by Grania Spingies
Most of you won’t know that Ireland has a Catholic publication called Alive! although it should have three or four more exclamation points to convey the nuances of fervent and slightly rabid editorial style. It should be pointed out that in spite of the paper being distributed widely and for free, the average Irish Catholic neither endorses nor reads the paper, espousing as it does all the favorite hits of ultra conservatism, otherwise known as Vatican-approved Catholicism.
It appears they may be in trouble for this edition that declares:
They no longer live happily ever after… Being the child of parents with no faith is tough.
It was inevitable that people who lost sight of God would eventually turn against fairy tale endings, in the name of “realism”. Being the child of parents with no faith and no ultimate hope is tough.
However, the “realists” have got it wrong. Hope and happiness, not despair, are the realistic attitude to life.
The resurrection of Jesus tells us that God has created us to live ‘happily ever after’. Children learn from fairy stories that we are destined for eternal happiness with God.
Pulitzer Prize stuff it ain’t.
RT if you think @dina_goldstein should sue Catholic Publication Alivehttp://t.co/XAXrmvaNAD pic.twitter.com/Tt0RTxhmiO
— Sabina Brennan (@Sabina_Brennan) June 6, 2015
The Irish Examiner reports that Dina Goldstein, Canadian photographer and creator of the Fallen Princesses series may sue for unauthorized reproduction.
As much as Alive! is a not particularly good example of an influential or representative view of non-believers; the opinion of this month’s op-ed isn’t that far off that espoused by people like Oprah who do have influence and no doubt regard themselves as open-minded and liberal: atheists are miserable. Or in this case, atheists are Snow White and have no understanding of birth control. Either statement is about as accurate as the other.
That’s not even an accurate description of the Disney versions, let alone the original versions of fairy tales, which were often quite gruesome.
Religion has its gruesome ending too, as the kids also learn that they might suffer eternal torment in hell.
They also learn from Catholic “fairy tales” that if they even THINK about violating the rules, they will burn in agonizing hellfire forever!
Not only that, they have to live with the agony of “knowing” that their friends who belong to a different religion – even a different sect of Christianity – or who are atheist will burn and cry in hell forever.
Hard to believe “God has created us to live ‘happily ever after'” when he condemned the great majority of everyone who’s ever lived to eternal torture.
At least they got the “fairy stories” part right.
Coming from the nation that believes in leprechauns…..
You know, you really shouldn’t believe everything you see in dodgy 1950s Hollywood movies. They are usually not documentaries.
They couldn’t show it if it weren’t true. (I manage a movie theater and have heard people say this in all seriousness.)
I did once see an interview with Maureen O’Hara in which someone mentioned banshees. She said, “People will laugh, but banshees are real. I’ve heard them.” They didn’t ask about leprechauns.
Banshees, yeah. Whole ‘nother story. 😛
Probably wailing about how you spell your names. Or maybe the banshees are screaming “Nooooooooo moooooooore potatoooooooooeeees”
(There, I think I’ve just met my stereotype requirement for a year).
Maureen O’Sullivan was so much more interesting.
You sayin’ John Wayne wasn’t a Paddy-cap-wearing Irishman who married Maureen O’Hara and settled down on the family farm in Inisfree, after whipping her brother, Victor McLaglen, in a fist-fight that roamed over half the Irish countryside, huh?
Ah yes, John Wayne in the Quiet Man. Barry Fitzgerald says “Let’s go down to the pub and talk a little treason!” Irish whiskey not fairy tales!
You are aware that all visible leprechauns were eaten for food during the famine.
Leprechaun meat is extremely tasty with Charles Darwin saying it tasted nearly as good as giant tortoise.
Some leprechauns had the ability to turn invisible and as such avoided extinction. However it is very difficult to ascertain current populations as they are invisible. The current strategy is to monitor known behavior models such as left sock disappearance and use that to estimate current invisible leprechaun populations.
Next week: How to work out how many shamrock are in a keg of Guinness
I did not know this and it explains a bit. I suspect some have left the Emerald Isle for good and living in the South Pacific (is this possible???) changed their orientation and disappearing only right socks and teaspoons (a local variation?) I also live in a particularly green area, just right for blending in.
The leprechauns that moved to the South Pacific met a tragic end. It is a little known fact that invisible creatures can be seen by other invisible creatures; the leprechauns were eaten by taniwha.
See: http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/taniwha
Sounds like cargo-Celt science to me.
To the punnery with you!
> The resurrection of Jesus tells us that God has created us to live ‘happily ever after’.
I feel fantastic and I’m still alive …
Hey, another Portal player!
Another one here too. I remember posting about Portal 2 on a thread from a few months ago. One of the most ingenious, atmospheric and funny games I’vs ever played. The very real possibility of the next Portal coming out on Valve’s VR set is enough to make me lose my bearings for a few seconds.
I’m not dead yet!
You know you’re detested when even your own fold rejects your free newspaper.
Maybe I’m misunderstanding something here but doesn’t this
Children learn from fairy stories that we are destined for eternal happiness with God.
mean they’re calling the bible a fairy tale?
I love the smell of “own goals” in the morning!
“Happily ever after” as in a fairy tale. Fitting.
However, the “realists” have got it wrong. Hope and happiness, not despair, are the realistic attitude to life.
Oh brother, that’s one of the most idiotic sentences I’ve ever read…even if it was grammatically correct.
The sort of nuts Eric Idle portrayed on Life of Brian with that famous final sing-along-on-the-crosses, “always look on the bright side of life ….” They would’ve insisted on singing that as the Titanic was sinking or if they were taking a “shower” in a Nazi death camp.
I get alive pushed through my letterbox on a regular enough basis and judging by the number of no posters around Glasnevin in the run up to the referendum I think I may have a number of crazy people living near me.
The junk mail that we used to get (in NZ) was named ‘The Plain Truth’ – it was produced by some American (I think) evangelical mob. It suffered the same fate as, I imagine, your copy of ‘Alive’ does.
Too glossy to be really useful for anything.
Yep, it was published by Herbert W Armstrong, who also broadcast weekly sermons on the Radio Church of God. When I was a graduate student in biology in the 1960s, one of the students had somehow gotten on the mailing list for the Plain Truth and we’d look through it occasionally to laugh at his rants about evolution and other aspects of reality he didn’t understand.
Snow White is clearly Catholic, as she has apparently never heard of birth control.
Excuse me- she didn’t birth seven- she adopted them, which is very responsible if one has he means to do so.
Those are NOT Sleazy & Gropey, et. al., in that picture!
I can hardly wait to hear the names of the other five! Please???
Ha. My first reaction to the image…
What a great advertisement for contraception!
The newspaper’s title “Alive!” sounds like a 1950s B-movie. Then I realized that it is something like that: people in the 1950s, with proper family values, who think the paranormal and strange was real, and who believe, say, spirits mate with humans. “Alive! Monthly Catholic Newspaper” sounds about right after all.
This is what I first thought of:
b&
Now I’m in the mood for some Schwartzwälder Kirschtorte.
Should have called it Undead!
My first thought was the Jehovah’s Witness publication Awake! (Are they still putting that out?)
Yes – I thought of that too – I’ve seen it here in Ottawa.
I hate to wish suffocation by fruit on even a broadsheet such as “Alive!” that is the foulest in the land, but if Snow White’s poison apple fits …
This looks like a parody.
I assure you the publication is real. Satire would probably try to be more subtle.
A lesson in copyright law would be appropriate!
I’ve never understood what they think we’re getting out of atheism if it makes us so bloody miserable.
Looked at impartially why would anyone choose atheism when the alternative promises eternal life in heaven, perfect justice and recompense for any suffering we experience in this world, membership of the socially accepted, privileged majority(at least in America and most non-western-European countries) and the promise of seeing our loved ones in the hereafter(admittedly the attractiveness of this proposition depends on the loved ones in question)?
Especially when atheism, at least when taken neat, says we have no free-will, that life has no objective meaning, that when we die that’s it, that morality, all values in fact, are human confabulations… And yet we are still atheists. How do they rationalise our actions? It’s not like we go around enjoying the satanic, libertarian freedom that comes with shunning the almighty.
Any reasonable person would look at the psychological wealth we are apparently denying ourselves, and the chilly, unsettling worldview we believe in, and conclude that we really are believing this stuff because it’s true and we have no other choice. Personally I wouldn’t say no to a particular, bespoke kind of afterlife – one where certain people are on the ‘guestlist’ and a far larger number aren’t. Nor would I object to a world that rewarded the good and punished the tories(as long as the punishments were small and petty rather than infinite and insane). I have no desire to live for just seventy/eighty years(if I’m very lucky). The utter, dismal awfulness of the lives theists believe we live should be a gigantic pointer to the fact that we accept the materialism of reality because it’s true, not because we’d like it to be true.
I’ve always felt the same way. “Don’t you think I’d like to believe in all those fairy tales? But how can you believe what is patently false?”
Exactly. I think the more rabid ones like to believe we just ‘want to sin’, and that’s why we’re not walking down their particular garden path. I don’t quite get that impression from the bookish, worried overthinkers that make up the majority of the declamatory atheists I know but hey, perhaps they’re all going hog-wild when I look away.
I dare say you haven’t had much practice. When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.
Well, my guess is that most people feel angst at the thought of leaving their religion, and assume this angst is related to not having religion rather than the act of leaving. IOW they mistakenly think a pain associated with change is really a pain associated with the end-state of the change.
For some reason, that front cover reminds me irresistibly of the start of Monty Python’s best ever musical number:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUspLVStPbk
But it’s true, two weeks ago, I was forced to take a baby in my arms, it started to cry.
The author ought to watch Stephen Sondheim’s “Into the Woods” (NOT the Disney movie thereof.)
Faith Vs. Fact just arrived in the mail today!