It being Sunday, the pond does its usual tour of the devout, but either the palate is jaded or things are genuinely dull.
I mean, for the sake of the long absent lord, the angry Sydney Anglicans have still got the crucial name tag issue up on the splash page:
Hi Matilda, this is loon pond, why don't you just go away? Where's Michael Jensen, why has he failed yet again to deliver the goods, a pity since he's one of the few readable contributors to the site?
As a result, the pond has had to look for other signs of life.
It turns out there's still great excitement at the notion of getting the word "submit" (so much nicer than "obey") into the Anglican wedding service, with the change to be debated on the 16th October (or so Russell Powell assures the world in Common Prayer revision set to go to Synod).
Apparently the Anglicans are still reeling from a media conspiracy to completely misunderstand the meaning of the change, as explained by Bishop Rob Forsyth, the chairman of the Archbishop's Liturgical Panel (and they talk about bureaucracy in Canberra):
“For some, it reinforced a narrative of the Anglican church as a bunch of dinosaurs. For others, they were pleased to have at last something of the genuine challenge of man and woman marriage, scripturally understood, being discussed. That’s where the young couple who had used that service were such a wonderful example because the stereotype was - ‘Young people will leave the church because of this’ - when in fact it was young people who were the reason we put the service in the book in the first place.” he said.
The pond swings both ways on this. The Sydney Anglicans are a bunch of dinosaurs, but it's entirely appropriate that old dinosaurs spawn young dinosaurs. But then came this further titillation:
A development draft of ‘Common Prayer’ was presented at Synod last year and a revised version has been sent to Synod members in preparation for this year’s debate.
“We’ve done a lot of nuancing to that second order of marriage, and I suspect some will think we have not gone far enough in making clear the differences between men and women. It’s going to be a very interesting debate.”
Make clear? Surely the key difference is already clear enough? Take your pick. Do you like the New American Standard Bible?
... I want women to adorn themselves with proper clothing, modestly and discreetly, not with braided hair and gold or pearls or costly garments, but rather by means of good works, as is proper for women making a claim to godliness. A woman must quietly receive instruction with entire submissiveness. But I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man, but to remain quiet. For it was Adam who was first created, and then Eve. And it was not Adam who was deceived, but the woman being deceived, fell into transgression. But women will be preserved through the bearing of children if they continue in faith and love and sanctity with self-restraint ...
Maybe not so much dinosaurs, as Taliban? How about that old favourite the King James version, doing the same bit of Timothy?
... women adorn themselves in modest apparel, with shamefacedness and sobriety; not with broided hair, or gold, or pearls, or costly array; but (which becometh women professing godliness) with good works. Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection. But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. For Adam was first formed, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression. Notwithstanding she shall be saved in childbearing, if they continue in faith and charity and holiness with sobriety.
Yep, there's no way around it, that's the key text for angry Sydney Anglicans, and what does it say. That easily fooled over-dressed lipstick-inclined harlot Eve was responsible for it all going horribly wrong, and unless women keep quiet and be submissive and do a little breeding, it'll keep going wrong.
By golly, there's a lot of good sense in the Taliban:
- Women should not appear in the streets without a blood relative and without wearing a burqa...
- Women should not wear high-heeled shoes as no man should hear a woman’s footsteps lest it excite him.
- Women must not speak loudly in public as no stranger should hear a woman's voice.
- All ground and first floor residential windows should be painted over or screened to prevent women being visible from the street.
- The photographing or filming of women was banned as was displaying pictures of females in newspapers, books, shops or the home.
- The modification of any place names that included the word "women." For example, "women's garden" was renamed "spring garden".
- Women were forbidden to appear on the balconies of their apartments or houses.
- Ban on women's presence on radio, television or at public gatherings of any kind. (Taliban treatment of women wiki here).
Clearly there's much inspirational material here for anxious Sydney Anglicans eager to make clear the differences between men and women, lest wicked women excite them too much ...
So what else? Well Phillip Jensen has gone bolshie and socialist and unionist in The Land of the Lost Weekend, as he gets terribly agitated about shop assistants helping keep open stores on the weekend. Clearly the trading hours are cutting into the number of punters available to turn up for Anglican services.
His piece includes this impeccable piece of logic:
The main reason shops are open is competition, not growth – it’s to maintain market share, not to increase the market – it’s to compete with other retailers, not to improve the economy. When everybody is open for business there is no advantage to anybody, and when nobody is open for business there is no disadvantage to anybody.
And what about the intertubes and using a quiet Saturday to order some goods from Amazon in the United States, which somehow still think it's Friday? Or that Sunday is actually Saturday? And that this sort of nonsensical chatter about the problems faced by bricks and mortar shopfront retailers entirely misses the point?
Did anyone mention dinosaurs?
There's a lot more well-meaning blather in Jensen's piece, but not one mention of how workers' rights to penalty rates and five day weeks is the real go, with days off during the week compensating for time worked on weekends, but then who would turn to the Sydney Anglicans for advice on retailing, industrial relations or job security in a world being transformed by online selling? (Not that it's all bad news, Shopfront traders still prosper).
Meanwhile, over at the Pellists, Cardinal George Pell was last week banging on for the Sunday Terror about abortions, in the usual predictable, sanctimonious, righteous way we've come to expect from the exclusively male Catholic hierarchy. (The Value of Life). So you've had to endure the pain and anguish of an abortion? (Yes the pond has been intimately acquainted with a couple)...
If you have not already done so, give yourselves over with trust and humility to repentance. The Father of mercies is ready to give you his forgiveness and peace ...
Good old Catholic guilt, they can't get enough of it. By golly when they catch up with the Mother, here's hoping She gives them a hell of a time.
Will the Catholic hierarchy ever be happy until the regime of illegal backyard abortions is reintroduced to the populace at large, as existed in Australia up until the late nineteen sixties and passionate people like Bertram Wainer began to cry enough already?
Probably not ... and how quickly people forget ...
Crochet hooks, castor oil, slippery elm bark, syringes full of Lifebuoy soap and Dettol. Sepsis, gas gangrene of the uterus, hysterectomies on 12 year olds, deserted pregnant wives taking their children and jumping off the St Kilda pier and women waiting, scared and alone, on a dark windswept corner of Bourke Street for the stranger’s car that would take them, huddled beneath a blanket on the floor of the backseat, to the backyard abortionist. And if they haemorrhaged on the kitchen table, the best they could hope for was to be dumped on the corner near the Royal Women’s in the hope that someone would find them in time. Many died.
Did anyone mention dinosaurs?
Ah well, before the pond gets too gloomy, let's seek a little light relief in the story of a passionate bunch of cheerleaders in Kountze, Texas, who are fighting for the right to put biblical phrases on the banners players run through before each game. Phrases like If God is for us, who can be against us, and I can do all things through Christ which strengthens.
The judge involved in the case gave the cheerleaders a couple more weeks while he decides if they're violating the First Amendment (Cheerleaders See Victory as Judge Delays Decision on Religious Banners).
You can see why the cheerleaders were so keen. With god on their side, the Kountze High School football team (Go Lions), were running 4 and 0, and doing pretty good. And then in last game, wouldn't you know it, the wretched Woodville High School team (Go Eagles), taught them a spanking 18-16 lesson.
Is Woodville full of evil secularists? Did God take a view about the cheerleaders and Kountze? Being fickle and wrathful, did She want to teach Kountze a lesson? If Woodville had God on their side, did they have more powerful God Karma?
Is She something of a secularist herself? Does She believe in separation of church and state, or is She just tired of all the legal arguments in the USA? Or did She have a little plunge on Woodville?
So many questions and so few answers, so all the pond can do is run a snap of the Kountze cheerleaders doing their thing for team, Kountze, god and Texas (forget the rest of America, it's being run by an Islamic born in Kenya, it's doomed I tells ya).
Now remind me again of that verse about young women adorning themselves with proper modest and discreet clothing, and remaining quiet, and so forth and etc?
Did anyone mention dinosaurs?
And now, religious duties finished, please make sure you take a look at Mike Carlton's demolition of Alan Jones in Prissy shrieks of fear and loathing.
What a ripper. What a great example of venom, fear and loathing.
It makes clear why Ms Abbott is out and about on the hustings, supporting her man, and why Tony Abbott has suddenly revealed a fetish for Downton Abbey, the fetish for Fifty Shades of Grey now safely in the past.
Tony Abbott keeps the company of a prime misogynist. Jones even puts Peter Slipper in the shade.
If Abbott was genuinely serious about his love of women, how could he stand to go on Jones' show again? Does he like the company of a bilious serial misogynist of the worst kind?
You know the answer to that. Anything to get hold of the precioussss ...
Oh dear, it's back in the dankest part of grub street.
How about we wrap it up with a quote from a Frederick Seidel poem, Palm Sunday, which recently hit the August edition of Harpers (spoiler, closing stanza only):
Picture me in front of the TV
Staring at a mirage.
The events of the week in the world break the flat-screen surface like fish.
They are caught and cleaned and cooked and given a massage.
I'm climbing the dunes of the Sahara with a mermaid swimming toward me
Talking away, as if she were afraid she'd already bored me.
I hear her emphatic politics, spoken in English English,
Pat of the TV panel of pundits in Washington, D.C., on this Palm Sunday.
When I escape to the window for a moment to breathe New York,
Something white is flying through the sky that is not a stork.
I think about people who have died and are dead.
I don't think they have gone somewhere else instead.
I don't think I will see them again one day.
I don't think China will overtake the U.S. before Monday.
If the Kountze High School cheer-leaders are in need of a well-heeled sponsor, they could ask Alan Jones.
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