In an amazing volte-face, Pope Ratzo MCXXXXIV has said that God might just have dropped a bit of a bullock with his no condoms fiat.
Fresh from a summit meeting with an imaginary being atop Mount Sinai, Ratzo returned with some stone tablets stating that condoms might be justified on a case by case basis to prevent the spread of HIV/Aids. However, this was qualified by Ratzo saying their use would be limited to the bumpy female lady thing gripping a condom tightly between her knees when engaged in that dirty, shameful and disgusting thing men and women do.
Pope Benedict said the "sheer fixation on the condom implies a banalisation of sexuality" where sexuality was no longer an expression of love, "but only a sort of drug that people administer to themselves". I guess he’s never heard of oxytocin – the love hormone. Nor can he ever have seen animals rutting; not much in the way of love going on there, just plain procreation aligned with a bit of good old-fashioned sexual enjoyment.
What on earth can he mean by ‘on a case by case basis’? Is he going to personally judge each case with applicants queuing up outside the Vatican?
I wonder if he’ll next try and slip women into the church on the pretext that they’re OK in special circumstances and on a case by case basis? Cleaning, sewing, cooking? Perhaps God has been wrong about a plethora of dogmatic issues.
In another story about religious superstition, the Bishop of Lincoln, The Right Reverend Dr John Saxbee, will bless Lincolnshire's gritters in the hope of cutting the number of winter crashes. He has blessed the county's fleet each year since 2003 and said that past ceremonies had been followed by a reduction in road deaths, which was "perhaps not a coincidence".
Well, the only way to test his hypothesis is for him not to wave his magic wand over the gritters for a couple of years and see if the number of accidents increases. Without such a test his statement has as much validity as me saying that tearing up my Sunday newspaper while uttering incantations to Zeus keeps the elephants out of South Gloucestershire.
5 comments:
Sometimes you wake up in the morning and wonder which century you live in.
Alan: I was fully expecting a rant from you over yesterday's post.
Ah the armies of the faithful, gotta love em..
Mind you, road gritters around Reading last winter were pretty scarce so maybe God has decreed a new way to punish unbelievers, i.e. deny them adequate road maintenance (nothing like moving with the times I suppose :)
It is the nature of the Vatican to be about a hundred years behind the times; there can be benefits to this counterweight but I think it futile to convince you of this. However, your idea that the Pope has a Batphone to God is wildly misrepresentative - do you believe this, or are you just committed to distorting the beliefs of those who are not allied to your world view? ( Perhaps solely for your own amusement! :D )
As for blessing the gritters, by insisting that the matter at hand is testing the efficacy of the blessing, you impose your own values on the interpretation of these events. An alternative reading of this story is that a dignitary respects the gritters sufficiently to conduct a public ritual in their honour. Whether the blessing "works" is neither here nor there unless you are committed either to "proving God" (which is wildly stupid) or to a rabid form of consequentialism where outcomes are more important than people (which is wildly disturbing).
Like the religious figures you poke at, you seem quite certain in your own beliefs. I think, perhaps, you are closer in temperament to them than you are perhaps comfortable recognising.
Well, each to their own. :)
*waves*
Chris: Note the comments at the masthead.
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