Benedict's Evasive Apology

IN REPLY TO (IRT)
SUSAN JACOBY
"ALL POPES CAMPAIGN"

IRT:
"This should not be surprising, because all popes are politicians. They wouldn't have gotten to be popes otherwise."

ANS:
Bertrand Russell once said, “Most people would die sooner than think; in fact, they do.” You've been reading too many Popefictions. The last thing Benedict XVI wanted was to be Pope.

He wanted to retire and write. He had already planned his retirement. GK Chesterton once said, "The Catholic Church has been found wanting by those who never tried it. He might have added and by people who are egocentric iconoclast who only see what they want to see.

The Pope is not God; he is a human person, and humans make mistakes unless they're perfect. As one pundit wrote, “Mistakes are a fact of life. It is the response to error that counts.”

The Pope made a mistake and corrected it. You just made one. What’s your response? It's not a big deal what the Pope did. It would have been a big deal if he had knew it would cause a problem, and did it anyway. He didn't know, and he corrected it. He apologized, to his people and the dissident Jews. It has nothing to do with the Public, but with the reconciliation of Catholics and Jews.

The Pope said, "...he is saddened that even Catholics who should know better 'thought they had to attack me with open hostility.'"

The Pope lived under Nazi terrorists, and to intimate Benedict was a Nazi sympathizer is where the real hypocrisy exists.

"Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi said the letter — released in six languages — was "really unusual and deserving of maximum attention."

That the quiet gesture of extending a hand gave rise to a huge uproar, and this became exactly the opposite of a gesture of reconciliation, is a fact which we must accept," Benedict said.

"But Benedict said the church cannot be indifferent to a movement that counts 491 priests, 215 seminarians, and six seminaries.

"Should we casually let them drift farther from the church?" he asked."

Danielinthelionsden wrote:

"What else is there to say?"

Undoubtedly you will think of something.

Susan is right.

Why not just try and ignore the offending, troubled, and troublesome posters as much as possible, and go on with the conversation at hand?

Farnaz,

Ignore CCNL. I think he is really Gaby, the turd lover.

I wonder why he thinks the OT is fiction? Its the only believable part of the bible, in my opinion. Well, except for the first three books which are a fantasy!

If you want a dog, get a scottie. VERY loyal animals.

How about this for frequent posters:

No one here can "hurt" anyone else, excpet possibly momentarily ruffling some feathers. When that happens, why not log off and drink some water?

No one here can damage anyone's "reputation" except their anonymous On-Faith reputation, which can be easily regained in a few days or weeks.

If anyone is "acting out" any kinds of delutions of "mental illness," it is not really their fault, and nothing that can be helped, and nothing that we can do about it. I, at least, do not believe that mental illness is a moral question, and I do not think we should blame mentally ill people for being ill.

If anyone posts under more than one name, there is no way that anyone else can know for sure, and there is nothing that we can do about it. So, why not just let it go? And if any particular person cannot let it go, why not just, everyone else, ignore that person?

If anyone is accused of posting under more than one name, there is no way they can prove they are not. In such a case, it is besst to ignore it. If is untrue, it is not unjust, because these are all trivial matters. Rather than ruminating on it, just ignore whomever you think is treating you unjustly.

I am writing all of this because in her next essay, Susan added some comments at the end about all these silly controversies. She is right.

These are all just silly, trivial, and childish controversies of no importance or consequence.

Yet, it is all we seem to be left with, since most of the intelligent commenters seem to have fled, or else have become mute.

Oh, I forgot to mention when my husband comes to bed the other two little ones follow him, Little Chanel (poodle) and Zigeuner (poddle). Then I get a few kisses again before everyone settles down for the night.

Not to forget, Tanner, the monster dog (Great Pyranee/Yellow Lab mix). No, he is not allowed in bed, but sleeps very noisily (God that dog snores) next to the bed.

And now, while I am previewing this message, my dogs reminded me that it's way past bedtime. 1:15 am. Shoot what am I thinking..

Farnaz,

Please do not fight for me, I can hold my own.

A puppy is much better than a geranium, it talks back and gives you kisses (if you allow it to) and greets you at the door when you come home/

If you live in an apartment and walking a dog interferes with your daily routine, let me suggest a tiny toy breed (poodle, Shi Tzu, Yorkie, etc.) They don't shed, can easily be trained to use a littler box and the grooming is not too costly. As as matter of fact, you can take a class or two and become your dog's own groomer.

Every night when I say "Bedtime bunnies!", my little Emma girl (poodle) and my little Schatzie (Dachshund) beat me to bed. Once I climb into bed, they cuddle up around my neck and cover me with puppy kisses.

There is nothing like butterfly kisses from a puppy.

Reality 101 (for those eyes that have not seen)

1. As per 1.5 million non-apologetic, Conservative Jews and their rabbis to include Rabbi Wolpe, an On Faith panelist, Abraham founder/father of three major religions was either the embellishment of the lives of three different men or a mythical character as was mythical Moses, the "Tablet-Man" who talked to burning bushes and made much magic in Egypt.

Current crisis:

Realization that the Jews are not god's chosen people.

www.simpletoremember.com/vitals/ConservativeTorah.htm

2. As per many non-apologetic , contemporary NT exegetes , Jesus was an illiterate Jewish peasant/carpenter/simple preacher man who suffered from hallucinations and who has been characterized anywhere from the Messiah from Nazareth to a mythical character from mythical Nazareth to a mamzer from Nazareth (Professor Bruce Chilton, in his book Rabbi Jesus). Analyses of Jesus’ life by many contemporary NT scholars (e.g. Professors Crossan, Borg and Fredriksen, On Faith panelists) via the NT and related documents have concluded that only about 30% of Jesus' sayings and ways noted in the NT were authentic. The rest being embellishments (e.g. miracles)/hallucinations made/had by the NT authors to impress various Christian, Jewish and Pagan sects.

The 30% of the NT that is "authentic Jesus" like everything in life was borrowed/plagiarized and/or improved from those who came before. In Jesus' case, it was the ways and sayings of the Babylonians, Greeks, Persians, Egyptians, Hittites, Canaanites, OT, John the Baptizer and possibly the ways and sayings of traveling Greek Cynics.
http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/theories.html

For added "pizzazz", Catholic/Christian theologians divided god the singularity into three persons and invented atonement as an added guilt trip for the "pew people" to go along with this trinity of overseers. By doing so, they made god the padre into god the "filicider".

Current crises:

Pedophiliac priests, atonement theology and original sin!!!!

3. And the non-apologetic Luther, Calvin, Smith, Henry VIII, Wesley, Roger Williams et al, founders of Christian-based religions, also suffered from the belief in/hallucinations of "pretty wingie thingie" visits and "prophecies" for profits analogous to the myths of Catholicism (resurrections, apparitions, ascensions and immaculate conceptions).

Current crises:

Adulterous preachers, "propheteering/ profiteering" evangelicals and atonement theology. .

Btes., Concerned Ctetin Nuts Loosening,

You obvously read nothing anyone else writes, unless you think there's an idiotic rejoinder in it for you. And, so I say to you, again, LEAVE GABY ALONE. LEAVE HER ALONE, GET IT?\\

Ah, thou follower of the Prince of Peace, the compassionate One. Jesus weeps.

Susan Jacoby:

Last on CCNL's Jewish problems. Prior to this recent bout of obsession, he lay in wait for my posts to accuse me of being a paid agent of JDL.

What, I wonder, does this sort of thing contribute to whatever topic is supposed to be under discussion?

Farnaz

Susan,

Another thing. I never posted under the aliases CCNL claims I did. It's all a fiction of his warped imagination. Another blogger just offered the same "proof" that ccnl was posting under another name.

This is the utmost nonesense, as ccnl, sho has also posted as "Tom," though not "Stadtbear," evidently, or at least so it seems, should know..

He, of course, has a hidden agenda. As an outspoken Jew, I awake in him Catholic guilt, which inspires him to post endless exerpts from the "OT" as proof of Jewish something or other. Btw., he also thinks the "OT" is "myth."

I'm sorry for his Catholic guilt. As I have told him, he is only responsible for what he does or affirms. But that doesn't stop it, of course. He thinks if I leave the blog, he'll recover. He won't. (He's a crypto-Protestant, at heart.)

Ah, 'tis pity. Since I shan't be going anywhere soon.

Farnaz

Susan Jacoby,

I wonder if you might do something about this pesky CCNL, who bothers everyone, interferes with discussions, indeed, actually, blocks them. As I understand it , this isn't meant to be a forum for acting out one's paranoid delusions, cutting, and pasting.

Rather, I thought it was meant to be a blog on religion and politics. This nonense is bothering everyone, as you can easily see if you skip over to other threads.

I wonder that you can tolerate reading these threads with all this CCNL nonesense on them. She clearly needs help, but this isn't a doctor's office. It can offer her a space to discuss, not harrass, not cut and paste.

With the deepest appreciation for anything you might be able to do.

Farnaz

Hi Gabby,

In part, I was joking, but I have a few friends who have multiple dogs, and they all report different behaviors. Two of them have two dogs each. They are completely indifferent to one another, seemingly unaware that they are of the same species. You can see there utter lack of interest when they're being walked.

IN another case, one dog has a very serious temperent, while the other is a playful tease, who never tires of troubling his co-canine (Ernest). Ernest, however, takes it all in stride.

I'm glad your doggies snuggle together! All things considered, I think we will have to buy a puppy (one)!

Farnaz :)

ALIAS ALERT FOR THE DAY: ( a little late as there were some registration issues with On Faith most of the day)

Farnaz aka Farnaz2 aka Observer12 aka Observer31 aka Yael1 aka ivri5678 aka IVRI5678 aka Billy8 was caught "red handed" using all these aliases some threads ago.

After this, she said she would no longer participate in said discussions. As seen, this has not happened but we continue to remind everyone about this "devilish"/delusional woman as a service to our fellow bloggers.

On occasion, she even "talks" to herself in her commentaries i.e. To: ivri5678 From: Farnaz2. She is definitely one strange woman!!
Her newest aliases are "nadinebatra" and "Stadtbear.

And it appears GABY1 and Farnaz have formed some kind of odd alliance to perpetuate the bearing of false witness by Farnaz. Very strange!!!

Dear Farnaz.

"aHow does the whole managerie get along? Are there any good friends? Competitions? Squabbles? Do the tiny toy poodles blog on the Puppynet? Are any being harrassed by trolling puppies making false accusations? Hope not! That could give Cattyanity a bad name! :)"

Sorry, but you totally lost me here. Why would my dogs fight each other, they grew up in the same house and received equal love. Yes, at times there is a little "your piece of pie was bigger than mine" mentality, but they love to snuggel with each other and so I don't understand your questions at all.

Gaby,

You have to see Rev. Thistlewait's piece on the presidential pup. I believe the lady may just come around to my way of thinking that Puppy Religion, with its natural spirituality, might usher in the promised Whatever.

Farnaz

Hi Gaby,

Let's forget flora, and move on to fauna. Are your wide apart in age? How does the whole managerie get along? Are there any good friends? Competitions? Squabbles? Do the tiny toy poodles blog on the Puppynet? Are any being harrassed by trolling puppies making false accusations? Hope not! That could give Cattyanity a bad name! :)

Farnaz

Farnaz,

Sorry, I do not have a green thumb. I do grow geraniums outside and they bloom all summer. Inside, however, I never had any luck.

Gaby

And, Daniel, I just to let you know that I am 100% true blue. I have never ever posted under someone else's name, my thoughts are my own, and although I had to log in as Nevermore from a different computer I have always tried to clarify who it is that posts.

Only that you are absolutely correct, DITLD!!!

How does giving out an anonymous email address prove ones identity?

And can’t a picture to prove identity sent over the internet be faked? So what does it prove?

This blog is not a good place to meet people or make friends. The key word is "meet" and there will never be anyone "to meet" here. There is no “here” here.

I think there are a lot of troublesome posts lately from people who are seeking some sort of fulfillment that this kind of activity can never satisfy. It is a drag on the banter of whatever subject is at hand.

This post is sure to offend, even though I have weighed every word and syllable to be as inoffensive as possible. What else is there to say?
.

test

Hi Gaby,

Do you know anything about caring for geraniums? No doubt, this question shows appalling ignorance on my part, but what the heck My daughter came home with one a little while ago, a gift from a friend who wanted to cheer her up about her not having a pet! Talk about guilt-trips!

Farnaz

Dear Gaby,

Thanks for your reply! Despite what we've been told, I've come to see that nothing is written. I'm reading just now a book by Jack Kornfield, of Insight Meditation fame, about a woman diagnosed with stage 4 cancer, last remission, etc. She took up healing meditation, anti-cancer nutrition and lived many more years.

You don't say what your illness is, and don't need to. Just know that it ain't over 'til it's over, and judging from your posts, I can say it's far from over. And those five (!) dogs, et al, need you! :) So do many others!!

Goldfish, hmmm....Never had much luck with the little critters. You must have a gift!

Farnaz

Hi Farnaz,

No, the appointment did not go as well as I had hoped, That is OK though! This Kraut, as Stadtbear calls me, still has some fight left in her.

Bye the way, I have 5 dogs, a cat, an aquarium and a fish pond. The dogs are 3 tiny toy poddles, a Dachshund (fitting for a Kraut) and a Great Pyranee/Golden Retriever mix.

So you see, I still have to live a little longer to take care of everyone.

Gaby

Well, CCNL, did you get Stadtbear's pictures? If you didn't, I certainly did, be glad to forward them to you!

More on the importance of brown puppy spaniels. I had to babysit for one whilst a neighbor went out of town. This amazingly tiny thing would crawl under my daughter's desk while she was doing her homework, and remain there. Otherwise, he wasn't still for more than a few minutes.

Puppies, are to my way of thinking, powerful sources for spiritual renewal. They will probably never organize, become institutions, develop any puppy theology other than that which they embody. Hence, no nonprofit status. Also, we can be reasonably sure they won't lobby for their favorite candidates, whether in local or national elections.

It seems to me that the matter of Puppy Religion is long overdue for analysis on this blog. Of course, there will always be Puppy atheists and agnostics, those who subscribe to Kitten Religion, and they, too, should be acknowledged, respectfully.

:)

Hi Stadtbear,

Glad you sent ccnl the picture! I wish you could post the harpsichord (and scottie) picture on the web so that we could all see it.

I can see that you don't like people mixing in, so, with some trepidation, I tell you that Gaby is good people. Of course, none of us knows one another, except cyberspatially, but she's been blogging here for a long, long time, since before I started and from such a long history, one gets a sense. And she is a music lover!

Turning to the matter of dogs, I'm starting to dream about brown spaniels. I suddenly developed a "need" for one, akin to that which my daughter has had for months now. And now he's in my dreams, a puppy spaniel. Unfortunately, it's not possible, as our apartment is too small. One day....

I envy you :)

PS. It's still me--Farnaz, formerly Farnaz2. For explanation, see my last post to Gaby.

Hi Gaby,

Hope things went well for you with your appointment today!

My login went bananas. I couldn't log in as Farnaz2, or as Farnaz, which I all that was ever necessary. At all events, I kept getting the message that there already were bloggers using those names. Weird. So, I'm finally re-registered as Farnaz1, which I suppose is more sensible than Farnaz2, but not so good as Farnaz. That's the sort of thing that happens, Farnazianly. But 'tis still me.

Farnaz

Well, Stadtbear and I have no sympathy for you, you evil little troll!

Thanks for the pictures by the way. I couldn't have manufactured better myself.

Farnaz wrote
As for Stadtbear, I have concluded that he was probably demonically possessed, since if you've read his posts, he appears to be civil, knowledgeable, principled.
Would his demon had not seized aupon vous et moi, but thankfully it did so only cyberspatially.

Ha! Demons. Please. Aside from Gaby, the Antichrist, there are no demons. You like a good fight and I decided to "fight" with you. As for the Kraut Gaby, she stuck her nose in something that did not concern her, in Kraut fashion, and got slapped for it. I have no sympathy for her whining.

Well, I delivered as promised to CCNL, 1 pic of me, 1 of my scottie, and one of the harpsichord I just finished building. We'll see what she thinks. If she is stupid enough to continue thinking we are one and the same, she is to dense to bother with.

When has Stadtbear become civil? What did I miss pray tell?!?!?!?

Posted by: Gaby1 | April 12, 2009 11:12 PM

You miss a lot when you are out playing with your turds.

In Book of God,Son of Jewish Woman Mary says *Do not take along any gold or silver or copper in your belt*Matthew 10.9

But,The Pope,Holder of the Keys of Heaven,has golden mace and many golden ornamented dresses.How can we interpret and appreciate ?

Orson Welles is singing;

I know what it is to be young
But you dont know what it is to be old
Some day you'll be saying the same thing
Time ticks away,so the story is told.....

Yes,yes....Time ticks away and the same story is told since 50/60 centuries
Yes,Life goes on and we pass through....the same tales is told....

OOOPS, I don't know what happened to the rest of my sentence.

....computer "geeks" the kind of people who dabble into making harpsicords.

Then again, my daughter has an astrophysics degree but is also well versed in the arts (writes pretty good poetry and paints). I guess one never knows. Maybe the left part and the right part of the brain can work together.

Thank you Farnaz!

I will look forward to Stadtbear's e-mails to me. It should be enlightening to say the least. I normally do not consider computer "geeks"

We shall see what comes of it.

Hi Gaby,

I just posted to you on the main thread. I second Frederic, btw., on your elegant translation. About Norman's rendition, I agree. The costume went with the schmaltz. Still the richness of her voice and range are astonishing.

Anne Sofie von Otter's rendition truly is world class. She stands with Goethe one with one foot over the border into the "enlightenment." To me it's a modernist interpretation, and I'm thinking seriously of using it in a course I co-teach on modernism.

As for Stadtbear, I have concluded that he was probably demonically possessed, since if you've read his posts, he appears to be civil, knowledgeable, principled.
Would his demon had not seized aupon vous et moi, but thankfully it did so only cyberspatially.

I hope the two of you do communicate. The fellow makes harpsichords! Maybe, he'll post a picture on the web for us all to see. That would be nice.

Be well, my friend.

Farnaz

Frederic1:

Thank you for the compliment in regards to my translation skills.

Gaby

Susan,

I would rather have an evasice apology than none at all. A small step forward is better than three back.

Gaby

Oh, and just so you know, Nevermore stands for No more war, no more suffering, no more starvation, no more disease, no more lies, no more........no more, no more......Nevermore!!!!

I'll take Stadtbear up on his offer. My e-mail is Nevermore53@yahoo.com.

Let's see who is who and what is what! This ought to be an interesting time for all! I have nothing to hide, and since he called me all kind of names and posted some very offensive little ditties, let's see who he really is.

I have very little compassion for pretenders! If you can bear out who you say you are, we will see!!!

When has Stadtbear become civil? What did I miss pray tell?!?!?!?

Hi Farmaz,

Yes, I did listen to Jesseys rendition and though it was awesome. However, knowing the poem so well in my own mind and heart, I thought she was a tad too "operatic" if you know what I mean.

In any case she has a tremendous voice and is a shining star.

Gaby

And Farnaz alias Stadtbear continues along her path of delusions.

CCNL:

I'm waiting to answer your email. Where are you? I have some great pics of hot men getting it on with each other, that I could send to you to help you with your masturbation fantasies. A Catholic priest friend of mine gave them to me. I'd be glad to share.

It was more of a dare than an offer, LOL. I don't think he has the balls.

Well, closet-gay I could agree with.

Jews are not a race. If you become an athiest, do you ccease being a Jew?

Stadtbear,

I hope ccnl takes you up on your offer. Harpsichords and scotties are good for the soul! You are kind, Stadtbear.

Farnaz

Stadtbear,

The creature claims he is a man, but he's a sexist, gay-hating, antisemitic, Muslim-bashing, antisemite, Pagan trashing jerk. Right now, I've cast him as female. If he doesn't depart soon, he'll be a self-hating Jew, closet gay, Imam, etc.

CCNL, you idiot, Mary has nothing to do with this. You, my dear, are the elderly lady, Constantina. Mary is many years your junior. She, undoubtedly, has more to do with her time than follow me around like a leech or mosquito.

Go get your hubby to by you a new dress, or whatever it is that lady mosquitos wear.

Farnaz,

Are you certain CCNL is a woman? For some reason I had the impression that he/she was a man. What is her problem with the JDL?

Tell you what, CCNL, to prove to you that I am not Farnaz, I'll give you my email. stadtbear@gmail.com. You can email me there, we can swap pics, if you have the nerve, or we can webcam. I'll send you pics of a harpsichord I just completed, and I'll have a scottie to show you online. So put your money where your mouth is.

Frederic,

"ccnl's repetitive assertion that you have a lot of aliases is tiring."

This did not come out in your initial post. However, you are not alone. Others on this blog, right now have said the same. He's impeded threads, even stopped discussions.
Got to go.

Frederic,

Thanks for your reply! No wrath, and less mental output from me, I assure you. I am most heartily sick of ccnl. Prior to this recent harrassment, he posted following every post of mine, that I was a member of JDL--this went on for weeks, is a matter of recent record that I could and will post unless he buzzes away. In wait, the creature sat, following every post I made, accusing me of being a JDL agent, posting that JDL was a terrorist group, over and over ad nauseum. Followed me, stuck to me like an insect. Was the topic of comment by other bloggers.

Most recently he said I was "Hitler." Really, this has got to stop, and it just occurs to me that it can be done. I have taken no pleasure in exchanges with this leech. He's beginning to make my skin craw., so much so that I actually think of him when not blogging.

If you didn't mean to include me in your lament, whence the ccnl/stadtbear comment, or was it simply their posts that were your target?

I

Mary Cunningham was only the first of many commentators who caught Farnaz in her bearing of false witness. And it was I not Mary who noted the possibility of Farnaz being a member of the JDL.

And Farnaz's delusions about Stadtbear continue!!!

Dear Farnaz, my comment did not have anything to do with you and I am a bit surprised at the amount of mental output I initiated in you by the trivial statement that ccnl's repetitive assertion that you have a lot of aliases is tiring.

Of course I read all the posts in this thread, including about stadttbear's recent occupations in Austria. Good for him or her.

As to Wagner, I am no fan of him at all, but I do, as a matter of fact, teach Schubert's songs, including his own difficulty with his right hand triplets accompaniment. ("Der Teufel soll das Zeug spielen").

And as to the breakthrough in Vermont - I wholeheartedly congratulate you and the rest of humanity, to which I even count myself.

Don't squander your wrath: I appreciate it very much where it is appropriate and "does something".

Gaby,

I think we can safely take Stadtbear at his word with respect to his identity, that is, to his not being ccnl. For one thing, Stadtbear is clearly homo sapiens. He can write, and he he knowledgeable. He also says he is gay.

Farnaz.
Over and out

Gaby,

Stadtbear has joined us as himself. We had a substantive chat. You will, I think, find his posts worth reading.

I know you're not a Christian, so I shall wish you, then, a Happy Sunday!

Regards,
Farnaz :)

FOR CRUSTY CONSTANTINA NUTS LOOSENING

Be a good Catholic Mosquito and take this with you to the Swarm today. Ask what your co-relgionists plan to do about this. Report back when the Ratzinger apologies and recommunications have occurred.

Friday, Mar. 06, 2009
Nine-Year-Old's Abortion Outrages Brazil's Catholic Church
By Andrew Downie / São Paulo

The case of the pregnant 9-year-old was shocking enough. But it was the response of the Catholic Church that infuriated many Brazilians. Archibishop Jose Cardoso Sobrinho of the coastal city of Recife announced that the Vatican was excommunicating the family of a local girl who had been raped and impregnated with twins by her stepfather, because they had chosen to have the girl undergo an abortion. The Church excommunicated the doctors who performed the procedure as well. "God's laws," said the archbishop, dictate that abortion is a sin and that transgressors are no longer welcome in the Roman Catholic Church. "They took the life of an innocent," Sobrinho told TIME in a telephone interview. "Abortion is much more serious than killing an adult. An adult may or may not be an innocent, but an unborn child is most definitely innocent. Taking that life cannot be ignored."

The case has caused a furor. Abortion is illegal in Brazil except in cases of rape or when the mother's life is in danger, both of which apply in this case. (The girl's immature hips would have made labor dangerous; the Catholic opinion was that she could have had a cesarean section.) When the incident came to light in local newspapers, the Church first asked a judge to halt the process and then condemned those involved, including the 9-year-old's distraught mother

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1883598,00.html

NB: " the Catholic opinion was that she [the little girl] could have had a cesarean section"

Although I fear pollution I shall reply to this one buzz from Crusty Catholic Nuts Loosenting (mosquito):

"Once again, although asked to do so by a number of commentators, Farnaz has never denied using aliases basically because she was caught "redhanded" doing so a few weeks ago."

This is untrue. One blogger, a newbie, after endless posts by ccnl asked, and I told him that I did not use aliases. This unfortunate Constantina elderly lady has been obsessed with me for a long time, posting after every comment I made in the past that I was an agent of JDL. She is what one might call (a) obsessively compulsively disordered, (b) infatuated with yours truly (c) a paranoid schizophrenic, (d) suffering from Alzheimers, and, thus, forgetful that she repeats herself. Or, itself. I don't know much about the sex of mosquitos.

I would suggest, however, that she stop mosquiturbating as it will make her larvally blind.

This is my last post to or on or about ccnl. I hope she enjoys hunting for painted eggs, doesn't sit on any, and doesn't drown in water holy or otherwise. May the wafer not get stuck in her moquito throat equivalent. May the Q(ueer) gospell in the sky not fall on it and crush it. Or the converse.

Halozcel:

You write:

Date BC 4000(from Uruk),Sumerian God Dummizid/Tammuzi used to resurrect/rise in the beginning of spring every year and peoples were celebrating The Resurrection/Rise of God Dummizid.

Date AD 2009,Second Sunday of April,Easter,beginning of spring and peoples are celebrating The Resurrection/Rise of Son of God.

There is no change since 60 centuries.
-------------------
Ah, but you are mistaken. Prada was only a vision in 4000 BC, but now it is upon the feet of his Ratzinger-ness. And, then, too, Rick Warren, they say, was thinner then.

(as noted below), Farnaz continues to talk to herself in her commentaries e.g. To: Stadtbear From: Farnaz2. She is definitely one strange, delusional woman!!

Farnaz's made-up description of Stadtbear shows the delusions she suffers from!!!

Once again, although asked to do so by a number of commentators, Farnaz has never denied using aliases basically because she was caught "redhanded" doing so a few weeks ago.

Frederic,

See or listen to Wagner's Faust Overture for which Onofrio's "trouvaille" is the motto, and read the discussion on Wagner. Read a bit of the discussion on Erlkonig, and listen to the recordings on YouTube, links to which have been posted by Gaby and me.

Otherwise, I am not so very interested in learning of your fatigue with CCNL, who, it turns out is not Statdtbear, who lived for four years in Austria and who currently makes pipe organs and harpsichords. This, you would know had you been a little less not-so-very interested and read on.

I don't quite know how to break this to you, since others have tried and failed, but this thread is not a preview seeking comment from potential movie goers. To make it something that interests you, you must, how shall I put it, do something. As for CCNL Mosquito, I am most heartily sick of her, and if you look around the current blog, you will find that I am far, far from alone. Others, however, have posted to or about her, encouraging her to go away and have also written to Waters, who informs me that the complaints have been numerous. Indeed, he has so informed me every time I asked that ccnl be instructed in netiquette.

Rather than deign to inform us of what does and does not interest you, perhaps your awesomeness might post on that which does, and do something to end the endless irritation and show-stopping caused by Crusty Constantine Nuts Loosening, do something, as others have done.

Sorry, but when perfumed handkerchiefs drift to the floor, I start to sneeze and I am not so very concerned about the annoyed spirits that fly out.

As for the Pope, I am hopeful that no one unintentionally left Easter eggs in his Prada slippers, which, I understand, he prefers to heels.

Here in the US, where I live, Vermont through a two-thirds legislative majority over-ride of the governor's veto, legalized gay marriage. In that, Frederic, I am very, very interested. Freedom rung out loud and clear on April 7, 2009, and that, I find very, very "interesting."

Happy Sunday, and happy Monday, too.

Date BC 4000(from Uruk),Sumerian God Dummizid/Tammuzi used to resurrect/rise in the beginning of spring every year and peoples were celebrating The Resurrection/Rise of God Dummizid.

Date AD 2009,Second Sunday of April,Easter,beginning of spring and peoples are celebrating The Resurrection/Rise of Son of God.

There is no change since 60 centuries.

!

The Pope is such a nice man: He just donated 500 Easter eggs for the homeless children in the Italian earth quake area (there may be 20.000 homeless children in that area.). He also donated some beakers for the holy wine for Easter celebration!

I almost feel motivated to return into the arms of such a generous institution!

Congratulations, Gaby1, for your Werther translation! And thanks, Onofrio, for the "trouvaille" of this quotation!

Otherwise, I am not so very interested in joining the stupid repetitive stadtbear/ccnl "discussion". I prefer to practice a bit on my cello.

Happy Easter, everybody!.

frederic1

Stadtbear:

Re: My next-to-last post

Meant to write

"It does seem to me, though, that greater tolerance is BECOMING evident within the black community, but I am not black (am brown)."

Meaning, I think tolerance is growing within the African American community.

"The only place the RCC is "selling" now is in third-world countries, such as Africa."

And look at the consequences for that continent.

"Are you suggesting that black gays are less accepted by the black community than white gays are by the white community? This certainly appears to be true of the Hispanic community: zero tolerance."

I don't know how to compare tolerance levels between two minority cultures and so large a majority. But the tolerance-level among the groups you mention doesn't seem to be high. Are you familiar with the phrase "down low"? It does seem to me, though, that greater tolerance is evident within the black community, but I am not black (am brown).

Check this out when you have a chance. (Also, I don't know if you saw my other links on Auden's grave site.)

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/03/magazine/double-lives-on-the-down-low.html?sec=health

The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life reports that Catholicism in America has lost more affiliated members than any other faith tradition.
There are reportedly 67.1 million Catholics in the U.S., according to The Official Catholic Directory 2008. Compared to the 2007 number of 67.5, that's about a 400,000 decrease in one year. And the Pew Forum found that approximately a third of its survey respondents who were raised in the Roman Catholic Church no longer attend the church. The pope will allow the RCC in America and Europe to wither and die, before any doctrinal retractions, or rewrites of canon law, are permitted. And that is happening. The only place the RCC is "selling" now is in third-world countries, such as Africa. Its just not selling in Europe and America any longer. This pope is supposed to be such a hot intellectual, but I don't see it. He impresses me as being positively backward and intellectually dishonest.

When it comes to abortion, divorce/remarriage, family, homosexuality, biblical inerrancy, the Southern Baptist church makes the RCC look like a bunch of screaming liberals.

Are you suggesting that black gays are less accepted by the black community than white gays are by the white community? This certainly appears to be true of the Hispanic community: zero tolerance.

You may be right about the Catholic Church, I don't know. I have a very, very close friend, who was raised Southern Baptist, like you, and he is also gay, gay and black. Many in the black community do not seemt particularly accepting of gays.

My friend did a lot of crazy things, had lengthy affairs with women, got hooked on pot (two ounces daily), then on cocaine, finally, on crack. I honestly thought he would destroy himself. Yet, he survived. He's well now, and has found a different church.

I don't know much about the Baptists. Had a couple of run-ins with Willis Elliot on this blog, but then this Jew and another, along with a gay Pagan found a cyber pied a terre on his thread. Go figure, as my Askenazic brethren would say.

Can't tell Willis institutionalized religion has to go, though. :)

Stadtbear,

"I'm studying Zen Buddhism, but as a philosophy, not as a religion. It satisfies me."

I'm struggling with Tibetan Buddhist practices. Very difficult due to lack of time, primarily. Wish I had undertaken this long, long ago.

Persiflage, is our resident expert in Buddhism, and he is an expert, literally. He also has a wonderful persona. Periodically, he posts on the topic, suggests sources, etc. I miss his posts. He brings much needed wisdom and gentleness to this blog.

But the Catholic church cannot change, without admitting that it has been in error about morality (sex, birth control, divorce....) and it will NEVER admit that. The RCC will always be what it is.

Stadtbear,

On Crumbling Constantine Nuts Loosening: Yes, she's a Catholic gay-hater, a hater. But you know, my friend, hatreds often come in bunches. Crippled Catholic hates gays, Jews, Pagans, and Muslims. The first and last mentioned even more than the others. What, I wonder, does she think about Jewish gays, Muslim gays? We already have a sense of what she thinks of Pagan gays.

Four states now permit gay marriage. Vermont did it through the legislature!! There is an openly gay priest in my neighborhood. Although he doesn't live with his partner, he (the partner) is an active member of the church in which the padre presides.

Maybe, the Catholic church will arise from its moral slumber one day. Then me fears, Crusty Constantine will have to excommunicate herself.

I agree. I was raised as a Southern Baptist, became an Anglican many years ago, and have finally renounced all organized religion, particularly Christianity, which has almost nothing to do with the teachings of Christ. I'm not even certain that most Christians like Christ. In any event, I'm studying Zen Buddhism, but as a philosophy, not as a religion. It satisfies me.

Stadtbear,

Just FYO, for some years, i worked in a prestigious Catholic University, at which there dwelt a pedophile priest dean, who also flirted with black women, much to their infinite disgust, three faculty priests, who were also known pedophiles, and God knows how many others who liked young boys.

Then there was a virulently racist nun, beautiful, who lived openly with a priest, a nice guy, actually. She told a black friend of mine that she was a credit to her race. Those were this monster's words, precisely. She said something similar to me one day. I could only return the compliment.

At the same time, there was a celibate priest, who tried to get me to a synagogue, giving me reasons, referrals to "brilliant" rabbis, friends of his, telling me I must have God in my life. To him, I sent a couple of male students, suspecting they were struggling with homosexuality; one had written a short story about a Catholic college student who committed suicide because he was gay. Major alarm bells went off in the Farnazian brain about him. The young man now lives happily with his lover of several years, and they are in the process of adopting a son.

There were also priests who came to the rescue of students in need in ways that brought me to tears, so human were they. And there were activist nuns, activist priests. Like Joyce's Ireland, the Vatican is an "the old sow that eats her [most noble] farrow."

Simply put, institutionalized religions oppress us all. They need to go.

Is CCNL a homophobic Catholic? Too bad for her. She's going to be disappointed when New Hampshire, Maine and New Jersey soon adopt gay marriage laws.

Stadtbear,

"I am not CCNL. I am a retired computer science prof. I now build pipe orgns and harpsichords. I am gay, have a lover of ...how many years, 17 if I count correctly."

I am pleased to meet you! And I congratulate you on your long relationship!

Stadtbear,

Requiring clerical celibacy was clearly one of their greatest historical "errors," and there were so many of them. That is no way to end "debauchery" either in the literal or figurative sense, as shown by its continuing presence among them.

Even so, the fundies, who aren't celibate, hate just as effectively. There are none so morally blind as the morally blind.

Don't bother answering my post about your identity. Clearly, I was mistaken, and you aren't CCNL. She can't even fake principle. And she could never write as well as you do.

I am not CCNL. I am a retired computer science prof. I now build pipe orgns and harpsichords. I am gay, have a lover of ...how many years, 17 if I count correctly.

Stadtbear,

Reassure me that I'm wrong, that you're not the gay-hating Catholic cripple, CCNL, as we had earlier thought. (Don't really need sh*t right now, not even in cyberspace.)

Oh the Vatican has known of gay artists and priests and popes for centuries.

Priests (and therefore Popes) were not required to be celibate until the eleventh century, as I'm sure you know, and some took full advantage. John XII-a bisexual pope who held orgies in the papal palace. Benedict IX-a homosexual pope who also enjoyed hosting orgies. Alexander VI-a bisexual pope who was not going to let his fun be spoiled just because he became pope after celibacy became mandatory. He fathered at least 8 children and had many male lovers. Julius III-a homosexual pope who respected his vow of celibacy, but had a male lover before taking that vow. Paul II-Possible transsexual pope? His tendency to wear lavish and feminine clothing earned him the nickname "Our Lady of Pity."

Stadtbear,

Re: Auden's grave

Sorry about the link--don't know how that happened. But, at any rate, Kirchstetten appears to be the site. Pasted something below and search results.

W.H. Auden (1907-1973)
Cemetery at Kirchstetten, Austria
From 1958 until his death, Auden spent his summers at his home in this small eastern Austrian town less than 30 minutes from Vienna, and he is now buried in its center. A medley of flowers and plants cloak the grave, marked with an ornate wrought-iron cross and plaque. Also worth a look: The town's Auden museum displays a remodeled version of the poet's workroom. (gay.com Gay Travel Online)

http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=navclient&gfns=1&q=auden+burial+site

On occasion (as noted below), Farnaz even "talks" to herself in her commentaries e.g. To: Stadtbear From: Farnaz2. She is definitely one strange, delusional woman!!

E.M. Forster, yes, one of my favorites, too. Oddly, enough, although I'm intrigued by the great works, it's "Room with a View" that probably is nearest to me. I read it a long time ago, but still recall the chapter heading, "Italians Drive Them," and see the whole procession underway. Wish I could have been there.

And gay themes run through the fiction. Would he had published Maurice in his lifetime, or lived a little longer so that he felt he could come out.

Have you ever wondered why the Vatican doesn't tear down the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel? Some of the old fellows must know the artist was gay. Or maybe they have disproven it to their love forsaken selves. Wagner went to great lengths to separate Mendelsohn from his music. (How could someone with "Jewish roots" write such music?)

By such "logic," Ratzinger, et al, may still look up at Buonarroti, assuring themselves that queerness and sacred art hath not joined above them. They are so very good, it seems, at "proving" whatever they wish to themselves, but, then, it is an easy task if one needs no evidence, no principle, no ratiocination, nothing, but unusual clothes, censors, jewelry, buildings, and money.

Wonder if they'll excommunicate Vermont. If so, I'd like to know. Can't afford to pick up and move there, but I"d like to be there for the party.

Forster. Not Forester. I just realized I misspelled it.

He of "Howard's End" fame.

E.M. Forester, actually. The link to me to an "unauthorized" message on wikipedia. Auden has a floor plaque in Westminster Abbey, even though he is not there.

Stadtbear,

On Auden't burial site, I found this, with which you are probably familiar: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirchstetten.

You mean C. S. Forester?

Yes, those three years he continued to teach at UI/Chicago. I spent my days working on a doctorate, and the evenings taking care of him. He's the only reason I have a doctorate.

Both Auden and Forester are personal favorites. I'm very familiar with the lives of both. I lived in Austria four years, where Auden is supposed to be buried, but I never found the place.

Stadtbear,

I am so terribly sorry for your loss. Thank Humanity that he had you with him during those three years.

You probably know that Auden was gay. Completely, out of the closet, forthrightly gay. When, in 1938, the magnificent Ericka Mann, Thomas Mann's daughter, also gay, needed to get out of Germany, she appealed to Isherwood to marry her, but citing household problems as an impediment, he passed the request along to Auden. Auden did marry her, apparently not giving the matter a second thought, enabling her to get a British passport. Although they never lived together, they never divorced and remained lifelong friends.

I first heard it at a gay funeral in Chicago, for a man I cared for the last three years of his life. Aids. It reduced me to tears.

Stadtbear:

"Thank you for posting "Funeral Blues". It is one of my favorites."

You are welcome. I lost someone I love recently, and for weeks afterward. could not stop thinking that "nothing now can ever come to any good." He was twenty-four.

Farnaz2:

Thank you for posting "Funeral Blues". It is one of my favorites.

Hello Norrie Hoyt,

A belated congratulations to you and the entire state of Vermont! Let freedom ring, and sound the bell long and loud at the Vatican!! Moral deafness can be cured-- Vermont gives us hope!

Farnaz

Hi Gaby,

Did you have the chance to listen to Jesse Norman's rendering of Erlkonig? And, if so, what did you think?

The version you recommended was spectacular in its interpretation, among many other things.

What is stunning in Norman's rendition goes, in part, to the enormous range of her voice, allowing her to sing alto, "tenor," mezzo, etc., and the overall richness of her "instrument." The interpretation is very, very good, but not so good as Anne Sofie von Otter's. Also, without the costume, I could have done nicely.

I am told that her German accent is "flawless," unusual, one hears, among American opera singers.

Regards,
Farnaz

If a guy gets drunk, goes out driving, and kills someone, his apology is worth listening to, if only to discern something of the guy's psyche.

But, by the time the guy's tenth drunk driving episode and tenth dead victim have been racked up, his tenth apology is scarcely worth anybody's attention.

Isn't that where things stand today with Pope Benedict and his Church?

ALIAS ALERT FOR THE DAY:

Farnaz aka Farnaz2 aka Observer12 aka Observer31 aka Yael1 aka ivri5678 aka IVRI5678 aka Billy8 was caught "red handed" using all these aliases some threads ago.

After this, she said she would no longer participate in said discussions. As seen, this has not happened but we continue to remind everyone about this "devilish"/delusional woman as a service to our fellow bloggers.

On occasion, she even "talks" to herself in her commentaries i.e. To: ivri5678 From: Farnaz2. She is definitely one strange woman!!
Her newest aliases are "nadinebatra" and "Stadtbear.

Ego Tripping

I was born in the Congo.

I walked to the Fertile Crescent and built the sphinx.

I designed a pyramid so tough that a star

that only glows every one hundred years falls

into the center giving divine perfect light.

I am bad.

I sat on the throne

drinking nectar with Allah.

I got hot and sent an ice age to Europe

to cool my thirst.

My oldest daughter is Nefertiti.

The tears from my birth pains

created the Nile.

I am a beautiful woman.

I gazed on the forest and burned

out the Sahara desert.

With a packet of goat's meat

and a change of clothes,

I crossed it in two hours.

I am a gazelle so swift,

so swift you can't catch me.

For a birthday present when he was three,

I gave my son Hannibal an elephant.

He gave me Rome for mother's day.

My strength flows ever on.

My son Noah built an ark and

I stood proudly at the helm

as we sailed on a soft summer day.

I turned myself into myself and was Jesus.

Men intone my loving name.

All praises all praises,

I am the one who would save.

I sowed diamonds in my back yard.

My bowels deliver uranium.

The filings from my fingernails are

semi-precious jewels.

On a trip north,

I caught a cold and blew

my nose giving oil to the Arab world.

I am so hip even my errors are correct.

I sailed west to reach east and had to round off

the earth as I went.

The hair from my head thinned and gold was laid

across three continents.

I am so perfect so divine so ethereal so surreal.

I cannot be comprehended except by my permission.

I mean...I...can fly

like a bird in the sky...

--Nikki Giovanni (1973)

Nietsche, if only you had not gone mad, if only, if only, if only. Thus spake Farnaz of the seer.

L;ast note on Kaplan. The thing is no belief is necessary. The fellow was what we would call, ahem, an atheist. Know a Reconstructionist rabbi forty-something, also an atheist. Interesting. Then there's this ethical culture stuff.

Me, I'm interested in myth, myth and morality.

Onofrio,

Then again...screw it all :) Most wise, my friend. Time to move on to the religion-free universe big-banged back in the day.

Give a listen to Gaby's link if you have a chance and to Jesse Norman. You will like:)

Gaby,

Regarding Wagner's purported homosexual liasson with Ludwig, if I'm correct, the possibility has been largely discounted. Ludwig was surely gay, and anyone who took Wagner's "views" on anything outside of music could not have been doing anything in the interest of maintaining his/her sanity, but that they had an affair is considered doubtful.

Gay rights activisists of the day, along with Wagner's numerous enemies, including the disillusioned Nietzsche, who never let up, even posthumously, did all the could to spread the tale. But the S.O.B. went after women, not men, I believe.

Here's an interesting link. There are several books available on googlebooks that take up the Wagner-Ludwig connection.

http://books.google.com/books?id=FEqLoG-FLVYC&pg=PA15&lpg=PA15&dq=wagner+homosexual+ludwig&source=bl&ots=YvGjKTVGwL&sig=373CL4ie3wpfmqMFn6Jo54Ag6Zo&hl=en&ei=nhjgScWCE47slQfokYTgDg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4

Gaby,

Ah, poor, crazy Ludwig. Lucky Nietzsche saw the light and got out of that Wagnerific goop, but, alas, went mad anyhow. I love reading his 'Contra Wagner' - bright bravura bile!

Farnaz,

Re the choice of 'Funeral Blues' by my maman - I don't think it was all that germane to her relationship with the deceased, but it is a poem that moves her deeply. Its stopped clocks unstruck/unstuck her mingled grief and resentment. It's now to me emblematic of that sad time and place, conjures it like a spell.

Re Kaplan comments - how to believe AND not believe, that is the question. I would like it if more people were able to get over the belief/non-belief fact/falsity dichotomies when it comes to god(s), and instead encounter god(s) by a voluntary suspension of disbelief like that we routinely generate in order to experience cinema, novels, or theatre. Religion(s) not as belief, but as profound make-believe.

Then again...screw it all :)

ONOFRIO:

Wagner was a genious in his own right, however, from what I understand he was also the lover of King Ludwig II who built the lust castle Linderhof more or less for him; Wagner, being an arrogant SOB, soon had the young King embroiled in his miserable life. The Castle Linderhof(although very small in comparisson to Ludwig's other endeavors) contains a grotto where where to this day Wagner's opuses are being played. Lohengren and Tannhaesser to name two.

DITLD:

Is this really you? What do you intend it to mean, that is, if it is you, that is. Otherwise, no reply required (or desired).

"Be vawee, vawee quite; I'm hunting chwist-kiwas."

From the new American Elmer Fudd translation of Mein Kampf

Hi Gaby,

I just followed your link, and listened, twice. WORLD CLASS! Almost unbelievable.

Speaking of roles (and of world class) did you have a chance to listen to Jesse Norman?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8noeFpdfWcQ&NR=1

Farnaz

"Be vawee, vawee quite; I'm hunting chwist-kiwas."

From the new American Elmer Fudd translation of Mein Kampf

Once again, although asked to do so by a number of commentators, Farnaz has never denied using aliases basically because she was caught "redhanded" doing so a few weeks ago.

And these recent commentaries from "Stadtbear" seem to ooze of something Farnaz has cooked up to deflect attention away from her constant bearing of false witness.

Hi Onorfio,

Thanks for your replies and learnedness! Queer fellow, Wagner, in the "literal" sense. A walking advertisement for the pitfalls of myth subscription, nationalism, and wishful self-deification. Genius, alas, defenseless at the the gates of those, and genius, the wretch surely was. Take note, Daniel12.

Glad you like Lorde, amazing, dazzling, scary. The concrete and Walpurgisnacht, yes. Too many liberations, and not enough. The Cancer Journals, one day you may read.

Kaplan believed something along the lines that religions arise historically (writ large). They change, retain a sense of history, keep up, if they are to have any ethical value, any value as manna for a people's (non)numinous yearnings, aching for "transcendency." Mordecai Kaplan. Hence, Reconstructionist Judaism. No belief in deity required, not even in the traditional Jewish sense of "belief."

"Funeral Blues," yes. I overlooked that post on past perusal. How did your mother-in-law come to choose it, if I may ask? Queer fellow, Auden. Now, how many of the "marriage" protectors would have married Erika Mann? Ah, heterosexism! Ah, humanity! Auden--Yes!!!

Farnaz,

Though I have not read Kaplan, I very much like the idea of recycling deities. Osiris would approve :)

Oops, that's Nietzsche I meant.

Hi Farnaz,

Re Wagner: Aye! Alas, that vicious antisemitic SOB produced some of my favourite music. And my most utterly unfavourite too. Neitzsche was so right in his 'Contra Wagner' about *swimming* through that music :)

Re Lordes: That would be the bright Betelgeuse I japed about, that consigns my versic mereness rightfully to the cosmic latrine :) I always appreciate your *new stuff* (new to me, that is), Farnaz.

As for Genesis 1, what makes it unique in my eyes is the climax of sabbath rest, and the significance of human beings in the whole structure of creation. It is they, corporately, who bear the image of the deity - unusual in terms of the ANE milieu, where such was usually the prerogative of divine kings and cult statues. Unusual, but not unprecedented. For example, there was a tradition among the Egyptians that humans - "the flock of the god" - were made in the divine image, and moreover that they rebelled against the creator god (eg. in the wisdom text 'The Teaching for Merikare', c. 2000 BC.)

Farnaz,

I have listened to quite a number of the renditions.I am kind of sad that I could not find one that had more than one performer, but in lieu of multiple voices and ranges, this is the one that speaks to me most:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdhRYMY6IEc&feature=related

In highschool we were given different assignments as narrator (tenor), father (basso), child (alto) and Erlking (soprano) which made for a very nice perfomance.

Ah, Onofrio, mythic Moses, mythic Jesus/ mithra/osiris/horus/dyonisyus, where does it all end, or err begin?

Ever read much Mordecai Kaplan? The anthropology of religion? If we all understood a bit more on that score (rhyme unintended, but fitting), maybe Believers could keep on reading their favorite sacred syncrets, recycling, perhaps, instead of sacrificing when Temple seated. Great for the environment and would offer god celebratizing structures the chance to earn their tax exemptions.

Don't know if mythos is okay, but it won't go away, best see it, then, I say!

13th century BC...Ramesses II...consensus historical context for holy Moses! And it's said he was well versed in the wisdom of the Egyptians...

The ouroboros cannot suppress a guffaw, and lets slip its tail.

Hi Onofrio,

Your post to H: Neat!

From my (radically) scant knowledge and scanter memory, I recall Gen. 1.1-2..3 differing from other Near East accounts of world making in its abstractness, schematic and formulaic structure. Portentous or proleptic of Hashem. Am I correct?

Also, did you see my post to you on Faust? Did you have a chance to read the Lorde poems? If so, what did you think?

Farnaz

Halozcel1,

O frabjous! A chance for me to play pedant.

"Date BC 2400,Pharaoh of Egypt,The Representative of God Amon-Ra."

In 2400 BC, the Egyptian *Old Kingdom* was in full swing, a.k.a. The Pyramid Age. At that time the pharaoh was "Son of Re", par excellence. The syncretised Amun-Re did not emerge till the *Middle Kingdom*, some four centuries later, when Theban dynasts secured the pharaonate and elevated their local numen Amun in the process. Amun-Re reached his apogee as god of Egyptian imperium in the *New Kingdom*, beginning circa 1550 BC.

Amun means "the hidden", and referred to the mysterious source of being, immanent in all phenomena, yet also transcending any attempt at depiction and identification. Re means simply "sun", so Amun-Re is the mysterious cosmic power manifest in the life giving power of the sun. Beautiful, no?

But let the ancients speak of their god:

"He began to speak in the midst of silence; opened all eyes and caused them to behold. He began to cry aloud when the earth was inert. His roaring spread about; there was none beside him. He birthed all that exist; caused them to live. He made all people know a path to walk in. Their hearts lived when they saw him..."

"He is the Lord of All, beginning of existing things. It is his soul, so to speak, which is in heaven. And it is he who's in the netherworld, opposite the East....Amun is unique, concealing himself from them, hiding himself from the gods. His true nature is not known...no gods know his true form. His image is not displayed in the writings; no witness is borne to him...He is too mysterious for his glory to be revealed, too great to be questioned, powerful beyond knowing. An instant, struggling death befalls the one who pronounces his mysterious name, which the knower knows not. "

Such passages have a familiar ring, no? These are excerpts from the collection of great hymns to Amun on Papyrus Leiden I 350, written down in the time of Ramesses II (a.k.a Ozymandias) 13th century BC.

Gaby,

I think maybe stadtbear/ccnl needs a long rest. DITLD is right, I think, about ignoring it (them). They (it) won't go away, but maybe will begin to post sensibly. S/C is a lonely creature, and here is a place S/C can find virtual community, it s/c so wishes. We can be open to the prospect. Until that longed-for occasion, I think maybe it's best we let s/c go s/c's own way alone, no?

Farnaz

Hi Gaby,

Regarding Erlkonig, yes, there appear to be several musical versions, perhaps, many! Unfortunately, I haven't had to time to listen yet, but here are the search results.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&hs=927&q=Erlkonig&btnG=Search

If you decide to give one of the recordings a listen, could you let us know what you think?

Regards,
Farnaz

To Bear your Soul:

That God, who lives in my bosom,
Can deeply excite my inner core,
He is enthroned over all my strenghts,
And yet cannot affect a thing outside me;
And thus my existence is a burden to me,
The death welcome, this life to me odious. "

Ah, but was he hateful and critical before he married you? Does he share your scatological interests?

Actually, Stadtrbear, you sound la lot ike my soon-to-be ex-husband of 32 years.

He is a hateful and critical creature just like you (with the same abnormal fantasies).

May both of you go your chosen paths, I will not come to the rescue.

Why, I see you, dear, fishing around in toilets.

Stadtbear,

Let me tell you something. I am German by birth, but have been a naturalized citizen for almost 30 years.

I try to be a civil person on these blogs, but you and your ilk bring out the worst in me.

Your belittling of othes is nothing short of vulgarity of the worst kind. Do me a favor, go the the nearest mirror and look yourself in the eyes. What do you see?

Sorry, wart =war. Not that a war cannot be a wart on someone's face!

Gaby1,

When you Reich-lesbischen get it wrong, you REALLY get it wrong. I am not CCNL. I am Sarah Farnaz.

Stadtbear,

Never been to Auschwitz, but have been to Dachau. And no, not while the camp was in operation since I was not born until 8 years after the wart ended.

It would behoove you to go and see, maybe it would stir up at least some compassion you dolt!

Stadtbear/CCNL:

You claim to be something you are not, that in itself tells me that you are a pathological liar and/or totally discombobulated

If we were to meet in person I would in all lieklyhood feel very sorry for you. Ac;tually, I already do!

Why be so hateful? What has the world done to you that you have no compassion for anyone, even yourself???

Gaby1,

I bet you look great in black leather and hipboots, goose-stepping your way from one toilet to another in your efforts to satisfy your cravings for scat. Send me a picture! That female guard in Auschwitz, who made lampshades, had nothing on you!!! God, I crave you!

Gaby1,

Your scatological obsessions are such a turn on! You are a great credit to the Reich.

Hi Farnaz,

Where you able to find the melodic version of the Erlkoening?

The one I remember was in Alto, Tenor and lastly Basso when he sang:

Der Vater reitet, er reited geschwind.....

Stadtbear,

I already have one Arschloch, why would I need another???

Hi Onofrio,

Wagner's Faust Overture motto?
---------------

'Der Gott, der mir im Busen wohnt,
Kann tief mein Innerstes erregen;
Der uber alien meinen Kraften thront,

Er kann nach aussen nichts bewegen;
Und so ist mir das Dasein eine Last,
Der Tod erwunscht, das Leben mir verhasstf

Colinnicholas wrote:

"Regarding your remark that I can't prove that god doesn't exist - I don't have to. You are the one claiming that god exists. Atheists are the ones saying show me. Show us this god; prove there is one."

Maybe Thomas The Hallucinator could be prevailed upon for some first-hand proof. PWHAHHAHAHAHAHHA

Gaby1, I'm in love with you. You are the German Ethel Merman. Marry me.

Justillthen;

Hi. I'm happy that you're happy that I'm happy.

My point Justil, was that if un-indoctrinated - a person will grow up not believing in a skygod. It's the default position.
It looks like what we believe is environmental. Our beliefs just reflect our cultural indoctrination. That's all. We were made to believe what we believe so we believe.

If you and me had swapped environments immediately after our births, I would be saying what you are saying, and you would be saying what I am saying, give or take a variation.

Regarding your remark that I can't prove that god doesn't exist - I don't have to. You are the one claiming that god exists. Atheists are the ones saying show me. Show us this god; prove there is one.

Carl Sagan said, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Nothing is more extraordinary than the god hypothesis, and nothing has less evidence to support it..

Look Justill, I can't even prove that Tinkerbell doesn't exist even though she probably doesn't. See my point?

Stadtbear,

Sie sind und bleiben ein Arschloch!

And now it's...
Springtime for Hitler and Germany
Deutschland is happy and gay!
We're marching to a faster pace
Look out, here comes the master race!
Springtime for Hitler and Germany
Rhineland's a fine land once more!
Springtime for Hitler and Germany
Watch out, Europe
We're going on tour!
Springtime for Hitler and Germany.

JUSTILTHEN:

""I mean as far as we actually know there are no gods and never were."
---------
We do not know this. We 'know' many things, and do not know many others. We do not know that 'God' does not and never has existed. That is a common stance of an atheist, but it is still a belief based on what is NOT proven as fact."

___________________________________________________

Colin is right. He said as far as we know there are no gods. He never said we know for a fact.

We 'know' what we can see, feel, touch, hear, and taste. Then we know what the scientific world has accomplished. We can not see, feel, touch, taste or hear an atom, yet we know it exists, we can not see bacteria or viruses, yet we know they exist. We can not see most planets in the universe, but through scietific breaktrhoughs we know they exist.

No one to my knowledge (other than Thomas Baum) has ever seen, felt, touched, heard or tasted any god. That is were the wonder of the human imagination comes in. Some perceive the imagination to be true, others don't.

As for myself, I sense that there is a higher power, but I do not know. One thing I sense though, whatever that power maybe, it has nothing to do with the religious teachings going on in our world. Those are man-made stories from people who had no knowledge of the reality that modern science has brought us and who desperately tried to make sense of their one- dimensional world.

.

DITLD:

Here is my mediocre translation

Faust said:

"That God, who lives in my bosom,
Can deeply excite my inner core,
He is enthroned over all my strenghts,
And yet cannot affect a thing outside me;
And thus my existence is a burden to me,
The death welcome, this life to me odious. "

To which Mephistopheles replies:

"And yet, Death is never a truly welcome guest."

Hello Colinnicholas,

I am happy for your sense of peace and fulfillment and success with parenting your children in the direction that they have no belief in God. I am happy for you are. It is better to do what we believe in and feel successful in that endevour. My happiness is for that, not for non-belief in God, of whatever variety that takes in an individual.
----------
"I mean as far as we actually know there are no gods and never were."
---------
We do not know this. We 'know' many things, and do not know many others. We do not know that 'God' does not and never has existed. That is a common stance of an atheist, but it is still a belief based on what is NOT proven as fact.
---------
"The only way we end up believing this nonsense is if we were indoctrinated as children into believing it. I raised five children; and as I didn't brainwash any of them - they all grew up to be atheists, or at least agnostics. I didn't indoctrinate them into atheism."
----------
Not the only way. I know of many agnostics or secularists, raised that way, that went looking for 'God' later in life... Even earlier in life.
I do not use the word brainwash regarding religion or child-rearing except rarely. Conditioning fits far better and does not carry the negative judgment and connotations. You, along with every other parent, instilled the conditioning that you did on your children. No doubt that included your judgment of and disbelief in religions. They were conditioned to this way of viewing life and so are the subjects of it. I would imagine that you did, in fact, indoctrinate them into atheism. Acknowledgement of that would be honesty.
---------
"Reality beats fantasy every time. and it's honest."
---------
Depends on who you ask. There are billions right now looking for some way to escape "reality" for a good fantasy. Entertainment is all about it. Some of the worlds biggest industries exist because they are in that 'game'.

Actually the Voltaire poem below is just the middle section.
The system rejected it on account of it's length.
The whole is Voltaire at his best, and is available in

"The Portable Voltaire" available as a Penguin paperback.

I see that our loving god has once again gone awol,
with hundreds sceaming for his help under the rubble
of yet another disaster on his watch.
He's a bit like Bush in that respect.
This earthquake was so close to the Vatican that
the pope was crouched in prayer hoping
the Lord was going to protect him .

Voltaire wrote the following after the Lisbon earthquake
of 1775. This is just a part of the poem, the final part..

But how conceive a God, the source of love,
That would the race with various plagues confound
Can mortals penetrate His views profound?
Ill could not from a perfect being spring,
Not from another, since God's sovereign king,
And yet, sad truth! in this our world 'tis found.
What contradictions here my soul confound!
A God once dwelt on earth amongst mankind,
Yet vices still lay waste the human mind;
He could not do it, this proud sophist cries,
He could, but he declined it, that replies.
He surely will, ere these disputes have end,
Lisbon's foundations hidden thunders rend,
And thirty cities' shattered remnents fly,
With ruin and combustion through the sky,
From dismal Tagus' ensanguined shore,
To where of Cadiz' sea the billows roar.
Or man's a sinful creature fron his birth,
And God to woe condemns the sons of earth;
Or else the God who being rules and space,
Untouched with pity for the human race,
Indifferent, both from love and anger free,
Stll acts consistent to His first decree:
Or matter has defects which still oppose
God's will, and thence all human evil flows;
Or else this transient world by mortals trod,
Is but a passage that conducts to God.
Our transient sufferings here shall soon be o'er,
And death will land us on a happier shore.
But when we rise from this accursed abbys,
Who by his merit can lay claim to bliss?
Dangers and difficulties man surround,
Doubts and perplexes his mind confound,
To nature we apply for truth in vain,
God should His will to humankind explain.
He only can illume the human soul,
Instruct the wise man, and the weak console.
Without Him man of error still the sport,
Thinks from each broken reed to find support.

And Moses said to the Pharoah, "let my people go."

And Pharoah had the guards seize Moses and they threw him down the palace steps, where he rolled down into the grit and grime of the dirty streets.

And Moses got up and dusted himself off and said, "Well, I guess the ball's in his court now."

--from the New American vernacular Slang and street ussage Bible

I don't know German. So, I cannot understand what whas posted in German:

"Der Gott, der mir im Busen wohnt,
Kann tief mein Innerstes erregen,
Der uber allen meinen Kraften thront,
Er kann nach aussen nichts bewegen;
Und so is mir das Dasein eine Last,
Der Tod erwunscht, das Leben mir verhasst."

If I have to guess, maybe it says,

"From God, from me, I'm busting loose!
Can a thief mine inside the earth?
Although I am through with all my crafts,
can not the end of night begin?
And so it is my dance at last,
from Tod's emotional love for my very assistance.”

I don’t think it can mean that. But what can it mean? I don’t know German.
.

I raised five atheists.:

It's depressing that ancient beliefs in supernatural gods continues to have credibility with so many.
I mean as far as we actually know there are no gods and never were. The only way we end up believing this nonsense is if we were indoctrinated as children into believing it. I raised five children; and as I didn't brainwash any of them - they all grew up to be atheists, or at least agnostics. I didn't indoctrinate them into atheism. I just refused to allow them to be indoctrinated into a religion. So 'naturally' they do not believe in god; and they don't miss him anymore than I do.
I would urge all parents to do this. Reality beats fantasy every time. and it's honest.

Ah, Good Friday. BIG day for the christkillers.

Once again, although asked to do so by a number of commentators, Farnaz has never denied using aliases basically because she was caught "redhanded" doing so a few weeks ago.

Date BC 2400,Pharaoh of Egypt,The Representative of God Amon-Ra.

Date AD 2009,The Pope,The Representative(Vicar) of Son of God.

There is no change since 45 centuries.

The Pope,ex-nazi,The Representative of Prince of Peace.

Farnaz,

This wealth of Rigels and Betelgeuses you cite startles my faint occasional quasars way down the versing abyss :)

Serves me right, certes.

'Funeral Blues' resonates in particular, as my mum-in-law recited it at my much missed dad-in-law's funeral.

Farnaz,

Faust:
......
Der Gott, der mir im Busen wohnt,
Kann tief mein Innerstes erregen,
Der uber allen meinen Kraften thront,
Er kann nach aussen nichts bewegen;
Und so is mir das Dasein eine Last,
Der Tod erwunscht, das Leben mir verhasst.

Mephistopheles:
Und doch ist nie der Tod ein ganz willkommner Gast.

Faust Part 1: 1566 - 1572

(Forgive the umlaut lack)

Farnaz

A world without gods?
Without us: the selfsame.
It's already sown.

Crazy Jane On The Mountain

I AM tired of cursing the Bishop,
(Said Crazy Jane)
Nine books or nine hats
Would not make him a man.
I have found something worse
To meditate on.
A King had some beautiful cousins.
But where are they gone?
Battered to death in a cellar,
And he stuck to his throne.
Last night I lay on the mountain.
(Said Crazy Jane)
There in a two-horsed carriage
That on two wheels ran
Great-bladdered Emer sat.
Her violent man
Cuchulain sat at her side;
Thereupon'
Propped upon my two knees,
I kissed a stone
I lay stretched out in the dirt
And I cried tears down.

--William Butler Yeats

About Tu Fu

I met Tu Fu on a mountaintop
in August when the sun was hot.

Under the shade of his big straw hat
his face was sad --

in the years since we last parted,
he'd grown wan, exhausted.

Poor old Tu Fu, I thought then,
he must be agonizing over poetry again.

--Li Bai

Dreaming of Li Bai (1)

Separation by death must finally be choked down,
but separation in life is a long anguish,

Chiang-nan is a pestilential land;
no word from you there in exile.

You have been in my dreams, old friend,
as if knowing how much I miss you.

Caught in a net,
how is it you still have wings?

I fear you are no longer mortal;
the distance to here is enormous.

When your spirit came, the maples were green;
when it went, the passes were black.

The setting moon spills light on the rafters;
for a moment I think it's your face.

The waters are deep, the waves wide;
don't let the river gods take you.

---------------------

Dreaming of Li Bai (2)

Clouds drifting the whole day;
a traveler traveling who never arrives.

Three nights you have been in my dreams;
as your friend, I knew your mind.

You say your return is always harrowing;
your coming, a hard coming;

Rivers, lakes, so many waves;
in your boat you fear overturning.

Going out the door, you scratch your white head
as if the purpose of your whole life was ruined,

The rich and high positioned fill the Capital,
while you, alone, are careworn and dejected.

Who says the net of heaven is cast wide?
Growing older, you only grow more preyed upon.

One thousand autumns, ten thousand years of fame,
are nothing after death.

-Do Fu

Resentment Near the Jade Stairs

Dew whitens the jade stairs.
This late, it soaks her gauze stockings.

She lowers her crystal blind to watch
the breaking, glass-clear moon of autumn.

-Li Po

CCNL/Stadtbear/Whatever, Be Ye Human, Mosquito, or Other; Be Ye Single, Double, or Swarm, read and go to sleep, now.

When You Are Old

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

-William Butler Yeats

ccnl/stadtbear/whatever, from all the gay, Jewish, black, gypsy, et al, living, bad news:

Americans cannot commit mass murder within the US. Ditto, own slaves. In FOUR STATES (4), gay people can marry. Now, marriage involves an activity known as "sex," with which you, as a Mosquito/Whatever, are unfamiliar. Whilst awaiting the opening of the Lunar Zoo ca. 2096, perhaps, you can buzz up on it. (This would mean you'll have to stop mosquiturbating, since it will make you larvally blind.)

MOSQUITO(S) CCNL/STADTBEAR/WHATEVER/CAIN, FROM ALL THE GAY, JEWISH, BLACK, BROWN, GYPSY DEAD, GREETINGS:

written in pencil in the sealed railway car

here in this carload
I am eve
with abel my son
if you see my older son
cain son of adam
tell him that I

-Dan Pagis

ALIEN MOSQUITO(S) UPDATE: CCNL/STADTBEAR (WHATEVER) HOIST ON ITS OWN LARVAL PETARD

"Again, Farnaz has been known to set up "straw" aliases who she makes out to be some adversary so she can continue her rants about JEWISH DISCRIMINATION (emphasis mine). "Stadtbear" appears to be one such alias."

Posted by: CCNL | April 10, 2009 2:54 AM
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
ALIAS ALERT!!!

"Farnaz continues to lie about who she is by now using at least seven aliases now i.e. Farnaz2 aka Observer12 aka Observer31 aka Yael1 aka ivri5678 aka Billy8 aka Ivri (her most recent).
Her lying 24/7 is a daily embarrassment to her Jewish heritage!!! (She claims to be a Jewish atheist.)
Farnaz aka Farnaz2 aka Observer12 aka Observer31 aka Yael1 aka ivri5678 aka Billy8 aka Ivri was caught "red handed" using all these aliases some threads ago. After this, she said she would no longer participate in said discussions. As seen, this has not happened but we continue to remind everyone about this "devilish" woman as a service to our fellow bloggers.

On occasion, she even "talks" to herself in her commentaries i.e. To: ivri5678 From: Farnaz2 and she has continued the talks
recently as noted by the comments To: Ivri From: Farnaz. She apparently has another alias/lie she is using on another commentary page. It is "nadinebatra"!!! Now she has another new alias, its Stadtbear, so she can argue with herself and claim to be a victim of JEW DISCRIMINATION (emphasis mine).
One very seriously disturbed woman!!!"

Posted by: stadtbear | April 10, 2009 12:35 AM
________________________________________

Countless bloggers have questioned ccnl/stadtbear/whatever's identity, asking it to blog under a single name, and from the perspective of homo sapiens, the latter understandably difficult for this Mosquito/Whatever. This request, be it known, followed an endless stream of complaints to David Waters asking that its posts be blocked, but freedom of sound trumps all, including xenophobia, homophobia, sexism, antisemitism, anti-Islam spewing, racism, etc.

In time, it too, shall pass, hopefully to the Lunar Zoo, whose opening ca 2096 it will await in solitude, whilst being informed that Mosquito/Whatevers don't golf. (Who would golf with it? ROFLMAO!!!) .

Who would golf with ccnl/stadtbear/whatever, with that which most recently ascribed to me the identity of Hitler. Who would have anything to do with it.

ALIEN MOSQUITO(S) ALERT!!!

CCNL/STADTBEAR REVEALED AS ONE AND THE SAME EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL WHATEVER--ON SUDAN JACOBY'S THREAD
.................................................................................................................

ALIAS ALERT!!!

Farnaz continues to lie about who she is by now using at least seven aliases now i.e. Farnaz2 aka Observer12 aka Observer31 aka Yael1 aka ivri5678 aka Billy8 aka Ivri (her most recent).
Her lying 24/7 is a daily embarrassment to her Jewish heritage!!! (She claims to be a Jewish atheist.)
Farnaz aka Farnaz2 aka Observer12 aka Observer31 aka Yael1 aka ivri5678 aka Billy8 aka Ivri was caught "red handed" using all these aliases some threads ago. After this, she said she would no longer participate in said discussions. As seen, this has not happened but we continue to remind everyone about this "devilish" woman as a service to our fellow bloggers.

On occasion, she even "talks" to herself in her commentaries i.e. To: ivri5678 From: Farnaz2 and she has continued the talks
recently as noted by the comments To: Ivri From: Farnaz. She apparently has another alias/lie she is using on another commentary page. It is "nadinebatra"!!! Now she has another new alias, its Stadtbear, so she can argue with herself and claim to be a victim of jew discrimination.
One very seriously disturbed woman!!!

Again, Farnaz has been known to set up "straw" aliases who she makes out to be some adversary so she can continue her rants about Jewish discrimination. "Stadtbear" appears to be one such alias.

I was out today playing golf so I missed the accusations below that I am "Stadtbear" so I am a bit late in categorically denying that I am "Stadtbear". Unlike Farnaz, I don't bear false witness.

Btw, although asked to do so by a number of commentators, Farnaz has never denied using aliases basically because she was caught "redhanded" doing so a few weeks ago.

As always, in these parts, Jane has the last word(s).


Crazy Jane Talks With The Bishop

I met the Bishop on the road
And much said he and I.
'Those breasts are flat and fallen now,
Those veins must soon be dry;
Live in a heavenly mansion,
Not in some foul sty.'

'Fair and foul are near of kin,
And fair needs foul,' I cried.
'My friends are gone, but that's a truth
Nor grave nor bed denied,
Learned in bodily lowliness
And in the heart's pride.

'A woman can be proud and stiff
When on love intent;
But Love has pitched his mansion in
The place of excrement;
For nothing can be sole or whole
That has not been rent.'

-William Butler Yeats

Ode to Terminus

The High Priests of telescopes and cyclotrons
keep making pronouncements about happenings
on scales too gigantic or dwarfish
to be noticed by our native senses,

discoveries which, couched in the elegant
euphemisms of algebra, look innocent,
harmless enough but, when translated
into the vulgar anthropomorphic

tongue, will give no cause for hilarity
to gardeners or housewives: if galaxies
bolt like panicking mobs, if mesons
riot like fish in a feeding-frenzy,

it sounds too like Political History
to boost civil morale, too symbolic of
the crimes and strikes and demonstrations
we are supposed to gloat on at breakfast.

How trite, though, our fears beside the miracle
that we're here to shiver, that a Thingummy
so addicted to lethal violence
should have somehow secreted a placid

tump with exactly the right ingredients
to start and to cocker Life, that heavenly
freak for whose manage we shall have to
give account at the Judgement, our Middle-

Earth, where Sun-Father to all appearances
moves by day from orient to occident,
and his light is felt as a friendly
presence not a photonic bombardment,

where all visibles do have a definite
outline they stick to, and are undoubtedly
at rest or in motion, where lovers
recognize each other by their surface,

where to all species except the talkative
have been allotted the niche and diet that
become them. This, whatever micro-
biology may think, is the world we

really live in and that saves our sanity,
who know all too well how the most erudite
mind behaves in the dark without a
surround it is called on to interpret,

how, discarding rhythm, punctuation, metaphor,
it sinks into a driveling monologue,
too literal to see a joke or
distinguish a penis from a pencil.

Venus and Mars are powers too natural
to temper our outlandish extravagance:
You alone, Terminus the Mentor,
can teach us how to alter our gestures.

God of walls, doors and reticence, nemesis
overtakes the sacreligious technocrat,
but blessed is the City that thanks you
for giving us games and grammar and metres.

By whose grace, also, every gathering
of two or three in confident amity
repeats the pentacostal marvel,
as each in each finds his righteous translator.

In this world our colossal immodesty
has plundered and poisoned, it is possible
You still might save us, who by now have
learned this: that scientists, to be truthful,

must remind us to take all they say as a
tall story, that abhorred in the Heav'ns are all
self-proclaimed poets who, to wow an
audience, utter some resonant lie.

-W. H. Auden

Funeral Blues

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He is Dead.
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the woods;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

W.H. Auden

As the poets have mournfully sung

As the poets have mournfully sung,
Death takes the innocent young,
The rolling-in-money,
The screamingly-funny,
And those who are very well hung.

-- W. H. Auden

GABY,

WE'RE CORRECT. CCNL and stadtbear are the same blogger. The thing is the amusement is shortlived. I mean I'm no longer amused or unamused or bemused. In short, I am bored. Wonder why ccnl/stadtbear can't post on another topic.
---------------------------------

POSTED BELOW BY ALIEN MOSQUITO CCNL/STADTBEAR. NOTE THE LANGUAGE. THEY ARE ONE AND THE SAME. ALIEN MOSQUITO, SINGULAR.

Now she has another new alias, its Stadtbear, so she can argue with herself and claim to be a victim of JEW DISCRIMINATION. (Emphasis mine)

Posted by: stadtbear | April 10, 2009 12:35 AM
-------------------------------

Arroint, thee, Satan!

Colinnicholas, this is for you.

SEPTEMBER 1, 1939

I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.

Accurate scholarship can
Unearth the whole offence
From Luther until now
That has driven a culture mad,
Find what occurred at Linz,
What huge imago made
A psychopathic god:
I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.

Exiled Thucydides knew
All that a speech can say
About Democracy,
And what dictators do,
The elderly rubbish they talk
To an apathetic grave;
Analysed all in his book,
The enlightenment driven away,
The habit-forming pain,
Mismanagement and grief:
We must suffer them all again.

Into this neutral air
Where blind skyscrapers use
Their full height to proclaim
The strength of Collective Man,
Each language pours its vain
Competitive excuse:
But who can live for long
In an euphoric dream;
Out of the mirror they stare,
Imperialism's face
And the international wrong.

Faces along the bar
Cling to their average day:
The lights must never go out,
The music must always play,
All the conventions conspire
To make this fort assume
The furniture of home;
Lest we should see where we are,
Lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the night
Who have never been happy or good.

The windiest militant trash
Important Persons shout
Is not so crude as our wish:
What mad Nijinsky wrote
About Diaghilev
Is true of the normal heart;
For the error bred in the bone
Of each woman and each man
Craves what it cannot have,
Not universal love
But to be loved alone.

From the conservative dark
Into the ethical life
The dense commuters come,
Repeating their morning vow;
'I will be true to the wife,
I'll concentrate more on my work,'
And helpless governors wake
To resume their compulsory game:
Who can release them now,
Who can reach the dead,
Who can speak for the dumb?

All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.

Defenseless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.

-W. H. Auden

Dear Colinnicholas,

I have probably never seen in my life what you have seen in and of war. But when I was a child, I saw a family friend murdered by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, while being "taken into custody." His blood spattered on my clothes, In this country, I was raped for being a Jew bi*ch (and I'm not even observant, am an atheist, btw!), and, on another occasion, was driven to the hospital, half in shock, when my daughter's teeth were knocked out by Catholic School girl thugs.

None of these incidents led me to become an atheist. I don't really know what did. Judaism doesn't expect God to save anybody personally, It has no personal God, no personal salvation, so I never expected saving. One day, I just woke up, and something wasn't there anymore. I tried exploring other religions and found nada. N.a.d.a.

Now, I'm struggling with a Tibetan Buddhist practices, practices, mind you, as I still believe in N.a.d.a. The "single secret," said a poet, "will still be man." Of course, that was not said in the current era, when man seems more than ever hell-bent on destroying himself.

I do believe that although fallible, incapable of conquering war within us, we are, nevertheless, capable of genuine goodness, decency. We are ironic, ColinNicholas. One deplores much of what the RCC has done, its throwing Archbishop Oscar Romero to the Salvadoran "government" dogs, for instance, yet it was the Church that produced him.

We are an ironic bunch, we humans.

ALIAS ALERT!!!

Farnaz continues to lie about who she is by now using at least seven aliases now i.e. Farnaz2 aka Observer12 aka Observer31 aka Yael1 aka ivri5678 aka Billy8 aka Ivri (her most recent).
Her lying 24/7 is a daily embarrassment to her Jewish heritage!!! (She claims to be a Jewish atheist.)
Farnaz aka Farnaz2 aka Observer12 aka Observer31 aka Yael1 aka ivri5678 aka Billy8 aka Ivri was caught "red handed" using all these aliases some threads ago. After this, she said she would no longer participate in said discussions. As seen, this has not happened but we continue to remind everyone about this "devilish" woman as a service to our fellow bloggers.

On occasion, she even "talks" to herself in her commentaries i.e. To: ivri5678 From: Farnaz2 and she has continued the talks
recently as noted by the comments To: Ivri From: Farnaz. She apparently has another alias/lie she is using on another commentary page. It is "nadinebatra"!!! Now she has another new alias, its Stadtbear, so she can argue with herself and claim to be a victim of jew discrimination.
One very seriously disturbed woman!!!

Who Said It Was Simple

There are so many roots to the tree of anger
that sometimes the branches shatter
before they bear.
Sitting in Nedicks
the women rally before they march
discussing the problematic girls
they hire to make them free.
An almost white counterman passes
a waiting brother to serve them first
and the ladies neither notice nor reject
the slighter pleasures of their slavery.
But I who am bound by my mirror
as well as my bed
see causes in color
as well as sex

and sit here wondering
which me will survive
all these liberations.

-Audre Lorde

Hanging Fire

I am fourteen
and my skin has betrayed me
the boy I cannot live without
still sucks his tumb
in secret
how come my knees are
always so ashy
what if I die
before the morning comes
and momma's in the bedroom
with the door closed.

I have to learn how to dance
in time for the next party
my room is too small for me
suppose I de before graduation
they will sing sad melodies
but finally
tell the truth aout me
There is nothing I want to do
and too much
that has to be done
and momma's in the bedroom
with the door closed.

Nobody even stops to think
about my side of it
I should have been on Math Team
my marks were better than his
why do I have to be
the one
wearing braces
I have nothing to wear tomorrow
will I live long enough
to grow up
and momma's in the bedroom
with the door closed.

-Audre Lorde

Audre Lorde was a great American poet, a self-described black lesbian feminist poet (a womanist, too). At some point, I'll post her thoughts on being a black lesbian primarily in hopes of saving stadtbear/ccnl's soul (brain? mind? DNA molecule? WHATEVER), but also because they are worth reading by anyone, anywhere, any time.

Colinnicholas,

On "When is a pope not a pope?"

Sir, I am awesome thunder and sun struck by the majesty of your in-spired verse. Hide not your great gifts from us, prithee.

Making Love To Concrete by Audre Lorde

An upright abutment in the mouth
of the Willis Avenue bridge
a beige Honda leaps the divider
like a steel gazelle inescapable
sleek leather boots on the pavement
rat-a-tat-tat best intentions
going down for the third time
stuck in the particular

You cannot make love to concrete
if you care about being
non-essential wrong or worn thin
if you fear ever becoming
diamonds or lard
you cannot make love to concrete
if you cannot pretend
concrete needs your loving

To make love to concrete
you need an indelible feather
white dresses before you are ten
a confirmation lace veil milk-large bones
and air raid drills in your nightmares
no stars till you go to the country
and one summer when you are twelve
Con Edison pulls the plug
on the street-corner moons Walpurgisnacht
and there are sudden new lights in the sky
stone chips that forget you need
to become a light rope a hammer
a repeatable bridge
garden-fresh broccoli two dozen dropped eggs
and a hint of you
caught up between my fingers
the lesson of a wooden beam
propped up on barrels
across a mined terrain

between forgiving too easily
and never giving at all.

When is a pope not a pope?

When he's a dupe.

Which - as there is no god

is what he really is.

The pope is a dupe.

I tell no lie.

Hmmm, Farnaz has been known to set up "straw" aliases who she makes out to be some adversary so she can continue her rants about Jewish discrimination. "Stadtbear" appears to be one such alias.

I was out today playing golf so I missed the accusations below that I am "Stadtbear" so I am a bit late in categorically denying that I am "Stadtbear". Unlike Farnaz, I don't bear false witness.

Btw, although asked to do so by a number of commentators, Farnaz has never denied using aliases basically because she was caught "redhanded" doing so a few weeks ago.

SONGS OF EXPERIENCE by WILLIAM BLAKE

THE CHIMNEY SWEEPER

A little black thing in the snow,
Crying "weep! weep!" in notes of woe!
"Where are thy father and mother? Say!"--
"They are both gone up to the church to pray.

"Because I was happy upon the heath,
And smiled among the winter's snow,
They clothed me in the clothes of death,
And taught me to sing the notes of woe.

"And because I am happy and dance and sing,
They think they have done me no injury,
And are gone to praise God and his priest and king,
Who make up a heaven of our misery."

Gaby,

"Oh, Farnaz, before I leave, have you ever read Goethe's poem "Der Erlenkoenig"."

Gaby, yes, also in college. I don't recall hearing it sung, but I wonder if I might find it on the net. Worth a try, at any rate!

Goodnight, my friend. I've enjoyed our chat!

Farnaz

DITLD:

As usual, you are on the mark, my friend. Even though I think that CCML and Stadtbear are one the the same. They appear to have similar IQ's

Have a good night!

A Little Boy Lost

v'Nought loves another as itself,
Nor venerates another so,
Nor is it possible to thought
A greater than itself to know.

'And, father, how can I love you
Or any of my brothers more?
I love you like the little bird
That picks up crumbs around the door.'

The Priest sat by and heard the child;
In trembling zeal he seized his hair,
He led him by his little coat,
And all admired the priestly care.

And standing on the altar high,
'Lo, what a fiend is here! said he:
'One who sets reason up for judge
Of our most holy mystery.'

The weeping child could not be heard,
The weeping parents wept in vain:
They stripped him to his little shirt,
And bound him in an iron chain,

And burned him in a holy place
Where many had been burned before;
The weeping parents wept in vain.
Are such thing done on Albion's shore?

William Blake

stadtbear won't go away. It's ccnl.

If you will all notice, Stadtbear has not actually made any thoughtful comments about the conversaton or about the question at hand. Stadbear has not acdtually made any plain statements of belief, nor given any straightforward opinons. This person has merely made personal comments,colored with sarcastic inuendo, to a few people, designed to cause upset and hurt feelings. I suspect this is not a serous person, but a prankster, possibly a teenaged boy. Why not ignore him, and he will be more than likely to go away.

Like William James said, be of good courage, and act for the best.

Ignoring people like this is a good excercise in inner strength and healthy self-esteem. It is not necessary always to reply to such people, and besides, there is nothing you can say to them to shut them up or make them go away if they will not. Just be quiet and calm, and go on like he is not here, and let us see what happens.

Oh, Farnaz, before I leave, have you ever read Goethe's poem "Der Erlenkoenig".

I had to recite it in high school and later sing it. I has never left my mind.

Gaby1 wrote:

"As far as the lamp shade is concerned, I think Stadtbear saw the movie "A Chrsitmas Story" once too often."

Ah, my dear, this is a very special lampshade. Its nearly 70 years old. It used to be called Sarah, but you might wish to rename it. "Clueless" seems appropriate, dear.

In any case, I better go to bed now, it appears that my spelling and grammar is becoming a bit discombobulated. (Sit, Stadtbear, SIT)

Gaby,

I, too, see the passage as woeful, sorrowful, but with a faint trace of bitterness. Werther, the character, has some bite, don't you think? But, again, I defer to you. The only time I'd venture to translate Goethe would be if my life depended on it! :)

Farnaz:

I think Goethe ,in this instance, spoke woefully of the human existance that is why I thought that vaunted would not be in context of the meaning of the passage. To me there was sorrow expressed.

However, I might be wrong.

Gaby,

You're probably right. I also thought of "vaunted," which I mentioned. "Over-praised?" The thing is, to me, far from proficient in German, the passage begins questioning the praise of the demigod. He is too-much praised, as it were. (Echoes of "Hamlet")

vaunt (vônt, vnt)
v. vaunt·ed, vaunt·ing, vaunts
v.tr.
To speak boastfully of; brag about.
v.intr.
To speak boastfully; brag. See Synonyms at boast1.
n.
1. A boastful remark.
2. Speech of extravagant self-praise.

Still, my friend, I bow to your far greater knowledge of the language. Sad, sad passage. It's also sad to me that Goethe so bemoaned the place in his oeuvre given to "Werther." Surely, he thought, "Faust" was the greater work. So, now, does everyone. Ah, world! Ah, Goethe!

Farnaz:

Leave it to Yeats to sum it up.

As far as the lamp shade is concerned, I think Stadtbear saw the movie "A Chrsitmas Story" once too often.

Remember the the prized lamp shade???? God, I wish I could put it on my husband's side of the bed!!!! ROFLMAO!!!!!

Farnaz:

Much-praised would work, but in my humble opinion would be a little over the top in the contect of this work. The simple mention of demigod already implies that.

Music to soothe the savage soul (mind, brain, etc.)

Crazy Jane On God

That lover of a night
Came when he would,
Went in the dawning light
Whether I would or no;
Men come, men go;
All things remain in God.

Banners choke the sky;
Men-at-arms tread;
Armoured horses neigh
In the narrow pass:
All things remain in God.

Before their eyes a house
That from childhood stood
Uninhabited, ruinous,
Suddenly lit up
From door to top:
All things remain in God.

I had wild Jack for a lover;
Though like a road
That men pass over
My body makes no moan
But sings on:
All things remain in God.

-William Butler Yeats

stadtbear/ccnl writes to Gaby:

"Congratulations, Gaby! You win this evening's door prize: a fascinating lamp shade!!!!!"

Someone must tell it that no one would think of removing the signature lampshade atop its err...head(?). It'll need it in the Lunar Zoo, opening ca. 2096, to which it shall be dispatched forthwith. But it will have to do something about that dreadful footwear. Tsk, tsk.

Quiet as one tries to keep it, Alien Mosquitoes have no fashion sense.

Farnaz2 wrote:

"Gaby,

Bravo! Your translation is better than anything I've seen thus far! A question about "praised." "Much-praised"? "Vaunted"? What do you think?"

Congratulations, Gaby! You win this evening's door prize: a fascinating lamp shade!!!!!

Gaby,

Bravo! Your translation is better than anything I've seen thus far! A question about "praised." "Much-praised"? "Vaunted"? What do you think?

Skowronek:

Mea culpa!

I misread! However I totally agree with your last sentence.

"Yet, when a 66 lb., 9-year old girl has an abortion (and in my mind her live was in serious danger), she is excommunicated."

No, that's incorrect. SHE was not excommunicated, her MOTHER who sought and approved of the abortion and the PHYSICIANS who performed the abortion were. Nil to scant comfort, in my mind.

Farnaz:

Here is my pitiful atempt to tranlate the Werther tidbit you offered.

What is the human, the praised demigod? Do not the forces of self sustenance lack him just when he needs them most urgently? And when he soars in joy or sinks into the depths of suffering, is he not detained in both and just brought back to this the dull, cold consciousness again that he longed to escape in the richness of the infinite?
.

Farnaz,

Let me ponder and see if I can come up with a reasoable translation. Then again who am I wo translate Goethe???

Silly me!

Gaby,

You write: "I think the better question would be what would a religionless (or religion free) world look like"

Yes, I agree. That is the better question. It is THE question, and I agree with your answer.

Gaby,

On a radically different topic, I posted these lines for Frederic on the previous thread. I read "Werther" in college and was so shaken by these words that I committed them to memory, and they have never left me. At the time, I had no idea how famous they were.

If my German writing/speaking skills weren't so dreadful, I'd translate for the other bloggers. The translations I've seen on the web, thus far, are not very good.
-------------------

Was ist der Mensch, der gepriesene Halbgott! Ermangeln ihm nicht eben da die Kräfte, wo er sie am nötigsten braucht? Und wenn er in Freude sich aufschwingt oder im Leiden versinkt, wird er nicht in beiden eben da aufgehalten, eben da zu dem stumpfen kalten Bewußtsein wieder zurück gebracht, da er sich in der Fülle des Unendlichen zu verlieren sehnte?

-Goethe, Werther 2. Buch, 6. Dezember

Farnaz:

You asked: "What would a godless (or godfree) world be like?"

I think the better question would be what would a religionless (or religion free) world look like.

Answer: Infinitely better!

Finally no more us against them symdromes. No more Christians, Muslims, Hindi, Jews, Pagans, etc.

God is just that.....God.

It did not invent religions, those are institutions men created for the simple reason of asserting power over others in the name of God.

They gave it humanlike qualities, when it in fact can not even fathom a human, nor did it make humans in his image.

God is simply the energy of the universe, it has nothing to do with us per se, but rather is the ultimate power from which everthing stems, including rocks.

Gaby,

"I said it won't live long in Munich. Germans have come a long way since the Hitler years and trust me, they will make minced meat out of it when it rears it's ugly head."

Ah! I understand. Yes, I've read about Germany's denazification and ongoing vigilance. The US could and should take a lesson.

Regarding stadbear, I pity the poor Germans. Why should they have to deal with stadtbear/ccnl?

Best we take up a collection to send it moonward, to reserve its place in the Lunar Zoo, opening ca 2096.

Farnaz

Stadtbear,

Sie ein ein sehr dummer Mensch, oder besser ausgedrueckt, ein richtiges Arschloch. Voll von Scheisse! Nehmen sie bitte das Toilettenpapier mit in then Wald.

Hi Onofrio,

Great verse, as always! You know, I was thinking. Religion, like ideals, like art, speaks to our need to find something beyond ourselves, something transcendent. Atheism and agnosticism are not organized institutions. The two take root in a god-filled world. What would a godless (or godfree) world be like?

Farnaz:

Yes, that poor excuse for an animal really wrote that. (Gaby shaking head in disbelieve!!!)

No, it doesn't reside in Munich. I said it won't live long in Munich. Germans have come a long way since the Hitler years and trust me, they will make minced meat out of it when it rears it's ugly head.

And yes, I agree that Stadtbear and CCNL are one and the same.. Pitiful!

Oh my, it looks as though Ms Farnaz and Ms, Gaby1, the dears, are both entertaining their monthly 'visitor'.

Gaby1,

YOU: Farnaz: You are kidding right? Stadtbear posted that?

ME: Yes, it just wrote it. Scroll down a bit to find the original post.

Do you mean to say it resides in Munich? Are you sure? It couldn't be German since it can't speak the language. Remember, it tried? Of course, it could be living in Germany, but I suspect Philly's more like it. (I think Stadbear is CCNL.)

Farnaz:

You are kidding right?

Stadtbear posted that?

What a poor excuse for a human being.

By the way, he and his ilk won't live long in Munich, the German nowadays have very little tolerance for the likes of him/her/it. Nevermind, why should I be referring to him/her when we all know it's and "it".

When a Bear sh*ts in the woods and noone is there to smell it, does is stink?

Papal Mace

Who can wield a billion, roughly,
lacking arms to smite them toughly?
Bind their minds with fearful rules,
then puppetise the faithful fools!
And those who will not dance to twitches
yank about with hunts for witches,
slurried slopes of Good's decline,
and loss of final tunnel's shine.

Gaby1,

Did you see this gentle missive from Stadtbear aka CCNL? I'm thinking it's a good reminder to all of us about what the RCC and Christianity have wrought.

................................................................

Farnaz2 wrote:
"It must end Passion Plays once and for all, revise the NT and the Catechism. Otherwise, it will simply grow more Williamsons."

The Passion Plays clearly place blame where it correctly belongs, on the Christkillers. As for growing more Williamsons, there are a very great many non-Catholics in the world who do not believe in the lie of the holocaust. Williamson is entitled to state his beliefs, as are those of us who will soon gather in Munich for the annual birthday party for the Fuehrer. I would be very willing to take you as my guest.

Does anyone know whether Zyklon B is still manufactured? It was a very effective pesticide.

Posted by: stadtbear | April 9, 2009 6:44 PM

Gaby1,

YOU: "Farnaz,That would be a good place for him/her/it. Let's make sure the oxygen tank it failing. What a total dirtbag!

ME: We have to give it an oxygen tank? %:

Farnaz,

That would be a good place for him/her/it. Let's make sure the oxygen tank it failing.

What a total dirtbag!

EMONTY:

I read the article and although I applaud the statements by Archbishop Fisichella, I deplore the closing statement by Archbishop Rocha.

I can not believe that someone can rape a child from the age of 6, impregnate her by the age of 9 (with twins, nonetheless) and get away with it in the eyes of the church.

Yet, when a 66 lb., 9-year old girl has an abortion (and in my mind her live was in serious danger), she is excommunicated.

In this case, all I have to say, “Devil get thee behind me!”

Bye the way, I am not saying that the Church condoned the atrocities the father committed on this little girl, but the Church should have come out canons ablaze in favor of the 9-year old and hung the father.

If a CEO (the Pope) cannot control his managers (the Archbishops) then maybe the CEO is ineffective and should resign.

Gaby1,

Maybe CCNL aka Stadbear could go to the new underground Lunar Zoo to await the expected opening, ca. 2096?

What do you think?

Farnaz

Gabi1 wrote:
"Ah, Bear, didn't I already tell you to go back to the woods and don't forget the toilet paper???

The Stadt is not a proper environment for you!"

Who needs toilet paper when you are in the neighborhood?

Gaby1, you write to Miss Stadtbear,

"Ah, Bear, didn't I already tell you to go back to the woods and don't forget the toilet paper???

The Stadt is not a proper environment for you!"

Of course, the Stadt isn't the right place for the lady, but do you think it fair to the woodland creatures to send her to dwell among them? Also, what about the environment? Shouldn't we send, rather, send Stadtbear aka CCNL some place else?

But where....?

Farnaz :)

Farnaz2 wrote:
"It must end Passion Plays once and for all, revise the NT and the Catechism. Otherwise, it will simply grow more Williamsons."

The Passion Plays clearly place blame where it correctly belongs, on the Christkillers. As for growing more Williamsons, there are a very great many non-Catholics in the world who do not believe in the lie of the holocaust. Williamson is entitled to state his beliefs, as are those of us who will soon gather in Munich for the annual birthday party for the Fuehrer. I would be very willing to take you as my guest.

Does anyone know whether Zyklon B is still manufactured? It was a very effective pesticide.

Ah, Bear, didn't I already tell you to go back to the woods and don't forget the toilet paper???

The Stadt is not a proper environment for you!

Farnaz2 wrote:
"BLOG ON TOPIC, OR STOP INTERFERING WITH EVERYONE ELSE'S ATTEMPTS TO DO SO. DO SOMETHING ELSE WITH WHAT WOULD APPEAR TO BE THE ENDLESS TIME YOU HAVE ON YOUR HANDS.
_________
IN OTHER WORDS, GET A LIFE."

Go and do thou likewise, dear.

EMONTY:

Thank you for being a reasonable voice on this blog. Thanks for the reference, I shall look it up.

CCNL:

Sit, Boy, SIT!

Farnaz:

Don't even give CCNL the time of day. I know it is difficult when you are constantly maligned, but try, dear. (Good reply though, LOL)

To all secular humanists here, I wrote a present for you on the main page of on faith on this question. If you do not know how to get to the main page, which is to say you have been arriving at Jacoby's site through what to me would be a back door (because I arrive at her site by going to the main page of on faith), simply go to washpost.com then scroll down to where on the left you have the "post global" and "on faith" buttons then press "on faith" and go to the main page. Then just look where the public can post replies to the questions brought up every wednesday on on faith. Enjoy!

Dear Susan, The individuals comprising the Catholic Church, up to and including the pope, are all human and sin. For some unknown reason, Christ offers the entire human race forgiveness. Yet we remain unwilling or unable to forgive each other. Quite a conundrum

ALIEN MOSQUITO ALERT: CCNL'S ON THE LOOSE

MISSIVE TO RANTING, SHRIEKING BANSHEE MOSQUITO BELOW:
_______________

CONCERNED CHRISTIAN (?) FAR, FAR from LIBERATED:

Sorry to be blunt, but you are a bigoted, sexist, racist, homophobic troll. And now, your insane accusations against me are holding up discussions, aside from the fact that you are "bearing false witness."
______________
Ever since I've been blogging here, countless people have sent in complaints about your cutting, pasting, prejudice, vitriol, etc.
______________

If you can take a break from delusion, try asking yourself whether if I were the shape-shifting computer whiz you think I am, I would continue to post under the name of Farnaz. (Mansouri is my "maiden name.")
______________
You don't like Jews, we know, and on this and other threads, you have posted that I am like "Hitler," somehow holding me responsible for the "OT," for which you blame the last two thousand years of the world's violence, while at the same time, claiming the "OT" is myth.
______________

You don't like gays, we know, and think they should not be allowed to marry. Their sex is "masturbation." You don't like Muslims, whom you hold responsible for everything from moldy peanut butter to Hurricane Katrina. You don't like Pagans.
_____________

Indeed, you actively, personally dislike anyone who doesn't subscribe to your Crossanized version of Catholicism, or "StemCellian" faith, as Ivri5768 would have it, abusing them ad nauseum.
____________

What else can you do? You have shown yourself incapable of having a reasoned argument. So you cut, paste, cut, paste, taking breaks to call people "reality challenged," "hallucinators" and, in my case, "Hitler."
_____________
Under these circumstances, it is obvious that you should leave off blogging here so that the rest of us can get on with the discussion.
_____________
AS FOR YOUR ACCUSATIONS AGAINST ME, YOU ARE A PAROCHIAL FELLOW WHO DOESN'T UNDERSTAND THAT AMONG THE MASSES, THERE ARE THOSE WHO SHARE VIEWS DIFFERENT FROM YOURS.
_____________
Amazing news for you, I'm sure. But, true, nevertheless. Step out of the house, and look around.
____________

BLOG ON TOPIC, OR STOP INTERFERING WITH EVERYONE ELSE'S ATTEMPTS TO DO SO. DO SOMETHING ELSE WITH WHAT WOULD APPEAR TO BE THE ENDLESS TIME YOU HAVE ON YOUR HANDS.
_________
IN OTHER WORDS, GET A LIFE.

ALIAS ALERT FOR THE DAY:

Farnaz aka Farnaz2 aka Observer12 aka Observer31 aka Yael1 aka ivri5678 aka IVRI5678 aka Billy8 was caught "red handed" using all these aliases some threads ago.

After this, she said she would no longer participate in said discussions. As seen, this has not happened but we continue to remind everyone about this "devilish"/delusional woman as a service to our fellow bloggers.
On occasion, she even "talks" to herself in her commentaries i.e. To: ivri5678 From: Farnaz2. She is definitely one strange woman!!

Her newest alias is "nadinebatra

This Pope's apologies tend to range from 'I'm sorry you are ignorant enough to feel that way' not -apologies, to utter slaps in the face, (a la, 'This is an apology for institutionalized sexual abuse and a major institutional coverup: I hereby blame homosexuals and promise to institute a witch-hunt forthwith, while decreeing it the fault of queer people who were often the victims.')

To... Actually revoking the previous Pope's apologies for the abuses of the Inquisition.

The Pope should apologize for all the worthless apologies that he and other Popes have uttered through the years. As Susan says, these ridiculous and offensive pronouncements are just belated exercises in damage control for the church. One wonders what the purpose of the Roman Catholic church is, these days: to bring a spiritual message to the Earth, or to perpetuate itself? They're bad at the former, good at the latter.

For a semblance of sanity, which the RCC, indeed all Christians, should study, see John Carroll's essay on this blog:

http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/guestvoices/2009/04/calling_all_faiths_to_disarm_holy_texts.html

NB: Popes do not have control over what Catholicism teaches Catholics in the Vatican, let alone worldwide. Detoxifying Catholicism and Christianity needs to be undertaken post-reform at a grassroots in every nation in which adherents have a presence.

Catholics and other Christians need to focus less on "the perfidious Jews," the "perfidious nine-year-old rape victims," etc. Catholicism, Christianity needs to take a good hard look at its theological dismissal of justice. As long as these "faiths" continue to eschew it, they will show no mercy to others, none to children such as this precious girl, raped by her Catholic stepfather, none to anyone who justly deserves it.

Although I was raised Protestant, I have a number of Catholic friends and aquaintances, including nieces, cousins, and inlaws. Most of them are believers to some extent, some more than others, some very religious and devout. But none, not a single one, regards the Pope as infallible in any frame of reference. They all view the Catholic Church as a confused political institution and the Pope as its political head, whom thay may bow to in respect, but still, whom they analyze and judge under a democratic paradigm, and not according to the Catholic Church's own Medeival paradigm. This is the problem of the Catholic Church, that even devout Catholics who want to believe, and want to participate sincerely, do not respect it.

The Catholic Church is a Medeival institution, and the Pope is a Medeival monarch, totally out of step and out of place in the modern world. Catholic officials are tone deaf when it comes to the political world which they often seek to engage. Nothing can ever be made right in the Catholic Church until this fundamental dysfunction is reformed, and the government of the Catholic Church is made democratic, according to the ideals of all Western peoples.

Otherwise, if God hates democracy and loves feudal monarchy, then we are all wrong as American citizens living under a Constitution, and Westen Europe is all wrong, holding periodic elections and carrying our periodic political and economic reforms.

What is so wrong with replacing institutions which we all well know are dysfunctional, with ones that we all well know are superior?

Gee, Jacoby not agreeing with the pope. Will wonders ever cease.

Watch the walk, talk is cheap.

Clearly, when you have one person dictating the behavior of over one billion religious followers, there are going to be problems. In this day and age such a rigid hierarchical arrangement is destined to fail in a very big way - it's only a matter of time.

Benedict is doing his level best to plug a major leak in the edifice of unquestioning faith, but a mighty flood of disenchanted and disenfranchised believers is building. Being such a stickler for medieval traditions, I hope the Pontiff and his Vatican minions have a substantial supply of sturdy wooden boats in the ecumenical warehouse.

The breakdown of Catholics worldwide just below:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/4243727.stm

The Vatican's Prefect for the Congregation of Bishops is a much higher church official than the bishop who expressed reservations about the excommunication of the doctors and mother in Brazil. Furthermore, the excommunications stand. That's the main point. Pope Benedict, who reversed the excommunication of a Holocaust-denying bishop, could put an end to this by reversing the excommunication of the mother and doctors in Brazil. He hasn't, has he? That's the bottom line. I know that a lot of Catholics, including the president of Brazil, are horrified by the excommunications. But that doesn't matter in the least to the Pope Benedict. That, indeed, is why the church is losing members throughout the developed world, including the United States as well as Europe. The Catholic Church is what it is, and the pope has the last word. Surely anyone brought up a Catholic knows this. It is understandable that sane Catholics prefer to cherry-pick views expressed by lower officials with more mercy, and more shame, than the pontiff.

Rome, that spectre most persistent,
casts about for foes resistant,
but instead of Hannibal or Huns
smites violated little ones:
not with blades of steel, now sheathed,
but points of law its god bequeathed.

"The automatic excommunication of doctors involved in the abortion of the twins of a nine-year-old rape victim in Brazil has created a largely unprecedented public scuffle between Vatican prelates. The excommunication was announced by Archbishop Jose Cardoso Sobrinho of the archdiocese of the city of Recife where the girl lived and backed by the Vatican's Prefect for the Congregation of Bishops Cardinal Battista Re. (see coverage: http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2009/mar/09030903.html )

However, in what came as a shock to the pro-life and Catholic world, Archbishop Salvatore (Rino) Fisichella, the new appointee to head the Pontifical Academy for Life, published an article in the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano Sunday publicly disagreeing with the Brazilian Archbishop and, by extension, the Vatican Prefect who supported him.

Archbishop Fisichella wrote in the Vatican's newspaper that the decision to "help stop the pregnancy," was a "difficult" one "for doctors and for the moral law." He added that the announcement by the local bishop in Brazil of the excommunication of the mother and doctors who procured the abortion, was made "hastily." He appeared to defend the doctors "choices," saying that they are made only with difficulty, and that it is "unjust" to assume that the abortion was done ."

Gaby1

Sure, I should have done so earlier and I apolgize. The offical's name is Archbishop Rino Fisichella, president of the Pontifical Academy for Life. The address of the article is http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/0901197.htm . It probably did not receive wide play because of politics inside and outside of the Vatican and because it might force people to deal with the fact than Catholicism is not a monolithic force.

I am not interested in a brawl with anyone. It is just that in the blogosphere it is easy to selectively use information to make a point which is a disservice to anyone truly looking for insights. I am a Catholic, and I can defend that but I don't feel the need to at all. A very good author pointed out in a book called 'Blue Like Jazz' that he cannot defend Christianity because 10 different people would have ten different defintions for the term, but that he could defend his belief that jesus had some pretty good ideas. In the same way, I do not feel the need to defend Catholicism because of the many different ideas of just what 'Catholicism' is, but I think it is fair to point our that 1.1 billion Catholics are quite likely to see and practice their faith with more variety than is often acknowledged.

Emonty,

in re: "EMonty is quite wrong about Williamson not being able to function as a priest. As long as the reversal of his excommunication stands, so does his status as an ordained priest."

You are right, Susan is wrong. Thank you for the additional documentation. I too have corrected Susan's factual errors on numerous occasions and she never retracts her errors or apologizes for her sloppy work. At some point these systematic and uncorrected "errors" become simple prevarication.

Susan, you really do owe us better. You owe yourself better, too.

Poor Pope!

What a train wreck the Catholic Church is.

It's a sorry sight.

I think that it is surely intrinscally disordered.

Sorry, about the typo....pergury to supposed to say purgatory

SUSAN:

"Religious "authorities" ought to burn in hell, if there were a hell, for hypocritical apologies composed of words rather than deeds. There could surely be no better place for church leaders who believe in forcing a nine-year-old to bear the children of her rapist. No apology could ever wipe away their guilt. But they won't apologize, because they feel no guilt. And no shame."

I am right with you!!! And any person of the Catholic creed who condones this kind of misguided religion should go with the the misguided clergy.

On the other hand, don't Catholics go to pergury first, and then to hell???

EMONTY:

You have alluded to the 'Tell the whole story; the one about the Vatican official who flatly said that the actions and attitudes of the archbishop in Brazil were wrong.', but you have never told us which high ranking official is was.

Any suggestions???

AH! APOCALYPTIC-LiFE is soo so Beautifull without them PRE-Apocalyptarian(s) ; {NATiONS}!

Susan,

A fine essay. A comment on Irving and Williamson. They've known each other for a long time. Williamson has been a guest at Irving's home.

There are renegade groups of priests like Williamson's all over the US and abroad; I posted the names of a few of them come threads back.
----------------------
The larger issue is the strains of antisemitism, in particular, prejudice against other religions, in general, racism, xenophobia, tolerance of pedophilia that continue within the culture of Catholicism.

Combined with a sacred mission to protect the "name" of the church at all costs and focus on "forgiveness," the Roman Catholic Church has caused a great, great deal of harm. This, of course, is not to say it has done no good, for indeed it has. But it has harmed and continues to do so.

Part of the problem is theological, part political. The radical division between justice and mercy, the devotion to the soul of the sinner, leads to the kind of morally atrocious behavior witnessed in the case of the raped child and her rapist stepfather. It led, under JPII, to accusations from the Vatican of US aggression toward the Church, once, finally, this nation started to prosecute pedophile priests. CCNL (in most, but not all ways demented) posted a link to an internal memo from Ratzinger directing silence on the matter of pedophile clergy. Plus ca change....

It may no longer be part of liturgy for Catholics to pray for "the perfidious Jews," but read the Catechism. Read the recent threads on Shoah denial on this blog. The RC needs to accept that there are paths different from its own, that Judaism, in specific, will never surrender itself to Catholic theology, and get on with it. It must recognize that the majority of Jews in Jesus' time were clueless as to his existence, that their own religion was developing via the Tannaim.

It must end Passion Plays once and for all, revise the NT and the Catechism. Otherwise, it will simply grow more Williamsons.

It needs to understand that rapist priests belong in jail and that it must do all it can to see that they get there. Step-father child rapists should be excommunicated, not their victims or those who try to help them. It must tolerate all other faiths--Islam, Hinduism, Paganism, Animism, etc. and atheism. It must recognize that ineffective birth control contributes to unimaginable poverty, suffering.

It must accept the variety of humans on the earth, understanding the proper relations between justice and mercy, in short revisit its priorities.

Robert_B1

His ordination is considered for life. He could be 'laicized' which would means he could not perform any priestly function ever again, which I personally think should happen. However, as he is not functioning as a priest in the Roman Catholic Church, it would seem overkill to take away his rights to minister in a Church he does not recognize anyway. All of the canon law stuff can get messy. I simply wanted to make clear that he is NOT a priest in good standing nor is he performing priestly duties in the Roman Catholic Church which I thought was being implied and then reinforced.

I greatly admire Susan Jacoby and I always read her comments because I think I need to listen especially hard to those I don't always agree with. If Susan has said that Williamson's beliefs were despicable and he should not be allowed to function as a priest with those attitudes I would absolutely agree. I would also be the first to criticize the Pope if he evers allows such a thing to happen.

My point about Brazil is just because one archbishop is an idiot does not means he represents some monolithic Catholic attitude. It baffles me when people expect my Church, or any Church, or any human organization to never be wrong. Every Church is made up of fallible human beings and we prove it all the time.

EMonty--

Thanks for clearing that up.

RE: Susan's comments

EMonty is quite wrong about Williamson not being able to function as a priest. As long as the reversal of his excommunication stands, so does his status as an ordained priest.

Note: Under canon law, Williamson is a priest. Susan is quite right about that. However, she is playing with words to create an impression that is not true; that Williamson is a functioning priest.

Perhaps before she criticizes the Pope, me, or anyone else, Susan should check her sources. I offer the following from the Pope's letter whcih is easily available to anyone who looks:

"As long as the Society does not have a canonical status in the Church, its ministers do not exercise legitimate ministries in the Church. There needs to be a distinction, then, between the disciplinary level, which deals with individuals as such, and the doctrinal level, at which ministry and institution are involved. In order to make this clear once again: until the doctrinal questions are clarified, the Society has no canonical status in the Church, and its ministers – even though they have been freed of the ecclesiastical penalty – do not legitimately exercise any ministry in the Church."

I think it says not once, but twice, that the Society (including Williamson) exercise no ministry. Under the existing conditions, it is quite likely they will never function as ministers, priests, or bishops in the Roman Catholic Church. Perhaps I should be more charitable to Susan, she is quite right that he has "status as an ordained priest" and perhpas she could be equally charitable by admitting that he is not "functioning' as a priest, at least not in the Roman Catholic Chruch. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts. Susan's reply to my first remarks do not square with the facts. And she never did follow up on the main part of my comments, that a highly-placed Vatican official flatly said that the archbishop in Brazil was wrong.

EMonty --
Williamson may not be serving as a priest, but is he still ordained? Is ordination canceled by his excommunication?

Susan needs to check her facts, once again. Williamson is not functioning as a priest, or bishop in the Roman Catholic Church.

B16 should not be speaking for anyone and should not even be pope because his position is bogus being solely dependent on one passage in Matthew's gospel i.e. Matt 16: 18-19. This passage is simply more embellishment by an NT author to make the simple preacher man into some type of god and/or caesar.

EMonty is quite wrong about Williamson not being able to function as a priest. As long as the reversal of his excommunication stands, so does his status as an ordained priest.

Probably Benedict just drank too much holy whine.

Tell the whole story; the one about the Vatican official who flatly said that the actions and attitudes of the archbishop in Brazil were wrong. Susan's writing is outstanding but she tends to like to paint with a pretty broad brush which takes away credibility from her opinions.

Williamson, by the way, cannot function in any priestly capacity, as a priest or bishop, in the Catholic church and is very unlikely to ever do so.

Susan;
Yes it's outrageous but be grateful for small mercies - at least you can speak your mind now without being tortured or burned alive. You've come a long way baby.

Whoever would have thought two hundred years ago - that this would ever come to pass? An Atheist giving voice to criticism of The Almighty Pope, God's Main Man on Planet Earth. Galileo would never have tried that.

Gee, Susan Jacoby doesn't believe the pope's apology to be sincere. Color me shocked...

Ms. Jacoby, you plead with your readers not to criticize you for criticizing the Church. However, when you take every single opportunity to bash Catholicism, I start to wonder if your criticisms are even valid...

"Consider the Vatican's defense of a decision by a Brazilian archbishop to excommunicate the mother and doctors of a nine-year-old girl who had an abortion after she was raped by her stepfather.
The rapist-stepfather was not excommunicated because, the Brazilian bishop had said, abortion is a far more serious crime than the rape of a child."

Next time someone mentions what the Catholic position is on some medical- or scientific-ethics question, like stem-cell research, I'll use this as one of my examples why I don't value the church's opinion on the subject. Keeping Galleilo in purgatory until 1990 is another.

BTW, when's Secularist Corner coming back?

I don’t see a question on this site regarding this subject. Maybe it is just not up yet.

But I do agree this is a serious issue.

I feel sorry for the Catholic followers (I used to be one) who have to deal with their leaders covering up moral transgressions of their leadership instead of cleaning house. It certainly makes the Pope look more like a politician than a spiritual leader.

Sadly, it follows the historical cycle of Apostasy of the people of this earth and why Jesus keeps restarting his church.

Mark
Always seek the truth.