Religion is not a "private pursuit"

We do not live in isolation.

The slightest thought of the manifestly intelligent person should help us realise that religion is not a personal or private pursuit. 
I mean religion is essentially a community activity, it's about relationships, family life, society....etc and etc.

It's a big call to question the Pope's right to make observations about outrageous things that people say from a religious perspective.

Let's face it, Trump doesn't seem to have any qualms about questioning the Pope or  anyone's bona fides on anything. Certainly  he doesn't seem to think there are any limitations on his right to comment on things that he is manifestly not qualified to coment about.

As for the furphy that religion is private and leaders should not offer political critique, try telling that to Mary...who saw her son crucified. 
Or to Mohammad, peace be upon him, who never felt such compunction. Or to George Bush who blatantly exploited his evangelical credentials.

Or to Barack Obama who sang with true faith of God's Amazing Grace. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IN05jVNBs64)

Pacifism

I imagine a hard thing for good world leaders is making decisions about going to war, so recent decision to send more troops to Afghanistan must be hard for Rudd and Obama.  The principle is, I suppose, doing a lesser evil to allow a greater good. Though this is slippery slope stuff, and indeed the difference between politics and philosophy or ethics.

(Read for example an awful account of a current defamation trial in The Age. An alleged rapist and brutalist is alleged to have said about his brutality and killing of his enemies 

(Reporter),Paul  McGeough reported (in an interview with the man known as  Captain Dragan )  as saying: "Because of me, fewer have died than might have. And I don't think you will see any prisoners of war treated as well as ours."

Such language is of course total and utter rationalization. )

Thomas Merton says:

"I have learned that an age in which politicians talk about peace is an age in which everybody expects war: the great men of the earth would not talk of peace so much if they did not secretly believe it possible,  with one more war, to annihilate their enemies forever"

 in The Collected Poems pp 374-75  as in Seeds p. 34

Our beloved leaders would do well to hear this caution

Kev and Bazz

I suppose it's good for us that the Pres and the PM seem to have hit it off so well. But the thought of another love story to rival George and John seems sickening!!

You're being watched

Local Blackwood Real Estate Agent, Joanne Lemmer, wiull probably be delighted she is the focus of an article in the press today (here), in which her use of a racially offensive joke about President Obama is critcised. It is an old and pathetic joke! Of the cheap shot variety.
Ms Lemmer is well-known in the local community for her outrageous publicity. You either love it or you hate it! Mostly for me it is the latter.

>[By way of clarification Joanne Lemmer has asked that
reference to her full text be made. This can be accessed at the reference she
has given me here http://www.hillsandvalley.com.au/uncut/february09.pdf]

But she is the sort of 'Any publicity.....is good publicity' type of person. When you are talking about how stupid it is you at least are possibly reading her ad rather than ignoring it. As she says in one of her documents:

While they're watching us they're watching you?

The particular issue concerns a joke about black people ...I am not going to repeat it, as I think these days it is inappropriate (always was...but hopefully we are not perpetuating the prejudice of the past ). Some of our politicians (mentioned earlier this week) learnt the hard way for example that you don't joke about people who beat up their spouses!
Ms Lemmer's alleged come back to a reporter was to say (when her disingenuous claims to not risk offence were obviously challenged by the reporter) was to say

"Are you black? Well, when you turn black, you ring up and tell me you're offended."

What nonsense! Admittedly she was probably peeved.
Are only men allowed to critique men, or women women. Can only Indonesians write about East Timor?
Come on Joanne, if you are going to stick your neck out these days you have to be prepared to have it cut off. As some of us have learned this week!

momentous momentum

In a week which has seen all sorts of things happen it will be interesting to check back and see if it has all made much difference.
It has been for me a great mixture. From the grand scale of the beginning of of the presidency of Barck Obama, to dinner with friends last night...a sort of annual check up.
Which, in my scheme of things, is more important?
Yesterday,too, I took a funeral of the mother of a parishioner. A momentous and unexpected event for that family; from teary ten year old grandson to teary 40 something year old devastated daughter.
Heath Ledger was nominated for an academy award for a film I can't bear to see, on the first anniversary of his death by drug overdose (whether deliberate or accidental) which I blogged about this time last year (here)
I went to the doctor yesterday to get a couple opf routine referrals and came away anaemic and feeling that I had a hundred things wrong with me.
The Premier was in rapture on radio because Tour Down Under was being reported on the front page of the New York Times.
I noted at dinner last night that the much touted economic woes seemed to have been allowed to drift into the back of our minds. It was not that they have gone away it is that we are easily distracted, even desirous of being so.
It's a lot of stuff for one week.
And the tomatoes have just kept coming!

Day of Optimism

Yes!! the alarm did go off at 2.44 to allow me to watch the inauguration. And it was, I thought, good, and worth doing. Though I feel a little tired now!!!
Mr and Mrs President already looked tired!!

Interesting to see amongst other things :

• how religious it was...more religious in a way than an Anglican ceremony in Abbey or Cathedral..People of the Lord do justice and love mercy, and let all people who agree say Amen! and Let them say Amen!!
• how regal it was...despite there being no royalty in the USA, the royal families were all there, and there is no doubt a fresh prince has arrived!
• how informal it was...whilst also being formal...I am used to weddings being like this these days. People happily greeting each other, and the genuine spirit of goodwill

There is indeed a spirit of hope and optimism, so let's try and not be too cynical about it for today.
And let all people who agree.....say Amen

good, better, best

Ruth Gledhill has a naughty article with a little web poll...Who is the better Christian? McCain, Obama, Palin or Biden
I have mused before (here) about the inadequacy of phone in and online polls since they are uncontrolled exercises and there is no way of stopping interested parties from trying to skew the results, and when we neutralise them by making them into percentages they all look the same (50% of 2500 is 1250, but 50% of 12 is 6...there is a lot of difference between over 1000 people who bother to ring in and a handful... you know lies, lies and damn statistics)
So the issue might not be...are the results meaningful? But is the question meaningful?
I indeed rankled, because there is much in Christian teaching that goes against this sort of religious self-promotion (you know the first shall be last), and some of Ruth's commentators rightly asked what does better mean. The usual suspects immediately jump on to the pro-life issues, but I want to hear what they say about caring for the poor and the broken, about the sick and the enslaved...it seems to me that there is more of Jesus' teaching about this than about anything else.
Of course it is an amusing bit of fluff!

getting out of the war

One headline today reads "Obama: Discussing the war he never agreed to!"
It is, necessarily, part of the dilemma that he faces. In order to be seen as credible by the wider electorate he now has to get up to speed on how you deal competently with a war....even though he didn't think America should have been in that war in the first place.
The President, of course, is also the Commander-in-Chief, [a scary thought when you think of George Bush] but Obama does appear to be taking it seriously. And is being taken seriously by those who will have to cooperate with him. (See the steep learning curve here)
It will always be an issue for incoming politicians. The electorate will have to decide whether the fresh approach outweighs lack of experience. McCain seems to me tired and not up to the task. Obama at least has the capacity to grow and learn.

Absolutely Super

Well, the only thing better/worse than 10 months of Australian electoral campaigning is 10 months of US campaigning. We look with interest at what today might mean for the pruning of the field.
Some commentary on the Clinton/Obama rivalry has been very perceptive. I note particularly:

• the US, despite its liberal nature. has the lowest real participation of women in elected Government of any Western democracy. There are less women in the State and Federal legislatures than anywhere else in the world claiming to be democratic
• it is a pity that the Obama/Clinton divide has polarised the debate so that Clinton is about women and Obama about blacks.
• This has the unfortunate side effectthat it seems that the women's issue is about white women, and the black issue about black men
• I think this observation is fairly true, and the net effect is to disempower black women. This bears some thinking about

We look forward with interest!!

The incredible benefit of backstabbing

Will we ever understand the election process of the US? I doubt it. What we're witnessing at the moment is virtually the parties selecting their candidates, not the voting of the people for a new president. Commentary is both effulgent and effusive (see here for example) and we are warned that the dirty tricks have only just begun.
In Oz this takes place out of public view, what ever Howard said about Costello and vice versa, was firmly kept behind locked doors. What Clinton and Obama say about each other, or McCain and Romney will be said out in the open.
This public backstabbing is riveting stuff, even from the Antipodes. It has the advantage of ( win lose or draw) knowing what your "friends" can say about you in the event that you become your party's anointed. This is a benefit in a way that Howard and Costello must attest to, part (at least) of what caused their downfall was the electorate's uncertainty about them. What did they really think about each other?
Had there been blindingly open critique in the selection process, the whispering campaign would have been sliced into tiny little pieces. But it was not to be
It is always faintly amusing to watch the way the Democrats and Republican get behind their chose candidate eventually. Obama or Clinton will stand side by side and attest that the other was the best thing since Drive In Movies, despite the fact that this week she called him a hypocrite and a liar.
The big mistake (of course ) that the Democrats have made is in wanting either the first woman or the first black person, they should have concatenated the two. But I suppose Dr Rice is a Republican!