In which the pond celebrates the Sabbath on a Saturday, thanks to Shanners ...

These days the pond's Sunday meditation seems to come on a Saturday, but who knows, maybe the seventh-day churches who observe Saturday as the Sabbath were right ...

Could it be another example of the Catholic church fucking up the message in the usual way?

Could it have something to do with Emperor Aurelian beginning a new Sun cult in 274 AD?

Christian seventh-day Sabbatarians, arising from Adventist groups in the Millerite tradition, hold beliefs similar to that tradition that the change of the sabbath was part of a Great Apostasy in the Christian faith. Some of these, most notably the Seventh-day Adventist Church, have traditionally held that the apostate church formed when the Bishop of Rome began to dominate the west and brought heathen corruption and allowed pagan idol worship and beliefs to come in, and formed the Roman Catholic Church, which teaches traditions over Scripture, and to rest from their work on Sunday, instead of Sabbath, which is not in keeping with Scripture.

Heathen, pagan!

But enough of this thorny theological issue - next week, why the pond eats meat on a Friday - because the company of a member of the great apostasy calls ...

Now for those who came in late to the story, the fundamentalist Shanahan got together with fundamentalist Islamics, last week pleading to the world that everyone had the right to be fundamentalists, and incidentally wear whatever clothing they like,.

This week the robust spiritual warrior takes up the cudgels again and mightily smites the wicked secularists ...

Indeed, indeed. It reminded the pond that there were others contemplating Xian values ... why, yesterday in the lizard Oz there was a very poignant reflection on Xian values at work ...

Well the pond can't quote much from it, it's too harrowing even for a Saturday meditation, but here's one excerpt ...

Ah yes, exemplary Xian values at work ... 

And now back to Shanners, taking a shot at the secularists with an exemplary kind of rabid rhetoric ... though strangely the pond misses the good old days of being consigned to an eternity of hellfire ...

Good old Jimmie Joyce, what a writer he was, to be sure, but now we really must get on with Shanners delivering her own form of damnation ...

Actually the pond wouldn't mind if we went down a path where wayward trucks and cars didn't career out of control and kill innocents going about their daily business, but there you go, in a world of fundamentalist religious freaks, it's not possible to have everything ...

On the other hand ...

Yep, it's maintain the war against the gays, and suffer little children ... oh yes, suffer ...

And Shanners has the cheek to have a go at secularist values and bemoan the way that church authorities have to front a commission here or there ...

That's somehow the way when theological absolutists of the Xian kind get together and consign vast swathes of the world to an eternity of hell ...

Meanwhile, for a bit of light relief in these troubled times, Rowe has put the Donald out on the practice green ... so many balls, so much good hitting... with more shanking and hooking and slicing and the yips by Rowe here ...