Sometimes I read things in the newspaper and have to read them again - and possibly again - to make sure that I have not gone completely stark raving mad. Today I read in the Sydney Morning Herald that:
“The ordination of women as Catholic priests is a "crime against the faith," the Vatican has said while it issued a raft of new disciplinary rules.
Cases of "attempted ordination of women" will now be handled by the Vatican's doctrinal watchdog, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), a Vatican statement said on Thursday.
The new rules put attempts at the ordination of women among the "most serious crimes", along with pedophilia”.
This set my ‘surreal alarm’ off and I had to throw a blanket over it and drop it into a bucket of water to stop it from squawking.
However - as barkingly bizarre as this sounds - if the Vatican moves with the same speed on this as they have over the last few thousand years on the issue of pedophilia then any women ordained will be safely dead for centuries before they can be hunted down and persecuted.
I will refrain from further comment as if I do I will work myself into a lather.
I discovered with some degree of alarm when I stayed in Sydney with my brother and his wife last week that they are regular readers of my Blog. The problem is that they are also regular church goers and - if not tub-thumpingly religious - certainly have some level of faith in the potential existence of a supreme being.
I have know this fact for some time but was not aware that they read my blog - well - religiously,
How - I asked uncertainly - do you then cope with my regular rants about religion?
Well - they said - whoever reads the blog first warns the other not to go there. An excellent solution. I only offend one person per day.
I did stress to them - as I have previously on this very blog - that I have no problem with people who have religion or faith - or whatever they need to get them over the line. The choice is theirs.
What I object to is religious people telling me how I should live my life, that unless I live how they live I am a sinner, that the bible is is the handbook by which we must live our lives, that I cannot marry a member of the same sex, that if I am a woman I cannot have an abortion, that if I am old and dying in agony I cannot end my own life but must suffer torment until my last gasp, that I must go to church and pray for forgiveness otherwise when I die I will go STRAIGHT TO HELL and will rot there till the end of time being tortured - along with Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld - (and quite a few others I would think).
Mmmm...perhaps church is not such a bad idea after all.
Just kidding.
