So he Plays the Piano. So?

Piano players are rarely philosophers let alone theologians. They can make a better living banging the ivories than sounding off on matters they are obsessed with arguing out, for self-justification. But their fans will listen to them until someone tells them to just play. Heck, they used to have piano players in brothels but even the clientele there used to tell them to 'shut it' when they insisted on pointing out their particular lace petti-point preferences.  But now they are everywhere and pontificating even about the Pontiff. 

Just who does Elton John think he is kidding?  Or impressing?  I am presuming it is his fellow queers who comprise as much as 2% of the population on a warm day when the gold lame hot pants need airing. But the rst of us 98% heterowossnames are getting a little terse and wish he would stick to his keyboard and toupees. I could call him a daft bugger but two correct descriptors may be overdoing it.

Laying Rotten Eggs.

What he has plenty of in pianoforte talent, he lacks in moral standing.

Sit down sir. SIT !

Kirsten and Jonathon were around in the US room the other evening. Kirsten Anderson  had some quite terse things to say about E. John. She did not go quite as far as drawing the parallel between his name and the American name for the toilet but clearly felt his theology belonged in there.  Jonathon van Maren  peered into it.

And its a good job they started up before I started on the fatuous fat pianoman's dress sense. Heck, I polish my armour like my bar tops and I would be ashamed to let the public in with the place in drag.

An Open Letter to Elton John:   

No,

Jesus wouldn’t support gay ‘marriage’

KIRSTEN ANDERSEN

 https://www.lifesitenews.com/blogs/an-open-letter-to-elton-john-no-jesus-wouldnt-support-gay-marriage

Dear Elton,

First of all, my apologies for not calling you ‘sir,’ but I’m an American and we don’t really go in for all that nobility stuff over on this side of the pond.  Don’t fret, however; we still worship celebrities, which is why every single news site I read breathlessly reported your comments regarding Jesus, the Pope and the Catholic Church the other week. 

Now, a word, young woman. I do not always answer to 'bar keep' or even Tavern Keeper. I am a Knight and a King. Some call me 'Sire'. I agree however that 'Sir' Elton lowers the whole tone of the honours system. Not that it is my system, mind you. Now.... continue. 

As a Catholic myself, I have to take issue with a few of the things you said in your Sky News interview – namely, that Jesus Christ would support gay “marriage,” that the traditions of the Catholic Church are “old and stupid,” and that Pope Francis has “stripped the Church down to the bare bones” – 

a development you find “wonderful.” 

But before I jump into all that, let me back up about eight years to 2006.

Back then, in an interview with the Observer’s “Music Monthly,” you said, “From my point of view, I would ban religion completely. Organized religion doesn't seem to work. It turns people into really hateful lemmings and it's not really compassionate.”

Pro-tip, Elton: when you wear your hatred for religion on your sleeve like this, it makes it hard to take anything you have to say about religion without a giant grain of salt, or maybe even an entire salt lick.   

And he thinks the Pope dresses funny !!!

That said, I’ll attempt to suspend my incredulity and address your most recent statements as if they were serious expressions of your theology … you know, as opposed to verbal grenades meant to damage the Church you’ve already admitted you’d delight in seeing destroyed.

Let’s start with this statement: “If Jesus Christ was alive today, I cannot see him, as the Christian person that he was and the great person that he was, saying [gay marriage] could not happen.  He was all about love and compassion and forgiveness and trying to bring people together and that is what the church should be about.”

Okay, first of all, let’s get our facts straight, here: Jesus Christ was not a Christian.  Christians are his followers; Jesus Christ himself was a Jew.  As such, he followed the Torah, which does proscribe homosexual relations.  I’m sure you’re already aware of that, but just in case, I’ll throw a couple of citations at you:

Leviticus 18:22: “Do not practice homosexuality, having sex with another man as with a woman. It is a detestable sin.”

Leviticus 20:13: "If a man practices homosexuality, having sex with another man as with a woman, both men have committed a detestable act. They must both be put to death, for they are guilty of a capital offense."

Pretty stark, eh?  Now, before you freak out, I am absolutely not saying I think practicing homosexuality should get you or anyone else the death penalty.  I don’t even believe in the death penalty.  What I am saying is that it’s pretty disingenuous to imply that Jesus Christ, a.k.a. the most obedient Jew who ever lived, would have given the A-OK to something his religion’s most sacred teachings strictly forbade, with horrifying consequences.   

I think it’s even more disingenuous to say, as you did to Parade in 2011, that Jesus Christ himself “was a compassionate, super-intelligent gay man.” 

It’s worth noting that in the Old Testament, there are two separate instances where fathers willingly offered their virgin daughters up to rape gangs rather than allow male acquaintances to be sodomized.  We could discuss all day how messed up that is, and how much it says about a woman’s worth (or lack thereof) in the ancient Middle East, but the truth is that it also says a great deal about exactly how reviled the practice of homosexuality was by the Jewish culture of Jesus’ time.   

If Jesus – who was not at all afraid of controversy – really was gay, don’t you think he might have said something about that during his 33-year-long “anger all the elders” tour?

Remember, this was a man who lived his entire public life advocating for the rights of the unfairly oppressed.  If he felt homosexuals were among them, I’d like to think he would have said something.   

But he didn’t.   

In a world as hostile to homosexuality as Jesus’ was, his apparent silence on the matter actually speaks volumes.

Okay, moving right along.  You also told Sky News you think the traditions of the Catholic Church are “old and stupid.”  Specifically, you said you thought priests should be able to get married – including gay priests – and that you oppose the priestly celibacy requirement.  

How he sees things.

You know what I have to say to that?  Nothing.  Because it’s not really worth addressing.  It’s your opinion, and you’re entitled to it.  But at the end of the day, that’s all it is.  Considering you hate the Church and want to ban it anyway, I should hope no one at the Vatican pays you any heed at all.

That leads me to my next point, which is that while I’m glad you think Pope Francis is “wonderful,” I’ve a feeling you haven’t the first clue who the pope is and what he actually believes.  So here’s a tip: If you want to know what Pope Francis believes, check out the Catechism of the Catholic Church.  It’s all in there.  Once you’ve read that, tell us all again how “wonderful” Francis is … because that’s what he believes – every word of it.  Until you understand that, you don’t understand the Papacy. 

Look, popes will come and popes will go.  Some will revel in pomp and circumstance, and some would rather ride the bus.  Some preach love, and some preach law and order (most preach both).  Some will hold fast to tradition and some are more open to change. 

But the one thing no pope will ever be able to change is the Faith itself. Like it or not, it is what it is. 

It’s been this way for 2,000 years, and it’s not going to change.

Bottom line, Elton: You’re embarrassing yourself.   

Please leave the theology to the trained professionals. 

Pope Francis wouldn’t presume to tell you how to write and perform music, so stop telling him how to run his Church.

In other words (as she is a polite lady I will make it clear) SHUT IT. 

Then Jonathon tagged-teamed in to look at the state of modern moral confusion that Elton and his ilk seem to think makes sense. It is not just queers you see (their term, not mine. I prefer to call a bugger a bugger m'self) who are so up themselves that moral acuity is completely in their own dark and stink. Feminists, atheists, cultural marxists, heck, even some priests are so full of relativity they should be ashamed of themselves and their brainlessness. 

Philosophers they are not. They eschew 'shame'. They, and anyone else, must not ever be ashamed.

But engaging in any activity, such as this Taverning bizzo with the potential to expose hypocricy and cant that can (hopefully) make someone feel ashamed of a past action (and so correct it and themselves - make a better person of themselves) is a shameful thing to do, apparantly, and so we should feel ashamed of ourselves. Got it? Got it.

So just think of all the hoops feminists jump through to avoid feeling ashamed when they go marching on 'Slut Walks' It isn't as though a million Parisiens march with them demanding their free-undress rights, is it?  Where's a muslim nutter when you need one?

The painful irony of those ‘Slut-walks’

Jonathon van Maren

It is interesting to note the evolution of our culture’s perception of values over time. The word “prude,” for example, brings to mind a dour, asexual—if not anti-sexual—person, with whom there may well be something fundamentally wrong. 

However, it has a very different origin, deriving from the word “prudence”—which used to be considered quite a valuable trait. Some etymologists say it even derives from the French prudefemme, meaning a “respectable woman.” 

But traits like “respectableness” and “prudence” have fallen out of fashion. And thus it is that the brave warriors of today’s aging and disease-ridden Sexual Revolution, without any morally credible battles left to fight, have set their sights on combating the vague idea of “shame.”

Someone's delightful little girl once

In her 1874 book Middlemarch, Mary Anne Evans (writing under the penname George Eliot), wrote eloquently of the concept of shame:

The terror of being judged sharpens the memory: it sends an inevitable glare over that long-unvisited past which has been habitually recalled only in general phrases. Even without memory, the life is bound into one by a zone of dependence in growth and decay; but intense memory forces a man to own his blameworthy past. With memory set smarting like a reopened wound, a man’s past is not simply a dead history, an outworn preparation of the present: it is not a repented error shaken loose from the life: it is a still quivering part of himself, bringing shudders and bitter flavors and the tinglings of a merited shame.

These, of course, are all very novel concepts.  The idea of a “blameworthy past” or “merited shame” are now glibly but fiercely remodeled as “alternative lifestyles” or “self-expression.” 

The greatest thought-crime one can commit on the modern university campus is to be perceived as “judging” someone, which could possibly result in “shaming them,” which in today’s vernacular means that they were made to feel bad about something, irrespective of whether or not that thing was, in fact, something they should feel bad about. 

Any hint of heresy from the moral relativism of the Sexual Revolution is bound to prompt a defiant, shameless march, whether it is a “Slut-Walk” or even an anti-“fat-shaming” march.

It’s often so ridiculous that it defies response. 

I remember two of my university peers discussing what to do about the upcoming scheduled Slut-Walk in Vancouver some years ago. “How are we supposed to react to that?” asked the one. “Just go and watch!” chortled the other, in what I would venture to say was a rather shameless way.

More than a hint of exhibitionism there. Not that they are ashamed of course.

Like other manifestations of moral relativism, 

the Sexual Revolution’s war on shame is intellectually suicidal. 

As a pro-life activist, I can’t count the number of times I and my comrades are yelled at by people who dislike how we expose the reality of abortion, and who tell us we “should be ashamed” of ourselves. Why? “Because we might make some people who have had experiences with abortion feel bad.”

So, engaging in any activity with the potential to make someone feel ashamed of a past action is a shameful thing to do, and so we should feel ashamed of ourselves. Got it.

It may seem rather stupid when put that bluntly, but left-wing publications shriek day in and day out that Christians - and anyone else who might timidly suggest that standards for behavior, sexual and otherwise, do exist - should be “ashamed of themselves.” 

This, while claiming that “shaming people” was the unforgivable sin being committed in the first place.

Proud of their womanliness and femininity.

Like most other manifestations of the Sexual Revolution, the war on shame is not an accidental happening, but the result of a carefully orchestrated philosophy designed to promote sexual hedonism. The work of Swiss psychiatrist and contemporary of Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, did much to promote that idea that shame was, in his words, “a soul-eating disease.” Jung did not suffer from much of this disease himself, engaging in a number of high-profile affairs while remaining married to the mother of his children. If shame were to crop up, Jung thought, repeated exposure to shame could eventually neutralize the feelings.

That, of course, is the role pornography plays in our culture today. While “shamelessness,” and our correlating dislike of shame and accompanying guilt, have been steadily increasing since the advent of the Sexual Revolution, the rise of Internet pornography has turned that into a monstrous tidal wave. 

Now, every imaginable sexual action, no matter how disgusting, deviant, or wicked, can be found with just a few clicks of the mouse. And millions upon millions have progressed from titillation, to lust, to dark sexual obsession. 

The Sexual Revolution began the war on shame, and Internet pornography finished it. Those sad, pathetic university activists, yearning for the glory days of 1968, are really nothing more than clean-up crews.

English Major.

And I mean that. There really is something sad and pathetic about young university students, burning with zeal to fight for something, and settling on the right to as much meaningless sex, or as much exposed skin, or as much health-destroying gluttony as one might want. 

And when I think of university students of times past, who boarded buses heading into the Deep South to protest segregation, and got clubbed and hosed and brutalized for the civil rights of themselves and others, I can only shake my head at the contrast. 

We should be ashamed of ourselves.

Jonathon graduated from Simon Fraser University in 2010 with a Bachelor of Arts Degree in History. He is the communications director for the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform.

 https://www.lifesitenews.com/blogs/the-painful-irony-of-those-slut-walks

I shake my head and go and put a fresh barrel on. Anything to wash the taste from our mouths after talking about all this. 

But someone has to do it. That is what 'Battle' is about.  It is dirty in the trenches.

Pax,

Eventually.