mozzaok wrote on Mar 18^th, 2010 at 11:37pm:

It just seems a bit infantile to be so eager to cheer when nothing has been said. It's hardly the case that we're under the yoke of the church and only just being liberated by "the great father Dawkins".

But it's probably more that we're a great nation of iconoclasts and piss-takers (and ain't it great!) that makes us jump up and cheer so easily.

I sense a slight embarrassment in Dawkins and Hitchens when they speak in Australia. They're hardly challenged at all here. They're preaching to the converted. They announce to us that "god stuff is bunkum" and we're dancing in the aisles. The irony being that while we're busy with our iconoclasm we're making (dare I say it) living saints out of the likes of Dawkins and Hitchens by our fawning uncritical acceptance of their every utterance, no matter how frivolous they may be.

Is there not a risk that we're replacing "old-timey religion" with "scientism"?

A joke that did the email circuit recently was "100 office dares". One of them was - Finish every sentence with "In accordance with the prophecy...".

Maybe another could be - "In accordance with science..."

Or even more scary - "In accordance with Father Dawkins... let us cheer"

NorthOfNorth wrote on Mar 19^th, 2010 at 4:33am:


Which could be literally interpreted as "in accordance with that logical conjecture which has not been contradicted by an accumulation of thoroughly tested emprical data, and is subject to an ongoing and continual process of review and revision by both the peers of its proponents and by subsequent practitioners."

Obviously you have a problem with this?

Paella wrote on Mar 19^th, 2010 at 8:07am:

Alright, finish every sentence with that.

And wait till the conversation is about tits. (come to think of it, that might be funny... say it during a conversation about... bowel disorders).

Don't be surprised if you're not invited to too many office drinks after a while, but

Maybe he was just looking upwards. ??

Seems to me he'd be the last person to be looking for divine intervention.

He does hit the Christians hard (deservedly so), but I have seen him hit Islam as well. Stands to reason why he hits Christianity so hard in Australia, US and UK. He's no fan of Islam either.

You miss the point helian, the whole reason that I raised the current pope's involvement in the hitler youth, and his seeking to cannonise pacelli, who has long been considered by many as, "Hitler's" Pope, which both you and I disagree with, because of what we have read about the subject, but the fact that Rome still refuses to release documents from that period to be examined by any outside the church, which could shed further light onto just what really went on, is enough to still leave many with unanswered questions.
That paranoid secrecy, that resistance to openness, that refusal to ever allow the cold light of independent scrutiny to ever come to bear upon the church, is the same old catholic attitude that has set itself up for criticism on those issues for such a very long time.

So while they maintain their secret organisation, and while they refuse to release pertinent material that could definitively settle the issue once and for all, then as they say in the classics, F... them.

mozzaok wrote on Mar 19^th, 2010 at 11:47am:

So what has Ratzinger's forced membership of the Hitler Youth got to do with canonising Pacelli?

Actually nearly all of Pacelli's documents and relevant material have been made publicly available and there is very little that has not been due to Vatican archive rules. But of that which has not been made open to the public has been viewed by some historians. Few historians (Catholic or non) believe there is a "smoking gun" with Pacelli's name on it.

Most of what Pacelli did for the Jews went undocumented and unrecorded for very obvious reasons. One being that both Mussolini and Hitler were looking for any reason to invade the Vatican and arrest the Pope. His blatant and public interference in German and Italian government would probably have been a trigger. Mussolini would have taken particular delight in doing this as he hated Pacelli. The second obvious reason is that any documentation that indicated where the church was hiding Jews and "enemies of the state" would have meant death for them and their protectors.

For the more cynical among us, any idea that there would be document signed by Pacelli that proves he collaborated with the German and Italian governments to deport Jews or reveal their identity to the Nazis and fascists is about as likely as one that shows Hitler authorised, in writing, the final solution. So hey, maybe the holocaust was Pacelli's idea and Hitler just went along for the ride.  

jordan - Quote:


Exactly.  I entirely agree.