George Pell, Phillip Jensen, divorce, marriage, and the whole damn thing ...

(Above: the man who loved marriage so much he invented new ways to get a divorce. Like, start a church).

It being Sunday, and the news inclined to be grim, it's time for a little respite, retreat and meditation, and in the process to catch up with the thinking of Cardinal George Pell, as revealed unto the world in the Sunday Terror.

Unless you like to waste money and kill trees by buying today's rag, you'll have to be content with last week's Same-Sex Union.

Naturally the Pellists are deeply disturbed by the notion of same sex marriage, which flies in the face of everything that is reasonable, and has already led to some dangerous thinking:

One or two Muslim voices are already calling for Australian law to recognize polygamy, one man with many wives. Some feminists might approve this provided a woman could have more than one husband!

Oh those perverted feminists and their damned, vexing taste for polyandry. But let's leave jokes about Muslim voices and women's perverted tastes aside for an even more vexing issue:

If we reject the natural order of society and if we decide to manufacture reality through redefining marriage, why should we resist further changes such as polygamy?

There you are: the natural order rejected, and reality manufactured, and hapless society incapable of resisting change!

It led us to think that there were other issues to contemplate:

If we reject the natural order of society and if we decide to manufacture reality through redefining marriage and becoming brides of christ, why should we resist further changes such as intercourse with the spirit world?

Indeed. Let us take us our text:

There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown. (King James version, Genesis 6:4)

Oh dear. The sons of god doing it with the daughters of men, to the bare-faced point of baring children.

Let's face it, this kind of unholy holy business actually led to the holy ghost having his way with Mary, and producing a most troubled and troubling son.

Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise: When as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost. (Matthew 1:18).

Talk about fiddling in the dark and disturbing the natural order of things!

And we haven't even got on to the vexed problem of the Nephilim, the offspring of the 'sons of god' and the 'daughters of men', though perhaps that's why god introduced the concept of genocide into the world by showing how it's done with a giant flood.

Yep, spirits cavorting with the flesh has always been a tendency in the world (just ask Hollywood), and it can turn quite nasty, as Barbara Hershey discovered in The Entity (just ask any pulp movie buff for further references, a treatise on the sexual implications of The Exorcist, and an episode guide to Supernatural, as the boys battle Lucifer and get tempted by wicked fallen angels).

But perhaps the most unnatural order of things involves the church requiring of its people that they abstain from the natural order of marriage, and instead become chaste brides of christ in a church which is the ultimate bride of christ. Talk about kinkiness ... why it makes the way the pond regularly becomes a bride of satan quite a normal way of conducting a relationship.

But will the Pellists discuss the way the Catholic church rejects marriage and the natural order of society for a manufactured spiritual reality and an artificial definition of marriage based on the views of goat herders and cheese makers from thousands of years ago, and remain resistant to changes involving people wanting to display love and affection towards each other?

Fat chance.

Meanwhile, over at the Sydney Anglicans, Phillip Jensen is in meltdown mode over marriage, in No Fault Today, No Marriage Tomorrow. It seems that easy divorce has ruined marriage, as opposed to the joys of a guilt-ridden, onerous judgemental divorce, or perhaps a life spent building up the raw materials trapped in a marital hell all your very own, a kind of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? ("Flores para los muertos")

... changing the basis for divorce changed the real meaning of marriage and, for many people, has effectively made marriage redundant.

Yes indeed, that rascally Henry VIII has a lot to answer for.

Changing the basis for divorce in sixteenth century England certainly changed the real meaning of marriage, and it led to ... eek, the Anglicans, the Sydney Anglicans and the ponderous pontificating Phillip Jensen.

Now it's those damned pesky gays seeking to do a Henry the Eighth:

So now again we have a minority wishing to address their problems by changing the nature of marriage. The homosexual community is a much smaller minority, than those who were seeking easier divorce and they are not facing legal or financial discrimination, for their issues have all been dealt with in recent legislation. Their motivation for changing marriage is to gain social acceptance of their lifestyle.

Oh the wicked fiends, seeking to live in suburban bliss when there's really nothing wrong with a ghetto.

However, such a change is self-defeating as it will only further diminish the distinctive value of marriage and its place in society.

Because you see heterosexuals have done such a good job enhancing the distinctive value of marriage, to the point where a decent Catholic nun or priest, brides of christ, won't have a bar of it.

It will not immediately change our relationship with our spouse, but over time it will further erode the fundamental place that family life has in our nation. It is a further rejection of the Christian culture but it is also, and more importantly for our parliamentarians, a further undermining of the family structure on which all stable societies are built.

By golly, Henry VIII, and by extension, all those Anglicans who followed him, bear a heavy responsibility, and it shouldn't be easy for them to deliver a hospital pass to the gays, so they can get out of jail and go on to tithe the world their five hundred bucks.

And it's heartening to see that prattling Dean Jensen agrees:

Here then is a great paradox. At this time when Henry VIII and the community has, by simplifying divorce, so redefined marriage as to say that it is of no real value (“only a piece of paper” and a head chopping away), some people feel their relationship will only gain value if it is recognized as a marriage.

Oh dear, I think the subbie's just slipped a fast one into the ponderous Jensen's final par, trying to perhaps highlight the contradictions and hypocrisies of a church founded on a quickie divorce rabbiting on about the dangers of quickie divorce, and linking this to the matter of gay marriage. Damn you subbie, hie thee back to Rupert.

Meanwhile, speaking of the media, on a more solemn note, it was fascinating to see the way, knee-jerk style, that all the early reports on the tragic events in Norway immediately linked it to Muslims, Islamic terrorism, al-Qaeda and international terrorists. (try a local have it both ways Was al-Qaeda or far-Right group behind attacks? as an example).

The 24/7 news cycle now requires ill-informed, meaningless, fact-free, intuitive speculations to feed the satanic mill of misinformation.

This has been noted in detail by Gleen Greenwald in a piece for Salon, on The omnipotence of Al Qaeda and the meaninglessness of "Terrorism", including a flurry of links showing how the media just reached for the bottom shelf - mix terrorism and Islam and produce instant headline.

... now it turns out that the alleged perpetrator wasn't from an international Muslim extremist group at all, but was rather a right-wing Norwegian nationalist with a history of anti-Muslim commentary and an affection for Muslim-hating blogs such as Pam Geller's Atlas Shrugged, Daniel Pipes, and Robert Spencer's Jihad Watch. Despite that, The New York Times is still working hard to pin some form of blame, even ultimate blame, on Muslim radicals.

As for the concept of terrorism:

... in many (though not all) media circles, discussion of the Oslo attack quickly morphed from this is Terrorism (when it was believed Muslims did it) to no, this isn't Terrorism, just extremism (once it became likely that Muslims didn't).

This then is where the "war on terrorism" has led us.

To cultural and religious wars and to acts of madness, with religion as the font and unholy souce, while the sophists fronting the churches spruik on endlessly about how their snake oil will fix the world, and the desire of gay people to get married and lead boring conventional suburban lives (perhaps with a whiff of Virginia Woolf in some cases) will lead to the end of the world.

If you can spot the difference between a fundie Muslim cleric and a Christian fundie cleric carrying on about how gay marriage is a danger to the natural world, you're more astute than the pond.

Perhaps it's more likely that the end of the world will come out of some fundamentalist true believer's gun barrel ...