Via Jesus’ General comes this toecurlingly awful rapping fundie granny.
Forgive her, she knows not what she does. Fo’ shizzle.
(Can’t say I’m surprised at the existence of GodTube, especially in light of the daft hubris that produced the laughable Conservapedia)
From King Aardvark’s Kick in the Nuts via the ever reliable Pharyngula (did you know Karl Rove’s stepdad was a model for a genital piercings mag? No, neither did I):
Breaking New: Dutch Priest is a Contemptible Jerk
From CBC.ca, a catholic priest in the Netherlands by the name of Harm Schilder is being a assheaded jerkwad to his neighbours. Schilder’s church holds services every weekday morning. Much to the dismay of the townsfolk around him, at the ungodly hour of 7:15am, he rings the church bells loudly and proudly (well, 7:15am is ungodly for me, though everything is ungodly for me, but anything taking place at 7:15am is more ungodly than most things). And the townsfolk want him to stop, or at least turn down the volume a bit. Municipal officials have been urging Schilder to stop ringing the bells for months (Update: according to www.katholieknederland.nl, since March 16th)and recently told him that, starting Aug 16, if he didn’t stop he would be fined a whopping 5000 euros each morning.
Says municipal spokesman Thomas Heesters, “The council does not want to get involved in this – it’s a house of prayer – but we have to take into account the feelings of local residents.” That actually bothers me a bit. Just because Schilder runs a church instead of any other establishment, the council isn’t keen to get involved. Thankfully, they are putting aside their misplaced respect for the church and are proceding with the fines. The church rang its bells on Thursday and Friday, incurring fines worth 10000 euros.
That Schilder fellow sure seems like a nice accomodating person.
What’s Schilder’s reply? “People who are bothered by the bell should know that we pray for them in the mass.” Seriously, this is what he said on the church website. What a dillhole. That’s basically a giant “screw you” to everyone who is pissed off at loud noises in the morning. He’s saying that, because he’s on the side of God, he can be as inconsiderate as he wants.
If I had to pick one national trait to ascribe to the Dutch nation above any other it would be just this kind of mule-headed bloody obstinacy – yes, I’m looking at YOU, the neighbours who’ve been leisurely banging away and drilling* for the past 6 weeks from sunup till sunset and beyond.
*That’s not a double entendre, they really are banging and drilling. Ecstatic moans I can handle, hammer-drills not so much.
I thought Jesuits In Space was just fiction: but no, it seems as though the bloody Jesuits get everywhere.
Mind you, theologically speaking if the Jesuits accept Second Life as an actual second life, what does that make The Afterlife they preach? Third Life?
Society of Jesus calls missionaries to Second Life
Saving virtual souls from ‘erotic simulation‘
By Cade Metz in San Francisco
Published Friday 27th July 2007 18:36 GMTJesuit missionaries may soon venture into Second Life, intent on saving virtual people from virtual sins.
Writing in the Italian Jesuit journal La Civilta Cattolica, whose contents are approved by the Vatican, Father Antonio Spadaro has told fellow Catholics that they shouldn’t be wary of venturing into Second Life’s virtual world, arguing that the online alternate universe might be the perfect place to land converts, Reuters reports.
“It’s not possible to close our eyes to this phenomenon or rush to judge it,” Spadaro said. “Instead, it needs to be understood … the best way to understand it is to enter it.” A regular contributor to the Jesuit journal, Spadaro has also lauded Tom Waits as a Christian role model.
Really? Tom Waits? Well maybe he has a point there…No! I refute the hipness of Jesuits. That’s how they get you, the sneaky buggers. First it’s science fiction, then it’s rock music, then it’s the internet…
With his latest piece, the 40-year-old academic warned that “the erotic dimension is very present” in Second Life, explaining that users often buy virtual genitalia for their virtual avatars and that Linden Lab’s 3D world is “open to any form of erotic stimulation from prostitution to pedophilia.”
I expect that last activity’ll have priests flocking to Second Life in their droves.
What is the Catholic church’s position on celibate priests committing virtual sin, anyway? Is it still a sin? Since it’s virtual and not actual hat’s worse, het or gay virtual priest sex or paedophiliac priest zex? After all, none of it’s really happening.
I was never a fan of Second Life to begin with, it seems no different to the first really, except with clunkier avatars and the ability to virtually fly. And once religion is involved then there really is no difrerence at all. So much for the new paradigm of online society.
But he also said that Second Life is home to various churches and temples, quoting a Swedish Muslim who says “his avatar prays as regularly as he prays in real life,” and though this sort of thing is far from the norm, Spadaro believes that many who venture into Second Life’s virtual den of iniquity may be calling out for virtual help.
Well if they are I’m sure they can find it with no help from bloody interfering missionaries.
“Deep down, the digital world can be considered, in its way, mission territory,” he said. “Second Life is somewhere where the opportunity to meet people and to grow should not be missed, therefore, any initiative that can inspire the residents in a positive way should be considered opportune.”®
What I want to know is whether these priests who’ll venture into Second Life will do so as priests or whether they’ll hide their true purpose and what they actually are behind a non-religious avatar. There are serious issues about honesty and integrity that arise from Second Life as just another channel for religious proselytisation for any religious group, not just Catholics : nobody knows who anyone is, what their age is or what their religion, if any, is unless and until they choose to reveal it. Messing with unknown people’s religious beliefs is playing with fire.
What would be fun, though, is if the Jesuits entered Second Life en masse and ended up being converted to Hinduism. Or if they all had Spanish Inquisition avatars…
How many is that now? I forget – the list of fundy sex offenders is getting so long it’ll soon need its own dedicated server.
Bristol pastor, Christian radio station employee charged with indecent exposure
Published 07/30/2007 By Kacie Dingus Breeding
A Christian radio station employee and Bristol pastor has been charged with indecent exposure as well as DUI and violation of the open container law.
[…]
According to the Johnson City Press article, Tester allegedly pulled up in a blue 2007 Toyota Camry and offered to give Johnson City police officers oral sex when they arrived at 308 S. Belmont Street to investigate a report of indecent exposure.
Tester, allegedly wearing a skirt, then reportedly got out of his car at the Belmont Car Wash and urinated in a wash bay in public view with children present.
A search of Tester’s vehicle reportedly revealed a half-empty pint-sized bottle of vodka and an empty bottle of Oxycodone in the passenger floorboard. Morris said Tester had told him about the painkiller prescription, which he’d said was prescribed due to previous back surgeries.
According to reports, Tester also allegedly admitted to police that he had been drinking and failed all field sobriety tests.
According to commenters at the paper, Tester’s parishioners and listeners are arguing that he was set up by police and that he is in fact so devout and modest that he “wouldn’t even go into a place where people wear shorts”.
I’m no fan of the police but even I’m pushed to imagine why they’d bother to force-feed an obscure fundy Tennessee radio host oxycontin and booze, dress him in a skirt. and make him horny for sweaty, hot yet entirely heterosexual man-love.
Speaking of which, I was criticised on a sex discussion bulletin board recently (this happens when you tag posts ‘sexuality’) for making fun of Vitter The Shitter, which apparently means I’m a prude who’s down on those with alternative sexual preferences.
I suspect the same people would say the same about my continued featuring of fundy sex offenders. For them I’ll say it slowly, calmly and clearly:
IT’S THE HYPOCRISY, STUPID.
[Hat tip goes to Hawthorne Wingnut, which also makes it Comment of The Day.]
Simon Jenkins’ excellent Guardian article pointing out that the Pope is a totally bonkers megalomaniac (my description, not Jenkins’) for condemning the C of E as ‘not a real church’ inspired this nicely potted explanation of Roman Catholicism:
Mujokan
July 13, 2007 5:02 AM
The whole thing is so arcane. Edit a bunch of mixed up writings and call it “The Book”, stir in a bunch of Classical Greek philosophy and miscellaneous Mediterranean cultural practices, sift it through 1500 years of imperial politics and arguments over stuff like whether some dead Jewish apocalyptarian had one body or two, not forgetting to keep a few ingredients from all the other weird religions you’ve displaced, then try to jam it into the modern scientific world like fitting an African elephant into the boot of the Pope-mobile.
What can you say? I don’t know how anyone, looking round at the world today and the universe it spins in, can claim to know the will of God with such certainty.
Unless they are schizophrenic, and there have been enough of those in the history of religion, certainly.
40 days in the desert with no food and water would make anybody see things, yes. Not that that deserves crucifixion.
You want to be Catholic, fine, whatever, as long as you don’t interfere with the rest of us. O one thing I don’t understand about today’s Catholics is how they can look at Pope Benedict and see holiness and benevolence, when what I see is Uncle Fester the Child Molester.
It’s the bloodless complexion and the tiny beady glinti from down in those massive hollow eyesockets… and the row of little grey teeth in his trap of a mouth….
In fact the more I think of it he becomes less Fester and more Pennywise The Clown sans makeup. Oh my… who put those those orange pompoms on the Papal Prada?
