I think there are excellent arguments in favour of gay marriage (not least they should be allowed to be as miserable as all us heteros). I think there are even better arguments in favour of a single civil marriage for anyone who wants it with you and whoever having a further religious ceremony from whomever you would like or none and from whomever will have you.

Hoever, trying to argue from within Catholicism for gay marriage doesn’t really work because of the underlying theology of sex itself. As I explain in this comment over there:

“What is a non-bigoted argument against gay marriage that actually holds logic?”

I most certainly don’t say that you have to agree with this logic (I don’t myself, despite a Cathoilic upbringing and education) but this is the underlying logic of the Catholic attitude towards sex (not surprisingly, it’s remarkably similar to traditional Judaic law as well and there are many similarities with Islamic).

Sex must always be open to the possibility of conception.

And that, pretty much, is it. If you really pin down the explanation of it all that is. I’ve not seen this stated quite so bluntly by a Catholic authority, but I have seen it written by a Rabbi and also an Imam.

Anal sex, oral sex, these things are just fine. If that’s what turns the parties on, mutually, why the hell not? Sex is fun, it’s very definitely a gift from God. But such anal, oral, frotting, handjobs, tit rubs, whatever you want to think of, are only allowable as long as the actual male orgasm happens where conception is possible. This was the sin of Onan recall, coitus interruptus.

Now, given that only a woman can get pregnant and only get pregnant if ejaculation takes place at least vaguely in the region of her genitals then the only morally and righteously allowable form of sex is where ejaculation takes place at least vaguely in the region of a woman’s genitals.

As I say, that’s pretty much it as the basis to the whole thing.

You can disagree with the premise (I do myself) but that is what the premise is that then leads to all of the other restrictions. The restriction on contraception, to gay sex itself. That sin of Onan again.

Of course, when the premise is accepted (and as I say, it is at the heart of the Catholic theology of sex however much all of us Catholics, nominal, practising or non believing like myself ignore it or disagree with it) then the very concept of gay marriage beomes unthinkable. For marriage is a public recognition of devoting oneself to a sexual relationship (the marriage ceremony really does say “I thee with my body shall worship”) and how can that happen with a sexual relationship where conception is not possible and thus is not a moral or righteous sexual relationship?

Just to repeat myself again. I don’t find this convincing either. But it is an explanation of that underlying religious argument and it is indeed believed to be true by many.

You can only argue from within Catholicism in favour of gay marriage if you are to reject the Church’s basic teachings about sex. At which point, you’re not really making a Catholic argument, are you?

Yet it is time that foreign churches, as well as sending money and priests to the Middle East, used their influence to reform family law in the region. Who will bring pressure to bear to modernise the dense muddle of Christian personal status laws in the Middle East? The majority of the 14 million Arab Christians there cannot divorce. Many are locked into dead marriages – or convert to another religion so they can divorce.

Being a member of a religion is a statement: that this is the revealed truth about this world and the next.

Some such religions say that marriage is indissoluble. Maybe this is the revealed truth and maybe it isn’t. But membership of a church which states that it is means taking that revealed truth as being revealed truth.

If you feel that no divorce is not part of the revealed truth then of course you’re stating that divorce isn’t part of the revealed truth. Therefore shifting your religious allegiance to another religion, one that does not claim no divorce to be part of the revealed truth, seems entirely logical.

Your desire to divorce is exactly that, a rejection of the teachings of the church you belong to. That you should therefore leave doesn’t sound all that terrible really.

And there aren’t any restrictions on being able to move churh. So why is this woman demanding that the churches must change their versions of the revealed truth?

Use this page as a handy check as to whether the Rapture, the giant earthquake which will sweep believers into heaven, has happened as yet on 21 May 2011.

If the page is still here, no it hasn’t.

It makes people think I’m peculiar and lack intellectual fibres because I don’t have any doubts about my faith, but I’d be terrified to have doubts.

Which is really a rather odd statement actually.

For his faith is Catholic, Papist, he’s married to a divorcee (brief marriage, probably shouldn’t have happened in the first place, but rules is rules) and he’s been known to complain quite bitterly about not being able to receive communion as someone married to a divorcee (but rules is rules, see?).

It’s just a bit difficult to believe both things, that the Church is right (“no doubts about my faith”) but also that marrying a divorcee and taking communion is just fine.

Emdadur Choudhury, 26, a member of Muslims Against Crusades (MAC), was convicted of public disorder after burning two poppies during the two-minute silence on November 11 last year.

He added: “I get more when I get a parking ticket.”

Is it illegal to burn poppies? No.

Is it illegal to insult people? No.

Is it illegal to insult the military? No.

The government? People’s feelings? The dead? Act like a complete tool?

No, all of these things are entirely legal in our country, for we are a free people.

The maximum punishment under Section 5 of the Public Order Act is a £1,000 fine for using threatening, abusive, or insulting words or behaviour that could cause harassment, alarm or distress.

You need to actually directly harm someone else (harassment, alarm and distress are indeed harms). Or, the other thing that you could have been charged with, behaviour likely to cause a breach of the peace, is about you acting as such a tosspot that someone was likely to beat you up.

Freedom of speech really does mean freedom of speech and that we accord that freedom to all, even those we vehemently disagree with, is a badge of honour for us, not for those who speak freely.

As it should be of course and as it isn’t in all too much of the world.

Do remember that next time someone decides to call Mohammed a paedophile. It’s legal to insult the memory of the Prophet, to insult your religious beliefs, even to insult you. What would not be legal is to cause harassment, alarm or distress, nor behaviour likely to cause a breach of the peace.

Aisha was 9 when he bonked her, you know?

You’ll know that I’m not religious myself and there’s certainly lots of the Mormon world view that’s easy enough to mock. But an intelligent piece in The Guardian about one of the symbols of fatih: who would have thought it?

Normally the non-Catholic partner agrees, at the request of the priest, to let the Catholic partner bring up the children in the faith if they are being married in a Catholic church.

Umm, no.

The non-Catholic partner has to agree to let the Catholic partner bring the children up in the faith if they are to be allowed to marry in a Catholic Church.

And on the short version you can take yourself, this agnostic/atheist got 100%, aided by two things.

One, a lucky guess on the last question and two, well, try this:

When does the Jewish Sabbath begin?

Possible answers are Friday, Saturday or Sunday.

The correct answer is “by whose calendar”?

For the Jewish Sabbath is indeed the Saturday: but in the Jewish calendar which day is which is not defined by when is midnight or noon (both quite difficult things to ascertain with accuracy without watches, although sundials will do for one of them). Rather, as would be logical in a pastoral/nomadic society (when many of these rules were first set), by nightfall or dawn, rather more easily observed phenomena.

As it happens, Jewish tradition chose nightfall.

So, the precise answer to the beginning of the Sabbath is the nightfall before Saturday using our standard western calendar, that is, Friday night.

But in the Jewish calendar the Sabbath starts at the beginning of the day after Friday: that’s why they’re celebrating it on what “we” call Friday night because to them it is already the Sabbath, Saturday.

So we’ve a question that (OK, but only by being pedantic, I admit), in this quiz, changes answer dependent upon whether you are Jewish or not.

BTW, no, I’ll not tell you what the quiz thinks is the right answer. Work it out for yourselves.

I hadn’t realised that the Jedi census thing was more than just the UK.

No, really:

The Blues Brothers have received an endorsement from the unlikeliest of quarters – the Vatican.

When you think about it they’re right too. Despite the faults of the Church on Earth, the Brothers, Jake and Elwood, act as if that Church is indeed their family. And they ignore the secular authorities, indeed strive against them, in order to aid that Church. The true Church, not just the fallible one here.

If we can sing and dance to Praise the Lord, are we not Praising the Lord by singing and dancing?

Tim Aquinas…Tom’s lesser known younger brother.

Or, in short: Shake Your Tailfeather:

Benny XVI

There was an intake of breath among the congregation, yet I wondered if I’d misheard the Archbishop. I hadn’t, for the text is on Rowan Williams’s website: “If Henry VIII is saved (an open question, perhaps) it will be at the prayers of John Houghton.”

Of course it’s an open question. The definition of “Saint” is someone that we know is in heaven*. As Henry VIII is not a saint we do not know that he is “saved”.

QED.

* Yes, I know that I don’t believe this and you may or may not. And there are of course any number of different groups with different methods of “knowing” and thus declaring sainthood. But if we are to debate matters theological it’s worth using the terms and assumptions which are used to debate matters theological. There’s no point in starting every discussion about the difference between consubstantiation and transubstantiation with an “of course Jesus was just some itinerant mystic, not the Son of God at all”.

If I might put it in anachronistic terms, Jesus lived practically his entire life in the ‘private sector’: so far as we are aware, his only significant ‘public sector’ involvement was in the day or so before his execution.

On the advantages of temple prostitution, the use of sex as a form of worship.

Agape, that good natured Christian love of all is all very well in its place but there’s no reason to posit a Sky Fairy as a reason to practice it. Nor to purchase Cadillacs, fine houses, and private jets for those who take our money for scaring us into doing so. And the advantage of worshipping Eros is that we know he actually exists: he exists in every boner and damp gusset on the planet.

Benedict XVI claimed that legislation introduced by Labour to end discrimination “actually violates natural law” because it stopped worshippers remaining true to their beliefs.

Rather than making society more equal, the Government’s new rules limited religious freedom, he said.

Wonder how many of such will support Il Papa’s latest thought.

That one agrees with some thing someone says and not with others is fine. It’s rather that you’re not supposed to make appeals to authority and then be selective…..

As The Guardian headline has it:

Freedom comes before equality

Wel,, yes, it should, certainly…..

The astonishing efforts to lure away Anglican priests show that Pope Benedict is set on restoring the Roman imperium.

That’s Hans Kung that is.

And he seems just a tad dim here. For the Pope and the Catholic Church rather claim to be the one true apostolic church. It is therefore, by their own lights, their duty to bring all into that communion.

Complaining that people who have dedicated their lives to saving souls are trying to save souls just doesn’t sound all that sensible.

As many as 1,000 priests could quit the Church of England and thousands more may leave churches in America and Australia under bold proposals to welcome Anglicans to Rome.

Entire parishes and even dioceses could be tempted to defect after Pope Benedict XVI’s decision to offer a legal structure to Anglicans joining the Roman Catholic Church.

So which Bishop has to come over with his diocese for us to get Westminster Abbey back?

The widow of Ferdinand Marcos disclosed last week that she is pushing her son Ferdinand Jr, 51, known as “Bongbong”, to stand for president next year.

…

He was educated at Worth, a Benedictine boarding school in West Sussex.

I remember, when I was at the prep school there, seeing the limo coming to take him off for a weekend exeat or half term or some such. Whether Ma and Pa were in the back I don’t know although I was told they were.

Anyway, on to the question.

If elected would he be the first head of state to have been educated at an English Catholic (err, yes, specifying Roman, not the Apostolic etc claim of the CoE) school since the Reformation?

The Tudors and Stuarts weren’t educated at schools and we’ve not had a Catholic HoS since then (neatly leaving aside all the arguments about whether Charles I, or II, or James II were in fact Papists). Then there were no Catholic schools in England until what, 1837 and the Emancipation (maybe earlier?)?

I doubt very much if any member of any other Royal Family who has ascended the throne was educated in England which leaves elected Presidents and the like since around 1850 or so.

So, anyone any idea?

Ah, looking it up I see that Ampleforth has already had a Grand Duke of Luxembourg and a King of Lesotho. So how about elected heads of state?

Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, has urged non-Muslims to fast for a day during Ramadan and then to break their fast at a mosque to improve their understanding of Islam.

Why not?

And we can then go on to where everyone has only one meal and no meat on Good Friday as with old Catholic tradition, six glasses of wine at Passover, a properly vegetarian meal with our observant Hindu neighbours, not tread on the ants one day with a Jain, deny the existence of God another along with Polly.

Why not?