I don’t follow the who’s who of the Catholic hierarchy; when I hear the phrase “Primate of All Ireland”, I think of Ussher, the fellow who notoriously calculated the age of the earth using a combination of crude genealogy and numerology. He’s gone down in history for getting it all wrong; so will this one.
While I felt that Ireland as a whole had begun to progress, Cardinal Sean Brady recently issued a statement declaring that any attempt made by the government of Ireland to legislate for abortion due to a judgement made by the European Court of Human Rights would be; “vigorously and comprehensively opposed by many”.
This is nothing new. The Catholic church has always taken a strong stand against human rights.
I always picture a very handsome orang-outan in a big tall hat with lots of bling.
I always picture a very handsome
oranggreen-outan in a big tall hat with lots of bling.Ussher was a prod, not a papist, though.
The librarian would be quite put off by that comparison.
The picture at the link of the primate in question is priceless: d00d glaring from an opulent throne, wearing a ridiculous hat, and looking just as miserable as every panty-sniffing social conservative I’ve ever met.
“…lots of bling”
bling that would feed lots of kids for lots of days.
This abortion stance is so hypocritical. All this concern for eggs and zygotes but no concern for the born. I read recently that about 21,000 children die every day of malnutrition or malnutrition-related conditions
http://www.globalissues.org/article/715/today-21000-children-died-around-the-world
while the Poop and his acolytes walk around in gold and gem-trimmed regalia, the value of which could feed, immunize, and treat thousands.
How do they manage to keep this con going generation to generation? Isn’t there a meme vaccine? Isn’t anybody in the big pharma empire working on this? Hurry…before it’s too late.
don’t make fun of him. we descended from primates. we are all primates.
@ chrisv:
Yeah: education generally, and critical thinking skills in particular—which is why the religious right openly opposes it. There is also some evidence that a strong social safety net, especially universal healthcare, may be the ultimate antidote.
@ david #7:
Why on earth not? I’m not making fun of him because he’s a primate. I’m making fun of him because he’s a ridiculous primate, one who is particularly deserving of my ridicule.
It would appear that Cardinal Sean Brady has his own problems and
conspired / colluded in a cover-upfailed to report to police and parents a list of children who were being abused by a notorious paedophile priest.What does
such a creepa priest have to do to get fired?Every time I hear the word ‘primate’ of something religious, I think of Bubbles the chimp. Then I think, nah, he would say something more intelligent.
Well the great fun is there are both a Primate of Ireland (the Archbishop of Dublin) and a Primate of All Ireland (Archbishop of Armagh) and two of each of those, one for the Catholic Church in Ireland and one for the Church of Ireland (Anglican), for a sum total of four primates in Ireland.
@amoeba
What does such a creep a priest have to do to get fired?
That’s the point they can’t. They just get relocated to another area where the abuse or lack of reporting continues. Glad people like my first blog post, didn’t think people would.!
But… but… every sperm is sacred!
Erp
They should have a cage-match.
I think of a little slow loris with a leprechaun hat.
Yeah, but it’s a bit pretentious to style one’s self as THE primate of ALL Ireland, innit? He can row out to one of those offshore rock outcrops and declare himself the primate of all of that and it’d be a true claim.
Die of old age.
I think it “state the bleedin obvious” day at the Catholic church.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-19451439
Cardinal Carlo Martini says Church ‘200 years behind’
@Josh Andrews
classic
I thoght it was the first upright animal to go to Ireland, about 300,000? years ago.
Easy. Come out in favour of gay marriage or abortion rights. That’d get his arse fired right damn quick. Covering up the rape of children is minor compared to failing to fight against human rights.
I’m going to have to disagree with the Cardinal.
Only 200?
The image that springs to mind when I hear the word “Primate” is Brady playing the monkey to Papa Ratzi’s organ-grinder …
@chrisv:
The most convincing argument for preserving a lot of the older Church buildings, bling, and artwork that I’ve heard is historical. e.g. selling the Sistine Chapel to the highest bidder is probably not a good idea if we want to preserve Michelangelo’s work.
But that doesn’t justify the vast majority of money that gets spent on displays of status.
But some are more primate than the others.
Just ask them.
What does a priest have to do to get fired? That’s an easy question:
Refusing to pray as the Catholic Church demands.
Being gay
Living with a lady friend
Not filing the proper paperwork before using Jeebus Magic (though that just cost him a post: he did a lot more, including criticizing the church and getting married, before being completely defrocked)
For context, war criminals like this and people like this and this got to keep their title. Because, in terms of severity, rape, murder, and genocide take a back-seat to not obeying the Vatican and not having sex (with adults).
Of course, if that tickles you, Catholic school teachers can be fired for such horrible things as supporting gay marriage, supporting abortion, or getting IVF. In a more “perfect” Catholic world, I’m sure they’d be fired for not tithing the full 10% and for not voting Republican.
Regarding priests and bling. I recall that a few months ago a priest, I think that it might have been Russian Orthodox rather than Catholic, was caught wibbling on about the virtues of poverty while wearing a wristwatch worth several grand. When the blogsphere started drawing attention to the watch, his church produced an image with the watch shopped out and indignantly claimed that malicious bloggers had shopped the watch in to make him look bad. Unfortunately there was a clear reflection of the watch that he wasn’t wearing in the highly polished surface of the table that he was sitting at.
A patriarchal magisterium that held sway in global society for over 2000 yrs has begun to finally realize that they are sliding down the slippery and deadly acute incline of oblivion with no plan B and even less idea of how to implement one if they had it…
The inevitable crumble and irreversible collapsing of what morality ethics and integrity they boasted at the Lateran councils, has been well documented through the ages, but they failed abysmally to recognize that their behavior does not go unnoticed or not commented on in a modern era.
For nearly 1000 yrs they were so used to doing anything they wished or saying anything they wanted as a institution because they found that nothing has the power to persuade like an imagined super deity that dabbled in sadism, that they did not mind lying and bigging the concept up on a public platform.
Besides they found the lies useful and very lucrative.
It had worked so well in the bronze and dark ages, they cannot conceive it ever having been different.
200 yrs behind?…nope more like a 1000yrs at best!
The screw is now well and truly turning as is has done for all previous major mythological tall tales when the strings are revealed,
Then the attendance falls off gradually, no matter what threats and pleadings are made to the ‘faithful’ then they find they are openly challenged and they have no way of combating or even defeating the challenge, then they are shunned…finally bankrupted, it is a slow downward spiral towards irrelevancy and extinction.
We are seeing it right here.
A Roman Catholic… Cardinal Carlo Martini finally has admitted failure!
Scotland has challenged them and looks like it will defeat them…now it is Ireland’s turn…they will both find it much easier then they think!
Because nothing trumps humanity and rationality not even fairy tales and threats of make believe Gothic horror!
I suspect this will not go far as they are distracted by the need to penetrate dogmas into their schoolboys-this takes a lot of holy time.
Not always and entirely against human rights. “Rerum Novarum” and “Caritas in Veritate” are both somewhat supportive of the rights of labor organizing — though with major limits. (The Church had some obvious motives to object to the notion of abolition of private property.) It seems likely a kind of rare “stopped clock” phenomenon, though.
Sure, they support certain kinds of property rights. And when that framework is used to oppose other human rights, that’s still being against human rights.
For example, this is from Rerum Novarum, with my emphasis:
That’s not “limited” support for rights. That’s a statement against equality based on gender, orientation, identity, etc. and against the freedom to have sex outside of marriage with a consenting partner. And notice how it’s all propped up by appeals to a god? That’s not what a human right is anyway. If they’re anything at all, they’re what we make them, based on our own authority.
Personally, I think this primate is just monkeying around on us.
I suppose I shouldn’t Ape the primate. it would be insulting, to the Ape.
Lots of possibilities. You could come out in favor of gay marriage, the use of contraception or abortion. You could give priestly ordinances to a woman. Or you could steal money from the church.
The inclusion/exclusion criteria of a group tells you a lot about their priorities.
I now know why he’s called Primate; sitting on his perch throwing feces at us.
Either a) directly antagonize the Pope, or directly question the Church’s authority without permission or without apology, b) get caught committing some horrible crime that no amount of Public Relations studio magic can ever whitewash, c) volunteer as a sacrificial lamb to be sacrificed as a scapegoat, or d) get caught trying to found a new sect or religion.
Like I said, directly antagonizing the Pope or questioning the Church’s authority will get you fired and or excommunicated.
And here we have one example of what the Catholic Church would consider a “horrible crime that no amount of Public Relations studio magic can ever whitewash.”
You would think that the Vatican would consider revising the inclusion/exclusion criteria at least so they wouldn’t appear as gilded hypocrites, but…
I recall when one more more hospital ships floated off the coast of Ireland, just outside Irish territorial waters, to provide abortions for women who were prohibited from getting them in-country. That was years ago. I wonder if they’re still there?
Another one of my very tangential Digressions:
(Possibly apocryphal) I recall an anthropology major friend in college told me the story he heard in class that the first book on lower primates was The sexual behavior of primates. The average person at the time was more familiar with the term for the religious office pronounced “Pree-mah-tay” than the one pronounced “Pry-mate.” According to the story, the book became a runaway best-seller (for its time). We can speculate as to whether the readers could tell the difference. [/snark]
I always immediately picture a chimpanzee wearing a Mitre and a sheepish grin.
anubisprime@ #28
Excellent post. Encouraging.
He is called “primate” because he is “first”, from the Latin primus. The term for the bishop came before the term for the ape. Incidentally, the text of Rerum Novarum> is in Latin, and the word translated “man” is homo, which is gender neutral. “Adult male” is vir in Latin. So it is not being sexist.
That’s a good point. I would’ve noticed that if I had checked the Latin, but I didn’t bother. My mistake. However, it is still inherently sexist and homophobic to claim the purpose of sex is baby-making.
And if a god is so opposed to humanity that it wants to claim the divine authority to make that the purpose of sex, it hasn’t yet made a reasonable case for that, nor has it forced us all to agree with it against our own best interests. I’m fairly sure that’s not going to happen any time soon either, since gods are far too busy not existing.
The idea that sex is primarily for baby-making is stupid, but not actually sexist or homophobic. It comes from the notion that sex has to be justified; which apparently comes from a fear of pleasure. Think of H. L. Mencken’s definition of puritanism: “The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.” So sexual activity is permitted in the Catholic Church if the primary intention of the couple is to make a baby.
Now, there is plenty of homophobia and sexism in the Catholic Church. The argument against women becoming priests is basically that women are inferior to men; Thomas Aquinas states that explicitly. The Vatican says that argument is no longer used, but if anyone really believes that, I want to talk to you about some oceanfront property in Utah. If they did believe that women were equal to men, then they would allow women to be priests.
The Vatican saying that homosexuality is “intrinsically disordered” is homophobic, pure and simple.
But the idea of sex being only proper if the couple is trying to make babies is neither homophobic or sexist. It is a stupidity of a different sort, developed by celibate men.
Blame Carolus Linnaeus for that pretentious taxon name. I would have preferred something more neutral, like Manifera (“hand bearers”), from feet being modified for grasping.
It’s worth nothing that an old taxonomic name for nonhuman primates/maniferans was Quadrumana (“four hands”), with us being Bimana (“two hands”). But it’s too late to use Manifera or Quadrumana instead of Primates.