Or we could be in big trouble. The antis of Ireland have a whole arsenal of secret weapons in the battle to keep women pregnant that I haven’t seen deployed here — they have access to Catholic magic. I don’t think we’d be able to resist if they started cruising our country with magic paintings, magic garments (guaranteeing immunity from hellfire!), and magic faces.
No word yet on whether they have any magic briar patches.
Ye Gods! I’ve misplaced my fuzzy brown scapulars and now I’m defenseless against those who wear the magic lanyards! (Padre Pio used to have a nice little business blessing scraps of cloth and selling them to pious Catholics who wanted to wear them as scapulars.)
It funny to see the invocation of the “face of Jesus” cloth, which is so painfully obviously phony that it’s all a polite nonbeliever can do to avoid laughing in it (in that “face,” that is). Check out the “miraculous” image yourself. It’s not even a good painting! Veronica’s veil.
Magic garments!? Wait until the mormons hear about this.
I first read that one phrase as “magic feces.”
Hence the expression “holy shit”.
IslandBrewer>
I did too. :/
And then there’s this: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/may/20/cardinal-boston-college-enda-kenny-abortion
Cardinal Sean O’Malley, the leader of the Boston archdiocese, skipped Boston College’s commencement on Monday because the commencement speaker is Irish prime minister Enda Kenny, who is sponsoring a bill that would make abortions legal in Ireland in extremely limited circumstances – three doctors would have to verify in writing that the pregnancy would be fatal to the mother.
Zeno, he is so cute!!
uncle frogy
No religious person has ever satisfactorily explained to me why, if there is an omnipotent, omniscient, sovereign deity,who has strong moral opinions, and who actually intervenes in human affairs, just why it is that anything that he doesn’t like is ever allowed to happen at all.
Nor has the whole intercessory prayer thing ever made any sense. Wouldn’t such a deity know, better than you or I, what our needs and wants are? And wouldn’t he know, in advance and infallibly, if and how he was going to answer our prayers? For that matter, wouldn’t he know if we were going to pray or not?
They also have the +5 Shield of Fact Resistance, the Armor of Gawd (grants a bonus to sanctimony and smug self-satisfaction), a handful of Holy Bombs of Righteous Baby Saving, plenty of Bibles of Selective Quotations (a minor magic item, but still), several Pulpits of Immunity from Criticism, and they can fashion Protest Signs of Confusion, complete with Image of Squickiness. Our greatest secret weapon might be informing them of their magical powers and proceeding to watch them execute each other for witchcraft.
Good comment on that site:
“Weapons of mass creation.”
I hear catholic magic can turn crackers into jesus meat. How’d that work for ya?
Marcus Ranum:
Are you sure you’re not thinking of elfin magic? I hear those Keblet fellows can do wonders with crackers.
Edit: Kebler.
Damn this smartphone keyboards and my massive, bratwurst-fingers.
During my (brief) Catholic years I figured the witch-hunts were done because the church didn’t want magic in the world. When I later realised it was because they didn’t want any competing magic in the world I was well on my way out the door.
anteprepro @9:
Christian Magic: The Gathering?
No, Christian Magic: The Blathering.
On the other hand, if anti-choicers could be persuaded that it would be more productive for their cause to just talk to paintings than to stand outside hospitals screaming at people…
I remember scapulars!! We were told that they gave GOD’S POWER!! to protect the wearer. I put mine on and confronted the school bully who tormented me.
Don’t much remember after that except that God works in mysterious ways that don’t actually involve protecting you from school bullies.
@8/tbp1
Because Free Will, don’t you see? God is omniscient and omnipotent and eternal and immanent and transcendent and omnibenevolent, but he is not capable of creating a state or place where free will obtains and sin does not. Absolutely not. Heaven doesn’t actually exist, you see.
Besides, it’s more good of God, more respecting of the sovereignty of Human Free Will (TM) to chuck them out of paradise, impute the sin of one of them on all humanity forever, and then create an eternal burning hell which all humans deserve to go to just for being born because he decided to impute that sin on them, so he can send his son, who is also himself, to a backwater in the Roman outlands, and get his son, who is also himself, crucified to soothe his own anger over the sins he knew his creations would commit before he created them. Only it only works for some people, and they have to choose using their Free Will, and fuck ’em if it seems unjust or impossible.
You arrogant atheists.
…shit, ow. That popping sound was my Sarcasmotron chewing through a 100-milliCarlin fuse. I really need to stop doing that.
Glad you fine folk enjoyed this. “+5 Shield of Fact Resistance” – I may have to knick that if I do a followup.
Best,
Geoff (author of the piece linked.)
Magic water. hey, what would happen if I made homeopathic cancer remedy using holy water as a base ?
Would it be holy homeopathy, Batman ?
Exactly.
Whoa. I didn’t even knew this. I grew up Catholic, but post-Vatican-II Catholic…
@anteprepro
I was already giggling at the rest of the comment, but this…. I couldn’t breathe for laughing. What a fantastic image :) Here, have an internetz.
@Thumper, @anteprepro:
Better still, just imagine the schisms which would result as they tried to work out which method of execution their god wanted them to use.
Christian 1: “Drown the witch!”
Christian 2: “Burn the witch!”
Newly created ex-christian: “How about both at the same time. No? Oh well. Just as long as you don’t throw me in that briar patch…”