Just read that again, slowly. And consider the implications: Continue reading
Category Archives: Anglican/Episcopalianism
UK: Good news! — Anglican Church decides to ignore Bible
Yes, we know it says homosexuals should be killed, but fuck, eh — what’s a little thing like a direct command from God when you weigh it against the chance of losing parishioners? Continue reading
Australia: Anglican school condones doping by student athlete
Because when you have religion you don’t need ethics. Continue reading
Australia: Anglican Bishop resigns over child abuse cover-ups
Bishop Keith Slater today apologised for his past failings in managing the allegations of physical, psychological and sexual abuse at the North Coast Childrens Home in Lismore between 1940 and the 1980s. Continue reading
Australia: ‘My headmaster made me a pedophile’
If I get him the wool, will he make me one too? Continue reading
UK: All the way up: former Archbishop of York admits complicity in child abuse
A CHILD sex scandal involving children in Australia and Britain has hit the top echelon of the Anglican Church, with allegations that some of its most senior clergymen failed to respond properly to complaints of horrific abuse. Continue reading
UK: The Primate of All England, and a really together guy
What do you mean, it’s not really the Archbishop? Continue reading
UK: Are you being persecuted?
Try this quick quiz:
…Are you prevented from constantly judging complete strangers? Continue reading
UK: Equal treatment for all faiths!
…except those stinkin’ atheists. Continue reading
Australia: Too vile for one cult? Try another!
A PRIEST described as “one of the worst offenders in the history of the Anglican Church” moved between parishes in NSW, and later joined the Baptist Church, despite senior clerics knowing he had allegedly committed serial sex abuse.
Geoffrey Albert Taylor is alleged to have abused dozens of predominantly teenage women and girls over at least three decades from the 1960s.
Of course, knowing someone has ‘allegedly done’ something is not the same as knowing he’s done it. But I expect they could have found out if it had bothered them.
Australia: PM endorses religion’s right to bigotry
PRIME Minister Julia Gillard has assured religious groups they will have the ”freedom” under a new rights bill to discriminate against homosexuals and others they deem sinners, according to the head of the Australian Christian Lobby.
Under current law, faith-based organisations, including schools and hospitals, can refuse to hire those they view as sinners if they consider it ”is necessary to avoid injury to the religious sensitivities of adherents of that religion”.
Ms Gillard has met Australian Christian Lobby managing director Jim Wallace several times, and he says she assured him ”she has no intention of restricting freedom of religion” when it comes to religious groups’ legal rights to discriminate in hiring and firing.
As a devout atheist it ‘injures my religious sensitivities’ when people try to get away with this crap.
Canada: If it’s Thursday, then it must be Ask A Confabulist Day!
Dead kids, good God — what’s up with that?
Ask the Religion Experts: How can we explain a tragedy like the Newtown shootings?
It’s appropriate, because these guys wrote the book on crazy! Here’s a summary, so you don’t have to read it:
Jews: Dunno.
Anglicans: ‘Cos people are shite and God hates us.
Sikhs: God knows, we don’t.
Muslims: Can we have more time, please?
Bah’ai: God? What God?
Hindus: See Sikhs above.
Atheists: Stupid question!
Buddhism: Dunno why it happened, but Buddhism could have prevented it.
Catholics: God gave us this great stuff, so dodge the question.
Fundamentalist Christians: God da man, dude! Don’t give him no shit, yo!
How come they didn’t ask any Satanists?
Update: I didn’t realise, but at the Ottawa Citizen every Thursday is Ask A Confabulist Day!
UK: No sex, please, we’re Bishops!
Men in a civil union will now be allowed to become bishops in the Church of England, but they are not allowed to have sex.
Intercourse between two men — or two women — remains a sin.
“Homosexual genital acts fall short of the Christian ideal and are to be met with a call to repentance and the exercise of compassion,” according to Anglican doctrine.
Men and women in same-sex unions were already allowed to serve as priests in the Church of England, but there was a moratorium on advancement to the episcopate — becoming a bishop — while the church considered the issue.
The church announced Friday that if men in celibate civil unions may be priests, then there is no reason for them not to be bishops, as long as they are “living in accordance with the teaching of the Church on human sexuality.”
Said the Bishop of Westminster
To the Bish of Bath and Wells,
“Will you marry me tomorrow
To the sound of wedding bells?
We’ll drive off from the reception
In a limousine of white.
But I won’t fellate your willy,
Because that would not be right.”
UK: Listening to gay marriage opposition ‘like visiting a farm museum’
Dr Logan has suggested Lottery funds could be used to set up an interactive intolerance museum where visitors could pay to watch someone weave an argument out of bits of Bible and some string.
He added: “They should make the arguments by candlelight. And they should speak while holding their lapels.”
Australia: Don’t call it ‘rape’!
Call it a ‘discrepancy’.
A teenage boy has been charged with rape in Scotland and several fellow students have returned to Australia in disgrace after they were chosen to represent Sydney’s prestigious The King’s School in an international leadership exchange program….
In the latest scandal, a 16-year-old boy returned to Australia a fortnight ago after he was arrested, charged and remanded in custody over an alleged sexual assault at Scotland’s oldest boarding school, Loretto….
…one parent, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, claimed King’s – Australia’s oldest independent school – had become consumed by a culture of ”cover up”.
She said: ”Power and influence rule the school and the boarder culture breeds bullying and contempt. This sort of behaviour is being excused again and again.”…
Fairfax Media is aware of the identities of several students involved in overseas discrepancies but has chosen not to reveal them.
King’s is a wealthy Anglican private school — though you have to look hard on its website these days to find any evidence of its religious affliliation — heavily subsidised by Australian taxpayers.
UK: Misogynistic religious group practices misogyny!
Bristol University Christian Union have forbidden women from speaking at their weekly meetings.
The ban reflects the recent decision by the Church of England synod to reject the introduction of female bishops, consequently ignoring the last century of the equal rights movement.
Having spent ‘a lot of time exploring this issue, seeking God’s wisdom on it and discussing it together’ the CU executive committee decided that it is not appropriate for women to teach alone at weekly meetings, or be the main speaker at the CU weekend away.
Women are also banned from speaking alone at the group’s mission weeks.
However, it’s not all gloom and doom: women are allowed to speak as a double act with their husbands. Those who are unmarried must remain silent.
“Some of the women members protested.” said a spokesman for the Christian Union. “But we stoned them and they went away.”
UK: In Anglican beauty contests…
… Miss Ogyny always wins.
The Church of England has again voted down the introduction of women bishops, after a long and divisive debate including over 100 speeches.
The measure had majority support but did not win the two-thirds majority in all three houses of the General Synod that was needed for it to pass. It was lost in the House of Laity by just six votes.
UK: Former Anglican bishop held on suspicion of child abuse
The Reverend Peter Ball, 80, a former bishop of Gloucester, was detained by officers from Sussex Police at his home in Somerset. He was held on suspicion of sexual offences committed against eight boys and young men aged from 12 to their early 20s when he was bishop of Lewes.
Another Anglican clergyman, The Reverend Vickery House, 67, was arrested at his home in Haywards Heath, West Sussex, on suspicion of sexual offences against two teenage boys between 1981 and 1983.
If you’re still attending a church, if you’re still supporting their activities or putting money in their collection plate, then you need to ask yourself seriously: How much am I contributing to these atrocities? How much of it is my fault?
US: God and Hurricane Sandy — yes, he DID it, he just didn’t MEAN it
What if God just wanted to go paddling?
As Hurricane Sandy barges through the northeastern U.S., what are people of faith to make of it? Is it a punishment from God, as some pastors have already declared? It it a test? Will everything be OK? Pastors, rabbis, imams and other clergy have been inundated with these kinds of questions and requests for prayers. The answers are complex, and vary among faiths.
But they all have one thing in common: none of them make any sense.
“Nature is value-free,” said Kushner, a rabbi of the conservative Jewish tradition. “It can’t tell the role between the deserving the undeserving. God’s role is not to decide where the hurricane goes and how severe it is. God’s role is to motivate people to help neighbors and improve methods to predict hurricanes. God is found not in the problem, but in the resilience.”
See, God’s just a regular guy like you and me, except for knowing everything and being all-powerful.
And when in doubt, obfuscate:
Martin, the Catholic priest, said Christians should have a similar outlook. “Suffering is never the last word in the Christian world view. “There is no cross without resurrection.”
UK: Atheist schoolboy banned from Boy Scouts
Schoolboy George Pratt had attended his local Scout group for ten months, and was expecting to invest in the group along with his friends.
But, after being required to swear the traditional promise, he found himself unable to join as he does not believe in God.
George, 11, said he was “very disappointed” in the decision, calling it “very unfair” and claiming he feels left out from experiences and trips his friends are attending.
His father Nick Pratt, 45, has accused the Scout movement of being “narrow minded” and “intolerant”, saying his son is being “excluded because he doesn’t believe”.
To become a full member of the 1st Midsomer Norton Group in Somerset, which meets in a hall opposite his home, George must take the Scout Promise.
This reads: “On my honour, I promise that I will do my best, To do my duty to God and to the Queen, To help other people, And to keep the Scout Law.”
Different versions of the oath are available for different faiths, such as the use of ‘Allah’ to replace ‘God’ for Muslims.
So it doesn’t matter what Invisible Friend you think you have, as long as you have one? What about Harvey, the six-foot rabbit? I’m sure he could teach a twelve-year-old boy all sorts of things.
Global: Credulous, let’s get credulous!
It’s International Believe Weird Shit Day!
…today, we pledge to agree with what everyone else believes and says, just for one day. We are not allowed to dissent, ‘offend’ or question. Also, to be fair, we ask everyone else to agree with everything that we believe and say. So let’s see how that works out.
Just for today, I agree with the following twenty five beliefs:
I agree with the Greek poet Hesiod that the world began when Gaia emerged out of Chaos, and gave birth to Uranus, who made her pregnant to give birth to the Titans, after which Gaia convinced her son Conus to castrate his father and become King of the Titans.
I agree with the Bible that the creator of the universe came to planet Earth, circling one of a hundred billion stars in one of a hundred billion galaxies, so that he could impregnate a virgin in order to give birth to himself, then be tortured and die and dictate a book about it…..
Australia: Dead people are scumbags, says Archbishop
“Awful consequences await those who ignore God’s command to ‘Just shut up and die!”
THE popularity of I Did It My Way as a funeral song shows a ”vulgar egotism” exists in society, the Anglican Archbishop of Sydney, Peter Jensen, says…
‘The last words come from friends and family, and their aim seems to be to build up the reputation of the dead person that all will believe how good a person he or she was,” he said. ”All seems designed to avoid the truth that the person is gone, that death is horrible, that bodies turn to dust, that the person has not one chance in hell of avoiding hell based on the quality of their lives.”
There will be a short break after Dr. Jensen’s speech while we wipe the foam off the lectern. But now the good news…
In his last presidential speech before retirement…
The Australian broadcaster Alan Jones was recently excoriated by the public for saying one rude thing about one dead person. Surely Jensen should be hounded out of his job for this level of insensitivity?
UK: Just when you thought it was safe to come out of the pulpit…
BISHOPS wearing futuristic body suits are locked in deadly combat beneath Gloucester cathedral.
Dr Rowan Williams’s retirement has triggered the traditional, violent archbishop selection battle known as the Game of God….
The Bishop of Durham has already been shot through the liver with a crossbow, while the Bishop of Carlisle has been garrotted.
A C of E spokesman, watching the deadly game unfold via video cameras hidden in gargoyles, said: “The Bishop of London and the Bishop of Coventry have formed an alliance based on London having a box of protein biscuits and Coventry carrying a big crossbow…”
via The Daily Mash
Remember, you read it here first!
Well, second, then.
UK: Who can decide if your life is not worth living? (Hint: not you)
Andrew Brown can.
That is why people are – quite rightly – suspicious of the apparently more limited programme of allowing doctors to kill off the terminally ill who are clear that they want to die because their life offers nothing more than suffering.
Because what could be more sinister than actually letting people do what they want?
Global: ‘We all worship the same God’…
And this is just the West!
Or not.
Click the image for a full-size version.
Australia: ‘Some doctors have told me’…
…that it’s OK to make shit up.
Sydney’s Anglican Archbishop, Peter Jensen, drew strong criticism for comments on ABC TV’s Q&A on Monday night that the gay lifestyle led to a “significantly shorter life”….
One of several studies by Paul Cameron and his son, Kirk, of the Family Research Institute in Colorado in the United States – which claims its ”overriding mission is to generate empirical research on issues that threaten the traditional family, particularly homosexuality, AIDS, sexual social policy and drug abuse” – concluded heterosexual men outlived gay men by 20 years….
The study has been criticised for its lack of academic rigour. It was partly based on lifespan estimates of men and women and gays and lesbians from obituaries in several US newspapers….
“Some doctors have told me that health outcomes are worse for gay and lesbian people, and gay activists themselves point to health problems. I mean this in the widest sense, not just HIV-AIDS but rates of cancer, alcoholism and other disease…..
A Sydney researcher who runs the Gay Community Periodic Surveys, Martin Holt, said Dr Jensen’s vague assertion that the lifespan of practising gays was significantly shorter than heterosexual men seemed to originate from discredited US research.
”The gist of the Camerons’ argument was that lesbians and gay men must die younger than their heterosexual peers because they appeared to be under-represented in studies of older people,” Dr Holt, from the University of NSW, said.
And Dr Jensen can’t think of any reason why older people might have been reluctant to admit to being gay?
Australia: One step forward, three steps back
The Diocese also offers marriage guidance counselling services…
Sydney Anglican diocese to introduce new marriage vow in which women promise to ‘submit’ to their husbands.
…there has been a slow, intense creep of anti-women sentiment in Sydney since 1992, when the national church voted to allow dioceses to decide for themselves whether they would ordain women priests. Since then, Sydney’s refusal to has become the touchstone of orthodoxy, where retrograde views on women are not just taught, they are flaunted as a subject of pride. Women cannot lead and rarely preach (unless only to other women and children.)
And what has not been reported is that now they are being told that not only must they submit to husbands, and men in their churches, but also, alarmingly, men in their workplaces….
Christian women, Spencer argues, must have a feminine leadership style, which means being “consultative, collaborative and relationship-building”. They should not be authoritarian, aggressive or directive, or lead in a coercive style or a “pace-setting” style, which means setting “high standards of excellence” and having “little sympathy for poor performance”. (One can only ponder the low bar for performance the alternative might present.)
An exception can be made if, for example, a building is burning down and a coercive leader is needed to save a life. Phew. A woman can tell you what to do if, say, you are on fire.
It’s the thin end of the wedge, I tell you. Let them start giving orders just because people are on fire, and the next thing you know they’ll be saying we can’t spit on the pavement.
UK: Queen luvverly, too bad about the peasants, says old man in frock
“Tell me again about this ‘cosplay’.”
Promiscuity, separation and divorce are at ‘epidemic’ proportions, a senior Church of England bishop has warned as he called for Britain to use the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee as an opportunity to reflect and reassess values.
The Rt Rev Richard Chartres, Bishop of London, writing in a Bible Society pamphlet about the origins of the word jubilee, said Britain was now an ‘enormously different’ society compared to 1952 – the year of the Queen’s accession to the throne – and in ‘so many ways’ a better place to live.
But he said inequality had grown and material progress had been at the expense of communal life with relationships within families, communities and society ‘more strained, more fragile’ and more broken than people cared to recognise.
I just put this in for the picture. Isn’t it wonderful!
UK: Christian private schools protect pedophile teacher
Wellington College — a hands-on school
This is all dreadfully familiar. The welfare of the abusing teacher and the reputation of the schools are prioritised ahead of the safety of the children in their care. At no point in all this did it ever occur to any of these highly qualified and even eminent gentlemen that a phone call to the police or social services might be in order, just in case they might be wrong to trust Roth. Instead, it was all handled in-house, Roth’s denials were believed over the allegations and he continued to have trusted access to children. If they were ever trained in child protection procedures, all the lessons must have been as water off a duck’s back to them. Sound safeguarding procedure is that you always report allegations to the authorities. But in twenty years, at two schools, they never did it.
Jonathan West – Confessions of a skeptic
And, yes, Wellington College is a Christian school, though you have to search the website fairly thoroughly before they let on. It’s almost as if they’re ashamed of it or something.
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