Tetherd Cow Ahead

One of the great joys of living in a society with a relatively high secularly-inclined population with a penchant for larrikanism, is watching the occasional clashes between the church and the heathens when they occur.

This time it all started when someone (the Catholic Church says it wasn’t them and the Catholic Premier of NSW, Morris Iemma, says it wasn’t him) decided that any form of protest of the upcoming World Youth Day (or as some wag has pointed out: World [Roman Catholic] Youth [if you’re a bishop] Day [more like a week]), is not acceptable. Especially, it seems, if that protest is in the form of a t-shirt that might ‘annoy’ the pilgrims. The Sydney constabulary have duly had special laws created for them, without consultation from the very great proportion of the non-Catholic community, that give them quite surprising leeway to apprehend protesters, pranksters or even completely innocent bystanders on the flimsiest of pretexts.

Of course this kind of stupidity is, thankfully, still treated with the derision it deserves by a goodly number of Australians, to the point that one beloved Sydney entrepreneur, Remo Giuffré, the man behind the Remo General Store, is running a contest to see who can come up with the best t-shirt slogan for the event.

I want about ten of these.

About a quarter of Australia’s population is self-declared as Christian Catholic.* Over the last few decades, the younger part of the population has been demonstrating a slow inclination to drift away from the conventional Christian Church (and indeed, organized religion altogether) but in about 20 days time in Sydney, the Catholic Church will attempt to reddress that trend by exerting its influence over the waning faith of the young people of Australia and holding an event that they are calling (some might say duplicitously) World ‘Youth’ Day.

Tourism New South Wales’s ‘Sydney’ page breathlessly gushes:

New South Wales looks forward to welcoming young people for World Youth Day 2008, the biggest event to be held in Australia, ever.

Poster and radio advertising around Sydney is urging people who are ‘not involved’ with World Youth Day to take a holiday or stay off the roads. The NSW Government is spending a small fortune on the event and the Catholic Church, notably the oleaginous and unpalatable Cardinal George Pell, is of course smirking all over the media.

I’m not entirely sure why, but if it is true that this is ‘the biggest event to be held in Australia, ever’† this makes me incredibly depressed. I intended to make this post a kind of jocular look at a silly phenomenon, in keeping with The Pope’s Cologne and Mother Teresa’s Breath Mist, but you know, I just don’t find it funny that at the beginning of the 21st Century, a two-thousand year old superstitious belief system has enough currency (metaphorically, practically and politically) to bring an entire modern city to a standstill. It’s particularly disheartening that this exercise is nominally aimed at young people – it’s hard not to be cynical about such things.

I often hear the argument, when it comes to religion, that it does no harm, and people should be able to make up their own minds about what they believe. While I disagree strongly that religion does no harm, I certainly approve of the concept that a person should be able to make up their own mind about it – with the caveat that they should also be given the tools to make their decision an informed one. This particularly applies to the young.

The Catholic Church has never been particularly squeamish about converting non-believers so I don’t expect that an event masquerading as Australia’s Biggest Sleepover is going to even register a blip on their moral radar, but in my opinion this is a sneaky, disingenuous ruse to attempt to lever more religious thought into a country that has been until recently making a slow but encouraging trek toward secularism (inherited religions notwithstanding).

I put this thought to you Cardinal Pell and Pope Benedict: if you’re really confident that God will come through with the goods, and you are morally committed to the betterment of young people as you claim, concentrate your efforts on giving them a proper education and the ability to make up their minds based on what we know to be true instead of attempting to indoctrinate them with intangible, absurd mythology while they are still impressionable. Give them the data and the brain tools and let them decide, when they come of age, whether or not to believe in a two-millennium-old fairy tale.

Surely, if you are right, and God really does exist, then you have nothing at all to be afraid of.

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*Statistics from the 2006 Australian census.

†I guess it depends on your definitions of ‘biggest’, ‘event’ and ‘ever’…

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While we’re on the subject of religious personal hygiene products… this just in courtesy of JR:

You can buy it here. Confuse Creationists today! Wear the Pope’s Cologne and have breath like Mother Teresa, whilst being an atheist!

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I’m pretty sure this is a joke. Thing is, with religion, you just can’t tell.

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Sheesh. The Catholic Church only ever really had one original idea and even that wasn’t terribly popular. Now they (or someone using their credentials anyway*) has gone into competition with Tetherd Cow Ahead and is treading on our turf…

PZ Myers over at Pharyngula brings to our attention a recent product to hit the Perfume Department shelves: The Pope’s Cologne. Long time readers of The Cow will know that this is well-worn territory in these parts, after our introduction in May 2006 of Lamb of God and prior to that (because we are not at all partisan here in The Cow Perfume Laboratories) of Satan’s preferred cologne Brimstone.

The Pope’s Cologne website claims to have in their possession the ‘private formula of Pope Pius IX’ and spruiks it as an “aristocratic, Old World cologne with suprising freshness…”. I hope their perfume chemistry is better than their spelling, but somehow I doubt it.

And we must wonder at the ‘suprising’ freshness. Why surprising (presuming that’s what they were trying to spell)? Is it because Pius IX is renowned as a smelly old bugger? Or did they whip it up out any old stuff they had lying around and then excitedly proclaim “Hey! Who’da thought turps and orange peel with a dash of kerosene would smell, like, fresh?”

The San Francisco Chronicle tells the story of the perfume’s rediscovery by Dr. Fred Hass, a general practitioner from California:

Hass found the purported recipe about seven years ago in a limited-edition 1963 cookbook published in the United States. The cookbook says the recipe is believed to have been passed down by the family of a French general who was in Pius’ papal guard.

One night, after a few glasses of wine with friends, he decided to make the concoction in his kitchen.

‘After a few glasses of wine with friends…’ Uh-huh. Lot’s of ‘great’ things happen like that.

“It was very pleasant,” said Hass’ cohort, Hank Sandbach of Sonoma, a retired vice president of Nabisco. “To think, if you close your eyes you’re in the presence of the pope. And if you splash a little on you get something even headier.”

Whoa there Hank! What exactly are you suggesting by that? Are you thinking, perhaps, that you chaps might have undersold yourselves there, now that the SF Chronicle has interviewed you, and that you should have tried, maybe, for God’s Perfume?

Here’s what Hass, undoubtedly aided by Hank’s expertise at the helm of Nabisco, came up with for the catchline for his scent:

The Pope’s Cologne ….a fresh new fragrance from the past.

Fresh. New. Two words not usually associated with the past. Usually things from the past are Old and Dusty. But hey.

Thing is, seeing as Pius IX was the Pope who declared Papal Infallibility as official Catholic Dogma I’m just suprised they missed the obvious marketing line:

The Pope’s Cologne. You simply CAN’T fail to impress.

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*Despite the use of one of their figureheads, the Catholic Church doesn’t appear to have anything to do with this venture.

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A study made last year by researchers at the University of Minnesota found that people declaring themselves to be atheists are the least trusted in America. A phone survey of more than 2000 people rated atheists ‘…below Muslims, recent immigrants, homosexuals and other groups as “sharing their vision of American society.”‘

In America, it seems, one has freedom of religion, but when it comes to freedom of thought, not so much.

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I keep promising to turn the scathing bovine eye of The Cow onto Scientology at some point but whenever attempt to pick up my quill on that particular subject my brain just turns to custard. It should be just like shooting fish in a barrel, but heck, it’s such a small barrel and there are so many big fish and if I wanted to do something futile and time-wasting I could just go play another level of BioShock and have a LOT more fun …

Anyways, Atlas Cerise brings my attention to this story in the Guardian about some recent antics involving the Church* of Scientology. To synopsize: a young man picketing the CoS headquarters in London as part of a peaceful demonstration by the anti-Scientology group Anonymous was arrested and is facing prosecution for calling Scientology a ‘cult’.

Let me make it quite clear what’s happening here, because it’s way more scary than the usual dumbo stuff that the Scientologists themselves manage to concoct: the CoS itself is not bringing this accusation against the teenager responsible; it’s the City of London Police who have charged the boy. He was told by an officer that the word ‘cult’ was ‘abusive and insulting’ and that he could not carry a placard which read ‘Scientology is not a religion, it is a dangerous cult.’

This is how the Ask Oxford online dictionary defines the word ‘cult’:

cult • noun 1 a system of religious worship directed towards a particular figure or object. 2 a small religious group regarded as strange or as imposing excessive control over members. 3 something popular or fashionable among a particular section of society.

Hands up who thinks the Bill are going to pull this one off?

What’s deeply worrying is that the best proper accusation that the UK Law can bring against this boy would appear to be that he was airing an opinion. If that kind of thing is encouraged, then Scientologists and all the other loonies like them will get a free ticket to legitimacy.

If you’re not scared about that, you should be.

UPDATE: Well, I don’t know why it surprises me to find out† that, in fact, it seems that the CoS was involved in the above incident. Not directly, but certainly implicitly. It turns out that for some time now the City of London Police have been, shall we say, receptive to offers of entertainment and donations from L. Ron’s flock. It appears that the laws under which the young man I mentioned above were detained are almost never actually acted upon, except, perhaps when you have friends in the right places.

Let there be no mistake: Dotty belief combined with money & influence always equals setbacks for the human species. Just look at the havoc the Catholic Church has managed in its time.

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*Even though I am in no way religiously inclined, something really grates on me having to refer to these loons as a ‘church’. They are no more a church than the entire fandom of Dungeons & Dragons is a church, only a lot less rooted in reality.

†Thanks to the Skeptical Rogues.

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