Christianity

Hands off our bodies! Hands off our votes!

The forces of militant obscurantism, bigotry, intolerance, and social regression, are on the march in Britain! Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor has implicitly advised Catholics to vote for Michael Howard’s Conservative party in the General Election, on the grounds that the Tories support a lower limit for legal abortion — 20 weeks of pregnancy instead of 24. “Abortion, for Catholics, is a very key issue”, declared the cardinal. “We are totally opposed to it. The policy supported by Mr Howard is one that we would also commend, on the way to a full abandonment of abortion… There has been a notion...

Jerry Springer Row: Defend Free Speech!

1.7 million people watched the BBC2 screening of the award-winning Jerry Springer, The Opera on Saturday 8 January. Prior to the broadcast, the BBC received 47,000 complaints from people organised by fundamentalist Christian groups who regard the musical as blasphemous. The Christian Voice Group has threatened to take out a private prosecution against the BBC for blasphemy. And apparently BBC chairman Michael Grade sought personal assurances from director general Mark Thompson that the show did not breach blasphemy laws. No doubt these organisations would have been happy to see the opera...

We saved our school!

By Mathew Bailey Parents, teachers and students of Northcliffe School, serving Conisbrough and Denaby near Doncaster, have recently stopped their school from being turned into an academy run by a religious organisation, the Emmanuel Schools Foundation (ESF). This is the first time proposals for an academy have been overturned. It is, as the Yorkshire Post put it, a “huge blow to Blair”. New Labour’s academies are a way of bringing the market into education. Only 12 currently exist but the Government wants 200. Academies are directly funded by central government with private sponsors running...

Banning Monty Python?

By Dan Katz The Home Secretary, David Blunkett, is considering abolishing Britain’s absurd blasphemy laws when legislating for a new offence of incitement to religious hatred. By so doing Blunkett hopes to split those opposed to the new incitement law. But Blunkett’ concession is relatively unimportant — any blasphemy prosecutions would probably now be overridden by EU law. Besides the new offence is in effect an extension of the old blasphemy law — it will be a new “all religions” blasphemy law. Blasphemy prosecutions run foul of the European Convention on Human Rights Act because blasphemy...

Save our school.... from Christian fundamentalists

By Joan Trevor Parents and teachers of Northcliffe School, serving Conisbrough and Denaby near Doncaster, are fighting to keep their school… and to keep it from Christian fundamentalists. The school, a secondary school in an ex-mining area, had been declared a failing school in 2003 and was in special measures at the start of 2004. This makes the school eligible for bids from private or voluntary bodies or religious organisations to run it as a city technology college or city academy. In such situations, the school is taken out of control of the Local Education Authority and answers to the...

The Passion of The Christ - and of Historical Christianity: A Message for Easter

It is a mark of the integrity of Mel Gibson, the Tridentine, traditionalist Catholic whose film this is, that it is spoken in two dead languages - Aramaic, the language of Judea two thousand years ago, and Latin, the language of their Roman overlords. Subtitles are not 'commercial', but that has not damaged the money-making prospects of The Passion of the Christ. It took $300 million in its first week on release in America. In fact the dominant language in the film is not Aramaic or Latin, or the language of the subtitles. It is the language of violence. From the beginning, almost to the very...

Unions challenge Blair on gay equality

Trade unions are challenging the Government in court to give full employment rights for their lesbian, gay and bisexual members. The case begins on 17 March at the High Court in the Strand, against the Government's inadequate implementation of the EU Sexual Orientation Employment regulations, which were brought in on 1 December last year. The TUC is coordinating the action, but it is being brought by seven unions including the teaching unions NUT and NATFHE, other public sector unions, including UNISON, TGWU, and AMICUS, the union representing the clergy. The Government is being supported by...

Regaining a child's emotion

The Passions, an exhibition by Bill Viola, National Gallery, London The Passions is not all about the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, but it does take some of its inspiration from the iconography of early Christian religious art. Its subject is the nature of human emotion. Viola started the work in 2000 when his father was dying of cancer and this, according to the artist, accounts for the grief and sorrow in the work. Viola is a video artist. He makes big and small screens, usually using simple images, mostly of human beings. He is something of a religion-inspired artist - eclectic, as you'd...

Writing on the wall

Pope Idol Karol Wojtyla, alias John Paul II, supreme caudillo of the Catholic Church, finally popped his clogs last week. He has gone to the great Vatican in the sky to hobnob with the other dead Popes, a pious collection of poisoners, adulterers, thieves, warmongers and dictators. Not to mention the Protestant church leaders — Luther the anti-Semite and Henry Tudor the serial wife-murderer… As can be seen from the following quotations, the Pope was a much loved and respected international figure, among religious and non-religious people alike: “Pope John Paul II waged a ceaseless war against...

The writing on the wall

Rogue bodyguards Blair's bodyguard Multi-cultural? No, anti-semitic BNP idiot of the week By their celebrities shall you know them Not our brothers Rogue bodyguards Over the last weeks we have become more aware of the extent to which the Iraqi Coalition Provisional Authority "outsources" its security services. According to the Pacific News Service 1,500 of the security personnel are South Africans and many have used their backgrounds as mercenaries during the years of apartheid to bolster their credentials. This fact emerged after after a bomb blast in January 2004 in which one South African...

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