PAVING UPDATE

 

NEARLY THERE. JUST SOME TIDYING UP TO DO.

FOR ROBERT AGAIN

I'm reading James Joyce's Ulysses again and in the first chapter there's an excerpt

from Oliver St. John Gogarty's poem that Joyce slightly adapted and changed the title:

"The Ballad of Joking Jesus" 

I'm the queerest young fellow that ever was heard.

My mother's a Jew; my father's a Bird

With Joseph the Joiner I cannot agree

So 'Here's to Disciples and Calvary.

'If anyone thinks that I amn't divine,

He gets no free drinks when I'm making the wine

But have to drink water and wish it were plain

That I make when the wine becomes water again.

For the full poem The Song of the Cheerful (but slightly Sarcastic) Jesus by Oliver St. John Gogarty you can look it up on the internet.

Oliver St. John Gogarty

Robert The Most Unchristian Catholic recently uses quotes from long dead authors, mystics and assorted nutters to preface his blog posts. I think he could do no worse by reading anything by James Joyce and copying and pasting some of the funny and irreverent things that he says.

If that's not appropriate he can at least just read the rude bits.

'Ulysses'

SISTERLY SCHISM

 Occasionally the Catholic Church and its members have disagreements on theology, history and the Catechism. When these are significant they can result in schism.

Recently two religious commenters on blog posts in this community, have been at loggerheads. Sister Mary Fruitloop who we first met in a post about stigmata:

SISTER MARY FRUITLOOP

And Saint Faustina who Robert first disinterred here:

SAINT FAUSTINA

And who I referred to here:

SAINT FAUSTINA 

These two have popped up a lot in comments and posts:

Saint Faustina tells us to pray in this way...

"Father I offer to you the body, and blood and soul and divinity of your son Jesus, for our sins and for the sins of the whole world." This makes sense to me.  - Robert the sinner.

Sister Mary Fruitloop - sorry - Saint Faustina was just plain nuts (and would have made both Jung's and Freud's day trying to psychoanalyse her). - The Curmudgeon.

Jesus told St Faustina that He delights in giving himself to us in the Blessed Communion.

       - Robert the sinner. 

"Jesus told St Faustina that He delights in giving himself to us in the Blessed Communion." There's a rude joke in there.

       - The Curmudgeon. 

There are many more but you get the gist.

I thought it time to get Sister Mary Fruitloop and Sister Maria Faustina of the Blessed Sacrament (I told you she was nuts) aka Saint Faustina together to debate some of their differences of opinion.

Sister Maria Faustina of the Blessed Sacrament 

Sister Mary Fruitloop

versus

THE RELIGIOUS CURMUDGEON: Welcome Sister Mary Fruitloop and Sister Maria Faustina of the Blessed Sacrament aka Saint Faustina let's take this opportunity to discuss ..... look, for simplicity's sake - not Saint Simplicty ha ha, that was a little joke there .... can we drop some of the titles and just call you Fruitloop and Faustina?

FAUSTINA: I don't appreciate that humour The Religious Curmudgeon, or should we just call you Curmudgeon (hee hee). I take my canonisation very seriously and to be entitled Saint Faustina sort of, well, gives me entitlement I ....

FRUITLOOP: Who made you a Saint then?

FAUSTINA: In 1965, with the approval of the Holy Office, Karol Wojtyla, then Archbishop of Krakow and later Pope John Paul II, opened the initial informative process into my life and virtues, interviewed witnesses and, in 1967, submitted a number of documents about me to the Vatican and requested the start of the official process of my beatification. That was begun in 1968 and concluded with my beatification on 18 April 1993. I was canonised on 30 April 2000, and my feast day is 5 October.

FRUITLOOP: Weee-ew! Get you. La de da. I guess being polish helped eh? I didn't see old Papa John Paul handing out the gongs to us Germans. I ...

CURMUDGEON: Sorry but I need to remind you Fruitloop to keep this civil ...

FRUITLOOP: Well where was she when they were handing out the sharpened knitting needles? Just saying.

FAUSTINA: Look Fruitloop, one doesn't have to flagellate oneself and stick bloody great pins into one's body to demonstrate a connection to Jesus and his love...

FRUITLOOP: Ha! No, in your case you just have erotic fantasies and tell these to those salivating priests who get a kick out of hearing what you say about hot flesh and blood and sweat and blood and hot sweat and eating and submission and ....ohhhh.. give me my needles! 

FAUSTINA: Here we go again. You just can't help yourself you silly old ..

CURMUDGEON: Sadly I think we'll have to wrap this up. Fruitloop..... please stop doing that and Faustina ...... well good luck with your saintly status but I fear that when the Russians overrun the Ukraine and Poland again they just might change all that.

"NAH, NAH, UMM .... NOTHING TO SEE HERE"

The Catholic Church in New Zealand says a more thorough investigation is needed before it involves police in its historic abuse findings.

Following a two-year inquiry, the church reported that it had found 1680 recorded instances of alleged abuse since 1950 - of which 592 alleged abusers were identified. Many of the complaints were upheld at the time, but it is not known how many resulted in a police investigation.

You can read the whole story here ......

STUFF NEWS

....... but I've selected some outtakes and only slightly edited them for you:

Victim advocates, who said the inquiry likely covered a fraction of overall abuse, questioned what would be done with the new findings.

"There's still a lot not clear from our analysis about how many of the allegations were upheld," Cardinal John Dew told the Herald when asked about the plans for the investigation.

What old Dewdrop meant was: "Our analysis was so  shallow and our investigation so incomplete that god (mea culpa) knows how many victims are ou there."

"Most of them have been. But considerable research is still needed to be done to see how many have been upheld, and that is something we're continuing to work on."

Meaning: "All of the allegations are actually true but we continue to pretend that they aren't and hope that they will go away".

Dew, the most senior representative of the church in this country, said the information had not been centralised until now and had been spread across dioceses and congregations. Further analysis would show what had happened to the perpetrators and what redress had been made to the complainant, he said.

What he didn't say: "For years we've expected the heads of dioceses and congregations to bury this information and woe behold any priest, monsignors or bishop who didn't destroy the evidence".

Asked what would be done with upheld complaints that had not yet been referred to police, a spokesman noted that many of the alleged abusers had died. The spokesman reiterated that more work was needed before any action was taken.

What the spokesman meant was: "We've been stretching this out for a long time now pretending to investigate but actually hoping that all of the  abusers loyal priests brothers and nuns would die off and that the children victims alleged complainants would also die. We're getting close to that now but more work is needed to bury the evidence and deny culpability so - stay posted."

It's interesting that this comes out now just when old Cardinal 'Ratbag' Ratzinger is in the news for supposedly covering up sexual abuses in his various parishes but saying that he didn't know it was going on. Well, we've heard excuses like that before from 'good' Germans who claimed "We didn't know" when asked about their knowledge of extermination camps (some right next to the towns that they lived in).

EX POPE BENEDICT ASK FOR FORGIVENESS

I wonder what Robert has to say about these stories or will we have to wait until he's been to Mass on Sunday to get his briefing?

EVOLUTION VS CREATIONISM

 The old evolution vs creationism argument is never-ending and it seems to be central to christian beliefs.

Robert (the apathetic sinner and toilet cleaner) mentions creationism a lot in his posts and firmly believes that his god created humans in his own image which doesn't really explain why we all look so different. Maybe old god didn't create a decent mirror back in the day and every-time he looks at himself the image is a bit distorted.

Here's Robert's latest post ...........

......  in which he once again acknowledges the existence of a 'creator'.

 

"I might have concluded "Creation needs an intelligent creator".

           - Robert the apathetic sinner and toilet cleaner 

I'm in that other camp that believes in evolution so I guess there's no possibility of agreement with Robert. Maybe we should meet somewhere in the middle: