The Bellefonte First Presbyterian Church in Bellefonte, Pa., USA. Founded in 1800 by the same group who founded the borough of Bellefonte in Pennsylvania, held its last service on 21th December 2021.
As though to reinforce the recent findings of the Pew Research survey which shows an accelerating decline in affiliation to mainstream churches in the USA, one of the oldest fundamentalist Christian churches in Pennsylvania, The First Presbyterian Church of Bellefonte, has closed its doors for the last time, attendance having fallen by 87% from about 200 in the 1970s to about 40 before the pandemic and just 25 now.
When it was founded in 1800, the First Presbyterian Church of Bellefonte was very much a part of the local political establishment, even holding meetings in the courthouse before the church was built and providing two Pennsylvania governors from amongst its members. The church provided the local civil leadership for the borough and the state at large, which was, for all practical purposes, a local theocracy with no attempt to separate church and state, the local Christian leadership believing it was entitled to rule.
The latest Pew Research survey reveals another huge fall in the number of Americans self-identifying as Christian and another increase in the number self-identifying as 'None' or unaffiliated. At just 63% self-identifying as Christians, this is the second lowest since Pew began these surveys, down from 75% a decade ago and from 78% in 2007.
'Nones' have reached a new high at 29%.
As the next chart shows, all the decline has been at the expense of Protestant churches which have fallen by 12 percentage points since 2007 to just 40%, in other words, 6 out of 10 Americans now self-identify as non-Protestant, including 21% Catholic and about 3% Orthodox Christian or Mormon.
The Protestant share of the population is down 4 percentage points over the last five years and has dropped 10 points in 10 years, in other words, these churches which includes those who described themselves as 'just Christian' without identifying any particular church, have been losing about 1% of their share of the people per year.
Catholicism has fallen by only 3 percentage points since 2007 and has staged a small recovery compared to 3 years ago when it fell below 20%. It is now back to its 2014 share at 21%.
That Earth is flat and has a dome over it to keep the water above the sky out. The moon and sun are lamps hung on this dome so we can tell day from night and the stars stuck to it can shake loose and fall to earth during earthquakes.
That a magic man designed himself before he existed then self-assemble out of nothing with enough information to create a Universe out of nothing and micromanage it to the minutest level.
That a hundred-year-old man built a wooden boat and rounded up two or seven of every species in the world to live together for a year sealed in that boat with only one small window for air, then they left the boat onto a sterile planet on which all living things had been destroyed, including the plants, but still found enough to eat so everything alive today is descended from those few survivors.
That just five generations after the survivors left the boat in 2, there were enough people to support a massive civil engineering project to build a tower up to Heaven, which in those days was just above the sky over the Middle East, and that all the languages on Earth are the result of this population each being magically made to speak languages that non-one else could understand, because the project alarmed an omniscient, omnipotent god who lived in the Heaven.
According to an internal Facebook report, leaked by a former employee to MIT Technology Review, in the run-up to the 2020 elections in the USA, Christians were amongst those specially targeted by Eastern European troll farms intent on interfering with the elections, to the extent that 19 of the 20 most popular Christian groups on Facebook were run by these troll farms.
The report found that, after the 2016 election, Facebook:
I mentioned at the end my last blog post that Christians seem to need the promise of a reward in order to do the right thing, with the implication that it would be much better if they just did the right thing because it is the right thing to do. However, nowhere in their handbook of morals and ethics, is that ever mandated or even recommended.
The closest they come to it is the instruction to do to others what they would want others to do to them - the so-called golden rule, common to just about every culture. Unfortunately, after several decades of the Republicans advocating greed and selfishness and insisting that it deserves a reward, most American fundamentalist Christians have come to associate doing the right thing by others as some sort of undesirable, socialist/liberal subversion of the 'American Way', and so not what God wants at all.
Few things highlight this better than the findings of a recent Pew Research survey into COVID-19 vaccine take-up, which places white evangelicals at the bottom of the table and Atheists at the top. Atheists clearly understand that by being vaccinated, they are not only protecting themselves, but also protecting other people and the society at large, by:
I'm not sure if this is good news or bad news. Pastor Greg Locke, of Global Vision Bible Church, Tennessee, is such a goldmine of anti-fundamentalist propaganda that it'll be a shame to lose him, but on the other hand, events have shown that there are people, especially in USA, who are gullible enough to let him think for them. Given his increasing advocacy of violence, repeated misinformation about Trump's defeat last November, which he still can't bring himself to accept, and his Trumpanzee/QAnon-inspired anti Covid vaccine lies, he constitutes the sort of danger to society that Twitter should be protecting its customers from.
In fact, the true value of preachers of hate like Locke is that they server to remind us what a violent and hate-filled religion Christianity would be if it hadn't been moderated and civilised by a hefty dose of Humanism following the European Enlightenment. They simply preach a pure version of primitive Medieval Christianity, based on Bronze Age, despotic Middle Eastern tribalism of which the Taliban and the Spanish Inquisition would be proud.
Despite the apparent rise in white supremacist racism in Donald Trump's America, the reality is that Americans of all races and ages are far less racist in their attitude to interracial marriage than they used to be, according to a recent Gallup poll.
In 1958, with segregation and Jim Crow laws operating in many southern states, only 4% of Americans of all races approved of interracial marriages; in 2012 that figure has reached 94%. Moreover, the gap between the races on the issue has closed to just 3% (96%, black and 93%, white). It was 56% and 17% respectively in 1969!
As though to prove my point that religions provide excuses for people who need excuses, the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) has concluded that child sexual abuse was fequent in most major uK religions, and that the normal response to allegations was to defend the organization at the expense of their victims.
In a report released yesterday, they say:
Child sexual abuse has been found in most major UK religions… with some found to have no child protection policies in place at all.
The ‘Child protection in religious organisations and settings’ report examined evidence received from 38 religious organisations with a presence in England and Wales, with the figures provided to the Inquiry about known prevalence of child sexual abuse unlikely to reflect the full picture.
Religious organisations play a central and even dominant role in the lives of millions of children in England and Wales. The report highlights the blatant hypocrisy and moral failing of religions purporting to teach right from wrong and yet failing to prevent or respond to child sexual abuse.
A surf school owner who had been suckered in by the pro-Trump, neo-Nazi QAnon conspiracy theories ended up so paranoid that he killed his children, believing that was the only way to save the world from evil.
According to this report in the Daily Beast, he told FBI agents:
... that he was enlightened by the QAnon and Illuminati conspiracy theories and was receiving visions and signs revealing that his wife...possessed serpent DNA and had passed it onto his children [so he was] saving the world from monsters.
Coleman was arrested when he attempted to re-enter the USA from Mexico, the day after the bodies of his two children, a 3 year-old boy and a 1 year-old girl, were found at a ranch near Rosarito, Baha California, Mexico, to where Coleman had taken them a day earlier without telling his wife where he was taking them. The girl had 17 stab wounds and the boy, 12.
Coleman and his wife, Abby, ran the Lovewater Surfing School at Santa Barbara, California, offering 'surfing therapy' to child victims of sex trafficking.
In a (now deleted) Facebook post last November, Coleman told his followers about his Christian faith, speculating that:
...there is a type of Great American Renaissance following the years of Covid, censorship, and political divisiveness... that will empower each person’s heart to come alive and explode with innovative ideas, new business models, new music sounds and never seen ways to build an amazing community?
Last October, celebrating his daughter's birthday, in a post suffused with the 'coming battle' imagery of QAnon conspiracists, he posted about his 'visions' on Instagram:
While waiting for her to come, I kept feeling this sense that she was going to be born at a very pivotal time in history and that she would represent a dawn, or even awakening, to years of great blessing for our family and nation. Another picture that came to me was of God reaching down into a river bed and picking up a small stone (rock), examining it intently. Just as David had done before slaying Goliath, God examined the stone and was confident that it was just the perfect one for the battle. Although it was small, smooth and somewhat harmless looking, he knew that it would become great when placed into the palm of a skilled hand. My declaration over Roxy Rain is that she has been hand picked by God to slay the giants in the land.
Clearly, Coleman, who appears to have been suffering from paranoid schizophrenia, began imagining visions and messages telling him something far more sinister, and more in line with the sort of paranoia being deliberately inculcated into their followers' minds by whoever is behind the QAnon conspiracy theories.
QAnon adherents believe in a myriad of far-right conspiracy theories, including the false belief that a cabal of Satanic pedophiles comprised of global elites, Hollywood actors, and Democratic politicians operate a global child sex-trafficking ring, and that former president Donald Trump was working to bring down the cabal. In the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election, which led to the election of Democratic nominee Joe Biden, QAnon adherents began spreading disproven election fraud narratives while also contributing to the spread of COVID-19 disinformation and anti-vaccine conspiracy theories.
The QAnon conspiracy theories have consumed relationships and marriages across the United States, with thousands of people sharing their stories on support groups such as Reddit’s r/QAnonCasualties subreddit. Countless spouses and family members shared stories about their “losing” their loved ones to QAnon. Recently, a student who survived the Parkland shooting in 2018 revealed in the subreddit that QAnon convinced his own father that the tragic shooting was nothing more than a hoax.
Clearly there is nothign the Trumpanzee cult and their allies in white supremacist evangelical Christianity, won't stoop to. No price is too high for them to pay in terms of damage to the mental health of individuals and destruction of families, to try to get the former head of the White House crime syndicate, Donald J Trump, back into the White House in 2024.
Just when you thought the Vatican financial scandals couldn't get any murkier, we have news that someone is sending Pope Francis death threats, presumably to try to intimidate him into dropping the charges against former cardinal, Angelo Becciu and his shady cronies in the dodgy London property deal and money-laundering operation. Meanwhile the Vatican is degenerating into mutual back-stabbing and finger-pointing.
Readers may recall how Becciu was summarily sacked and stripped of his rank as cardinal last September. He had been replaced by Archbishop Edgar Pena Parra, as sostituto (effectively, Pope Francis' Chief of Staff), in 2018.
The Mafioso-style death threat, in the form of an envelope containing three 9mm bullets and a letter referring to Vatican financial mismanagement, addressed to "Pope Francis — Vatican City — St. Peter’s Square in Rome", was sent from France. According to this report, Vatican police believe they know the person who sent it.
If ever there was a time for the Catholic Church, under the leadership of Pope Francis, to do some good for the future of mankind and life on Earth it is now, with two major crises currently playing havoc: the coronavirus pandemic and global warming. The latter being perhaps the most serious in the longer term.
And yet we have had very little in the way of encouraging Catholics, let alone the rest of us, to do something constructive about either!
In an article by Thomas Reese in Religion News Service, he simultaneously points out this failure by the Pope and identifies some of the reason for it. The main problem is that the Pope can no longer command the support and mandate the actions of Catholics, under the threat of hellfire and damnation, or even death for heresy for non-compliance, so all he can do is smile and mutter warm words and platitudes in the hope that someone will listen to him.
The problem is not just the lack of any moral authority from the leader of a church whose clerics systematically and routinely abused their positions of trust to sexually predate on children and vulnerable adults, but the fact that when Popes did have those autocratic powers, they almost invariably abused them. Far from supporting scientists like Galileo and Darwin on the basis that the truth is worth defending, they were condemned as heretics because they reported evidence that went against the established doctrines. The test was not "What does the evidence show?" or "What is the truth?", but "What do we need people to believe?".
Reese points out the contrast between when Popes could order Crusades against Muslims and how today the Pope is powerless to order a 'crusade' to save the planet, or to get the world's people vaccinated against the coronavirus:
And rather than organizing crusades against Muslims, as it did in the past, the church could mobilize its people to protect the health of the Earth and humanity. But today, the children’s crusade is led, not by the church, but by Greta Thunberg. Hopefully she will be more successful than the Children’s Crusade of 1212, which ended in disaster.
But of course, by the murderous Medieval crusades, and the Inquisition, the Pope showed how to abuse dictatorial powers, so those powers, post-enlightenment, have been removed.
Again, Reese points out:
There was a time when Christianity had the ability to do great things (some good, some bad).
We marvel at those Christians in the past who dug the foundations of great cathedrals, the completion of which they and their children would never see. The idea of taking on a project, like building a cathedral, that might take centuries to complete is incomprehensible to us.
Indeed, although it is quite difficult to think of many 'great things' that Christianity did. Reese cites the laying of foundations for Cathedrals for their grandchildren by people who would never see the full fruits of their labours, but those were invariably on the instructions of powerful bishops and monarchs, intent on consolidating their grip on the people with an ostentatious display of wealth and power.
It is doubtful that the labourers, or those who paid them, were motivated by a vision of the great architecture, impressive vaulting and stained glass that would follow. Skilled though they may have been, they were likely more motivated by the need to earn their daily bread and feed a family, in the case of the diggers, and their own self-aggrandizement in the case of the financiers, than thoughts of what their grandchildren might eventually see.
In stark contrast, there are the very many bad things that Christianity did, from witch burning, holy wars like the Albigensian Crusade (read, genocide of the Cathars), antisemitic pogroms, the Inquisition, marginalisation of women and minorities, the literal demonization of people suffering with mental health and neurological problems, imperialism and permitting slavery in the nameunder the guise of 'civilising' other peoples and teaching them the 'good news' of the need for salvation and how to achieve it by adopting Christianity, obeying the priests, accepting the autocratic rule of Christian kings and emperors, and knowing their place and staying in it.
Yes, Thomas Reese is right: the Pope could and should use what authority he still has to urge Catholics to do their utmost to save the planet and get on top of the coronavirus pandemic. But he cannot, for the simple reason that he has little or no moral authority left after centuries of abuse of their power by his predecessors, the accumulation of vast treasures of incalculable worth for nothing more important than self-glorification, decades of abuse of children and vulnerable adults by his priests and a long, sorry history of marginalisation, demonization and damnation of minorities, degradation of women, and the promotion of poverty and suffering as a blessing.
He now leads a church visibly struggling to keep up with the advances in humanist ethics now replacing the primitive, Bronze Age superstitions and brutal, misogynistic tribal moral codes that his church still holds sacred, in civilised countries. To paraphrase Stephen Fry's words in the Intelligence Squared debate, the Pope could take that vast wealth stored in the Vatican and use it to send his nuns and priest and monks out into the world with instructions to use it to vaccinate the poor and invest in green technologies and renewable energy.
If he did so, the Catholic Church could be a force for good in the world; but he does not, and it is not.
It is clear from the testimony of serving Metropolitan Police officers to the Committee of enquiry into the violent insurrection in support of Donald Trump at the Capitol, Washington DC, on 6 January, 2021, that the people attempting the violent coup d’état were not, as the GOP and Trumpanzee cult maintain, assorted BLM/Socialists, but full-blooded Christian Jihadi terrorists. The terrorists were intent on creating a Christian evangelical theocracy in the USA.
Bizarrely, this was to be under the leadership of their idol, Donald Trump, possibly the least competent, most corrupt and most un-Christian US politician ever to hold public high office.
One of the police officer who gave evidence was Daniel Hodges, one of the on-duty officers who were violently attacked by the mob as they forced their way into the Capitol building, seeking to prevent the House from ratifying the EC vote confirming that Joe Biden had won the presidency and Trump had lost. Some were even calling for the seizure and summary execution of leading lawmakers.
During his harrowing testimony, he described being crushed by the mob against the Capital door and a Christian terrorist trying to gouge his eye out with his thumb.
He told the committee:
The sea of people was punctuated throughout by flags. Mostly variations of American flags and Trump flags. There was Gadsden flags. It was clear the terrorists perceived themselves to be Christians. I saw the Christian flag directly to my front, and another had 'Jesus is my savior, Trump is my president.' Another, 'Jesus is king.
To my perpetual confusion, I saw the Thin Blue Line flag, a symbol of support for law enforcement, more than once being carried by the terrorists as they ignored our commands and continued to assault us.
[The] rioters identifying as veterans said they had "fought for this country and were fighting for it again."
Others demanded that law enforcement refrain from attacking them because "'we're not Black Lives Matter,' as if political affiliation is how we determine when to use force."
From that last remark, it is clear that the Talibangelicals were entitled white supremacists who see themselves as privileged; entitled to exemptions from the law not available to non-whites; a law which they see as designed to maintain the social strata with blacks and Hispanics below the whites.
Other officers, such as Harry Dunn, a black officer and Sgt. Aquilino Gonnell (Hispanic), testified how they were subjected to racist abuse. When Dunn revealed that he had voted for Biden, a woman in pink shouted:
Did you hear that, guys? That [N-word] voted for Joe Biden!
And the mob began chanting "Boo! F**ing [N-word]".
Gonnell, who served in Iraq, was told he wasn't an American because of his race.
A screenshot from surveillance footage provided by the FBI shows Casey Cusick (red hat) inside the U.S. Capitol on Jan 6. along with his father Pastor Jim Cusick (white hat).
FBI Handout Photo
Amongst the 591 people so far charged in connection to the attempted coup d’état are an evangelical Christian pastor from Florida and his son. James Cusick is a pastor in the Global Outreach Church, Melbourne, Florida, of which his son, Casey is vice president. They have both been charged with disorderly and violent conduct at the Capitol. The FBI became aware of their involvement when they were named during questioning by a congregant who was also present. This was later confirmed by bodycam footage from the cameras worn by the police and surveillance camera footage.
Pastor James “Jim” Cusick Jr. of the Global Outreach Church of Melbourne, and his minister son, Casey Cusick, face charges of entering a restricted building, disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds and violent entry, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. A third man, Global Outreach church member David Lesperance, also faces charges.
Investigators say they first received a tip via telephone in January, followed by an anonymous letter on March 26, alleging that Lesperance and the Cusicks had traveled from Florida to D.C. and participated in the insurrection after listening to former President Trump speak.
The FBI found surveillance footage of the three men among the mob of Trump supporters who stormed the U.S. Capitol during the riots that left five people dead and roughly 140 law enforcement officers injured.
Investigators secured a warrant to search Lesperance’s cellphone and found both historical location data placing him at the Capitol on Jan. 6 as well as photos from his iCloud account that show James and Casey Cusick inside the building, the affidavit states.
It is becoming very clear that the attempted coup d’état was a Christian insurrection in alliance with the neo-fascist, white supremacist right; an attempt by Taliban-style Christian jihadis to take over the US Government. The subsequent lies by the GOP and their white Christian extremist allies, intended to blame the whole thing on BLM activists and Socialist Democrats, and their attempts to obstruct any attempt to reveal the truth of who was behind it, is indicative that they already know the truth but don't want the American people to know, or to know what they were trying to achieve - a Christo-fascist takeover by a white supremacist minority and an abolition of democracy.
Expect even more obstructionism from GOP representatives as the party abandons any pretence of being a democratic party determined to uphold American democracy and preserve the spirit of 1776. The party of the entitled white right is not going to take defeat at the polls with good grace. They feel, like Donald Trump, that they have been unfairly cheated of the power that is theirs by right. Democracy was only ever going to be tolerated so long as it delivered them that power.
It looks like the USA is belatedly following the rest of the developed world in rejecting the intellectual absurdity and justification for hate that is Christianity today, if this poll is anything to go by.
It was conducted by the Barna Group which is hosted by Arizona Christian University, who, to their credit, do little to gloss over the findings which should terrify those whose livelihood depends on people turning up to church and giving their tax-free donations. Amongst the main findings of the AWVI 2021 are:
The effort from the extremist right in the USA is to blame the January 6th failed coup d’état on the liberal left and Black Lives Matter activists, by fruitloop conspiracists and Talibangelical liars for Trump such as Michelle Bachmann. The truth is, of course, the diametric opposite in terms of their politics, as the prosecutions are revealing.
Amongst those so far charged, for example, are these fifteen law-enforcement offices that no-one in their right mind would call liberal left. The following table comes courtesy of Right Wing Watch, with additional graphics from Internet sources:
In declining to hear a case, the Supreme Court of the United States, even with its Trump-given conservative Christian majority, has in effect confirmed that even Christian bigots do not have the right to deny other people their basic human rights and so cannot victimise minorities of their choice.
In 2013, Baronelle Stutzman, the owner of a New York flower shop, refused to supply flowers for the wedding of Robert Ingersoll to Curt Freed, even though same-sex marriage is legal in New York, and discrimination of the grounds of sexual orienation is illegal. She was prosecuted by NY law enforcement officials, found guilty and fined $1000.
The vital element to consider is the gender norms and beliefs surrounding
male dominance and male superiority, created by power hierarchies that
accord men greater status.
Australia has a significant problem of domestic violence perpetrated mostly by
men against women with whom they are in an intimate relationship and especially
common in Anglican communities. The problem was first highlighted by an ABC News
investigation which reported:
Research shows that the men most likely to abuse their wives are evangelical
Christians who attend church sporadically*. Church leaders in Australia say they
abhor abuse of any kind. But advocates say the church is not just failing to
sufficiently address domestic violence, it is both enabling and concealing it
The report had cited as a typical example, a couple named 'Sally' and 'Peter'
and the exchange that took place the evening before Sally left the household
with nothing except her young daughter and what cloths she could carry to escape
from the nightly abuse.
This exchange was triggered by Sally coming down stairs to say 'Goodnight' which
Peter interpreted as her unwillingness to have sex. He began screaming abuse at
her and accused her of being a disobedient wife who was disobeying God's instruction to be obedient to her husband. He grabbed a Bible and quoted
from it:
Preacher of hate, Greg Locke, of Global Vision Bible Church, Mt Juliet, Tennessee, seems fixated with homosexuality to a degree that must raise questions about what exactly he is trying to dissociate from. In his latest outburst he is ranting about Gay Pride:
I know what the Bible teaches. And what the Bible teaches is that pride is an abomination. Pride in sin is a double abomination. So now we've decided that we would nationalistically and around the world take an entire month to celebrate something that God clearly says in His Bible grieves Him. "Because, after all, love is love." Not according to the Bible! Love ain't always love! Sometimes love is lust!
With a stable majority of Americans supporting a woman's right to abortion in all or most cases, attempts to repeal Roe v. Wade in SCOTUS, exploiting the new Trump-supplied right-wing majority, could backfire badly on the Repuglicans, since conservative evangelicals tend to be the only demographic group with less than 50% support for the continuing legality of abortions, so repealing Roe v. Wade could precipitate a move of moderate and liberal red voters to vote blue in red states. Most of the opposition, by numbers, comes from white evangelical Christians, matched only by a few minority faiths such as Mormons, Jehovah's Winesses and Hispanic Catholics. All the major non-evangelicals are strongly or moderately pro-abortion legality in all or most cases.
What a repeal of Roe v. Wade would produce is a situation where Repuglican politicians in red states would no longer be able to pander to their evangelical base by passing anti-abortion legislation, confident that it will be struck down in the lower courts, so they can pose as champions of conservative 'values', thwarted by a liberal establishment.
They would then be faced with the choice of continuing to pander to their extremist wing by passing increasingly restrictive anti-abortion measures and accepting the consequences of losing large numbers of their less extreme supporters to the Democrts or alientating the fanatics by not using their new-found freedom to restrict a woman's right to choose.
Taking offence and playing the martyr seems to come naturally to religious fundamentalist and Creationists like the new leader of Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionist Party, Edwin Poots.
Poot's long-time political ally on the extreme right of the party, Ian Paisley Jnr. has already started complaining that the BBC mocked Poots for his fundamentalist beliefs when it told viewers that Poots is a Free Presbyterian Young-Earth Creationist, who believes Earth is only 6000 years old. Apparently, telling the truth about the bible-literalist beliefs of fundamentalist Christians is a form of mockery. But perhaps Paisley is sensitive about the matter, realising as he must, how ludicrous those beliefs sound in the rest of the UK, where they are regarded as more than a little deranged and the opinions of loopy religious nut-jobs and people with whom you wouldn't want your children left alone.
With so many questions following from his election, his refusal to answer them from the assembled journalists outside Stormont can only attract more ridicule. What is he running away from? What about his opinions is he ashamed of or embarrassed by?
Inspired no doubt by the singular lack of success with praying to make the coronavirus pandemic go away, the Pope has announced a month-long period for Catholics to try praying to make the coronavirus pandemic to go away. They are to do this ritually, while chanting short prayers in a strict order as predetermined by a string of magic beads, known as a rosary and bearing a strong resemblance to the 'worry beads' which are popular in Arab countries.
The belief is that ancient dead people will be alerted to the human requests and tell God about them. At the moment, God is not aware that the virus it created to make us sick is making us sick, or if he is aware of the success of his plan in that regard, he doesn't realise it's wrong. Having been so informed by his long-dead advisors, the belief is, he will see the error of his ways and stop his virus from working the way it was designed to work.
Sound like a plan?
Apparently, the Pope thinks so. According to this report in Religion News Service:
In this month of May, led by the shrines scattered throughout the world, we are reciting the rosary to pray for the end of the pandemic and for the resumption of social activity and work.
Pope Francis
5 May, 2021
Thirty sanctuaries located all over the world and dedicated to the Virgin Mary will take part in reciting the rosary in unison, each one in turn leading the prayer. From Poland to Nigeria to South Korea, faithful Catholics will join together with special intentions for those who have been affected the most by COVID-19.
This period of spell-casting by millions of Catholics will achieve more than medical science has so far with its vaccines which are reducing the seriousness of the Covid-19 illness the SARS-CoV-2 virus causes and reducing the rate of transmission from person to person.
Insanity Is Doing the Same Thing Over and Over Again and Expecting Different Results
Atrib. Albert Einstein
(Probably wrongly)
The spell-casting began on Wednesday, 5th May in South Korea at 'The Shrine of the Blessed Virgin of the Rosary' in Namyang. Over the next few days, more spell-casting took place at various shrines across the world, from the shrine of ' Our Lady of Lujan', in Argentina, 'The Sanctuary of Our Lady of Knock', Ireland and various other Marian shrines including 'Our Lady of Health', India and 'Our Lady of Lourdes', Myanmar, culminating is a special spell-casting ritual at 'The National shrine of the Immaculate Conception' in Washington, D.C., USA. where special spells will be cast to protect "all world leaders and for all heads of international organizations". This is expected to bring about:
...the end of the pandemic and the resumption of our social and economic life.
Despite this period of spell-casting, either no-one was listening or the dead remains of the legendary mother of Jesus either didn't ask God to change his perfect plan for mankind, or God declined to do so, since nothing whatsoever happened in terms of reduced transmissions or reduced mortality rates from Covid-19, which could not be directly attributed to the success of the vaccination and social distancing campaigns.
Last December, Pope Francis braved the rain to cast special anti-coronavirus spells at the 'Shrine of the Immaculate Conception' near the Spanish Steps in Rome, just as another, more serious, wave of infections was taking off over most of Europe and elsewhere.
It made no discernible difference whatsoever.
So, inspired by this spectacular failure, and following his policy of backing both horses in a two-horse race, Pope Francis then announced that he had asked the same dead person to ask God to divert the money intended for military purposes to medical research to prevent God from repeating his success with another similar virus or similar natural catastrophe.
Will this succeed? Don't hold your breath - if God's special virus isn't preventing you from breathing normally.
The only change so far seems to be the design of a new, more contagious variant, the 'Indian variant', that is threatening the tentative moves to lift the restrictions.
