Weekly Update: to

by | November 21, 2020

Here’s your Canadian Atheist Weekly Update for to .

  • [] Places of worship linked to ‘dozens’ of COVID-19 outbreaks in Brampton, Mississauga and Caledon

    It’s actually somewhat surprising to see a regional medical officer specifically pointing the finger at religious gatherings. That signals to me that the problem is both particularly acute, and particularly glaring. It could also be a sign of rising panic in health officials; the surge that’s making up the “second wave” is alarming, and Peel looks like one of the worst-hit areas. I haven’t read up on what the new lock-down protocols that have just been (re-)implemented are; curious to see if places of worship got a mention.

  • [] Records military fought to keep secret show pedophile priest had multiple child victims

    By this point I’ve become pretty jaded when it comes to stories of priestly abuse and churches’ attempts to cover it up. And yet, there’s always a new twist on the genre to keep my rage burning. Where to begin here? It’s not the fact that the Canadian Forces employs chaplains that bothers me; given the trauma that soldiers are forced to endure, the Forces damn well should provide any and everything that soldiers want to help them get through it – that means every kind of therapist a soldier could possibly want for, and if a soldier wants a voodoo doctor to pray with instead, then fine, they should get it. But what was going on here appears to have gone well beyond what was necessary for the well-being of the troops – like, what the fuck was an army chaplain doing around kids? If a soldier wants spiritual support, fine… but a chaplain on the army’s dime is not a general religious resource; if a soldier wants a religious experience for their family… that’s no longer in the Force’s purview – it is not their obligation to provide general faith resources. And of course, overstepping their obligations here led to pretty predictable results, so I have no sympathy for the fact that the Forces has to bear responsibility for what their cleric did. Don’t want to deal with class action suits for rapist priests? Then don’t have priests. Simple as that. If a soldier wants a priest, fine, but that just means you provide a priest solely for that soldier… and for absolutely nothing and no-one else. If the priest wants to minister to the soldier’s family as well, that’s something they can do on their own time, with their own resources, and not on the military’s dime. So I have no sympathy for the fact that the Forces brought this misery on themselves… and I am completely disgusted at the fact that they’re trying to shirk the consequences the way they are.

  • [] Conservative MP Defends Giving ‘Community Hero Award’ to Controversial Anti-LGBTQ School Trustee

    I’d say the headline here is giving Strahl more credit than he deserves. I mean, if he were actually defending giving the award to Barry Neufeld, that would show that Strahl at least has a shred of integrity. But no, of course Strahl has no spine, and is a craven little shit: he’s not really defending the award, he’s trying to duck responsibility for it by saying, “hey man, the awards were chosen by the community; I had no power whatsoever in who actually got it”. Of course no one actually believes that bullshit – if it were true, Strahl would basically be begging to be brigaded by Internet trolls nominating awards for “Hatey McHateFace” (which, now that I think about it, is basically Neufeld, so maybe it already happened!).

  • [] “Prayer” by Zach Weinersmith (Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal)

    Technically the punchline here is a math joke, not a religious one. But I do love the way God just glosses over the woman’s very salient point about the pestilence.

  • [] Pressure mounts on Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservatives to distance themselves from Charles McVety

    Wow, this scandal is actually digging in. I’m honestly surprised, because while I generally disdain comparisons between Doug Ford and Donald Trump, they do have one thing in common: somehow they’re both perpetually mired in stupid controversy after stupid controversy, yet none of them seem to stick – after a week, any given scandal is forgotten because there’s a whole flood of new ones to take its place. But this scandal actually seems to have legs, and as it goes on, more and more shady shit is being uncovered. We learned in previous items how dodgy McVety’s “college” is… now we’re learning that there may have been illegal election contributions going on between McVety and Ford.

Canadian Atheist’s Weekly Update depends on the submissions of readers like you. If you see anything on the Internet that you think might be of interest to CA readers, please take a minute to make a submission.

One thought on “Weekly Update: to

  1. shane newman

    Regarding places of worship and covid. My opinion is simply this , to these idiots, the covid rules do not apply to them, they do not give a damn about anyone but themselves. As long as they think they can be with their gods then that is all that matters…in short, like a cocaine addict needs cocaine and will do anything to get it. They get the damn virus and spread it and obviously do not give a crap about who gets it. Just so long as they get their “god fix” then that is all that matters.They want to be with their fake gods, maybe we should just let them do it, stay away from the idiots and let them remove themselves from the food chain.

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.