Newly anointed “rock star” Pope Francis has his work cut out for him.
Maybe you’ve seen the digital billboard hanging over Times Square this month like a gigantic, glowing middle finger in the face.
“Who needs Christ during Christmas?’’ queries the sign erected by the merry jokesters of the American Atheists, a group of irreligious wingnuts whose sole mission is to kill the buzz of true believers.
The sign answers with an oafish air of finality that is at once startlingly arrogant and wickedly offensive — to Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus and anyone with even an ounce of faith.
“Nobody.’’
It may be working. Officials of the insanely politically correct 14th Street McBurney YMCA have even fired the religiously suspect Santa Claus and replaced him with a man dressed as a creepy Frosty the Snowman.
At a time of worldwide moral and spiritual decay — of school cheating scandals and Miley Cyrus, of Eliot Spitzer and Anthony Weiner — we the people are losing our religion.
God has not just been cast out of the public square, He’s been booted from sight by lily-livered officials’ mortal fear of lawsuits.
So a display of the religiously neutral Ten Commandments was banned from an Ohio courtroom by an appeals court that grew weak in the knees at the idea of potentially mooshing the concepts of church and state.
Even a sukkah, a drafty little hut in which Jews eat, drink and be merry during the fall festival of Sukkot, was evicted from Tribeca’s Duane Park by cowards on the local community board, ignominiously dumped on a privately owned vacant lot.
A Pew Research Center poll last year determined the number of Americans who do not identify with any particular faith has grown to nearly one-fifth of the population. And one-third of adults under 30 don’t hold any particular religious belief.
This is not mere faith-shopping. A record 13 million people, or nearly 6 percent of the population, now consider themselves atheists and agnostics.
In Chicago’s Daley Plaza, a gigantic “A’’ for atheism was planted near a model of the baby Jesus and a Hanukkah menorah.
Atheism has made significant grabs overseas, too. For the first time, some 16,000 Irish schoolkids next year will get lessons on atheism, agnosticism and humanism. While 93 percent of Ireland’s kids attend schools affiliated with the Catholic church, even those students will be encouraged to experience an atheism course online.
In Cuba, Elian Gonzalez, 20, who escaped to America clinging to an inner tube 14 years ago, only to be sent back after his mom died, created a stir when he said Fidel Castro was his “God.”
“Dreidel Dreidel” was as threatening as fruitcake in school districts in Wisconsin and New Jersey, which this season banned performances of religious music. In Santa Monica, Calif., a Nativity scene was kicked out of a park. Leftists such as HBO’s Bill Maher deny to their last atheistic breath there exists a war on religion, especially in the season of Kwanzaa, Christmas and Hanukkah. But there are signs this battle over our collective soul has turned into a kind of religion itself.
“Religious participation has declined overall,” agreed Joseph Zwilling, spokesman for the New York Archdiocese. But all is not lost in an age when many prefer the comfort of their iPhones to the Bible.
Pope Francis, just named Time’s Person of the Year, is a former Argentinian bouncer who lives simply in a papal guest house, tools around solo in a 1984 Renault, took an appropriate selfie with teens in St. Peter’s Basilica, and preaches tolerance and love for homosexuals.
Is this the rock star of our age?
“I laugh,” said Zwilling. “I’ve heard that term used to describe Timothy Cardinal Dolan, as well. These men are alive, happy and vibrant. It puts, I think, a smile on the church’s face, if you will.”
After a torrent of bad press for Catholics, New York’s confession booths are filling up.
“Atheism might or might not be on the rise,” Rabbi Serge Lippe of Brooklyn Heights Synagogue told me. “It doesn’t mean people are not spiritually interested.”
This Christmas season is a time of joy for people of all faiths.
Even the atheists. They could use a little religion, too.
Claim of ‘safe’ e-cigarettes is a smoke
Not so fast! E-cigarettes, the vapor-spewing sticks often touted as a safer alternative to tobacco, could expose users to higher concentrations of toxins. That’s according to researchers from New York University, who found that people puffing electronic smokes actually inhale more deeply and frequently.
Until I read about the study, I had no clue that e-cigs contain nicotine.
Perhaps the orally fixated should give in and kick the e-cigarette habit.
You’re a mean one, Ms. Stewart
She’s been called a domestic dominatrix and an ex-con who did time in federal prison for lying to federal investigators about a stock sale. Now, Martha Stewart has earned a new title: grinch.
A week and a half before Christmas, the lavishly compensated chairwoman of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia yielded to the wishes of her new CEO and axed 100 employees, many of whom left company headquarters in tears. Her money-losing publishing and goods-peddling empire is expected to save $10 million next year from the cutbacks.
Martha, who just visited Miami’s winter playground of the rich and fabulous, Art Basel, pulled down some $5.5 million last year.
Being Martha Stewart is a good thing.
NYC’s finest indeed
Good people exist in the world. Some of them are cops.
NYPD Police Officer Carlos Ramos removed a sweat shirt from under his uniform on Friday, and handed the gift of warmth to Robert William, a coatless, shoeless homeless man who shivered on a street near the UN.
This random act of kindness came a year after Police Officer Larry DePrimo (now a detective) bought a pair of boots as a gift for a barefoot man in Times Square.
The people of this city get an unfair rap for being coldhearted. Cops like Ramos and DePrimo serve as a blessed example for us all.
They make me proud to be a New Yorker.
Fresh-ly $queezed
Couch potatoes, look out. Grocery company FreshDirect charges more for the food it delivers to wealthy areas of Manhattan than it does for grub sold in parts of Brooklyn and New Jersey, company officials admitted to The Post. This means the 12-pack of 6-ounce cups of Stonyfield yogurt will set you back just $4.99 if you live in Newark. Those who dwell on the Upper West Side pay $7.20 for the same thing — though it costs less in gas and tolls for FreshDirect to drive its products there from a facility in Long Island City. It’s not fair to fleece folks according to ZIP code.