In Godless We Trust

Christmas Truce: What if they gave a war and no one came?

Thanksgiving is tomorrow followed by Black Friday and Cyber Monday with a weekend of leftovers in between, so this looks like a good time for an update on the “War on Christmas.”

It’s over. We won.

To be more accurate, I should point out that it’s not possible to win a war that was never really waged. And there never was a war on Christmas. The “war” was a figment of the Religious Right’s imagination all along, or, more accurately, a cynical creation designed to help theocratic groups raise funds, win new support and get their names in the media.

Several Religious Right groups rode that reindeer hard for several years, but let’s face it – the run is over. No one cares anymore. Even the Fox News Channel has lost interest.

Nevertheless, the American Family Association continues to man the battle trenches. But even the group’s whining and calls for boycotts aren’t attracting much interest these days. In fact, the “war” has pretty much devolved into an occasion for the AFA to hawk buttons, signs, stickers and other pro-Christmas gewgaws to its supporters. (I’m including a grammatically challenged pop-up ad that has been on the AFA site for weeks now.)

That doesn’t mean the AFA isn’t trying to resume hostilities. In fact, the group has been blasting forth emails about the mythical war on the yuletide since before Halloween. But the stuff is just lame. The other day I received the latest AFA salvo: seems the Walgreens drug store chain put out an entire flier that never once mentioned the word “Christmas.”

“It’s true!” blared the AFA. “At Walgreens, they advertise ‘Holiday Candy,’ ‘Holiday Gift Tags,’ ‘Holiday Gift Wrap,’ ‘Holiday Decor,’ ‘Holiday Accessories,’ ‘Holiday Nuts and Snacks’ and ‘Holiday Hats and Stockings.’ But no Christmas! In total, Walgreens used the term ‘holiday’ 36 times, rather than using ‘Christmas.’”

It’s sad, isn’t it? Some poor soul at the AFA actually had to sit down and count the number of times “holiday” appeared in a newspaper circular. I know times are tough, but this sounds like the worst job ever. I’d sooner sign on as an articled clerk for Ebenezer Scrooge.

Unfortunately, all of that counting of the word “holiday” is for naught. More and more retailers are getting wise to the AFA’s empty boycott threats. For months now, the Tupelo, Miss.-based band of theocrats has been pouring disdain on Home Depot, which has dared to reach out to the gay and lesbian community with targeted advertisements.

The AFA declared a fatwa – I’m sorry, boycott – against Home Depot. The response to that has beenhigher profits for the company. (It’s true this is due in part to some bad fall storms in certain parts of the country that damaged many homes, but that raises an interesting theological question: Why did God allow these storms to occur, knowing that Home Depot would likely benefit? Maybe God is trying to tell the AFA something.)

The AFA is still releasing its “Naughty & Nice” list of retailers, if anyone actually cares. My guess is that during this holiday season, only the most ardent fundamentalists  are going to be hoarding store circulars and counting up the number of times the word “Christmas” appears.

In this tough economy, the rest of us are going to be scrutinizing a different part of those fliers: the sale prices.   

P.S. To the entire staff of the American Family Association and all of its supporters I’d like to say, “Season’s Greetings.”

Note: “The Wall of Separation” will be on hiatus tomorrow. If you want to read a Thanksgiving-themed post, I recommend this very good one by AU’s Joe Conn. Happy Thanksgiving!

From Secular News Daily

Catholic School with appalling abuse record determined to retain reporting loopholes

Lord Carlile QC released his report on Wednesday into decades of abuse at St Benedict’s independent RC School run by the adjacent Ealing (Benedictine) Abbey in west London.

The report contained details of over twenty accusations he had received, some with multiple victims. Two perpetrators have been convicted and another has jumped bail and is the subject of an international arrest warrant. Lord Carlile lambasted the monastic community for its “lengthy and culpable failure to deal with what at times must have been evident behaviour placing children at risk”.

The NSS submitted a great deal of evidence to Lord Carlile who acknowledged and thanked us for our “constructive” contributions.

Even the Abbot accepts that the governance arrangements, where the Abbey had total control, were “opaque to outsiders” and accepts that in the case of one of those convicted that “the commitment to trust within the community … appears to have overshadowed responsibility for children’s welfare”.

Lord Carlile concluded that the monks should be shorn of direct responsibility for school governance which should be much more open and accountable. St Benedict’s is not the only Benedictine school in England with the same governance model which failed.

At the press conference to launch the report, attended by the national press, Keith Porteous Wood offered Lord Carlile some obvious improvements to the new child protection procedures set out for the school – and which the headmaster had just heralded as the best there was.

Why, Mr Porteous Wood demanded, were there multiple exceptions permitted to the requirement to report concerns to the police or local authority or rather than, as there should be, an absolute requirement to do so? He also suggested that the school should widely publicise a telephone number to which concerns could be raised with an independent external body.

Mr Porteous Wood said that if St Benedict’s procedure to protect pupils — with all its obvious flaws and loopholes — was as had been claimed the best available, what were the implications for other schools? To his credit, Lord Carlile picked this point up and expressed his agreement.

All too predictably, even in front of the press corps, the child protection officer refused to take the suggestion onboard with the lame assertion that they always did report abuses, something that has clearly not happened in the past. The BBC picked up our point and taxed the headteacher with them in a televised interview – he was similarly evasive. One would have imagined that those anxious to do their best to avoid any repetition would have welcomed such suggestions for making the procedures watertight.

Another questioner, blogger Jonathan West, without whom much of this history of abuse would not have been brought to the public’s attention, was particularly incensed by the headteacher’s assertion just last year (2010) in a formal speech that “I absolutely refute that anyone associated with St Benedict‘s school has misled the Inspectors or protected offenders.” He proceeded to warn off those seeking to bring the rape and abuse into the public by smearing them as an “anti-Catholic movement linked to the papal visit”.

Mr West asked the head, who has been in post a long time, to consider his position. Needless to say he did not. The NSS later told Sky television in an interview that in any other walk of life it was inconceivable that those such as the headmaster and the, also long-serving, Abbott would have remained in their posts. (Here is a sample of Jonathan West’s blog.)

The head claimed, in response to another of Mr West’s questions that he was not aware of anyone remaining at the nearby Abbey who had been found to have behaved inappropriately. Yet in the report itself — which the Head agreed he had read — one was named.

A letter in the Times on 1 November 2011 by the the Right Rev John Arnold, Cumberlege Commission, Apostolic Visitor to Ealing Abbey headed “The Catholic Church is committed to maintaining transparency and fully co-operating with the statutory authorities” was flatly refuted in detail by Mr West in a reply in the following day’s edition. There was also criticism at the press conference of the so-called apostolic visitation (Pope’s inquiry), because the head of England’s Bendictines was part of the visitation.

The problem at Ealing is part of a more disturbing national picture. The suffering of the victims has been further intensified by the supine Cumberlege Commission (responsible for RC child protection in England and Wales) and the former Chairman of the Catholic Office for the Protection of Children and Vulnerable Adults, Vincent Nichols, now Archbishop of Westminster.

Keith Porteous Wood was adamant that Vincent Nichols and the Cumberlege Commission’s “complacency, failure to tackle the problem head on and vested interest in protecting the Church’s reputation has directly led to these criminals being harboured to offend again. We call on Vincent Nichols and all those responsible for the Benedictine Order and other Catholic bodies outside the diocesan structure to publicly instruct everyone under their control to report all known or suspected abuse, whether physical mental or sexual, to the prosecuting authorities. They must also be required to make available all evidence, if necessary calling for its return from Rome, where it is believed that much of it has been mandated to be sent.”

On wider legal issues, Lord Carlile referred to a crucial case concluded this week in Portsmouth.

Keith Porteous Wood said: “We urge that developments in law in the UK and US to be exploited to ensure that the Church is required to pay much more generous compensation for the often life-destroying harm done and to ensure that the many who have impeded investigation should now also be punished appropriately through criminal and civil processes.”

From National Secular Society

~Mooglets

Rapture: For real this time?

According to evangelical Christian talk radio host, Harold Camping the Rapture is right around the corner… for real this time. Harold Camping famousy predicted that May 21st, 2011 would be the beginning of the end for humanity on Earth. Despite all evidence that showed that nothing supernatural actually happened on that fated day, Camping insisted that the first stage of the Rapture did indeed occur as scheduled.

Harold Camping admitted that he was wrong in his prediction that on May 21st there was to be massive climatic upheaval followed by five months for Hell on Earth for the unsaved. This clearly didn’t happen. However, he maintains that God did indeed judge and doom non-believers on this day. His view is that Jesus is no longer taking applications to Heaven. The pearly gates are closed. If you weren’t saved by May 21st, you can’t be saved now. So no more billboards and no more travelling vans with an apocalyptic date painted on them.

The time table of the Rapture is however still on course and the end of the world will happen as scheduled according to Camping on October 2lst, 2011. On this date nothing will happen but Camping and those who believe as he does claim the world will just stop and all the saved will be Raptured to Heaven and the rest of us will be damned to be torture for all eternity in Hell. Camping claims that God is a good God so he decided to spare us the five months of Hell on Earth. Is he not merciful?

Many religious believes still insist that the Rapture is real and that Camping just has it all wrong. They rely on a small number of verses in their ancient story book which says that no one can predict the time or the day of the End of Days and that the end will come like a theif in the night. Camping has been bombarded with such verses for at least two decades and one would have to be a complete idiot to think that Camping must have missed this in his intense Biblical calculations. Camping actually has quite a lot to say about these verses including the multiple other verses that contradict those verses. He claims that the verses that have been quoted at him were taken out of context and then shows other verses that support his view that, “We can know.”

But you don’t need to be a Bible scholar to figure this out. We all know or at least we all should know that nothing supernatural will happen on October 21st, 2011. There will be no Rapture on October 21st or any other day because the idea of a Rapture is fictional. In fact, most of the Bible is fictional. My prediction is that there will never be a Rapture and I dare anyone to prove me wrong.

From Examiner

Anyone else getting terribly bored of Camping and his followers? 

~Mooglets