The thing is, would the statues cause the clergy to be worried that Holy Mother Church is about to crush them, or would it be seen as encouragement that they will be given a slap on the wrist because they are among their own? (My money is on the latter)
No one knows if St. Michael the Arc-Angel exists, much less what he might look like. Religion puts forward no objective evidence to support their claims, and as such is inherently divisive. Never the less, true believers of all stripes see their particular brand of supernatural nonsense as the solution to all the world's problems.
In recent years, it's dawned on me just how silly the way (usually Christian) angels are depicted really is, and how conceited it really might be. I mean...bird people? You slap feathery wings on a human being and maybe make them a rave attendee, and that's 'holy' for some reason?
Now, the old Jewish ones, with thousands of eyes and hundreds of wings everywhere that looked like some sort of MC Escher work, those were at least intimidating. Still a flight of fancy, of course, but at least a less 'humans are the center of everything' situation.
Thankfully, common sense and respect for secular governance and use for public funds is alive and well in Quincy, Massachusetts, Mayor Tom Koch and Councilor Dave McCarthy notwithstanding. Once again I am pleased to note the participation of the FFRF, Americans United, and the ACLU in dealing with this misguided attempt to use public funds for a religious display. I also find it interesting that the judge in this case exercised elements of the Lemon Test to evaluate the claims made. Personally, I think the Lemon Test should NEVER have been dismissed by the Supreme Court, and its value should be returned to American jurisprudence.
Good news, and these days, I'll take all the good news I can get.
Before I go out on duty: "Lord, if you exist, can you get the mayor's head out of his a** and have him stop wasting my tax money on religious statuary?"
Yeah. Let’s ask the first responders if they can think of anything that would improve their working situation and there a budget of $850,000. Statues, of any kind, would not be in the top ten.
“ It probably didn’t help that City Council President Ian Cain directed his anger at the anonymous person who informed the public about these statues:
… Cain went on to slam the “cowardice” of an unnamed person who leaked information on the statues to the newspaper.
“This wasn’t meant to open up a discussion with the people who work in government,” Cain said. “This was someone trying to embarrass us, which I don’t appreciate. The council should not be put in a position, whether by the mayor’s office or by anyone who wanted to subvert this, where we appear uninformed. That’s not good faith.”
——————————
Leak— an intentional disclosure of something private or secret. That’s what The Great and Powerful Oz—I mean AI, sorry—the latest God to come down the pipeline says. And they are admitting it. They were trying to slip it past Toto—I mean, past the public sniffing around the Curtain of Shenanigans. That almost sounds like the actual COWARDICE going on here. In fact, it sounds like that heretical creed: EVERY ACCUSATION IS A CONFESSION
So, I have to agree. Religion has no place on public buildings meant to serve everyone.
And look at how much money they could have saved for those very, very religious officers who believe in magic, myths, and miracles, had the only taken up a private subscription and bought every officer that wanted one a medal of Saint Florian and another medal of Captain America, I mean Captain Michael.
Damn, my iPad is acting up this morning. Or maybe it’s just the coffee.
“This wasn’t meant to open up a discussion with the people who work in government" has such a great double meaning. A script writer in a comedy could not have put a bigger foot in his mouth.
And to think, that $850,000 could have been spent on much more worthy and useful things for the town's law enforcement and first responders, but instead it was wasted on two mythological figures.
Useful for first responders: $850k for two or three fully equipped ambulances. Not useful for first responders: $850k for two bits of performative Christianity.
In Hemant's previous piece on this topic, I think I said something about that money going to salaries or services for the community or something suchlike ... instead of essentially WASTING it.
The mayor and the councils members who were with him on this illegal stunt should have to reimburse the city. Public servants and elected officials should have a 3 feet by 2 feet poster* written in US modern English from left to right with the words in the right order in a color contrasting with the background and in a font no smaller than one inch (height) and 1/2 inch (width) in a prominent place on every office and public space reminding them some basic rules :
- You are not the boss of your constituants, you are their employee.
- Tax payers money is not your personal wallet.
- Respect the oath and the rules you sworn to follow.
"St. Michael is a figure common to Christianity, Islam and Judaism."
Yes, but speaking as a former Protestant, we didn't call him "Saint" and, whether or not modern Evangelicals want to say this openly now, we considered praying to anyone other than God to be idolatry. Michael was just an angel. An important angel, but just an angel. Not a figure for veneration.
And speaking now as an agnostic something something humanist, religious artwork belongs in a place of worship or a museum or an art gallery and if it's an art gallery that happens to be in a government owned space, then it needs to be open to everyone.
Look, whenever I go to work I expect that the city give me every bit of PPE that I would ever need and you atheists and your lawyers are depriving me of the magic that fully encapsulates my person in dangerous situations. I can't help your feelings in this matter, but the facts are in: the magic works! No First Responder has ever been harmed once protected by the saints. Not one. Ever.
That's because they weren't true believers, more like part-time believers. Maybe even more like peacocking than believing. Nothing irks God more than peacocks. Well... that's what I heard anyway.
If Mayor Cock truly wants to erect statues dedicated to bravery, courage and service, simply erect secular statues to first responders. Keep the religious aspect out of it.
I'm not a fan of erecting anything that costs me money to glorify cops. I spent years servicing my community. I never shot anyone, I never beat anyone, and I never made anyone succumb to my sick need to control.
NEITHER statue is strictly religious, Koko Puffs? Are you that blind? What part of them is NOT religious? Especially the guy with wings fighting a demon. And did you somehow miss the angels and the dude standing on a cloud in the other one?
The Catholic Church doesn’t like spending their own money on anything, the church like to spend other people’s money on church projects. Remember in the Catholic world money flows only upward, not wasted on the average catholic person issues.
Require defenders who violate the Constitution to pay all legal fees from their own pockets, see how the number of these violations will dramatically decrease.
My sister is poking around in the Texas village where our father was born. The church was open. A secretary was there. She pulled out the church records and found Dad’s baptismal record from 1923. The church cemetery was next door and there was a marker for children who died as infants. LOTS of names* and a few of them had a year listed (latter half of the 1800s). My sister was shocked to see some names that were the same as our mother’s maiden name. Mom was born hundreds of miles west of Dad’s village. We had no idea that some of her (presumable) relatives had been in Dad’s area. Neither of the surnames in this story are very common either in the US or Germany. So Sis goes back in to see the secretary again who turns out to be a treasure trove of info. The spelling of Mom’s surname likely indicates that those people came from an area that is now in Poland but used to belong to Germany.
Mom and Dad met in an area of Texas hundreds of miles away from either of their birthplaces.
Anyway, that’s about the most interesting thing I’ve ever learned from a church.
* on my father’s side, the ancestor that came to the US in 1840s and his wife had 15 children. Three survived to adulthood.
My grandparents (mother's side) had seven kids. Five reached adulthood, but one of them drowned when he was 19. Borned between 1930 and 1945, they are all dead now.
Of the 12 in that generation who died, several were boys who had been given the exact same name. Clearly my great- great whatever wanted a namesake. He did not get one.
"taxpayer dollars" Bottom line, Catholicism is a death and blood cult like many other religions. IMO modern day religious statues in the United States have no aesthetic or artistic value in public places. They are created to proselytize and antagonize others, especially non-believers. Sad and embarrassing.
Many in the US forget freedom of religion also means freedom from religion 🤔
Catholic statues in police stations? Given the number of times Catholic clergy find themselves in those stations for child diddling...
The thing is, would the statues cause the clergy to be worried that Holy Mother Church is about to crush them, or would it be seen as encouragement that they will be given a slap on the wrist because they are among their own? (My money is on the latter)
Notoriously not enough times.
No one knows if St. Michael the Arc-Angel exists, much less what he might look like. Religion puts forward no objective evidence to support their claims, and as such is inherently divisive. Never the less, true believers of all stripes see their particular brand of supernatural nonsense as the solution to all the world's problems.
Oh we know. He is as blond-haired, blue-eyed, and Caucasian as Jesus. :)
I thought he looked like Jon Hamm.
Nope. Vision (Paul Bettany)
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1038686/?ref_=fn_all_ttl_2
Gimme fried chicken.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-OGd4gplxQM
Makes me think of iron eagles.
I know I've seen it, but don't remember a thing about it.
🤣
In recent years, it's dawned on me just how silly the way (usually Christian) angels are depicted really is, and how conceited it really might be. I mean...bird people? You slap feathery wings on a human being and maybe make them a rave attendee, and that's 'holy' for some reason?
Now, the old Jewish ones, with thousands of eyes and hundreds of wings everywhere that looked like some sort of MC Escher work, those were at least intimidating. Still a flight of fancy, of course, but at least a less 'humans are the center of everything' situation.
“𝐼𝑡 𝑚𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡 ℎ𝑒𝑙𝑝 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑚,” ℎ𝑒 𝑎𝑑𝑑𝑒𝑑. “𝑇ℎ𝑒𝑦 𝑚𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡 𝑠𝑎𝑦 𝑎 𝑙𝑖𝑡𝑡𝑙𝑒 𝑝𝑟𝑎𝑦𝑒𝑟 𝑏𝑒𝑓𝑜𝑟𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑦 𝑔𝑜 𝑜𝑢𝑡 𝑜𝑛 𝑑𝑢𝑡𝑦.”
SERIOUSLY?!?
Thankfully, common sense and respect for secular governance and use for public funds is alive and well in Quincy, Massachusetts, Mayor Tom Koch and Councilor Dave McCarthy notwithstanding. Once again I am pleased to note the participation of the FFRF, Americans United, and the ACLU in dealing with this misguided attempt to use public funds for a religious display. I also find it interesting that the judge in this case exercised elements of the Lemon Test to evaluate the claims made. Personally, I think the Lemon Test should NEVER have been dismissed by the Supreme Court, and its value should be returned to American jurisprudence.
Good news, and these days, I'll take all the good news I can get.
If you need a statue to remind you to pray, then you don’t really believe all that much and the statue and prayer are unnecessary.
Its not there to *remind* believers to pray, it's there to *encourage* non-believers to pray.
In this case, "encourage" = "coerce".
Well put!
Ha! AS IF!!!
Before I go out on duty: "Lord, if you exist, can you get the mayor's head out of his a** and have him stop wasting my tax money on religious statuary?"
Yeah. Let’s ask the first responders if they can think of anything that would improve their working situation and there a budget of $850,000. Statues, of any kind, would not be in the top ten.
THAT was a real goodie! 🤣
Thanks for the laugh.
I read this as "Lord, can you let the mayor's head come of with an ax?".
This may sound zany, but the best place to put Catholic statues is in Catholic churches.
Crazy, no?
It's not like they don't have the real estate...
But…but…but….then those statues would almost never be seen by Catholics.
🤪
Rather embarrassing words here.
“ It probably didn’t help that City Council President Ian Cain directed his anger at the anonymous person who informed the public about these statues:
… Cain went on to slam the “cowardice” of an unnamed person who leaked information on the statues to the newspaper.
“This wasn’t meant to open up a discussion with the people who work in government,” Cain said. “This was someone trying to embarrass us, which I don’t appreciate. The council should not be put in a position, whether by the mayor’s office or by anyone who wanted to subvert this, where we appear uninformed. That’s not good faith.”
——————————
Leak— an intentional disclosure of something private or secret. That’s what The Great and Powerful Oz—I mean AI, sorry—the latest God to come down the pipeline says. And they are admitting it. They were trying to slip it past Toto—I mean, past the public sniffing around the Curtain of Shenanigans. That almost sounds like the actual COWARDICE going on here. In fact, it sounds like that heretical creed: EVERY ACCUSATION IS A CONFESSION
So, I have to agree. Religion has no place on public buildings meant to serve everyone.
And look at how much money they could have saved for those very, very religious officers who believe in magic, myths, and miracles, had the only taken up a private subscription and bought every officer that wanted one a medal of Saint Florian and another medal of Captain America, I mean Captain Michael.
Damn, my iPad is acting up this morning. Or maybe it’s just the coffee.
He got bent out of shape because he was trying to pull a fast one ... AND GOT CAUGHT.
Well, of course.
I'm a little surprised he didn't just quote, "Snitches get stitches".
Which is glitches, bitches.
See, I can do it too!
“This wasn’t meant to open up a discussion with the people who work in government" has such a great double meaning. A script writer in a comedy could not have put a bigger foot in his mouth.
God knows the secrets of your heart. He is that small, still voice that says “don’t tell anyone,billy.It will be our secret.”
Poor Billy. That phrase is never good.
I'm with you.
Now I might take a medal of Captain America. It is after all "America's ass" and a very fine one at that.
I have no idea what you’re talking about. I’m not that way.
Well, except for Ryan. but he’s ambiguous.
Wasn't Cain a bad guy in their book? It seems like he has never stopped doing bad things.
He wasn’t actually bad. He was just mythologized that way.
Good coffee. Try an espresso!
Another PO'd kkkatwik. GOOD!!!
A little side benefit.
And to think, that $850,000 could have been spent on much more worthy and useful things for the town's law enforcement and first responders, but instead it was wasted on two mythological figures.
Useful for first responders: $850k for two or three fully equipped ambulances. Not useful for first responders: $850k for two bits of performative Christianity.
In Hemant's previous piece on this topic, I think I said something about that money going to salaries or services for the community or something suchlike ... instead of essentially WASTING it.
The mayor and the councils members who were with him on this illegal stunt should have to reimburse the city. Public servants and elected officials should have a 3 feet by 2 feet poster* written in US modern English from left to right with the words in the right order in a color contrasting with the background and in a font no smaller than one inch (height) and 1/2 inch (width) in a prominent place on every office and public space reminding them some basic rules :
- You are not the boss of your constituants, you are their employee.
- Tax payers money is not your personal wallet.
- Respect the oath and the rules you sworn to follow.
* I think I covered all that's there to go awry.
Edit : I added Val' suggestion.
Perhaps note the version of English to be USA, as the British English can be slightly different but enough to cause a stir.
108pt Helvetica Bold (be specific on the font or someone will use something practically illegible.)
"St. Michael is a figure common to Christianity, Islam and Judaism."
Yes, but speaking as a former Protestant, we didn't call him "Saint" and, whether or not modern Evangelicals want to say this openly now, we considered praying to anyone other than God to be idolatry. Michael was just an angel. An important angel, but just an angel. Not a figure for veneration.
And speaking now as an agnostic something something humanist, religious artwork belongs in a place of worship or a museum or an art gallery and if it's an art gallery that happens to be in a government owned space, then it needs to be open to everyone.
I saw an article on this elsewhere, there were comments on how it wasn't just for catholics, it was for Protestants and Anglicans.
We have both kinds, country and western!
"Neither statue carries strictly religious messages, Koch said,"
“It might help them,” he (Dave McCarthy) added. “They might say a little prayer before they go out on duty.”
Someone didn't get the memo.
Look, whenever I go to work I expect that the city give me every bit of PPE that I would ever need and you atheists and your lawyers are depriving me of the magic that fully encapsulates my person in dangerous situations. I can't help your feelings in this matter, but the facts are in: the magic works! No First Responder has ever been harmed once protected by the saints. Not one. Ever.
I get the sarcasm and it is well-deserved.
It so happens the National Memorial to Fallen Firefighters is 20 minutes from my house. The saints didn’t help these men and women.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Fallen_Firefighters_Memorial
That's because they weren't true believers, more like part-time believers. Maybe even more like peacocking than believing. Nothing irks God more than peacocks. Well... that's what I heard anyway.
Well, they are some damn noisy birds.
And the males are notorious showoffs!
And if they were harmed it was because their faith was weak...?
You grok me completely.
You forgot the /S after your comment
It wasn't obvious?
It was absolutely obvious.
Yes.
Ça l'est pour moi.
If Mayor Cock truly wants to erect statues dedicated to bravery, courage and service, simply erect secular statues to first responders. Keep the religious aspect out of it.
I'm not a fan of erecting anything that costs me money to glorify cops. I spent years servicing my community. I never shot anyone, I never beat anyone, and I never made anyone succumb to my sick need to control.
I deserve a damn prize, but only in my head.
I'm thinking more firefighters and EMTs.
Semi OT : There is a manhwa I like where one character is nicknamed Major Cock (not because he is a dick) by the readers.
Probably NSFW: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGdjKvivJA8
NEITHER statue is strictly religious, Koko Puffs? Are you that blind? What part of them is NOT religious? Especially the guy with wings fighting a demon. And did you somehow miss the angels and the dude standing on a cloud in the other one?
♫♪ All lies and jest / Still, a man hears what he wants to hear / And disregards the rest. ♪♫
-- Paul Simon, "The Boxer
"Especially the guy with wings" - Maybe he had a Red Bull.
Or he knows that character from the Buffalo Wild Wings commercials! 🤣
Hank?
youtu.be/FPsPRCb72I0
Something more appropriate would be a monument commemorating the fallen men and women of the police and fire services.
Let Holy Mother Church pony up the $$$ for those statues and keep their hands out of the pockets of the taxpayers.
It'd still be illegal, but at least the public would be off the hook.
The Catholic Church doesn’t like spending their own money on anything, the church like to spend other people’s money on church projects. Remember in the Catholic world money flows only upward, not wasted on the average catholic person issues.
GMTA!
But the public would still have to pay the legal bills. Unless the RCC is required to defend legal challenges out of their own pockets, too.
Require defenders who violate the Constitution to pay all legal fees from their own pockets, see how the number of these violations will dramatically decrease.
They would still go venue shopping to find a judge to side with them.
OT: Something a church can be good for!
My sister is poking around in the Texas village where our father was born. The church was open. A secretary was there. She pulled out the church records and found Dad’s baptismal record from 1923. The church cemetery was next door and there was a marker for children who died as infants. LOTS of names* and a few of them had a year listed (latter half of the 1800s). My sister was shocked to see some names that were the same as our mother’s maiden name. Mom was born hundreds of miles west of Dad’s village. We had no idea that some of her (presumable) relatives had been in Dad’s area. Neither of the surnames in this story are very common either in the US or Germany. So Sis goes back in to see the secretary again who turns out to be a treasure trove of info. The spelling of Mom’s surname likely indicates that those people came from an area that is now in Poland but used to belong to Germany.
Mom and Dad met in an area of Texas hundreds of miles away from either of their birthplaces.
Anyway, that’s about the most interesting thing I’ve ever learned from a church.
* on my father’s side, the ancestor that came to the US in 1840s and his wife had 15 children. Three survived to adulthood.
My grandparents had a picture of infant twins in matching white caskets. Both died of diarrhea. It was the only photo ever taken of the twins.
My grandparents (mother's side) had seven kids. Five reached adulthood, but one of them drowned when he was 19. Borned between 1930 and 1945, they are all dead now.
The twins referenced were born about 1915.
Of the 12 in that generation who died, several were boys who had been given the exact same name. Clearly my great- great whatever wanted a namesake. He did not get one.
DM's grandmother birthed nine children, all reached adult age. The eldest was born in 1928. The youngest in the 40's.
The following generation wasn't as lucky. En plus of the aunt who died from measles, DM's older sister had a twin who was still born.
"taxpayer dollars" Bottom line, Catholicism is a death and blood cult like many other religions. IMO modern day religious statues in the United States have no aesthetic or artistic value in public places. They are created to proselytize and antagonize others, especially non-believers. Sad and embarrassing.
Many in the US forget freedom of religion also means freedom from religion 🤔