Pope On Good Friday: We Are Witnessing A "Anti-Genesis.. Aimed At Eliminating The Family"...

On Good Friday at the Colosseum, Pope Benedict XVI leads The Way of the Cross. The text, written not by him but by Archbishop Angelo Comastri, can be read on Zenit here. But it is safe to assume the Pope has given it his blessing. It shows clearly that there is another side to this Pope besides that revealed in Deus Caritas Est. Some cynics might argue the rottweiler is unleashed and start going round saying: 'We told you so all along.' Ohers might feel tempted to dismiss it as a rant. Myself, I quite like it. It is always quite nice when a top cleric goes on a really top rant about the decadent narcissism of our world and doesn't mention the media, not even once. And if the Pope is not going to bang on about sin and remind us it still exists, then who is? Not Noel Edmonds, that's for sure. But more below on the story of how the Cosmic Ordering Service fulfilled Edmonds' heart's desires. A bishop's had a go at him too. Here are some of the best bits of Comastri's text:

'Lord, we have lost our sense of sin! Today a slick campaign of propaganda is spreading an inane apologia of evil, a senseless cult of Satan, a mindless desire for transgression, a dishonest and frivolour freedom, exalting impulsiveness, immorality and selfishness as if they were new heights of sophistication. Lord Jesus, open our eyes: Let us see the filth around us and recognise it for what it is, so that a single tear of sorrow can restore us to purity of heart and the breath of true freedom.'

'Lord Jesus, our affluence is making us less human, our entertainment has become a drug, a source of alienation, and our society's incessant, tedious message is an invitation to die of selfishness.'

'Surely God is deeply pained by the attack on the family. Today we seem to be witnessing a kind of anti-Genesis, a counter-plan, a diabolical pride aimed at eliminating the family. There is a move to reinvent mankind, to modify the very grammar of life as planned and willed by God.'

'Lord Jesus, purity has everywhere fallen victim to a calculated conspiracy of silence: an impure silence! People have even come to believe a complete lie: that purity is somehow the enemy of love.'

Meanwhile, the Right Rev Carl Cooper, Bishop of St Davids in Wales, has in his Easter Message had a go at Noel Edmonds'  embrace of Cosmic Ordering. Barbel Mohr's book, The Cosmic Ordering Service, is based on the premise that you can order something from the Cosmos and have your wish granted. Edmonds believes the Cosmos has granted four of his six wishes already. Read more about it on Barbel's own homepage here. She had never heard of Edmonds but after he praised her book, it shot to the top of the Amazon best-sellers. I haven't read the book and I just can't bring myself to buy it off Amazon, even though I could claim the minimal cost back on exes.

But I have read Frazer's Golden Bough, or at least the abridged version which is long enough. I'll reproduce here a story he tells about the practice of 'sympathetic magic' in Prussia: 'In Prussia they say that if you cannot catch a thief, the next best thing you can do is to get hold of a garment which he may have shed in his flight; for if you beat it soundly, the thief will fall sick. This belief is firmly rooted in the popular mind. Some eighty or ninety years ago, in the neighbourhood of Berend, a man was detected trying to steal honey, and fled, leaving his coat behind him. When he heard that the enraged owner of the honey was mauling his lost coat, he was so alarmed that he took to his bed and died.' But of course the man who cast the curse believed his magic had worked, and in a sense it had.

And that's how it works, through the power of suggestion and the phenomenal power of the mind. The reason Noel got a house in the south of France when you 'wished' for one was because he could afford to buy one and could step on a plane to go out there.

It is astonishing how in our society we are turing back towards these primitive religious beliefs. It is a strange coincidence that Frazer opened his book by discussing the cult of Diana. One can only imagine what Frazer would say if he could see Edmonds now, a top television host walking around with squiggles of the stars and bunches of grapes drawn on his hands.

It can only end in tears. I'll leave the last word to a blogger, g reeper, on this weblog:  'told my grilfrend that i wished she jsut **** off and die. that was like two years ago. she's now dead nad i blame teh cosmos.'

Posted by Ruth Gledhill @ Pope On Good Friday: We Are Witnessing A "Anti-Genesis.. Aimed At Eliminating The Family”...