I handle The Catholic Weekly pretty much every week. It is one of a number of publications that is sent periodically to the offices of all NSW politicians (and likely more besides) – like the Epoch Times and the Australian Israel Review – which is kind of journalism but kind of not.
I barely have time to engage with all of the major printed news sources – with The Australian, for example, I generally just scan through the first two sections to see if there’s another bullsh-t story about The Greens. So you’ll forgive me (pun intended) if I don’t actually sit down over a leisurely cup of tea and read these ‘news sources’ cover to cover.
The Catholic Weekly usually gets filed under no thanks in the recycling bin, between meh and FFS, but I’m starting to think that there may be a role for it after all.
Page three of The Catholic Weekly last week contains an article entitled (in big red letters) Church ‘in midst of battle between good and evil’, containing a cracking quote from Sydney Archbishop, and newly appointed member of the general secretariat of the Synod of Bishops, Cardinal George Pell.
“We’re in the midst of an enormous struggle between good and evil, faith and fear on a supernatural as well as a natural level,” he said.
I will not mince around – this is exciting news.
I have personally suspected that supernatural beings were real for AGES. It is naturally why I have to watch pretty much every zombie and vampire film/tv show – to prepare myself as a supernatural expert to survive either:
a) the zombie apocalypse,
b) the vampires deciding to come out of the shadows and enslave and breed humans as a food source, or
c) the zombie apocalypse brought on when the underground resistance fighting against the vampires’ human-farms begin experimenting with poisoning our own blood to infect the Nosferatu, much like a computer virus or the common cold, but, while decimating the blood-suckers, creates a new threat – the brain-suckers…
Honest, I watch True Blood in preparation for the end of days. Mum – you’ll thank me when I risk life and limb to come rescue you in the days immediately following the outbreak, to take you, my estranged girlfriend, socially awkward best friend and assorted hangers-on to the local pub – where we’ll all be safe.
It did occur to me at about this point of reliving the plot of Shaun of the Dead that from Cardinal Pell’s words it wasn’t entirely clear how the good vs evil, fear vs faith and natural vs supernatural nexuses all intersected with each other.
And then, because obviously God should probably be counted as a supernatural being, I had the awesome thought of God leading the hordes of the undead against an army of humans with samurai swords and wooden stakes (while all the atheists scratched their heads saying f-ck, didn’t see that one coming and wrote blog posts about the comparative value of crucifixes.
But The Catholic Weekly isn’t just about the lulz.
One of the campaigns we’ve been working on out of our office for well over a year has been relating to Justice for Victims – campaigning for a legislative change in NSW which will end a legal anomaly where victms of sexual abuse by the Catholic Church are unable to successfully sue for damages against the property trusts which hold the majority of the Church’s wealth.
As part of this we produced a booklet which explained the issue and the need for reform. The response from Cardinal Pell, through channels including The Catholic Weekly, was to basically call us liars and to say that the Catholic Church takes sexual abuse very seriously, and puts the needs of victims first.
I would think anyone who has been watching the news recently – or ever – would know that there’s as much reality in those claims as there is in Season 3 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Oh yes… immediately under the Church ‘in midst of battle between good and evil’ article on page 3 of the Catholic Weekly was this advertisement, for toilet paper. Says it all, really…
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