The Prestidigitator

The Catholic Church is caught up in yet another child abuse scandal. But contrary to what many of us would like to think, the church is not in its final throes of relevance. Someone in a ridiculous hat will come up with a convoluted justification and/or a half-assed apology and the sheep will forget. Before you tell me that the Catholic Church does not represent all Christians, let’s not forget that senile prick  Pat Robertson who really does believe with all his black heart that a ‘deal with the devil’ was what caused the earthquake in Haiti. Or that clown, Benny Hinn who gets away with pretty much everything save murder. Yes, I’ve heard that the lunatic fringe is never to be taken seriously but any organization that has over a billion members and has the gall to entertain the delusion that it can control people’s lives while covering up institutional child abuse and rampantly promoting ignorance, hatred and homophobia does not constitute the fringe. Any person, organization or movement incapable of telling the difference between ethics and morality does not deserve to be taken seriously. No bloody exceptions.

I really don’t want to contribute to the hyperbole that this debate has already created but I can safely say that this is the finest one hour of debate, one-sided as it is, I’ve seen in a very long time. Two amazingly articulate intellectuals take on Catholicism and religious hypocrisy. To be fair, I do wish that the two proponents of the Catholic church would have been a little more, I don’t know, Christlike instead of pretending that (institutional) child abuse and homophobia are urban myths.

Stephen Fry makes an especially brilliant case against the so called ‘force for good’. Nod along or throw stuff at your computer but this is what good television is all about.

Go watch. Now.

There is only so much bullshit you can take on any given day.

The faculty at St Stephens, Delhi is apparently conducting a boycott (although the brother was still rushing to class when I last checked) in an attempt to protest againts the ludicrous move by the college to enforce a quota for Christians in faculty recruitment.

What is bound to really rile people up is a statement by the  spokesperson for Delhi Catholic Archdiocese, Father Dominic Emmanuel on CNN IBN’s Face the Nation. He goes onto say that academic excellence is not as important when compared to (wait for it) following the ‘call’ of Jesus Christ. Coming form a christian minority institution (that infringed on almost every fundamental right) myself, it irks me to see that one of the premier institutes in the country has to bear the brunt of illogical and neanderthal decisions made by the f*ckwits (thankyou, P Z Myers!) who actually have a say in matters that concern them in no discernable way. Add to that, Stephens is a publicly funded institution; so basically everyone gets to sow but few reap. Go figure.

Source: Minority quota in colleges a huge mistake