Riotous Rowan pontificates on the looting

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Rowan Williams offers ecclesiastical wisdom – or lack thereof – on the rioting in the UK:

Aug 11 (Reuters) – England’s most senior cleric on Thursday gave his first reaction to riots across the country, saying the government’s stated priority of building stronger communities was now a matter of urgency.

The Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams said the violence would “intensify the cycle of deprivation and vulnerability” in Britain, in a statement emailed to Reuters.

“The government has insisted on the priority of creating stronger, better-resourced local communities. This priority is now a matter of extreme urgency. We need to see initiatives that will address anxieties and provide some hope of long-term stability in community services, especially for the young,” he wrote.

I’m unsure as what kind of cycle of deprivation would include in its deprivations Blackberries with which to organise looting parties. I have no doubt that, had the government provided more community centres – offering free Blackberries, perhaps – they would have been looted too.

Rowan Williams has, predictably, placed the blame for the rioting on the government for not providing adequate community services, while, at the same time, missing the obvious fact that the government is to blame for not protecting its citizens.

The kind of long term stability that Rowan is looking for is not provided by governments but by families. What is his church doing to strengthen families? Oh, right, it’s promoting same sex marriage; that should do the trick.

British looting isn’t new

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In the UK during the blitz looting was not uncommon:

One of the most shocking crimes committed during wartime was the looting from bombed houses. In the first eight weeks of the London Blitz a total of 390 cases of looting was reported to the police. On 9th November, 1940, the first people tried for looting took place at the Old Bailey. Of these twenty cases, ten involved members of the Auxiliary Fire Service.

The Lord Mayor of London suggested that notices should be posted throughout the city, reminding the population that looting was punishable by hanging or shooting. However, the courts continued to treat this crime leniently. When a gang of army deserters were convicted of looting in Kent the judge handed down sentences ranging from five years’ penal servitude to eight years’ hard labour.

I doubt that any of today’s looters will face eight years’ hard labour (most are unacquainted with labour of any sort), although public opinion is certainly becoming opposed to leniency:

– In common with Conservative MEP Roger Helmer, 33 per cent of the public believe the police should be allowed to shoot the rioters with live ammunition.

– 78 per cent support the use of tear gas.

– 72 per cent support the use of tasers.

– 82 per cent want curfews imposed.

– 90 per cent support the use of water cannon.

– 65 per cent support the use of plastic bullets.

And now your daily laugh: Iran wants to monitor UK human rights violations

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From here:

Iranian official urges Britain to allow delegation into country to investigate police human rights violations.

As riots have spread across the UK leading to hundreds of arrests and the death of one 26-year-old man, Iran has called on British police to avoid using violence against rioters and demonstrators, and to show “restraint” when dealing with protesters, Iranian Fars News Agency reported.

The Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Ramin Mehman-Parast reportedly asked the UK government to open dialogue with “protesters,” and has called on human rights groups to investigate the killing of Mark Duggan, 29, which sparked the violent riots that has seen substantial damage and theft.

If something is worth doing at all, it’s worth doing well, so Iran’s delegation is privately offering to share its longstanding experience in torture, rape, mutilation, murder and kangaroo courts with Britain, which never has had a particularly good grip on how to violate human rights properly.

Barbarians within the gates

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Malcolm Muggeridge spent much of his time predicting the downfall of the West in gems like this:

So the final conclusion would surely be that whereas other civilizations have been brought down by attacks of barbarians from without, ours had the unique distinction of training its own destroyers at its own educational institutions, and then providing them with facilities for propagating their destructive ideology far and wide, all at the public expense. Thus did Western Man decide to abolish himself, creating his own boredom out of his own affluence, his own vulnerability out of his own strength, his own impotence out of his own erotomania, himself blowing the trumpet that brought the walls of his own city tumbling down, and having convinced himself that he was too numerous, laboured with pill and scalpel and syringe to make himself fewer. Until at last, having educated himself into imbecility, and polluted and drugged himself into stupefaction, he keeled over–a weary, battered old brontosaurus–and became extinct.

Although his prognostications of doom were premature, he was essentially right.

 


The evolution of the e-card

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I’ve always thought e-cards were a bit strange. Now they have become quite a bit stranger: you can send a “you may have caught an STD from me” e-card to your friend, bishop, whatever.

For the immoderate sower of wild STD oats, you can send a card to six people at once, along with a personal message –  something touching like “Thank you for being part of my life and if you’ve seen any unusual lumps or sores, lately, I might know why.”

From here:

The e-cards, which can be sent anonymously, are pithy and to the point.

“Sometimes there are strings attached,” reads one. “I got diagnosed with STDs since we were together. Get checked out soon.”

Another says: “It’s not what you brought to the party, it’s what you left with. I left with an STI. You might have, too. Get checked out soon.”

E-cards can be sent to up to six partners at a time, and users have the option of including a personal message.

 

 

Anglicans deal with heretical bishops by waiting for them to die

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That seems to be Rev. Gary Nicolosi’s approach in this article. While waiting for wayward bishops to die might appear to be gentler than summarily defrocking them – assuming the process isn’t artificially hastened – it doesn’t work particularly well in a church like the Anglican Church of Canada which is producing new heretical bishops at a greater rate than it is burying them.

Bishop Paul Moore of New York told a story several years ago about an incident that occurred in his junior year at General Theological Seminary. Some of the students were upset by a headline in The New York Times stating that the bishop of Birmingham (England) did not believe in the resurrection of Jesus. The students rushed to their theology professor, Dr. Marshall Boyer Stewart. “Dr. Stewart, Dr. Stewart,” said the students, “what are we going to do? The bishop of Birmingham, a real English bishop, does not believe in the resurrection!” Dr. Stewart put his face in his hands, sighed and said, “Well, the bishop of Birmingham will die someday, and the next bishop of Birmingham probably will believe in the resurrection.” That, Bishop Moore said, is how Anglicans deal with heresy!

Nicolisi’s article deliberately muddles the necessity for confronting heresy by quoting Matthew 13:24-30, the parable of the weeds: in his view, heresy is a weed that, if uprooted, might also uproot the wheat. This, of course is a typically devious liberal misapplication of a parable. While we are not to uproot possible unbelievers from the church, allowing teachers – bishops – to spout anti-Christian nonsense is an entirely different issue.

2 Peter 2:1-3 puts pay to the idea of  tolerance  for false teachers; unsurprisingly, Nicolosi doesn’t quote from it.

Linda Gibbons, Canada’s prisoner of conscience

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For doing what you see in this video, disobeying a 1994 “temporary” injunction by continuing to protest the killing of the unborn, Linda Gibbons has spent 8 years in jail.

Here is a video of the latest arrest for her “crime”:

 

Canada’s lack of legal limits on abortion is a disgusting example of apathetic tolerance for evil. Persecuting a 69 year old who has the temerity to mildly protest the unfettered killing of the unborn is shockingly twisted. It shames Canada, Canadian law and Canadian citizens who, through their taxes, are paying for a travesty of justice that would find itself more at home in the KGB than a civilised society.

More here.

 

Back to Church Sunday, red light style

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Further to the article below, an Amsterdam church has a new way to get people into the church:

Churches in Amsterdam were hoping to attract such people with a recent open evening.

At the Old Church “in the hottest part of the red light district”, the attractions included “speed-dating”.

As skimpily dressed girls began to appear in red-lit windows in the streets outside, visitors to the church moved from table to table to discuss love with a succession of strangers.