Anti-Pope activists can give out condoms in Sydney

Another quick update on the Pope's visit to Australia – last month we told how draconian new laws had been introduced for the duration of the Papal visit which would prevent protests and stop demonstrators from handing out condoms to pilgrims attending World Youth Day. Well, following an appeal, a New South Wales court has overturned the law and anti-Catholic protesters can now dish out prophylactics to their hearts content.

Sydney brothels offer 10% off for Catholic pilgrims

A few weeks ago on this blog we told how market researchers were predicting a rise in custom at Sydney's brothels and strip clubs as Catholic pilgrims (and the Pope) descended on Sydney for World Youth Day.

Well, with that event beginning today one of our Australian readers has sent us an update – according to Melbourne newspaper The Age, Sydney's brothels have grabbed this commercial opportunity with both hands and offered Catholic pilgrims 10 per cent off whichever services they desire.

It was in The Age's "In brief" section, which unfortunately does not seem to make it on to the paper's website, but our reader kindly included the full story in his email:

"BROTHELS 10% off for pilgrims

IT'S proving difficult to prevent com­mercialisation of World Youth Day. Nearby brothels are reportedly offering 10% discounts to pilgrims on presentation of their WYD accreditation, while the Doncaster Hotel in Kensington, as the self-proclaimed "closest pub to the Pope", is running a "Pappy hour" with schooners available for $3.30.

They can hardly be blamed for cashing in, if the Catholic Church is not above commercialising the occasion. WYD merchandise includes coins, T-shirts, caps, stamps and minted memorabilia, all licensed by the church. Pilgrims are being encouraged to buy clothes lest people think them mere tourists. A catalogue exhorts them to purchase rosary beads with cruci­fixes made from West Australian iron ore and stainless steel WYD08 dog tags."

[Thanks Nigel]

Stay tuned folks....

Prepare for the television event of the year. On 5 October Pope Benedict XVI will kick off a six-day round-the-clock Bible reading marathon – and the whole thing will be transmitted live on Italian TV.

The Pope will start things off in St Peter's by reading the first 33 chapters of Genesis, before 12,000 volunteers keep it going in a Rome church. The Pope's segment will be beamed live on the top channel of Italy's state-funded network RAI, with the rest of the epic going out on the network's satellite education channel.

Wondering why the Pope's stopping at chapter 33 of Genesis, Guardian journalist John Hooper did a cheeky bit of research and looked up chapter 34, which begins:

"And Dinah the daughter of Leah, which she bare unto Jacob, went out to see the daughters of the land. And when Shechem the son of Hamor the Hivite, prince of the country, saw her, he took her, and lay with her, and defiled her."

Could this be a hint that Christians aren't so proud of their holy book, in its entirity, after all?

Civil liberties to be reduced for Pope's visit to Sydney

A few weeks ago we reported on how this month's Catholic World Youth Day (Papal visit included) is set to cause a rise in visits to Sydney's brothels and strip clubs, but now we've learned of a far less amusing knock-on effect courtesy of Reuters (via our friend Christina Martin).

Fearing a bout of protests and anti-Catholic messages, the Australian authorities have given Sydney police extra powers to clamp down on anyone "causing annoyance or inconvenience to participants in World Youth Day". One group is planning on handing out condoms to those attending the Papal extravaganza (Reuters say it's the Catholic Church's Woodstock, so naturally we need to start calling it "Popestock"), but under the new powers they could face arrest and a fine of 5,000 Australian dollars.

Civil liberties campaigners are unhappy, including Anna Katzmann of the New South Wales Bar Association, who said the measures are "repugnant for two reasons. First of all the government has by-passed the normal parliamentary scrutiny...and secondly they are an unreasonable interference with people's freedom of speech and movement."

Good luck to the protesters, we say, especially with handing out those condoms. If the story about increased demand for prostitutes holds true, they might just come in handy...

Pope's visit to Australia will drive up trips to brothels

Here's an unfortunate knock-on effect if ever there was one – market research analysts IBIS World predict that the Pope's July visit to Sydney for Catholic World Youth Day will lead to an increase in business for the city's brothels, strip clubs and prostitutes.

225,000 pilgrims and clergy are expected at the event, which runs from 15-20 July, but Ed Butler of IBIS World was keen to stress that it is unlikely to be the Catholics, or that matter the Pope himself, caught with their trousers down:

"Any major event will drive tourism, which is closely related to the sex industry … and World Youth Day will also bring out a certain number of non-religious people."

Because, obviously, it's only those pesky "non-religious people" (who Fox Australia clarify as "tourists, support staff and media") who do things like visiting strip clubs and prostitutes. With this in mind, I thought I'd have a look what World Youth Day is all about. For a start it's a five-day event, so the Catholic Church is clearly not concerned by any kind of trade description legislation, and it "brings together young people from around the globe to celebrate and learn about their faith on a more regular basis."

Two things come to mind here. Firstly, of those 225,000 attendees, how many of the young people will be there entirely on the back of their own initiative and religious zeal, and how many will have been sent there by their parents? Secondly, this being a massive Catholic youth event, how much of it will consist of telling the young pilgrims (who are away from home in Australia's biggest city for 5 days) to steer clear of having sex?

If you follow my argument, you may agree that it might not just be those depraved "non-religious people" setting out on pilgrimages to Sydney's brothels and strip clubs next month...

[Thanks to Christina for the link]

Is George Bush about to follow Blair into Catholicism?

Could converting to Catholicism be set to join hitting the after-dinner speaking circuit on the list of things for world leaders to do after they leave office? According to the Italian weekly Panorama (via Reuters' Faith World blog), George W Bush is poised to follow the Reverend Tony's lead and covert to the Catholic faith once he leaves the White House next January.

Before anyone gets too carried away, let us clarify that this story appears spurious at best. Reuters' blogger Philip Pullella is entirely unconvinced, saying that "the odds of this happening appear as good as those of the proverbial snowball in hell."

Panorama's evidence for this claim amounts to the fact that Methodist Bush prayed with Pope Benedict during his recent visit to the US, that Bush's brother Jeb converted to join his Mexican wife as a Catholic, and that several of the President's close advisers are Catholic.

And that's pretty much it. Catholic blogger Father John Duhlsdorf provides his own English translation and dismisses the story with the introduction "Wanna read an article typical of much of the Italian press?", before concluding that "A lot of this article is pure fantasy. "

So, to sum up, don't expect to see George W confessing in a booth adjacent to Tony's any time soon.

Boom time for tat as New York prepares for Papal visit

Readers of our print magazine will have seen Christina Martin's collection of religious tat - the Argod Catalogue - in the current issue, and in keeping with this theme we were delighted to hear that New York is currently experiencing an explosion in the sale of Catholic tat as it prepares for next week's visit of Pope Benedict XVI.

The New York Daily News reports that tat-mongers are cashing in on the Pope's visit by peddling high-class items like Papal bookmarks, coffee mugs, baseball caps, t-shirts and (our favourite) Benedict XVI cologne.

Catholic gift shop owner Neil Fusco took time off from counting his sacred cash to tell reporters that"Our Holy Father is coming, everyone is excited and every body wants a piece of him." And that wont be a problem at Neil's store – he's set up a cardboard cut-out of Benedict outside his shop so customers can stop off to have and have their picture taken with him. We're not sure if he's charging them for this, but we'd be disappointed in his tat-instincts if we found out that he isn't.

Deadly sins for the modern age

As suspected, those good folks in the Vatican really are making it up as they go along. For the first time in Catholic history the seven deadly sins have been brought up to date to accommodate the perceived ills of the modern world.

To coincide with the Pope's condemnation of the secularised world's "decreasing sense of sin", the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano yesterday published seven new ones which, according to Bishop Gianfranco Girotti, head of the Apostolic Penitentiary (it "oversees confessions and plenary indulgences", apparently), take account of "new sins which have appeared on the horizon of humanity as a corollary of the unstoppable process of globalisation."

The new sins can be listed as follows:

• Paedophilia
• Abortion
• Ruining the environment
• Carrying out morally debatable scientific experiments
• Allowing genetic manipulations which alter DNA or compromise embryos
• Dealing or taking drugs
• Social injustice that causes poverty or the excessive accumulation of wealth by a few

To make a couple of observations, it's good of the Catholic Church to have noticed that paedophilia's a bad thing, and I think it's worth highlighting the attack on science represented by two of the new sins – no doubt the Vatican's definition of "morally debatable scientific experiments" is broader than most.

Will the concept of 14 deadly sins take off? It seems unlikely, as the names aren't quite as catchy as Pride, Envy, Gluttony, Lust, Anger, Greed and Sloth. And does this mean there'll be a sequel to David Fincher's 1995 Oscar-nominated picture Seven, provisionally entitled Fourteen? Let's hope so...

Reasons why it's great being a Catholic saint...

# 3643 in an occasional series: They dig up your body and put it on public display.

That's right – the body of the mystic monk Padre Pio, who died in 1968, has been exhumed so it can be displayed to his devotees for a few months in the southern Italian town of San Giovanni Rotondo.

Plain old Pio became Saint Pio of Pietrelcina after Pope John Paul II had him canonised in 2002. He attracts more prayers than any other saint.

According to Reuters it is said that Pio had the stigmata, "wrestled with the devil in his monastery cell ... predicted future events, [was] seen in two places at once, and [was] able to tell people their sins before they confessed them to him."

Quite a feat, I'm sure you'll admit. And he's doing pretty well in death too, apparently. A statement from the Catholic Church said his corpse is in "fair condition", especially his hands which "looked like they had just undergone a manicure".

Catholic Church calls for more exorcists

The Catholic Church in Australia is facing a massive shortage of exorcists – and hundreds of priests are to be trained to help plug the deficit. Church leaders are blaming a rise in Satanism for the increasing demand for exorcisms.

One Brisbane-based priest, who is the only qualified exorcist in the whole of Queensland, told Australia's Sunday Mail that he has seen a shocking rise in demonic possessions along the Gold Coast:

"Being possessed by a demon is terrifying in one's mental and emotional life. Some of these manifestations are extremely powerful, causing people to be plagued by disturbances. They hear voices and see hideous creatures in their sleep. There has been a recruitment of pagan practices, and it's sheer poison. The Gold Coast is not good at all. I do far more exorcisms there than Brisbane."

The Church has now vowed to "fight the devil head-on" by training hundreds of new exorcists. Father Gabriele Amorth, 82, the Pope's Exorcist-in-Chief, recently announced a new initiative to ensure every Catholic diocese has a group of trained exorcists, saying: "Too many bishops are not taking this seriously and are not delegating their priests in the fight against the devil. You have to hunt high and low for a proper, trained exorcist."

As for the Brisbane priest, who asked the Sunday Mail not to name him for "fear of reprisals", he remains troubled by the threat of possession: "We are not very plentiful and certainly need more of us to cope with the big occult following that is emerging today. It's frightening what can happen when you invite entities into your life which are not meant to be part of God's world."

He provided the newspaper with one example of someone carelessly inviting these entities into their life: "He said one woman he had met had been plagued by demonic manifestations since taking part in a playground witch game as a child."

[Thanks Christina]

The Pope's at it again...

Benedict XVI seems to be on a mission to rile scientists at the moment, at least if his latest comments on the "seductive" powers of science are anything to go by.

Addressing a meeting of academics sponsored by the Paris Academy of Sciences and Pontifical Academy of Sciences, the Pope warned that “in an age when scientific developments attract and seduce with the possibilities they offer, it's more important than ever to educate our contemporaries' consciences so that science does not become the criteria for goodness.”

He added that research is required "into anthropology, philosophy and theology" in order to discover “man's own mystery, because no science can say who man is, where he comes from or where he is going”.

Apparently this is because "man is not the fruit of chance or a bundle of convergences, determinisms or physical and chemical reactions."

Perhaps someone ought to have a quiet word with him?

Galileo and the popes

The Guardian's Science Podcast has started a new feature: Thought from the Pod will be a regular slot based on the Thought for the Day model only with reason in place of the spurious religious wittering. The first one is on this week's, and features New Humanist editor Caspar Melville talking about what the current Pope's attitude to Galileo tells us about the strained relationship between religion and science.

Pope pulls out of university visit, Vatican newspaper condemns Harry Potter

The Pope has cancelled his visit to Rome's La Sapienza University following a widely reported protest from academics and students who were unhappy with his views on the 1633 conviction of the astronomer Galileo for heresy. The Vatican announced last night that it had been "considered opportune to postpone" the visit.

Meanwhile, L'Osservatore Romano, the Vatican's official newspaper, has launched an attack on everyone's favourite boy wizard in an article entitled "The double face of Harry Potter". The article, by Edoardo Rialti, a professor of literature at Florence University, concludes that "Despite the values that we come across in the narration, at the base of this story, witchcraft is proposed as a positive ideal".

It must be noted that, in a stunning commitment to free debate, the newspaper has run a parallel article in favour of Potter, which declares that Harry "carries the reader from the vision of a selfish man towards a vision of a man guided by moral values, the choice of good sacrifice, friendship, love".

The Daily Telegraph reports that "the Vatican line on JK Rowling's teenage wizard has hardened considerably since Pope Benedict XVI ... succeeded Pope John Paul II". Which seems fair enough. After all, the Pope is really the head of a government, and governments need to have "lines" on things. However, we're still waiting for the heads of the major G8 governments to announce their own Potter policies.

It does seem that the Catholic Church has chosen a strange time to attack Harry Potter. Didn't all this happen last year? The next film's not even out for a few months. And anti-Potter policies are a bit old hat anyway. Even the Church of England gave up the whole "it promotes witchcraft" idea and declared Harry to be a good thing, presumably after realising that children prefer him to Jesus et al. Expect the Catholic "line" to soften some time in the next six centuries...

Italian scientists protest against visit from Pope

Academics at a leading Italian university are protesting against a planned visit from the Pope due to his views on the 1633 trial of Galileo for heresy. The great astronomer was convicted and made to renounce his acceptance of the Copernican system, that is, the outrageous view that the Earth orbits the Sun.

In 1990 Pope Benedict, or Cardinal Ratzinger as he was then known, declared that "At the time of Galileo the Church remained much more faithful to reason than Galileo himself. The process against Galileo was reasonable and just."

Tutors and students at Rome's Sapienza University are refusing to forgive the Pontiff for these words, with 61 scientists signing a letter to the university rector stating that Thursday's planned Papal visit is "incongruous" and that his views on Galileo "offend and humiliate us".

The protestors are also unhappy that the visit, during which the Pope will deliver a speech to open the university's academic year, would undermine "the secular nature of science" and the institution's acceptance "students of every belief and ideology".

In addition to the scientists' letter, students have organised four days of protest against the visit, which will include hosting an "anti-clerical meal of bread, pork and wine" and greeting Benedict with loud pop music and banners reading "Knowledge needs neither fathers nor priests".

This isn't the first time the Pope has clashed with academics. Just last week he ordered the removal of an astronomical observatory from his summer residence in order to make more room for receiving diplomats, and in 2006 he sacked the Vatican's chief astronomer, George Coyne, after he criticised the Pope's support for Intelligent Design.

Prayers can stop paedophile priests, says Vatican

Catholics worldwide will now be expected to pray "in perpetuity" in order to cleanse the Church of paedophile priests, The Times reports. An instruction sent to bishops by Cardinal Claudio Hummes, head of the Vatican Congregation of the Clergy states, according to The Times, that "every parish or institution should designate a person or group each day to conduct prayers for the Church to rid itself of the scandal of sexual abuse by clergy".

So there you have it. This is obviously going to work, so there's almost certainly no need to worry about this problem any more. Case closed, I'd say.

Is the Pope Catholic? The religious views of the new England manager

If football truly is a religion, and Fabio Capello achieves the impossible and leads the England team to salvation, we may just have to recognise him as the high priest of the national game, the Holy Father of the FA. Which will be appropriate given the insight into his faith and politics provided by today's Independent.

You see, it turns out that England's new Pope is indeed a Catholic. Hardly surprising, you might say, given the fact that he's Italian, and what of it? Nothing much really, except that Capello has been known to make his views public on more than one occasion – and these views are just as conservative as his style of football.

In a job that saw Glenn Hoddle fired for claiming disabled people are being punished for misdemeanours in their past lives, any new incumbent might be well-advised to keep any controversial views on matters of heaven and earth under wraps. Which may prove difficult for Capello, who earlier this year proclaimed his support for the conservatism of Pope Benedict XVI: "I'm very Catholic and I am not at all in favour of the current [Italian] law on abortion. I like the Pope – for me now the Church needs a traditionalist turn. I am someone who prays twice a day, in the morning and evening, wherever I find myself".

In addition to backing God's notorious rottweiler, the soon-to-be England boss – a supporter of Silvio Berlusconi – has previously expressed his admiration for General Franco, the fascist Spanish dictator whose regime was responsible for the deaths of 200,000 people. On returning to Italy from a spell managing Real Madrid, Capello was full of praise for Spanish society: "In Madrid, I breathed a sparkling atmosphere, the air of a country in Europe making the greatest progress. When I returned to Italy it seemed I had taken two steps back. Spain in two words? Latin warmth and creativity regulated by a rigorous order. The order which comes from Franco."

So, with this in mind, should humanist football fans (yes, them) rethink any support they may have had for the appointment of Capello? We'll certainly be keeping an eye on what the new boss has to say on non-footballing matters (he's already a possible contender for next year's Bad Faith Awards), but in the dressing room perhaps an iron fist is just what's required to whip England's perennial underachievers into shape?

Bad Faith Awards: Vote for the winner now

After months of nominations, the time has finally come to decide who walks away with the coveted 2007 New Humanist Bad Faith Award.

To help you decide who will be crowned 2007's most scurrilous enemy of reason we've pulled together a shortlist of 10 runners and riders. Have a read, follow the links for more information on the nonsense they've been spouting, then place your vote in the poll at the top right of this page:

• Chuck Norris: These days the martial arts legend seems to spend less time cracking skulls and more time lamenting the moral decline of Western civilisation. His weekly column on conservative Christian website WorldNetDaily is a goldmine of evangelical rantings, and his Bad Faith nomination comes by way of his declaration that if he was US President he would "tattoo an American flag with the words 'In God we trust' on the forehead of every atheist".

• The Bishop of Carlisle: This Cumbrian prelate shot to fame when he suggested this summer's floods were God's punishment for Britain's liberal attitude to homosexuality.

• Dr Joyce Pratt: Appropriately named doctor who recommended an exorcism to a woman complaining of stomach pains.

• Richard Dawkins: One heretic New Humanist reader even put forward rationalism's very own Dawkins, for turning "the 19th century's doubting of religious dogma into another kind of dogma". The cheek...

• Cardinal Keith O'Brien: Scottish cardinal who tastefully compared the abortion rate in Scotland to "two Dunblane massacres a day".

• Westboro Baptist Church: That delightful bunch who picket the funerals of US soldiers killed in Iraq, displaying such tactful signs as "God hates fags" and "God blew up the troops".

• Archbishop Francisco Chimoio: Head of the Catholic Church in Mozambique who claims some European-made condoms are deliberately infected with HIV in order to quickly finish off the African people.

• Dinesh D'Souza: Conservative author who said the following about the Virginia Tech massacre: "Notice something interesting about the aftermath of the Virginia Tech shootings? Atheists are nowhere to be found".

• General Sir Richard Dannatt: Chief of the General Staff, and self professed evangelical, who said: "In my business, asking people to risk their lives is part of the job, but doing so without giving them the chance to understand that there is a life after death is something of a betrayal".

• Pope Benedict XVI: Clearly the bookies' favourite. Perhaps he should be excluded to give the rest a chance?

So there we have it. The poll is open until 16 December, and the winner will be announced in the January/February issue of New Humanist.

Bad Faith Awards: last chance to nominate

As many of you will know, since July we've been inviting nominations for our inaugural Bad Faith Awards, encouraging readers to put forward the men and women they feel have made the most outstanding contributions to talking nonsense about religion.

Nominations for the 2007 awards are set to close on 8 December, after which we'll run a poll on here to determine the overall winner. With this in mind, now's the time to put forward your nominees to join the existing field of bigots, charlatans and proselytisers. To do so, simply add a comment to this blog post, preferably with a web reference that backs up your choice.

As things stand, here's the current list of runners and riders:

• Chuck Norris: These days the martial arts legend seems to spend less time cracking skulls and more time lamenting the moral decline of Western civilisation. His weekly column on conservative Christian website WorldNetDaily is a goldmine of evangelical rantings, and his Bad Faith nomination comes by way of his declaration that if he was US President he would "tattoo an American flag with the words 'In God we trust' on the forehead of every atheist".

• The Bishop of Carlisle: This Cumbrian prelate shot to fame when he suggested this summer's floods were God's punishment for Britain's liberal attitude to homosexuality.

• Dr Joyce Pratt: Appropriately named doctor who recommended an exorcism to a woman complaining of stomach pains.

• Fake witches: A woman in Harrogate was driven to suicide when she was unable to keep up payments to witches providing "astral protection" for £23.95 a month. Newspaper reports labelled them "fake witches", which suggests those real witches are out there somewhere.

• Richard Dawkins: One heretic New Humanist reader even put forward rationalism's very own Dawkins, for turning "the 19th century's doubting of religious dogma into another kind of dogma". The cheek...

• Cardinal Keith O'Brien: Scottish cardinal who tastefully compared the abortion rate in Scotland to "two Dunblane massacres a day".

• Westboro Baptist Church: That delightful bunch who picket the funerals of US soldiers killed in Iraq, displaying such tactful signs as "God hates fags" and "God blew up the troops".

• Archbishop Francisco Chimoio: Head of the Catholic Church in Mozambique who claims some European-made condoms are deliberately infected with HIV in order to quickly finish off the African people.

• Omer Butt: Dentist who told a female patient he wouldn't treat her unless she wore a headscarf.

• Pope Benedict XVI: Clearly the bookies' favourite. Perhaps he should be excluded to give the rest a chance?

So, it's a long field but someone's got to win. Keep the nominations coming by commenting on this post.

Why can't this be true?

In reporting yesterday that the actress Carly Pope would be appearing in the hit US TV show 24, Yahoo made a fantastic mistake and ran the story alongside a photo of Pope Benedict XVI. Naturally this, erm, cardinal error was quickly rectified, but just imagine if it was true. I bet the Pope could get those pesky terrorists to confess without the need for any of Jack Bauer's strong-arm torture tactics.

I really couldn't resist doing one of those "how it might look" mock-ups for this...

Fragments of Pope John Paul II's robe sold to the faithful

Any GCSE history student knows the sale of relics helped trigger the Reformation back in the 16th century, so perhaps Catholics should be a little worried at the news that pieces of a robe worn by departed Pope John Paul II are being sold to believers.

The cassock has reportedly been cut into 100,000 pieces, and followers can apply to buy a slice by email, fax or post. The sale is being run by the Vicariate of Rome, which is promoting sainthood for the late Pope. Apparently demand is so high that priority is being given to the seriously ill, or to those praying for the sick.

The Vatican is said to be uneasy at the renewed sale of relics, a practice which was banned under Catholic canon law in wake of the Reformation. Bishop Velasio De Paolis, secretary of the Vatican's top judicial body, told one Catholic newspaper: "No one can say whether venerating relics aids prayer, it depends on the faith of the believer."

This story continues a trend we've been noticing recently, namely the classification of things which were never real in the first place as "fake". In the September/October issue we've got "fake witches" and "fake astrologers", and now we've got it in reference to relics. Convinced the robe fragments are real, the Polish priest in charge of John Paul's sainthood campaign nevertheless warned believers of the dangers of websites offering "false relics". The Times reports that last year a souvenir shop near the Vatican withdrew some specks of cloth supposedly belonging to John Paul from sale, admitting they were "third-class relics".

In the March/April issue of New Humanist Toby Saul reported on the fast-track beatification process being given to John Paul II, and looked at the criteria candidates need to fulfill. You need a miracle, apparently.