and the point was that that was the last time ever there would be a human sacrifice of blood and pain to this Yahweh guy because he wasn't Moloch, he was the opposite of Moloch, that it was over, Jesus had broken the game and the 'debt' had been paid in full. Henceforth no-one had to pay for his or her sins, real or imaginary. Only people didn't get the point. Righteously hanging and burning and flogging and crucifying people is too much fun to be dropped.
1When the morning was come, all the chief priests and elders of the people took counsel against Jesus to put him to death:
2And when they had bound him, they led him away, and delivered him to Pontius Pilate the governor.
3Then Judas, which had betrayed him, when he saw that he was condemned, repented himself, and brought again the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders,
4Saying, I have sinned in that I have betrayed the innocent blood. And they said, What is that to us? see thou to that.
5And he cast down the pieces of silver in the temple, and departed, and went and hanged himself.
6And the chief priests took the silver pieces, and said, It is not lawful for to put them into the treasury, because it is the price of blood.
7And they took counsel, and bought with them the potter's field, to bury strangers in.
8Wherefore that field was called, The field of blood, unto this day.
9Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremy the prophet, saying, And they took the thirty pieces of silver, the price of him that was valued, whom they of the children of Israel did value;
10And gave them for the potter's field, as the Lord appointed me.
11And Jesus stood before the governor: and the governor asked him, saying, Art thou the King of the Jews? And Jesus said unto him, Thou sayest.
12And when he was accused of the chief priests and elders, he answered nothing.
13Then said Pilate unto him, Hearest thou not how many things they witness against thee?
14And he answered him to never a word; insomuch that the governor marvelled greatly.
15Now at that feast the governor was wont to release unto the people a prisoner, whom they would.
16And they had then a notable prisoner, called Barabbas.
17Therefore when they were gathered together, Pilate said unto them, Whom will ye that I release unto you? Barabbas, or Jesus which is called Christ?
18For he knew that for envy they had delivered him.
19When he was set down on the judgment seat, his wife sent unto him, saying, Have thou nothing to do with that just man: for I have suffered many things this day in a dream because of him.
20But the chief priests and elders persuaded the multitude that they should ask Barabbas, and destroy Jesus.
21The governor answered and said unto them, Whether of the twain will ye that I release unto you? They said, Barabbas.
22Pilate saith unto them, What shall I do then with Jesus which is called Christ? They all say unto him, Let him be crucified.
23And the governor said, Why, what evil hath he done? But they cried out the more, saying, Let him be crucified.
24When Pilate saw that he could prevail nothing, but that rather a tumult was made, he took water, and washed his hands before the multitude, saying, I am innocent of the blood of this just person: see ye to it.
25Then answered all the people, and said, His blood be on us, and on our children.
26Then released he Barabbas unto them: and when he had scourged Jesus, he delivered him to be crucified.
27Then the soldiers of the governor took Jesus into the common hall, and gathered unto him the whole band of soldiers.
28And they stripped him, and put on him a scarlet robe.
29And when they had platted a crown of thorns, they put it upon his head, and a reed in his right hand: and they bowed the knee before him, and mocked him, saying, Hail, King of the Jews!
30And they spit upon him, and took the reed, and smote him on the head.
31And after that they had mocked him, they took the robe off from him, and put his own raiment on him, and led him away to crucify him.
32And as they came out, they found a man of Cyrene, Simon by name: him they compelled to bear his cross.
33And when they were come unto a place called Golgotha, that is to say, a place of a skull,
34They gave him vinegar to drink mingled with gall: and when he had tasted thereof, he would not drink.
35And they crucified him, and parted his garments, casting lots: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, They parted my garments among them, and upon my vesture did they cast lots.
36And sitting down they watched him there;
37And set up over his head his accusation written, THIS IS JESUS THE KING OF THE JEWS.
38Then were there two thieves crucified with him, one on the right hand, and another on the left.
39And they that passed by reviled him, wagging their heads,
40And saying, Thou that destroyest the temple, and buildest it in three days, save thyself. If thou be the Son of God, come down from the cross.
41Likewise also the chief priests mocking him, with the scribes and elders, said,
42He saved others; himself he cannot save. If he be the King of Israel, let him now come down from the cross, and we will believe him.
43He trusted in God; let him deliver him now, if he will have him: for he said, I am the Son of God.
44The thieves also, which were crucified with him, cast the same in his teeth.
45Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land unto the ninth hour.
46And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
47Some of them that stood there, when they heard that, said, This man calleth for Elias.
48And straightway one of them ran, and took a spunge, and filled it with vinegar, and put it on a reed, and gave him to drink.
49The rest said, Let be, let us see whether Elias will come to save him.
50Jesus, when he had cried again with a loud voice, yielded up the ghost.
51And, behold, the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom; and the earth did quake, and the rocks rent;
52And the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose,
53And came out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many.
54Now when the centurion, and they that were with him, watching Jesus, saw the earthquake, and those things that were done, they feared greatly, saying, Truly this was the Son of God.
55And many women were there beholding afar off, which followed Jesus from Galilee, ministering unto him:
56Among which was Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James and Joses, and the mother of Zebedees children.
57When the even was come, there came a rich man of Arimathaea, named Joseph, who also himself was Jesus' disciple:
58He went to Pilate, and begged the body of Jesus. Then Pilate commanded the body to be delivered.
59And when Joseph had taken the body, he wrapped it in a clean linen cloth,
60And laid it in his own new tomb, which he had hewn out in the rock: and he rolled a great stone to the door of the sepulchre, and departed.
61And there was Mary Magdalene, and the other Mary, sitting over against the sepulchre.
62Now the next day, that followed the day of the preparation, the chief priests and Pharisees came together unto Pilate,
63Saying, Sir, we remember that that deceiver said, while he was yet alive, After three days I will rise again.
64Command therefore that the sepulchre be made sure until the third day, lest his disciples come by night, and steal him away, and say unto the people, He is risen from the dead: so the last error shall be worse than the first.
65Pilate said unto them, Ye have a watch: go your way, make it as sure as ye can.
66So they went, and made the sepulchre sure, sealing the stone, and setting a watch.
Mark 27
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PANTHER -> Site news -> Please do not feed the god. He really doesn't appreciate it
by Ysabel Howard - Sunday, 18 December 2011, 12:35 AM
If the country is to have a god, it should I think be a vulnerable, bleeding, sorrowing, sighing god, one you want to help, get him down from that bloody cross, give him some water, where are the medics - unless of course you are shithead who despises 'weakness' and worships power - who assumes busily anyone condemned by 'the authorities who know what's best' is a bad person.
The story screams a great many things unpalatable, impossible or intolerable to hierarchical legalistic little minds.
No, no, it's God who takes the knocks. He's big enough to carry it. Human bodies break too easily.
God is Man. What you do to humans you do to God and he cries out in pain.
The relationship between God and Man redefined, realigned, not what the little hierarchical legalistic minds had made it.
When people say they feel Jesus is their friend, they are talking about something else besides the internal dialogue. You cannot be frightened of a guy hanging from a cross or for that matter of a babe in a manger.
Hence among other things the monopolizing of 'interpretation' by the Magisterium and the historic hostility to people reading the Bible for themselves.
It is a very dangerous story and everything had to be, was and often is done to neutralize it.
My poem continued:
If as thyself then equally
No way you matter more than he
Love's no prize for docility
Thy neighbour and thy enemy...
It's why they nailed him to a tree
This God who wants a dead Rushdie.
There is a very long (eight Web pages) article from the New Yorker on Ratzinger and Islam here, where it is recognized that it's not the same God.
The most zealous of God's self-appointed representatives on earth, hate human, human has to be crushed, in order for 'divine' to hold sway, but there is no difference and when they ought to be teaching people how to deal with 'human', to be reconciled within, all they can come up is thou shalt not. They hate people for being people and any excuse will do to punish them. The first deformity is of course that you have to subscribe to their particular fantasy in order to be a proper whatever, to be accepted in the club. They don't want people to be people, they want people to be what they say people should be.
Most of us therefore fall at the first hurdle, all that evil secularism having established our right to be people.
The 'evils of secularism' apart from the straightforward stopping the fun of sadists and other freaking nutters are:
feminism - women being people
gay rights - gays being people
independent thought - people being people
sex - people being people
They assume the right to dictate to others. That is the great divide, the unquestioned assumption of rights over the hearts and minds of others. Again it is simply a question of two separate continuums.
So they continue their conspiracy against people, everything reduced to 'thou shalt not', and Neu Arbeit continues its relentless campaign against reason and love, the intellectual and moral bases of the nation,and one can only wonder how much they're paid, though as a good Marxist it's not so much who owns whom that interests me as who owns what, which would seem to me the basis for their apparent fixation that resistance is useless; as a good modern Marxist I don't want to nationalize anything but I do rather dwell on the concept of sequestration, having a mild objection to the notion of my country having been bought and paid for by a bunch of diseased fucks. If thanks to the ministrations of our frankly fascist government, we consequently end up with what thinks it's going to be Islamic Britain, and England's answer to Indiana Jones rescues the first victim of a public flogging, at least we all know who'll replace the intended victims on the whipping-post
PANTHER -> Anglican England, past, present and future -> Some things for our oh so Christian government to think about
by Ysabel Howard - Saturday, 21 March 2009, 10:38 PM
We who knew Jesus and heard his discourses say that he taught Man how to break the chains of his bondage, that he might be free from his yesterdays.
But Paul is forging chains for the man of tomorrow. He would strike with his own hammer upon the anvil in the name of one whom he does not know.
The Nazarene would have us live the hour in passion and ecstasy.
The Man of Tarsus would have us be mindful of laws recorded in ancient books.
Kahlil Gibran: Jesus, Son of Man
The line continued through the early Christian era, and there is no doubt that Joshua ben Miriam, or Jesus, was well acquainted with the hidden Jewish tradition. His whole outlook and frame of reference is Kabbalistic; thus, for example, his term ‘Kingdom of Heaven’ directly refers to the Malkhut of Beriah.
Zev ben Shimon Halevi: The Way of Kabbalah
Truth nailed upon the cross compels nobody, oppresses no one; it must be accepted and confessed freely; its appeal is addressed to free spirits...A divine Truth panoplied in power, triumphant over the world and conquering souls, would not be consonant with the freedom of man's spirit, and in the mystery of Golgotha is the mystery of liberty….Every time in history that man has tried to turn crucified Truth into coercive truth he has betrayed the fundamental principle of Christ.
Nicholas Berdyaev
…all legitimate religious study must lead to unlearning the difference, the illusory differences, between boys and girls, animals and stones, day and night, heat and cold.
JD Salinger: Franny and Zooey
Jesus was a sailor when he walked upon the water/and he spent a long time watching/from a lonely wooden tower/and when he knew for certain/only drowning men could see him/he said, All men must be sailors now/until the sea shall free them/but he himself was broken/long before the sky would open/forsaken, almost human/he sank beneath your wisdom like a stone/And you want to travel with him/you want to travel blind/and you think maybe you’ll trust him/because he’s touched your perfect body/with his mind.
Leonard Cohen: ‘Suzanne takes you down….’
Particularly of course they don’t want it spread about that Jesus was rather obviously a Jewish mystic.
Jesus understood that people who claim to love God will refuse love to their fellow-humans on the grounds that is the will of God unless they are also clearly instructed that the refusal of love to their fellow-humans isn't on the menu.
The working of love in erasing the incessant demands of the self is entirely clear to most normal people, anyone who has nursed a sick child or an aged relative, forgotten the misdeeds of an erring friend or partner; that which may in certain states of consciousness nag and niggle simply ceases to matter, becomes absent, no longer exists.
How faith achieves this is not similarly clear. What is clear is that what people of faith decide is the will of God may be an enshrining as divine will of those incessant demands, an insistence they alone matter.
I gather that, at least in Dante's time, sin was defined as wrongly directed love, love directed to the self, instead of to its proper objects, first God, then others, based on the Augustinian premiss that evil is itself nothing, only a parody of love, which is all.
If one loves God with all one's heart, soul, strength, it is hard to see what love remains for others. Must one not, therefore, regard loving others as synonymous with loving God? If the teachings of the Church appear to require not loving certain defined groups of others, then loving God cannot be thus synonymous.
May it not therefore be said that it is actually more important to direct love to others, love which is evidently not directed to the self, than to direct to God a love which is morally ambivalent?
That at least has been the decision of the best of the West. Loving one's neighbour as oneself demands one does not force one's questionable views on him or her, therefore loving God must be optional.
Jesus, Son of Man, Son of God, Kabbalist, Sufi, realizing his Buddha-nature, Brahma, whatever. 'I am God,' claimed the Sufi al-Hallaj, rather a long time ago; as you of course know mysticism cannot be claimed a modern or liberal error. He too was crucified. Alternative perspectives of Jesus in the West once were simple. Either he was a dashed good chap, one of the great ethical teachers of the world, but not of course God, or he was simply a lunatic. We place this man you call God in the context of world-thought and he looks different. This is a dilemma for you distinct from a simple atheist claim that he was not divine. This invades your territory, saying he was divine, as we all are. The Information Age in free societies enables circulation of the alternative notion he was a towering religious figure, but not your towering religious figure. Alternative paths to beauty, awe, wonder the transcendent from those who have no faith, those who are 'deeply religious non-believers', as Einstein styled himself, as Professor Dawkins begins by saying, equally invade your territory. The perspective of science is not limited to the existence of this one planet, this one galaxy or even this one universe. The beauty, strangeness, size and scope of reality dazzle those who contemplate them and engender intellectual transcendence, humility, for however much we know we do not and cannot know it all. The mental landscape has changed beyond recognition. There are no recognizable and positive landmarks for you, only those you describe as heresy, incredulity, apostasy, evil.
Translated out of the language of mystics, there is not much in Jesus' words that is problematic and, if one considers him as human like the rest of us, he was clearly under stress the whole time and entitled to moments of bad temper, as people are when they're saying something others aren't necessarily going to like hearing and those others are constantly trying to catch them out - as people are when they have a shrewd idea they may be going to end up dead and have to make a difficult decision as to whether they are going to fight to put off that sad day - not, I think, to win: in the end Jesus' army, had he raised one, would surely have confronted the entire Roman empire.
Normal people who are interested in this stuff are generally more familiar with the Noble Eightfold Path than the Old Testament; one of the Vatican’s many problems is people who are interested in Jesus on the opposite side.
PANTHER -> Site news -> What happened when the Pope got to heaven
by Ysabel Howard - Sunday, 12 February 2012, 08:14 PM
I found this on a Sri Lankan site ages ago. Sigh. So many different ways of looking at the world, d'you see. Get more bloody sense out of earthworms in the garden.
PANTHER -> Site news -> Fortunately there is Dharma the Cat
by Ysabel Howard - Sunday, 12 February 2012, 08:12 PM
http://www.mahabodhi.net/dcat/
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PANTHER -> Site news -> More about the new Uncle Joe
by Ysabel Howard - Sunday, 12 February 2012, 08:10 PM
So, yes, I am aware 'His Holiness' considers Buddhism currently a greater threat to the Church than Marxism and so that I am to those whom faith means works, and in fairness in this personal respect I don't think that includes the old chap himself, most definitely expendable. Exactly what I think, which is not of course know, is that I have accidentally hit upon a conspiracy of wealthy religious fascist nutcases who think the world can be carved up between Catholicism and Islam, Jews, Marxists, women of course well below the salt; after all, they reason, it only needs a few dirty little slave-boys in high places (Blair springs to mind). Life is not quite that simple, guys, but they do not in any sense live in the real world.
Wednesday, September 20, 2006
Pope Benedict and the Buddhism/Masturbation Controversy
Pope Benedict’s recent scuffle with Islam, including his non-apology--characterized by Middle East observer Abu Aardvark as “that time-honored classic ‘I'm sorry that you got angry when I called you fat’” dodge--- has highlighted his confrontational stance toward other faiths.
A column by Madeleine Bunting in The Guardian makes a case for his hostility toward Judaism and Buddhism as well.
In the process, Bunting retails the notorious statement made by Benedict while he was still Cardinal Ratzinger, purportedly equating Buddhism with masturbation.
Buddhist Channel reported that the full quote, delivered in an interview with L’Expresse in 1997, went like this:
"If Buddhism is attractive, it's only because it suggests that by belonging to it you can touch the infinite, and you can have joy without concrete religious obligations,'' Ratzinger said. ``It's spiritually self-indulgent eroticism.''
Other outlets cut Cardinal Ratzinger some slack, opining that “auto-erotisme”, the term used in the original article, could more accurately translated at “self-love” or “narcissism”.
Actually, auto-eroticism is an English-language term coined by the sexologist Havelock Ellis to describe mental or physical sexual activity not directed toward a sexual partner. It was later picked up by Freud.
Cardinal Ratzinger knows his Freud. He considers Freud an originator of the secular spirit he detests, and entitled one of his major pronouncements on the decadence of Europe “Europe and its Discontents”—a play on Freud’s Civilization and its Discontents.
In this case, I assume Cardinal Ratzinger employed auto-eroticism as a term of art, using a modern term for the sinful, non-reproductive sexuality abhorred by the church to condemn a kind of shallow spiritual gratification that he considers futile, degenerate, and dangerous to the soul.
So, although the Pope was not referring to Buddhists as masturbators, they can find little consolation in the awareness that what he really meant is that he was dismissing their spiritual exercises as pathetic and contemptible.
In any event, Benedict’s hostility toward non-Catholic faiths is a matter of public record.
Religions that have felt the lash of his disapproval include Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, and Anglicanism.
In 2000, the National Catholic Reporter published a list of Cardinal Ratzinger’s greatest hits, including a money quote from the same L’Expresse interview:
"In the 1950s someone said that the undoing of the Catholic church in the 20th century wouldn't come from Marxism but from Buddhism. They were right."
Reportedly, at the time Cardinal Ratzinger was incensed that there were allegedly more Frenchmen studying to be Buddhist monks than Benedictine monks.
As the Catholic Church’s top doctrine cop—running the Congregation for the Doctrine ]of the Faith, a.k.a. the Inquisition--he also ordered a German Benedictine monk, Willigis Jager, a.k.a Zen master Ko-un Roshi, to cease and desist from all public statements and activities promoting dialogue between Catholics and Buddhists.
Beyond strict demands for doctrinal conformity and acknowledgement of the Catholic Church’s unique role as interlocutor between humanity and the one true God, Pope Benedict’s worldview is apparently militantly Euro-centric. Europe, in the Pope’s view, is a creation of Catholicism and the implication is that Catholicism without Europe cannot survive.
There was speculation that Cardinal Ratzinger chose his papal title not to commemorate Pope Benedict XV, but to honor St. Benedict, who founded the Benedictine order and is credited with saving Catholicism from extinction in the European Dark Ages.
The Pope considers Europe to be Catholicism’s home turf, under assault from alien faiths and lazy tendencies toward syncretism (literally “Cretan towns forming an alliance” according to my Webster’s, but figuratively speaking a meaningless mishmash).
Islam at the gates of Europe is Pope Benedict’s particular bugbear.
The Pope’s perspective—in which Catholicism is inextricably bound to its European matrix—has a creepy clash-of-civilization vibe and his recent statements criticizing Islam were undoubtedly a conscious “stay outta my yard” challenge to the demographic, social, and political encroachment of Islam into Europe.
In the lament on decadent, faithless Europe that he coauthored--Without Roots—Cardinal Ratzinger wrote:
At the hour of its greatest success, Europe seems hollow, as if it were internally paralyzed by a failure of its circulatory system that is endangering its life, subjecting it to transplants that erase its identity. At the same time as its sustaining spiritual forces have collapsed, a growing decline in its ethnicity is also taking place.
Hmmm…”a growing decline in its ethnicity”. I don’t think he’s referring to a shortage of good Vietnamese restaurants in Rome.
Pared to the bone, the Pope’s attitudes look a lot like racism cloaked in theology.
Reuters reported on an interview Cardinal Ratzinger gave to Le Figaro in 2004:
Joseph Ratzinger... has said Muslim but secular Turkey should seek its future in an association of Islamic nations rather than the EU, which has Christian roots.
In an interview last year for France's Le Figaro Magazine, Ratzinger, then doctrinal head of the Roman Catholic Church, said Turkey had always been "in permanent contrast to Europe" and that linking it to Europe would be a mistake.
If Pope Benedict is going to be busy re-fighting the crusades in Europe and the Middle East and reliving the glories of the Inquisition, he’s not going to have a lot of interest and energy in dealing with Buddhism except as a competitor for the hearts, minds, and souls of the parfit knights of his Caucasian Round Table.
Indeed, since he is wrapped up in his theory that European civilization is uniquely Catholic, he seems ready to write off the rest of the world—at least those parts with “great cultural protagonists”, as he termed them, such as East Asia and South Asia--as spheres that are innately Buddhist , Muslim, or Hindu.
It will be interesting to see how the Roman Catholic Church fares in China under Benedict’s reign.
Permalink posted by China Hand @ 10:31 PM >
Comments:
Some commenters on Peking Duck made the point that it’s understandable that the Pope should have the right to speak his mind. And if he believes that Buddhists are (doctrinal) jerk-offs, well, free speech doesn’t stop at the Inquisitor’s door.
A few thoughts.
The Pope believes his is the one true faith, qualitatively different from all others.
That’s his right, even his duty. It’s the cornerstone of his faith.
He can also trash other religions, not only as inferior in doctrine and rigor but also false paths to salvation.
No problem.
But he’s also the head of a religion that claims not only to profess the true Word of God, but also to serve as God’s instrument on earth, and provide the means of human salvation that is not only unique but universal (“Catholic).
It’s a test of his leadership—and God-given duties as Pope—to put points on the board for the Catholic Church worldwide, and not just in the European homeland.
Pope John Paul II, who shared many of Cardinal Ratzinger’s views including, presumably, revulsion at Buddhism, understood that his job was to condone inter-faith dialogue so that the Catholic Church could claim to encompass the good points of other religions and at the same time assert its superiority in the critical matters of revealed truth and salvation.
Benedict XVI, on the other hand, appears to have made the dubious decision that other religions have to be discredited en toto so that Catholicism is the last faith standing.
It’s an understandable position for an Inquisitor to take.
It’s the necessary stand for the leader of an embattled sect, which is how Pope Benedict sometimes appears to regard himself.
But it is not a viable position for the leader of a global church that considers itself not only unique in truth but infinite in its understanding and universal in its scope.
Tearing every other religion (and for good measure, secular humanism) to their foundations so that the deluded turn to the true faith would be a tough job even if the Savior appeared in person to do the job. For fallible men and a fragile church to attempt it by themselves is simply beyond their capacity.
So instead of engaging in a multi-millennial argument with Islam, Buddhism, and every other religion that won’t be decided until the true God shows up to settle accounts, I think the interests of the Catholic Church and the world would be better served if Pope Benedict decided his faith could be most effectively protected and propagated by looking for good in the hearts of Buddhists, Muslims -- instead of making remarks easily construed as deriding them and their religions.
Permalink posted by China Hand : 11:27 AM
I tried to masturbate to Buddhism, but to no avail...I guess I will have to try this Catholicism thing…again.
What the Great Papa needs to do is offer a better product than hatred, hypocrisy, fear, etc., and the people may come to him. But until that time, he may find that they are a lot smarter than that.
The other amazing thing to me about ALL religious types is why the need to “SAVE” everybody? …and against their will too. Why the need to hate people who just do not see it your way and are going to hell because of it? Should not THEY be coming to YOU?
If I knew the way out of a dangerous place to nirvana, would not people be following me because they know better? Of course if they knew I was just wasting their time, going to steal their money and just make me worship them in the HOPES of going to nirvana, I might be hesitant to follow me and they would then resort to some form of kidnapping.
Basically like most commerce, the Pope just needs a better product and the people will come. But selling snake oil does not work in this day of enlightenment and that just pisses these type of folks off. That is why they hate science and are trying to destroy the public school system. Ignorance is bliss to them.
Permalink posted by G Warcriminal Shrub : 5:43 AM
As a former Catholic, and present Buddhist, I agree that Benedict's approach to spreading "the Faith" is counter-productive -- not just to members of other religions, atheists, agnostics, secular humanists -- but to many Catholics themselves. These Catholics and others wished for a return to Vatican II,to Pope John XXIII with his outreach and embrace of people of other faiths and and to those with no faith.
Many persons were hoping Benedict XVI would be as Pope -- a different person than he often was seen in his previous role as Head of the Propagation of the Faith.
These hopes appear to have been dashed to the ground.
Permalink posted by zingiber : 7:49 AM
This morning I read that the Creation Museum in Kentucky has had 100,000 visitors when they were hoping for 25,000 the first year. This museum purports that the earth is merely 6,000 years old, Adam and Eve were there at the beginning in our present form, and that dinosaurs walked alongside them while Noah was busily building his ark and gathering together male and female species of every animal in existence in order to save them for procreation.
Then in the Middle East, in the name of religion we have family members killing their sisters because she "dishonored" them by leaving a husband she was forced to marry as a child.
Then Benedict comes out with his remark that the Catholic Church is the "one true" religion. In a world of billions of people, each having a mind of their own, he spews the same old same old I was fed for 12 years of Catholic schooling.
Religion? I don't think so.
Permalink posted by Permafrost : 2:30 PM
O Well
so this ------------
Sweet John ___________
Religion
is
most prudent
discerning
all
human error*
Alas
roasted
poor sweet
Joan
to
a
perfect
medium rare *
Blessings mebob *****************hufm
PANTHER -> Site news -> Priests out of step with Ratzinger
by Ysabel Howard - Sunday, 12 February 2012, 08:08 PM
Catholic Church In Italy Out Of Step With Ratzinger
"Shame!" screeched the Vatican’s official newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, "Fake confessions in search of a shameful scoop!"
But what on earth had got the Vatican’s propaganda rag in such a flap? Well, it seems Ratzinger is not happy with Italian journalists who posed as ordinary Catholic congregants and went to confession to admit to invented sins. They wanted to find out just how in step with the Vatican the average parish priest is in Italy. "Shame! There is no other word to express our distress toward an operation that was disgusting, worthless, disrespectful and particularly offensive," L’Osservatore Romano said in an editorial.
The reporters made their fake confessions to 24 different priests in five Italian cities, including Rome. The magazine L’Esspresso, which published the results, said the idea was to see how priests handle difficult pastoral situations and whether they followed the strict dogmas laid out by church teaching.
What the journalists found was that priests are almost uniformly out of step with the Vatican on a range of social issues. The only matter on which they did unanimously follow the Vatican line was on abortion.
One of the reporters claimed in the confessional that she had let a doctor switch off the respirator that kept her father alive. "Don’t think any more about it," she was told by a friar in Naples. "If I had a father, a wife or a child who had lived for years only because of artificial means, I would pull out the plug."
More than once, the magazine said, priests gave quite different advice on what the Church regards as "sins" – on issues such as homosexuality, divorce, stem-cell research, euthanasia and prostitution. One reporter said he was HIV-positive and asked if he should use a condom with his girlfriend. One priest said no, another said it was more of a personal matter than one of conscience.
Another journalist posed as a researcher who had received a lucrative offer to work abroad on embryonic stem cells. With the extra cash, he said, he and his wife could think about starting a family. So should he take up the post? "Yes. Yes. Of course," came the reply.
Given the Vatican’s almost hysterical hatred of homosexuality, with its pronouncements that gay people are ‘intrinsically evil’ and ‘morally disordered’ it comes as a surprise to one gay man who went to one of the confessions to be told by the priest that the best solution was to "come out" and "be yourself".
L’Osservatore Romano said the deception was "a sacrilege, because it violated the sacred space in which a self-recognised sinner asks intimately to receive God’s merciful love." The paper failed to say that it made Ratzinger look like even more of an authoritarian bigot than usual. It also illustrated that truly compassionate people simply disregard his pronouncements.
PANTHER -> Site news -> Fortunately there is Dharma the Cat
by Ysabel Howard - Sunday, 12 February 2012, 08:12 PM
http://www.mahabodhi.net/dcat/
PANTHER -> Site news -> Abu Nuwas
by Ysabel Howard - Saturday, 3 December 2011, 04:14 PM
They do not for instance share that one of the Muslim world's greatest poets was gay.
The lies they tell, etc: Abu Nuwas
by Ysabel Howard - Sunday, 21 May 2006, 09:59 AM
Abu Nuwas was born to a father whom he never knew, Hani, who was a soldier in the army of Marwan II. His Persian mother was named Golban, who worked as a weaver. Biographies differ on the date of Abu Nuwas' birth, ranging from 747 to 762. Some say he was born in Damascus, others at Busra, and others at Al-Ahwaz.
His given name was al-Hasan ibn Hani al-Hakami, 'Abu Nuwas' being a nick-name: 'Father of the Lock of Hair' referred to the two long locks of hair which hung down to his shoulders.
When Abu Nuwas was still a boy, his mother apparently sold him to a shopkeeper from Yemen, Sa’ad al-Yashira. The young Abu Nuwas apparently worked for al-Yashira in his grocery shop at Basra, Iraq. In time, Abu Nuwas' youthful beauty and intelligence caught the attention of Walibah ibn al-Hubab, a poet noted for his blond hair. Al-Hubab bought Abu Nuwas's freedom, took him under his wing, mentoring him in studies of theology and grammar, as well as poetry. The two became lovers. Later, Abu Nuwas continued his studies under Khalaf al-Ahmar. Tradition declares that he also lived for a year among the Bedouins to purify his knowledge of unadulterated Arabic.
Abu Nuwas migrated to Baghdad, possibly in the company of Walibah ibn al-Hubab, and soon became renowned for his witty and humorous poetry, which dealt not with the traditional desert themes, but with urban life and the joys of wine and drinking (khamriyyat), loving adolescent boys and young men (mudhakkarat), and ribald humor (mujuniyyat). "For young boys, the girls I’ve left behind, and for old wine set clear water out of mind," is a typical verse of his. "I delight in what the Book forbids, and flee what is allowed," was another, showing how unashamed Nuwas was about his indulgences.
He was infamous for his mockery and satire, two of his favorite themes being the sexual passivity of men and the sexual intemperance of women. Despite his celebration of male sexual freedom, he was less than sympathetic towards lesbianism, and often mocked what he perceived as its inanity. He liked to shock society by openly writing about things which Islam so vehemently forbade. He may have been the first Arab poet to write about masturbation, his judgment being that it was inferior to the love of boys but preferable to marriage.
His commissioned work includes poems on the topic of hunting, the love of women, and panegyrics to his patrons.
Ismail bin Nubakht said of Abu Nuwas:
"I never saw a man of more extensive learning than Abu Nuwas, nor one who, with a memory so richly furnished, possessed so few books. After his decease we searched his house, and could only find one book-cover containing a quire of paper, in which was a collection of rare expressions and grammatical observations."
[edit] Exile and imprisonment
Abu Nuwas was forced to flee to Egypt for a time, after he wrote an elegiac poem praising the Barmakis, the powerful family which had been toppled and massacred by the caliph, Harun al-Rashid. He returned to Baghdad in 809 upon the death of Harun al-Rashid. The subsequent ascension of Muhammad al-Amin, Harun al-Rashid's twenty-two-year-old libertine son (and former student of Abu Nuwas) was a mighty stroke of luck for Abu Nuwas. In fact, most scholars believe that Abu Nuwas wrote most of his poems during the reign of Al-Amin, a caliph who shared Abu Nuwas' tastes for wine and boys. His most famous royal commission was a poem (a 'Kasida') which he composed in praise of as-Amin.
"According to the critics of his time, he was the greatest poet in Islam." wrote F.F. Arbuthnot in Arabic Authors. His contemporary Abu Hatim al Mekki often said that the deepest meanings of thoughts were concealed underground until Abu Nuwas dug them out.
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PANTHER -> Site news -> Islamic culture and civilization
by Ysabel Howard - Saturday, 3 December 2011, 04:06 PM
There is an Islam which is delightful, which is civilized and which neither Warsi nor any other member of the political class heaving and sweating on the subject of ‘Islamophobia’ and finally giving birth to a small mouse thinks to tell Britain.
It is central to the subject to discuss these things because, if we are told, as we are, the death-cult, the extremists, or indeed the highly conservative, shall we say, are not Islam or not the totality of Islam, the question arises what then is Islam and no answer is given, only vague generalizations. Nor is Hafiz, Rumi or the artists or indeed the architects and the astronomers the totality of Islam, but any one of them represents a good answer. It is possible to be quite cross with those whose cultural backdrop is Islam and I am, especially with those such as Warsi who have achieved prominence and therefore a platform, from which it generally appears they prefer proclaiming victimhood to telling us all what uninformed idiots we are and rapidly correcting our ignorance, a notable exception being Professor Jim al-Khalili. An alternative image is not all people need but it is a start, that which enables them to shrug off the loonies and say that is not Islam.
It leads inexorably to the conclusion that what they want is acceptance of fascism and brain-death.
This is (my favourite, this one, pensive poets of the world unite, we have nothing to lose but our chains).
Many more to be found at A Sufi Cookbook and Art Gallery, a garden of pure delight.
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PANTHER -> Site news -> Love IS the law
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