An extraordinary obsession with sex and sexual behaviour seems to be a characteristic of many professional religious people, not just Roman Catholics but also Muslims, those weird evangelical Christian sects that flourish in the USA and Fred Nile. Maybe I'm blinkered, but the great mass of humanity seems to get by pretty well just doing whatever comes naturally, and only starts getting hang-ups about sex once the moralisers and prurient conservatives start interfering.

Yaaairs...

Because, apart from that confusing "sex" stuff, the institution of marriage is motoring along just fine in our wide brown land.

Idiots.

Its nice that we have these diseases that will rid the world of these filthy back people.They all smell(when they are wet)and the steal from us.

Ya! for AIDS.

Comment has been deleted by moderator as it's racism transgresses the conditions and conventions of commentary on the blog.

I've just glanced through David Burchell's Oh Yea of little Faith in The Australian. He protests that the ABC television news says that:

Christianity is no longer the country's traditional religious centre. Rather, it's become a fascinating spiritual subculture, on a par with the obscure mystery-religions of the ancient Romans, or the awful but fascinating pagan sacrifices of the Aztecs, or the charming village rituals of the Javanese.

It seems that Burchill cannot accept that Australia is a multicultural society and so Christianity is one religion amongst many.The reference to pagan sacrifices of the Aztecs is a red herring.

The Aztecs sacrificed red herrings??? I,m outraged!

I liked the bit where Burchell said it was all different back when he was a lad and James Dibble was doing the news. Back then, men with sensible haircuts and slightly British accents told the truth about Easter.

Apparently religious beliefs and practices are influenced by ABC news presenters.

My goodness...

Looking for Australia's "religious centre", are we? The stuff that sustains our soul?

Easy! Just go to your local shopping mall!

Religion? We got it by the basket load. And 25% off this weekend only.

The Aztecs and Romans don't stand a chance.

Lynn,
Burchill sounds almost nostalgic for the good old days:

my parents' old orange Ford Cortina parked in the carport, the jaunty sounds of the Tijuana Brass on the stereo at Christmas time, Dean Martin warbling "Everybody loves somebody, sometime" as he shimmied down that fire pole.

He forgot the white picket suburban fence.

The lad appears to be deeply concerned by Western intellectuals being troubled by the continued presence of Christianity in the world.

Burchill has started speaking the language of the cultural conservatives when he says that securalism is a

novel amalgam of aesthetics and politics [that] became not just a new faith but the one true faith. Indeed, beside it the old-style faiths (seen as the preserve of the insincere or the insufficiently self-inspecting) appeared to spiritually emancipated intellectuals merely as a series of inauthentic and even rather blasphemous imitations.

It is a funny way for an ex-leftie to describe an enlightening reason of liberalism.

mars08,
yes, consumerism has replaced religion as the moral order of the nation. Buy buy buy is the new national prayer.