Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;
Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last grey hairs,
Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;
Where but to think is to be full of sorrow…

• John Keats

• Taoism: Shit happens.
• Buddhism: If shit happens, it’s not really shit.
• Islam: If shit happens, it’s the will of Allah.
• Protestantism: Shit happens because you don’t work hard enough.
• Judaism: Why does this shit always happen to us?
• Hinduism: This shit happened before.
• Catholicism: Shit happens because you’re bad.
• Hara Krishna: Shit happens rama rama.
• T.V. Evangelism: Send more shit.
• Atheism: No shit.
• Jehova’s Witness: Knock knock, shit happens.
• Hedonism: There’s nothing like a good shit happening.
• Christian Science: Shit happens in your mind.
• Agnosticism: Maybe shit happens, maybe it doesn’t.
• Rastafarianism: Let’s smoke this shit.
• Existentialism: What is shit anyway?
• Stoicism: This shit doesn’t bother me.

• Given my recent religious rantings, you can probably tell that I am very bitter about the Catholic Church, and about organized religion in general. I think we’d all be better off if we’d been reared as spriritual (or not) Unitarians (my mother said to me once that I might as well join a book club!).

• Some of my other posts show that I struggle with things like loss, sadness, grief, fear of the future, existential quandaries, etc.

• And even more show that I’m a goof.

So please don’t take offense at things I might write: I’m just expressing my free-associating, something-to-do thoughts. I don’t talk much to people, so this is one of my conversational outlets.

An oldie but goodie:

“What is tat, and where can I exchange it for some tit?”

• Taoism: Shit happens.
• Buddhism: If shit happens, it’s not really shit.
• Islam: If shit happens, it’s the will of Allah.
• Protestantism: Shit happens because you don’t work hard enough.
• Judaism: Why does this shit always happen to us?
• Hinduism: This shit happened before.
• Catholicism: Shit happens because you’re bad.
• Hara Krishna: Shit happens rama rama.
• T.V. Evangelism: Send more shit.
• Atheism: No shit.
• Jehova’s Witness: Knock knock, shit happens.
• Hedonism: There’s nothing like a good shit happening.
• Christian Science: Shit happens in your mind.
• Agnosticism: Maybe shit happens, maybe it doesn’t.
• Rastafarianism: Let’s smoke this shit.
• Existentialism: What is shit anyway?
• Stoicism: This shit doesn’t bother me.

Let me count the ways:

primarily because of my own experiences…

1. mental abuse by Catholic school children, physical abuse by nun;
2. religion ruled by guilt and fear;
3. abuse of sister by “counseling” priest;
4. firing of husband from Boston College by priest, never with any explanation;

but also…

5. forbidding use of condoms, especially in countries with astronomical HIV/AIDS levels;
6. unacceptance of homosexuals, women in church authority, divorcees, etc.;
7. Pope Innocent III sponsors 4 “crusades” to exterminate the Albigenses;
8. in July of 1209 A.D. an army of Louis VII orthodox Catholics attack Beziers and murder 60,000 unarmed civilians;
9. at Minerve, 14,000 Christians put to death in the flames: ears, noses, and lips of the “heretics” cut off by the “faithful”;
10. wars of extermination committed by the Church against the Cathars, Knights Templars, and other break-away Christian groups;
11. Pope Alexander IV establishes the Office of the Inquisition within Italy in 1254;
12. silence of Pope Pius XII during the Nazi holocaust;
13. children starved to death iconcentration camp of Jasenovec in Catholic Croatia, one of whose commandants was a Franciscan Monk, Father Filipovic: more than 2,000 Eastern Orthodox children die;
14. Monsignor Tiso, head of the Slovak State, delivers first trainload of Jews to Auschwitz;
15. hundreds of thousands of women burned alive as witches in late Middle Ages and Renaissance;
16. Saint Cyril and monks burn the great Library at Alexandria, destroying 600,000 volumes of knowledge of the ancient world, the greatest property crime of all time;
17. Protestant Reformation and following wars during which Germany lost half its population in a generation;
18. destruction, plunder, rape, and papal pillage of the people of the Americas and the eradication of their culture;
19. extermination of the Huguenots in France;
20. issuing of Vatican passports to Nazi leaders after World War II so that they could escape prosecution for war crimes;
21. castration of boy singers in the church so that they could continue to sing in high pitch into adulthood;
22. clergy sexual abuse;
23. Irish Magdalene laundries;
24. church leaders once taught that was acceptable under a wide range of situation;
25. church equates abortion with murder at all stages of pregnancy;
26. church placed under house arrest or burned alive number of scientists and philosophers, such as Galileo and Bruno;
27. church once taught that parents must not give their children inoculations against disease because it would thwart God’s will. God was seen as expecting a certain percentage of children to die; inoculations would have prevented those deaths.

…watch this. For those of you who have only heard awful police- and fire-department bands (no offense to them, of course) and thought that bagpipes were supposed to sound like caterwauling…they’re not.

Here’s a video of one of the very top pipe bands in the world, the House of Edgar Shotts and Dykehead Caledonia Pipe Band, from Shotts, Scotland. This video is of their march, strathspey, and reel (MSR) set from this year’s British Championships.

picture on left from 2005 World Pipe Band Championships in Glasgow

Let me count the ways:

primarily because of my own experiences…

1. mental abuse by Catholic school children, physical abuse by nun;
2. religion ruled by guilt and fear;
3. abuse of sister by “counseling” priest;
4. firing of husband from Boston College by priest, never with any explanation;

but also…

5. forbidding use of condoms, especially in countries with astronomical HIV/AIDS levels;
6. unacceptance of homosexuals, women in church authority, divorcees, etc.;
7. Pope Innocent III sponsors 4 “crusades” to exterminate the Albigenses;
8. in July of 1209 A.D. an army of Louis VII orthodox Catholics attack Beziers and murder 60,000 unarmed civilians;
9. at Minerve, 14,000 Christians put to death in the flames: ears, noses, and lips of the “heretics” cut off by the “faithful”;
10. wars of extermination committed by the Church against the Cathars, Knights Templars, and other break-away Christian groups;
11. Pope Alexander IV establishes the Office of the Inquisition within Italy in 1254;
12. silence of Pope Pius XII during the Nazi holocaust;
13. children starved to death iconcentration camp of Jasenovec in Catholic Croatia, one of whose commandants was a Franciscan Monk, Father Filipovic: more than 2,000 Eastern Orthodox children die;
14. Monsignor Tiso, head of the Slovak State, delivers first trainload of Jews to Auschwitz;
15. hundreds of thousands of women burned alive as witches in late Middle Ages and Renaissance;
16. Saint Cyril and monks burn the great Library at Alexandria, destroying 600,000 volumes of knowledge of the ancient world, the greatest property crime of all time;
17. Protestant Reformation and following wars during which Germany lost half its population in a generation;
18. destruction, plunder, rape, and papal pillage of the people of the Americas and the eradication of their culture;
19. extermination of the Huguenots in France;
20. issuing of Vatican passports to Nazi leaders after World War II so that they could escape prosecution for war crimes;
21. castration of boy singers in the church so that they could continue to sing in high pitch into adulthood;
22. clergy sexual abuse;
23. Irish Magdalene laundries;
24. church leaders once taught that was acceptable under a wide range of situation;
25. church equates abortion with murder at all stages of pregnancy;
26. church placed under house arrest or burned alive number of scientists and philosophers, such as Galileo and Bruno;
27. church once taught that parents must not give their children inoculations against disease because it would thwart God’s will. God was seen as expecting a certain percentage of children to die; inoculations would have prevented those deaths.