From BBC News:
A shaken Pope Benedict has celebrated Christmas Eve Mass in St Peter's Basilica shortly after being knocked over by a female spectator. The woman, said to be mentally unstable, managed to grab him by his vestments near the neck as a security guard tried to overwhelm her. The Vatican said she had also tried to jump at the Pope last year. French Cardinal Roger Etchegaray, 87, was standing a few metres away and fell and broke his hip during the incident.

Proceeding with the Mass, Benedict looked shaken and stumbled over some words. The Vatican later said the Pope was unharmed and would give Mass on Christmas Day as planned. "It was an assault, but it wasn't dangerous because she wasn't armed," said Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi.

The BBC's David Willey, in Rome, says the woman is now undergoing checks at a medical facility in Rome. Vatican officials named her as 25-year-old Susanna Maiolo and said she held dual Swiss and Italian nationality. The Christmas Eve service in the Vatican started two hours early because officials did not want the pontiff, 82, to get tired.

Repeat incident
Dressed in a red hooded sweatshirt, the attacker leaped over the barrier towards the Pope, prompting gasps from the crowd. Eyewitness Marybeth Burns, a US tourist, told the Associated Press the woman "sort of flew over the barricade. The Holy Father went down and all of a sudden all the security people were all on top of it, you know the whole pile there, getting her off and pulling him back up," she said.

Security officials rushed down the main aisle to detain the woman, who was later arrested by police. Vatican security staff said they recognised the woman as being the same person who had tried to jump a barricade to get close to the Pope at the same service last year. The Pope had to be helped up by his master of ceremonies. The pontiff had earlier appeared briefly at nightfall at the window of his studio to light a candle in a sign of peace.
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I didn't really watch any TV today, nor did I visit any news websites so I missed this story. It is a belter of a story though, isn't it? The Pope gets knocked over by a woman. Genius!!!

Notice that the woman is 'mentally unstable'; she's not merely allowed to show her repugnance for the Catholic Church, no, she has to be mentally unstable (much like an awful lot of religious folk).

Oh well, madame, my hat is off to you. Congratulations!

I am gay. Deal with it.

If you have a problem with that, I couldn't give a flying f**k. If you're too bigoted to understand and accept me for who I am then you are too bigoted to be my friend.

Everyone else though... Have a happy Christmas!

If he ever existed, Jesus was a Jew, and was killed by the Jews. Biblical historians think it's highly unlikely he was born in December, and that it was more likely September. How many shepherds herd sheep in the middle of winter?

The Jews don't think he was the son of the made-up deity, and are waiting for the 'messiah' to come. The Christians think he was the son of the made-up deity who can't re-grow the limbs of amputees, and the Muslims think he was merely a prophet, and that there won't be a 'messiah'.

I think it's all based on the Pagan ritual of celebrating the feast of the Son of Isis (the Goddess of Nature) which was on Dec 25th. Funnily enough, the Pagans gave gifts on this day, and ate a large feast. The Romans also celebrated the Winter Solstice. The Mummers were a group of costumed singers and dancers that went from house to house entertaining people - that's where carol singers come from...

The Pagans in Europe celebrated the Winter Solstice and called it Yule. Hmmm, yule log, anyone? Yule was symbolic of the Pagan sun god, Mithras. It was celebrated on the shortest day of the year. After that, the days grew longer and warmer, and it was customary to light candles to encourage the sun to return.

Kissing under the mistletoe was a fertility ritual, and holly berries were thought to be a food of the gods.

The Druids used evergreen trees as religious symbols.

It was in the year 350 that Pope Julius I declared that Christ's birthday was December 25th. He was trying to make it easier for Pagans to convert to Christianity.

Christ-Mass began in Germany. The earliest record of an evergreen being decorated in a Christian celebration was in 1521 in the Alsace region of Germany.

Given the above, Christmas is not a Christian festival at all. It is a collection of traditions and old Pagan and Druidic celebrations. Tell me, where in the Bible does it mention Santa Claus? Or decorating evergreen trees at this time? (I know it mentions taking trees inside and decorating them, and clearly mentions the Pagans.) And what about those red and white candy canes that we hang on these trees? I can't find it anywhere.

I'm not a Christmas grinch, but I don't treat this time as a Christian religious festival, or even any sort of religious festival. The Catholics and Christians can attempt to claim it as their own - "Look, aren't we all nice and giving?" - but it most certainly is not theirs.

Spend the next few days with family and friends and be happy that you're alive and well. Merry Christmas.

From BBC News:
A Pakistani court has ordered that two men have their ears and noses cut off, as punishment for doing the same to a woman who refused to marry one of them.

The two brothers were found guilty of kidnapping 20-year-old Fazeelat Bibi, one of their cousins, in September. The judge in Lahore also sentenced them to life in prison. Sentence was passed on Monday under a rarely invoked Islamic law dating from the 1980s. In the past similar sentences have been revoked on appeal.

'Eye for an eye'
Government prosecutor Ehtisham Qadir said the punishment had been awarded in accordance with the Islamic principle of "an eye for an eye".

Sher Mohammad and Amanat abducted Fazeelat Bibi as she returned home from work at a brick kiln in the Raiwind area of Lahore, the court heard. "They put a noose around her neck, and then cut off her ears and nose," Mr Qadir told the BBC. Three alleged accomplices are still being sought by police. The crime was committed after Fazeelat Bibi's parents refused to give her hand in marriage to Sher Mohammad, Mr Qadir said.

Islamic laws were introduced in Pakistan during the military regime of General Ziaul Haq in the 1980s. The BBC's M Ilyas Khan in Islamabad says punishments prescribed under the laws have rarely been awarded, and never carried out. Pakistani human rights activists have long campaigned for more to be done to stop attacks against women, which often include facial disfigurement. However, they also disagree with the type of punishment handed out in Lahore, correspondents say.
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Well, that's just another example of an utterly barbaric idea from the law books of Islam. How progressive! Rather than just stick to life imprisonment, the judge also thinks that barbarity should be dealt out. F**king idiotic religious laws!!!

Pakistan is going backwards, not forwards, and we're giving them money in aid! What the hell for? Why are UK taxpayers paying hard-earned money to countries that have punishments like this? Why?!

From BBC News:
A priest from North Yorkshire has advised his congregation to shoplift if they find themselves in hard times. Father Tim Jones, the parish priest of St Lawrence and St Hilda in York, said people should steal from big chains rather than small businesses. He said society's attitude to those in need "leaves some people little option but crime".

However the Archdeacon of York said: "The Church of England does not advise anyone to shoplift". North Yorkshire Police described the sermon as "highly irresponsible".

'Catastrophic folly'
A force spokesman said despite people getting in difficult situations "shoplifting or committing other crimes should never be the solution. To do this would make the downward spiral even more rapid, both on an individual basis and on society as a whole," he said. Speaking to his congregation on Sunday, Father Jones said: "My advice, as a Christian priest, is to shoplift. I do not offer such advice because I think that stealing is a good thing, or because I think it is harmless, for it is neither. I would ask that they do not steal from small, family businesses, but from national businesses, knowing that the costs are ultimately passed on to the rest of us in the form of higher prices.

"When people are released from prison, or find themselves suddenly without work or family support, then to leave them for weeks and weeks with inadequate or clumsy social support is monumental, catastrophic folly. We create a situation which leaves some people little option but crime."

'Important issues'
Speaking later on BBC Radio York, Father Jones said his intention had not been to rally people to shoplifting, but to encourage people to give more to charity to avoid those in need from becoming so desperate. "If one has exhausted every legal opportunity to get money and you're still in a desperate situation it is a better moral thing to do to take absolutely no more than you need for no longer than you need," he said.

However the Archdeacon of York, the Venerable Richard Seed, said: "Father Tim Jones is raising important issues about the difficulties people face when benefits are not forthcoming, but shoplifting is not the way to overcome these difficulties."

Father Jones made the news in May 2008 when he made a protest about Playboy branded stationery being aimed at children. He went into a local stationers and threw the Playboy merchandise on the floor.
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Father Jones made a protest about Playboy stationery, but couldn't bring himself to protest against his own church for the child abuse scandal? Hmmm...

So, this priest thinks it's okay to shoplift when you've exhausted all legal ways of getting money? What a tool! If you are in such a desperate need for money, you have benefits you can claim. If you need more money than you are getting from your benefits, then you are clearly doing something wrong.

If your 'god' loves the poor more than it loves the rich, then it would find a way to help you that doesn't involve hurting or depriving others of their own property. If it is unable to do this, then it doesn't deserve the praise or the attributes you give it. If your god is incapable of even providing just a meal to you, then why do you place your faith in it? Place your faith in humanity instead - at least it delivers.

"My advice, as a Christian priest, is to shoplift." - And my advice as a non-theist moral human is to ignore the advice of someone who bases his decisions on a two thousand year old book of nonsense. My advice is to think for yourselves and to not listen to someone else.

From BBC News:
An unholy row has broken out in New Zealand over a church billboard aimed at "challenging stereotypes" about the birth of Jesus Christ. A dejected-looking Joseph lies in bed next to Mary under the caption, "Poor Joseph. God was a hard act to follow".

St Matthew-in-the-City Church in Auckland, which erected the billboard, said it had intended to provoke debate. But the Catholic Church, among others, has condemned it as "inappropriate" and "disrespectful". Within hours of its unveiling, the billboard had been defaced with brown paint.

The church's vicar, Archdeacon Glynn Cardy, said the aim of the billboard had been to lampoon the literal interpretation of the Christmas conception story. "What we're trying to do is to get people to think more about what Christmas is all about," he told the New Zealand Press Association (NZPA). "Is it about a spiritual male God sending down sperm so a child would be born, or is it about the power of love in our midst as seen in Jesus?" He told NZPA that the church had received e-mails and phone calls about the controversial image. "About 50% said they loved it, and about 50% said it was terribly offensive," he said. "But that's out of about 20 responses - this is New Zealand."

But Lyndsay Freer, spokeswoman for the Catholic Diocese of Auckland, said the poster was offensive to Christians. "Our Christian tradition of 2,000 years is that Mary remains a virgin and that Jesus is the son of God, not Joseph," she told the New Zealand Herald. "Such a poster is inappropriate and disrespectful."

The family values group Family First said any debate about the Virgin birth should be held inside the church. "To confront children and families with the concept as a street billboard is completely irresponsible and unnecessary," Family First director Bob McCroskrie told the news website stuff.co.nz.
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I think it's funny, and I think that the idiots at the Catholic church are just being childish. Your entire religion is based upon the idea that Mary was a virgin. Your all-powerful god couldn't simply bring a human into existence, it had to make a woman pregnant. A woman who was married to a man. Given that you think your god is all-knowing, it would've known that it would cause problems thousands of years into the future. Or is your god not all-powerful or all-knowing?

How you lot can still believe this nonsense is beyond me. It is clearly rubbish. The virgin birth is both physically impossible and based upon zero evidence. Hearsay is not evidence. If three friends of mine, and I said a unicorn just walked down the street, did it? No. Would our four voices convince anyone? No. It's hearsay. It's not evidence. Wake up and smell the houmous.

I also find it strange how the Catholic church is protesting about this, but has absolutely nothing to say on the continuing scandal of child abuse committed by Catholic priests, and the shameful way the church covered it up. Nothing to say on this matter? No one?

From BBC News:
An Irish bishop has resigned, weeks after his handling of child sex abuse allegations was severely criticised. A report on abuse by priests in the Dublin Archdiocese found Donal Murray's handling of one case while an auxiliary bishop in the 1980s was "inexcusable". The Vatican said the Pope had accepted his resignation as bishop of Limerick.

Dr Murray said: "I know full well my resignation cannot undo the pain that survivors of abuse have suffered in the past and continue to suffer each day."

The Murphy report into abuse in the Dublin Archdiocese from 1975 to 2004 was highly critical of the Catholic church hierarchy's handling of priests suspected of being child abusers.

The report said many bishops were more concerned with preserving the reputation of the church rather than protecting children. It found that during Dr Murray's time as an auxiliary bishop in Dublin from 1982 to 1996, he was dismissive of complaints about a priest who went on to abuse again.

Dr Murray said on Thursday he had taken time to study the report in full before deciding to resign. "I humbly apologise once again to all who were abused as little children," he said. "To all survivors of abuse, I repeat that my primary concern is to assist in every way that I can on their journey towards finding closure and serenity. I asked the Holy Father to allow me to resign and to appoint a new bishop to the diocese because I believe that my presence will create difficulties for some of the survivors who must have first place in our thoughts and prayers."

Dr Murray held talks about his future with the Pope in the Vatican last week. He said Pope Benedict had accepted his resignation on Monday but agreed that Dr Murray should return to Limerick to allow him be in his diocese when the announcement was made.

'Inexcusable'
The Murphy report said Bishop Murray did not deal properly with the suspicions and concerns that were expressed to him in relation to one priest, Fr Tom Naughton in 1983. A short time later, factual evidence of Naughton's abusing emerged in another parish. The Murphy report found Bishop Murray's failure to reinvestigate the earlier suspicions was "inexcusable".

In May 1998, Naughton pleaded guilty to six counts of indecently assaulting three boys in 1985 and 1986. He was jailed for three years, reduced on appeal to two and a half years. On Wednesday Naughton was jailed again - this time for three years for sexually abusing an altar boy between 1982 and 1984.
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Well, there's a surprise... Another scandal involving Catholic priests abusing children. When are we going to see an end to this? Why are no media outlets linking Catholic priests with child abuse, and calling for the Catholic Church to be removed from all areas of power in our country?

Why do we have bishops in our House of Lords? We have seen time and time again that bishops are more concerned with protecting the Church than protecting the children in their care, and yet we don't take the next step in removing these vile creatures from positions of power that affect millions of people.

I'm not saying all Catholic priests are child abusers, but there is a definite link between the two. If there weren't, then we'd see some other link between, say, postmen and child abuse, or hamburger sellers in a van and child abuse. But we don't. We continue to see that it's Catholic priests. If you can't judge every Catholic priest by the actions of a few, at what number do we start to judge all? One, two, a hundred, a thousand? How many more victims of these evil monsters do we have to uncover before we'll eject this evil enabler of child abuse from our lands?

From BBC News:
The new bishop to the armed forces has apologised over comments he made about how the Taliban could be admired for their "conviction to their faith".

The Right Reverend Dr Stephen Venner said his words had been taken out of context by the Daily Telegraph. "I'm not trying to support the Taliban," he told the BBC. "At the moment what they are doing is evil." He said he would be "deeply grieved" if anyone had taken offence and hoped he had not jeopardised his job.

Following his comments in the Monday's Daily Telegraph, one MP accused the bishop of giving "comfort and succour to the enemy".

In his interview Bishop Venner said the attitude taken towards the Taliban had been "too simplistic". He told the paper the insurgents could "perhaps be admired for their conviction to their faith and their sense of loyalty to each other. There's a large number of things that the Taliban say and stand for which none of us in the West could approve, but simply to say therefore that everything they do is bad is not helping the situation," he told the paper.

'Very apologetic'
But in a BBC interview, he admitted it may have been naive to make such comments. "I am not trying to support the Taliban," he said. "Very far from it. I am very supportive of our forces. And if what I've said and the way it's been reported, has caused offence, then of course I'm deeply grieved, and very apologetic, and if that comes under the heading of naivety then I plead guilty."

Bishop Venner said the way the interview had been written up, made his comments look "incredibly insensitive". He also insisted he had been talking about engaging with the Taliban once the military operation was over.

"It was one small phrase in quite a long interview, and a phrase that simply said you cannot describe everybody under one heading as Taliban as being equally black, equally evil," he said. "These are human beings and there are some amongst them who could - we don't know - who could perhaps be people with whom at the end of the day we could do business."

Following the publication of Bishop Venner's Daily Telegraph interview, the Liberal Democrat MP for the garrison town of Colchester, Bob Russell, said the bishop had given "comfort and succour to the enemy".

"What you never do is give comfort to the enemy. It is one thing for people to have respect for their enemy, but there is a world of difference here," he said. Mr Russell added the bishop should concentrate on "boosting the morale of our armed forces rather than boosting the morale of our enemy".

Bishop Venner had previously been the Bishop of Dover and only recently took up his post as Bishop to the Armed Forces. He will continue his role as Bishop for the Falkland Islands.
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Yet another example of religious faith being respected and held above the concept of morality; and another example of how idiocy in the 'Church' is rampant. Just because someone has faith, it does not mean they are a good person.

And why do we have a Bishop to the Armed Forces anyway? Get rid of religious interference in our government and armed forces!!!

From BBC News:
The Archbishop of Canterbury has accused the government of treating religious faith as an "eccentricity" practised by "oddities". But Rowan Williams told the Daily Telegraph ministers were wrong to think it was no longer relevant to society. Political leaders should be more open about their beliefs, he added. Dr Williams also suggested a new "supermarket ombudsman" should be established to protect the interests of Britain's rural economy. "We need more care in holding together the environmental and conservation agenda with food protection in some areas," he said.

Pope's invitation
Dr Williams told the Telegraph: "The trouble with a lot of government initiatives about faith is that they assume it is a problem, it's an eccentricity, it's practised by oddities, foreigners and minorities. The effect is to de-normalise faith, to intensify the perception that faith is not part of our bloodstream. And, you know, in great swathes of the country that's how it is." He said it would not do "any harm" for political leaders to be more open about their religious beliefs. He said the three main party leaders "curiously" all have a "very strong moral sense of some spiritual flavour. Part of establishing their human credentials is saying 'This is where my motivation comes from... I'm in politics because this is what I believe'. And that includes religious conviction."

Dr Williams also played down the Pope's invitation for disaffected Anglicans to cross over to Rome. The Vatican says it was responding to pleas from Anglicans unhappy about the creation of women bishops. The proposal would allow Anglicans to convert while preserving many of their traditions and practices. Dr Williams said: "A great many Anglo-Catholics have good reason for not being Roman Catholics. They don't believe the Pope is infallible. And that's why they're still pressing for a solution in Anglican terms, rather than what many of them see as a theologically rather eccentric option."

In 2007, former prime minister Tony Blair told the BBC that while his faith was "hugely important" to him, he avoided publicly speaking about it for fear of being labelled. "You talk about it in our system and, frankly, people do think you're a nutter," he said. The prime minister's ex-spokesman Alastair Campbell famously warned reporters: "We don't do God."
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Vast swathes of the UK population do NOT believe in any religion, and would rather it be eradicated from the public sphere. I don't mind anyone believing in a religion as long they keep it to themselves. It has no place in public, and the public should not be expected to respect it. In the same way, politicians should not be required to respect it given that our MPs are meant to represent us.

This old fart, Rowan Williams, has lost touch with the public. He's publicly stated that we should have Sharia in the UK - you know, the ISLAMIC legal system based on the words and deeds of a dead 7th century murdering warlord. Mr. Williams - I don't care about any title your religion has given you - get lost. You are a buffoon. You try to infiltrate the government and get your own bishops into the House of Lords so that they can direct policy-making. I don't care for your religion, so please get the hell out of politics and stop holding us back!!!

From the Daily Mail:
Tony Blair has confessed he would have gone to war in Iraq to remove Saddam Hussein even if he had known there were no weapons of mass destruction there.

In remarks that will outrage anti-war campaigners, the former Prime Minister said he would have 'deployed different arguments' to justify the invasion. His admission will fuel claims that he sent 179 British servicemen and women to their deaths on a false premise.

Mr Blair secured Parliamentary backing for the war in 2003 by insisting Saddam could deploy chemical and biological missiles in 45 minutes - a claim that proved to be untrue.

But asked in a BBC1 interview with presenter Fern Britton if he would still have proceeded to war if he had known Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction, Mr Blair said: 'I would still have thought it right to remove him.' He went on: 'I mean obviously you would have had to use and deploy different arguments about the nature of the threat. I can't really think that we would be better with him and his two sons still in charge but it is incredibly difficult. I sympathise with the people who were against it for perfectly good reasons and are against it now, but for me you know in the end I had to take the decision.'

The interview comes as the Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq War prepares to hear Mr Blair's evidence in the New Year.
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This is the lying c**t who was backed for being President of the EU. This is the lying b*st*rd who sent our forces into war for NO F**KING REASON!

This 'man' should be brought to justice. He should be charged with war crimes. He shouldn't be allowed to get away with this. He's a *censored*.

(And, he certainly is a great example of a good Christian/Catholic.)