Couldn't Help Noticing

Voting for a gospel-preaching Pope

Seeing as how everybody else seems to have a view on who the next Pope should be, I thought I'd jump on the bandwagon with this letter, which snuck into The Australian:

Last night in our (Anglican) church we prayed that the cardinals would elect a Pope who clearly understood and taught salvation: that we are right with God only through trust in Jesus Christ and his resurrection; not through the contribution of our own good works.

Issues such as AIDS, women priests, birth control, abortion, euthanasia, homosexuality and the like are of importance, no doubt about it. But if there is uncertainty about the grace and forgiveness of God, available in Jesus, the whole edifice has been eroded at the foundation.

Gay Penguins

This is just silly.

According to The Telegraph, a zoo in Germany began a campaign to mate six of their male penguins with some Swedish female penguins, to “help save a threatened species” (according to the zoo's director). So far, it sounds like the kind of things zoos do.

However, the zoo was “inundated with criticism by the gay lobby after making public [their] plan.” Why?

Because these male penguins are homosexuals, and we shouldn't try and ‘cure’ them of their homosexuality.

Apparently, the Humboldt penguin is “a bird whose homosexual tendencies are well known to zoologists”. These six penguins seem to have paired off, trying to mate with each other and gathering rocks which they covered and sat on (as if they were eggs) making their keepers think they were boy and girl couples.

A subsequent article in The Age reported that the zoo had abandoned their breeding plan due to the harrassment they received. Now they're getting some heterosexual male penguins to breed with the Swedish females they have.

The thing is, if we are going to force human moral standards upon animals (i.e. to not make them mate with females if they don't want to—as if you can do that anyway!), should we be out there trying to save the male praying mantis who gets eaten by the female they've just mated with, so as to prevent their murder? Come to think of it, there are a lot of animals out there that should be behind bars for stealing, murdering, raping, etc.

Or perhaps we only endorse those behaviours that line up with a moral position we have chosen not because of biology, but on completely different grounds.

Sources: Article from The Telegraph on 14 February 2005 (registration required to view article at no cost), and a subsequent article in The Age on 17 February 2005 (registration required and then cost of $2.20 for the article).

Wasn’t he a songwriter?

Just noticed through Word-a-day that there is in fact a word for someone who is a “peddler of religious books”.

We are now thinking of changing our own John Sammut's official title from Sales Representative to Colporteur.

There is no link, apparently, to Cole Porter (a peddler of songs).

More on Flew

Christianity Today covers the interesting story of Antony Flew. As we've noticed before in CHN, Antony Flew is one of the world's leading philosophers, and for the majority of his life has been a champion of atheists and naturalists everywhere. However he recently changed his mind, deciding that he does believe in a god, but not the Christian God.

Among various things of note in the article: he is “impressed by Intelligent Design theorists”, but does not believe in a loving God who punishes eternally, or that Jesus rose from the dead. However he does admit that “the evidence for the Resurrection is better than for claimed miracles in any other religion.”

The Wrong Spirit

Amidst the deluge of media coverage of the events surrounding the Pope's death, an alert Briefing reader noticed this Dateline interview that George Negus conducted with Cardinal George Pell, on April 6.

GEORGE NEGUS: Cardinal, I don't mean this in a facetious or a sacrilegious way, but how does the Holy Spirit guide people like yourself in the conclave when there has to be politics involved, there has to be ideology involved, there has to be numbers involved, is the Holy Spirit a good political numbers man?

CARDINAL GEORGE PELL: No, sometimes He gets it right, sometimes He gets it wrong. But the Holy Spirit always works through free individuals. We try to listen to one another, we try to think, we try to discern what the church needs and to come to some consensus. The Holy Spirit only works through humans and through natural means generally. I've received no special inspiration.

GEORGE NEGUS: It's interesting though you said sometimes the Holy Spirit can get it wrong?

CARDINAL GEORGE PELL: Yes, well there have been bad popes in history.

I'd humbly suggest that if some bad popes have been picked, someone apart from the Holy Spirit may be at fault.