Is that the St Peter or the Peter principle we're talking about?

(Above: more Steve Bell here)

The pond is pleased to announce, with some considerable personal pride, that after only three attempts, it has completed its premiere viewing of Lana and Andy Wachowski's and Tom Tyker's 172 minute co-production, Cloud Atlas.

It's this kind of personal Olympian achievement that provides an inordinate amount of pleasure and self-validation.

The pond is pleased to note that the film will now be released in Melbourne at the Cinema Nova on 28th February, without any Russian titles. Completing the task was almost as wondrous a sign of Christ's second coming as a meteor shower over Russia (oh sweet long absent lord, will this tickle your superstitious credulous childish fancy or what).

The pond is further pleased to advise that it has read What to make of the retirement of the Pope? over at the Sydney Anglican site, though why it wasn't headed What to make of the retirement of the chief heretic, anti-Christ and head of the whore of Babylon must remain a mystery.

It turns out that the writer, one Nick Gilbert, asked one Mark Gilbert about the issue on the basis that Mark is a former Catholic and now head of ENC. It further turns out that ENC stands for:

Evangelism and New Churches Certainty4Eternity mission.

C4E?

At which point the pond had the desire to kick the cat in the lounge room and throw the dog on the BBQ, in a bid to match Korean cuisine and teach the French a thing or two about how their love of horse meat was nothing special.

It turns out that when it comes to theology, the Pope's a Catholic, which will teach Barry McKenzie a thing or two, because he was always muttering how certain unlikely events - like a meteor shower over Russia - suggested the Pope might be a Jew.

This deceptive perfidious Pope might have sounded a tad favourable to Protestants, but the truth always came out in the wash:

“It was some of the stuff that he wrote on [Wolfhart] Pannenburg and [Jürgen] Moltmann that I thought he was quite positively disposed to, but when it came down to where they disagreed with more orthodox Catholic teachings, he would choose the Catholic line. “

Astonishing that the Pope would choose the Catholic line! Is there no end to his perfidy and deceit?

Anyhoo, it turns out that the Pope's resignation is a good thing, because it offers up vast potential for Sydney Anglican missionary work amongst the heretics, satanists and Babylonian whoremongers:

“I’m wondering whether the resignation opens up opportunities to talk to Catholics about individual salvation. He is just a man, he’s recognised his limits as a man, and acted accordingly. In the end, the institution isn’t the be all and end all. What is? Well, it’s our personal response to the gospel. “ 

Alarmingly, certain of the faithful Sydney Anglican flock have taken this as an omen that all will be well if they tell the Jensenists to fuck off, and they'll work out their own personal response to the gospel without the help of the church. Gays and women seemed to be at the head of the queue.

It turns out that the best way to engage with the Catholic community is to act as a counter-terrorist, and to help the Manchurian candidates, the pitiful, the indoctrinated and the brain washed, to leave the Catholic church and join other churches.

Mark Gilbert, as part of his engagement with the Catholic community, has also recently written a book called Stepping Out in Faith, that catalogues the stories of people who have left the Catholic Church and joined other churches. It is published by Matthias Media and will launch in March.

Engagement? Here's the pitch for that book:

A young boy in the confessional lies about his sin, knowing that he is choosing hell over shame and embarrassment. A young man in spiritual distress decides to become a priest so he can be sure he will go to heaven. A white leather Bible sits in a box on a shelf for years, off limits to the little girl who asks to see it, because it might get dirty. "Just do what I say," a priest tells another boy who is full of questions about God, "and everything will be okay".

Hmm, that's a funny kind of engagement.

And that pitch seems lacking a little. Perhaps the pond could tweak it a little to suit the Sydney Anglican way.

A young gay boy in the Sydney Anglican church lies about his intrinsic nature, his carnal desires and who he is, knowing that if admits he's gay, the church will tell him that he is choosing hell, not to mention all the shame and embarrassment involved in such a sinful set of thoughts.
A young man in spiritual distress decides to become a evangelical missionary persuading Catholics that they should leave the church, thereby ensuring that he and they will be sure to go to heaven. 
A white leather Bible sits in a box on a shelf for years, off limits to the little girl who asks to see it, because it might get dirty, and let's face it, because women should just shut the fuck up when in church and leave the preaching to the Anglican menfolk. 
"Just listen to what the menfolk have to say," a Jensenist minister tells another boy who is full of questions about God and why she invented gays, "and everything will be okay".

Or some such thing. Perhaps the reading for today could be Luke 6:41:

And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but perceivest not the beam, the gigantic bit of Sydney Anglican 4be2, that is in thine own eye?

Never mind, where would Monty Python have been without the schismatics and the splitters.

Strange things seem to be happening to the Sydney Anglicans, and is there anything stranger - apart from meteors over Russia heralding the unexpected return of Christ - than Michael Jensen embarking on 500 word rant about the forthcoming federal election, without a single par, or any kind of pause for breath or even a full stop? (In the year of the election).

The poor dear seems quite overwrought, and wound up, but at least he won a prize from a reader for writing the longest sentence ever written on the website. Vanity, vanity, all is vanity ...

Ah well, at least it's more fun than reading the Pellists on Syria, as you can if you catch up with the week-old thoughts of Cardinal Pell in the Sunday Terror, under the header Syria.

The pond has no dog in that fight, but to take the side of President Assad and his Allawite troops is surely an indication of why the Catholic church is abjectly useless when it comes to meaningful commentary on anything.

Still, when you remember the fondness the Catholic church had for Franco, it seems like they know how to maintain better and more consistent form than Greater Western Sydney (did you know there was a wiki about AFL wooden spooners? So cruel, the intertubes).

Pell concludes the Assad's team aren't fighting democrats but religious zealots, which would be fine if Assad and his team happened to be democrats as opposed a vile, destructive, oppressive, cruel, murderous, torturing regime.

What Pell is saying is sucks boo to talk of an Arab spring, what it's unleashed on the world is a whirlwind, a democratic winter, and a flock of mad Mullahs who refuse to accept the separation of Church and State, like sensible secularists do.

The pond looks forward to the Catholic church returning all the gifts and alms and funding it receives from the state in Australia in order to maintain its Ponzi scheme and indoctrinate the hapless young with talk of hellfire for eternity. Then the mad Mullahs will have no basis for claiming fair dibs down under.

Or some such thing. Perhaps the reading for today could be Luke 6:41:

And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but perceivest not the beam, the gigantic bit of Catholic humbugger 4be2 that is in thine own eye?

No doubt in today's Terror, Pell talks about the pope's resignation, but the pond would rather shove a gigantic load-bearing beam in its eye than pay the rag for the news.

Anyway, it's not hard to guess. Here's the prattling prelate doing the usual humbug before the politics get under way:

"Pope Benedict has always loved the Church and worked to do what was best for her. His resignation came as a surprise to me. We thank him for his years of devoted leadership and service, and his brilliant teaching. We’ll pray for him as he enters retirement. We must also pray for the church as she prepares to choose the next successor of St Peter” ... (here)

The only upside is that Pell is currently at long odds to take the crown. Oh and now he can emulate his hero by retiring, and saving Sydney-siders from his pompous preenings ...

On the other hand, getting kicked out of Melbourne so he could do over Sydney suggests that the next step is for him to get promoted to the ultimate level of incompetence, by taking over the whole ship and steering it towards the nearest iceberg.

The Catholic and Sydney Anglican churches. Keeping the Peter and Dilbert principles alive ... while Christ ignores the mating call of the meteor showers over Russia ...

(Below: click to enlarge)