What Donohue says about these (sexual) “contacts” by priests on children not being especially bad gains an extra layer of irony coming from a religion with such a generalised hatred of sexual pleasure.
Michael O’Brian is a very brave man who makes it clear how much harm was done, to him and others, both then and now. If you want to see how brave, listen to him at the link below. Prepare yourself.
John, I was having the same problem. You need to go to http://update.microsoft.com/windowsupdate and get the latest IE updates. Either that or install google chrome – that seems to work. (see google home page)
JonnieC- you weren’t kidding were you? Yikes. I think it was George Bernard Shaw (?) who described celibacy as the weirdest perversion of all. It certainly seems to bring out some ghastly behaviours in these priests- forcing themselves on children in their care and then taking “revenge” on these poor innocents for being somehow responsible for this. It looks a lot like blaming the victim.
Why does Mo always get the best lines? Okay, “What’s the lettuce for?” was great, but different.
Celibacy is not for everyone (as a professional I think I can express an opinion), but it doesn’t necessarily turn you into a child molester. Having said that, I don’t doubt that unhealthy attitudes about sex (& about everything concerning the body) were significant contributing factors to this horrible situation (& after I saw “The Magdalene Sisters”, I wanted to punch a nun).
Oh, poor Grouchy-One! You have been suckered by the sweet kool-aid of the google search engine, free gmail, free google calendar, and so many other treats, but really, Google just wants to absorb you and your data into the giant Borg, er, Google Collective! It’s not too late — open your eyes and start asking questions. What does the code look like? Can you modify it yourself or must you rely on Google’s priests/programmers? Open your heart, your mind, your software — switch to Firefox!
Uncle Roger, I can see that you just haven’t let Google into your heart yet.
You must understand, it comes with an awesome array of gadgets that will, if you believe in it strongly enough, enhance your productivity and even raise your IQ in the eyes of others.
The company charter even says “Don’t be evil”! C’mon how many of the other browsers can say that!!!
Besides, Chrome must be cool because it says so in one of its help pages
I didnt want to suggest that celibacy=child molestation. However, there is clearly something odd about the Catholic Church’s attitude towards the body, its various pleasures and possible dangers. Putting it mildy- I don’t think that they have quite got the balance quite right.
What part of thou shalt have no other browsers before my namesake dost thou not understand? Begone from my site thou blasphemous chromians, lest I smite thee.
…and for my fellow Texans
What the hell’s wrong witcha, boy. I dun sayed ya ain’t ‘posed ta be usin’ nuttin’ else. Ya best getonouttahere, a’fore I kick the ass off you sumbitches
How much worse celibacy and the culture of protecting themselves first makes the RCC compared to others, I don’t know. Apparently whenever you put people in charge of the defenceless and fail to make their actions transparent, this can be the result.
Nuns do it, priests do it, youth leaders do it and so do attendants at homes for the elderly and the mentally incompetent.
In Canada it was the Residential Schools for First Nations children. 25% of them were run by churches other than the RCC. Sexual abuse occurred in most though perhaps not all of them, so it certainly wasn’t exclusively an RCC failing.
As for physical abuse, one must grant that ‘spare the rod’ was more or less a given in those days, but sadism is another matter. Emotional abuse was almost a design feature of the Residential Schools. The idea was to switch First Nations children from their ‘failed’ culture to ‘white’ culture. They were punished for speaking their language and their possessions were destroyed. They were required to abandon their religion and accept that of the church sect that controlled their school.
Religion is one of the most effective ways to get good people to do evil. Without religion, who knows, Bill Donahue might not have become so despicable.
Thanks to Author and the others for your helpful suggestions.
I do have absolutely the latest version of IE7 (I did have IE8 but the company made me remove it as “not yet corporate standard” – a euphemism for “we don’t want you browsing porn sites in stealth mode”).
Luckily I also have Firefox AND Chrome loaded on the laptop so now I can access the Authors sublimeness whenever.
And as there is nothing like a good holy war to get the juices going I cannot see any real benefit in Firefox or Chrome, especially not over IE8. In fact I thought Chrome was rubbish and only left it on the machine as I can’t be arsed removing it. Firefox does not seem to have anything IE does not have. Yeah OK maybe open source but how many everyday users are likely to hack the code in their browser).
And Google might say stuff about not being evil but it fails to suffix it with “yet”. It reminds me of the Hegemonising Swarm.
Anyway I do think there is something particularly odd about being a catlick religionist which turns you into a kiddy fiddler. Do buddhist monks institutionally molest kids in their charge ?
I was so hoping to find that others were having the same problems I have had as of late. I do however feel a bit lost with not having been able to keep up with the J&M strip for a week. THe think that most bothers me is that I thought this discussion group had evovled into “we at J&M”. Now there is so much infighting with this browser issue. Much like the religions we scoff at we are close to becoming IE’rs or FF’ers, etc. Can’t we all just get along….SPOING!!!!!
This is an intellectual strip. Best comic strip in the business, but because it is so good will never be mass market material. Thank you authors for not dumbing down to get the numbers up. The numbers you do have love you.
The radio frequency worries me. I hope J&M aren’t listening to Town 102 in Ipswich. I’d be really pissed off if I discovered that Bill Donohue had visited my home town and I’d missed the opportunity to smack him in the mouth.
Thank you JohnnieC for your link. A very articulate man, and like the second guest in the Donohue clip, one who was raped by priests, and whose anger is all the more moving by his restraint and desire to describe what actually happened, rather than simply rant like Donohue.
I’ve thought for a while that while religion’s claim is that its adherents are more moral than atheists, in fact it is more accurate to say that it sanctifies its adherents’ behaviour, whatever that might be.
Toast in the machine: “religion… sanctifies its adherents’ behaviour, whatever that might be.”
Dawkins puts patriotism and religion in the same category when he thinks about what causes our ‘tribal’ group adherence and the resultant conflict and war. We might aptly rework a a certain well known phrase as “My religion, right or wrong!”
I had the same problem as John the Geologist, but today I downloaded Firefox and now I am reading Jesus & Mo just fine. Anecdotal evidence? Yes. But it makes me happy.
Just to put the record straight. Residential Schools are/were not the same as industrial schools. The latter catered for babies, toddlers and child inmates.. They were incarcerated into these child labour camps by the courts and were given numbers in the same way as adult prisoners. They were sentenced to these child gulags for the duration of their whole childhoods – not being allowed to enter the outside world until they were sixteen years old, excepting that of week-ends and holidays, if they were fortunate enough to own a family.
One differentiation between those who went into industrial schools and those who went into Residential Schools is that the former were classed as criminals and the latter were not indeed. Sadly to say, the introduction of Residential Schools in Ireland, did not come into being until the seventies.
Magdalen laundry penitents, as they were called, were teenagers and had very similar lives to babies and children in industrial schools. Nonetheless, in saying this, young children from the gulags, were by far much, much younger, I emphasise, than the ‘penitents’ from Magdalen laundries, yet young children had to do the exact type of work on a daily basis – but nobody has ever made films about them – they have been, up till the Ryan Report, voiceless victims, whom the media had only ever been drip-fed information about them. You see, they are mainly illiterate, having not had any opportunity of being educated by the religious. whose ethos, ironically, in the first instance, was to educate the poorest of the poor. So therefore they were not in the privileged position of being voice their opinions adequately.
The religious were supposed to have laid down their lives to serve the poor , this was their vocation, their calling, from their God to the religious life, yet a certain amount of bad apples amongst them were allowed for generations, to ride rough-shod over vulnerable, defenceless, poor children, who had no choice but to depend on them for their every need indeed.
Speaking of fruit! There are some highly educated people out there in the wider academic world who would rather discuss fruit than engage with the diabolical deathly miserable subject which is contained in the Ryan Report. The English media too would much rather entertain its people with political illegal fees shenanigans than discuss systemic child abuse that occurred in Ireland’s industrial schools. Richard Dawkins talks about religion being some kind of child abuse, I wonder what he would make of the Ryan Report? I have not personally read too much about the Ryan Report on blogs belonging to the educated people of the world – what is it they are afraid of – what, indeed? They would, from my perception, anyway, rather talk about boring mundane things, than virtual horrendous goings-on of babies and children who were left by society to rot in institutions. They probably support charities, like Maddy supports babies on her hips. they doubtless also compartmentalise their emotions – meaning, children outside of their own are of no consequence. Because if they were, interested, they would be shouting with their fountain pens from the roof-tops about the atrocities that occurred to thousands of children in these mini-concentration camps. I say, shame on those who ignore what happened to these children in the past – they have suffered a holocaust of abuse at the hands of the religious and they certainly do not want it compounded by those who have had the privilege of being educated. It is up to all of you who have been gifted with the eloquence of expression to give credence with your gifts to this dastardly horrible subject of child abuse. Students galore used adults survivors to do dissertations and it would be only proper if those who have dissertations in subjects appertaining to the study of human nature to get their act together and write about the Ryan Report. It is after all – Ireland’s mini-holocaust.
Marie-Therese, if your post set the record straight for some, it didn’t for me, especially if you were referring to my comment. The best I can make out is that the term Residential School was used in more than one country for more than one set of unfortunates.
Reform School was the term used here (e.g. Ontario) for an equivalent to your industrial schools and yes once again, there are abuse claims.
Residential schools here were intended to solve the ‘Indian Problem’ and came into being when the government began to fund Mission Schools.
Those who ‘meant well’ in establishing these institutions were too naive to put proper oversight in place. They had not learned from history that power corrupts.
Re:… “[t]he term Residential School and…[s]et of unfortunates.”
Granted, Johnnie! The only word which shouted out at me from your post was ‘”Residential” as in residential schools. The latter word ‘residential’ has a distinct connotation here in Ireland – as these said schools were only up and running since the seventies, as in contrast to those in existence in Canada since 1840 (with the last “residential school” closing in 1996). In Great Britain, industrial schools, which were alive and kicking since 1857, were disbanded by the government in 1933. However, Irish “Industrial Schools” (Act of 1868) which were established (as with the British ones) to care supposedly for “neglected, orphaned and abandoned children” were still flourishing right up to the 1970’s. A residential institutional redress board was set up in Ireland in 2002 and countless ex-inmates from the industrial schools could not relate to the ‘resident’ label – to them it was rather a euphemism for detainees, after all they went through the court system and were imprisoned in these child labour camps and did not want their prisoner status belittled. A child prisoner was a child prisoner was a child prisoner and definitely not a child resident or a child pupil – however much the powers that be want to dress down the reality of the title.
BTW, I looked up the word “unfortunates” – they are persons who suffer bad fortune. Archaically speaking, though, they are people who are considered immoral or lacking in religious faith or instruction, esp. a prostitute.? Interesting!
Jesus & Mo (the characters) are absurd, blinkered, and oddly very sweet. J&M (the cartoon) is brilliant: sharp, delicious, irresistible. Salman Rushdie
Jesus and Mo cartoons are wonderfully funny and true. Richard Dawkins
Jesus and Mo make the world a better place, bless their little hearts. Ophelia Benson
In a world defined by outrage and offence and liberal spinelessness, Jesus and Mo is a treasure, whose value we should never fail to recognize. Read them. Laugh. And think. Kenan Malik
The brilliant, celebrated, freaking hilarious atheist comic strip ... Greta Christina
...rays of sanity in a befuddled world. Keri Hulme
The liveliest depictions of Muhammad currently available... Malise Ruthven
J & Mo is the funniest and most consistently thought-provoking cartoon strip on the Net. In a saner world, it would run in a major newspaper. Nelson Jones, Heresy Corner
Consistently amusing, frequently thought-provoking and often heart-warming. New Humanist
Jesus & Mo is one of the most wonderful things on the internet.. JT Eberhard
Wittily captures much of the absurdity of religious apologetics. Mano Singham
I love jesusandmo.net cartoons - witty and sharp! Katha Pollitt
Often hilarious, frequently wry, these cartoons do what all the best cartoons do: they tell the truth through humour. Terry Sanderson, NSS President
...a wonderfully acid British cartoonist... Nick Cohen
I love the scrappy mockery of Jesus and Mo. Freedom of speech
includes the freedom to mock any person, any thing, any activity, and
any belief -- and J&M stands up for this unflinchingly Richard Stallman
...empowering, important and deeply progressive, not to mention hilarious... Council of Ex-Muslims
December 3, 2010
That Bill Donahue…what a fisking douchebag. He wouldn’t feel alive if he weren’t offended by something.
The good news is that Billy-boyo was totally ripped to shreds in that interview.
—
Martin
I am having extreme difficulty accessing the site.
I keep getting “”Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage””. All other web pages are accessible to me.
Sometimes the current page flashes briefly then I get the error page.
I managed to get here via the isitfunny.com site.
Is the Author being DOSed by mad techno-mullahs or jesusite hackers ??
What Donohue says about these (sexual) “contacts” by priests on children not being especially bad gains an extra layer of irony coming from a religion with such a generalised hatred of sexual pleasure.
Not that I want to start a religious war, but John the Geologist, I strongly recommend switching to Firefox if you can. http://www.getfirefox.com/
Michael O’Brian is a very brave man who makes it clear how much harm was done, to him and others, both then and now. If you want to see how brave, listen to him at the link below. Prepare yourself.
http://whythatsdelightful.wordpress.com/2009/05/26/hero-of-the-day/
John, I was having the same problem. You need to go to http://update.microsoft.com/windowsupdate and get the latest IE updates. Either that or install google chrome – that seems to work. (see google home page)
Uncle Roger you have been led astray. Firefox is the work of the devil. I believe in the one true browser – Chrome!
? Google loves me yes I know… ?
JonnieC- you weren’t kidding were you? Yikes. I think it was George Bernard Shaw (?) who described celibacy as the weirdest perversion of all. It certainly seems to bring out some ghastly behaviours in these priests- forcing themselves on children in their care and then taking “revenge” on these poor innocents for being somehow responsible for this. It looks a lot like blaming the victim.
Why does Mo always get the best lines? Okay, “What’s the lettuce for?” was great, but different.
Celibacy is not for everyone (as a professional I think I can express an opinion), but it doesn’t necessarily turn you into a child molester. Having said that, I don’t doubt that unhealthy attitudes about sex (& about everything concerning the body) were significant contributing factors to this horrible situation (& after I saw “The Magdalene Sisters”, I wanted to punch a nun).
Oh, poor Grouchy-One! You have been suckered by the sweet kool-aid of the google search engine, free gmail, free google calendar, and so many other treats, but really, Google just wants to absorb you and your data into the giant Borg, er, Google Collective! It’s not too late — open your eyes and start asking questions. What does the code look like? Can you modify it yourself or must you rely on Google’s priests/programmers? Open your heart, your mind, your software — switch to Firefox!
Uncle Roger, I can see that you just haven’t let Google into your heart yet.
You must understand, it comes with an awesome array of gadgets that will, if you believe in it strongly enough, enhance your productivity and even raise your IQ in the eyes of others.
The company charter even says “Don’t be evil”! C’mon how many of the other browsers can say that!!!
Besides, Chrome must be cool because it says so in one of its help pages
I didnt want to suggest that celibacy=child molestation. However, there is clearly something odd about the Catholic Church’s attitude towards the body, its various pleasures and possible dangers. Putting it mildy- I don’t think that they have quite got the balance quite right.
Daoloth — I wouldn’t disagree with a thing you said (Prior Aelred, happy Episcopalian)!
Bill is such a fLIcking tool. He’ll do anything to defend his institutional masters.
What part of thou shalt have no other browsers before my namesake dost thou not understand? Begone from my site thou blasphemous chromians, lest I smite thee.
…and for my fellow Texans
What the hell’s wrong witcha, boy. I dun sayed ya ain’t ‘posed ta be usin’ nuttin’ else. Ya best getonouttahere, a’fore I kick the ass off you sumbitches
Oh, I thought it was Bill O’Reilly…. I guess all those bloated
dirt bags start to sound alike after a while.
Sometimes a very short while.
How much worse celibacy and the culture of protecting themselves first makes the RCC compared to others, I don’t know. Apparently whenever you put people in charge of the defenceless and fail to make their actions transparent, this can be the result.
Nuns do it, priests do it, youth leaders do it and so do attendants at homes for the elderly and the mentally incompetent.
In Canada it was the Residential Schools for First Nations children. 25% of them were run by churches other than the RCC. Sexual abuse occurred in most though perhaps not all of them, so it certainly wasn’t exclusively an RCC failing.
As for physical abuse, one must grant that ‘spare the rod’ was more or less a given in those days, but sadism is another matter. Emotional abuse was almost a design feature of the Residential Schools. The idea was to switch First Nations children from their ‘failed’ culture to ‘white’ culture. They were punished for speaking their language and their possessions were destroyed. They were required to abandon their religion and accept that of the church sect that controlled their school.
Religion is one of the most effective ways to get good people to do evil. Without religion, who knows, Bill Donahue might not have become so despicable.
Thanks to Author and the others for your helpful suggestions.
I do have absolutely the latest version of IE7 (I did have IE8 but the company made me remove it as “not yet corporate standard” – a euphemism for “we don’t want you browsing porn sites in stealth mode”).
Luckily I also have Firefox AND Chrome loaded on the laptop so now I can access the Authors sublimeness whenever.
And as there is nothing like a good holy war to get the juices going I cannot see any real benefit in Firefox or Chrome, especially not over IE8. In fact I thought Chrome was rubbish and only left it on the machine as I can’t be arsed removing it. Firefox does not seem to have anything IE does not have. Yeah OK maybe open source but how many everyday users are likely to hack the code in their browser).
And Google might say stuff about not being evil but it fails to suffix it with “yet”. It reminds me of the Hegemonising Swarm.
Anyway I do think there is something particularly odd about being a catlick religionist which turns you into a kiddy fiddler. Do buddhist monks institutionally molest kids in their charge ?
And FF does not support the yahoo email system !
“”””Sorry, the all-new Yahoo! Mail does not support your browser.
You can either download a compatible browser or proceed to Yahoo! Mail Classic.””””
I use the new Yahoo mail every day in FF. perhaps an update is needed?
I was so hoping to find that others were having the same problems I have had as of late. I do however feel a bit lost with not having been able to keep up with the J&M strip for a week. THe think that most bothers me is that I thought this discussion group had evovled into “we at J&M”. Now there is so much infighting with this browser issue. Much like the religions we scoff at we are close to becoming IE’rs or FF’ers, etc. Can’t we all just get along….SPOING!!!!!
Opps don’t have the 5min edit window any more, Jesus “Frikin'” Christ…
This is an intellectual strip. Best comic strip in the business, but because it is so good will never be mass market material. Thank you authors for not dumbing down to get the numbers up. The numbers you do have love you.
The radio frequency worries me. I hope J&M aren’t listening to Town 102 in Ipswich. I’d be really pissed off if I discovered that Bill Donohue had visited my home town and I’d missed the opportunity to smack him in the mouth.
This might be the relevant Bill Donohue interview: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptVOpbEpn0k
Thank you JohnnieC for your link. A very articulate man, and like the second guest in the Donohue clip, one who was raped by priests, and whose anger is all the more moving by his restraint and desire to describe what actually happened, rather than simply rant like Donohue.
I’ve thought for a while that while religion’s claim is that its adherents are more moral than atheists, in fact it is more accurate to say that it sanctifies its adherents’ behaviour, whatever that might be.
He’s like the bastard child of Mary Whitehouse by a US conservative shock jock. When WILL he be canonised?
Toast in the machine: “religion… sanctifies its adherents’ behaviour, whatever that might be.”
Dawkins puts patriotism and religion in the same category when he thinks about what causes our ‘tribal’ group adherence and the resultant conflict and war. We might aptly rework a a certain well known phrase as “My religion, right or wrong!”
I had the same problem as John the Geologist, but today I downloaded Firefox and now I am reading Jesus & Mo just fine. Anecdotal evidence? Yes. But it makes me happy.
Re; AOL and J&M. Same problem, Firefox fixed it, but WTF?
Daoloth,
The celibacy thing was one of Oscar’s.
And I think it was Mencken who said that ‘My country, right or wrong.’ was equivalent to ‘My mother, drunk or sober.’
Author bang on form.
Just to put the record straight. Residential Schools are/were not the same as industrial schools. The latter catered for babies, toddlers and child inmates.. They were incarcerated into these child labour camps by the courts and were given numbers in the same way as adult prisoners. They were sentenced to these child gulags for the duration of their whole childhoods – not being allowed to enter the outside world until they were sixteen years old, excepting that of week-ends and holidays, if they were fortunate enough to own a family.
One differentiation between those who went into industrial schools and those who went into Residential Schools is that the former were classed as criminals and the latter were not indeed. Sadly to say, the introduction of Residential Schools in Ireland, did not come into being until the seventies.
Magdalen laundry penitents, as they were called, were teenagers and had very similar lives to babies and children in industrial schools. Nonetheless, in saying this, young children from the gulags, were by far much, much younger, I emphasise, than the ‘penitents’ from Magdalen laundries, yet young children had to do the exact type of work on a daily basis – but nobody has ever made films about them – they have been, up till the Ryan Report, voiceless victims, whom the media had only ever been drip-fed information about them. You see, they are mainly illiterate, having not had any opportunity of being educated by the religious. whose ethos, ironically, in the first instance, was to educate the poorest of the poor. So therefore they were not in the privileged position of being voice their opinions adequately.
The religious were supposed to have laid down their lives to serve the poor , this was their vocation, their calling, from their God to the religious life, yet a certain amount of bad apples amongst them were allowed for generations, to ride rough-shod over vulnerable, defenceless, poor children, who had no choice but to depend on them for their every need indeed.
Speaking of fruit! There are some highly educated people out there in the wider academic world who would rather discuss fruit than engage with the diabolical deathly miserable subject which is contained in the Ryan Report. The English media too would much rather entertain its people with political illegal fees shenanigans than discuss systemic child abuse that occurred in Ireland’s industrial schools. Richard Dawkins talks about religion being some kind of child abuse, I wonder what he would make of the Ryan Report? I have not personally read too much about the Ryan Report on blogs belonging to the educated people of the world – what is it they are afraid of – what, indeed? They would, from my perception, anyway, rather talk about boring mundane things, than virtual horrendous goings-on of babies and children who were left by society to rot in institutions. They probably support charities, like Maddy supports babies on her hips. they doubtless also compartmentalise their emotions – meaning, children outside of their own are of no consequence. Because if they were, interested, they would be shouting with their fountain pens from the roof-tops about the atrocities that occurred to thousands of children in these mini-concentration camps. I say, shame on those who ignore what happened to these children in the past – they have suffered a holocaust of abuse at the hands of the religious and they certainly do not want it compounded by those who have had the privilege of being educated. It is up to all of you who have been gifted with the eloquence of expression to give credence with your gifts to this dastardly horrible subject of child abuse. Students galore used adults survivors to do dissertations and it would be only proper if those who have dissertations in subjects appertaining to the study of human nature to get their act together and write about the Ryan Report. It is after all – Ireland’s mini-holocaust.
Marie-Therese, if your post set the record straight for some, it didn’t for me, especially if you were referring to my comment. The best I can make out is that the term Residential School was used in more than one country for more than one set of unfortunates.
Reform School was the term used here (e.g. Ontario) for an equivalent to your industrial schools and yes once again, there are abuse claims.
Residential schools here were intended to solve the ‘Indian Problem’ and came into being when the government began to fund Mission Schools.
Those who ‘meant well’ in establishing these institutions were too naive to put proper oversight in place. They had not learned from history that power corrupts.
Re:… “[t]he term Residential School and…[s]et of unfortunates.”
Granted, Johnnie! The only word which shouted out at me from your post was ‘”Residential” as in residential schools. The latter word ‘residential’ has a distinct connotation here in Ireland – as these said schools were only up and running since the seventies, as in contrast to those in existence in Canada since 1840 (with the last “residential school” closing in 1996). In Great Britain, industrial schools, which were alive and kicking since 1857, were disbanded by the government in 1933. However, Irish “Industrial Schools” (Act of 1868) which were established (as with the British ones) to care supposedly for “neglected, orphaned and abandoned children” were still flourishing right up to the 1970’s. A residential institutional redress board was set up in Ireland in 2002 and countless ex-inmates from the industrial schools could not relate to the ‘resident’ label – to them it was rather a euphemism for detainees, after all they went through the court system and were imprisoned in these child labour camps and did not want their prisoner status belittled. A child prisoner was a child prisoner was a child prisoner and definitely not a child resident or a child pupil – however much the powers that be want to dress down the reality of the title.
BTW, I looked up the word “unfortunates” – they are persons who suffer bad fortune. Archaically speaking, though, they are people who are considered immoral or lacking in religious faith or instruction, esp. a prostitute.? Interesting!