Aus govt thumbs nose at separation of church & state, blows $1.5m on MacKillop crap
Friday October 15th 2010, 8:00 am

MacKillop celebrations funding a waste, say atheists

The Atheist Foundation of Australia has criticised the amount of Federal Government funding for celebrations over the canonisation of Mary MacKillop.

Blessed Mary (1842-1909) passed the first stage to sainthood when pope John Paul II beatified her in 1995, after recognising a first miracle attributed to her in which a woman was said to have been cured of terminal leukaemia.

Last year the Vatican decreed she has cured a woman with inoperable cancer, giving her the second miracle she needed for canonisation.

She will be canonised on October 17 as Australia’s first Catholic saint.

The foundation says the $1.5 million is a waste of taxpayers’ money for a cause that has no right to be government subsidised.

President David Nicholls says the funding could be better spent in areas like cancer research.

“That is $1.5 million taken from every taxpayer. Now we know in Australia 50 per cent of the population don’t have a god in their life at all, why are we continually spending money on this?” he said.

Yep.

So, do dead nuns really cure cancer? A larger statistical study should be performed.

-weez

MOAR: Dave (The Happy) Singer tweets:

Seriously. What is the world coming to when the Cancer Council issues a press release saying, ‘No, wishing on a corpse doesn’t cure cancer’?


3 Comments so far
Leave a comment

I’m sure that the pope means with canonisation that you have to aim the saint towards haven. Presently you’re canonising her into the ground, Weez

Comment by Melchior 10.23.10 @ 4:39 pm

I didn’t think she’d reach escape velocity, Mel. 😉

Comment by weez 10.23.10 @ 4:49 pm

All the hoo-ha about Mary MacKillop is tantamount to a religious frenzy. Insofar as the so-called “miracles” (curing cancer) is concerned, it is more likely to have been “mind over matter”. However, one thing I DID admire about Mary MacKillop was her steadfast stance against a paedophile priest which earned her an excommunication (which was later reinstated). Isn’t it ironic that an organisation as mysogynistic and paternalistic as the Catholic heirachy in this country should have a woman as its first saint. The most ironic thing is that the canonisation of Mary MacKillop (a woman with obvious disdain for child abuse) should have been overseen by the Australian head of church (the dreaded Pell) who just happens to be the current subject of paedophile charges himself (refer to the Broken Rites website). Pell’s consistent support of horrific paedophiles (eg the notorious Fr Nazareno
Fasciale) is widely known! He just moved these disgusting predators from one place to another and helped ensure that Fasciale (who preyed on hundreds of young boys, girls, men and women!) was buried with full Catholic Church pomp and ceremony! The evil hypocrisy of Pell must have had St MacKillop spinning in her grave!!!

Comment by Katie 10.27.10 @ 9:23 pm



Leave a comment

(required)

(required)





Fatal error: Uncaught Error: Call to undefined function show_subscription_checkbox() in /home/www/machinegunkeyboard.com/wp-content/themes/benevolence/comments.php:155 Stack trace: #0 /home/www/machinegunkeyboard.com/wp-includes/comment-template.php(1618): require() #1 /home/www/machinegunkeyboard.com/wp-content/themes/benevolence/index.php(28): comments_template() #2 /home/www/machinegunkeyboard.com/wp-includes/template-loader.php(106): include('/home/www/machi...') #3 /home/www/machinegunkeyboard.com/wp-blog-header.php(19): require_once('/home/www/machi...') #4 /home/www/machinegunkeyboard.com/index.php(17): require('/home/www/machi...') #5 {main} thrown in /home/www/machinegunkeyboard.com/wp-content/themes/benevolence/comments.php on line 155