Christianity

On human fear

Christian belief in Jesus relies on the idea that Jesus existed and he was a very special man. That he worked miracles — e.g. whether he cured the sick. That he was the son of God, born to a virgin. If Jesus was not as unique as Christianity tells us he was, then Christianity loses its reason-to-be. Philip Pullman’s retelling of the Jesus story shows, hypothetically, how the all-important miracles in the Bible could have been invented. Pullman creates situations to “explain” how the events in Jesus’s life could have happened. Pullman, like many other people before him, has also done a lot of...

Catholic Church cover-up: yes, prosecute the Pope!

Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens are right. Of course, Pope Benedict should be prosecuted when he comes to Britain! It is alleged that as a bishop he helped cover up for paedophile priests and shielded them from prosecution. If he is not guilty, then prosecution would clear his name of the stigma that will otherwise attach to it— that Benedict XVI is the pope of the paedophile priests! If he is found guilty then he should be punished according to the law — as any citizen in any civilised country should and would be. The Pope, the spiritual absolute monarch of the world's 1.4 billion...

Catholic Church child abuse scandal: religion as a licence to prey

Ireland in the 20th Century: for countless small children, orphans alone in the world and children confined in special prisons for some petty crime against property or for bunking off school, life in institutions and schools run by Catholic priests and nuns was a childhood-long nightmare of violence at the hands of nuns, priests and Christian Brothers (a male, monklike, celibate, teaching order). There was no escape other than by way of the slow process of growing up in a priest and nun-made Hell, and then being released, often psychically maimed, into the adult world. In the nature of things...

The Connolly Association and its work: a critical memoir

There are striking parallels between the SWP's attitude to Islam over the last period and the way the Communist Party used to relate to Irish Catholic immigrants in Britain. I had some experience of that. For a while, over forty years ago, I was involved in the work of the Communist Party among Irish people of devout Catholic background in Britain, people from the nearest thing to a theocracy in Europe, where clerics ruled within the glove-puppet institutions of a bourgeois democracy. Hundreds of thousands of us came to Britain from small towns, backward rural areas, from communities of small...

Catholic school bans "cervical cancer jab"

The governors of the Roman Catholic school in Lancashire which has banned vaccination to protect against cervical cancer on its premises, claim this is on health grounds. The vaccination – which provides immunity to the virus linked to the big majority of cervical cancers - can have mild side effects, such as headache and nausea. Their objections are disingenuous – a convenient excuse for people who don’t want the vaccination on so-called moral grounds. This is also extremely irresponsible. If the governors are so worried about side effects and their ability to deal with them then they should...

CONFESSIONS OF A TRIDENTINE BOY

CONFESSIONS OF A TRIDENTINE* BOY (THE PRO-CATHEDRAL, ENNIS, 1950-53) “It has been said: ‘Ireland is one huge monastery’. In spite of exaggeration [this] correctly emphasizes the fact that religion and the supernatural are a vital element in Irish life. At every twist and turn of the day a man is reminded of the affairs of the soul. Thus he meets priests and nuns, he passes by churches and convents; he hears bells ringing for Mass, the Angelus, etc. — The whole atmosphere is conducive to spirituality.” — The Furrow, Organ of Maynooth College, Ireland’s leading seminary. 1954. [Glossary, and...

The Bible

My younger daughter Molly is currently reading the Bible - reading it as a convinced atheist, for information and literary instruction - and I'm trying to keep up with her.

Molly reads much faster than me, so I'm still in Kings while she has finished the Old Testament and is about to start on...

LAMENT FOR AN UNEXPECTED DEATH

LAMENT FOR AN UNEXPECTED DEATH God God God God! My God That God is dead! Though God is dead God lives in my deep self, In the buried mind of a hard old Red, A grieving cosmic orphan strung alive To echoing cavernous voids inside my cheated head: A wised-up Irish God-fed man, limed to social certainties, — "No balance, frame or sense in life but life" — Infinities of emptiness, my tendrons trailing there, Beneath my will for finite crusted truth still lie A deep archaic hunger, fed And starved in my subconscious, Sustained by buried lies. God is not dead: I live — He lives! The void in my head...

IN ASISSI

IN ASISSI Midst the avarice and sanctity In Asissi, white in sun and years, Two flushed, pale-bloused, young-breasted girls, Their mouths half-open, smiling, watch Two pidgeons fucking in the sun. Breath held in Francis-empathy, Delighted, knowing hands entwined, Unconsciously at one, they catch Life fired by the pantheistic sun. And then, their eyes cloud and drop, As the shade-faced, fussing shepherd nun Comes at a dry stiff trot — cast down Like the dead saint's communistic friends Who broke the sacredotal line, To set life over property. They burned in priest-set fires, whose minds Too...

One secular law for all!

When Archbishop Rowan Williams proposed that British courts should use Islamic sharia law for family matters among Muslim citizens, he met with a just uproar of denunciation. Williams was not concerned only with extending the role of sharia law amongst Muslims in British society. He wants — and he said so clearly — to increase the role of all the different religions, in British society, and not least the one at whose head he stands. Williams’ ostensible chief rival, the Catholic Cardinal, Cormac Murphy O’Connor, rushed in to defend him. It is yet another example of the pattern which we have...

This website uses cookies, you can find out more and set your preferences here.
By continuing to use this website, you agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms & Conditions.