The pond usually tries to keep its rampant atheism under control.
The pond isn't keen on angry atheists, still enjoys the Galgolitic and Nelson masses (could Leoš Janáček and Haydn write music, or what?) and a dash of mystical Blake, and generally thinks there are more interesting things to do than argue with people besotted by their imaginary friends, whether three in one entities of a weird kind, or fairies at the bottom of Conan Doyle's garden …
But every so often, the pond is unendurably provoked, and trust the bromancer to be the provoker, and at such inordinate length too …
Actually Easter offers no solace at all, because the world is pretty fucked, there's a lot of pain and suffering out there, and the only upside is that it makes the misery the pond experiences reading the reptiles feel like small beer …
But let us get on with the bromancer before we return to a couple of choice reptiles who graced the pond yesterday …
Easter is love, Christianity is solidarity? Go tell that to the dog botherer …
Easter is time for miserliness and a canny hand in the pocket, or a redback in the handbag …
Oh aye Davie boy, hoot-toot, we must have a steely resolve nae to waste money on candles and such fripperies, and remember to try the stairs here … but do go on ...
Selfless courage? Is that like the dog botherer telling teachers they should head back to school because, you know, who cares if a few of them die?
So that's selfless courage. Sending others out to face the virus, while you shelter in place … but do go on bromancer, preaching the usual Xian guff few Xians actually preach, especially if they go by the name of Jerry Falwell Jr ...
Now it's not the fault of the bromancer that he brought up the Nazis, even if it gives the pond a chance to break Godwin's Law, by citing Dame Slap …even the header gave the clue …
And the follow-up line was even uglier …
It makes the bromancer's waffle sound even sillier … because we've been there before …
Ah yes, burdensome lives and useless eaters, and probably old too, and only good to become Soylent Green ...
But let's give the bromancer some more rope before returning to Dame Slap...
Christian care? Oh yes, it's back to Dame Slap …
Oh yes, we really have been there before …and not just blather about throwing the fat man on the railway track to save lives … we're back with useless eaters and burdensome lives ...
Never mind, the bromancer is still rabbiting on about Xian caring … just don't get the pond started on the cosy relationship between the Catholic church and the fascists in Spain, Italy and Germany during those balmy days leading up to the second world war ...
Indeed, happy easter and a merry Xmas to you, in perpetual adoration…
But at least the pond didn't have to argue with the bromancer … the reptiles did all the hard yards … and so we arrive at the final gobbet about imaginary friends ...
The pond's hope is for the bromancer to take a long holiday and relax …it must be hard scribbling these kinds of fatuities while the dog botherer is snatching money from the poor, and Dame Slap is explaining how it's a kindness and a mercy to put down the aged ...
And so to another pond burden.
Only a blind person would have failed to note all the carry on and hoopla about the Pellists this week, including but not limited to …
Out of the endless guff, the pond has selected only prattling Polonius, who, with his usual infinite stupidity, blamed it all on social media …
Now before we start, the pond should say right from the get go that it's inordinately pleased that Pell was sent down and did time. He emerged a little more humble and less arrogant - if appearances are anything to go by - and that alone was a good thing.
Pell managed to escape, by hook and by crook, any responsibility for the Catholic church's outrageous behaviour over decades … and yet he was guilty as hell.
Here the pond must drag in the Catholic priest in the family, who had a particular contempt for Pell, and for the gay clique that he surrounded himself with in Melbourne.
Now it's true the pond's family connection was a liberal, at least as the church understood the term, and so an outsider, but he is an extraordinarily engaging and companionable person, who has done much for his parishes …and he didn't object to the gay clique because they were gay, being gay himself.
He objected to the Melbourne response, and its sundry and various cruelties and outrageous denials and mistreatment of victims, and to the way that the Pellists soft-pedalled and gave pedophiles easy breaks every step of the way … no better illustrated than that shameful photo when Pell accompanied the criminal Ridsdale to court to help him keep up his morale…
Later Pell would pretend it had all been a terrible mistake, but everyone, including the victims, knew what it really signalled …
More here, including this …
Ballarat bishop Ronald Mulkearns was among a number of clergy who knew Ridsdale had a boy living with him, but failed to intervene.
On Tuesday, emotional abuse survivors put their arms around Mr Levey's shoulders as he addressed the media.
Mr Levey said his mother had called Bishop Mulkearns multiple times requesting he be removed from Ridsdale's care, but she was repeatedly ignored.
"I can't believe that those meetings never discussed his paedophilia," he said. "There is no way Cardinal Pell couldn't have known what was going on."
Mr Levey said Ridsdale hadn't been shifted into another parish as a promotion as suggested by Cardinal Pell, but was removed from Mortlake to stop him sexually abusing children.
"He had to have known, he was at those meetings," Mr Levey said. "The church definitely knew I was at the presbytery. It was common knowledge the whole time I was at Mortlake that other clergy knew I was there."
He fought back tears as he said: "This has been the hardest part of it all so far ".
So really the pond doesn't give a fig about Pell or what his apologists have to say about him, or their bleating about injustice. Talk to the hand, or the blank wall Pell's church offered to its victims …
Column after column, Polonius has rabbited on about pedophiles in the ABC back in the 1970s, but when it comes to pedophiles in the church, and the church's response to the victims, Polonius has been as wise as the three wise critters the pond once saw at the Tōshō-gū shrine in Nikkō, Japan …
Get him on to the suffering of Pell, as opposed to the suffering of the victims who formed the basis of the court case, and you can't shut him up ...
Actually, the pond prefers to refer to the precedent of a genuine Pope, with astonishing papal insights …
Well this has gone on much to long, even for a Sunday meditation, and so it's on to the final gobbet of Polonius's prattle, with the pond pleased that a little wild justice at last came the Pellist way ...
The Catholic church and its apologists will keep on blathering on like the bromancer, or talking of collective guilt, as if that wasn't a thing, when in reality, collective guilt has been routinely assigned to lots of groups or nations, fairly and unfairly …
The pond will not ponder on it further … and instead will revert to another Pope to wrap things up …
If you like the Glagolitic Mass, Dorothy, have a listen to Martinu’s Gilgamesh. Much less well known but another awesome expression of Czech genius.
ReplyDeleteAnd, if you don't want to sit still for 59 minutes, you can hear it in three 19 and a bit minute segments here:
Deletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAUYNVNJ6Bo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eX4LDLEITKI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgCamg0ZQFU
Know it, love it, love Martinu too …what GB says, but also here in one piece, and much more of his work available on YouTube (sometimes wonder why I keep all the old CDs)
Deletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQ8mOhy9q_4
Me too. I haven't touched a CD in years.
DeleteDP: "The pond usually tries to keep its rampant atheism under control. "
ReplyDeleteAnd you do it so well ! :-)
But getting onto the Bromancer, he avers that: "In Christian belief, Jesus is the Son of God, the second person of the Trinity." And "Before he was known as God ..."
Ok that fixes it: Jesus is God. So, based on that I suggest that the truly accurate rendition of God Jesus's cries on the cross were:
"Myself, Myself, why have I abandoned me ?" and
"Me, into My hands I commend My spirit."
Now, moving on from the Bro's Easter Bunny stories, we come to Polonius: "The fact is that no defendant in modern Australia has been subjected to such a media pile-on as Pell."
No ? Polonius does mention Lindy Chamberlain in passing but doesn't actually do a comparison. And the injustice to her lasted a lot longer and was much more injurious than anything Pell "endured".
Besides, don't Christians want to be martyrs ? Surely Pell should be speaking out about how his trials have purified his soul and brought him and God to love each other the more ?
But one small thing for Polonius to contemplate; he says: "Yet Milligan's book is essentially a case for the prosecution which, in the final analysis, failed."
Did it ? No, I think the case was just rejected by an 'unholy septinity' of very human and very fallible judges, and who, except for the Poloniuses of the world, unconditionaly believes that they got it right ? And in any case, if/when the civil cases come, will Pell and the Catholic Church necessarily be adjudged "not guilty" then ?
In any case, as Cassidy tried to make clear, Pell has not actually been found innocent, we've just had a judgement that comes close to the Scottish "not proven" verdict (which I wish we had).
Well at least the craven Craven is soon going, going, gone …
DeleteOne of the most vociferous critics of Aunty this week was Greg Craven, the president and vice-chancellor of the Australian Catholic University, who claimed live on ABC News that ABC journalists were part of the cheer squad who sent Pell to jail.
“The ABC did its very best to be part of the [anti-Pell] cheer squad,” Craven said to host Karina Carvalho. “You worked closely with police to make sure that there were coincidental leakings.”
The ABC corrected another claim by Craven, published in the Australian on Wednesday, that Ferguson’s Revelation series was “rushed forward once the date of the high court’s decision was announced”.
“It was almost as if the ABC had the breathtaking arrogance to think that it might influence the decision of our highest court,” Craven wrote. Only it wasn’t.
The ABC was forced to reschedule the broadcast of episodes two and three of Revelation due to the live broadcast of the prime minister’s Covid-19 update, which bumped the show when it ran live on both ABC News and ABC TV.
“Episode 3 was eventually broadcast on 2 April,” the ABC said. “Rather than being ‘rushed forward’, it went to air later than originally planned.”
Two days after his outburst on ABC News Craven resigned as vice-chancellor.
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/apr/10/the-pell-reckoning-ray-hadley-challenges-andrew-bolt-to-take-it-outside
Second highest paid, to run 26th largest in terms of student numbers …
https://www.universityrankings.com.au/university-student-numbers.html
They reward their lap dogs well ...
"Running dog lackeys" is the term I think, DP.
DeleteAnyway, I'm just astounded; Pointing to his own experience of “13 months in jail for a crime I didn’t commit”, Pell reckons that “God-fearers are better able to deal with evil and suffering than atheists".
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/apr/11/cardinal-george-pell-writes-about-suffering-jail-and-coronavirus-in-news-corp-piece
Personally I reckon "God botherers" (does Pell really "fear" God ? Does Pell even really believe in the existence of God ?) are indeed better able to deal with evil and suffering because they impose so much of it, even upon their own children.
We do remember the Melbourne Response very well, George.
It was supposedly said of the French cleric Le Maistre, that he believed not in God, but in the Catholic Church.
DeleteThe Melbourne Response is indeed remember GB and was as disgusting as the crimes it attempted to delay judgement on.
DeleteI’m quite fascinated with the indoctrination of the child and how in maintains into adulthood, to the point that the whole of the Murdoch press, and particularly Henderson and Sheridan, remain avid defenders of the indefensible.
Like many, I was raised in the realm of Catholicism, religious fear and division, with assorted attempts at grooming.
Not that pedophilia is exclusively a Catholic problem, I will say that the whole religious indoctrination process is a bit like a virus, spread from one deluded mind to another's and perpetuated into the mind of the child.....with bonus sexual abuse and brutality, broken lives, destroyed families and suicides.
The two creeps featured today could do no worse than visit Broken Rights and then come back and defend their lowlife enabler, George Pell. They need only Google indoctrination of the child by fear or the psychology of religious belief......more papers than you can poke a stick at....... and then take a long look in the mirror. Grrr!
On your last point, the likes of Pell only get to the hierarchical heights for one reason. They are psychopaths, hence they fear and feel nothing, even though they may very well believe they believe. Their minds are steel traps.
Cheery Anon.
I've posted this before CA but you may not have seen it
Deletehttps://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/147470491000800113
see also
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_dominance_orientation
It makes sense to me that these guys are interested in the power that an institution confers rather than any sort of spiritual enlightenment. The arrogance alone gives it away. They go absolutely ape-shit when challenged and it couldn't be any sweeter than Craven overstepping the mark.
Anyway, can't wait for Hadley and Bolt to sort this out by single combat - don't really care if it's a draw.
Interesting links, Bef, thanks. Whether or not CA had seen them, I hadn't.
DeleteBeing taken by "the power that an institution confers" is a fairly common syndrome, isn't it. And I think it is strong in that one (Pell).
Somehow I'd never come across 'Broken Rites' before, CA; so thanks for that. "They believe [that] they believe" is an interesting idea. I'll have to think about that one, but clearly whatever it is that they actually believe probably has only incidental connection with my reality. Or yours.
Good links Bef. Everyone likes a good job, particularly if it confers power, as GB notes.
DeleteBroken Rites is quite harrowing. The WA reports were the worst. My father and a couple of his close associates were all raised in Catholic orphanages and told some disturbing stories that clearly determined their life choices and human attributes......many of them were not that good, although they without exception always achieved what they desired. Absolute book material. Cheery Anon.
Trial by judge alone? It's not hard to imagine what the reptiles would say if Pell were found guilty by a judge alone - unelected! elite! a Proddie! swayed by social media!
ReplyDeleteYes, the reptiles are mindless simpletons much, of not all, of the time. I'm sure that many - starting with Polonius - believe that if Pell had been tried by one single judge with no jury, that he would clearly have been found innocent.
DeleteForgetting entirely that 2 out of 3 judges in his first appeal quite comfortably found his guilt to have been sustained.
Well, maybe we should just form juries entirely from serving judges ?
Joe, and GB, we were offered a solution, not a month ago, by the Garrick Professor of Law, and occasional ‘contributor’. His article, although from ‘Spectator’, entitled ‘Can the Libs move just a smidgen to the right, please?’, set out what he saw as the poor choices the Libs made selecting judges for the highest court we have. He wanted judges who were more readily identifiable as ‘conservative’ (although I have suspected he saw the better solution as having, well - the Garrick Professor select judges. What else is a Garrick Professor for?).
DeleteHis indicators for ‘conservatism’ in judges were not well defined, but he did leave a strong impression that several currently on the court would not satisfy his rather general definitions.
With this recent majority, 7-0, one wonders what result a more ‘conservative’ court might have delivered? Might the Garrick’s ‘conservatives’ have shown more concern that they were overturning a jury verdict?
Other Anonymous
Prof James Allan does ring a tiny bell in my mind, OA, but I think it might just have been a whooshies - somebody else upset that the world isn't as he would have made it.
Delete7-0 was a tad strange, there is usually at least one dissenter, as indeed there was in the 2-1 lower court decision. In my mind, Pell has committed crimes, but I'm not altogether sure "beyond reasonable doubt" he'd been "proven" to have committed that one. So if I (God forbid) had been a judge, I might sadly have been one of the 'unholy septinity' too.
The spinmill of his mind
ReplyDeleteSee his brain in constant idle
Like a hamster in a wheel
As he fobs off questions viral
With his sneering snake-eyed spiel
Heartless comments he loves tweeting
Since to him it’s all a race
Just to see which curves are peaking
In the Democratic states
When he spruiks a pill untested
As a wonderful vaccine
We suspect that he’s invested
In Hydroxychloroquine
And his minions stand behind…
…as he spins out of his mind
"When you knew that it was over you were suddenly aware"
DeleteI do wish at times that I was "suddenly aware". But this helps :-)
Cheers GB. The autumn leaves are turning...
DeleteSince Godwin’s law has been broken so magnificently I thought I might carry the theme to a fanciful conclusion where certain perpetrators get their just desserts...
ReplyDeleteWillkommen in der Hölle
The Donald and Cardinal Pell
Were greeted by Hitler in hell
Trump shook his hand
And said “I’ll take command -
The whole world was under my spell!”
Said Adolf, “You were number one
But this is no place to have fun
Down here I have power
So prepare for your shower
I’ll turn off the gas when you’re done”
George cried “I’ve no need of ablutions
The Pope’s granted me absolution!”
But the Fuhrer cried “Humph!
Get in there with Trump
It’s time for your final solution”