´óÏó´«Ã½

Ten thousand people are currently gathered at the , County Mayo, hoping or expecting to see an apparition of Mary. Today's apparition was predicted by some well-known "visionaries", following a previous alleged appearance of Mary on October 11th, when the sun was said to have "danced in the sky".

Dr Michael Neary, the Archbishop of Tuam, in encouraging people to believe there would be an apparition at the Knock shrine today. (Read the archbishop's statement here.)

Below the fold, I have published the full text of the press release we have received from the organisers of today's "event".

A letter published in the Irish Times (on Saturday 17 October), from Thomas Cotter, a biochemistry professor from University College Cork, offers an alternjative explanation of the dancing sun at Knock:

Madam, - The sun "dancing" in the sky at the Marian shrine in Knock, Co Mayo, reported by a small fraction of the large crowd that gathered there last week (Home News, October 12th), is very unlikely to be due to any supernatural events.

A more likely natural explanation is as follows. On the day in question it was cloudy and when the sun is viewed through thin cloud it often appears as a bright thin disc. Any alteration in the density of the passing cloud can cause the sun to appear to "shimmer or dance" due to alterations in the sun's apparent brightness and dimness as seen through the passing clouds. As the sun brightens it appears to advance and as it dims it appears to go back or recede. Water droplets or atmospheric dust in the cloud can also cause the sun also to apparently change colours.

If the sun truly danced in the sky, scientific observatories worldwide would have recorded it, but they did not! A little more common scientific sense is needed here before invoking supernatural explanations for what are after all just natural events.

- Yours, etc,

Thomas G Cotter, PhD MRIA
Professor of Biochemistry
University College Cork.

Read the rest of this entry

The is having a bad week. Yesterday, an Oscar-winning film director, who has been a member of the church for 35 years, because, he said, it tolerated 'gay-bashing'. Today, a French court found the church .

The video shows Scientology spokesperson Tommy Davis walking out of a TV interview with Martin Bashir after Bashir repeatedly asked him about Scientology's alleged belief in a space alien overlord named Xenu. Davis said he found the question offensive, and denied that such beliefs play any role in Scientology, but he left the rhetorical door open earlier in the year L. Ron Hubbard. (Listen to Hubbard talking about the legend in a 1968 lecture . And is L. Ron Hubbard's handwriting.)

Some say the religion's views on space aliens may appear ludicrous, but their alleged stance on '' is no laughing matter.

Over on the , Paul Sims writes:

'In a gesture which dramatically parallels the recent "come-and-join-us" invitation from the Pope to disaffected Anglicans, the Rationalist Association has opened its door to thousands of can't-quite-decide agnostics. A spokesperson for the RA (publisher of New Humanist) pointed out that many agnostics had been unhappy for years about the manner in which their uncertainty about God's existence played into the hands of religious apologists. New recruits to the RA were given some reassurances. "We are," said the spokesperson, "not at all averse to agnostics maintaining some traditional forms of speech, such as 'You can't help feeling that there is something up there', but obviously they'll be expected to gradually forsake their uncertainty about who made the world." In a further gesture of conciliation, the spokesperson confirmed that new recruits would not initially be expected to recognise the infallibility of Richard Dawkins.'

"I don't join the New Atheists. So, for example, I wouldn't have the arrogance to lecture some mother who hopes to see her dying child in heaven -- that's none of my business ultimately. I won't lecture her on the philosophy of science."

That's how responded today, during our conversation about politics and religion. (LIsten to the interview here.) While Dawkins, Harris and Hitchens challenge the claim that religion has made any constructive contribution to the world, Chomshy lauded the sacrificial work of the murdered and the social critique of liberationist theology.

When I asked him for contemporary examples of religion making a positive contribution, he told me this: "The Catholic Bishops Conference in the United States comes out with statements that are so progressive that the press won't report them. The Pope's new year messages are often not reported because they would be considered so far 'to the left' (whatever that means in the US spectrum)."

Though himself an atheist or agnostic, Chomsky opposed both the tone and the focus of the new atheist movement. Here's another excerpt from today's interview:

Chomsky: "I'm not impressed with it, frankly. And I don't think they address the concerns, feelings and commitments of seriously religious people. Yes, they do address the concerns of people who think the world was created ten thousand years ago, but they're not going to listen to these arguments -- not in the arrogant form in which they are presented. Discourse is possible. And if people want to believe in, say, a future life, or a divine figure, that's their right. What does bother me much more is, for example, reading publications from the Hoover Institute at Stanford University which describe Ronald Reagan, their divinity, as a 'colossus' striding over the country whose spirit looks over us like a loving ghost.

Crawley: "Good Lord."

Chomsky: "Yeah, I'm almost literally quoting. When secular figures are turned into divinities, they way they are in Peian Yang or Stanford University -- that I don't like."

We also talked about pacifism and the justification of war. Noam Chomsky denied that he was a complete pacifist. He supported the Allied military response to Hitler, and when pressed he accepted that the British intervention in Sierra Leone was justified. But, in general, he said, the case for war is a very hard sell, and governments turn to military action much too easily, without fully exhausting peaceful means.

Noam Chomsky was speaking to me, ahead of his visit to Belfast next week. on Friday evening. That event has been sold out for quite some time, but the lecture and audience event will eventually be screened online on the .

is the term Ruth Gledhill used in our discussion, this morning, of Pope Benedict's announcement that he is willing to permit traditionalist Anglicans to convert en masse to Catholicism. The Irish primate Archbishop Alan Harper said he did not expect any groups within Ireland to take up the pope's offer. But the unprecedented intervention by the Vatican will have massive implications for Anglican-Roman Catholic dialogue, and possibly for the theological demographics of the Anglican communion. Some Catholic leaders are even said to be whispering questions about the implications for them: if married Anglican priests are permitted to cross the Tiber and maintain their ordination status, isn't the church's rule of clerical celibacy now up for grabs?

Father Ted quotes are rarely far away from the . On this morning's Sunday Sequence, from the summarized the findings of new research which seeks to audit Ireland's religious diversity. The first phase of that research is now complete: a two-part survey looking at clergy and lay attitudes to ecumenism, diversity and reconciliation.

You can read both surveys in full .

I took this picture of the film director in the lobby of the Queen's Film Theatre just before the launch of a last night. That season of films includes a rare screening of Ken Russell's personal copy of .

Ken is standing in front of an original poster for his film . During our conversation, we talked about Ken's ´óÏó´«Ã½ days, working with Hew Weldon on Monitor, his break into cinema, and the themes and values that colour his films. He talked about the Catholicism that informs and infuses his work, his sense of the spiritual, and the ultimately "puritanical" approach to sex and sexuality evidenced in his films.

Ken recently made a 20-minute short, , which was screened last night, starring his wife Elize.

This was his first visit to Belfast, but I hope it won't be his last. I suggested that he might make a short film in the city, at this key stage in our history. In fact, the liminality of our current historical moment could be a fascinating area of exploration for a filmmaker renowned for engaging with liminal states and spaces. Ken and Elize loved the idea. Watch this space.

Half the country seemed to have watched, or listened in, to in the programmes's history. and commentary of this media ethics case study. The BNP is a legal political party which has two MEPs, but their policies and views are deeply offensive to many people in Britain. Nick Griffin says he has moved his party away from racism and denies that he is a Nazi.

His performance on last night's programme has been widely described as 'shifty', and he certainly looked uncomfortable as he tried, unsuccessfully, to wriggle his way out of every quotation of his own words. At times, Nick Griffin even appeared to giggle at his own bizarre arguments as he deployed them, and was prepared -- for reasons passing understanding -- to applaud and laugh at well-delivered attacks on his own views. He was clearly enjoying the attention.

Critics say the leader of a party that fans racism should be given no air time, even if that party has some measure of electoral support. Some members of the government have been critical of the ´óÏó´«Ã½'s editorial decision to invite the BNP leader to appear on a programme which permits the public to examine his views. it is not the responsibility of a public service broadcaster to censor the BNP.

What we witnessed last night was a politician in trouble as he faced an audience that wasn't buying what he had to sell.

"I have an English nostalgia for village life, including church. I never go, find it excruciatingly boring, but still, I have some nostalgia for evensong on a summer evening."

Earlier this week, I tweated a link to the (as chosen by Dr. Goodword). This prompted some twittering from my esteemed followers. Steve Goddard, over at Ship of Fools, has been in touch with news that to construct a sentence using those same beautiful words.

Money quote:

"Demurely, I gambolled in my bucolic bungalow, brooding on a dalliance with an eloquent, evanescent palimpsest which would be the cynosure of all, evocative of halcyon glamour, redolent of the riparian petrichor of the Susquehanna; incipient it was, until an insouciant harbinger made an ebullient epiphany by my inglenook, to murmur, "'Ere! The ratatouille's conflating, and it's gone all effervescent!" and wafted out again, leaving me languid and woebegone for my ephemeral leisure."

Is that not now the most beautiful sentence in the English language?

Jan Moir's about the death of Stephen Gately has now entered the record books as the most complained-against newspaper article in the history of British journalism. So far, with the Press Complaints Commission. Moir denies that there was any homophobic undertone to her comments.

, Janet Street Porter offers her fellow Mail columnist a few home truths about the nature and scope of homophobic abuse. This will be seen by some as a damage-limitation exercise by the Mail, but the article speaks for itself in any case. Janet Street Porter's piece also relates to the death of a gay man, but this time it is , a 62-year-old civil servant who died last week after an alleged homophobic attack in London.

Stories about anti-gay attacks and other allegedly homophobic incidents are now being reported on an almost-weekly basis in the UK press and programmes like Sunday Sequence have chronicled the theological debate about same-sex relationships that has divided the worldwide Anglican Communion and other denominations too. In the past few decades, we have seen a revolution in biblical scholarship, with some interpreters calling for a reversal of the church's traditional opposition to homosexuality while others maintain a more conservative stance. The same kind of debate can be seen in non-Christian religions too. But for gay and lesbian people of faith, the debate cuts much deeper than a hermeneutical argument; it can sometimes mean losing family and friends, facing isolation, abuse, and, in some cases, physical danger.

On this week's Sunday Sequence, I talked to Lloyd Newson from about their extraordinary new production , which comes to the Grand Opera House on Wednesday night for a three-day run. I saw the production recently in Dublin, while making a short film about it for Festival Nights. Incorporating dance, drama, film and animation, this is a remarkably rich evening of theatre and an immensely powerful exploration of the relationship between religious faith and homosexuality. Following Thursday evening's performance, I'll be chairing a panel discussion examining the themes explored in the play. The panel includes DV8's director , the human rights campaigner , Mike Davidson, , and from the Northern Ireland Muslim Family Association.

Northern Ireland culture minister Nelson McCausland has reasserted his commitment that he will . Mr McCausland says his presence at a Catholic service would be inconsistent with his personal religious views, though he has no difficulty visiting Catholic churches for events and ceremonies which do not include religious services.

On today's Sunday Sequence, the Presbyterian Moderator, Dr Stafford Carson (pictured),. He said, "I don't think we'll want to cause offence or hurt in any way, and a minister attending a service like that does not necessarily mean that he would endorse all that that denomination believes." Stafford Carson plainly draws a distinction between taking a view, as a Protestant, on the theology of the Catholic Mass and being present at a service itself. I suspect that he and Nelson McCausland may have quite similar understandings of the Mass, from a Reformed theological perspective, but the Moderator doesn't feel the same discomfort at visiting a Catholic church when a service is being held. It occurred to me after today's programme that Dr Carson may soon find invitations in his official mail bag (or inbox) that will test his openness quite directly.

Update (19 October): Todays News Letter is running a front page story, , which summarises our interview with Stafford Carson and brings reaction from both Nelson McCausland and Sinn Fein.

Charlie Brooker's response to Moir ('a gratuitous piece of gay-bashing') has now been tweeted and re-tweeted around the country. The Press Complaints Commission has received a record number of .

I mention tweeting because it was about media ethics and homophobia. When the article was published, the anger it occasioned in many people was translated into Twitter chatter. Before long, complaints were pouring in to the PCC (again, mostly via the net).

Online journalism sites in the US .

and believes she is the victim of an 'orchestrated internet campaign.' Derren Brown responds to the orchestration charge .

Amid the furore, Stephen Gately was .

Yesterday morning, I took this picture of Nelson McCausland, the Northern Ireland culture minister, unveiling on 2 Crescent Gardens, Belfast, the house where wrote his debut novel December Bride in 1951. The novel was by David Rudkin and directed by Thaddeus O'Sullivan in 1990.

Read the rest of this entry

I've been inundated with emails, texts, calls, Twitter messages and Facebook comments following the screening last night of Losing Our Religion, which explored Northern Ireland's relationship with religion -- and my own personal faith journey.

The film is, like the other two documentaries in my trilogy, partly autobiographical and partly a social analysis. As with Sorry For Your Trouble and Dying For A Drink, we never attempted to offer the final word on the subjects considered -- merely a way in to those subjects as part of a personal travelogue.

Thanks to everyone for your responses to the film. Some churches have even asked if they can show the documentary as part of a discussion forum examining faith and the future of the church.

You can still watch the documentary on the ´óÏó´«Ã½ iPlayer.

US president Barack Obama has been awarded the "for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples". The gave examples of diplomatic interventions by Barack Obama, before and after he became president. These include "reaching out to the Muslim world", and working for "a world free of Nuclear arms".

Read the rest of this entry

Thanks for all your suggested poems on a religious theme to mark . As promised, here's my personal choice:

The Skylight
by Seamus Heaney

You were the one for skylights. I opposed
Cutting into the seasoned tongue-and-groove
Of pitch pine. I liked it low and closed,
Its claustrophobic, nest-up-in-the-roof
Effect. I liked the snuff-dry feeling,
The perfect, trunk-lid fit of the old ceiling.
Under there, it was all hutch and hatch.
The blue slates kept the heat like midnight thatch.

But when the slates came off, extravagant
Sky entered and held surprise wide open.
For days I felt like an inhabitant
Of that house where the man sick of the palsy
Was lowered through the roof, had his sins forgiven,
Was healed, took up his bed and walked away.

Ceasefire
by Michael Longley

Put in mind of his own father and moved to tears
Achilles took him by the hand and pushed the old king
Gently away, but Priam curled up at his feet and
Wept with him until their sadness filled the building.

Taking Hector's corpse into his own hands Achilles
Made sure it was washed and, for the old king's sake,
Laid out in uniform, ready for Priam to carry
Wrapped like a present home to Troy at daybreak.

When they had eaten together, it pleased them both
To stare at each other's beauty as lovers might,
Achilles built like a god, Priam good-looking still
And full of conversation, who earlier had sighed:

'I get down on my knees and do what must be done
And kiss Achilles' hand, the killer of my son.'

Longley's poem is for . (Read more about Longley's poem .) It's a wonderful poem which matures with every new reading. Patrick, the Northern Ireland director of Amnesty International, chose the poem because it calls attention to the importance of human rights (and much more too).

I am now receiving your suggestions for a poem exploring religion: it could be devotional, or sceptical, celebratory or philosophical. You could even write an original poem. I'll post my own choice by the end of the day.

An Creationist campaign group is distributing 175,000 copies of Darwin's On the Origin of Species -- with by

The organisation is called , and they have secured the cooperation of the , who had recorded this advert for the organisation:

to Darwin's book, which points out the books supposed errors and makes an appeal for a literal reading of the Bible, is previously published books with such enticing titles as: "You Can Lead an Atheist to Evidence, But You Can't Make Him Think", "The Charles Darwin Bible", "Evolution: A Fairy Tale for Grownups", and "Comfort Food: Delectable Devotions to Satisfy the Soul".

is one of Britain's leading philosophers of religion. He's also a lifelong student of Calvin's ideas and a distinguished theologian in the evangelical Christian tradition. He introduces Calvin for Guardian readers , and follows up with a piece on Calvin as a practical theologian . Unlike many of the commentators writing about Calvin's legacy in this 500th anniversary of the Reformer's birth, Helm is actually a "Calvinist".

Money quote:

"Calvin did not for a moment think that every word, clause and sentence of the Bible was objectively factual, that the streets of heaven are (literally) paved with gold and that God literally has a backside. He had a Renaissance humanist's appreciation of metaphor and analogy and of the different genres of biblical writing. He knew that a parable is a fictional story and that the biblical writers occasionally used hyperbole. He was sensitive to what these days are called "speech acts", that words are tools for doing a variety of things, asserting, questioning, exclaiming, and so on. Besides this sensitivity to language was his emphasis upon of "accommodation". God accommodates himself to us. He has to. He is beyond time and space, we are time-bound and space-bound. Calvin seems to have taken the idea from Chrysostom. So for God to communicate effectively to us he must do so by adapting himself to our condition. He "comes down" to us. He "clothes" himself with our forms of thought and speech. The incarnation is the supreme form of accommodation."

"God probably works through other people, some of them doctors." Judge Vincent Howard Dale offers some theological advice to Dale and Leilani Neumann, for praying rather than seeking medical help for their dying daughter, Madeline Neumann.

Last night, I "interviewed" the emergent church thinker/activist/theologian before a small audience at his last-ever Ikon event in Belfast. Peter leaves for the United States this month: he'll be living on the east coast, writing books and speaking at events across the US. I suspect he will also try to develop Ikon-like communities in various parts of America. Peter is one to watch; he has already gathered a significant following of admirers and near-adherents following the that re-think and re-imagine traditional theological concepts.

Read the rest of this entry

The Queen would be acting in breach of her if she meets with Pope Benedict during his state visit to the UK, according to the y. Wallace Thompson, the Society's secretary, and a former DUP advisor, told Sunday Sequence today that he was saddened by the Queen's willingness to meet Pope Benedict. He has called on "Protestant politicians" in Northern Ireland to "nail their colours to the mast" and say whether they support or oppose a future visit by Pope Benedict. Queen Elizabeth has, of course, .

Mr Thompson conceded that "a decreasing number of Protestants" would oppose a papal visit to Northern Ireland, and acknowledged that his organisation does not speak for the Protestant community as a whole. He also said it was difficult to estimate how the "membership" of the Evangelical Protestant Society, then suggested that this number may be in the region of "a few thousand" people.

Read the rest of this entry

This may be the first time in television history that the host of a show used the format to admit to the audience that he had been having sex with female members of his production staff, and that he had just foiled a blackmail attempt. Some critics are already making comparisons with Bill Clinton's abuse of power in the Lewinsky Affair. Letterman is not the US president, on the other hand. How this all plays out in the next week will tell us a lot about American cultural politics.

There are conspiracy theories already doing the rounds on Twitter, but appears to be nothing more than an administrative blunder on his part: he failed to produce a letter of sponsorship from a UK church, which is required under new immigration rules. (.)

A Border Agency spokesman said: "Under the UK's tough new points-based system, religious workers must obtain a valid certificate of sponsorship prior to arriving in the UK. These rules are designed to make sure that a legitimate sponsor is linked to each application to enter the UK for work purposes. These rules are applied objectively and clearly set out for travellers. People who arrive without the required documentation can be refused entry to the UK.

"How do you do?" asks Richard Dawkins. "I do very well," replies . That was the end of the pleasantries in the encounter, filmed for one of Dawkins's documentaries. I can't remember if this interview made the final edit, but the raw footage is available online. John Mackay will be visiting Northern Ireland next month (more details about that soon).

Needless to say, Dawkins and Mackay agree about hardly anything in their encounter (and there's a decidedly unpleasant end to it all). The interview is fascinating on a number of levels, not least because it has been 'read' so differently by creationist and evolutionist commentators. To an evolutionist, it displays the arrogance of a scientifically-uninformed perspective and a campaigner who could never be persuaded by any evidence they have to answer. To a creationist, it shows how a fast-talking creationist can take on an evolutionist armed with creationist counter-claims.

Read the rest of this entry

The has issued the following statement, making clear their opposition to any visit to Northern Ireland (and presumably Great Britain as well) by Pope Benedict or his successors:

Read the rest of this entry

According to some press reports, it was the Vatican "lashing out". of the statement, this week, by the church's permanent observer to the UN at Geneva, but the fuss caused by 's intervention on Monday is turning into a diplomatic incident.

It appears that Archbishop Tomasi (pictured) released his statement after a meeting of the UN human rights council, was prompted by comments from the humanist representative at the council, Keith Porteous Wood, who had accused the Catholic Church of breaching of several articles under the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Keith Porteous Wood will join me live on Sunday's programme to talk about this debacle. He has posted his speech to the UN Council on Human Rights (which also includes the full text of the archbishop's response), and the UN's of that document.

While accepting that the Catholic Church has had to deal with child sex abusers in the ranks of its clergy and religious, the archbishop stressed that other religious denominations had a similar problem. He was clearly upset that the world's press have given less attention to scandals in other faith traditions. He said: "As the Catholic church has been busy cleaning its own house, it would be good if other institutions and authorities, where the major part of abuses are reported, could do the same and inform the media about it."

Read the rest of this entry