What are you getting rid of for Christmas?

Mary Kenny says gluttony.

Joan Baez: ‘Coventry Carol’

Even Jack Bauer doesn’t want coal and switches

Interrogating Santa doesn’t turn out well for Jack Bauer:

More, equally serious video at the Guardian’s Digital Content Blog.

Anglican Archbishop of York & Catholic Archbishop of Kampala condemn Ugandan anti-gay bill

Archbishop of York John Sentamu, a senior Anglican cleric who was born in Uganda, approached the celebration of the birth of the Prince of Peace by taking a stand against Uganda’s gay genocide bill.

He told BBC:

I’m opposed to the death sentence. I’m also not happy when you describe people in the kind of language you find in this private member’s bill. … [It is] a diminishment of the individuals concerned.

About a third of the Ugandan population considers itself to be affiliated with the Church of Uganda (Anglican).

Sentamu’s measured, authoritative voice is an important counter on this issue to the counterfactual, poorly written letter directed by the hastily organized Ugandan National Task Force Against Homosexuality at Saddleback Community Church pastor Rick Warren. The Task Force demanded an apology from Warren, who urged his “fellow pastors in Uganda” to oppose the measure.

About 40% of Uganda’s population is Roman Catholic.

Joining Sentamu, Mark Silk writes, was the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Kampala, Uganda, Cyprian. K. Lwanga, who in his Christmas message said:

The recent tabled Anti-Homosexuality Bill does not pass a test of a Christian caring approach to this issue.

A video report of Archbishop Lwanga’s message:

Health reform

Robert Pear wrote

The Senate voted Thursday to reinvent the nation’s health care system, passing a bill to guarantee access to health insurance for tens of millions of Americans and to rein in health costs as proposed by President Obama.

The 60-to-39 party-line vote, on the 25th straight day of debate on the legislation, brings Democrats a step closer to a goal they have pursued for decades.

‘Aristotle’s Virtues and Homer’s Doughnut’

The Vatican official newspaper L’Osservatore Romano on Tuesday congratulated The Simpsons on their 20th anniversary. It said that from the soporific sermons of the Rev. Lovejoy to Homer’s face-to-face talks with God, religion appears so often on the show that it one might devise a “Simpsonian theology.”

The article specifically mentioned several religion-themed episodes (without reviewing the entire list documented by Wikipedia), including the one in which Homer calls for divine intervention by crying: “I’m not normally a religious man, but if you’re up there, save me, Superman!”

Homer’s religious confusion is “a mirror of the indifference and the need that modern man feels toward faith,” and the piece also says:

Homer finds in God his last refuge, even though he sometimes gets His name sensationally wrong.

As well as the parentage of the Son of God:

Never mind the 1998 New York Times interview with “The Simpsons” creator Matt Groening. He was asked about his views of God and responded:

I was very disturbed when Jesus found a demon in a guy and He put the demon into a herd of pigs, then sent them off a cliff. What did the pigs do? I could never figure that out. It just seemed very un-Christian. Technically, I’m an agnostic, but I definitely believe in hell — especially after watching the fall TV schedule.

Regarding Groening’s view of hell: Amen.

Seen on sidewalks below our office window

Written by Willie Nelson and released in 1963 by Roy Orbison, “Pretty Paper” speaks of people we see and any of us may become:

Gawkering at Scientology in pursuit

Ravi Somaiya writes:

A tipster in Texas flirted briefly with Scientology when college-age. Then, sensibly, she ran the hell away. Now people she’s never met are sending her creepy hand-written notes trying to get her back into the cult.

Read the entire saga of a cult in hor pursuit, complete with images of hand-written notes and the like, here.

SSPX/Rome reconciliation on a years-long path

Begun with an explosion of controversy over the de-excommunication of holocaust denying SSPX Bishop Richard Willamson and three others, the discussions toward reconciliation of Rome and SSPX are proceeding with laborious care.

Jesuit journalist Austen Ivereigh writes:

The “conversations” follow a systematic method. First, the topic. Then, the SSPX sends a paper laying out its doubts. The Vatican representatives answer in writing. Then both sides meet to discuss the exchanges.

The meetings will be filmed and recorded by both sides, which may indicate a healthy mutual scepticism but will make for fascinating material for future historians. The conclusions of each discussion are then taken to the Pope and the Superior General of the SSPX.

The frequency of the meetings will depend on whether the topic is a new one or has already been discussed: if the first, the conversations will take place about every three months; if the second, every two. The next meeting is scheduled for mid January.

He estimates three years will be required just to cover topics currently known to be on the table and laments that the recorded proceedings are not being posted for general enlightment on YouTube.

Indeed. Could a pope who has become more Internet-aware as a part of this process not be persuaded to do exactly that?

Graph: Whither truth in 2009?

Truth came out last with only 18% of the claims examined by PolitiFact last year evaluating as simply”true.”