If it's just another meditative Sunday, how did a peanut butter and jelly sandwich get into it?

The Anglican church has been in the news this week, for all the wrong reasons, but the harrowing tales and the smirking arrogance and stonewalling aren't the sort of things the pond cares to contemplate on a meditative Sunday.

Oh sure you can read abut Grafton in Anglican Church abuse compensation not motivated by suffering, inquiry told,  and follow the links to associated stories, but the likely outcome is a fit of depression. Headline after headline - Child abuse victim 'manipulated' by Anglican Church - or Inquiry told Anglican Church approach to abuse victims was antagonistic, and so on.

So what do we cop on the front page of the Sydney Anglicans this week? Lashings of mortification? Self-excoriation of the strongest kind? Self-examination and a deep expression of regret? A promise to do better, and think again about ancient bigoted attitudes to gays and women and their rights?

Oh get off the grass:

What happens in Grafton stays in Grafton, and so we have a lead story about an ancient political hack warning year 13 graduates not to be fooled by the world. How about not being fooled by the Anglican church? I mean, what gormless cheek and twaddle:

The former leader of the National Party told the audience gathered at the Danebank School auditorium that the western world is in the midst of a major moral crisis.

The western world? Is that code for Grafton? Nope:

Students came mainly from Sydney but also from other parts of Australia including Cairns, Townsville, Wellington, Maitland, Lismore and Noosa.


Anderson, who was always a bit of a dopey agrarian socialist, was once given a decent dust-up by Tony Windsor, back when Tamworth was the centre of the universe, as you can remember in Tony Windsor accuses John Anderson of bribery.

Anderson, who is a bear with very little brain, prattled on about the secularists:

To the parents of friends of the graduates he spoke of the self-centredness of the secular society. "How are families going to raise the next generation to think beyond themselves?" Mr Anderson asked. "You don't have to show your children how to worry about themselves .... 
You don't actually have to sit down and say to little Johnny 'The great key to life is it is all about you'. Do you? It comes innately and if it goes unchecked, its a disaster. Yet, that's the value that our post-Christian age has promoted as the appropriate one to live by."

Yes young ones, look to Grafton to see how to live your life.

  "These are real issues we need to grapple with" he told the graduates. "They are not reasons for us to give up or to live in ghettos. they are reasons for us to engage wisely, with courage and with compassion undergirded by humility. But the world is in the mess that it is in because we have deserted the beliefs that drove the values that drove the behaviour and the ethics that made our societies such wonderful places, in worldly terms, to live in. And we need to again point people to the core of those beliefs."

Well it's proof yet again, should anyone feel in need, that the god botherers can supply lashings of humbug with a pious sauce of hypocrisy ...

 "Western man has come to hate the truth and to deny it and to mock it and to distort it. But if you have met Jesus then you will know that nothing else matters by comparison" Mr Anderson said.

Western man? Yep, it's the usual nonsense, because you see, western women aren't valued enough for the way they hate the truth and deny it and mock it and distort it ... in Grafton ...

And then just to rub even more hot pepper sauce into the wound, Michael Jensen got to wondering Is the Sermon on the Mount humanly possible? Well certainly not for Anglicans in Grafton ...

It is, of course, a silly rhetorical preacher trick. Ask the question, ramble through the eccentricities of Tolstoy - lordy, was he as mad as a hatter or what - and it turns out an idealistic life is simply impossible, so let's forget all this nonsense about the Sermon on the Mount....

That stuff about turning the other cheek and all the rest of the bloody hyperbolic, exaggerating, explosive shelled stuff Jesus vented is just too bloody tricky. which is very handy if you happen to live in Grafton.

By the end of it all, the pond was yearning for a bit of straight old fashioned fun.

Wheel in the crack Methodist! Yes, it was all over the English tabloids, and it even got a run down under, as you can read in The scandals that brought down 'crystal Methodist' bank chief.

The pond had an aunt who turned to Methodism in her old age. It was understandable enough given the alcoholic ways of her partner, who turned abusive when in drink, so when at last the drink got him, she became teetotal and turned to bible reading. Her dress was modest - some might say that never a dowdier bird wore such dull plumage - and there was no ribaldry or much laughter, and not even a scratchie in the house, so severe was the ban on gambling. She was canny and knew it was a form of state tithing and leeching up there with the weekly Catholic envelope ...

But now it turns out that she led both herself and the pond astray. Did we miss out on the real meaning of Methodism or what?

And now that Michael Jensen has assured us all that the Sermon on the Mount is just too bloody hard, waiter, please bring the pond some of that dissolute Methodist lifestyle you keep in the fridge in the kitchen ...

Meanwhile, it's been a good week for Islamic bashing amongst conservatives because it's much easier to bash other versions of god botherers than bash your very own god botherers lurking in Sydney.

The cretins have been on the march at Menzies House - how Ming must roll in his grave - recycling British FUD about a school excursion, cleverly satirising the Australian Bullshit Corporation - by golly that's as subtle as a meat cleaver to the noggin, and most bizarre of all, praising peanut and jelly sandwichs as the font of western civilisation under threat from the Islamic hordes - without understanding how or why the United States is such a fucked obsese nation ...

And along the way, coming up with lines like this:

I’ll say it again, Islam runs counter to every single progressive left ideology, but because the right doesn’t like Islam, progressives continue to make excuses for it. The facts are, should Islam ever become the majority, it will be the progressives that will be targeted first by the Islamists. (here)

Actually, Andy, liberals, secularists and anyone standing remotely in the shade to the left of Genghis Khan are targeted first by drooling peanut butter and jelly sandwich munching fuckwits like you ...

Have a go at Grafton, and then let's talk about the Islamics, and the fact that should raving foaming peanut and jelly sandwich chewers become a majority, the progressives will be the first to go down ... and if you're going to make a stand for western civilisation, at least make a stand for something a bit classier than a fucking peanut butter and jelly sandwich, you addle-brained peanut ... (here for the sandwich routine).

Which inevitably brings us to Cardinal Pell, now a splendid and seemingly permanent presence on the tabloid front page of the Sunday Terror.

The piece itself, Celebrating the feast of Christ the King, is utterly trivial and mindless, of the kind that Catholic priests used to trot out long ago, with Pell having an each way bet on Christ being a monarchist:

Is it right and proper to call Christ a king or does such a title mislead us?

You know - if you were ever exposed routinely to Catholic tosh - the rest of it, the paradox, the consoling, the hope, and the need for a good lawyer and a clever set of trusts and plausible deniability and responsibility rests with Rome and an exclusively male structure and weird sexual attitudes permeating through the church like a canker at the core so that anyone listening to a priest for advice on sex and contraception must be at least a little bit balmy. Heck, even the pond's mad aunt couldn't go there ...

But never mind, what the pond really enjoys is the way expert climate scientist Pell and Pellism has now been given top digital tabloid exposure.

The fine fickle finger of tabloid conjunctions means that Pellism is now conflated and confused with all the tabloid dross doing the Sunday rounds.

Christ wasn't afraid to get amongst the brothels and the money lenders and the tax collectors and the rest of the riff raff, and so the pond has put together a little show and tell to reveal the real home of the Pellists. Suffer little children to come unto me, or perhaps, just suffer little children, suffer bloody suffer endless tabloid gossip...

Yep, Christ is the king ... of the gossip tabloids, that is ... though no doubt if you actually bothered to read all this crap, you might in fact have a flash from heaven, turn religious and even embrace the Sermon on the Mount.

UDATE: and now thanks to a reader, the pond has been pleased to learn of Michael Jensen's rant about lullabies of lucre while directly, right next to, giving the details on how to hand over your filthy lucre, unless you happen to be dropping the filthy lucre on his next book.

Oh it's a grand, wonderful, strange world. Click to enlarge and be sure to follow the reader's link below. You're sure to stumble on a magic faraway tree marvel: