BBC News - Ministers defend plan to force jobless to do work

Last time the Tories were in power the joke was that they had plans to shorten the dole queues; get people to stand closer together. Is it just like last time? Listen to their rhetoric, they are vilifying the weak and vulnerable, creating unemployment and then blaming people for being out of work; just like last time.

They are dividing us by setting us against each other. Calling working people superfluous backroom staff and making them unemployed in the name of economy then making working people think that those out of work are not workless but work shy; making the able-bodied think the disabled are cheating the system, making every blue-badge holder the object of suspicion; making the unemployed, made so by the Tories, work for nothing more than benefits and expecting them to be grateful to eat today.

Why this sustained and indefensible attack on ordinary people who are the victims  and not the instigators of the current crisis? What is this designed to distract us from? What are they doing behind our backs while we worry about our futures and that of our children? They are putting us all in our place, making us accept their presumed natural right to govern. They are looking after their own and ensuring their own are well provided for. Do you doubt it?

They are creating an educated elite by burdening future graduates with unsustainable levels of debt so that our universities will be filled, not with the gifted who will contribute to the future wealth of the nation, but the privileged who will contribute to the future wealth of the privileged.

Ian Duncan-Smith, during the Tory conference, was challenged about his plans to withdraw child benefit and he gave a response that I am surprised no one has made more of. “I wish I didn’t have to do it,” he said, “I wish we were elected in 1997. The treasury was awash with money then.”

Indeed, the Labour government inherited a strong exchequer, along with crumbling schools, people dying on hospital waiting lists and on trolleys in hospital corridors, the old were dying from cold in the winter and the young despairing of any hope. When the Tories were last kicked out the country threw a party and the only thing we have to look forward too now is the next party, when the country comes to its senses and throws them out again. Let’s hope we don’t take so long this time to see this lying, cheating rabble of chinless wonders for what they are.

As for the LibDems, well, at least the Tories are true to their nature when they take the country back to the big house, the poorhouse and the tugged forelock. The LibDems declare themselves progressive then betray themselves as Quislings. They should remember that “coalition” only has meaning and significance for LibDems. Everyone knows this is a Tory government and all the talk of coalition won’t change the fact that we have a Tory future until we take back what is ours.

BBC News - Ministers defend plan to force jobless to do work

French Catholic Church launches campaign to attract young believers - Telegraph

"France's Catholic Church has launched a vast poster campaign whose English slogan is "Jesus is my Boss" in a bid to convince young believers that becoming a priest can be hip.
The poster, featuring a cheery young man's face superimposed onto a wacky yellow and green collage, also bears the question in English: "Why Not?"

This at the same time as Catholic leaders in England and Wales issue an apology and express their “deep sorrow for decades of child abuse.” Read more here

“Decades?” More like centuries, a millennium! This scandal goes back a thousand years and involves some of the greatest names in Catholic history. One leading historian says that during the Middle Ages, “in some areas the mere fact of having taken Orders seems to have rendered one liable top the suspicion of being a sodomite.”  (John Boswell)

In 1651 in Florence an Apologia for schoolmasters falling for their children recommended boys between nine and eighteen, “although there is no fixed rule, since some retain their boyishness longer, and others fade early, just as some full round, little boys excite you from infancy.” (L’Alcibiade fanciullo a scuolo, in Michael Rocke, Forbidden Friendships p.95)

In her excellent book Fallen Order Karen Liebreich draws comparisons across the centuries with her account of paedophile priests in 17th-century Italy. Implicated is Fr. Jose’ de Calasanz, founder of the Piarist Order to house and educate the poor children of Rome. He was created patron saint of all Christian schools in 1948. His Order was so rife with abuse that in 1646 was abolished by the pope. Every aspect of abuse and how the church deals with it that so disturbs us today has a long and shameful history going back centuries.

The British Foreign Office has apologised for a leaked internal memo suggesting ways to make the Pope’s impending visit successful. These included having him blessing a gay marriage, opening an abortion clinic and launching his own brand of condoms. Richard Dawkins has put his name to a campaign to have the Pope arrested for crimes against humanity for the alleged cover-up of abuse in the Catholic Church.

Apologies have been issued for the leaked memo and, of course, Dawkins’ love of the limelight is well know so this latest stunt shouldn’t be taken seriously. However, after protests, crippling law suits and worldwide condemnation following the most damning publicity they still don’t seem to get it. It is not a local difficulty, neither is it one or two generations that have suffered the abuse.

They can’t stand outside of this and look on with disapproval alongside the rest of us. Abuse is historic and endemic in the Catholic Church and the church can no longer be a law to itself, hiding behind the conceit of being a state with its own legislative system. Their system doesn’t work, their laws protect the criminals, their tradition puts perpetrators before victims and brings shame and distress to honest Catholics, priesthood and laity, around the world. The church needs to offer what it demands of its members, full confession and heartfelt repentance.

French Catholic Church launches campaign to attract young believers - Telegraph

Integrity without God is Hypocrisy

After a week of incredible and breathtaking scandal in the British Parliament and with recriminations flying, calls for resignations, and a mad scramble for the moral high ground I find my thoughts turning to a familiar Bible theme. There are significant parallels it seems to me between the way politicians have been behaving and the conduct of the Pharisees in the New Testament. The problem in each case is the same; “integrity” without God is hypocrisy.

The Pharisees fall into the category of religious and cultural purists fighting against long-standing efforts to reconcile Hebrew religion with Greek philosophy. Aiming for integrity in your faith is a noble thing but it can become religion for religion’s sake and this is what happened to the otherwise noble Pharisees. They defined and enforced their religion to the extreme, hedging it about with endless laws and regulations designed to ensure strict adherence.

This led inevitably to both strange and cruel interpretations and applications of the law as well as widespread abuses. They insisted, for instance, that on the Sabbath a man may spit on rocky ground but not on soft earth because it may make a furrow and that would constitute ploughing. Individuals found technicalities that allowed them to condemn others while excusing themselves. Famously, while the Law of Moses commanded that children should “honour your father and your mother” there was a technicality that allowed a man to absolve himself of any responsibility for his parents by declaring his money and property a gift to the temple. He wouldn’t actually have to part with any property, just pronounce it “Corban” or dedicated and then live off it with the declared intention of one day giving it to the temple and meanwhile no longer bearing any filial responsibility.

Their real problems started when they ran up against the One who gave the Law and found his standards and expectations very different from their own. Jesus made them look bad when they were working so hard to do good as they saw it. In Matthew 12 we see what happened when the ones who interpreted the Law came up against the One who gave the Law.

In this passage we read that, “Jesus went through the grain fields on the Sabbath. His disciples were hungry, and they began to pluck heads of grain to eat. But when the Pharisees saw it, they said to him, ‘Look, your disciples are doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath” To the Pharisees Jesus’ disciples were ‘harvesting’ wheat and thus breaking the Sabbath; to Jesus they were hungry men being practical about meeting their needs. “I desire mercy and not sacrifice” Jesus said.

As Jesus went into the synagogue they seemed to have a man with a withered hand there already set up to entrap him. “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath”, they asked, clearly looking for an excuse to accuse and condemn him on the basis of the law. But Jesus replied, “Which one of you who has a sheep, if it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will not take hold of it and lift it out? Of how much more value is a man than a sheep?” The man was duly healed.

Finally, we see Jesus heal a demon-oppressed blind and mute man. Determined now to not be impressed the Pharisees ascribed the miracle to Satan and accused Jesus of serving Satan. Of course, Jesus response was again perfect reason; if Satan casts out Satan then Satan is divided against himself. What was worse however was their denial of the power of the Holy Spirit, a show of their total opposition now to what Jesus had clearly and consistently demonstrated was of God; the sin against the Holy Spirit.

The aims of the Pharisees were noble, that is, to serve Israel by maintaining a pure religion but their means of achieving this end were heartless, putting their rules before God and the outcome was a disaster because, as Jesus said, their rules demanded sacrifice but allowed no mercy. They sought to serve the God of mercy by becoming a merciless religious regime.

In the same way, our politicians have set out, most of them, with the best of intentions, to serve the community in which they live and represent them in Parliament. However, they have, over generations, drafted rules for themselves that are politically convenient and interpreted without any moral compass but in ways that simply “apply” the rules. This has led to widespread abuse and, like the young man who absolves himself of any responsibility for his parents by “sticking to the rules” of Corban, they too easily declare themselves as acting within the law while ignoring entirely their original purpose to serve the wider community.

Like mercy, morality cannot be legislated; you are either merciful or you are not; either a man or woman of good moral standing or you are not. It depends I suppose on who and what influences you. This week has shown that neither mercy nor morality is ultimately attainable without God. Men and women when left to their own devices might entertain the best of intentions declaring themselves prepared to make any sacrifice to serve the community but without God such intentions and such service will lack both mercy and morality because without God everything is relative and everyone will do what seems right to them at the time.

We should pray for our leaders and for our country that the good and the godly will rise up and demonstrate service that is truly sacrificial and that is informed by both mercy and integrity that can only come from the God who is both merciful and true to his word.