German Dhimmitude Alert from Catholic Exchange, with thanks to David:
Mardi Gras, Shrove Tuesday, Fat Tuesday and Pancake Tuesday are among the many names for the custom of keeping a festival on the last day before the beginning of the Christian penitential season of Lent. In most countries that have European roots, Mardi Gras has always included elements mocking Catholic ceremonies and customs.But the tone has changed since the growth of what Christians are recognizing as a new militant secularism that specifically fosters hatred of Christianity. One skit planned for Cologne features the Pope and the Cardinal Archbishop of Cologne as homosexual pop stars who end up in bed together. Last year, a float in the Dusseldorf parade showed Cardinal Meisner striking a match to a pregnant woman tied to the stake, the words "I had an abortion" written on her. The float’s caption read, “Fostering Tradition.”
The custom for making fun of Cathlic symbols goes back to the Middle Ages said Matthias von der Bank, a historian from Cologne's Carnival Museum said, “In the Middle Ages, carnival was a festival of reverse worlds and a playful expression of this," von der Bank said. "So Christian symbols, for example, were turned upside down.”...
Although the rule of the Düsseldorf carnival committee was that there would be no floats dealing with religion this year, parade organizers seem to feel that Catholicism does not qualify. A float in the Dusseldorf parade featured a statue of Pope Benedict wearing the jersey of the often-defeated soccer team Fortune. The message was clear: the Catholic Church is the losing team and attacking it is acceptable.
Bernd Jost, spokesman for the Dusseldorf carnival committee said that the religion the committee wants to exempt is Islam. “In view of the current debate, we will be keeping very clear of things related to Muslims,” Jost said. “We don't want to fuel hatred,” Jost said. But he admitted that the real motive is the need to keep parade spectators safe.
Of course. If you make fun of Catholicism, nothing will happen. If you make fun of Islam, you're taking your life into your hands.
yes and it is all perfectly acceptable and understood by everyone without demur.
JC wasn't kidding when he called us sheep and our politicians are our bellwethers leading us into the slaughteryard..
Would you like me to stretch my neck out now sir?
Further proof that anti-Catholicism is the "last acceptable prejudice."
At least we have the opportunity to set a good example for Islam with our reaction: No fatalities, no charred cars. Not a tall order, really. ;)
Further proof that anti-Catholicism is the "last acceptable prejudice."
Posted by: Shinoliite
Not true.
Fat rednecks are still fair game too
Is it possible that feelings that cannot be expressed, towards the belief-system, and those adherents of that belief-system, causing such physical, intellectual, and moral disruption, upheaval, and sense of menace within European societies and to European peoples, out of fear, are instead being diverted, without recognition of what is happening, toward much easier and more obvious and more conventional targets, the Catholic Church in this case, and of course, wherever possible, the state of Israel and of course that whipping-boy, with or without the gaucheries of the current President, the government and people of the United States, which more than once has helped to rescue Europe, and may (or may not) do so again. "But it's not antisemitic to criticize Israel" claim the most transparent of vicious critics, and they are quite wrong, because if that criticism consistently omits the legal, moral, and historic claims of the Jews, leaves out the nature of Islam and hence the nature of Arab and Muslim opposition to Israel, accepts without a moment's hesitation the most obvious fabrications, as the "Palestinian people." And as for the bad press of the United States, a country whose generosity is matched only by the naivety with which it continues to accept the role the world has apparently assigned to it -- responsible for rescuing people after every disaster, no matter how vicious those people or the country they come from, protecting Europe with the gigantic sums still devoted to defense, even thought the average European works far less, and has a much higher real standard of living, than do long-suffering Americans (and not least those Americans who supply the troops, both in the regular army, and in the Reserves and the National Guard). The Western world should be falling all over itself thanking Israel for so long guarding the Holy Land, keeping it out of Muslim control, and for being the lightning rod of the Jihad for so long -- and doing everything it can to support Israel. And that same Western world may deplore the naivete of American policy, but it should not for one second criticize anything the Americans have done in, say, Iraq or Afghanistan on moral grounds. And all those in Europe who want it to remain part of the West should be declaring their solidarity with the United States and Americans, in every conceivable way.
Meanwhile, don't expect any criticism of Islam and The Hate Whose Name We Dare Not Speak. Fear is all over. Fear of frothing members of fanatical mobs; fear of the use of the "wealth" weapon by the recipients of oil revenues, who did nothing to deserve that wealth but are good at employing it, whether through boycotts (the denial of custom) or bribery (Western hirelings of Arabs), fear of others who, preaching a belief-system full of inculcated hate and hysteria directed at all Infidels, working quietly, with outward smiles and calls for "dialogue" and promises of something called, but never defined, as "European Islam" (and what would that "European Islam" be like? What Qur'an would it use, and what version of the Hadith?, and how would the Muhammad of "European Islam" differ from the one we have before us today, animating the minds of hundreds of millions, who find him uswa hasana, al-insan al-kamil?). Why bother to mock those who threaten death world-wide to every Dane, and by implication to all those within the Lands of the Infidels who would dare to publish cartoons that might, in just the teenist-tiny way, make reference to the possibilities of violence that at least some might detect in -- Islam?
The real reason that many Europeans hate the Catholic Church is that it has the courage to remind people in season and out of season that our sexuality is about making babies and making lifetime friends who will cooperate together to procreate the next generation. The sybaritic life-styles of those who mock this common sense perspective on life and love are demographic Jihad enablers. They are dominated by fear - the fear of the self-sacrificial love connected with fidelity in marriage and placing the welfare of children above career and compulsive consumption goals. They also fear telling the truth about Jihad and Islamist designs on their own culture and life-styles.
It's particularly offensive that the mock should display disrespect by homoerotic displays. Benedict XVI, while still Cardinal Ratzinger, insisted that it is wrong to succomb to the reductionism involved in defining people by their sexual inclinations. He called for love and respect for homosexually inclined people, but insisted that it is wrong to redefine marriage to exclude family. He also insisted that same sex intercourse is not conducive to human flourishing. There was no call to adopt punitive attitudes toward adults who choose to engage in homosexual activity in private. But he insisted (along with the overwhelming majority of people in the world and in this country) that such practices should not be placed on a par with sexuality that is open to life long commitment to the beloved in the context of a project open to life and formation of the next generation.
Quite possible, I'd think. I tend to be sceptical of psychological explanations, but this sounds highly plausible.
Many not being incurably unobservant and incurious and deceived, as we tend to think, but actually feeling so menaced by Islam as to want to strike back somewhere, anywhere (anywhere that's safe to strike) without acknowledging their feelings to themselves. Quite a thought.
This shows clearly the difference between Catholicism and Islam. In a Catholic majority area, it is a longstanding custom to allow humor and parody about the faith. Even when degenerate anti-Christians ridicule the church with such obscenities, they are tolerated.
In contrast, Muslims riot and murder over cartoons. Yes, some prejudices are forbidden while others are approved and promoted. As a fat, Southern, Catholic, half-Semitic, redneck, I should know.
I've heard that similar things are happening in Andalusia, of all places, where the usual celebrations include mocking, er, you know.
Well, so far, no reports of Purim celebrations going PC. If I had a piece of chalk handy, I'd be writing Ahmadinejad's name on the sole of one of my shoes and Haman's on the other.
Yes:
The village of Bocairent near Valencia decided this year to discontinue the century old tradition of mocking and burning effigies of Muhammad.
http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/823?from=30&comments_per_page=10
The village of Bocairent near Valencia decided this year to discontinue the century old tradition of mocking and burning effigies of Muhammad.
Posted by: Yojimbo
OH MAN! I wished I would have gone there on vacation!
Like Tom above said, the sexual libertines are pretty much aware that the Catholic Church had been right all along. Would the Europeans be in such a panic today about Islam had they followed the Catholic Church's injuctions against abortion and euthanasia ? All the untold millions of young that the Europeans had aborted would have grown up to be loyal citizens, supporting their now decripit welfare state. Instead in a access of complete blindness they apparently depended on migration from the Muslim world to support their geriatric populations. Which wouldn't be so bad had the Muslims shown any inclination to work at filling up the hightech jobs. Wierd and just as weird is the hatred that homosexuals have for the Catholic Church considering that the Church had to take a lot of heat for the depredations of largely homosexual priests in the US.
"Further proof that anti-Catholicism is the "last acceptable prejudice."
Posted by: Shinoliite
Actually, anti-Catholicism was the first prejudice that started the whole anti-Western ball rolling. Luther's Reformation was one major catalyst for the remergence of the modern Gnostic nebula that eventually spawned Leftism (along with other amorphous movements that partake of this nebula, including Leftism's polar opposite, the ultra-right-wing: the Communism and Fascism of the 20th century); followed by the looser, more culturally insouciant and prevalent PC that currently impedes the West from rationally responding to the problem of Islam.
They have fear, it´s normal, I understand the fear, but the state can´t have fear. It´s suicidal.