Cardinal Pell, Michael Jensen, and let's bunga bunga on the way to a flat earth ...

(Above: screen culture and bubble boy attacking George. Beware, or this could happen to you).

Bless me father, because it's been two long weeks since I dropped in on The Punch and caught up on what's happening in cutting edge thinking ...

"Shush child," said my kindly confessor, "that's not a mortal sin, only a venial one. Say ten Hail Murdochs, and visit the local church websites, it being a Sunday, and all will be forgiven."

So hey ho, off we go, and first stop naturally is Cardinal Pell's week old thoughts as distributed in the Sunday Telegraph, because dang it, we just can't bear to drop a couple of bucks on the Sunday Terror to get to the Cardinal in right 'up to the minute' mode.

That's why we settle for the week old goodies, and the alarming news contained in Kids and Computers, because it seems that damaging screen culture can lead boys to develop hair on the palms, and make girls go weak-kneed and in need of exceptionally nerdy glasses.

Time for a special alert. Stop reading right now, switch off that bloody computer, go outside and play, or else you'll go blind.

Oh sorry, we got that wrong. That's what Saturday matinee serials, and Cinemascope, and colour television and comic books and pub pong games used to do, along with sex and sinfulness.

These days, according to reputable Italian newspapers and Cardinal Pell, it's computers!

A reputable Italian newspaper recently reported research claiming that Italian boys have twenty-five per cent less muscle than thirty or so years ago - due to computers!

Phew, that's a relief. Twenty five per cent less macho 'strutting like peacocks' Italian boys harassing innocent Australian female tourists, and here was the pond thinking it was all to do with Italian boys trying to imitate Silvio Berlusconi and his bunga bunga ways, where only one muscle seemed to count (hang on, is it a muscle?)

By the way, if you can't get enough of Silvio and his amazing ways, make sure - if you missed it - that you drop in on Ariel Levy's letter from Italy for The New Yorker, Basta Bunga Bunga, which happily is outside the paywall, and in which you will find this gripping statistic:

The average Italian woman does twenty-one hours of housework a week, while the average man does four.

Yes, that's a way to keep your muscle growth under control.

Sadly it seems the original hard copy statistic that 95% of Italian men had never operated a washing machine was in error - why as many as 10% might well have done it once - but perhaps there's a reason why Italian women have stopped breeding young boys with no muscles:

Francesca Comencini, a mother of three, said, “I don’t know what the situation is in America, but here women are doing everything. This problem, which is really the problem of modern times, is not solved anywhere.”
“Well, Scandinavia,” Cristina said. “But it’s cold.”

Not to worry, it is of course one of the happier follies of Italian Catholics and women that they helped vote in Berlusconi because he promised to promote the family. Some family, provided it has some tasty seventeen year old girls within it.

But we've strayed far from Cardinal Pell's dire warnings about the dangers of computers and screen culture, and of course the intertubes, which collectively is the ruination and damnation of the entire western world.

The mesmerising effect of television, computer and hand-held screens is reinforced by routinely pairing some of these screens with earphones so they can be played at volume. This raises the heart rate, hurts the hearing, and secures people in their own personal bubble.

Bubble boy! As revealed in the 47th episode of Seinfeld.

Oh dear I've wasted my entire life on the mesmerising effect of American sitcoms, raising my heart rate and hurting the hearing, when I could have been playing cricket, or soccer, or taking drugs to win a bicycle race, or other healthy pursuits.

What else could go wrong?

Dumbing-down is a disaster, and the best foundation for learning about other cultures is to know your own. Good things are being done, but the screen culture accustoms the young to music that is all beat, stories that carry you along, and short sharp bursts of information.

Indeed. Well let's not think too hard about the dumbing down involved in reading the Sunday Terror or short sharp bursts of George Pell on climate change as a myth ...

So it's hey ho, and off to the Anglicans we go, in a quest for a short sharp burst of information, stories that carry us along, and music that is all beat, drum and bass, a bit like the rapid, pulsating beat to be found in Ravel's version of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, with conductor Pinchias Steinberg jumping up and down like a whirling dervish. Consider your age man, and the consequences of maintaining such a fierce tempo!

Why it was an orgy of deafening drum and bass and brass, and the deafening Ingrid Fliter wasn't afraid to pound the ivories in the Schumann Piano Concerto. (program notes will turn up in due course here at the SSO in pdf form).

Oops, got carried away there with that noisy music - a hundred or so musicians banging away in unison, terrifying Cardinal Pell - so thank heavens Michael Jensen is to hand to settle us down, with Is Christian Payer Different?

Jensen sprays around 'Father' and 'Fatherly' at regular intervals in his consideration of prayer, which I'm sure is going to irritate the Holy Mother, should she ever get around to noticing it, and then delivers a 'bummer dude' moment:

While there are claims that prayer in general ‘works’, as far as I am aware no statistical study exists that vindicates Christian prayer as more ‘effective’ in changing events than prayer in other faiths.

Amazing, but come to think of it, the pond isn't aware of any statistical or scientific study which exists that vindicates any form of prayer at work in any faith as 'effective' in changing events. But along with William James, Jensen lives in hope:

Comparing accounts of prayer across religious traditions and moments in history, he determined that prayer was the vital heart-beat of all religious consciousness. Religious individuals claim to have intercourse with a higher power – and so must rest on the belief that prayer does something: ‘energy which but for prayer would be bound is by prayer set free and operates in some part, be it objective or subjective, of the world of facts’. A ‘scientific’ analysis of prayer ought at least in theory to be able to observe some difference being made by prayer.

Uh huh. A scientific analysis of prayer. Can we put that alongside the scientific analysis of wine turned magically into blood?

Never mind, instead of a bloody carbon tax, there's your solution to climate change, right there. Prayer, designed to turn back the waters Canute-like, and measured scientifically in a way to please the sceptics.

It turns out that prayer is just one of those all purpose religious activities which you can embark on without much hope of a result, seeing as how all these different religions are praying to all these different gods, or conceptions of god, or the She Mother Herself:

In many ways Christian prayer does not differ from prayer in other religions, or taken as a general phenomena of human existence. Notwithstanding that many scientists of religion have had Christian paradigms, and so articulated what they found in non-Christian religions in terms congenial to Christianity, making the unfamiliar perhaps more familiar than it really is: still, prayer is above all a normal and even ‘natural’ human activity.

As natural perhaps as masturbation. It turns out that prayer is a bit like those muscles those Italian boys are failing to develop:

So why not pray? It seems that prayer is an undiscovered benefit of the Christian life for many of us – an un-exercised muscle that is surprisingly powerful when finally it is put to use. We neglect to pray because we don’t see how good God is, and what treasures lie stored up for us in prayer. What is more, we don’t pray because we don’t grasp the power and majesty of God. We confine our prayers, afraid to ask for too much, as if God were somehow either too stingy or too puny to give us what we ask for.

Indeed. And all this in the context, and without irony, of a report on events in New Zealand under the header Christchurch cathedral sustains more damage.

Pity the poor people of Christchurch, but on the basis of Jensen's analysis of prayer, New Zealanders simply haven't been exercising their un-exercised powerful prayer muscle. And so their pride and joy, Christchurch cathedral, is broken. We'd like to find a way to pin the blame on computers or the intertubes or perhaps even Silvio Berlusconi, but it seems that the all seeing Earth Mother should collar a fair share for arranging earthquakes as part of the heavenly design.

Somehow New Zealanders have failed to understand how good god is in visiting earthquakes upon them, or how a prayer to god might just fix up the cathedral, because after all She's never too stingy and we're never too puny to get what we're asking for ...

Still, the Reverend Jay Behan, vicar at St. Stephen's Anglican church, had a key insight:

While the people of Christchurch struggle to come to terms with the aftermath of the earthquakes, Mr Behan believes it is important to continue to find things to be thankful for.

“We are thankful that we are not alone in all of this,” he said. “We have a government who is willing and able to help support its people ..."

Yep, the power of prayer can lead to help from the government (oh and an ever present and sovereign god will chip in as and when funds are available, though we're not expecting the Vatican to sell off its treasures any time soon. Think of the impact on the tourist trade).

Meanwhile, the indefatigable Phillip Jensen, in When to keep out the camel, starts by explaining how "slippery slope" arguments have no logical force, and have fairly fundamental weaknesses, and then proceeds to use "slippery sloppy slopey" arguments in relation to the charismatic movement, and the movement in relation to the ordination of women, and even gets down to the niceties of identifying where the top of a slippery slope lies.

Truly, it's a wondrous exercise in schizophrenic argumentation, which naturally arrives at the persecution of conservatives, because The ordination of women has ushered in wholesale persecution not only of its opponents but also those who oppose homosexual behaviour.

Shocking, and such a natural linkage between nagging wives and nagging gays, and with several decades of this wicked persecution easily outweighing a couple of thousand years of the persecution of women and homosexuals by conservative Christians ...

Oh stop it, you persecuting women and gays ...

Thankfully one Andrew Mackinnon is to hand in the comments section to explain that it's the failure of the church to uphold the historical existence of Adam and Eve that has led directly to the acceptance of women's ordination and homosexuality in many churches, when here at the pond we've always blamed the acceptance of Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny into the home.

And if you follow the link provided by Mr. Mackinnon, you might end up learning that Lucifer is the god of Judaism. Yep, the Jews worship Satan, who's hiding behind a mystical name. With readers like that, Mr. Jensen should perhaps Think. Again. Or perhaps the other Jensen (M.) can explain how the power of prayer for Jews is seriously misguided ...

Enough already. I guess it's time for my ten Hail Murdochs, and so off to The Punch we go.

Where to start? Oh no, not with Mark Kenny scribbling Taxation 101: Not everyone can get a tax cut. Clearly he hasn't been listening Tony Abbott who is only too keen to explain how in Taxation 2.01, everyone can indeed get a tax cut, along with pie in the sky by and by.

And then, who's that first out of the commentary box? A reader proposing a flat tax, perhaps as a way to a flat earth ... and perhaps not understanding that if you're rich enough, and with good enough tax advisors, you need never pay any tax at all. As Kerry Packer famously put it, not a penny more than whatever tax he might be required to pay, which come to think of it, turned out not even to be a penny ...(wikiquote)

Oh it's another day in Murdoch land, and I'm so out of there, nine Hail Murdochs short of the rosary. I'm just going to have to stay a wicked persecutory sinner ... waiter, bring me a prayerful Xian for dessert ...

(Below: a Sunday fantasy. Reporting for duty at the pond, ready to fight the power of prayer, madam sergeant suh!)