From the outgoing arsebisheop, we get an attack on Cameron’s Big Society.
He continues: “’Big society’ rhetoric is all too often heard by many therefore as aspirational waffle designed to conceal a deeply damaging withdrawal of the state from its responsibilities to the most vulnerable.”
Well, yeah… But from someone who has made a living peddling waffle, this is pretty rich. A plague on both their houses, frankly.
As an aside, I attended a wedding this weekend. I don’t much like church weddings, but go through the motions. I stand when they say stand and sit when they say sit and avoid doing all that praying stuff. Well, it’s a bit pointless as a belief in a deity is something of a prerequisite.
Still, we got a thinly disguised attack on gay marriage. While I might have some sympathy with the Christian concern about this, telling us that only a man and a woman will commit for life, though thick and thin, better or worse and all that isn’t exactly a well conceived argument. A couple of gayers can make exactly the same long term vows and, frankly, divorce a few years later like their heterosexual counterparts. I think he knew the dark angel was in the congregation as there was also a thinly disguised attack on atheists, too. Apparently we don’t get this marriage thing either – despite me being faithfully married for nearly a quarter of a century.
Ah, well, that’s my exposure to religion done for a bit – and it is true, if this experience was anything to go by – the Devil does have all the best tunes. The stuff we had to listen to was pretty weak.
As for the Arsebishop and the Big Society – good riddance to both. Sooner rather than later, one hopes.
I’d entirely agree with your summary of the archbish; a pointless, full of shit waffler talking about a pile of shit.
Interestingly, I went to a Catholic wedding recently where there were the same point comments about marriage being between “a MAN and a WOMAN”. Slightly awkward as I was next to a very happily married gay couple. And I do have to question the priest’s decision to then stress that marriage was about having children. My wife and I are (fairly obviously) not gay and also have no intention of procreating. Above all, I think my gay friends, my wife and myself had to wonder why a celibate man in a frock was lecturing us about marriage.
That one always amuses me. Not a problem for the Anglicans, of course. But, yeah, I’d take with a pinch of salt anything a celibate man in a frock has to say on the subject. As we are childfree by choice, the old procreation part of marriage is not relevant to us either.
Just as well I’m not a Christian, I guess.
Quite; Christianity is often very intolerant of those who do not conform. Even if the non-conformity is just the refusal, for whatever the reason, to bring more people onto this planet.
And the man in a frock thing is why I can’t cope with the Pope – a celibate dress wearing man who lives in a palace in Italy telling people who live in poverty stricken parts of the world how to live their lives. And that’s before we come to the incumbent; the Panzer Pope…
The other thing that managed to irritate me was the obsession with sin and the guilt tripping. This was supposed to be a happy occasion after all.
Yup – there is something very self-serving about propagandists who use the wedding day of others to spread their own prejudices.