This fabulously clouded Monday morning I arose to a storm of Facebook indignation. You know the kind, you know you do. Regardless, the offending object in question was a slip of paper which seems to be making the rounds in Balzan, Lija and Attard, and which has left many people confused as to what their reaction should be; that is, laughter, or tears?
This piece of ‘literature’ focuses on the evil evil evil that is Halloween, and seems to emanate from one of the many do gooder parishes we have on this paradise of an island. The jist of in English, courtesy of a friend, basically states that “Halloween is a pagan festival that promotes the occult, magic and the dark arts attracting children to evil. The celebration of Halloween, the viewing of sadistic porn, heavy metal music, reading up on Satan and on the occult and fantasy game play will all lead children into the occult.” I’ll provide the whole thing below, but first, I have a couple of arguments. In fact, I have 5 Reasons why Religion is more dangerous than Halloween.
1: Fear
What’s scarier, dressing up in a costume and getting sweets from strangers, or being told that if you don’t obey this set of vague rules you’ll perish in the everlasting fires of hell?
And speaking of sweets from strangers, someone said on Facebook about Halloween; “Little children are constantly told to be vigilant of strangers who hand them sweets to try and lure them into their homes. By any standard, that’s reasonable parenting. Then Halloween comes along. I don’t get. What is it? Work-from-home-day for molesters? Who invented this tradition? Was it a pedophile with a costume fetish and agoraphobia? Was he playing hard to get?” But perhaps the point of this ‘letter’ is actually to enforce the Church’s well renowned dominance in child molestation. A sort of ‘Get the hell off my field’ communication. Much like a cease and desist.
2: Violence
There’s absolutely no violence in Christianity is there? Forget the Crusades and Ireland for a moment, how about the Bible? Genocide, misogyny, infanticide, patricide, matricide, it’s al in the Bible. Only Deicide is not, and that’s because they’re awesome!
3: Occult
To paraphrase greater minds than mine “The belief that eating the flesh of a 2000 year old Jewish Zombie is somehow going to magically empower me in appearing holy when my eventual organic death happens, and that following my death, said zombie (together with an old man and a dove) is going to let me into a mysterious and meta-physical location where I will forever bask in their glory”. And that’s not occult-ish at all, is it?
4: Sadistic porn
Dear priests, if you were exposed to sadistic pornography through Halloween, I really don’t envy you your childhood. In my limited knowledge, you stumble upon sadistic porn if you type ‘sadistic porn’ into your search engine of choice. Remember to turn ‘Safe Browsing’ off. There. Enjoy.
5: Death
Halloween is obsessed with death, right? Sure, says the Catholic Church, who has not only an entire month dedicated to death, but also is possibly the number one death cult in the whole wide world, a cult which forces the belief that life here is worthless unless topped off with a healthy dose of death, through which you too can become some sort of cosmified zombie and live forever in the glory of the lord. Perhaps the Church’s concern is that of being forced out their death monopoly.
And now for the offending piece itself. Enjoy, and if you do not read the Maltese tongue, apologies, although seriously, you ain’t losing much.
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5 Reasons why chicks should wear more clothes
Rajtha tard vera imma prosit! Tal-genn int! :) Alavolja mhux dejjem na
5 Reasons why the Malta to Gozo tunnel proposal is bullshit
Then you just have to live with it and that's it. Or as suggested befo
5 Reasons why the Malta to Gozo tunnel proposal is bullshit
'if you have a problem living in gozo, then don’t live in gozo' Tha
5 Reasons why the Malta to Gozo tunnel proposal is bullshit
Matthew, it's not the ferry taking 2 hours to cross. Don't be silly. N
5 Reasons why the Malta to Gozo tunnel proposal is bullshit
You bring up many valid points. However, my main objection to the tun
diana
as the original perpetrator of having posted a scan of said offending paper, i say to you, well done!! keep up the good work
Sharlet
Couldn’t agree more with you Mark, thumbs up
Oh, and five other things (if i may):
1. Christmas is also a ‘festa pagana’
2. Christians in third world countries live in a death culture, due to hunger and disease ofcourse, not by choice
3. ‘dak li hu qaddis’ is actually a matter of opinion
4. I’d rather see young ones be exposed to sadism, sexual violence, satanism, torture and mutiliation at will rather than being molested by a priest
5. Correct me if I’m wrong, but kids are more prone to ‘hsara emozzjonali’ when everything they do is wrong in the church’s eye without providing a reason for it. Don’t have sex before marriage. Don’t celebrate halloween. Bah! You’re gonna rot in hell just the same, we were all born with the original sin afterall.
Happy halloween
CouponsHelper
Seeing that we are all going to Hell.. here are some bad spank bad spank costumes everyone might like: http://bit.ly/uLOEgl
Pici
Brilliant! Haha “you stumble upon sadistic porn if you type ‘sadistic porn’ into your search engine of choice”….cracked me up
S
Clearly you are very much against the Christian Church and very well done to you for your utmost persuasive blog. Only the people who bother to read and research will rightly interpret this as utter nonsense.
I agree with the heading of your article. Thats about it.
You clearly are making fun of Christianity when you should really look at organised religion on a whole. Any intelligent person with an eye for detail would see that this paper was made by some idiotic ultra conservative religion teacher who does not know how to teach religion or what to teach and does not know that the topic that deals with Halloween has been removed from the RE syllabus. Clearly this handout is directed towards children. This was not circulated by the church, not published or confirmed by the church.
Halloween is as much a Christian feast as it is pagan. The very meaning of ‘Hallow’ is Saint! The connotation of Halloween to magic, dark arts etc. is only socially constructed due to the images we use to celbrate it. But how can we celebrate death if not by skelletons, tombstones, bats and ghosts?
Pinpointing priests is unfair and a low blow on your part. As much as i condemn pedophilia when at the hands of priests, it exists at the hands of lay people too. Don’t be so daft as to disagree here. How many times have men and women been arrested because of this? How many fathers and mothers have been charged with molesting their own children (isn’t this worse?).
The Church does not say you’ll burn in hell if you celebrate halloween. They just tell people to celebrate it with caution. Who wouldn’t agree that on Halloween the looneys come out to play? Have you ever been in The US on Halloween?? Of course we are allowed to celebrate halloween, we are allowed to carve pumpkins and trick or treat. After all, its a holiday that allows us to remember those who dies. The only thing the church says about this is that we should remember those who passed all year round but in particular on the 31st Oct and 1st Nov.
As much as the Church focuses on death, they focus on life too. So don’t continue to be illinformed and say that death is an obsession. I could say that this obsession lies amoungst those who are not ever members of the church. It lies within us all. Who doesn’t think about their ‘end’?
I pity you as you obviosuly believe that the church would be as stupid as to say what was written on that paper. But I pity you most because you may not have been properly informed when at school. I condem people who think teaching religion is easy. I condemn those who let them teach religion. If the church could, i’m sure they would reform their religion teachers but speaking about Malta, if they did, there would be only a handful left!
The saying by James Joyse comes to mind: “There is no heresy or no philosophy which is so abhorrent to the church as a human being.”
I could go on all day discussing this topic but i rest my case.
Mark
Not to be rude or anything S, but read this article and eat your fucking words after. http://bit.ly/rzDUVM
That’s part one; it’s been established that this was sanctioned by one of those whom I unfairly pinpointed, a priest. And btw, I always knew it came with someone in the Church’s blessing; shit doesn’t get bundled with Flimkien magazine unless someone approves it.
Second, to be honest, I don’t actually give much of a shit about Halloween. I give even less of a shit about religion. It’s up to you to deduce exactly how much I care about religion teachers, or as I like to call them “purveyors of prehistoric myth’.
I chose that title because as you demonstrated, it worked. The paper was not aimed towards children; if you’d bothered to read it, you’d have seen it was directed towards. Then again, I suspect you don’t often bother to read before leaping to a death of false conclusions.
Last, I’m not exactly sure what the hell you’re on about here. Are you defending religion, or not? Are you condemning me, or praising me for writing good titles and persuasive blog posts? As to ‘organised religion as a whole’, we’re in agreement there, but you obviously don’t get the point do you. A) I haven’t heard of Muslims giving out papers against Halloween, so I couldn’t mention them in this post. B) If one religion is false, then all of them are. If i have to explain that to you I shall be very disappointed. C) I’m not very much in the know about Shinto, Hinduism, Buddhism and what have you. Much to my chagrin, I’m schooled in Christianity, Catholicism to be precise. This is the enemy I know inside and out. This is the enemy I’ll tackle.
ganni
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20111026/local/Halloween-exposes-people-to-sadism-sexual-violence-torture-.390777
By organised religion, do you mean church of malta, curia, vatican… please enlighten us. So much for your INTELLIGENT post;
“You clearly are making fun of Christianity when you should really look at organised religion on a whole. Any intelligent person with an eye for detail would see that this paper was made by some idiotic ultra conservative religion teacher who does not know how to teach religion or what to teach and does not know that the topic that deals with Halloween has been removed from the RE syllabus. Clearly this handout is directed towards children. This was not circulated by the church, not published or confirmed by the church.”
Nathan
Correction. Deicide WERE awesome