April 24, 2005:

Pope Benedict XVI faced claims last night he had ‘obstructed justice’ after it emerged he issued an order ensuring the church’s investigations into child sex abuse claims be carried out in secret. The order was made in a confidential letter, obtained by The Observer, which was sent to every Catholic bishop in May 2001.

It asserted the church’s right to hold its inquiries behind closed doors and keep the evidence confidential for up to 10 years after the victims reached adulthood. The letter was signed by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who was elected as John Paul II’s successor last week.

…

‘Cases of this kind are subject to the pontifical secret,’ Ratzinger’s letter concludes. Breaching the pontifical secret at any time while the 10-year jurisdiction order is operating carries penalties, including the threat of excommunication.

April 16, 2008:

“It is a great suffering for the church in the United States and for the Church in general and for me personally that this could happen,” Benedict said aboard a special Alitalia airliner, nicknamed Shepherd 1. “It is difficult for me to understand how it was possible that priests betray in this way their mission … to these children.”

It has to be said that there is something in this:

Former prime minister Tony Blair is to call for faith to be given a central role in tackling the world’s problems.

In a speech at Westminster Cathedral, Mr Blair will say failure to engage with religious groups will drive believers to apathy or fundamentalism.

He’s right in the sense that we want those among us who have imaginary friends to be the nice and helpful sort, not the explodey and kiddie-fiddling kind.

As a bonus, here’s Britain’s foremost religious blind-eye turner, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor:

The role of faith in our society cannot be ignored…

Can’t it? Are you a betting man, Your Eminence?

But still, Tony Blair banging on about the power of faith, eh? Boo, what a knob. We’ve seen the damage his brand of faith can do. If only we could harness Tony Blair’s faith to do good - in a swords-to-ploughshares deal. It’d be a holy grail, like a theological cold fusion.

This is monstrous, surely?

Cardinal Keith O’Brien is due to speak out against the proposals for the creation of human-animal hybrid embryos when he addresses a public meeting in the Fife town of Kirkcaldy.

The Cardinal, who has suffered poor health in recent weeks, was released from hospital after having a pacemaker fitted.

A pacemaker? Isn’t that against God’s will?

Where to start with this from Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor? It’s certainly a ’sausages are good for you, says sausage-maker’ piece.

He opens up with:

This simple reality belies the caricature of the Catholic church as some heartless, insular institution that wants to deny people their freedom. It is a distortion intended to persuade us that the church has no constructive role to play in our society.

And finishes with a distortion of his own:

Atheistic secularism ultimately diminishes us; it kills the human spirit under the pretence of liberating it.

As do lies, Cormac, as do propaganda. It is a distortion intended to persuade us that athiesm has no constructive role to play in our society. I would say escaping the emotional straightjacket of Catholicism and embracing atheistic secularism can have the opposite effect on this human spirit. I certainly felt lighter after rejecting the creeping fear, guilt and intimidation of my Catholic education.

Cormac also says:

This is why I wonder if there is not a lie that lurks in the appeal of an atheistic secularism. It is not its attacks on religion that gives me pause for thought, but its vision of what is human. It says that this is all we are, this is it! We have no significant purpose; we’re merely chance products of material processes.

Does he really believe this or is the good cardinal peddling another lie himself? Which athiests say ‘we have no significant purpose’? Even Richard Dawkins at his rawest says our purpose is to pass on our DNA in order to ensure the continuation of the beauty and majesty and complexity of awe-inspiring existence.

Take a look at some famous athiests and secularists. Think about their effect on the human spirit. Did their endeavours try to kill it or nurture it?

Abraham Lincoln, Van Gogh, Thomas Edison, Oscar Wilde, Mary Wollstonecraft, Albert Einstein, Arthur C. Clarke, George Bernard Shaw, Mary Ann Evans, George Orwell, Thomas Paine.

Do you die inside a little every time you expose yourself to what they left behind? It’s precisely the certainty of ‘this is it!’ that drives many to leave their mark on the human spirit. ‘Seize the day’, anybody?

It’s precisely my belief ‘that this is all we are, this is it!’ that shapes my moral outlook. I’m not on my own. I don’t believe in God but I never raped children or stood by while others did, unlike some. This is it! This is all we have. When it’s gone it’s gone. Let’s try and make the best of it. That’s what drives much of atheistic secularism. That and the certainty that life is a lot more joyless being a pawn of the likes of Murphy-O’Connor’s vested interests.

It’s why I think that people who believe that we go to a better place when we die can be the most dangerous. It gives an excuse for the most excruciating suffering. It’s the Arnaud Amaury defence. It certainly seems to be how and why those good Christians Tony Blair and George Bush can countenance the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. Under their (and others) good offices, it is religion that ultimately diminishes us; it kills the human spirit under the pretence of liberating it.

Devout Catholic Des Browne is once again displaying the extent of his Christian values this morning:

Embatttled Defence Secretary Des Browne has threatened to sack whistleblowers who expose Armed Forces’ budget cutbacks and embarrassing confidential information.

I wonder if this undignified scramble to cover his and his department’s grotesque shortcomings will extend injured Royal Marines. The undignified scramble certainly extends to shortchanging:

Mark Ormrod of 40 Commando was blown up by a landmine during a foot patrol in Helmand province on Christmas Eve. The 24-year-old has spent the last three months in intensive care and rehabilitation and will return soon to his home in Plymouth. But despite the extensive nature of his injuries, Ormrod has been offered £214,000 in compensation, rather than the maximum MoD package of £285,000.

Any Catholic, recovering or not, can tell you that Jesus was (allegedly) put on this earth as an example. He reached out to the sick, he helped the less fortunate.

Sure, like Des, he agonised over his career, particularly near the end when he was facing dismissal, but he never put the job first. If his disciples had been forbidden to spread news, as Des’s are now, Catholicism would have died with the Saviour.

They’d be as dead as Des’s Christian values in fact. He’ll be in church this morning no doubt, giving thanks for the risen Lord. And fretting about those poor little sacs of cellular mitosis. If these embryos don’t become active citizens, there’ll be fewer soldiers for his successor to shaft in about twenty years.

Happy Easter.

(Links via the mighty Sunday PaperRound)

As I’ve said before, I struggle to understand the moral calculations required to allow one to take up and flourish in high politics. That’s why I blog in my pants and not get wined and dined by Global Mega Corp executives. Therefore, the current brouhaha over hybrid human-animal embryos, has me a bit stumped:

The government faces a rebellion over embryo laws unless Gordon Brown allows a free vote, a Labour MP has warned.

The Catholics aren’t happy about the creation of the embryos for some reason I can’t fathom amongst the histrionic, demagogic language. Cardinal Keith O’Brien has described the science as ‘monstrous’ and ‘experiments of Frankenstein proportion‘.

Of the ‘2.2 million human embryos already destroyed or experimented upon’, the Cardinal offers no suggestion of who should carry these laboratory-created clusters of cells to term or clothe them and feed them. He’s certainly not offering. He’s the ideas man, you see - he wants you to stop doing that and do this. How that happens is for less spiritual minds.

The fact we’re not going to see half-human half-squirrel monkey people on our streets is completely by the by (and a great shame, if you ask me) but it’s a useful image to conjure in the minds of a public who rarely look beyond headlines.

The fact that the science of hybrid human-animal embryos, if successful, could mean the end to suffering for thousands if not millions seems to have passed many people by. Lost, as they are, in febrile daydreams of Tonto the Elephant Boy lumbering through the land or all those tiny little bags of chemical chance winging their way to heaven, the application and potential benefits don’t get a look in.

It’s certainly a consideration missing from man of God Cardinal Keith O’Brien’s sermon. Jesus went around curing the sick. Under this management? Live with it.

Look at some of the Catholic MPs and cabinet ministers getting in a lather about the little itty-bitty potential-babies. Des Browne: voted very strongly for the Iraq war. Ruth Kelly: voted very strongly for the Iraq war. Paul Murphy: voted very strongly for the Iraq war. Geraldine Smith: voted very strongly for the Iraq war.

Paul Goggins: voted very strongly for the Iraq war. Tommy McAvoy: voted very strongly for the Iraq war. Frank Roy: voted very strongly for the Iraq war. Tony Cunningham: voted very strongly for the Iraq war.

These people want to be allowed to vote with their consciences. Where were their consciences on March 18 2003 when the vote was taken to kill real, walking, talking, breathing, laughing human beings? How does an imaginary half-woman half-penguin get more rights than Iraqi children? Would the scientists get more support if their declared their intentions to cluster bomb these embryos?

God Bless him:

I was over in Australia during easter, which was interesting. Interesting to note they celebrate Easter the same way we do - commemorating the death and resurrection of Jesus by telling our children a giant bunny rabbit left chocolate eggs in the night.

Now, I wonder why we’re fucked up as a race. Anybody? Anybody got any clues out there?

Where do you get this shit from you know? Why those two things, you know? Why not ‘Goldfish left Lincoln Logs in your sock drawer’, you know? As long as we’re making shit up, go hog wild, you know. At least a goldfish with a Lincoln Log on it’s back going across your floor to your sock drawer has a miraculous connotation to it:

‘Mummy, I woke today and there was a Lincoln Log in me sock drawer!’.

‘That’s the story of Jesus’.

I’m not sure if it’s because I don’t mix with Catholics of a certain age or if it’s the sign of an increasingly heathen nation or if I had a particularly twisted religious upbringing, but I never meet anyone these days who’s heard of, or participated in, the veneration of the cross.

One of my indelible memories is of attending the Good Friday service at St Joseph’s church in Blackpool aged about six or seven. There’s nothing like having to kiss the feet of a life-sized crucified Jesus - perfect in every bloody detail - to instill the requisite religious awe required at this time of year. Or terror, as I now call it.

I can’t remember what I got for my sixth or seventh birthday but I can still see and feel myself queuing in the aisle to kiss Jesus’s feet. My heart thumps like it did then. The altar boy had a cloth and wiped Our Lord’s instep after every kiss. No anti-bacterial spray in them days.

Are there any other recovering Catholics out their who want to join my group and help each other through it?

Hi, I’m Justin and I’m a Catholic.

I’m much more of an enthusiastic amateur rather than any kind of expert. My collection is by no means definitive and there are larger ones out there, but I have a small gallery of religious icons.

My collection differs from the more traditional ones in that it features exclusively that school of religious icons that are victims, that are put upon, and that are in need of defence. They’re incredibly fragile and must be handled with the utmost care.

I’m fascinated by the concept of vulnerable omnipotence. I have, amongst others, in my gallery a prophet who doesn’t like to be represented pictorially and a Son of God who, while able to raise himself - 1,975 years ago this Sunday, fact fans - and others from the dead and walk on water, cannot take a joke.

My brother acquired my collection’s latest piece while on his travels in the mysterious North West, and I present it here for you now.

I don’t doubt that theologians and philosophers will ponder this icon’s origin and significance when I ultimately donate it to the nation. It truly is one of my more enigmatic pieces. I consider it often. How does one take God for granted? Are his wonders, mercy and saving grace so abundant that they are now part of the every day?

Does an omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent and omnivorous deity have an ego to bruise, I wonder. How did God express his dissatisfaction to this icon’s maker? Can you feel sympathy for an all-powerful being, emotionally and philosophically? Does a God who could, if he chose, eradicate cancer, war and even death itself on a whim, dwell on the numbers at his weekly fan club meetings?

I like this bumper sticker that I saw this morning:

I’m all for a spot of humour in religion, Dawkins knows it could do with a bit. I’m just not sure that comparing your deity with a fat, amoral gangster is a good move.

Apart from Don Corleone and God both having sons who were murdered, I’m struggling to see the similarities.

After all the misrepresentation, wilful and otherwise, of Rowan William’s remarks in the last few days, I’d thought I’d have a crack at it myself. Here’s what he actually said in his speech to the Church of England’s general synod this afternoon:

I must of course take responsibility for any unclarity in either that text or in the radio interview and for any misleading choice of words that’s helped to cause distress or misunderstanding among the public at large.

Here’s what I think he actually meant:

What are you supposed to do when some people are liars or lazy or wilfully ignorant or racist or just plain dickheads, eh? What’s this country come to when you can’t float an idea in plain English without being howled down by a mob? I notice Martin Amis didn’t get a fiftieth of the same stick when he talked about Muslims. But I forget, Amis was talking about his ‘definite urge’ to ’see Muslims suffer’, not putting forward some mild argument about helping Britain rub along with itself.

I think that about sums up what he meant, yes? I have to say, I could get used the reinterprating business. Think of the fun you could have. I might be cut out to be a gutter journalist or leading blogger after all.

Watch this report about the protest against Scientology in Birmingham. Listen for the Scientologist spokesman’s judicious and not at all out of proportion use of the ‘T’ word:

Fair enough, I suppose. One person’s student out on a jolly is another person’s terrorist. If you’re a blank-eyed propagandist taking orders from a dead writer of piss-poor science fiction, that is.

I’m just worried that the ‘T’ word is becoming so over-applied that very soon it’s going to be harder to identify those of us who aren’t terrorists.

(Via Graham Linehan.)

One of the bigger questions for me about the Archbishop of Canterbury’s speech about Sharia law is: do I really care?

As a bitter ex-Catholic and concrete-certain athiest, at my harshest I regard all this little more than the captain of one set counter-Enlightenment values speaking out on another set of counter-Enlightenment values. Let them get on with it, people in Britain are caring less and less about religion, and we’ll all be foaming at the mouth over something else this time next week.

But then you see the array of forces ranged against the Archbishop and it’s difficult indeed not to immediately and automatically jump to his defence out of an obligation of pure opposition. It’s a knee-jerk reaction of its own. Indeed, knees have been thrashing so furiously over the last few days, it makes you sorry they weren’t all wired up to a fancy new knee dynamo. You could have lit Birmingham for a week. If we could have harnessed the pig-ignorant self-righteousness as well, we could have powered Scotland as a bonus.

Just look at them though, queuing up to have a pop at Rowan Williams. The ‘I’m not racist but’-ers and the ‘I am racist, and’-ers, the bandwagon jumpers and the vested-interests, the wilfully ignorant and the woefully ignorant, newspapers with no more care than tomorrow’s circulation, minority audience 24 hour news channels trying to outdo each other, radio phone-in shows and speak-your-brains comment boards entertaining the barely articulate and the barely literate, those who use political correctness as a stick to beat rather than words to sooth.

Then there’s the fools, tools and mules, bloggers, muggers and self-tuggers, demagogues, demi-demagogues and attack dogs, the has-beens, never-beens and wannabes, the purblind, unsound of mind and the axe to grind. You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. How many, you have to wonder, have read the speech or heard the interview? Or have a view of Sharia law beyond some vague imagining of hand-chopping and women-stoning?

The thing is, the beauty of all this is that the people trying to knock the Archbishop’s hat off don’t have to have heard or read Rowan Williams’ views. They’re all confident in their safety in numbers. They can think to themselves, ‘well, someone here must have heard him and read him, so I don’t have to’, ignoring the motives of a lot of the people at the head of the throng. The wisdom of crowds, my arse. It’s a mob, pure and simple: most of them are simple and very few are pure. Hmmm, it turns out the Archbishop is a weapon with a multitude of uses - you can use him as a stick to beat anyone you like.

And now ‘they’ are talking of getting rid of Williams. Be careful what you wish for. Always keep an eye on the guy second in line. Do you want to ditch Gordon Brown only to get Jack Straw, an altogether more terrifying prospect? Ditch Cameron and risk a Gove or similar? Ditch Williams and get a Nazir-Ali? That said, those alternatives would be a boon to the legion of Islam-baiters who turned up this week. Straw with his fear of the veil, Gove with his Celcius 7/7, and Nazir-Ali with his ‘no-go areas‘.

And in the middle are Britain’s Muslims, the vast majority you never hear from, never see, and who - one would swear - just want to be left alone to get on with their lives. I wonder how many are feeling just that little bit less welcome and just that little bit more wary right now. Someone should tell them that as long a they continue to serve us our curries and keep their convenience stores open all hours (and whatever else it is popular imagination permits them to do) and seek no influence on ‘British’ ‘values’ - the glory of which we’ve seen on full display in the last week - they’ll be safe enough.

Update: Daniel Davies, as ever, rocks.

Update updated: Blimey! (via PDF.)

Me and the Mrs are off to London for the day and while I’m there I’ve set myself a little project.

Tom at Blairwatch has a string of headlines about the Archbishop of Canterbury’s unfortunate statements of yesterday (I say unfortunate not because I necessarily disagree with him but because he seems to have massively underestimated the response he was going to get from lazy journalists, political vested interests and wannabe demagogues).

The headlines, according to Tom, are majorly wide of the mark. I’m not going to comment further until I’ve allowed myself the luxury of listening to the Archbishop’s interview on the radio and read his speech. It’s an odd notion, admittedly, but I’m going to see if it works.

In the mean time, my project is to spend the day informing myself via nothing else than news bulletin and newspaper headlines to see how utterly ill-informed and mentally unbalanced I am by the end of the play. It’s dangerous, I know, but it’s a risk I’m willing to take to in order to get a feel for how media commentators and politicians operate and make their money.

I’ll attempt to document the journey with photos and notes. Wish me luck.

Is anyone else finding it almost impossible to drag themselves away from those videos of Tom Cruise?

I only turned away when a thought struck me: maybe this is The Cruiser’s plan. While the rest of us are all staring wide-eyed at his pronouncements and chewing our knuckles, Scientology is on the march.

Oh, and get well soon to Larry. Hopefully real help will be along soon.

But maybe the most interesting side to Benedict’s defence of his 17th-century predecessors is imagining the furore if a similar attitude happened within Islam. If the leader of the Muslim world declared it was reasonable and just to have sentenced one of history’s greatest minds to execution, piles of commentators would be telling us this proved Islam was a medieval, ignorant creed incompatible with Western values. So why hasn’t Martin Amis written a pamphlet full of such pompous twaddle as, “Within Galileo’s studies of orbits lie you, me, our knowledgification, our triumphant cleverment. So as I consider this catechismic papal assault on braininess, I feel a soulful urge to squeeze every Redemptionista into a giant confession box and set fire to the bloody lot of them. Don’t you?”

Read the rest

The Right Reverend Dr Michael Nazir-Ali, Bishop of Rochester, sounds the alarm bell. Dhimmification in Britain is under way, apparently. Do not panic. Stay in your homes, you will be collected.

A Church of England bishop has said Islamic extremism has turned some communities into no-go areas for people of a different faith or race.

He may be right, I can’t say. I don’t recognise what he’s talking about, not having a vested interest to protect or been chased past the mosque in Brighton for encroaching on its turf. I mean, it would be unthinkable for a representative of one religion and go off half-cocked in attacking another religion without a proper grasp of the facts, wouldn’t it? It would be without precedent.

The thing is, I wonder if the Bishop is the right person to be advising us on theological ‘no go’ areas. After all, he’s barricaded off one or two of his own.

There’s IVF for lesbians:

The Bishop of Rochester has spoken out against plans to make IVF readily available to single women and lesbians.

And veils for Muslim women:

Legislation should be introduced giving some officials the power to remove the veil worn by Muslim women, the Bishop of Rochester has said.

And gay clergy:

The Bishop of Rochester, the Rt Rev Michael Nazir-Ali, said he would find it difficult to attend a Church council alongside those who consecrated or approved the appointment of Anglicanism’s first openly gay bishop.

But not Iraq:

One of the Church of England’s most senior bishops broke ranks with his colleagues yesterday by suggesting that Britain and the US could be justified in using force against Saddam Hussein.

‘It is now less possible for Christianity to be the public faith in Britain,’ says the Bishop. Well, he ain’t helping much.

Update: PDF asks the most important question:

Where are these no-go areas for non-Muslims that the Bishop of Rochester is scaremongering about?

Where indeed? The Bishop forgot to provide any evidence to back up his claim. Maybe it was removed by the editor. Yes, that must be it.

I despair:

After six years of childless marriage, John and Cynthia Burke of Newark decided to adopt a baby boy through a state agency. Since the Burkes were young, scandal-free and solvent, they had no trouble with the New Jersey Bureau of Children’s Services—until investigators came to the line on the application that asked for the couple’s religious affiliation.

…

In an extraordinary decision, Judge Camarata denied the Burkes’ right to the child because of their lack of belief in a Supreme Being.

It’s the Christian thing to do, apparently.

(Via Graham Linehan)

Ahem: I would have despaired if I had been born when Judge Camarata made his judgement. In 1970. Always read the small print.

(Ta to Joe in the comments.)

Call off the search for Osama bin Laden. Stop hunting al Qaeda and the Taliban. World terrorism isn’t the cause of all the strife in the world today, merely one of the symptoms.

No, I’ll tell you who’s the biggest threat to world peace. Homosexuals.

The Pope said so. It’s all a matter of status, of course. When the likes of Fred Phelps say it, it’s weapons-grade loop-the-loop cobblers. When Benedict XVI says it, the world must sit up and listen. In his Message for the celebration of the World Day of Peace, the Pontiff says:

[E]verything that serves to weaken the family based on the marriage of a man and a woman, everything that directly or indirectly stands in the way of its openness to the responsible acceptance of a new life, everything that obstructs its right to be primarily responsible for the education of its children, constitutes an objective obstacle on the road to peace.

Did you hear that? Homosexuality is an objective obstacle on the road to peace. Why aren’t cruise missiles screaming down on the headquarters of Stonewall right now? What the hell are our leaders doing making Muslims miserable? I want hardline, empty-but-vaguely-reassuring rhetoric on the Gay Menace broadcast in a live television statement tonight.

Graham Norton was on the telly again the other day spreading his message. I tell you, it was chilling - that voice and those dead eyes. These people live amongst us with their music and their clothes. And have you noticed that they smell? Sort of warm and Calvin Klein-y? And they talk funny. At least, some of them do. They must be up to something, talking in code like that. I bet they want to make us all gay.

And they hate kids - who ever heard of gay people wanting to settle down and have families? It’s absurd, isn’t it? Asking a homosexual to hold down a stable relationship would be like asking the head of the Catholic Church to stop living in the 13th century, wouldn’t it?

Speaking of the Middle Ages, what we need is a crusade. The Pope could do it properly and grant plenary indulgences to all of us getting out there and converting the gay community. I mean, come on, who hasn’t had a few beers and offered to ‘cure’ a gay person? Which ladies among us hasn’t dreamed of riding Rupert Everett eight ways from Sunday in order to save his immortal soul? Which red-blooded mail hasn’t pondered that all Jodie Foster needs is some man-lovin’ to allow her to enter the Kingdom of Heaven? I know I haven’t because I’m not that much of a prick.

The former Prefect of Holy Office of the Inquisition ends his dire warning of Homogeddon with: ‘To all my best wishes for a joyful New Year!’. That of course depends on how you interpret the meaning of ‘joyful’. None of that making people of the wrong gender feel ‘joyful’, ok? There’s a war on.

Joyeux whatever, y’all.

Blair’s biographer Anthony Seldon has written tenderly of ‘Blair’s innate Catholicism‘.

Now forgive me, and it’s just possible that I’m unique amongst Catholics on this, but I have never ever regarded my Catholicism as an inherent quality. Rather, the faith was forced into me by various teachers and priests via the good offices of fear and intimidation. Catholics are the foie gras geese of world religion.

As to the question of Blair’s faith, they say God moves in mysterious ways but in the matter of Tony Blair and the application of his ‘innate Catholicism’ to geopolitics, Our Lord was dancing the Watusi to Rachmaninov while wearing a purple tutu and howling like a gibbon.

I’ve said before that our erstwhile prime minister kept his Christianity almost miraculously well hidden during his time in office. It’s a wonder the military aren’t now begging Blair to consult on the design of the next generation of battlefield camouflage.

Imagine if you could shield a stealth bomber using his ‘innate Catholicism’. A fleet of these invisible aircraft could make our nation great once more. The application and implications of this technology are beyond the dreams of us all.

Britain, let us harness Blair’s Catholicism for the greater good of our country!

It’s official: Tony Blair has converted to Catholicism in time for Christmas. It’s a timely move - I took my Mum to midnight mass last year and we all got a bar of chocolate at the end. I’m sure Tony with his love for a freebie had that in mind.

Apparently Blair, when giving his first confession as a Catholic, took with him a crib sheet of his sins to help him remember them. It took six Hercules military transport planes to deliver it.

And you have to say that the Catholic Church is taking a big risk in welcoming Blair into the faith. Look what happened to the last organisation having Blair as a prominent member - there was a stampede for the door.

As collection plate donations dry up at grass root level, will the Vatican be forced to turn to shady practices in order to shore up its finances? I’m sure Tony could suggest some candidates for the job now that Paul Marcinkus has joined the Choir Invisible.

‘You can’t run the Church on Hail Marys,’ as the late Archbishop said. Who’d pay for all the chocolate?

Maybe there is a reason to be cheerful at this time of year. We’ve been given a huge reason to celebrate this very week:

Planning an effective flood management strategy is as important as planning for terrorism or even preventing bird flu, an independent review by Sir Michael Pitt, who is the chairman of the South West Strategic Health Authority, has said.

“We’re all facing up to climate change and there are all sorts of implications for the country in terms of having to adapt to that change,” Sir Michael said.

Climate change and flooding are only as bad as terrorism and bird flu? Well, thank God for that. Maybe He exists after all. I mean, think of the rather small numbers of people who have been killed by terrorism or bird flu in the past few years.

If Sir Michael had likened the damage caused by climate change and flooding to the carnage wreaked by, say, cars, alcohol, botched invasions of Middle Eastern countries or those cancers that leave you screaming for death, I think we’d all have all been running round like Chicken Little this week.

But no, it’s all going to be all right. We can all relax this festive season and for many festive seasons to come. Hardly anybody is going to be killed by climate change. Except maybe quite a lot of brown people and most of those don’t celebrate Christmas anyway. Isn’t it always the way?

So, chin up. Happy Christmas!

…so I’ve laid in a crate of import-strength lager and my shortest temper, as is traditional at this time of year. I’ve been out and done the obligatory ’spend money you haven’t got on stuff people don’t need’ so I’ve discharged my responsibility to the economy. Gordon Brown shouldn’t refer to us as voters or tax payers. No, we should be his army of little economic Atlases. All wearing Santa hats if that makes you feel any better.

Anyway, I’m off now to bitch incessantly about how the telly is shit again this year. Happy whatever to you and yours. Back in a bit.

Here’s your pressie:

(Parts 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12.)

On this post here, there’s been some small discussion of what might happen to Tony Blair in the afterlife and how he might avoid spending eternity having a special relationship with a red hot poker.

No doubt he’ll find this useful:

Pope Benedict XVI has authorised special indulgences to mark the 150th anniversary of the Virgin Mary’s reputed appearance at Lourdes.

Catholics visiting the site within a year of 8 December will be able to receive an indulgence, which the Church teaches can reduce time in purgatory.

I wonder how many years off your sentence a visit to Lourdes gives you. If Tony visits every day he might only have to spend a couple of hundred million years in Purgatory.

How did Benedict decide to grant indulgences based on visits to Lourdes? Did God appear to him and say, ‘Ben, tell them to get their arses to Lourdes in the next 12 months and I’ll put a little bonus in their heavenly bank accounts’? I’d genuinely like to know how these things work.

As a Catholic (I’d say ex- but I don’t think you ever truly escape) whose religious education had that extra-special Augustinian twist, I’ve always regarded the faith as arbitrary, unjust and, to be frank, made up on the hoof (you can see why it would appeal to Tony Blair).

Take the concept of limbo for instance. It used to be that if a child died before it had its original sin expunged by baptism it couldn’t go to heaven. Instead, it suffered ‘lesser punishments’ in limbo. This injustice was certainly one of the (smaller) nails in the coffin of my Catholicism.

I say ‘it used to be’ that unbaptised babies went to limbo because Benedict XVI effectively abolished the place in April this year. I’d like to know why God told St Augustine one thing and the current pope another. It makes Gus look a bit of a heartless chump really. Whereas Benedict seems to understand the power of public relations in a kiddie-centric world.

Why he hasn’t also declared that ickle puppies have spiritual souls and all go to heaven, God only knows.