THE banning of Christianity by a football club is evil enough. The censoring of Christianity by the Catholic Church is something far more disturbing. With so much soft Red Terror playing out in the news cycle at any given time, you probably didn’t read about the giddy “lapsed Anglican” to whom Archbishop of Hobart Julian Porteous capitulated in late October, changing – at her behest – the internationally specified Gospel reading for the day of the St Mary’s College graduation service last week. Several days later – notwithstanding it was his own decision to cry uncle – the Archbishop lamented from the pulpit the rampaging Christophobia that had abetted this deprecation of both Saint Paul and the Church. Just as Andrew Thorburn’s unwillingness to sue Essendon for criminal discrimination empowers every other club, business, institution or corporation that will follow its lead, Archbishop Porteous’ decision to authorise a different New Testament reading now places the Gospel and the Mass itself in danger of China-style interference. Indeed, so-called laws policing Confession and banning conscientious objection to abortion and voluntary assisted homicide in all private hospitals constitute the beginnings of a ‘Patriotic’ Church.
Far from being “disrespectful” and “inappropriate” for the alumni fledglings of an all-girls school, Ephesians 5:21-33 should have been seen as both providential and meet. It’s about feminine and masculine charismata in marriage; about living this union as a type of God’s relationship with us – through a radical mutuality in which eros reigns over ego. Only the embittered would resent young women being taught what kind of man to give themselves to – strong, protective, kind – and how to be pleasing in his eyes. Take a look around the Western world and see a culture where men are neither inclined nor enjoined to be the leaders of families. Feminists, on the other hand – who claim to have all the DIY smarts they need – have been outflanked and beaten into submission in just a few years by low IQ cross-dressers. And there is nothing they can do about it. They will give up their bathroom privacy, their podium glory and even their hitherto exclusive sexual identity. Women so dumb have no business bowdlerising the Apostle to the Gentiles.
Some bluestocking version of angry impotence must, therefore, be part of the psychological explanation for the raving destestation of our society’s easiest male targets: the ones constitutionally inclined to turn the other cheek. Odds are the obscure Twitter feminist who curated a backwoods fuss about Ephesians – the letter’s slated reading “lit a fire in my belly,” she claimed – would remain abdominally inflammable if five St Mary’s girls lost the 100m butterfly to a boy named Sue. Catholics, though; fruit doesn’t hang any lower for the persnickety bigot – especially one whose foraging conveniently comes to the attention of the ABC.
A well-known feature of most of the national broadcaster’s pseudo-exposés is exclusive affirmation of the left-wing ‘side.’ This is traditionally accomplished with the ABC’s Two Experts Trick. For the St Mary’s-Ephesians concoction, the chosen speed-dial duo was Noel Debien and Margaret Beirne. Debien is a former “head of RE at a Catholic school” (alarm bells) and Beirne is a modern woman religious who teaches Biblical Studies (evacuate the building). Debien didn’t have to be telephoned by ‘investigative reporter’ Loretta Lohberger. As “a religion expert” now grubstaked by the ABC’s Religion and Ethics Unit, he was right up the hall. Sr Margaret must be a favourite of the unit. Via its good offices, in 2018 she was interviewed on Radio National – as “a leading feminist within the Church” – about “nuns” working for bishops and cardinals in Rome as domestic staff. She said she was “surprised” that Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone – a Salesian vowed to poverty – had housekeepers. Why that should be more surprising than a Sister of Charity sworn to serve the poor acquiring a PhD at the École Biblique in Jerusalem wasn’t explained.
Certainly, the Archbishop of Hobart erred by giving in to a small cell of provocateurs. Nor was this submission trivial or inconsequential. Arguably foremost among the several lessons learned from the storied (and complex) fall from esteem of good Pope Honorius I in the seventh century is that orthodoxy may never be sidelined to effect a reconciliation. ABC ‘expert’ Debien’s characterisation of Ephesians 5:21-33 as “extreme” is false, exegetically incorrect, arrogant and baseless. Beirne’s argument – and it is her argument – that Catholics should be free to boycott or redact unpopular biblical readings and accept only ideologically agreeable ones is equally false and equally fallacious. As an experiment, imagine how Sr Margaret would respond if a Catholic businessmen’s association persuaded a priest to replace Matthew 19:23-26 for its annual Mass. This would also be ‘to choose’ – which is literally the meaning (αἵρεσις) of heresy. Notwithstanding all this, Archbishop Porteous is a fine man and a fine Christian. The best proof of it is the left’s crazed obsession with silencing him. We are beyond the luxury of expecting shepherds to stand alone against the wolves without the strengthening sustenance of solidarity and gratitude.
My regular church (Dominican) has just finished installing central glass panels in what were previously the solid wooden doors of the confessionals. I’m trying to come up with a rational explanation for that one. Maybe it’s in case the priest crawls through the grille.
indeed
You know something, when it comes to the female sex, and I’m a female (a real one) so I can write this, the Greek philosophers Plato and Aristotle, the Torah, the Bible, the Koran, Jung, Peterson….even Camille Paglia, were and are correct about females.
One of the reasons why the West is flailing and failing is because there is now a clear imbalance between the sexes and women now rule the roost. This does not bode well for rationality and for humanity in general.
Here’s the thing, and I don’t care what people think, females are not the kinder sex.
Some cracking lines in here I am very tempted to co-opt. Persnickety bigot, bluestocking version of angry impotence, soft red terror, the ABC’s two experts trick.
This is clearly my fave.
Indeed, so roundly defeated they have given up champions like JK Rowling to the mob who claim the path to redemption lies in the emasculation of confused children.
Women have centuries of breeding to make them selfish when it comes to their own children. Look at the number of chardonnay socialists that send their children to private schools. Women have not been in the positions of power that they have now and are not adept at using that power judiciously. Maybe it will come with time but I think economic catastrophe will intervene.
Good to see Thorburn pushing back. If only Pell did the same.
Good ‘homily’ C.L.
and good to read about Fr Sheehy standing up and Andrew Thorburn.
It’s instructive that those women and men who eagerly bowed to the unlawful authority of many a state premier who stole their freedom and trickily injected them, now rail against that authority which exists for the sake of justice and which constitutes justice itself. And that authority is not St Paul but the Word.
Who are these trickily injected people you rail against?
I’ve seen a bit of coverage about the Irish homily on Catholic twitter, almost all of it supportive.
As for Ephesians there’s a teaching opportunity there, RE is, or at least it was when my children were at school not so long ago, compulsory at Catholic schools including year 12, I’m fairly certain a vast body of suitable material is available to Catholic educators.
I’m well aware that only a small percentage of Catholic schools parents are practising Catholics so no use looking to them at this time.
Such heresy is not confined to Roman Catholicism. A late cousin of mine of whom I speak no ill, a well-educated, never married, professional woman, was entirely at ease telling me some years ago that her local Anglican church consciously omitted the parts of the Bible they did not like or agree with. This reminded me of the quote of G K Chesterton:-
The words of Ephesians 5:21 about husbands and wives – Submit to one another as unto Christ – are lost on many, not least feminists.
The West has erred and strayed like lost sheep. As with Adam and Eve, only Divine intervention will repair the errors of and damage caused by weak men who capitulated to feminists by enacting affirmative action laws. The feminists’ cry before then was to the effect that ‘we only want to be a part of things.’ Today they run the show; men are marginalised or turned into compliant soy boys.
One of the most charming things I’ve seen in a congregation was once when the reading was Ephesians 6, and when it came to the line “Children, be obedient to your parents” a mother in front of me elbow-nudged the teenage daughter beside her. A moment later, when the line was “Parents, do not exasperate your children” the girl nudged her mother back.
LOL cuckoo
The OT is filled with marital imagery, allusions and counsel.
Also sublime erotic poetry:
When you think of your heart being ravished, feminists don’t come to mind.
Feminists have reaped what they have sowed.
Now the rights of a bearded man in a dress override that of women, and you dare not criticise them.
The fact is that the only place that Cardinal Pell felt safe on his release from prison was a Carmelite Monastery in Kew, Victoria.
There are not too many female religious ‘orders’ I would trust.
At some point, short of being overtly political, the Church should at least stop lefties from using it for their own ends when it suits. Dan Andrews claiming his bullshit Easter and Christmas Catholicism ‘shapes him’ and that he sends his kids to Catholic school for political gain needs pushback. The Archbishop should be saying that’s not enough, you aborting, murdering, mutilating, anti-family, oppressive, sacrilegious, abandoner of the faith.
Archbishop Comensoli gave Andrews a serve over his comments in relation to his Thorburn comments.
CL, it often seems odd to me that you have very strongly held religious convictions yet appear to have no empathy for the victims of evil such as that perpetrated by Putin on virtually every Ukrainian. I also find it odd that you believe quite firmly in imposing your values on other people. For example, women: “Only the embittered would resent young women being taught what kind of man to give themselves to – strong, protective, kind – and how to be pleasing in his eyes.” Taught? By whom? Are parents not good enough for such teaching? And what exactly is this pleasing stuff?
” I also find it odd that you believe quite firmly in imposing your values on other people”
Apart from the fact that this is a disgraceful statement, it’s also absolute codswallop. You’re an offensive moron. It’s very decent C.L. indulges you here, other’s wouldn’t.
Cassie you need CL to give you teaching. Idiot.
“Cassie you need CL to give you teaching. Idiot.”
Teach me what? Learn how to construct a sentence. Moron.
The troll farm that operates the “Yank” persona has changed over to the weekend shift. Don’t expect a whole lot of sense out of them for the next few days.
At the risk if hijacking this thread on feminism I suggest that if we are to disagree we do so without abuse but with respect for each other to speak and act according to our lights.
CL has religious convictions, as do I, Cassie and others. I doubt it can be fairly said that CL imposes his values on other people; rather I think he speaks from the biblical principle that “Man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” (Deuteronomy 8:3, Matthew 4:4.)
To those who cannot accept God exists I offer the counsel that you ponder how it is that the terrestrial home we call Earth –
• is a benignly placed planet approximately 150 million kilometres distant from the Sun, a ball of highly inflammable hydrogen and helium which has blazed for billions of years without yet exploding (or imploding?) into nothingness
• describes an elliptical orbit around the Sun once every year of 365¼ days, orbital speed being fastest at the equinoxes and slowest at the solstices
• rotates once daily on its axis to give us day and night and that this axis is tilted approximately 22½° from the celestial plane to give us seasonal changes throughout the orbital year
• has twice-daily tidal flows, with no visible connection between it and the moon, the gravitational pull of which is said to cause those flows
• is refreshed by unceasing photosynthetic conversion of carbon dioxide into oxygen that we and animals respire partly into CO2, vegetable matter, some of which we and animals eat to replenish bodily carbon, while trees and the like adorn the landscape to aid the continuing conversion of CO2 during their lifetimes and release it when they die or are burnt
• and so on.
Let us not cease to marvel at the world around us. Science may tell us what happens; it cannot tell us the first cause of things.
Yank, the people of Ukraine are not assisted by oily “empathy” or the overwrought stridency of urgers. They will be assisted by a ceasefire that stops any more people being killed for the Biden administration, for the military-industrial complex and for neo-con lunatics.
The moral case for a ceasefire needs no buttressing but if any were needed, here are three truths to amplify its aptness: 1) the CIA’s Ukraine coup in 2014 was illegal and its financing of Nazis was reprehensible; 2) there is absolutely no chance of Ukraine re-taking Crimea and returning to ethnic cleansing as usual in Donbas without a nuclear war or a generational conventional war; 3) the encroachment upon Russia by NATO (meaning the CIA) was, and is, a deliberate act of provocation. Authorities for this assertion include Pope Francis, Henry Kissinger, Barack Obama and the Reagan cabinet-men who won the Cold War.
The only figure advocating regime change in Russia is Joe Biden – who is, of course, mentally befuddled and burdened with the lowest IQ of any American President in living memory. He and his son’s criminal affairs in Ukraine are likely to be investigated in the months ahead.
I find it odd that a defender of contemporary liberal fascism could write that with a straight face. Equally odd is an ostentatious enemy of Russia who subscribes to every single thing the old Soviet Union did to Christians – censorship, policing, incitement, ostracism etc.
The parents concerned sent their daughters to a Catholic school precisely to be taught. Are you an advocate of home-schooling? The fount of all Christian education is Sacred Scripture; it cannot be rejected. Those who do reject it are free to make use of the state’s schools. Nobody is stopping them.
This pleasing stuff is the wisdom of the aforementioned Sacred Scripture which in this instance advises men and women on how to orient themselves to their beloved for the betterment of their marriages and for society.
Here is the passage:
Note that Paul says he is speaking about the Church’s relationship with God but that this relationship is a template for human marriage too; note also that “obey” is used vis-a-vis the former but that “respect” is used for the latter.
CL: I don’t see why anyone else needs to comply with your beliefs? This is my point. If as your friends say you are not about imposing beliefs then I suggest you revise your choice of expression.
Yank
I don’t see why you come here, you add nothing of value.
And there you have it. The vacuous moral preening of the media and the willingness of believers to capitulate to their demands is ultimately all about them. Biblical teachings be damned.
And while I’m quoting the greats of the church – “To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible.”
― St. Thomas Aquinas
CL is not forcing anyone at all to comply with his beliefs. With no understanding of the deeper biblical concepts at work, which CL is thoughtfully expanding on, I can see how an intellectually incapable idiot could come to such a position.
As ever…says everything about who he actually is and nothing at all about CL.