JABBA THE AGNIVORE

CROCODILE TEARS

The Sun continues its Orange Week by showing a picture of Cardinal O'Brien today. "He looks as if he has the weight of the world on his shoulders," said 'an onlooker.' An onlooker, for God's sake! (Pardon the pun!) They also call him the 'axed' Cardinal, when the whole world and his dog knows that he resigned. The whole piece does its best to condemn him.

His house is in 'posh Morningside, Edinburgh.' Another reason to hate him; he lives in a big house in one of the dearest parts of Edinburgh. Disgraceful, isn't it? Especially since all the Church of Scotland officials live in council flats in Muirhouse!

'The cardinal initially tendered his resignation as Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh last November — citing his age and ill-health.'

He did not actually cite anything of the sort. Cardinals are required to resign at the age of 75. O'Brien's 75th birthday is coming up so he was sending in his resignation in plenty of time.  The way The Sun puts it, it looks as if he was resigning for other reasons and using his age as an excuse. 

The piece finishes with a reminder of yesterday's 'shocker': 

'Yesterday, The Scottish Sun told how the archbishop boasted of being friends with sex beast Jimmy Savile for “many years”.'

And when did he boast of this? I was in Glencoe before Savile died and there were quite a few folk in the hotel that boasted of their friendship with Savile. Thatcher, and other politicians, were photographed with him, as were numerous doctors and health officials. Should we be looking into the sexual proclivities of all these people? I suppose it depends if they are Catholics or not!

Needless to say, the Rangers supporters have been having a field day. What the hell it has to do with football I've no idea but their hatred has been around a long time so maybe we can't blame them. They are on blogs, salivating with pleasure, saying how they've known for years about how corrupt the Catholic Church is. Strangely, Celtic is brought into this. Many of them laugh at how Celtic's world is crumbling around them! Maybe they don't realise but even if the Vatican were to disappear into the bowels of the Earth and everyone that was RC stopped following the religion, Celtic would still be there! Strange people.

As I have already said on here, paedophiles should be locked up and maybe O'Brien is guilty of whatever he has been accused of. The problem I have is twofold: condemnation seems to be reserved for paedophiles that are Catholics and the sheer joy of some people, while they try to profess sorrow for the children involved, is vomit-inducing to say the least.

Even stranger is Bill McMurdo's idea that Catholics should leave the church en masse and head over to Protestantism! Others on his blog agree. But why would they? Many people that call themselves Protestants have no idea what the Reformation was about. They seem to think it was a reaction to corruption in the Renaissance Church, when it was actually nothing of the sort. 

The Reformation came about due to fundamental differences of opinion about salvation: Luther's 'Justification by Faith.' Of course, once things got started other heads poked above the parapet to take further the ideas of Luther; notable among these was Zwingli. Of course, they all fell out with one another!

Historians speak of a 'Second Reformation' in the latter half of the Sixteenth Century. This is when new Reformers, like Calvin, came to the fore. The Church of Scotland follows a strict Calvinist doctrine. Part of this doctrine is that God is so perfect that he can never change his mind. That means that he made his mind up about who would be saved and who would be condemned before he even made anybody! These people that are going to be saved are called, 'The Elect' and Calvin put their number at 4800! That means that the vast majority of us are hell-bound no matter how good we are. It also means, conversely, that The Elect will go to Heaven no matter how bad they have been! Of course, nobody knows who constitutes The Elect and it might be that some of those paedophile priests will be up in Heaven laughing at the rest of us in our eternal torment!

Such an idea suggests that God is not good at all, but a capricious and arbitrary being, if not downright evil. Can a God be good if he makes people just to condemn them to everlasting torment through no fault of their own?

Anyway, sorry for the theology lecture. My point is that Catholicism as a religion is fundamentally different in its soteriology than the Protestant Churches. No matter how corrupt members, or even leaders, of that church might be, it does not diminish the truth of the church's doctrine for its followers. And there have been plenty of corrupt leaders: Pope Alexander VI and Julius II to name but two. But the church goes on.

Hopefully the Sun will stop pandering to this base, bigoted element and report the story impartially; but I doubt it. Equally, maybe the Rangers support could stop revelling in stories of child abuse; but, again, I doubt it.

Some good news for Sooperally, anyway. He will be taking part in a Question Of Sport 1000th edition special on March 4th. You never know, he might even win a trophy!

P.S.  Sorry about the funny look of this page. I can't understand it and I can't fix it!