Don’t Gnocchi It Till You’ve Tried It

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Rev Patrick G Burke states that the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster is a fiction. It is not.

I became an ordained Pastafarian minister during 2015. Beforehand, I went through an arduous process in 2014 involving the ecclesiastical authorities in Armagh to have my excommunication from the Roman Catholic Church confirmed in writing.

My faith in the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster is considered heretical by the Roman Catholic Church and this incurs latae sententiae excommunication, according to Canon 1364.

In the correspondence that I finally received from the bishop, he also states that he is “acknowledging apostasy in accordance with Canon 751, the total repudiation of the Christian faith”.

One of the reasons why I repudiated Christianity was the long history of Pastafarian persecution that has been perpetrated by Christians of every hue. I hope correspondents will reflect upon this history before blaspheming against my religion.

Pasta-based religions should be afforded the same respect as carpenter-based religions.

John Hamill,
Pastafarian Minister,
Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster,
Castleblayney,
Co Monaghan.

The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (Irish Times letters page)

Previously: Strained Relations

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73 thoughts on “Don’t Gnocchi It Till You’ve Tried It

  1. Rugbyfan

    He broke the pasta, sprinkled it with some parmesan cheese and said…take this all of you and eat it.

  2. Bertie Blenkinsop

    You just know John Hamill owns a “if you can’t lift her, don’t shift her” t-shirt.

    1. Brother Barnabas

      I know it’s probably not what you’re getting at, Bertie, but that’s actually pretty sage advice.

    2. bisted

      …sorry Bertie…John is a leading spokesman for Athiest Ireland and founder of a highly successful IT company…I don’t think it was him who stole your t-shirt…

  3. bisted

    …can’t wait to see the census returns and the decline in the number of people professing catholic/christian religion…even though the question was biased in favour of religious affiliation…shame on you CSO.

    1. Fact Checker

      I take your point.

      But there is merit in asking the same question every census so that the results are directly comparable over time.

    2. The Old Boy

      I know I’ve banged on about it on these pages before, but the Irish language question is by far the greatest breach of the principles of good surveying and statistics on the Census. The religion question is quite defensible, although I do take the point about “no religion” being placed at the bottom of the list.

    3. rotide

      People complaining about the perfectly reasonable and stadard placement of the ‘No religion’ option really should tilt at other windmills

      1. bisted

        …the CSO have acknowledged that the question should be ‘religion/no religion’ and if religion, then which flavour. Despite protests, the CSO retained the format but they have promised to revise it for the next census. I will admit that in the priest ridden Ireland, which seems stongest in officialdom, the format would seem perfectly reasonable and standard…within the past few months I was asked for my ‘christian’ name.

    1. The Gawm

      Isn’t he just! Maybe soon he’ll start restricting what women can do with their bodies, based on some oul buke. Then it will be truly legendary.

      To think some people take life lessons from some 2000 year old book, mind-boggling stuff justin

      1. newsjustin

        What’s wrong with taking lessons from a 2000 year old book? If they’re relevant? What does the date have to do with it?

        1. ahjayzis

          Well said. I’ve always advocated offering your daughters for reape in lieu of your guests, lest they think you’re inhospitable.

    1. The Old Boy

      Excommunication isn’t much good if you want to leave the Roman church. It’s a heavy punitive measure, designed not to keep you out, but to coax you back into the fold of full communion.

  4. Optimus Grime

    As a ‘Blayney man I can confirm all of the above is true and correct. I recently attended a funeral at the church, may the deceased rest in pesto.

    1. Kieran NYC

      I’m sure he would be perfectly happy getting a life where other people’s religious beliefs didn’t impinge on it.

    1. Optimus Grime

      Catherine, our great King is in consult with his advisors, known as the Mainliners. There is talk among the court that he sees no problem with it as long as spuds are served as a side dish

  5. Gorev Mahagut

    Except that Burke is correct. The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster is “a fiction created for the sole purpose of mocking religion”.

    Mocking the religious comes in different forms. There’s the satirist who pokes fun at the pretentiousness of Cardinals, draped in weath an influence. And then there’s the jokes about the Jews, the Muslims, or whatever minority; designed to humiliate, to exclude, to teach the “other” to know their place.

    The secularists have won in this part of the world. All citizens can claim equality. But a few cases remain where deference is paid religious identity. For example, hijabis are not required to go bare-headed in passport photographs. This isn’t a crawling deference to religious authority. It’s a gesture of empathy offered to neighbours, a compromise in the usually inflexible demands secular beaurocracy. It helps keep our secular society going: too much rigidity will lead any structure to fail.

    Our identities are complex and fragile. We live alongside people of many different faiths and cultures and we don’t all share the same assumptions. So sometimes we need to practice a little give-and-take.

    And it’s these little gestures that the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster wants to wipe out. This isn’t Justice for Magdalenes, or One In Four. It’s the rage of an educated, privileged insiders against any “official” recognition that different faith-cultures exist. Give-and-take feels like a threat to that privilege. Ok, so your teachers in secondary school never validated your atheism. That doesn’t make you one of the oppressed. In any case, you’re grown up now. Sometimes you don’t win your battles so much as outgrow them.

    Not all believers occupy positions of power. Not every expression of faith is a threat to your “way of life”. There’s a difference between humiliating people because you disagree with them and murdering them because you disagree with them; but it’s a difference of degree, not of quality.

    1. Brother Barnabas

      I don’t agree with you, Gorev, but that’s a superb comment. Thanks for sharing that. (And very nicely written, too).

    2. ahjayzis

      Kind of disagree. Religion cannot be placed on a pedestal above political or social beliefs. If I can harangue you in a friendly, mocking way for being stupid enough to vote Fianna Fail, I can question why you’re adding your voice to an organisation that goes out and argues for things you find reprehensible but are too a-la-carte to object to.

      I also think you’re underplaying how deeply ingrained a particular religion still is in this country – how can “all citizens claim equality” when their national school system privileges one superstition over others and none?

    3. Cup of tea anyone?

      You are only partly correct Gorev.

      The church of the FSM was not created to mock religion. The creator had a child in a school that parents wanted creationism thought along side evolution.

      The creator argued that if one persons religion is being thought as a science, his religion should also be thought. And that the FSM and creationism go hand in hand in that god did create the word, but that god is a trans -dimensional flying spaghetti monster.

      So the FSM does not mock other religious beliefs but the teaching of religion as a science.

      1. Gorev Mahagut

        The whole point about American Creationism is this: its inventors claim it’s a science (no appeal on religious grounds would ever succeed in getting it into public school curricula). You can make the point that Creationism is not science without attacking religion. FSM went a different route.

        1. ahjayzis

          Why is it okay to attack any other ideology? What is wrong with attacking religion? Attacking religion isn’t one and the same as attacking a person for their religion.

          I don’t recognise blasphemy, people’s daft superstitions aren’t beyond ridicule or argument, especially when those infantile magic stories are attempting to exercise influence in the public square.

    4. Rob_G

      I can kind of see what you are saying; but it is still the case that non-religious parents consider getting their kids baptised to get into the local school, priests threaten the prime minister with excommunication when the subject of legislating for fatal foetal abnormalities was brought up, etc.

      If we lived in a secular society, the Church of FSM people *would* seem a bit knobbish, but I don’t think that we are there yet.

    5. Robert

      “Secularism is not an argument against Christianity, it is one independent of it. It does not question the pretensions of Christianity; it advances others. Secularism does not say there is no light or guidance elsewhere, but maintains that there is light and guidance in secular truth, whose conditions and sanctions exist independently, and act forever. Secular knowledge is manifestly that kind of knowledge which is founded in this life, which relates to the conduct of this life, conduces to the welfare of this life, and is capable of being tested by the experience of this life.”

      The words of the guy who coined the term – from the Wikipedia page – in a nutshell “Live And Let Live”. Secularism benefits all religions where different religions exist. Which is of no use to the “one true religion” brigade at all!

  6. irishstu

    It’s an absolute pisstake, and all very childish, but it’s not really about humiliation, more about pointing out how ridiculous the whole not eating bacon, talking snakes, or not using electricity is. But it’s also very close to Dick Dawkins levels of assholery. Sure, no-one has the right not to be offended, but why would you go to all this effort?

    However… “The secularists have won in this part of the world. All citizens can claim equality. ”
    Really?

  7. Catherine McEntee

    Optimus, I was thinking he’d be obliging, hope the Travellers have no problem with it either if they’re still about, waiting in the wings, so to speak…..

    Ah now Gorev, why did you have to go and make a big story out of it, down with that kinda thing, can we not keep it light-hearted?

  8. The Real Jane

    There’s no one quite so unfunny as the painful eejit who can’t give up last decade’s amusing whimsy.

  9. ahjayzis

    Mormonism and Scientology are FAR more obvious frauds than Pastafarianism, in fairness. Literally founded within written memory by a known charlatan and a writer of fiction >_<

    1. The Real Jane

      Yes, although there is at least a point to mormonism and scientology- justifying your pervyness or making loads of cash. Obviously they’re both terrible and prey on and damage very vulnerable people but you can see some kind of outcome.

      The problem with the spaghetti monster thing is that it’s very, very weak. OK, so it is intended as a satire of religions. But it achieves nothing except a wry grin the first time you hear it. And then it becomes an endless Simpson’s quote from that tiresome w*rk colleague or the self righteous bore who writes letters to the Irish Times about what they didn’t like about the census this time.

      1. ahjayzis

        I always thought it was intended as a stick to beat people trying to break down the barriers between church and state in the US. When creationists demand to teach their nonsense to kids, the Pastafarians roll up and support them, on the proviso that they’ll be using that precedent to demand their silliness is taught in schools. Pretty good cause in my buke.

        Like how the Satanists wait for some state legislature in the US to erect a statue of the commandments on government property then assert their right under precedent to erect a statue to Baphomet, it’s effective.

        It also serves to highlight the insanity of having to live under another’s ridiculous superstitions. Like if they demanded we close all pubs on X day because of some bullcrap reason we’d be up in arms, but we’re all expected to be fine living under the good Friday fatwa from the Christbotherers.

      2. sǝɯǝɯʇɐpɐq

        @The Real Janitor

        So basically you’re saying that Pastafarianisn is ‘very, very weak’ because it isn’t funny enough? Is that it?

        1. The Real Jane

          Well partly. If it’s intended as humorous, it would benefit from being funny, yes. I imagine things like insisting on having a colander on your head for your driver’s licence is seen as the apex of hilarity in some quarters but I think it’s a fairly limited reach. So yeah, to be successfully satirical, I think funny is important.

        2. sǝɯǝɯʇɐpɐq

          The fuynny thing is that you don’t get is that it ISN’T a joke.

          I repeat, it ISN’T a joke.

          1. sǝɯǝɯʇɐpɐq

            Sorry for the Farfalle from proper English there, I’m off me noodle on bolognese.and promise to Macaroni amends sometime is the Fusilli.

            May the sauce be with you.

          2. sǝɯǝɯʇɐpɐq

            Ramen*

            Yeah, I know this a repeat of an earlier joke by Cian, but isn’t that how religion works? Youy just keep repeating stuff? Yeah?

          3. sǝɯǝɯʇɐpɐq

            Okay jANUS, I’ll take the bait…

            What is the name of the religion that isn’t ridiculously funny?
            (Maybe not funny…that’s a hard call…Which one is the most ridiculous? In your opinion…
            …I think yours ought to be in the Top Ten, but that’s just MY opinion.)

          4. sǝɯǝɯʇɐpɐq

            @The Wrong Jane.
            -This is NOT my comfortable zone. I feel like I’m affiliating myself with f***ing fogeys by deference, in my continuing allusion of being literate in alliteration and creating an illusion of intelligence.

            I know that you’re really a bloke.
            Stop messing.

  10. some old queen

    I couldn’t be part of this religion, I mean all those carbs? Could they not have gone down the lean protein and veg kinda route huh?

    1. sǝɯǝɯʇɐpɐq

      The long and the short of it is this SOQie, it’s isn’t hard if you give it twelve minutes or more, by which time it will have become bigger and more appetising.
      The great thing is that the feeling of full-fillment comes early, and you can stop right there if you have any self-control.
      If self-control is a problem for you there are other religions out there.

  11. rotide

    The fact that badger is a fan is pretty much all you need to know about pastafarianism

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