RELIGIOUS NUTTERS EVERYWHERE

Christ on a bike – the world is full of religious nutters. Well into the 21st Century these headbangers are still on the go. The attack on free speech in Birmingham looks like a blatant example of religious fundamentalism gone bonkers and yet looking across the water we can see the Roman Catholic Church in France is having a fit about a book which suggests that Mary wasn't a virgin! That's Mary as in the 'Virgin Mary'. You can see the problem right there.

In statements made as *Christians* prepared for Christmas, it has decried the best-selling "Mary, The Mother Of Jesus" by Catholic journalist Jacques Duquesne and "Mary, A Dogmatic Journey" by Dominican theologian Dominique Cerbelaud.

"The two books gravely offend the Catholic faith," declared Bishop Jean-Louis Brugues, head of the French bishops' doctrinal commission that recently reviewed the two works.

Oh dear what a load of horseshit. It’s pretty straightforward. As Gunther Grass wrote: “Even bad books are books and therefore sacred."

The two books attack a central dogma about Mary, who the Church teaches was a virgin who conceived by the Holy Spirit. Honouring Mary is a pillar of traditional piety in the world's largest church and Pope John Paul is strongly devoted to her.

The commission accused Duquesne, a leading French journalist, of "ignorance of Christian thinking" for denying the virgin birth and saying Mary had other children after Jesus -- a point the Catholic Church also disputes.

Duquesne says Church thinking has not kept up with science. "In Jesus' time, people did not know how children were born," he said when "Mary" was published.

The doctrinal commission was more critical of Cerbelaud, a priest who teaches theology at Lyon's Catholic University and argued in his 2003 book that the virgin birth dogma came about "for reasons that spring from collective psychology".

Shit – are these people just really thick or something?
What are they going to get all hot and bothered about next?

Was Joseph's coat not really technicoloured? Did Jonah not really sail about in the whale? Will Santa not really slither down my chimney with a big napsack full of Victorian childrens toys? Where do I protest?