Collective Nouns #118: "A Dusk of Idols"

A recent LGM thread raised the question, Is there a genre of “Dystopian Catholic Science Fiction?” Nominations included A Canticle For Leibowitz, His Dark Materials, and The Alteration.

Arguing that anything involving "a planet deliberately maintained in a state of genocidal savagery" is close enough, I voted for A Dusk of Idols.

--------------------------------------

In other news -- barely a few weeks old -- one Cardinal Pell, Archbishop of Sydney, was defending the Catholic Church against a general Royal Commission of Inquiry into institutionalised child sexual abuse, a prospect which he reckoned was part of a "persistent press campaign" of "general smears".

Cardinal Pell suggested media coverage of abuse, which rehashed the same stories, might open old wounds among abuse victims. "I wonder to what extent the victims are helped by this ongoing furore in the press," he said.

Can that caring person be the same Cardinal Pell who was noted earlier in his career for his sociopathic response to another episode of child-rape-covering-up-related activity? Perhaps he has an evil twin, or a goatee beard.

Bonus Cardinal Pell: the real victims of the Holocaust were the Germans.

"No," I thought, as I checked the Great Gazoogle, "not even the stupidest of Pell's supporters would complain that Catholicism was the persecuted victim of a 'witch-hunt'. No-one could be that deprived of insight and irony-awareness. One might as well liken atheists to the Spanish Inquisition [whom no-one expects]." HA HA silly Smut!