Dust ’em off and trot ’em out, boys and girls, because this one has to have earned at least a good-sized bunch of them. Yup, that’s right: a bunch of boneheads in Poland’s lower house are touting the idea of naming Jesus Christ the honourary king of Poland.

HEY, guys… what the hell are you thinking???

Not surprisingly, the Church in the overwhelmingly Catholic country is NOT amused with the idea:

The proposal “marks an overuse of religion for political goals,” Bishop Tadeusz Pieronek, a member of the Catholic Church Episcopate, said in an interview with the station. Archbishop Slawomir Glodz, also a member, told TVN24 “legislators should steer clear of things they have no idea about.”

I’m not big on it either. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure those guys’ hearts are in the right place; it’s their judgement that I find dubious. Perhaps they should have considered:

Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world, then My servants would be fighting so that I would not be handed over to the Jews; but as it is, My kingdom is not of this realm.”
– John 18:36

As we sit here in our nice comfortable and safe nation, complaining about what some bozo judge did to a Christmas tree, or about Christmas concerts in school getting renamed “winter festivals,” or people saying “happy holidays,” or any of the other gripes and groans that surface at this time of year, perhaps we should take just a minute or two to think about just how good we have it. There are plenty of people in the world who have one hell of a worse time of it than we do.

The Winterpeg Sun’s John Gleeson relates one such story today as he describes the plight of the oldest sect in Christendom, the one million Assyrian Christians currently living in Iraq:

Christians thrown to the lions in Iraq

By JOHN GLEESON

While Canada’s self-appointed guardians of Christmas dig up new evidence of persecution — a tree moved down the hall, a greeting without “merry” dutifully attached — real persecution against Christians is going on daily and is being largely ignored.

Nowhere is the situation as grave as in Iraq.

Since the U.S. invasion in 2003, Iraq’s one million Assyrian Christians — the oldest sect in Christendom — have been the target of a campaign of terror and ethnic cleansing at the hands of Islamic extremists and Kurdish nationalists. Tens of thousands have fled the country for Syria, Jordan or Turkey.

This year has been the worst since the invasion. Church bombings, car bombings, kidnappings and killings have become commonplace.

In August, 13 Assyrian women in Baghdad were kidnapped and murdered. In October, a 14-year-old boy in Albasra was crucified and stabbed in the stomach in mockery of the death of Christ. Another 14-year-old boy in Baquba was decapitated in his workplace by veiled Muslims chanting “Allahu, Akbar! Allahu, Akbar!” Also that month, a priest was kidnapped, tortured and beheaded, supposedly over the Pope’s comments critical of Islam.

Indeed, in the wake of Benedict XVI’s September speech, extremists threatened to kill all Christians in Iraq unless the Pope apologized.

Except for a few Christian relief agencies and the Assyrians’ own news service, the bloodletting has been virtually unreported — lost in the sea of carnage that is today’s Iraq.

Assyrians themselves are calling on the western world to create a “safe zone” for Christians on the Nineveh Plains in northern Iraq (the Canadian-based Council of Assyrian Research and Development has posted a petition at www.cardonline.org). The European Parliament passed a resolution to that effect in April, but so far nothing has been done.

Meanwhile, Christmas has understandably gone underground in Iraq.

Due to “the grave security situation in the country,” Iraq’s Chaldean patriarch Emmanuel Delly has “appealed on safety grounds to Christians … to refrain from any public celebrations for Christmas.”

Christians hide in their homes and pray in secret. Priests are afraid to appear in public in their clerical robes, lest they be indiscriminately attacked. Schoolgirls have been warned by Muslim extremists to wear the hijab, and boys to dress in a “sombre manner,” or face the consequences under sharia law.

Truly a sad fate for a Christian community that traces its foundation back to 33 AD and St. Thomas and where most of the people still speak Aramaic, the language of Jesus and the Apostles.

It’s ironic, but not really surprising, that the American-led occupation under President George W. Bush would usher in an era of atrocities against Iraq’s Christian minority. They were an easy revenge target for the majority Muslims, who have only been emboldened by the U.S. government’s apparent disregard for the Assyrians’ plight.

With more important geopolitical alliances to forge with the warring Muslim factions and the Kurds, you could say the Americans have thrown the Christians to the lions.

And remember, the same calamity could befall Pakistan’s three million Christians, already a persecuted minority, if things were to get really ugly in neighbouring Afghanistan.

Persecution? We don’t know the half of it.

Despite being Catholic, I have no real problem with the theory of evolution per se.  It’s actually rather neat and tidy, when you think about it.  Things that can survive, do.  Things that aren’t properly equipped and adapted to the realities of the world in which they live, don’t.  Sort of like nature’s way of keeping the traffic moving.

If you’re wondering why I’m babbling about evolution, it’s because yet another dinosaur is facing extinction: the City of London Board of Control:

The fate of London’s board of control is in the hands of a simple majority of city council.

Amendments to the Ontario Municipal Act approved yesterday at Queen’s Park reduces the required two-thirds majority vote of council to abolish board of control to a simple majority, or 10 of 19 council members.

And it removes the need for Ontario Municipal Board approval of any change.

Mayor Anne Marie DeCicco-Best, who supports abolishing the board, said she expects the issue to be dealt with sooner rather than later.

Okay, so maybe Annie’s not a total writeoff, after all.

Just about everybody hopping into the ring in this little circus –regardless of what side of the issue they’re on– all seem to agree that nothing is going to get done on this until after the 2007 budget is dealt with.  Fair enough; deal with things in order.  But this sauntering sauropod has been lumbering across the London political landscape like a bull in a china shop for decades past its best-before date and it’s damn well high time that it was put out of our misery.  London is the last city in Canada with a board of control.  Just shoot the damn diplodocus and get on with business, already.

Hm.  Come to think of it, now that Joe “I campaigned against it before I ran for it” Swan is back in town again, I wonder how long it will take before he starts hooting about this?

I know, I know; it’s silly. But then, so is all the buffoonery in a certain courthouse lately…