This is what happens when culturally sanctioned superstition and mental illness butts up against parody and satire. The reaction to this proposed 'black mass' speaks directly to just how little confidence they have in what they profess to believe. It's lost on the people protesting this event, that they are reacting the way the free-thought community reacts to having Christianity celebrated in the public square.
Especially when that "culturally sanctioned superstition" has exactly NO sense of humor and hasn't the capacity to laugh at itself or indulge in self-deprecation.
“The American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family, and Property—a right-wing group known for wearing cultish red cloaks—said they would hold a “rally of reparation” outside the Capitol during the Black Mass.”
This is the only reasonable and appropriate response to the black mass for people who are offended. They can protest the black mass all they want, fight speech with speech. This is their first amendment right.
“They also launched an online petition calling on the event to be shut down. (It has over 40,000 signatures as of this writing.)”
This is taking it too far. Or, well they could sign the petition to suggest the state deny the black mass, but for the state to actually do it is too far. So what if there is a majority that doesn’t want it, it’s still legal to do and protected by the constitution.
Forcing the mass outside is a gray area, they haven’t stopped them from doing the mass, but they reneged on a contract that they provide other groups, such as the anti-abortion groups, that are just as offensive and more aggressive. Obviously this is a case of viewpoint discrimination by the state.
As to the charges by the Catholics that Satanic Grotto stole the host. I guess “innocent until proven guilty” only applies to rapists. They cannot hold them accountable for a stolen host without evidence that it was stolen. Having one in no way remotely implies it was stolen. But they’re claiming the Satanic Grotto is already committing crimes when they’ve done no such thing. No theft. No trespassing. No destruction of stolen property.
But then we are living through a constitutional crisis and facing life under a fascist dictator, so this will go poorly for the Satanists. But it is necessary for all that. Hold your ground folks, don’t comply, get into goo trouble.
My cynic side says the Christian rally will seek to physically disrupt the SG ceremony. The police will be called in to restore order. They will do that by taking the satanists off in handcuffs.
It would end up with the abuser’s excuse me”look what you made me do!” It isn’t the Satanists that are the criminals, it’s always the Christian’s responding with violence, and yet it’s always the Satanists being punished.
The only quibble/suggestion I'd make to Mr. Stewart is: hold the mass on the grounds, THEN go into the building for your act of civil disobedience.
I mean it sounds like your ceremony is symbolically and psychologically useful for your congregation/participants, and it sounds like your goal of 'making people uncomfortable as the anti-abortion protesters do' can be accomplished on the grounds. So go do that. Declare mission accomplished. THEN go into the building peaceably and get arrested for doing nothing, as a means of registering your complaint about the governor using a flimsy 'all events' excuse to religiously discriminate against your group.
If they want. But IMO they aren't obligated to put their event in the service of another cause. I was quite impressed with the answers Mr. Stewart gave Hemant, and so if his group wants their event to be just about those things and not the RCC pedophilia issue, we should all be fine with that. Blood drives are good. Soup kitchens are good. Not every soup kitchen needs to run a blood drive to be good. :)
The best comes from Bury, Lancs. It is traditionally made from pig's blood and flavoured with, inter alia, pennyroyal, a herb that, reading between the lines in Culpeper, is an abortifacient. I have yet to see an advisory warning attached to one.
The information in Culpeper is, admittedly, getting on for 500 years out of date but, on the other hand it is 1,500 years more up-to-date than the Bible.
Have a specific purpose of visiting some office there. Have something to drop off, be it a petition or some form or whatnot. Enter as individuals. Find all the loopholes, use them.
Amazing how easily offended Catholics are, given their bloody recorded hisory and that they are staunchly misogynistic, anti-LGBTQ and have a massive, unending rampant child sexual abuse epidemic.
This is the church that has a tortured dying/dead man hanging from an execution device above the altar as their icon. What an uplifitng image for Catholics to view at every one of THEIR Masses (especially children). Where do Catholics get off complaining about anything to anyone?
Well Jesus’s Dad did rape his mother and then arrange for his son to be tortured and executed in a grisly manner. Definitely not the world’s greatest father, though a smart tactic given how the Titan’s offspring behaved.
Funny. I have thought that if I told people I was going to let them kill my son so that I would forgive their sins that I, myself had invented for them, they would immediately call child protective services!
Sometimes there are good ones. They are not so popular, even within the church. I like what the pope said, while he was in hospital. I might have a link?
WHAT??? Are they out of their minds?!? Bugs and Daffy and Elmer and Sylvester and Tweety have to be some of the most beloved cartoon characters of all time!
Yes, I did. My incredulity is not feigned. Looney Tunes is an American icon.
Similarly, I find it incredible that the BBC is going to restrict export of its output. It was on the Radio 4 news but I cannot find it on the website.
Well, as a true conservative Christian I am deeply offended by this. Sure, they're papists and the mass is a insult to us True believers, but you know it's close enough. But that's not the really problem here. Why does it have to be a 'black' mass? Don't they know that DEI in all its insidious forms are now illegal thanks to the greatestest president ever? If they want to wrongly celebrate Jesus, they should do it in a color-blind way and celebrate a white mass. After all, white is the presence of every color, and thus is the only true color.
Don't worry, I will not be surprised if the good conservative Christians of Kansas show up with some extra white ceremonial garb in case the Satanists wish to change color schemes.
Yet in total darkness the visible becomes invisible and communes with the eternal invisible. Darkness puts our omnipresent right brain into overdrive and engages the imagination.
"because she was moving all events that day outside the building. (She didn’t have the power to unilaterally cancel the Black Mass, but by moving “all events” outside that day, it uniquely affected the Satanists without creating a legal problem for Kelly.)"
Are there really other events ? And I disagree that moving events for one day can't lead to legal problems if she do it the one day Satanists want to express their freedom of speech but she allows anti-abortion to use the Capitol when a majority of Kansas voters protected abortion rights.
"It’s batshit insane for government officials to even suggest that law enforcement should shut down a peaceful event and protest."
It's a tradition from the 60's.
I hope the Black Mass will be filmed. I never watched one.
Man ... why did I know what you had posted without even looking before I clicked on the link? [sigh]
Hell of it is, I was in Kent the weekend before, TRYING to do a bar crawl with a friend, but the mood there was so dark that he and I had one beer and went back up to Cleveland (I was going to school at Case at the time).
About all I can do when I think back to that time is to shake my head.
I thought about this peaceful marche when Black people were bashed by the cops. One ended with a metal plate in his head. I can't remember if it was Lewis, Cummings or someone else.
For people who claim to believe that Christ is all powerful and defeated Satan, they sure are afraid.
If you really believe, it wouldn't bother you at all to let people oogedy boogedy. They can't magically hurt you. You have god on your side, after all.
And if you don't really believe, it shouldn't bother you either.
What this tells me is you lot are more polytheistic than you want to admit. You actually think the devil can hurt you.
My whole reaction to This entire thing is “bread and circuses”. Keep them busy with trivia, and they won’t know what you’ve actually been doing. And I think I’m referring to both sides of this. Hemant Is of course correct in his analysis about all of this. It is a great deal of sound and fury signifying nothing. But the Satanists Really just want to say fuck you to the Catholic Church. And the church is responding exactly as they hoped: “you can’t say that to us. We’re special!”
But of course, they’re also saying “we can say fuck you to you, but we’re Catholic bishops, and we don’t say things like fuck you.”
So the diocese is demanding their return of all their magical fooferaw. How exactly are they going to tell that the wine they get “returned’ is the magic wine they are concerned about. And what about those magical crackers? Have they been transubstantiated, or whatever the alternative is? Do they have a magical test, Or are we simply talking about crackers?
“ The Catholic Bishops of Kansas released a statement earlier this month denouncing the event as “anti-Catholic bigotry” before calling on members to pray for the conversion of the Satanists.
Not anti Christian bigotry, but specifically ANTI-CATHOLIC. And if course, it’s not actually bigotry at all, just first amendment ridicule and first amendment religious practices. I don’t always blaspheme, but when I do, I like to do it with crackers.
It’s not like they are accusing all catholics of centuries of child molestation and cover-ups by the church hierarchy, also for centuries, along with entire dioceses looking the other way and therefore complicit. Not all catholics. It’s not like they are accusing all catholics of being a threat to the religious sensibilities of the other 5/6 of the world that isn’t catholic, as if it were exactly like the 1/2 of 1 % of humanity that is gender dysphoric and therefore is a threat to the 99.5% of humanity that isn’t.
It’s not like that at all. No one is talking about excluding Catholics from participation in society.
But here comes the piece de Resistance. The bishops want All Catholics to Pray for the conversion of the Satanists. They haven’t demanded that all Catholics pray for an end to the centuries of child molestation. Or the centuries of Bishops living like princesses While Catholics starve. Or Bringing the perpetrators of the genocide in Rwanda to justice, or that the world remembers that the Catholic Church apologized for its participation in that genocide.
And how successful has all that prayer been, the Calls for which are performative nonsense, In converting the 5/6 of the world that think Catholicism is nonsense? That has been going on for 2000 years, and has achieved precisely holy bupkis.
I have to wonder if the bishops are as concerned about the preservation of our democracy, the preservation of religious freedom, and what might happen to the Catholic Church if the far right Fundamentalists actually achieve gutting the constitution in favor of right wing Christianity— that doesn’t like Catholics?
As I have said many times, religion is not what ennobles mankind. It’s what prevents us from advancing as a species. Whether it’s the Catholic Church protecting centuries of child molestation, Or protestants who simultaneously believe “my kingdom is not of this world” and “You can bet we’re going to use the civil law that governs all of us in any way we wish because we have the power in the world”, Religion is intent on dragging us back to the dark ages.
The RCC may be doing a 'bread and circuses' distraction from their legal problems, but I don't think the Governor is. Sounded to me like she would've happily ignored it if nobody had complained, she had this blow up on her as a constituent/optics thing, and she'd much prefer it just went away.
I am trying to look at this from a different angle: I grew up in a village, which was 2/3 catholic. The county is majority catholic. The state is majority catholic. Maybe not practicing catholic but certainly culturally catholic.
If something like that had happened back home, it would have been expected that the (religious) minister(s) might have railed against the event as part of their sermons in church on Sundays. But it would also have been expected that the (political) ministers would just have shrugged their official shoulders and uttered 'chac'un a son gout' (with apologies to @Black Hole and DM mourner).
"Everyone has their own taste." And yet there continue to be people out there who think that THEIR taste is THE TASTE, and if someone else's taste deviates from that, they completely lose their minds about something THAT HAS ZERO IMPACT ON THEM. Worse, some with "The Taste" will do their damnedest to coerce the others to their POV.
Juvenile, infantile, foolish, and utterly insane behavior.
That might be because Europeans, at least of the western variety, don’t tend to be idiots. Eastern Europeans seem to have learned nothing from World War II and 40 years of communist domination.
It seems that these days I've got reason to mention the ECHR on a daily basis. (European Convention on Human Rights). Sometimes it is because one of the rights listed is a right to due process (I don't have to repeat why this is a very current issue), sometimes it is for other reasons. One other right is the right to religious expression.
These rights apply to everyone.
We paid a high price for this, but it seems to have sunk into the minds of most of us (unfortunately not everyone) that rights apply to all of us. No matter whether we are part of a favoured group or not. (It's actually more important to safeguard the rights of unfavoured groups!)
Anything that offends the delicate sensibilities of the child rape cult is "anti-Catholic bigotry."
If their 'god' has an issue with it, why can't he show up to stop it? You know, just like he does with all the child rape his followers are so fond of committing.
We are already one quarter through the 21st Century, and a large portion of the populace in this idiotic country still believe in devils, gods, demons, angels, magic objects, magic spells, bad spooks and good spooks.
Medieval superstition with assault rifles and nukes.
Videos showing Cybertruck exterior panels peeling away have spread on Musk-owned social media site X, formerly Twitter, in recent days. Owners also reported the problem on the Cybertruck Owners Club website.
That’s just how it works when you are on the avant-guard of buying new tech. He’s going to fix it all for us. If we don’t die in one of the trucks first. Nevermind that most first runs of things use the more expensive parts and then as they make the next year’s they slowly cut corners. Using double sticky tape for applying the body to the frame seems like a good idea, they just needed to get the more expensive brand tape.
When the RCC cleans its act up and starts actually punishing the priests that sexually abuse children in their care, I'll consider caring what the RCC thinks.
I may be getting old or something, but I have reached the point I refuse to take advice on moral behavior from any group known to be committing crimes and getting away with them. Leaving aside numerous other issues - moral and legal - the RCC has emotional control over too many people at this point when good sense says they should be imprisoned at bare minimum. I get that sometimes it's hard to tell if the group as a whole is the problem or just some of the members, but the RCC has consistently refused to stop doing damaging things to humanity in general. We know this isn't "a few bad apples" but a systemic situation intended to benefit the RCC in a variety of ways. In my view, they have violently breached the social contract on a consistent basis, and should not receive any protection from upstanding members of society.
" Our commitment to protecting every member of this community remains unwavering.”
Our commitment to protecting every member of this community, EXCEPT ALTAR BOYS, BOYS in GENERAL, NON-WHITES, GIRLS and WOMEN, NON BINARY PEOPLE and ANYONE WHO IS ICKY, remains unwavering.”
This is what happens when culturally sanctioned superstition and mental illness butts up against parody and satire. The reaction to this proposed 'black mass' speaks directly to just how little confidence they have in what they profess to believe. It's lost on the people protesting this event, that they are reacting the way the free-thought community reacts to having Christianity celebrated in the public square.
Especially when that "culturally sanctioned superstition" has exactly NO sense of humor and hasn't the capacity to laugh at itself or indulge in self-deprecation.
Heath Ledger said it: "Why so serious?"
+++ When I'm faced with these dilemmas, I sacrifice a virgin to the Moon God, and it's all better. /s
Where did you find a virgin?
I substitute a unopened Bud Light.
You, sir, are certifiable ... and probably fulla bull! 🤣
LOL
Only one of them ? And which one ? The German, the Japanese, Thot ?
All better until you fully face the Moon Goddess Selene.
“The American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family, and Property—a right-wing group known for wearing cultish red cloaks—said they would hold a “rally of reparation” outside the Capitol during the Black Mass.”
This is the only reasonable and appropriate response to the black mass for people who are offended. They can protest the black mass all they want, fight speech with speech. This is their first amendment right.
“They also launched an online petition calling on the event to be shut down. (It has over 40,000 signatures as of this writing.)”
This is taking it too far. Or, well they could sign the petition to suggest the state deny the black mass, but for the state to actually do it is too far. So what if there is a majority that doesn’t want it, it’s still legal to do and protected by the constitution.
Forcing the mass outside is a gray area, they haven’t stopped them from doing the mass, but they reneged on a contract that they provide other groups, such as the anti-abortion groups, that are just as offensive and more aggressive. Obviously this is a case of viewpoint discrimination by the state.
As to the charges by the Catholics that Satanic Grotto stole the host. I guess “innocent until proven guilty” only applies to rapists. They cannot hold them accountable for a stolen host without evidence that it was stolen. Having one in no way remotely implies it was stolen. But they’re claiming the Satanic Grotto is already committing crimes when they’ve done no such thing. No theft. No trespassing. No destruction of stolen property.
But then we are living through a constitutional crisis and facing life under a fascist dictator, so this will go poorly for the Satanists. But it is necessary for all that. Hold your ground folks, don’t comply, get into goo trouble.
In theory you are right about the rally.
My cynic side says the Christian rally will seek to physically disrupt the SG ceremony. The police will be called in to restore order. They will do that by taking the satanists off in handcuffs.
It would end up with the abuser’s excuse me”look what you made me do!” It isn’t the Satanists that are the criminals, it’s always the Christian’s responding with violence, and yet it’s always the Satanists being punished.
When I read that I went to Amazon and looked up communion wafers. Sure, nuff they sell them.
You said it, this makes them feel very vulnerable about their's, I love this for them!!!
The only quibble/suggestion I'd make to Mr. Stewart is: hold the mass on the grounds, THEN go into the building for your act of civil disobedience.
I mean it sounds like your ceremony is symbolically and psychologically useful for your congregation/participants, and it sounds like your goal of 'making people uncomfortable as the anti-abortion protesters do' can be accomplished on the grounds. So go do that. Declare mission accomplished. THEN go into the building peaceably and get arrested for doing nothing, as a means of registering your complaint about the governor using a flimsy 'all events' excuse to religiously discriminate against your group.
They should also leave some counter-protesters outside to shout "Stop Raping Children!" at the Catholics. Make sure the media reports the real crimes.
If they want. But IMO they aren't obligated to put their event in the service of another cause. I was quite impressed with the answers Mr. Stewart gave Hemant, and so if his group wants their event to be just about those things and not the RCC pedophilia issue, we should all be fine with that. Blood drives are good. Soup kitchens are good. Not every soup kitchen needs to run a blood drive to be good. :)
Blood soup drive.......nomnomnomnom!
With an unhealthy side of blood pudding.
In England, it is called black pudding. It is a thing. I have never eaten it. Nor would i. But poverty creates strange recipes.
The best comes from Bury, Lancs. It is traditionally made from pig's blood and flavoured with, inter alia, pennyroyal, a herb that, reading between the lines in Culpeper, is an abortifacient. I have yet to see an advisory warning attached to one.
https://www.complete-herbal.com/culpepper/pennyroyal.htm
The information in Culpeper is, admittedly, getting on for 500 years out of date but, on the other hand it is 1,500 years more up-to-date than the Bible.
Not just England:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stornoway_black_pudding
Fair point. Plus, "stop protecting perv priests and property, more than victims".
Have a specific purpose of visiting some office there. Have something to drop off, be it a petition or some form or whatnot. Enter as individuals. Find all the loopholes, use them.
And with a wafer pasted to their foreheads.
Ooh! Blood-red wafers! There's an idea!
Hmmm....it's tax season. Could they all file their state taxes by hand?
Amazing how easily offended Catholics are, given their bloody recorded hisory and that they are staunchly misogynistic, anti-LGBTQ and have a massive, unending rampant child sexual abuse epidemic.
This is the church that has a tortured dying/dead man hanging from an execution device above the altar as their icon. What an uplifitng image for Catholics to view at every one of THEIR Masses (especially children). Where do Catholics get off complaining about anything to anyone?
Well Jesus’s Dad did rape his mother and then arrange for his son to be tortured and executed in a grisly manner. Definitely not the world’s greatest father, though a smart tactic given how the Titan’s offspring behaved.
Thats not how i heard it.
Funny. I have thought that if I told people I was going to let them kill my son so that I would forgive their sins that I, myself had invented for them, they would immediately call child protective services!
They don't really care about the evils in their past and present. They only care about power.
Sometimes there are good ones. They are not so popular, even within the church. I like what the pope said, while he was in hospital. I might have a link?
https://youtube.com/post/UgkxrdXBcr2KOPJ67gIC_pxZdBvsdeO3i1ir?si=SnsDV_2k86fKR6CR
He sounded human.
Other popes have been... shudder.
https://res.cloudinary.com/teepublic/image/private/s--SsE-qbo1--/t_Resized%20Artwork/c_fit,g_north_west,h_1054,w_1054/co_ffffff,e_outline:53/co_ffffff,e_outline:inner_fill:53/co_bbbbbb,e_outline:3:1000/c_mpad,g_center,h_1260,w_1260/b_rgb:eeeeee/t_watermark_lock/c_limit,f_auto,h_630,q_auto:good:420,w_630/v1589543097/production/designs/10184033_0.jpg
Hi Len.
I like it but there does seem to be a touch of Dr. Johnson there.
"Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully."
Boswell: Life of Johnson
Tell them to put the stolen consecrated host in with a bunch of normal ones. If they can pick it out of a lineup, they can have it back.
Oh that's easy. You can tell the ones consecrated by His Noodly Appendage because they are the flat ones.
Non-carbonated?
Ramen!
I attended a RC mass and they served bits of wonder bread as the body of a Jewish carpenter.
“despicable, blasphemous and offensive.” And those are my good qualities. 😂
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOyEBUYjUN0
Looks like WB is looking to offload the entire Looney Tunes franchise altogether.
WHAT??? Are they out of their minds?!? Bugs and Daffy and Elmer and Sylvester and Tweety have to be some of the most beloved cartoon characters of all time!
SOMEONE at WB is off their meds!
And they wonder why they don't have the greatest track record with their DC superhero movies. They don't know what they're doing.
Totally. The closest they've come to something that I found palatable was Justice League, and even it could have used some help.
Sthufferin' Sthuccotash!
The first Wonder woman was not bad.
I posted a link to the WB/Looney Tunes story below (if you sort by Newest first).
....and the Louvre is selling the Mona Lisa.
Did you read the link I posted to this? It's not a put-on. WB really is seeking to rid themselves of the Toons.
Yes, I did. My incredulity is not feigned. Looney Tunes is an American icon.
Similarly, I find it incredible that the BBC is going to restrict export of its output. It was on the Radio 4 news but I cannot find it on the website.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Qz1GMpOtUY
Here's the link to the story
comingsoon.net/tv/news/1941502-looney-tunes-warner-brothers-sell-brand-coyote-vs-acme
I consecrated my Cheerios this morning. Then anointed them with milk.
My cup runneth over last night and I will never get that tequila back that I spilled.
Spilled or spewed?
Spilled, although either instance is considered to be alcohol abuse. That poor tequila.
Udon noodles with vegetables and mushroom sauce, with a tangerine on the side.
Eggs and the leftovers from some guy named Benedict. And a nice Chianti.
With or without liver and fava beans ?
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/0/0e/Anthony_Hopkins_as_Hannibal_Lecter_%28screenshot%29.jpg/225px-Anthony_Hopkins_as_Hannibal_Lecter_%28screenshot%29.jpg
Eggs, potatoes, bacon and sausage. I am a downright heathen!
Plain or Honey Nut...you heretic.
Wheaties here, with OJ on the side.
Well, as a true conservative Christian I am deeply offended by this. Sure, they're papists and the mass is a insult to us True believers, but you know it's close enough. But that's not the really problem here. Why does it have to be a 'black' mass? Don't they know that DEI in all its insidious forms are now illegal thanks to the greatestest president ever? If they want to wrongly celebrate Jesus, they should do it in a color-blind way and celebrate a white mass. After all, white is the presence of every color, and thus is the only true color.
Don't worry, I will not be surprised if the good conservative Christians of Kansas show up with some extra white ceremonial garb in case the Satanists wish to change color schemes.
With hoods to boot.
! Yikes!!
Yet in total darkness the visible becomes invisible and communes with the eternal invisible. Darkness puts our omnipresent right brain into overdrive and engages the imagination.
Holytape, as a “true conservative Christian” why are you on this list?
Because we are friendly atheists. Full of wit, half the time, and wisdom.
Don't let the lack of a snark tag fool you.
"because she was moving all events that day outside the building. (She didn’t have the power to unilaterally cancel the Black Mass, but by moving “all events” outside that day, it uniquely affected the Satanists without creating a legal problem for Kelly.)"
Are there really other events ? And I disagree that moving events for one day can't lead to legal problems if she do it the one day Satanists want to express their freedom of speech but she allows anti-abortion to use the Capitol when a majority of Kansas voters protected abortion rights.
"It’s batshit insane for government officials to even suggest that law enforcement should shut down a peaceful event and protest."
It's a tradition from the 60's.
I hope the Black Mass will be filmed. I never watched one.
Kent State University. May 4th, 1970. 'Nuff said.
https://youtu.be/l1PrUU2S_iw?si=8Fru-Yq0-dBSC20x
Man ... why did I know what you had posted without even looking before I clicked on the link? [sigh]
Hell of it is, I was in Kent the weekend before, TRYING to do a bar crawl with a friend, but the mood there was so dark that he and I had one beer and went back up to Cleveland (I was going to school at Case at the time).
About all I can do when I think back to that time is to shake my head.
I thought about this peaceful marche when Black people were bashed by the cops. One ended with a metal plate in his head. I can't remember if it was Lewis, Cummings or someone else.
John Lewis.
Faaaahhhkkk. How does metal land peacefully in someone's head!? That is terrible.
With the aid of the kind surgeons who saved his life.
Ah. I thought a bit of metal had been forced into a skull. Even so ...needing surgery after a peaceful march? Still unacceptable.
I agree.
Um.... perhaps a Dream Theater concert?
Or the Hu*.
* Now I wonder how many non European bands/musicians/singers I saw. I can only remember the Hu, Lindsey Stirling and Tanya Tagaq.
For people who claim to believe that Christ is all powerful and defeated Satan, they sure are afraid.
If you really believe, it wouldn't bother you at all to let people oogedy boogedy. They can't magically hurt you. You have god on your side, after all.
And if you don't really believe, it shouldn't bother you either.
What this tells me is you lot are more polytheistic than you want to admit. You actually think the devil can hurt you.
If Satan is defeated, then what reason does anyone have for being a Christian?
Christianity needs a supernatural enemy to fight. If Satan is gone then they are effectively out of business.
EVERY hero needs enemies. Including gods. Without enemies they are mere caricatures
Hard to think of either god, his son or the pigeon as the heroes.
Pigeons are useful. Messengers, served with peas, harassing tourists...
Well, I once said “Satan, get thee behind me” but I forgot to say “and make sure you use plenty of lube.”
Boy, was I sorry!
My whole reaction to This entire thing is “bread and circuses”. Keep them busy with trivia, and they won’t know what you’ve actually been doing. And I think I’m referring to both sides of this. Hemant Is of course correct in his analysis about all of this. It is a great deal of sound and fury signifying nothing. But the Satanists Really just want to say fuck you to the Catholic Church. And the church is responding exactly as they hoped: “you can’t say that to us. We’re special!”
But of course, they’re also saying “we can say fuck you to you, but we’re Catholic bishops, and we don’t say things like fuck you.”
So the diocese is demanding their return of all their magical fooferaw. How exactly are they going to tell that the wine they get “returned’ is the magic wine they are concerned about. And what about those magical crackers? Have they been transubstantiated, or whatever the alternative is? Do they have a magical test, Or are we simply talking about crackers?
“ The Catholic Bishops of Kansas released a statement earlier this month denouncing the event as “anti-Catholic bigotry” before calling on members to pray for the conversion of the Satanists.
Not anti Christian bigotry, but specifically ANTI-CATHOLIC. And if course, it’s not actually bigotry at all, just first amendment ridicule and first amendment religious practices. I don’t always blaspheme, but when I do, I like to do it with crackers.
It’s not like they are accusing all catholics of centuries of child molestation and cover-ups by the church hierarchy, also for centuries, along with entire dioceses looking the other way and therefore complicit. Not all catholics. It’s not like they are accusing all catholics of being a threat to the religious sensibilities of the other 5/6 of the world that isn’t catholic, as if it were exactly like the 1/2 of 1 % of humanity that is gender dysphoric and therefore is a threat to the 99.5% of humanity that isn’t.
It’s not like that at all. No one is talking about excluding Catholics from participation in society.
But here comes the piece de Resistance. The bishops want All Catholics to Pray for the conversion of the Satanists. They haven’t demanded that all Catholics pray for an end to the centuries of child molestation. Or the centuries of Bishops living like princesses While Catholics starve. Or Bringing the perpetrators of the genocide in Rwanda to justice, or that the world remembers that the Catholic Church apologized for its participation in that genocide.
And how successful has all that prayer been, the Calls for which are performative nonsense, In converting the 5/6 of the world that think Catholicism is nonsense? That has been going on for 2000 years, and has achieved precisely holy bupkis.
I have to wonder if the bishops are as concerned about the preservation of our democracy, the preservation of religious freedom, and what might happen to the Catholic Church if the far right Fundamentalists actually achieve gutting the constitution in favor of right wing Christianity— that doesn’t like Catholics?
As I have said many times, religion is not what ennobles mankind. It’s what prevents us from advancing as a species. Whether it’s the Catholic Church protecting centuries of child molestation, Or protestants who simultaneously believe “my kingdom is not of this world” and “You can bet we’re going to use the civil law that governs all of us in any way we wish because we have the power in the world”, Religion is intent on dragging us back to the dark ages.
FUCK.
THEM.
ALL.
And yes, I am cranky this morning.
𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝑏𝑖𝑠ℎ𝑜𝑝𝑠 𝑤𝑎𝑛𝑡 𝐴𝑙𝑙 𝐶𝑎𝑡ℎ𝑜𝑙𝑖𝑐𝑠 𝑡𝑜 𝑃𝑟𝑎𝑦 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑠𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑆𝑎𝑡𝑎𝑛𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑠.
HA! As though that would ever happen!
The religious have been praying for the conversion of the nonbeliever. When that failed, they turned to the thumbscrew and the branding iron.
And yet after all that the unbelievers are still here.
Tempted to say something about what would happen should they try that crap now ... but I won't. 🤬
A local lad had something similar to say on unlikely conversions:
......................."I would
Love you ten years before the flood,
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews."
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44688/to-his-coy-mistress
The RCC may be doing a 'bread and circuses' distraction from their legal problems, but I don't think the Governor is. Sounded to me like she would've happily ignored it if nobody had complained, she had this blow up on her as a constituent/optics thing, and she'd much prefer it just went away.
I bet she would. And that was the problem. People who will stand anything will stand up for nothing.
I am trying to look at this from a different angle: I grew up in a village, which was 2/3 catholic. The county is majority catholic. The state is majority catholic. Maybe not practicing catholic but certainly culturally catholic.
If something like that had happened back home, it would have been expected that the (religious) minister(s) might have railed against the event as part of their sermons in church on Sundays. But it would also have been expected that the (political) ministers would just have shrugged their official shoulders and uttered 'chac'un a son gout' (with apologies to @Black Hole and DM mourner).
"Everyone has their own taste." And yet there continue to be people out there who think that THEIR taste is THE TASTE, and if someone else's taste deviates from that, they completely lose their minds about something THAT HAS ZERO IMPACT ON THEM. Worse, some with "The Taste" will do their damnedest to coerce the others to their POV.
Juvenile, infantile, foolish, and utterly insane behavior.
That might be because Europeans, at least of the western variety, don’t tend to be idiots. Eastern Europeans seem to have learned nothing from World War II and 40 years of communist domination.
It seems that these days I've got reason to mention the ECHR on a daily basis. (European Convention on Human Rights). Sometimes it is because one of the rights listed is a right to due process (I don't have to repeat why this is a very current issue), sometimes it is for other reasons. One other right is the right to religious expression.
These rights apply to everyone.
We paid a high price for this, but it seems to have sunk into the minds of most of us (unfortunately not everyone) that rights apply to all of us. No matter whether we are part of a favoured group or not. (It's actually more important to safeguard the rights of unfavoured groups!)
Absolutely.
Well, they're not as idiotic about it now. 16th-18th centuries, they were much more idiotic about it than we ever have been...so far...
I’m not sure that that’s quite a compliment.
Communism and religious superstition are dictatorships. The *only* difference is the deity in charge.
No offense taken.
"Chacun ses goûts".
Merci!
Indeed. I'm cranky too, and every word you wrote is true. Don't get me started on those idiots.
Amazon ghass alol your co9mmmunion needs.
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=communion+wafers&crid=1E36VKWML77DO&sprefix=communion%2Caps%2C124&ref=nb_sb_ss_mvt-t3-ranker_4_9
" he is convinced that I have Jesus trapped in a cracker "
Someone needs to photoshop Jesus in a cracker like General Zod in the phantom zone.
I thought he preferred toasts.
https://preview.redd.it/jesus-christ-on-a-cracker-v0-7si8jmqkk2ic1.jpg?width=1024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ae51928c68a20e6fc33e1b271eb32f95ebeb19fe
https://www.amazon.com/The-Grilled-Cheesus-Sandwich-Press/dp/B00DD0P0TK/ref=sr_1_1?crid=16209ZDIT304Q&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.6mjtcU6ZaE1Yf5lw6gz_bos1G46qPMpkr4gOwKretzoheJSo1ByBpvH1txc2CMD7pOeitGtfmqtPYe0Usq5hwihmVLrKHZbgyG0-f8SweJeyR9IzQ_HINpx6TbA_FgAy3a0sHTKLyhVL5W6XfDOH1OXoyrvYxllDZaSrjXFJbIeTKPU4sQps4cOEZOIdTA59yhcRLfZPMH2z3sgyKc-1uJbWTCA7Nrsf58w6GLchDps.hhfdA4w1sHqNu8-u6TyjNXBdZ9r_JR0pkva6WLhOlF0&dib_tag=se&keywords=jesus+toaster&qid=1742478801&sprefix=jesus+toaster%2Caps%2C76&sr=8-1
No well appointed cult kitchen should be without one.
Anything that offends the delicate sensibilities of the child rape cult is "anti-Catholic bigotry."
If their 'god' has an issue with it, why can't he show up to stop it? You know, just like he does with all the child rape his followers are so fond of committing.
We are already one quarter through the 21st Century, and a large portion of the populace in this idiotic country still believe in devils, gods, demons, angels, magic objects, magic spells, bad spooks and good spooks.
Medieval superstition with assault rifles and nukes.
Excuse me while I go to my crystal filled, aroma therapy room to cleanse my chakras of all the bad vibes you are emanating.
Just avoid the Gwenyth Paltrow coffee enema.
NOW you tell me. Besides, it was actually a good thing. It helped me expel that jade egg….which you didn't warn me about either.
Please tell me you added cream and sugar to smooth out the bitterness of the coffee.
(Didn't know if you'd used the jade eggs)
Religious superstition has always existed to hold people in ignorance and hatred.
WankPanzer recall, again:
Tesla Recalls Over 46,000 Cybertrucks
Videos showing Cybertruck exterior panels peeling away have spread on Musk-owned social media site X, formerly Twitter, in recent days. Owners also reported the problem on the Cybertruck Owners Club website.
https://www.newsweek.com/tesla-recalls-over-46000-cybertrucks-2047698
Rapid unplanned disassembly.
That’s just how it works when you are on the avant-guard of buying new tech. He’s going to fix it all for us. If we don’t die in one of the trucks first. Nevermind that most first runs of things use the more expensive parts and then as they make the next year’s they slowly cut corners. Using double sticky tape for applying the body to the frame seems like a good idea, they just needed to get the more expensive brand tape.
Just makes the Cybertruck more “appealing”.
Since Leon likes to rebrand, let's tweak the name of the Swastikar's fanboi website and refer to it as the Cybertruck Owners Hall of Shame website.
When the RCC cleans its act up and starts actually punishing the priests that sexually abuse children in their care, I'll consider caring what the RCC thinks.
I may be getting old or something, but I have reached the point I refuse to take advice on moral behavior from any group known to be committing crimes and getting away with them. Leaving aside numerous other issues - moral and legal - the RCC has emotional control over too many people at this point when good sense says they should be imprisoned at bare minimum. I get that sometimes it's hard to tell if the group as a whole is the problem or just some of the members, but the RCC has consistently refused to stop doing damaging things to humanity in general. We know this isn't "a few bad apples" but a systemic situation intended to benefit the RCC in a variety of ways. In my view, they have violently breached the social contract on a consistent basis, and should not receive any protection from upstanding members of society.
"One bad apple spoils the entire bunch."
In the RCCs case, the whole orchard is rotten.
And when the rottenness is pointed out, the Holics of Cat whine and moan about "anti-Catholic bigotry!"
Well-deserved hatred.
I'm fine with the Dogholics, however. Got no beef with them./s
Your veal is duly noted.
" Our commitment to protecting every member of this community remains unwavering.”
Our commitment to protecting every member of this community, EXCEPT ALTAR BOYS, BOYS in GENERAL, NON-WHITES, GIRLS and WOMEN, NON BINARY PEOPLE and ANYONE WHO IS ICKY, remains unwavering.”