Don't know much about Theology?

That's too bad, son. Go get yourself some sweet divinity and to hell with physics and math and history and always sinful biology and anatomy (for who but a closet heathen would busy himself so much with the vanishing flesh?). Yeah, son, to hell with them, and go open those sacred books until your Bible is cracked in half. Benedict, you're awesome...

Divine wisdom, on the other hand, is "following the mind of Christ, the one who opens the eyes of the heart to follow the path of truth and love," the Pontiff added.

Thus when St. Paul makes this distinction between types of wisdom, Benedict XVI explained, what he denounces is "the poison of false wisdom, which is human pride. It is not, therefore, knowledge in itself that can cause harm, but rather presumption, the 'vainglory' from what one has come -- or imagines he has come -- to know."

The Apostle, the Pope continued, "doesn't want in any way to lead to an undervaluing of the human effort necessary for knowing, but rather places himself on another plane: Paul is interested in emphasizing -- and he does it without any half measures -- what it is that is truly worthwhile for salvation and that which, on the other hand, can bring division and ruin."

What St. Paul opposes, he affirmed, is "a type of intellectual pride, in which man, even knowing a lot, loses his sensitivity for the truth and his willingness to open himself to the novelty of divine action."

Behond, a virgin shall conceive indeed

Red Sex, Blue Sex, en el New Yorker.

Halloween is for heathens

"No es una fiesta inocente porque es la noche del año nuevo para los brujos. Doreen Irving, bruja y posteriormente convertida al cristianismo alertó a los padres sobre esta fiesta donde incluso los sacrificios de niños formaban parte del ritual festivo".

Con lo sano que es llevar a los críos al cementerio. Menos mal que los obispos nos muestran el camino recto, frente a abominables herejes que buscan humillar lo más sagrado.

Behold, a virgin shall conceive...

The Christian Right, as both Dagmar Herzog and the Republican nomination of Sarah Palin make abundantly clear, is not anti-sex. “We are the ones with the babe on the ticket”, gushes the conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh. “Run to the arms of your prince and enter your dream”, advises the author, media star and abstinence-before-marriage advocate Lisa Bevere in her book Kissed the Girls and Made Them Cry, on sale at Palin’s old Pentecostal church in Wasilla. Evangelical conservatives have outflanked their enemies: “Christian sex”, and not what the revolutionaries of the 1960s had to offer, turns out to be “the most amazing sex on God’s Green earth”.

All of this is not really surprising. Protestantism from the very beginning defined itself as being, roughly speaking, on the side of sexuality. Being married, the Reformers argued, was not second best; the putative celibacy of Catholic priests, monks and nuns was not only theologically misguided but also a front for hypocrisy and perversion. Methodism was attacked in the eighteenth century for being too sexy; what else was one to make of all its excited talk about “love feasts”? And even if, in early twentieth-century America, the peccadilloes of preachers were not exactly condoned, they were explicable as the all too human failures of men in a world where passion might well break its bounds. God forgives sinners. Still, there was something new going on in the last three decades of the twentieth century.

Nada menos que Thomas Laqueur escribe sobre Sex in Crisis: The New Sexual Revolution and the Future of American Politics en el Times Literary Supplement. Cosita güena.

With a hideous creature no one likes

Okay, nothing to have to do with religion, but this is priceless. McMaverick?

"The Lord will take care of us"

Don't know much about history

Don't know much about theology, either. After all, she cannot claim to be an A student. But she's NOT trying to be. I guess Christian theology is for commies.

Sarah Palin’s religious upbringing and affiliation leans heavily towards the world of Pentecostalism, a brand of basis Protestantism that has—in the minds of mainstream theologians—been viewed as long on enthusiasm and short on theology.

More in Harper's.

[Que Dios me perdone, pero hay que ver las joyas que uno se encuentra cuando entra en Fox News: Palin afirma que el Altísimo bendijo a "América" dándole petróleo y gas natural]

In Western Europe, Christianity seems a fading residue.

The Times Literarty Supplement uses Sarah Palin as an excuse to have a look at Pentacostalism.

And The Atlantic reviews things that White People Like.

Now, after having played T.S. Eliot, it's really time to go to bed.

A quiet Apocalypse?

At least it is definitely tackier... John, after all, that big drama queen of the end of days, had a thing for the epic flamboyant gesture.

Still, there's no point in worrying. If we're going to be plunged into some kind of barbaric medieval dark age, I might as well be philosophical about it, because there's no way I'll survive more than a month. I'd be hopeless at fighting over basic resources and don't have any essential manual skills, such as the ability to hunt and skin rats. Perhaps I can learn the lute and become a minstrel, or perform bawdy jigs in exchange for pennies. Assuming there are any pennies. Hey, maybe just before all currency is finally declared worthless we'll get to experience the whole wheelbarrows-full-of-worthless-banknotes thing, like they did in Germany just before the war. That'd be a blast.

It all seems particularly bizarre, because just over a week ago I was in Las Vegas, as part of a US road trip I'm writing up for the Travel section. The casino put me up in an outrageous suite the size of a millionaire's bachelor pad. It had a pool table, a butler, and a shower in the lounge with a lapdancing pole in the middle of it. The windows looked out over the Las Vegas strip; specifically over the multimillion-dollar fountain show at the front of Bellagio. I visited a nightclub full of pricks who danced around tossing banknotes in the air, then returned to the suite, which alongside a pool table and a butler, also came equipped with about six gigantic, wall-mounted HD plasma TVs, every single one of which was screaming bad news about the economy. I felt like I was trapped inside a terrifying satirical sci-fi flick.

And it had to happen, obviously.

More.

Christian nymphos... and no, it's not the title of a cheesy erotic 70s movie

We are women with excessive sexual desire for our husbands! There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. In fact, God wants us to be madly in love with our husbands. He wants us to keep that fire burning in our marriage beds! We have the Song of Solomon as a perfect example of a Christ honored union where the two people are obviously intoxicated with each other.

You can even expand your knowledge of sexual toys thanks to them, the Christian nymphos. Who would have thought they'd use something called a triple stimulator?

Courtesy of Tom Perrotta.

De los métodos de observación

Va y suelta Benedicto XVI, con la misma naturaleza de consideración absurda, incomprensible, del opispo de Hipona, ese tipo cuya biografía se puede comprar de saldo en los sótanos de la Harvard Bookstore, con una rebaja de precio que es, sin duda, una afrenta, una burla, una humillación intolerable impuesta por una panda de rojos comecuras sin decencia, sin corazón, sin lo que hay que tener para eliminar su halitosis, su permanente mal aliento. Dios no los perdone. En fin, a lo que iba. Dice Benedicto:

"La técnica no puede sustituir la maduración de la libertad cuando está en juego el amor", concluye el Papa, y para acabar exhorta a los curas a predicar a las parejas un mensaje "que les oriente a entender con el corazón el maravilloso diseño que Dios ha inscrito en el cuerpo humano".

Con lo fácil que sería recomendar la Coca-Cola. Con lo necesario que sería, en Italia, hablar desde el mismo Vaticano de alguna otra cosa.