This page was first created some considerable time ago - as you will see by some of the dates on the stories - but it fell by the wayside, as do many of my projects. However, I thought it worth resurrecting simply because some of the stories have lost little of their amusement value for being two years old. With any luck I will be able to start adding the occasional new story again but, failing that, at least it gives you something to read other than my standard apology. As ever, enjoy!
The Church of England has admitted that convicted pedophiles may be infiltrating congregations by claiming to be reformed. In future known offenders may be asked to sign a "contract" promising to stay away from children anywhere in the church and even to refuse hospitality from churchgoers with children.
The guidelines fail to suggest how parish priests are to continue their duties when so constrained. (Below the belt even for me, that one!)
Bishop Michael Fitzgerald, the most senior British priest in the Vatican, has emerged as the surprise favourite to succeed the late Cardinal Basil Hulme as leader of the Catholic Church in England and Wales. Against his is the fact that his fluent Arabic and intimate knowledge of Africa make him invaluable inside the Vatican.
Worldly wise and well traveled on the outside, Bishop Fitzgerald committed himself to the church from an early age and is thus unlikely to have the faintest idea what the hell is going on in the real world, but then what's new when it comes to the Papist hierarchy?
In one of those amusing stories that we would be denied, were it not for the actions of the more insane Christians in society, a woman 'preacher' has struck an unintentional blow for freedom of speech.
Ms Alison Redmond-Bate, a member of Faith Ministries, a Leeds fundamentalist group, was cleared by the high court of obstructing a police officer in the course of his duty by her preaching. The court heard that a crowd of up to 100 hecklers had gathered as she preached on the steps of Wakefield Cathedral with her mother and another woman.
The group, founded 10 years ago by Ms Bates father, Alan, is no stranger to the law. Father and daughter were previously convicted of willful obstruction in 1997 after warning a crowds in York not to turn their back on God. In the same year two male members were sentenced to three weeks in prison after shouting "sinners" at people leaving pubs in York!
Amusing as these events may seem when written down, the fact that the police have felt constrained to intervene proves how offensive these people must become when preaching. However, giving ruling in the case against Ms Redmond-Bate, Lord Justice Sedley said that, "Free speech includes not only the inoffensive but the irritating, the contentious, the heretical, the unwelcome and the provocative provided that it does not lead to violence."
A new sculpture of Jesus has been erected in Trafalgar Square to less than unanimous noises of approval from the laity. The statue is one of three 'works of art' that will grace a plinth in the square which has been empty for 150 years. A commission will then decide which sculpture will be made permanent.
Most doubters seemed to object to the very human scale of the statue, but church leaders were united in their praise for the efforts of artist, Mark Wallinger.
The plinth was originally intended for a statue of William IV on a white charger.
The Catholic Church has pulled out of the Churches' Advertising Network (CAN). For those who don't know about them, CAN is a joint campaign backed by most of the main Christian denominations and staffed by volunteers from the advertising industry. They are responsible for the catchy posters that you may have noticed outside churches from time to time.
It would seem that the 1999 Easter campaign was all too much for the Catholics. Jesus was portrayed as a Che Guevara look-alike with the caption, "Meek. Mild. As if.", below it. A previous Christmas poster read, "You're a virgin, you've just given birth, and now three kings have shown up. Find out the happy ending at a church near you."
A senior Papist, Mgr Keiran Conry, explained that, "We haven't got a product to market." He is telling me!
The Church of England synod has voted to update it's rules on clergy discipline.
Up until now the Church has faced huge difficulties in disciplining errant priests and, in one recent case, it cost £250,000 in legal fees to remove Tom Tyler, the vicar of Henfield, West Sussex, from his post for adultery. In another case it took 8 years of very public and damaging squabbling before Brandon Jackson, Dean of Lincoln Cathedral, would agree to resign his post. The problem stems from the fact that priests have extensive legal rights under the terms of their contacts with the church.
Sadly, it doesn't end here though. The evangelical wing of the Church, whose most senior member is the Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey, is attempting to tighten doctrinal discipline as well. Basically, the Anglican Church is a pretty broad church, but has become too much so for some tastes. The views of some priests border on atheism at times and hardliners have still not forgotten the former Bishop of Durham, David Jenkins, who famously cast doubt on the virgin birth and the resurrection only days before York Minster was struck by lightening! Many would have liked to see him taken to task.
Not all members of the Church are happy about the moves though and the Archdeacon of Surrey, Robert Reiss has voiced strong concerns about heresy trials letting loose "evil spirits" in the church!
Religious Truth agrees with him totally. The Church of England has enough evil spirits already and they should leave some for other faiths.
One only has to look to America for living proof of the close relationship between fundamentalist Christian groups and far right extremists and never is this clearer than in the case of the World Church of the Creator.
A week ago a supporter of this evil, anti-Semitic group, Benjamin Nathaniel Smith, went on a shooting spree in Illinois. He targeted blacks, Jews and Asians and left 2 dead and 9 wounded before he did the world a favour and turned his gun on himself.
Now two more rabid, racist, Christians have been arrested in connection with the murder of a gay couple in California. Brothers Matthew and Tyler Williams could also be implicated in various arson attacks on synagogues.
The World Church of the Creator is just one part of a recent upsurge in right wing/KKKhristian violence against minorities in America and is being investigated in connection with other incidents.
The Church of England has resorted to a poster campaign to recruit new blood to the priesthood.
Despite denying that there is any shortage of recruits, 16,000 posters are being sent out to parishes. One particularly gut churning caption underneath a picture of a vicar reads, "This man doesn't have a job. He has a life".
The Pope arrived in Romania on his first visit there and it was not an easy landing! Some observers were hoping that the three day visit would go some way towards healing the 1,000 year old rift between the Vatican and the eastern Orthodox church, but the prospects look bleak.
The vast majority of Romanians belong to the Eastern Orthodox church with about 300,000 being Catholics. The friction arose because the communists seized more than 2,000 Catholic churches back in 1948 and gave them to the Orthodox Church. Now the Catholics would like them back and the dispute has descended to the usual Christian level of violence on several occasions.
Most of the Catholics live in Transylvania, but the Pope has been prevented from visiting them to avoid inflaming the situation. Religious Truth thinks that this is a great shame. There may have been someone there with a stake at hand!
Meanwhile, plans are well in hand for the Pope to return to his native Poland for a visit. In preparation for the event, Poland's church has written to it's priests and warned them to give up their "luxury lifestyles" before the Pope arrives.
In January a dozen priests from one archdiocese were given suspended jail sentences for various financial scams and six more are yet to reach the dock. Many of them drive around in expensive cars and know little or nothing of the poverty that surrounds them. Religious Truth would also like to see the Pope himself give up a little of the Vatican £millions to help the poor, but there is about as much chance of that as there is of seeing a dead Pope in heaven!
A Church of Scotland Board has called for a debate on the decriminalization of prostitution. They point out the increase in teenage prostitution due to cuts in benefits and make the observation that fines handed out by courts do more to force the girls into continuing to work than to quit. How astute!
Irish singer Sinead O'Connor, famous for her support of the republican movement and for tearing up a picture of Pope John Paul II on TV, has become a pretend priest. O'Connor, 32, found a renegade Bishop, Divorcée Michael Cox, who was willing to perform the ceremony, even though the said cleric has no authority from the church to do so.
And just to make this 100% clear, Cox's willingness to travel to France to ordain O'Connor had NOTHING to do with the £150,000 that she gave him for his healing center. Religious Truth is determined to make that very clear.
O'Connor has now gone to live in Lourdes. The French are welcome to her!
Religion has always had a darker side to it, where vulnerable people are taken advantage of, but never more so it seems than in Salt Lake City, the home of the Mormon Church. On 22-04-99 it was reported that one John Daniel Kingston, the leader of a Mormon sect that still practices polygamy, was pleading no contest (guilty in effect) to charges of assault against his then 16 year old daughter. The case came to light when his daughter was found to have suffered a severe beating from her father after having walked out on a marriage to her uncle, 32 year old David Orrin Kingston.
John Daniel, now facing up to 15 years in prison, is reputed to have 25 wives and at least 150 children by them. David Orrin, still to be tried for incest and facing up to 5 years in prison, already had 14 wives when his niece was given to him to abuse.
One Sunday paper was today full of revelations about some pretty serious sinning going on within a UK religious sect. The Jesus Army, featured recently in a television documentary, travel the country wearing mock army fatigues, handing out leaflets to young people and generally trying to spread the 'good news'. How shocked they must have been then to receive some less than complimentary publicity at the hands of the rabid press pack.
Members of the army revealed tales of drunkenness, theft and sex, including the seduction of a 16 year old virgin. One member, David Hughes, confessed to using church funds to get drunk in nightclubs and bars while he should have been recruiting more members for the organization.
Jesus Army veteran, Brother John Paul, revealed even more over a pint of strong larger. His habits extend to taking amphetamines, seducing virgins and dumping one other Jesus freak upon finding out that she was pregnant by him. All's well that ends well though. The God fearing lady in question merely seduced another army member and then told him that the baby was his. Now isn't that so cute. Makes ya just wanna rush out and join them.
'Religious Truth' takes a great interest in any story about the Jesus Army. One veteran member told me that my interest in all things anti-Christian merely reflected the fact that God was working within me without my knowing it. Better that than to be a member of the Jesus Army and to be spending my time taking drugs and working my way into the knickers of unsuspecting and gullible teenage girls! (On the other hand, how do I join?)
I hope to return to this bunch of losers at greater length in the near future and look forward to accompanying them on one of their trips to win new members. As ever, 'Religious Truth' will report the truth whilst staying immune to the lies.
Meanwhile, why not visit their home page or even join me in leaving them some messages on their notice board?
For years the USA has justified it's blatantly fascist foreign policies by pointing to the human rights records of other countries. Let he who is without sin cast the first stone though. As the world gears up for the 21st century and as the USA continues to bomb and intimidate those who's human rights records it dislikes, Amnesty International has appealed to the United Nations Human Rights Commission to take the US to task over their lack of co-operation with human rights bodies.
Basically, Washington condemns other people for failing to meet internationally agreed standards (the US even helped to create these standards) of human rights and then ignores them themselves! The so called 'land of the free' is up to six years late in answering queries about alleged abuses including torture.
The USA can proudly boast to be the only industrialized country in the world to still use capital punishment, to have some of the most brutal prisons in the world and, guess what, they execute kids. My, how I admire America.
The Church of England, still reeling from the long term effects of financial incompetence in the late 1980s, is turning the screw on parish funds as never before. Faced with an £800 million loss resulting from failed land speculation, the Church Commissioners have reduced support for the ministry by over £40 million since 1992.
Pension costs are also soaring from just under £50 million in 1989 to £85 million in 1998.
Basically the message is that the people must contribute more to church funds or loose their priest. Tough choice, huh?
The Peniel Pentacostal Church from Brentwood, Essex, UK has been ordered to consult the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) before publishing future advertisements. The ruling came after complaints were made about an advert in which they claimed that a crippled man had been healed in their church by the power of prayer alone. The ASA ruled that proof at least comparable with that required of manufacturers who advertise was needed to back up such "powerful claims".
The church is, however, no stranger to such criticism. They once claimed that a visiting preacher had raised six people from the dead!
And lo! It came to pass that the News of the World found the cured cripple. Yes, it seems that David Gregg, disabled and bed ridden by sciatica for two years, had to crawl into the Peniel Pentecostal Church in Brentwood, Essex. It also seems that a few quick prayers later, David was able to walk out pain free and has remained so ever since. A MIRACLE, and one that could have nothing to do with the enormous power of suggestion (i.e. self hypnosis), could it?
If this was a miracle then please take this as a memo to God: Dear God, In a world on the brink of extinction, with wars killing men, women and children without distinction, would it be too much to ask that you direct your awesome powers towards a problem somewhat more pressing than a man with a bad back? Yours in awe, 'Religious Truth'.
PS. Still waiting for one of the six people that this loony lot claimed to have raised from the dead to come forward. Perhaps in next weeks papers, or perhaps not.
Nothing is a greater threat to the Catholic Church in the UK (and possibly other parts of the world) than the simple lack of new recruits to the priesthood. Things are so serious that calls are being made for lay people to fill in where priests find it impossible to carry out their duties.
The Bishop of Nottingham, the Rt Rev James McGuinness, has a diocese which covers Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, Leicestershire and Lincolnshire in England and over half of his priests are over 60 with 4 in their 80s! Inevitably, with an age profile like this, the Grim Reaper stays ever busy in churches up and down the country. In 1996 112 either died or were put out to pasture with a further 20 leaving the priesthood for other reasons. To put this in context, since 1990 there have only been an average of two ordinations a year with one to be ordained this year and no more until 2001.
Predictably and almost certainly correctly, the reasons for this slump are placed firmly at the door of the ageing fool in the Vatican who continues to insist that Priests must be celibate. Astonishingly, defecting Anglican Ministers who are married ARE being accepted for ordination into the Catholic Church!
Batty Bishop, David Hope, the Archbishop of York, has let it be known that he would be unwilling to continue his duties if the Church of England creates women bishops.
Tipped by some as the next Archbishop of Canterbury, Hope's possible resignation puts him in good company. Since the ban on women vicars and curates was lifted in 1992 some 450 clergy have resigned or joined the Papist church. The loss of these hopeless misogynists has hardly mattered to the church as their positions have quickly been filled by the very women who's ordination they objected to.
Although well thought of in his archdiocese, Hope has been no stranger to controversy in the past. Four years ago, whilst Bishop of London, he described his sexuality as "ambiguous". On that basis he should feel perfectly at home within the ranks of the Papists where homosexuality and child abuse have been turned into art forms and where women are still excluded from any meaningful role within the church.
The Aum Shinrikyo (Supreme Truth) cult is alive and well despite it's leader, Shoko Asahara, standing trial for masterminding the 1995 nerve gas attack on the Tokyo underground, which killed 12 people. The sect is now using rock'n'roll to attract young convert with, it seems, some success. They have now staged three concerts and the £9 tickets have sold well. Japan's security forces estimate that membership of the killer cult stands at 700 with as many as 1500 lay followers.
Despite it's determination to hasten Armageddon by murdering people, the cult has not been outlawed in Japan. This has left it free to recover from the set backs which followed the underground gas attack. At that time many followers left and Aum's property and assets were seized. Now they are on the up again and are actively buying property to build new facilities.
It seems that the cult is expecting the end of the world to take place in September. One can only hope that, for these killers at least, they are right!
The content of children's television programs has always been the subject of keen debate, but never more so than in the last few days. This has been a bad week for cult British children's program, the Teletubbies!
On Thursday, February the 11th, 1999 most, if not all, of the daily papers covered what The Mirror called, "THE OUTING OF TINKY WINKY". An ultra right-wing lunatic Baptist Minister, the Rev Jerry Falwell accused Tinky Winky of being a "gay role model", and declared that the cuddly character is, "damaging to the moral lives of children". To back up his bizarre fantasies, Falwell cited Tinky Winky's triangle shaped antenna and purple colour as being associated with Gay Pride. In fact the triangle would be upside down if this were true and the colour of Gay Pride in England, where the Teletubbies is made, is pink. Falwell also made mention of Tinky Winky's trademark handbag and thereby added a sinister dimension to the games of countless generations of children who use such items in their totally asexual games. This sick outburst was delivered in the National Liberty Journal, a fascist Christian publication from (where else) America.
But, the trouble didn't end there. On February 14th, 1999 The Sunday Mirror revealed "exclusively" that Teletubby land had been the site of a shocking witchcraft killing in 1945. Charles Walton, 74, a local farmer, was found pinned to the ground by his own pitchfork on Meon Hill, near Stratford-upon-Avon (Of Shakespeare fame), Warwickshire. Meon Hill, the paper informs us, is situated on a ley line, a source of energy "linked to the emergence of evil"! Really? I have never heard that said about ley lines before.
Oooops, but what is this we read further on? The ley line, it seems, passes through Meon Hill AND Teletubby Land which are actually two miles apart. Perhaps the story is better understood when linked to the fortunes of failed actor, Dave Thompson, than to Satan. Thompson, who is quoted extensively in the article, once played Tinky Winky, but was sacked. He blames this, and other subsequent misfortunes, on the Tubby Curse, but at least it got his name back in the papers!
The people of Sri Lanka have been overjoyed to discover that their assassinated ex president is alive and well again. Ranasinghe Premadasa bit the dust some five years ago when a bomb brought a sudden end to his bloody rule, but the Buddhist killer has been reincarnated it seems. He is now a 20 month old child and the faithful are flocking to see him. Just the kind of boost that Buddhism needs when many describe it as being in crisis.
The Rev Sun Myung Moon and his deranged followers are generating increasing amounts of cash through the manufacture of arms. The Washington Post has revealed that the Unification Church, which has world peace as one of it's aims, owns a Massachusetts company called Kahr Arms. Kahr, which specializes in 9mm automatic pistols, has in turn bought Auto-Ordnance Corporation, makers of the famous 'Tommy gun" used to such good effect by gangsters during the 1920's. The rest of Moon's business empire is reeling from the crash in eastern stock markets and gun manufacture is seen as a way to save the sinking ship.
Having allegedly forgotten just about every rule in the Bible on topics as diverse as adultery, theft and camels passing through the eye of needles, The Rev Henry Lyons, one of the most powerful religious leaders in America, faced justice. Along with his mistress, Bernice Edwards, he is accused of defrauding an insurance company and a funeral service company of $millions. The thefts were carried out to pay for his mansion and Rolls Royce car amongst many other little luxuries the court was told.
Their eventual undoing is laced with humor. Having sold a bogus list of 8 million members of the black National Baptist Convention to the insurance company for $400,000 for mailing purposes (The names were randomly picked by a computer programme), the managing director of the company, a non-Baptist, was somewhat surprised to be on the receiving end of his own junk mail! Even more startled was an imperial wizard of the Ku Klux Klan who opened a letter which began, "Dear fellow Baptist...".
(01-03-99)The Reverend Henry Lyons, president of the National Baptist Council in America, has been found guilty of swindling millions of dollars from business and charity to fund a champagne lifestyle for both himself and his mistress, Bernice Edwards. Although facing up to 8 years in jail, the Rev Lyons has declared his intention to stand for a second five year term as NBC president!
Mrs. Edwards was found not guilty of racketeering, but both face a federal trial in April on charges of fraud, money laundering, tax evasion and extortion. Personally I think that deleting a few letters from the former tyrants name fully describes these gullible people, but mad as a what is the question that we are left with?
A builder and his wife lost their case before Derby county court and the judgment looks set to haunt them for a long time! Andrew and Josie Smith had refused to pay the final installment of £3000 on Lowes Cottage, Upper Mayfield in Staffordshire after alleging that the previous owners had failed to tell them that the house was haunted. Phenomena ran the entire gambit of The Amityville Horror including foul smells and weeping walls, but with additional trauma caused by the spirit trying to molest Mrs. Smith. The judge disagreed and stated that, "This house is not haunted and it never has been haunted". Oh ye of little faith!
Later in the year (21-4-99) it was reported that the house had been sold for £56000, £6000 more than the market value of the property, to Tim Chilton, 48, a Christian psychic! He can now look forward to meeting a naked serving girl and having hands creep under the covers into his bed with him. Only in his dreams!
America's main Methodist Church has found itself at war with 95 of it's own Ministers. The rebels ignored strict homophobic United Methodists' laws by blessing the lesbian marriage of two women, both in their 60s, in Sacramento, California.
Advisors to Palestinian president and ex-terrorist, Yasser Arafat, and even some Israeli government ministers, are queuing up to consult an 18 year old Palestinian, Moussa el-Moghrabi who predicts the future by reading the dregs in coffee cups. Nice to know that world peace is in safe hands! Coffee anyone?
© Religious Truth 2001