Yet another Catholic leader turns out to be a paedophile – Fr. Marcial Maciel Degollado. The only problem is that he’s dead and he escaped punishment. He also apparently had an affair with a woman, fathered her child, and misused funds.
Maciel was the founder of the Catholic congregation called the "Legion Of Christ", which claims to have 70,000 members.
Tim Freke is the co-author (with his writing partner Peter Gandy) of many books about the Jesus myth – including THE JESUS MYSTERIES and THE LAUGHING JESUS. I chatted with him recently about one of their books “The Gospel of the Second Coming”, a marvelous book that manages to combine humour and insight – it explains the Jesus myth as a Gnostic parable. As Tim points out during our chat – nobody really thinks there was an historical “good Samaritan” or “prodigal son”. They are understood to be parables. Tim explains that the whole Jesus story is a series of parables wrapped up in another parable – the parable of Jesus himself.
Click on the above image to order your copy today from BookDepository (free shipping!).
Do you want an independent media?
I’m very excited today to release the news that I’ve partnered up with ourbrisbane.com to co-produce the "Brisbane Confidential" series that I’ve been talking about for the last year. Brisbane has a surprising number of cool, funky places and I want to show them to you. Each week the series will showcase some of the funkiest cafes, bars, restaurants, boutique stores and events in Brisbane. New episodes will be available each Thursday on ourbrisbane.com, BrisbaneConfidential.com and through iTunes.
Partnering up with ourbrisbane.com is exciting because they are THE site to tell you about what’s happening around Brisbane. They have huge reach in Brisbane, about 500,000 people visit their site each month. When I made a decision to move up here early last year, the first site I ended up on to learn more about Brisbane was ourbrisbane.com and I remember thinking at the time "I wish they had some podcasts".
Well, now they do. 🙂
My guests today help me explore some of the alternatives to the “Big Four” banks in Australia. Let’s say that you, like me, want to completely disassociate yourself from the Big Four – where do you turn? Are there alternatives in Australia?
Yes, say my guests:
Andrew Hadley, COO, Credit Union Australia
Tony Beck, Group Manager, Corporate Affairs, ME Bank (Members Equity)
They both belong to organisations that can provide all of the same services that you get from your bank – and they will do it with less fees and with much more customer service. Why? Both organisations are owned by their members instead of shareholders. In CUA’s case, they are owned by their customers. In ME’s case, they are owned by a group of superannuation firms which, in turn, are owned by their members.
So both organisations exist to provide good service – not solely for the sake of returning profits to shareholders. And, judging by their NPS scores, it makes a difference.
Do you want an independent media?
Today’s music is by:
Rick Estrin & The Nightcats
“U B U” (mp3)
from “Twisted”
(Alligator Records)
Buy at Amazon
According to this story in the Washington Post, the banksters are going to try to create sneakier ways to make you spend too much money and find yourself being hit with newly created fees in order to prop up their revenues. Expect the same thing to happen in Australia.