On the weekend we brought you the story of Piers Frassati, the globe-trotting Shroud-Model of Turin who is paying a visit here for World Youth Day. Only trouble is that he’s not paying for it, according to Mikey in comments … the NSW and Commonwealth governments are senselessly shelling out millions for this cultist cornucopia of Catholic crap. And then there’s this:

Extraordinary new powers will allow police to arrest and fine people for “causing annoyance” to World Youth Day participants and permit partial strip searches at hundreds of Sydney sites, beginning today.

The laws, which operate until the end of July, have the potential to make a crime of wearing a T-shirt with a message on it, undertaking a Chaser-style stunt, handing out condoms at protests, riding a skateboard or even playing music, critics say.

People who fail to comply will be subject to a $5500 fine.

Our recent history has been full of affronts to democracy and blatant attacks on freedom of speech, e.g. Bob Brown being ejected from his own parliament because he dared ask the US president a question, and the ludicrous restrictions foisted on Sydneysiders during APEC. But this nonsense, if as reported here, goes even further still, to the point of cultist neo-fascism. It’s not enough that we are paying for corpse-worshipping religious lunatics to gather, chant and dance around their shaman … we’ll also be heavily fined if we ‘offend’ or ‘annoy’ them.

A shame this palaver isn’t taking place in Melbourne because I’d be there in a heartbeat - wearing an ‘I HATE JESUS’ t-shirt and condoms on my fingers, carrying a decapitated statuette of the Virgin Mary and a Benedict XVI Fleshlight. And would they fine me $5500? Just let them fucking try it.

I kinda wish I could’ve been alive for the last couple of thousand years so I was able to watch Catholicism (and other religions) try rooly, rooly hard to marry their beliefs with human kind’s developing body of scientific knowledge and our growing awareness of the universe in which we live. I mean, listening to the Vatican’s “chief astronomer” try to grapple with life, the universe and everything and not make his religion look like a pile of pants is bloody hilarious.

“As an astronomer I continue to believe that God is the creator of the universe,” Jose Gabriel Funes said in an interview with the Vatican mouthpiece, the Osservatore Romano.

Even if “we don’t currently have any proof … the hypothesis” of extraterrestrial life cannot be ruled out, said Mr Funes, a Jesuit priest who directs the Vatican’s observatory at Castel Gandolfo, near Rome.

“Just as there are a plethora of creatures on Earth, there could be others, equally intelligent, created by God,” he said.

So far, so good. Nothing too weird there. But…

Original sin, which by Christian tradition occurred in the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit of a particular tree, refers to the fallen state from which humans can be saved only by God’s grace.

Asked about the difficult theological question, Mr Funes said: “If other intelligent beings exist, it’s not certain that they need redemption.”

They could “have remained in full friendship with their creator” without committing the original sin, he said.

Oh dear.

If not, extraterrestrials would benefit equally from the “incarnation,” in which Jesus Christ, the Son of God, assumed earthlings’ flesh, body and soul in order to redeem them, which Mr Funes called “a unique event that cannot be repeated”.

* smacks forehead into hand *

But all of this begs the really obvious question: what would Jesus Christ look like on ET’s planet?

JC phone home

As part of my longstanding policy of not blogging my own teaching stories but blogging those of my colleagues instead, I hereby present to you an excerpt of an email from my strongly non-Catholic friend who teaches in a Catholic primary school:

Difficult to believe that we are now in second term, hope everyone’s ok… I got an Easter card from my Indian boy on the last day of term one. He drew a picture of Father Christmas on it. l might have to review my Easter program.