The second in my series of three cathedrals of Newcastle is the Cathedral Church of St Nicholas Newcastle upon Tyne. I know that doesn’t scan properly, but that’s what they call it. This dates from 1359, and is the seat of the bishop of Newcastle, who – strangely enough – I’ve mentioned once before on here.

Of particular interest to my organist brother, it boasts a fine four-manual Grand Organ built by TC Lewis. I don’t really understand the meaning of those words in that order, but the organ has its own webpage, with very pretty pictures, which I’m sure Glenn will enjoy.

A little while ago, my organist brother Glenn and his family came to visit. Pete McGovern may have said of Liverpool that “if you want a cathedral, we’ve got one to spare”, but I was able to impress Glenn by pointing out that Newcastle boasts three cathedrals – or two to spare, depending on how you look at it!

He was a little less impressed when I confessed an inability to name them – mainly because he wanted to look them up in the National Pipe Organ Register (such fun!)

So, especially for Glenn, I’m going to try and feature photos of all three of Newcastle’s cathedrals this week. Here’s the first: St George and St Athanasius Coptic Orthodox Cathedral in Fenham.

Love Never Dies Poster

I really, really like Love Never Dies. I saw the original production and loved it, and saw the revised version and loved it still more. Well, maybe not more, but at least equally, and I appreciated that the changes were necessary for those less familiar with the backstory.

ALW is on the media circuit down-under at the moment due to the Antipodean opening of the aforementioned musical. In a recent interview (that I now can’t find), there was some tangential comparison between Love Never Dies and Jesus Christ Superstar, including the assertion that the latter was never intended as as a stage show, but merely a concept album.

Jesus Christ Superstar is something that I probably grew up with, and never really understood. So I dug it out on Spotify for a re-listen, and ultimately found that it bore several re-listens over several days. I actually found that I really quite liked it, but there was something missing.

It was the search for the thing that was not-quite-right that lead to me listening to the album more times over than is probably healthy, frequently on may way into or home from work. The album seemed to have everything: love, lust, jeopardy, moral complexity, and, of course, great music.

But something didn’t “hang” right.

The last time I had this feeling was over the wildly successful Wicked. I eventually realised that the missing ingredient here was moral complexity: the story is fairytale simple, with “good” and “evil”. This removes the intrinsic interest of moral complexity, and any sense of jeopardy, since the moralistic absolutes mean that the outcome is clearly predetermined.

And if anyone points out that this is obvious in a musical that’s aimed at children, I’d point them in the direction of Captain Scarlet, possibly the most morally complex TV series ever made, which was aimed squarely at children. The concepts explored in that are essentially the same concepts that Tony Blair battled with when deciding whether to invade Iraq. But I digress…

Jesus Christ Superstar

Moral absolutism meant that Wicked‘s outcome is predetermined. In itself, that’s not a problem that affects Jesus Christ Superstar. The morality is absolutist, but not out-and-out so. Jesus is not always immediately perfect in the musical – he gets angry, shouts, and is generally portrayed as having a human temperament, even if the backstory makes clear that ultimately he was on the side of the angels. So to speak.

The problem with Jesus Christ Superstar is Judas: his character’s storyline is never completed, which makes the whole musical unbalanced. In the musical, it is predetermined that Judas will betray Jesus. Judas duly betrays Jesus, Jesus gets cross and berates Judas who hangs himself, Judas’s ghost gives his reasons for his betrayal (whilst simultaneously knowing that it was predetermined and not really his fault), and Jesus promptly dies.

There’s no forgiving of Judas. There’s no relief for Judas from his wracked guilt. He’s left at the low-point of his story-arc, despite the musical constantly reminding us that Jesus, and by extension God, are forgiving. There’s no resolution.

This seemed a really odd choice. A couple of lines in the penultimate song (“Crucifixion”) with Jesus asking God to forgive Judas would fix it – yet he merely asks God to forgive everyone else. Obviously, Judas being stopped from hanging himself would be all the better, but hey-ho.

So why does the musical leave this story, ahem, hanging?

Luca Lionello as Judas in a movie I've never seen

Well, it turns out that it’s based on the Biblical story. As a non-believer, I’m not sure if it’s right for me to write posts poking holes in Christian theology, but I see no problem with pointing out holes in the plot of the book.

It is make explicit that Judas had no choice but to betray Jesus. It was prophesied that he would do so, hence his fate was effectively pre-determined. Luke says that he was possessed by Satan at the time, which adds yet more weight to the argument (Luke 22:3).

Given that Judas effectively had no say in the matter, it seem logical that his actions should be forgiven. Judas even confesses his sins (Matthew 27:4). Jesus has previously said that he would view anyone who did God’s will as his blood relative (Matthew 12:50). Punishment for actions over which there was no choice, and fulfilled God’s predetermined plan, and for which Judas has asked forgiveness, seems sadistic and vengeful.

Because of that, what happened to Judas after the betrayal becomes really important. A forgiving Jesus who “turns the other cheek” should absolve Judas, and all should live happily ever after.

Yet, bizarrely, the Bible is really unclear on what happened afterwards. Matthew says he committed suicide (Matthew 27:9-10). This doesn’t seem a great ending: Follow the path that God has laid for you and you’ll end up so guilt-ridden that you’ll kill yourself. Though perhaps that explains why suicide rates are higher in Christian than Muslim countries. Still, not something you here being preached every day.

Acts has a different story. Here, Judas buys a field, and falls over in it, causing his entire body to explode with bowels gushing everywhere (Acts 1:18). It’s difficult to imagine that this is intended to have happened by natural means, so it seems that God is directly punishing Judas on Earth for something that God had planned for Judas to do. How rewarding.

The non-canonical Gospel of Judas describes Judas being stoned to death by the other disciples. That’s Peter stoning to death Judas for following God’s pre-determined path. How does that sit with the Catholic church?

Barnabas reckons that, by some miracle, Judas was crucified instead of Jesus. Not friendly treatment.

And, lastly, Papias preached that Judas swelled up to quite an extraordinary size, until he was crushed by a chariot which was so huge it couldn’t get past him. That sounds worse than crucifixion. Again, apparently divine punishment for following a divine path.

Whichever one you choose, it represents a sticky end for Judas which seems entirely unjustifiable given that he was doing things which were pre-determined.

So the treatment of Judas is my Big Fat Theological Question of the Day: Why is Judas punished in the most horrendous way for following the will of God?

To my non-religious mind, that seems like a big ‘plot hole’ in the Biblical story.

Recently, I walked through Newcastle and saw a Christmas display that had a degree wit about it – Ann Summers shows its lingerie collection on models wearing antlers with the greeting ‘Have a Horny Christmas’.

Given that it’s Ann Summers, there’s nothing particularly surprising about the message or the sentiment, but it did raise a smile – and a slightly sinking feeling that there’d undoubtedly be complaints about it within days.

The sinking feeling was right – shortly afterwards, the Dean of Newcastle condemned the slogan, saying that it showed a lack of awareness of the spiritual significance of Christmas.

This is surely true of most window displays: ‘Remember how Christmas used to feel’, ‘Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without M&S’, or ‘Try our Festive After Eight McFlurry’ – none of these has any particular regard for the spirituality of the occasion.

And is it unreasonable to assume that the Very Reverend Chris Dalliston would have been even more offended had the slogan been ‘Have a horny Winterval’? He would probably claim that Ann Summers had forgotten his god at Christmas time.

Christmas in particular brings out the worst in Christians. Many normally tolerant Christians see it as their duty to shout down those who don’t have god at the centre of their seasonal celebration, regardless of whether those people actually believe. Its something that oddly doesn’t happen at Easter – nobody sees Christians lining up to protest about the sale of chocolate eggs which bear little relation to the murderous death and subsequent ghost sitings of their messiah, despite that being the most sacred Christian festival.

And given that Chris Dalliston likely disapproves of most of what Ann Summers sells, he may not be the best person to give them advice on their marketing – though I’m sure they’re pleased that he tried, as it’s no doubt provided a great boost in their publicity.

He claims, of the ‘Horny Christmas’ slogan,

Everyone who can read is being wished this message, which they may not want.

So where is the uprising of the morally bankrupt atheists against the nativity scene down the road in Eldon Sqaure, or the organised disruption of the carol singing in the MetroCentre? I have no particular desire to seek their Christian message, yet it’s foisted upon me. Surely Ariane Shariene and Richard Dawkins should be organising competing choirs singing entirely secular songs and stealing the baby Jesus from the nativity. They are evil secularists, after all.
Yet I doubt that’s going to happen. I actually think you’d struggle to find any rational atheist who was against Christmas in all its forms.

For me, Christmas is primarily about spending time with my family. It is a time for a guaranteed get-together, with nice food, good banter, and presents for one another. So what’s so wrong about that?

My point is this: I don’t actually care what you celebrate at this time of year: Christmas, Winterval, a Festivus for the rest of us, or nothing at all. It’s really none of my business, and it’s each to their own.

But whatever you’re doing today and over the next few days, I give you my very best wishes for all the peace, joy, and happiness you could want.

All the best.

This post is based on my contribution to the Pod Delusion Winterval Special – it’s great, so listen to the whole thing at poddelusion.co.uk

It’s Christmas Eve, and I thought it’d only right and proper to wish all of my readers a Merry Christmas. But just as I was logging on to do so, a startling truth hit me between the eyes: Some of you don’t like sprouts.

Such behaviour is intolerable. The liking or disliking of sprouts may be genetic, influenced by complex environmental factors, and perhaps innate, but it’s still absolutely wrong to dislike them.

For those of you who are unaware, sprouts are extremely nutritious, not to mention delicious. In fact, sprouts are so wonderful that there is simply no other option than to eat them. Everybody in the world should eat sprouts – except, perhaps, those who chose to eat nothing at all.

Climate change and the effect of carbon emissions on the environment are major challenges affecting the future of the world. But so is the curse of those people who choose not to eat sprouts. Curtailing this ridiculous behaviour is crucial to the future of the health of the world’s population.

Just as the Pope sees the minority of people who choose to perform consensual ‘homosexual acts’ in their own home as a target for our derision, I view the subset of society who dislike sprouts as worthy of insult. Just as the Pope believes that homosexuals need to be ‘saved’, I believe the same is true of sprout haters. And just as the Pope believes it reasonable to openly discriminate against the gay community, I will henceforth not accept any input into this website from evil detractors of the sprout. And I would most certainly never offer employment to those nasty, evil, unnatural non-sprout-eaters in any area of life.

Since you have just about as much control of your sexuality as over your sprout preference, I do not think this is unreasonable.

So, to those of you who faithfully read my site and enjoy a healthy serving of sprouts on a regular basis: Merry Christmas.

To the rest of you: Burn in hell.

[ Competing Interests: It just so happens that I can’t stand sprouts. ]