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Read on BBC news that the so-called “Virgin Mary” sandwich has sold on eBay for $28,000. That’s right, some woman has sold a 10-year old grilled cheese sandwich that supposedly has an image of Mother Mary emblazoned on the bread for a sum that could buy most people a brand new vehicle.

The casino that purchased the miracle bread plans to tour the sandwich around the world and donate the proceeds to charity. Can’t imagine anywhere that a holy icon like Mary, Mother of God, would rather be than in the hands of a casino. She’s a Catholic mascot so maybe a bingo hall would be more appropriate?

Now others are jumping on board with their own miracle sandwiches for sale, like one eBayer who is selling one that features an image of Christ that you “don’t have to pay tens of thousands of dollars” for. No, he’ll only charge you a grand for it. And he’s double-bagged it to make sure it doesn’t get moldy so your purchase is well protected if you decide to literally “eat of the body”.

My favorite is this one, which pretty much sums up this entire holy sandwich farce:

People are always seeing Jesus or Mary in burnt toast, the sides of buildings, or on trees, never stopping to ask themselves why such powerful deities would choose to appear in such ridiculous places, not to mention the fact that—at least to my knowledge—no known photographs of either Jesus or Mary exist. So how do they even know what they look like? “Lookie here, a face with a beard on my fish stick. Must be Jesus tryin’ ta tell me sumtin’!”

Instead of Jesus demonstrating his love and power by ending war, famine, and all the other bad stuff, he just wants to peek out at us from a burnt cinnamon bun? What the hell is that supposed to prove? I’m sure Satan is on the run now!

The fact is people can look at anything and see what they want to see. Religious fervents are always desperate for some physical validation of their faith. This is just the old “man in the moon” illusion, the mind searching for patterns, filling in the gaps to make sense of things that aren’t really there. Kind of like the face on Mars that had everyone freaked out a few years ago and the so-called devil’s face in the smoke of the crumbling WTC.

I’m sure if I stared at my bowel movement long enough I could see the face of Paris Hilton staring back…or is it Ashlee Simpson?

Hmmm. Hard to tell.

Maybe it’s just me, but doesn’t the holiday season seem nothing more than an annual excuse to get drunk, buy lots of gifts for people you don’t feel like buying gifts for, and most importantly, get a bunch of stuff that you don’t really need but were too cheap to go buy for yourself? It’s a capitalistic orgy, an orgasmic rolling in our own troughs of excess.

I know that this season is supposedly based on the birth of Jesus and that years ago, in an age long-forgotten and caked with dust, the majority of people actually took the religious component of Christmas seriously. But who takes it seriously these days? You get your ‘Christmas Christians’, who haul their suits out of the plastic wrappers once a year to go sit in the back of the Church and pretend they give a damn, as well as the folks who talk about how much they’re into the goodwill of the season while sidestepping the Salvation Army bucket on their way to the checkout, a few hundred dollars worth of goods tucked under their arms to give to their spoiled, ungrateful brats.

(And the trees! My god, every year they go out and massacre hundreds of thousands of innocent trees and charge $40 a piece for ‘em, so we can dress them up like cheap, painted whores, and then, after the holiday has passed and our loot has been assimilated into our bulging coffers, we chuck ‘em out with the trash. Buy an artificial one and you can keep it forever. “But it has to be real!” you say. No, you just think it does. Go get a fake and buy some of that tree fragrance they sell at Walmart or something. Or better yet, take a walk in the woods and enjoy the company of hundreds of real, living, oxygen-dispensing trees.)

But now Jesus is that face in the window, peering in at us from out in the cold while we roast chestnuts and drink rum-spiked eggnog (after a few of those you just might see Christ in the window). I think it was jolly St. Nick who pushed Jesus out of the way for Christmas supremacy. After all, it’s Santa we see selling us everything from car batteries to soap dispensers, and according to the folks at Coca Cola, it’s their beverage that the Fat Man likes to suck back. No wonder he is an overweight diabetic. How many little kids go to bed hoping that Jesus shows up the next day? And if he did, he’d damn well better have that Sony Playstation tucked under his robe somewhere.

With the ever-changing face of society we see more religious and cultural practices edging into what used to be primarily Christian territory. We have Ramadan, Hannukah, Kwanzaa all jostling for a bit of the holiday limelight. And some Christians are getting a bit upset, thinking that the December holidays are sacred to them and that all this hullabaloo is diluting the reverence of their celebrations.

But Christmas was around for several hundred years before the birth of Jesus. In fact, they can date similar pagan traditions going back almost 4,000 years before the famous virginal birth (which was itself borrowed from pagan legends—but let’s not go there today). Early Europeans began traditions like the Yule log while celebrating the winter solstice from December 21 through to January, and parades, feasts, and gift giving were common at this time of year in ancient Mesopotamian societies as well.

The Romans celebrated Saturnalia during the solstice period, which in typical Roman fashion was a hedonistic time filled with wine, large feasts and most likely an orgy or two. The birth of Mithra, a Roman god, was celebrated on December 25, which Pope Julius I later declared to be the birthdate of Jesus. However, he didn’t make this declaration until almost 400 years after the crucifixion, and was believed to have chosen that day to coincide with the Saturnalia celebrations (the Bible makes no mention of the year or month Jesus was born). So actually it was the Christians who “borrowed” the December 25 holiday in the first place.

There’s plenty of room for everyone to celebrate in their own way, as we’re all pretty much borrowing from the same ancient and common traditions. There’s no monopoly on Christmas, even if  ‘Christ’ is in the name.  We all want to spend time with family and friends, we all want to get shitfaced and enjoy a break from work, and if only for a week or two we seem to want to make the world a better place by helping with charity work, giving donations, buying gifts for the poor, etc. The name isn’t important.

But the gifts sure as hell are! Load up that cart, baby!

And before I forget, merry ‘Mas everybody!

On Sunday, October 18, Pope John Paul II held a beatification ceremony for Mother Teresa, placing the late nun one step below sainthood. The decision sparked controversy due to the dubious nature of Mother Teresa’s “miracle”, proof of which is required as a prerequisite to beatification. Apparently a woman named Monica Besra cured her stomach cancer by praying to the nun, a miracle that was investigated by the crack scientific team at the Vatican and determined to be valid—despite claims by the doctor who treated her that it was medication that finally put the boots to the tumor:

From CNN:

(The) doctor who first diagnosed Besra, says the church should not push Besra’s case because it was medication, not a miracle that cured her. “It is scientifically proven that the tumor that she had was linked to tuberculosis,” he said. “And it responded to an anti-tubercular drug.”

Hmmm…ok.

Another interesting fact that has emerged from the beatification news is the revelation that she often had crises of faith, feelings of abandonment and rejection from God. In fact, these “attacks from the Devil” were sometimes so severe that a bishop ordered the rites of exorcism to be read over her. We think that maybe she was feeling a little guilty over some of her more less publicized acts of kindness, which include:

• Publicly endorsing the brutal Duvalier dictatorship in Haiti saying the regime “loved the poor” when in fact they were carrying out mass executions and being anything but a “friend” to the poor.
• Accepting over a million dollars from Savings & Loan swindler, Charles Keating. This money was never returned, even when it was later discovered that a good portion of it had been stolen.
• Claiming that abortion was the greatest threat to world peace during her acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize.
• Continuing to propagate the Catholic belief that contraception is a sin in a city deluged by overcrowding, poverty, starving children and destitute families. (Hey, what’s a few more mouths not to feed?)
• When Ireland held a referendum trying to remove the ban on divorce, she told people there would be “no forgiveness” for them if they voted in approval of it.

So instead of just being the tired old lady who washed the feet of the poor (while licking the feet of the rich), Mother Teresa was busy endorsing the archaic and medieval dogma of the Catholic Church to the people who would most benefit from not being exposed to its hurtful, demeaning and evolutionary stunting teachings. She used her clout and “myth” to lobby Catholic causes in palaces and mansions all around the world.

If you want more details on the real Mother Teresa and not the Vatican-generated, kiddie-glove treated bio you get in the media, check out Christopher Hitchen’s book, The Missionary Position. While this lady did some great works and helped a lot of people, she was no moral compass, and certainly no saint.

Here is an anecdote from one of Hitchen’s interviews:

“Mother Teresa wrote to the court and said, look, Charles Keating is a great friend of the poor and a lovely man and you should go easy on him. I reprinted her letter, in which she says if he’s done anything wrong she can’t believe it and she doesn’t know what it is. The deputy D.A. of L.A. County a very clever guy by the name of Paul Turley, who I would say from his letter must at least have been a Catholic in his life, if he isn’t still.

He wrote her back a letter, explaining the process by which Keating had separated really large numbers of poor people from their life savings without any scruple at all or remorse, and then pointed out that in their audits they discovered that quite a lot of the money he had stolen he’d given to Mother Teresa. He said, now that you know this when are you going to give it back? At this point she broke off the correspondence and made no move to return the money.”

A true saint, indeed.

Other sources used for this posting:

Christopher Hitchens on Mother Teresa – by Matt Cherry. Free Inquiry Magazine . Volume 16, Number 4.

The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa’s Crimes Against Humanity- An Interview with Christopher Hitchens – by Danny Postel. LIP Magazine. September, 1998

The Ghoul of Calcutta – By Christopher Hitchens. The Nation. April, 1992. x

We’ve all seen the ads: a young child sits in the dirt, clothes nothing more than torn, dirty rags, the eyes brimming with tears of despair and hopelessness. The small belly swollen with the effects of long-term neglect and starvation. The ad asks us to help by sending money to an organization that promises to help this child and others that are experiencing the horrors of poverty and war. Often these organizations are Christian-based, such as Christian Children’s Fund, which operates in 30 countries and serves the needs of over 4.6 million suffering children.

But my problem isn’t with these groups who, by all indications, do actually go out and try to improve the quality of life for these children through much needed community support, education and health care. No, my problem is with the credit for all this hard work going to God—as in people doing “God’s work”.

I often use these ads as a way of explaining humanism to those who ask about it. If we waited for God to answer our prayers for these children would they miraculously have food to eat that day? Would the water clear itself of pollution and the wars that ravage that country suddenly end? Would cultures that have entrenched child labour and other forms of abuse into their ways of life suddenly see the light of day? If every single person in the world stopped and prayed would it make one single bit of difference?

Of course not. It is only when we get together to help each other that anything happens. It is caring people who go to these countries and do their best to help their fellow humans. It is people who rebuild communities, stop wars, provide health care and teach others how to help themselves. It is people who respond in times of disaster and hardship. If we waited for God to start doing “God’s work” then we would be waiting a long time. Face it, he ain’t interested in the job.

So isn’t it time to stop giving him all the credit?

Watching the CBC show Witness the other night was an exercise in restraint, as several times throughout the broadcast I was tempted to smash through the television screen and lay my own hands on the televangelist Benny Hinn, who they happened to be profiling that night.

I watched in disgust as this man preyed upon the desperation of an immigrant family whose child was severely brain damaged and handicapped, confined to a wheelchair and not given much longer to live. Doctors had been unable to give the family any hope so in an act of desperation they had converted from Hinduism to Christianity and gotten drawn into the world of “charismatic evangelism”, specifically that of Dallas-based preacher Benny Hinn. Surely this “man of God” could help them.

Benny Hinn will stand on a stage, hair blow-dried into the typical evangelical bouffant, his white suit gleaming in the lights, and proclaim to have a direct connection to God Himself. He will whip the crowd into a religious fervor—an ecstasy—and then, when they are good and ready for it, will begin to bless and heal people through the power of God.

“It’s not me,” he says at one point. “It’s Jesus working through me.”

But before any of this can begin Benny Hinn urges his followers to give a tribute to God. Is this tribute to be in the form of worship or the acceptance of salvation? No, it is cold hard cash. The more money you give, the more powerful the miracle you will receive.

So it appears one has to bribe God into helping them, and the best way to do this is by helping Benny Hinn drive Rolls Royces, fly around in private jets, and pay the mortgage on his million dollar home(s). He lays hands on people as one by one they come up onto the stage to proclaim the miracle that has just happened to them. Crippled people walk. Deaf people hear. Blind people see. At least until the show is over and the fervor wears off, by which time Hinn and his crew are long gone, the donation checks safely on route to the bank and his gleaming white suit pressed and put away for the next show.

But unfortunately, as this particular family found out, terminally ill children will still die. Despite the “tributes” they had paid to God via Benny Hinn’s ministry their son passed away. So did they qualify for a refund? Hmmm, I wonder…

I think that there should be a law against the kind of religious chicanery that Hinn and others of his ilk work upon masses of hurting, desperate people. If your intention is to knowingly deceive people for financial gain then isn’t that the same as running a con? Isn’t this a crime? But it seems if it is done in the guise of a religion then you can get away with it.

And as family after family returns to their lives disheartened, emotionally devastated and financially strapped, Benny Hinn packs up his tent and goes laughing all the way to the bank and into the next town of people desperate for his brand of “miracles”.

As a postscript, here is a quote taken from the CBC website concerning a Witness follow-up:

“Several weeks after Benny Hinn’s Portland crusade, the filmmaker follows up to see what has become of the 76 miracles that were proclaimed onstage. He is given five names to contact. Amongst the five, there is no evidence any cures have taken place.”