Pope resigns

I recommend checking the little fingers of any papal candidates.

His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI is resigning–the first pope to do so since 1415.

Ill health is cited, but I was watching my boxed set of The Invaders last night, so I have my own theories.

The Christmas curse

The above clip is how I suspect some people treat the word "Christmas", such as in this post from Space.com:

Three spaceflyers who launched on a Russian rocket Wednesday (Dec. 21) are preparing to dock at the International Space Station tomorrow (Dec. 23), just in time for the holidays.

Let's leave aside the idiocy of using a neologism like "spaceflyer" for "astronaut" (Yes, I know that one was a cosmonaut, but as far as I'm concerned, that's just the Russian word for astronaut and the article is written in English).   If they're getting there on December the 23rd, what "holidays" are they talking about?  It's not Ramadan or Hanukkah or Diwali–it's too late in the year for any of them.   Could they mean (pause) Christmas?  

It's a bit like an internet discussion I was reading yesterday about CE and BCE as a Newspeak substitute for AD and BC.  Don't get me started on these.  As a retired archaeologist and history lecturer, this really gets on my wick.  At any rate, one commentator claims that he doesn't use AD and BC because he isn't Christian.

Well and good, said another, but what does he do on a Wednesday, which is sacred to Woden?

I'd go a bit further in that the gentleman must be very uncomfortable on all the days of the week–not to mention every month of the year until October.  And if he's an Atheist, how can he stomach taking holidays?  Does he scream and stop his ears every time someone says "goodbye" to him because he can't bear to be wished that God be with him? Does he froth at the mouth when someone accuses him of pontificating or if he sees a ship being christened? The Solar System must fill him with rage. Looking at a poop deck must be as torture to him. And for heaven's sake (sorry) never mention computer icons in his hearing. This is one step away from G K Chesterton's character who loathed the cross so much that he screwed his eyes shut whenever he saw a fence or a window pane.

Why isn't this the case?  Because it isn't about not subscribing to Christianity; it's about objecting to its functional existence.

It's the hypocrisy of it all that grates.  If you want people to stop saying "Christmas" because you hate Christianity and want it banned from the culture, then come out and say so.  That at least is an honest position that can be defended.  Don't hide behind smarmy appeals to intolerance masquerading as tolerance.  

Eight Out of Ten

Russell Blackford has an excellent piece on the cluelessness of a certain Australian imam on the matter of separation of church and state and why Islamophobia is nothing but a bad word that should be dispensed with:

Unfortunately, the impression has been created by many Muslim leaders that Islam seeks to control all aspects of individuals' lives and does not shrink from using secular power to achieve its aim. We are all well aware of extreme examples in recent history, such as Afghanistan under the benighted Taliban regime. Until that fear is laid to rest, it is quite rational for the rest of us to fear Islam's political ambitions - which is one reason why the word "Islamophobia" is so stupid. A phobia is an irrational fear, but secular Westerners actually have perfectly rational reasons to be at least wary of Islam.

This is excellent stuff as far as it goes, but he does fall down on one point:

The question is not about kings and popes (though it is certainly relevant to the temporal ambitions of the current pope). It is about how religionists of any stripe can reassure the rest of us that they will not use the coercive power of the state to impose their contentious (and, let's face it, usually miserable) moral doctrines, should they come to command an electoral majority.

The matter of "miserable moral doctrines" aside, this is only half true. Yes, it is a question of reassurance, but not, as any competent theologian will tell you, that the church will be dangerous if it is backed by the power of the state. It is rather theat the state will be dangerous if it is backed by the awesome power of the church in the hands of fallible human beings. Hence the reason why most Christians reject theocracy and why even in the high-water time of the Catholic church the Pope only ruled his temporal realms as an earthly prince equal with his fellows.

Indeed, G. K. Chesterton dealt with this very neatly in The Everlasting Man when he addressed the Arian Heresy and the myth of the state as dictator of faith:

Take another rationalistic explanation of the rise of Christendom. It is common enough to find another critic saying, 'Christianity did not really rise at all; that is, it did not merely rise from below; it was imposed from above. It is an example of the power of the executive, especially in despotic states. The Empire was really an Empire; that is, it was really ruled by the Emperor. One of the Emperors happened to become a Christian. He might just as well have become a Mithraist or a Jew or a Fire-Worshipper; it was common in the decline of the Empire for eminent and educated people to adopt these eccentric eastern cults. But when he adopted it it became the official religion of the Roman Empire; and when it became the official religion of the Roman Empire, it became as strong, as universal and as invincible as the Roman Empire. It has only remained in the world as a relic of that Empire; or, as many have put it, it is but the ghost of Caesar still hovering over Rome.' This also is a very ordinary line taken in the criticism of orthodoxy, to say that it was only officialdoms that ever made it orthodoxy. And here again we can call on the heretics to refute it.

The whole great history of the Arian heresy might have been invented to explode this idea. It is a very interesting history often repeated in this connection; and the upshot of it is in so far as there ever was a merely official religion, it actually died because it was merely an official religion; and what destroyed it was the real religion. Arius advanced a version of Christianity which moved, more or less vaguely, in the direction of what we should call Unitarianism; thought was not the same, for it gave to Christ a curious intermediary position between the divine and human. The point is that it seemed to many more reasonable and less fanatical; and among these were many of the educated class in a sort of reaction against the first romance of conversion. Arians were a sort of moderates and a sort of modernists. And it was felt that after the first squabbles this was the final form of rationalized, religion into which civilization might well settle down. It was accepted by Divus Caesar himself and became the official orthodoxy; the generals and military princes drawn from the new barbarian powers of the north, full of the future, supported it strongly. But the sequel is still more important. Exactly as a modern man might pass through Unitarianism to complete agnosticism, so the greatest of the Arian emperors ultimately shed the last and thinnest pretense of Christianity; he abandoned even Arius and returned to Apollo. He was a Caesar of the Caesars; a soldier, a scholar, a man of large ambitions and ideals; another of the philosopher kings. It seemed to him as if at his signal the sun rose again. The oracles began to speak like birds beginning to sing at. dawn; paganism was itself again; the gods returned. It seemed the end of that strange interlude of an alien superstition. And indeed it was the end of it, so far as there was a mere interlude of mere superstition. It was the end of it, in so far as it was the fad of an emperor or the fashion of a generation. If there really was something that began with Constantine, then it ended with Julian.

A small point, but an important one.

Yuletide Dhimmitude

From Reuters (emphasis added):

A school in traditionally Catholic Spain has cancelled Christmas celebrations so as not to offend children who are not Christians, ABC newspaper reported on Wednesday.

The Hilarion Gimeno school in Zaragoza said teachers had put forward various reasons for not celebrating Christmas, but ABC said the worry was that Muslim children might be upset.

Where is El Cid when you need him?

Doc Savage and the Evil-Minded Parishoners

Do Monk, Ham and the others know about this?