Camille Paglia is an American academic, brought up Catholic, later atheist. She described an early experience where she learnt the lesson which is one that all religions and cults teach – don’t ask questions, we know better, do as you’re told!
‘The Catholic Church in the Fifties was at its most dogmatic and censorious, and I struggled restlessly against its rules. As we were being drilled for Confirmation, I asked the nun in our catechism class, “If God is all-forgiving, will he ever forgive Satan?” This innocent and it seems to me, interesting question produced a violent response. The nun turned beet-red and began screaming at me – odd, I thought, since we were sitting in the pews of the church. My question, needless to say, was not answered. That was when I knew there was no place in the American Church of that time for an enquiring mind.’
The experience appears not to have dampened Paglia’s ardour for asking awkward questions. There are still no places within religion for enquiring minds.
* * *
Creationism adherents are throwing their toys out of their prams. Wikipedia is biased against religion, they cry. Wikipedia states that there are over ten thousand distinct religions in the world. Those seeking elucidation from within its pages shouldn’t take everything found there to be gospel. Creationists have taken umbrage with Wiki because it lists ‘Creationism,’ aka ‘intelligent design,’ as a pseudoscience. They’ve resorted to ‘statistics’ which allegedly show how many Creationists there are in the world. We all know what is said about statistics. We think Wikipedia is being overly generous in using even that term (World Religious News).
* * *
As if the inhabitants of Rio de Janeiro’s favelas don’t have enough to contend with, the BBC reported that criminal gangs had taken ‘control of a group of five favelas in the north of the city – now known as the Israel Complex – after one of their leaders had what he believed was a revelation from God . . . gangsters see themselves as “soldiers of crime”, with Jesus as “the owner” of the territory they dominate’. The report says that ‘the gang selling these branded drugs is the Pure Third Command, one of Rio’s most powerful criminal groups, with a reputation both for making its opponents disappear, and for fanatical evangelical Christianity. Controversially, some have dubbed them “Narco-Pentecostals”’.
* * *
What does a hundred thousand dollars buy you these days? Two tickets to the ‘One America, One Light Sunday Service’. This was an ‘interfaith prayer service’ which took place the day before Trump’s inauguration as US president. Seems like the only faith on display was that of devotion to the mighty buck rather than the Almighty. Whoever organised this is an amateur compared to the Evangelists who pull in millions of dollars yearly. Did the participants offer up prayers to the Omnipotent One? What are the chances He, or his team, answered them? A bargain though if they got to meet the Holy Trinity, Trump, Vance and Musk.
DC
No comments:
Post a Comment