All Entries in the "Religion" Category
NAE Urges Church to Cancel “International Burn a Quran Day”
Dove World Outreach Center has been featured on Talk2Action before for their visible anti-Islamic protests. (Photo is Rifqa Bary rally in Ohio, 2009.) In an ironic twist, their pastor, Terry Jones, testified in 1997 U.S. congressional hearings on religious freedom in Europe, where he complained of intolerance and revocation of the tax-free status of his charismatic church in Cologne, Germany.
In a press release the National Association of Evangelicals has urged Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Florida, led by Terry and Sylvia Jones, to cancel their International Burn a Quran Day to be held on September 11. The NEA encouraged “increased understanding and reconciliation.”
Terry Jones is an apostle in the “apostolic and prophetic” movement which teaches the “five-fold ministry” preparing the church for the end times. (Jones is not one of C. Peter Wagner’s International Coalition of Apostles members.) Jones is also author of the book Islam is of the Devil which can be purchased along with matching coffee mugs. The church provides instructions by Pastor Wayne Sapp on how Christians should go about burning the Quran, complete with a test run.
Full Story: Talk To Action | NAE Urges Church to Cancel “International Burn a Quran Day”.
Pastor Hosting ‘International Burn A Quran Day’: ‘We Have Nothing Against Muslims’
On September 11, 2010, the extremist evangelical Dove World Church — whose pastor, Terry Jones, has written a book called “Islam Is Of The Devil” — plans to host “International Burn A Quran Day,” when it will burn Muslims’ sacred text and encourage others across the world to do so as well. Churchmember Wayne Sapp has even posted an instructional video that explains how and why to burn the Islamic text.
CNN host Rick Sanchez invited Jones on his show yesterday to ask him about the inflammatory action. When Sanchez pressed Jones about why he would try to anger the world’s Muslims by burning their sacred text, the evangelical pastor replied, “Well, for one thing, to us, the book is not sacred,” provoking laughter from the CNN host.
Jones later went on to explain, “What we are also doing by the burning of the Quran, we’re saying stop, stop to Islam, stop to Islamic law, stop to brutality. We have nothing against Muslims, they are welcome in our country.” When Sanchez asked him how he would feel if Muslims burned the Bible, Jones admitted he wouldn’t like it but emphasized that it was his “right” to burn the Islamic text because “we live in America”:
Full Story: Think Progress » Pastor Hosting ‘International Burn A Quran Day’: ‘We Have Nothing Against Muslims’.
Tim Lahaye, Evangelical Christian Minister, Warns Obama Bringing Us Closer To ‘The Apocalypse’ (VIDEO)
Evangelical Christian minister Tim LaHaye says that the policy initiatives put forth by the Obama administration are bringing the country “closer to the apocalypse.”
LaHaye issued the dire warning in an appearance this week on Mike Huckabee’s talk show on Fox News.
“Our present president doesn’t seem to get it,” LaHaye explained. “He doesn’t understand that some of the things he’s introducing that many of us call ‘raw socialism’ — it’s a different name, but it’s essentially government control and government domination of everything.”
The evangelical voice said of the political platform maintained by the Obama administration, “It’s going to work against our country and bringing us closer to the apocalypse.”
Full Story: Tim Lahaye, Evangelical Christian Minister, Warns Obama Bringing Us Closer To ‘The Apocalypse’ (VIDEO).
Finding God After Leaving Religion
Thirty-four million Americans have given up on organized religion, according to the most recent American Religious Identification Survey. Yet for many of these dropouts — from churches, synagogues, temples and so on — spirituality is still a vital part of their lives.
How else would you explain the phenomenal success of Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now, Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love (soon a major motion picture), or the writings of the Dalai Lama, Deepak Chopra, and others like them? Just because people are fed up with organized religion doesn’t mean their appetite for spiritual things has been swallowed up, too.
I know because I was one of these millions who dropped out of active involvement in organized religion. But unlike the majority of the other 33,999,999 dropouts, I was a religious leader when I did.
Full Story: Steve McSwain: Finding God After Leaving Religion.
Why Does God Reveal Himself to Some People and Not to Others?
Doesn’t it seem likely that the reason all of us can’t see God is because there is no God?
If God exists… why isn’t his existence obvious?
And is “free will” a good answer to this question?
A few weeks ago, in this very publication, I posed the question, “Why did God create atheists?” If God reveals himself to religious believers, in visions or revelations or other spiritual experiences… why doesn’t he do it with everyone? Why are those revelations so contradictory — not to mention so suspiciously consistent with whatever the people having them already believe or want to believe? And why doesn’t everyone have them? If God is real, I asked — if religious believers are perceiving a real entity with a real effect on the world — why isn’t it just obvious?
Why is God playing hide and seek?
Full Story: Why Does God Reveal Himself to Some People and Not to Others? | Belief | AlterNet.
They Cast Out Demons & Burn “Witchcraft Items,” and They’re Taking Over Entire States
They claim to be able to raise the dead and cause miracles, such as the multiplication of Thanksgiving turkey dinners. They burn “witchcraft items” and “idols.” They hold mass exorcisms to cast out alleged evil spirits they say cause lust, pornography, addiction, homosexuality, bisexuality, and perversion. They claim to be able to heal HIV, AIDS, Hepatitis C, Glaucoma, and cancer, and to break “generational curses” and “witchcraft curses.” Who are they? Here are a few overviews (1, 2, 3.)
They compare opponents of their movement to rats that will be exterminated and one of their leaders has predicted that the regime they’re working to create will initially “seem like totalitarianism”. They’re closely tied to the notorious, so-called “kill the gays bill” before Uganda’s Parliament. They’re behind Sarah Palin and one of their “prophets” has become the de-facto prayer leader for the Republican Party.
While America has fixated on the Tea Party movement, a radical, right-wing charismatic evangelical movement is burrowing into the power structures of major American cities, such as Newark, NJ [1, 2], and even entire states, such as Alaska and Hawaii.
Full Story: Talk To Action | They Cast Out Demons & Burn “Witchcraft Items,” and They’re Taking Over Entire States.
There Has Been a Mosque Near Ground Zero Since 1970 – Same Year the World Trade Center Opened
I lived four blocks east of the World Trade Center in the 1980s, so I’ve followed the controversy about Park51, formerly known as Cordoba House, the new Islamic center being built two blocks north of the trade center at Park Place, with insider-y interest.
Andrew Sullivan has been posting notes sent to his site, the Daily Dish, from people who live in my old neighborhood — including this factoid that shouldn’t be surprising: A mosque, Masjid Manhattan, has been holding services on Warren Street, four blocks north of the World Trade Center for the last 40 years. (It’s about a block west of the Tweed Courthouse, if you know the area.)
Our members are city, state and federal employees, as well as professional employees of the Financial [District] who come to our Masjid to perform their daily prayers. Masjid Manhattan and its members condemn any type of terrorist acts. In particular, the attacks of 9/11 where non-Muslims as well as Muslims lost their lives.
Full Story: Pensito Review » There Has Been a Mosque Near Ground Zero Since 1970 – Same Year the World Trade Center Opened.
Gay Priests Blasted For Leading ‘Double Life’ By Church
The Catholic Church in Italy, still reeling from the clerical sex abuse scandal, lashed out Friday at gay priests who are leading a double life, urging them to come out of the closet and leave the priesthood.
The Diocese of Rome issued the strongly worded statement after the conservative Panorama newsweekly said in a cover story and accompanying video that it had interviewed three gay priests in Rome and accompanied them to gay clubs and bars and to sexual encounters with strangers, including one in a church building.
One of the priests, a Frenchman identified only as Paul, celebrated Mass in the morning before driving the two escorts he had hired to attend a party the night before to the airport, Panorama said.
Full Story: Gay Priests Blasted For Leading ‘Double Life’ By Church.
MRFF vs. Sectarian Supremacism and Anti-Government Conspiracists in the U.S. Chaplain Corp
A compilation of past articles, video, and documentation on sectarian Christian supremacism and anti-government conspiracy theorists in the U.S. Military Chaplain Corp.
Given the current revival of anti-government rhetoric, the following list of articles might mean more to readers now than when they were originally published. MRFF has repeatedly warned about the aggressive proselytizing conducted by the Chaplaincy of Full Gospel Churches (CFGC), headed by Ret. Col. Jim Ammerman. In addition, Ammerman and some of his chaplains, while flaunting their military credentials, have promoted “New World Order” conspiracy ideology, in which they claim that the U.S. will imminently lose sovereignty, betrayed by government leaders who are part of a demonic cabal of “Illuminati,” described as international banking families. (The list is Jewish except for the Rockefellers – explanation to follow below).
An article about the history and activism of Mikey Weinstein’s Military Religious Freedom Foundation is currently cross-posted at Alternet and TruthOut. Below the following list of links is further information on Ammerman and a selection of quotes from his book After the Storm in which he describes the first Gulf War as a massive religious revival.
Full Story: Talk To Action | MRFF vs. Sectarian Supremacism and Anti-Government Conspiracists in the U.S. Chaplain Corp.
Louisiana Bishops Rebuff New State Gun Law: ‘We Don’t Think It’s Appropriate To Have Guns In Churches’
Earlier this month, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) signed a bill into law that allows people to bring concealed weapons into places of worship. Anyone who passes a background check and completes “eight hours of tactical training each year” can be designated “as part of a security force” for “churches, mosques, synagogues or other houses of worship” that allow carriers of concealed weapons. USA Today reported this week that Catholic churches in Louisiana will still not permit congregants to bring guns to their services:
Concealed handguns won’t be allowed in Roman Catholic churches, despite a new state law allowing them.
“We don’t think it is appropriate to have guns in churches,” Danny Loar, executive director of the Louisiana Conference of Catholic Bishops — the church’s public policy arm in Louisiana, said Monday. …
Bishops discussed the issue when reviewing bills, Loar said.
“The bishops decided that, if the bill became law, the bishops would let their pastors know that this would not be permissible in Catholic churches,” Loar said.
Exclusive: Religious group calls out Glenn Beck’s ‘warped gospel’, launches ad campaign
When Glenn Beck attacks Christianity, some just see red. Others — they spy opportunity.
Dan Nejfelt, a communications associate with advocacy group Faith in Public Life, has been high on Beck’s smear-list ever since his group began running Christian radio ads quoting scripture as a way of encouraging believers to stop paying attention to the right-wing Fox News personality.
The group, which says their ads are sponsored by over 100,000 members nation-wide, has gone so far as to target their ads for every city Beck is visiting this summer.
Their efforts have been getting Beck’s goat in a big way. In recent days he’s even played their ad on his radio program and increased the ferocity of his rhetoric against Christians who see poverty, war, climate change and economic tyranny as core social ills.
Full Story: Exclusive: Religious group calls out Glenn Beck’s ‘warped gospel’, launches ad campaign | Raw Story.
Extremist Christians Aim to Create Armed Militias Against “Godless” Federal Government
Christian Reconstructionists believe civil government should be reformed according to the dictates of biblical law. Some advocate for followers to take up arms.
Herb Titus, a lawyer for the far-right Gun Owners of America, is jubilant over last week’s Supreme Court decision in the case McDonald v. City of Chicago, finding that state and local regulation of gun ownership must comport with the Second Amendment right to bear arms.
The decision has also pleased the National Rifle Association, which sees it as ammunition for challenging gun control laws across the country. But for Titus, who thinks the NRA “compromises” on gun rights, the Second Amendment isn’t solely about “firepower,” he says. “You have to see it in its spiritual and providential perspective.”
That perspective is about far more than hunting and self-defense. For Titus, the Court’s 2008 recognition of an individual right to bear arms, and its application of that principle to the states in the McDonald case, are crucial steps toward arming Americans against their own government. Titus cites the “totalitarian threat” posed by “Obamacare” and “what Sarah Palin said about death panels.” People need to be armed, he said, “because ultimately it may come to the point where it’s a life and death situation.”
Hagee Markets New Prophecy Book While Claiming CUFI Not Motivated by End Times
Glenn Beck promotes Hagee’s latest prophecy book, which is currently #2 on the Wall Street Journal’s list of best selling “non-fiction.”
On Tuesday the New York Times published a front page article titled “Tax Exempt Funds Aid Settlements in the West Bank,” describing American financial support for Jewish settlements in the Israeli-occupied territories, by groups such as John Hagee Ministries, Inc. (See note below.) Responses to the article have included the claims that the authors were wrong to represent Christian Zionists as motivated by end times prophecy. The ridiculous claim that prophecy plays little role in Christian Zionist activism is one of the major talking points now being used across the country to market and maintain partnerships between Christian Zionists and Jewish organizations. For the benefit of Jewish audiences, these leaders present their lobbying efforts as reality-based, not prophecy-based, as John Hagee did in recent op-ed articles in the Jewish Daily Forward and Ha’aretz. Meanwhile, Hagee and other Christian Zionist leaders continue to solicit support through the marketing of apocalyptic end times prophecy.
[Authors note: The NY Times article lists financing by John Hagee Ministries, Inc., Hagee's personal ministry, not his Christians United for Israel (CUFI). Other CUFI directors have also raised funds for West Bank settlements in their own name or through their church ministries.]
Full Story: Talk To Action | Hagee Markets New Prophecy Book While Claiming CUFI Not Motivated by End Times.
Presbyterians: End U.S.-Israel Aid Over Settlements In Palestinian Land
Presbyterian leaders strongly backed a proposal Friday that included a call to end U.S. aid to Israel unless the country stops settlement expansions in disputed Palestinian territories.
But they said the 172-page report, which details their church’s approach to issues in the Middle East, was a sincere effort to mend long-standing fractures between the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and Jewish groups.
It earned qualified praise but also criticism from pro-Israel organizations, which have long taken issue with various Presbyterian statements on Middle East peace.
Full Story: Presbyterians: End U.S.-Israel Aid Over Settlements In Palestinian Land.
Head Of ‘World’s Largest Interactive Christian Website’ Calls Out Beck’s ‘Deception’ About His Mormonism
Glenn Beck often speaks about faith on his radio show and Fox News program, but he almost never mentions his own faith — Mormonism. Beck’s audience largely consists of conservative Christians, many of whom consider Mormonism to be a “cult.” So as to not alienate his followers, Beck obscures his religion, and focuses instead on broad themes common to many Christian faiths.
But out of view of his general audience, Beck readily explains that the Church of Latter-Day Saints made him who he is today. “I was baptized on a Sunday, and on Monday an agent called me out of the blue,” Beck said in a Mormon promotional video. And the Church has rewarded Beck. For example, the Mormon-affiliated LDSTravel.com website is currently promoting Beck’s 8/28 rally in Washington, D.C., offering travelers an entire day as part of a seven day tour of the East Coast.
Today, Bill Keller, the “leader of the world’s largest interactive Christian website” — an internet ministry with over 2.4 million subscribers — is attempting to expose Beck’s “deception” about his faith, explaining Beck “lies to people by stating he is a Christian”
Jindal Signs ‘Gun-In-Church’ Bill, Allowing Congregants To Bring Concealed Weapons To Worship
Yesterday, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) signed a bill into law that will allow people to bring concealed weapons into houses of worship. The Times-Picayune reports on the bill:
[State Rep. Henry] Burns’ bill would authorize persons who qualified to carry concealed weapons having passed the training and background checks to bring them to churches, mosques, synagogues or other houses of worship as part of a security force.
The pastor or head of the religious institution must announce verbally or in weekly newsletters or bulletins that there will be individuals armed on the property as members of he security force. Those chosen have to undergo eight hours of tactical training each year. [...]
The bill also allows a house of worship to hire off-duty police or security guards to protect congregants.
Full Story: Think Progress » Jindal Signs ‘Gun-In-Church’ Bill, Allowing Congregants To Bring Concealed Weapons To Worship.
OPS; Petulant children with their toys
Police: Conn. priest stole $1M for male escorts
A Roman Catholic priest in Connecticut has been arrested on charges he stole $1.3 million in church money over seven years to use for male escorts, expensive clothing, and luxury hotels and restaurants.
Waterbury police say the 64-year-old Rev. Kevin J. Gray was charged Tuesday with first-degree larceny. Gray is the former pastor at Sacred Heart/Sagrado Corazon Parish in Waterbury.
The Hartford Archdiocese last month asked police to investigate after it discovered during a financial review that he might have taken more than a million dollars for personal use.
Full Story: Police: Conn. priest stole $1M for male escorts | Raw Story.
Are Eastern Religions More Science-Friendly?
Religion comes into conflict with science when it is defined by unprovable claims that can be dismissed as superstitions, and when it treats as historical facts stories that read like legends and myths to non-believers. Other aspects of religion — what I would consider the deeper and more significant elements — are not only compatible with science but enrich its findings. The best evidence of this is science’s response to the religions of the East over the course of the last 200 years. As the French Nobel laureate Romain Rolland said early in the 20th century, “Religious faith in the case of the Hindus has never been allowed to run counter to scientific laws.” The same can be said for Buddhism, which derives from the same Vedic roots.
Most of the Hindu gurus, Yoga masters, Buddhist monks and other Asian teachers who came to the West framed their traditions in a science-friendly way. Emphasizing the experiential dimension of spirituality, with its demonstrable influence on individual lives, they presented their teachings as a science of consciousness with a theoretical component and a set of practical applications for applying and testing those theories. Most of the teachers were educated in both their own traditions and the Western canon; they respected science, had actively studied it, and dialogued with Western scientists, many of whom were inspired to study Eastern concepts for both personal and professional reasons.
Full Story: Philip Goldberg: Are Eastern Religions More Science-Friendly?.
Hoekstra skips unemployment extension vote for country club fundraiser, even as unemployment sits at 13.6%.
This afternoon, the House passed a bill to extend unemployment benefits for the next four months. The bill passed with bipartisan support, although 142 Republicans voted against it, along with 11 Democrats. Several members did not show up to vote however, including Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-MI), who is running for governor. Hoekstra, who hopes to govern a state with an unemployment rate of 13.6%, the second highest in the nation, spent the afternoon instead traveling to the Muskegon Country Club for a fundraiser. If the Senate fails to pass the House’s unemployment extension, then 90,000 Michigan residents are set to lose their unemployment checks by Saturday. Hoekstra also failed to vote on the unemployment insurance extension bill brought to the floor earlier this week
Tea Party Jesus: Blog Puts Words Of Conservatives In The Mouth Of Christ (PICTURES)
The concept behind the site Tea Party Jesus is simple: Put the words of conservative Christian social and political figures in the mouth of Christ. The juxtaposition of hateful, ignorant, or otherwise nonsensical rants with serene photos of JC himself isn’t only funny, but says a lot about the people who claim to be Christians. With the site’s permission, we’ve compiled some of our favorites so far. From the predictably fiery Bill O’Reilly and Ann Coulter to various pastors, radio hosts, and senators, these quotes are real, with quote sources linked to in the caption of each slide. If you go to the actual site, you can click on each photo to reveal the person behind the quote, making for for a jaw-dropping game of who-said-what.
Full Story: Tea Party Jesus: Blog Puts Words Of Conservatives In The Mouth Of Christ (PICTURES).
Catholic Churches Filing For Bankruptcy To Protect Assets From Sex Abuse Lawsuits
Dan Rather:
Spiritually Bankrupt
This is written with a sense of sadness and some mixed feelings. While not a member of the Roman Catholic Church, I have great respect for the church and its followers.
The church has done and continues to do much good in the world. I’ve seen it among the poor, the downtrodden, and the ill all around the globe. But with a team of other investigative reporters, we uncovered some things that should be brought to light and pondered.
Earlier this month, Pope Benedict XVI issued the first apology to priest abuse victims from St. Peter’s Square – a gesture intended to show that church leadership is finally ready to confront this growing scandal.
Full Story: Dan Rather: Spiritually Bankrupt.
Consciousness and the End of the War Between Science and Religion
Nothing gets as vicious as fighting for a lost cause. If the proverbial Martian landed in a flying saucer today and saw how religionists war against scientists, he would be surprised at the vehemence on both sides. What is the war about? Fact beat out faith long ago. When Darwin’s theory of evolution replaced Genesis to explain the appearance of human beings, which was in the middle of the 19th century, the trend away from faith was already old. The world had been remade as material, governed by natural laws, random in its effects, and immune to divine intervention. Not just science but thousands of unanswered prayers did their part to dethrone God.
I am not drawn to lost causes, and therefore I’d like to guide the debate away from religion. And since religion is the primary form of spirituality in most people’s lives, we’ll have to step away from spirituality, too, at least at first. There should be renewed admiration for science’s attempts to answer the fundamental mysteries. These are well known by now:
* How did the universe come about?
* What caused life to emerge from a soup of inorganic chemicals?
* Can evolution explain all of human development?
* What are the basic forces in Nature?
* How does the brain produce intelligence?
* What place do human beings occupy in the cosmos?
Full Story: Deepak Chopra: Consciousness and the End of the War Between Science and Religion.
Belgian Catholic Church Offices Raided Amid Sex Abuse Allegations
Police raided the home and former office of the recently retired archbishop of Belgium on Thursday, carrying off documents and a personal computer as part of an investigation into the sexual abuse of children by Roman Catholic priests, officials said.
Police and prosecutors would not say if former Archbishop Godfried Danneels was suspected of abuse himself or simply had records pertaining to allegations against another person.
Separately, police seized the records of an independent panel investigating sexual abuse by priests, some 500 cases in all. The head of the panel called the raid a huge violation of the privacy of people – mostly men now in their 60s and 70s – who have lived with the shame of abuse.
Full Story: Belgian Catholic Church Offices Raided Amid Sex Abuse Allegations.
Institute for Creation Research laughed out of court in Texas
U.S. District Judge Sam Sparks of Austin reasoning in throwing out the Dallas based Institute for Creation Research’s lawsuit.
This began back in 2007 when the ICR – founded by John Morris in 1972 to lobby our education system to teach 6000 year Young Earth creationism in biology classes in public schools – moved from California to the very buckle of the Bible Belt in Dallas, Texas.
In 2008 they wanted Texas accreditation for a masters degree in the Science of creationism. The State of Texas, down in the still barely sane Austin, refused on the grounds it was silly business. The ICR sued them and lost! Today the appeal lost! Here in Texas!
Sometimes I do have some pride in my home state, well when comparing it to the surrounding region anyway. Another example is how the Texas courts dealt with the FLDS men having sex with little girls. 6 have been tried and found guilty 5 sentenced to very very long prison terms and the last to be sentenced next week.
Louisiana lawmakers propose prayer to stop oil disaster
You’ve seen the devastation. Now it’s your chance to help. Tune in Monday night for a special “Larry King Live, Disaster in the Gulf: How You Can Help” telethon featuring an all-star panel of guests joining forces in the Gulf region. Don’t miss “Larry King Live,” 8 p.m. ET Monday on CNN.
(CNN) — While cleanup crews and technical teams continue efforts to stop crude gushing into the Gulf of Mexico, Louisiana lawmakers are proposing a different approach: prayer.
State senators designated Sunday as a day for citizens to ask for God’s help dealing with the oil disaster.
“Thus far efforts made by mortals to try to solve the crisis have been to no avail,” state Sen. Robert Adley said in a statement released after last week’s unanimous vote for the day of prayer. “It is clearly time for a miracle for us.”
Full Story: Louisiana lawmakers propose prayer to stop oil disaster – CNN.com.
Prayer, Confession and the Police
On June 1, the Supreme Court ruled in the case of Berghuis v. Thompkins. At the heart of the facts of that case was this bit of dialogue, in which a police officer elicited an incriminating statement after nearly three hours of questioning:
The interviewer asked Thompkins if he believed in God.
“Yes,” Thompkins replied. The Supreme Court opinion notes that at this point Thompkins made eye contact with the interviewer and “his eyes welled up with tears.”
The interviewer forged on: “Do you pray to God?”
“Yes,” the target again said.
Finally, the interviewer moved in to close the deal: “Do you pray to God to forgive you for shooting that boy down?”
Again, the crying Thompkins said, “Yes,” and his conviction was nearly assured.
Full Story: Mark Osler: Prayer, Confession and the Police.
Pat Robertson’s advice to woman whose husband flirts: Make yourself more attractive and ‘don’t hassle him.’
Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson frequently stresses the importance of monogamous heterosexual relationships and is happy to offer his viewers advice on how to maintain them. As Media Matters documents, Robertson fielded a question on yesterday’s edition of the 700 Club from a woman who was concerned that her husband frequently flirts with “other women he finds attractive.” Naturally, Robertson blamed the wife, advising her to “make yourself as attractive as possible,” and to not “hassle him about it,” lest she “drive him away”:
CO-HOST: Pat, this is from Anne who says, “My husband has always been a flirt and loves to talk with other women he finds attractive. He says he would never cheat on me but his actions are starting to get to me. What should I do?”
Ugandan Bishop: Some U.S. Christian Groups Are ‘Preaching A Gospel Of Hatred’ Toward Gays Worldwide
The Ugandan parliament is considering legislation that would impose the death penalty or life imprisonment for some homosexual acts (which are already illegal), require people to report every LGBT individual they know, and criminalize renting property to gay men and women.
As Rachel Maddow repeatedly highlighted on her MSNBC show, this anti-gay push in Uganda was inspired — and promoted — by the religious far right in the United States. In March 2009, three American evangelicals — whose anti-gay teachings have been widely discredited — went to Uganda and preached about the “dark agenda” of LGBT individuals. Just one month later, Ugandan lawmaker David Bahati introduced the “Anti-Homosexuality Bill.”
While many evangelical leaders who promote hatred toward gays have tried to distance themselves from the Uganda bill, Bishop Christopher Senyonjo, a retired Anglican bishop from Uganda and Chaplain of Integrity Uganda, spoke at the Center for American Progress this week and blamed global anti-LGBT sentiments on the religious right in the United States. From his discussion with CAP Visiting Senior Fellow Bishop Gene Robinson (13:35):
Full Story: Think Progress » Ugandan Bishop: Some U.S. Christian Groups Are ‘Preaching A Gospel Of Hatred’ Toward Gays Worldwide.
The Christian Fascists Are Growing Stronger
Chris Hedges:
Tens of millions of Americans, lumped into a diffuse and fractious movement known as the Christian right, have begun to dismantle the intellectual and scientific rigor of the Enlightenment. They are creating a theocratic state based on “biblical law,” and shutting out all those they define as the enemy. This movement, veering closer and closer to traditional fascism, seeks to force a recalcitrant world to submit before an imperial America. It champions the eradication of social deviants, beginning with homosexuals, and moving on to immigrants, secular humanists, feminists, Jews, Muslims and those they dismiss as “nominal Christians”—meaning Christians who do not embrace their perverted and heretical interpretation of the Bible. Those who defy the mass movement are condemned as posing a threat to the health and hygiene of the country and the family. All will be purged.
The followers of deviant faiths, from Judaism to Islam, must be converted or repressed. The deviant media, the deviant public schools, the deviant entertainment industry, the deviant secular humanist government and judiciary and the deviant churches will be reformed or closed. There will be a relentless promotion of Christian “values,” already under way on Christian radio and television and in Christian schools, as information and facts are replaced with overt forms of indoctrination. The march toward this terrifying dystopia has begun. It is taking place on the streets of Arizona, on cable news channels, at tea party rallies, in the Texas public schools, among militia members and within a Republican Party that is being hijacked by this lunatic fringe.
Elizabeth Dilling, who wrote “The Red Network” and was a Nazi sympathizer, is touted as required reading by trash-talk television hosts like Glenn Beck. Thomas Jefferson, who favored separation of church and state, is ignored in Christian schools and soon will be ignored in Texas public school textbooks. The Christian right hails the “significant contributions” of the Confederacy. Sen. Joseph McCarthy, who led the anti-communist witch hunts of the 1950s, has been rehabilitated, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is defined as part of the worldwide battle against Islamic terror. Legislation like the new Jim Crow laws of Arizona is being considered by 17 other states.
Full Story: Chris Hedges: The Christian Fascists Are Growing Stronger – Chris Hedges’ Columns – Truthdig.
Ted Haggard To Open More Inclusive Church That Will Only Promote ‘Heterosexual Monogamous Relationships’
Before resigning in disgrace after a three-year relationship with a male prostitute, Ted Haggard — the founder and former pastor of the New Life Church — was one of the Christian Right’s most powerful figures and a close confidante of the Bush White House. In 2006, Haggard — who railed against gays — admitted he was a “deceiver and a liar” and confessed to doing meth and engaging in “sexual immorality” with a male prostitute.
Moments ago, Haggard announced that he would be opening a new, more inclusive church, St. James, that would be open to “gay, straight, bi, tall, short” members and would focus on “helping other people going through the most difficult times of their lives.” “I just want to help people,” he said.
Asked if his new church would take a position on homosexuality, Haggard said “we will take positions.” “I’m going to teach the bible, chapter by chapter, verse by verse,” “but I don’t want to be a political activist.” Haggard explained that the church won’t advocate a specific public policy, but would instead “encourage” members to strive towards the ideal of biblical heterosexuality and monogamy:
Christian conservatives target seated judges
Critics say move threatens separation of church and state
A group of conservative attorneys say they are on a mission from God to unseat four California judges in a rare challenge that is turning a traditionally snooze-button election into what both sides call a battle for the integrity of U.S. courts.
Vowing to be God’s ambassadors on the bench, the four San Diego Superior Court candidates are backed by pastors, gun enthusiasts, and opponents of abortion and same-sex marriages.
“We believe our country is under assault and needs Christian values,” said Craig Candelore, a family law attorney who is one of the group’s candidates. “Unfortunately, God has called upon us to do this only with the judiciary.”
Full Story: Christian conservatives target seated judges – Politics- msnbc.com.
Church sued victim of convicted sex abuser: report
AP: Pope refused to defrock convicted priest
A Catholic diocese in Canada sued the victim of a convicted pedophile priest, driving the victim to attempt suicide several times, according to a newspaper report published Sunday.
The church’s move would prove to be a successful tactic to force the victim to settle out of court. And some victims of Catholic church sex abuse say the tactic is a common one.
John Caruso, a victim of convicted Roman Catholic priest James Kneale, sued the church for $8.6 million over sexual abuse he suffered at Kneale’s hands as an altar boy in the 1980s. The church responded with a “legal thunderbolt,” reports Mary Ormsby at the Toronto Star:
Full Story: Church sued victim of convicted sex abuser: report | Raw Story.
Nun excommunicated for helping gravely ill mother get abortion
Last November, a 27-year-old woman was admitted to St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center in Phoenix. She was 11 weeks pregnant with her fifth child, and she was gravely ill. According to a hospital document, she had “right heart failure,” and her doctors told her that if she continued with the pregnancy, her risk of mortality was “close to 100 percent.”
The patient, who was too ill to be moved to the operating room much less another hospital, agreed to an abortion. But there was a complication: She was at a Catholic hospital.
“They were in quite a dilemma,” says Lisa Sowle Cahill, who teaches Catholic theology at Boston College. “There was no good way out of it. The official church position would mandate that the correct solution would be to let both the mother and the child die. I think in the practical situation that would be a very hard choice to make.”
Full Story: Nun Excommunicated For Allowing Abortion : NPR.
Christian ‘Pregnancy Crisis Centers’ Masquerading as Health Clinics Tell Women Abortion Causes Cancer and Infertility — And You’re Helping Pay for Them
Under the dubious free speech protection, CPCs are going to disgusting lengths to scare women out of seeking abortions — with the help of federal and state funding.
She sat in the counseling room, looking at the posters of fetal development covering the walls. In her hands she held the pamphlets urging her to forgo abortion.
Together with a partner, the young woman, Alexa Cole, had entered the crisis pregnancy center – CPC, for short – hoping to get more information about abortion and birth control options.
“[It] was in kind of like a shopping plaza area,” Cole later recalled. “It had a sign on the curb or by the sidewalk advertising Pregnancy Resource Center or something along those lines.”
Inside, the office was decorated like a campus health clinic. On the reception desk sat a jar with plastic fetuses for visitors to take home. After check-in, the receptionist ushered Cole and her friend inside the counseling room, then left them there for 10 minutes under the unflinching gaze of the unborn.
Cole had heard about all this before: the health clinic décor, the anti-abortion pamphlets, the rooms decorated with fetus photos. She had heard of video presentations where women lament their decision to terminate their pregnancies. She had even heard of one woman, while waiting for her own appointment, being asked to hold a live infant while the mother excused herself to the restroom.
Michelangelo’s Secret Message in the Sistine Chapel
At the age of 17 he began dissecting corpses from the church graveyard. Between the years 1508 and 1512 he painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Rome. Michelangelo Buonarroti, known by his first name the world over as the singular artistic genius, sculptor, and architect, was also an anatomist, a secret he concealed by destroying almost all of his anatomical sketches and notes.
Now, 500 years after he drew them, his hidden anatomical illustrations have been found — painted on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, cleverly concealed from the eyes of Pope Julius II and countless religious worshipers, historians, and art lovers for centuries — inside the body of God.
This is the conclusion of Ian Suk and Rafael Tamargo, in their paper in the current issue of the scientific journal Neurosurgery. Suk and Tamargo are experts in neuroanatomy at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland.
Full Story: Dr. Douglas Fields: Michelangelo’s Secret Message in the Sistine Chapel.
Italy ordains first woman priest
A married teacher has become the first woman priest to be ordained in Italy.
Maria Vittoria Longhitano, 35, who belongs to a breakaway faction of the Catholic Church, received the holy orders at an Anglican church in Rome.
She belongs to the Italian Old Catholic Church, a congregation that broke away from Roman Catholicism in the 19th Century.
While the Vatican is opposed to women priests, other Christian groups have long accepted female clergy.
Mrs Longhitano, who will now be known as Mother Longhitano, said she hoped to break down what she described as prejudice in the Roman Catholic church.
Full Story: BBC News – Italy ordains first woman priest.
When being excommunicated is a badge of honor
The Catholic Church may have a new scandal to withstand or at the very least a PR nightmare along with the legitimate questioning of their moral authority while still reeling from an institutionalized child sexual molestation scandal playing out in public.
This involves the excommunication of Sister Margaret McBride a top administrator at St.Joseph’s Hospital in Phoenix and someone who sits on the hospital’s ethics board.
The incident involved a 27 year old woman who was 11 weeks pregnant with her fifth child and who was admitted to the hospital because the pregnancy was causing her severe health problems.
The woman suffered from pulmonary hypertension and she was told by her doctors at the hospital that if she continued the pregnancy her prospects for dying were close to 100% . She was told that the baby would die also.
Full Story: When being excommunicated is a badge of honor.
In U.S., Increasing Number Have No Religious Identity
Americans have become increasingly less tied to formal religion in recent decades, with the percentage saying they do not have a specific religious identity growing from near zero in the 1950s to 16% this year and last.
This upward trend in the percentage having no religious identity has been evident for a number of years in Gallup and other surveys.
Gallup began systematically tracking religion using this measure in 1948, asking Americans to name the major religion with which they personally identified. At that point, 2% of Americans volunteered “no religion” and another 3% had an otherwise undesignated religious identity. In 1949 and in the 1950s and 1960s, these percentages stayed low. The number of Americans with no formal religious identity began to increase in the 1970s, reaching 11% by 1990. After some fluctuations over the last two decades, 16% of Americans now say they have no religious identity or have an otherwise undesignated response.
Gallup’s 53-year trend on this measure represents nearly a quarter of the history of the United States as an independent country. There is no systematic way of comparing this trend with what may have been the case stretching back to the earliest post-Revolutionary War days. The best conclusion therefore is that Americans are more likely now than at previous times since World War II to say “no religion” when queried in traditional fashion about their religious identity.
Full Story: In U.S., Increasing Number Have No Religious Identity.
Mark Souder and the Duplicity Inherent in ‘Family Values’
It's hard to watch the YouTube video of Rep. Mark Souder and part-time staffer Tracy Jackson talking about Souder's unwavering commitment to abstinence education. Souder is the latest family-values guy to get poisoned with his own venom, as we find out that he and Jackson had an affair. This grown man, with a wife and children, could not do what he was asking hormonal prom-goers to do — abstain. In the video, Jackson seems to be intelligent and poised, playing the role of newscaster as well as she plays the role of a no-sex champ. It makes me cringe to see this made-for-Christian-TV video in which Rep. Souder pat himself on the back for standing up for abstinence, while talking to his mistress. But it doesn't surprise me. I grew up in that Christian Right world, and I know it's full of opportunities to be bitten.
Souder was part of the House Republican class of 1994, when we began to hear the “family values” message reverberating through our political and religious landscapes.I certainly heard it, at least. In the early 90s, I was young and a student at a Bible college. I remember one afternoon in particular when I sneaked out of the dorms to go to the beach with my friends, six other Christian college students, most of whom were from out of town. The women were from prominent families. Their fathers were pastors of large conservative churches and Evangelical institutions. All of our parents were in the thick of planning for the Republican Revolution, armed with a pro-life, pro-abstinence, and anti-gay agenda. Most of these women were at a Bible college not because they were aspiring to have great careers in the church, but because they were hoping to find men with similar values so that they could become wives, mothers, and supporters their husbands' careers. I, on the other hand, was a budding feminist, wrestling in the conservative Evangelical milieu. I liked these women. Even as I look back, I have a great fondness for them. Their hopes were different from mine, and I often became frustrated by their willingness to place all their own career ambitions aside for a man. But they were clever, witty, and beautiful. Their families were powerful for a reason, and as we approached the Oak Street Beach, I even felt a bit intimidated by them.
Full Story: Carol Howard Merritt: Mark Souder and the Duplicity Inherent in ‘Family Values’.
Woman Ordained As Catholic Priest, Denied Catholic Burial By Church
A Chicago woman who devoted her life to the Catholic Church and advocated that the church accept women as priests died Monday, and now the church will not allow her to be buried at her own parish.
Janine Denomme was ordained a priest in April by a group called Roman Catholic Womenpriests, according to Chicago Public Radio. Though the church excommunicates women who pursue ordination, Denomme had “always wanted to be a priest,” and decided to be ordained anyway.
Denomme was diagnosed with cancer before she was ordained, and blogged about her relationship with the church and dealing with her illness. The Windy City Times reports:
Full Story: Janine Denomme, Woman Ordained As Catholic Priest, Denied Catholic Burial By Church.
John Hagee Said God Sent Hitler to Hunt the Jews. Now He Wants to Be the Comeback Kid.
Pastor John Hagee, discredited by his God-sent-Hitler-to-hunt-the-Jews comment that surfaced during the 2008 presidential campaign, is on the comeback trail.
Pastor John Hagee, the head of a 19,000-member Texas mega-church and the founder of Christians United for Israel, a powerful lobbying group, has, in recent months, mounted an all-out public relations campaign to rehabilitate his image. Can the shouting prophet of the End Times be scrubbed clean?
If, sometime in the future, a conservative Israeli politician was able to get legislation passed through the Knesset establishing a Christian Zionist Hall of Fame in Israel, you can bet your bottom shekel that Pastor John Hagee would be among those voted into the Hall’s first class. Since being shunned by Senator John McCain during the 2008 presidential campaign –- after the senator had eagerly sought his endorsement — over a tape that had Hagee bellowing his belief that Hitler and the Nazis were sent by God to chase Europe’s Jews to Israel, the San Antonio, Texas-based pastor has been on the comeback trail. And while he might never wear the mantle of “The Comeback Kid,” Hagee has soared back into the good graces of many well-connected and politically powerful Americans and Israelis.
However, not all is smooth sailing. In order to regain his foothold within an often skeptical Jewish community, Team Hagee must confront persistent critics, and another more daunting obstacle: his sermons, speeches and writings. In this major public-relations battle, Team Hagee has attacked the Obama Administration for being too rough on Israel, J Street –- a liberal Jewish organization — and has responded directly to articles raising questions about Hagee and the dangers of a muscular Christian Zionism.
Full Story: John Hagee Said God Sent Hitler to Hunt the Jews. Now He Wants to Be the Comeback Kid. | BuzzFlash.org.
Tornadoes, Quakes, and the Myth of Karma
They say Karma’s a bitch. They’re too unkind. Recent floods, tornadoes, and earthquakes reveal her as a coolly indifferent, altogether inscrutable customer.
One wag noted a few years ago that the map of the Confederate slave states is pretty much the same as the map of today’s Bible Belt. True. And it doesn’t take a lot to see that those maps overlap nicely with a map of major tornado activity in the U.S.
So why exactly does Heaven so happily pummel the region that is God’s last, best hope for bringing salvation and good values to His beloved creation?
But I realize that’s just a matter of a conservative Christian perspective. A devout Muslim in Iran might say that his country is God’s last, best hope to stabilize the world.
Full Story: Rob Asghar: Tornadoes, Quakes, and the Myth of Karma.
Mary Glasspool, First Openly Gay Female Bishop, Ordained By Episcopal Church
Seven years after the Episcopal Church caused an uproar by consecrating its first openly gay bishop, it has done the same thing again – only this time with a woman.
The Rev. Canon Mary Glasspool, of Baltimore, was ordained and consecrated on Saturday, making her the second openly gay bishop in church history and one of the first two female bishops in the Diocese of Los Angeles’ 114-year history.
She was installed at Long Beach Arena before 3,000 people, who burst into applause at the end, church spokesman Bob Williams said.
Full Story: Mary Glasspool, First Openly Gay Female Bishop, Ordained By Episcopal Church.
Intelligent Design: Scientifically and Religiously Bankrupt
In case you had any doubt, the last nail was just placed in the coffin of intelligent design (ID). And, in case you had any doubt, that last nail joins many others that have been in place for quite some time.
The latest attack appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS) and provides conclusive evidence that the design of the human genome is incredibly imperfect, or, in other words, very far from being intelligently structured. As John Avise, a University of California-Irvine biologist, noted in the paper, his focus “is on a relatively neglected category of argument against ID and in favor of evolution: the argument from imperfection, as applied to the human genome.”
The basic concept of intelligent design comes in two parts and is as simple as it is satisfying for those unwilling to think deeply about the natural world, science, or the nature of religion. Part one, stretching way back to the ancient Greeks, notes that nature is so perfectly integrated that it must have been designed just as we see it. Part two, largely attributed to Lehigh University biologist Michael Behe, says that while some aspects of nature might certainly have changed (evolved?) over time, others are so complex that they must always have existed in the form we find them in today. Indeed, he coined the term “irreducibly complex” to explain such structures. Change anything at all in these irreducibly complex structures and they fail to work.
Both parts of ID are spectacularly wrong.
Full Story: Michael Zimmerman, Ph.D.: Intelligent Design: Scientifically and Religiously Bankrupt.
Ted Haggard Formally Opens St. James Church In Colorado Springs
Ted Haggard and his wife Gayle formally incorporated their new church, the St. James, in Colorado Springs on Tuesday.
The opening of the new church represents the latest step in a revival of sorts for the controversial former leader of New Life Church, a conservative megachurch with 14,000 parishioners.
In November, 2006, Haggard was forced out of his position at New Life Church after a very public scandal in which he admitted to soliciting oral sex and buying crystal meth from a male prostitute.
Haggard recently started hosting informal prayer groups at his home in Colorado Springs.
Full Story: Ted Haggard Formally Opens St. James Church In Colorado Springs.
How Do Christians Become Conservative?
When you are in the political world, you have decisions to make every single day about who you will try to help and who you won’t. In spite of the earnest quest of good technocrats everywhere, the simple fact is that there are only a few win-win solutions. Who you tax, who you give a tax break to, what programs you cut or add to, who you tighten regulations on, and who you loosen them on, what kind of contractors are eligible for government work, which school districts and non-profit groups get federal money, etc: these political decisions are generally not win-win. Instead, they mean that one group of people win, and one group of people loses. It is the nature of politics, and you can’t take the politics out of politics.
The most fundamental difference between progressives and conservatives is that question of which side you are on. Conservatives believe that the rich and powerful got that way because they deserve to be, that society owes its prosperity to the prosperous, and that government’s job when they have to make choices is to side with those businesspeople who are doing well, because all good things trickle down from them. Progressives, on the other hand, believe it is the poor and those who are ill-treated who need the most help from their government, and that prosperity comes from all of us — the worker as well as the employer, the consumer as well as the seller, the struggling entrepreneur trying to make it as well as the wealthy who already have.
Usually, I might spend my time arguing which of those worldviews gives us better policy outcomes, or which is better politics, but in this post I want to focus on something else: which side the God of the Judeo-Christian Biblical tradition is on.
Full Story: Mike Lux: How Do Christians Become Conservative?.
Pope Benedict accepts bishop’s resignation for beating kids, pedophilia probe underway
Pope Benedict XVI on Saturday accepted the resignation of a German bishop who admitted he beat children in a Catholic orphanage and also faces a pedophilia probe, the Vatican said.
Walter Mixa, 69, had tendered his resignation as bishop of Augsburg and military bishop on Thursday.
The pope “has accepted the renunciation of the pastoral government of the Augsburg diocese submitted by Walter Mixa”, a Vatican statement said.
Benedict accepted the resignation, less than five years after appointing him, under a code of canon law that allows the retirement of priests before the legal age of 75 due to “illness” or unspecified “other serious reasons”, it said.
Full Story: Pope Benedict accepts bishop’s resignation for beating kids, pedophilia probe underway | Raw Story.
Archbishop Sambi’s Bizarre War of Words With Sex Abuse Protester
When Pope Benedict XVI named Archbishop Pietro Sambi as the Vatican’s ambassador to the United Sates in 2005, he chose a man with broad international experience. The newest Papal Nuncio had spent 36 years in nine countries, including Israel, Indonesia, Belgium and Cuba.
Sambi was hailed by the Catholic News Agency as “one of the Vatican’s most able diplomats” and by the Catholic Exchange as “an energetic and gregarious man with an ability to bring the human touch to diplomatic challenges.”
One of those challenges turned out to be John Wojnowski, 67, who, since 1998 has ceaselessly picketed the Apostolic Nunciature on Washington D.C.’s posh Embassy Row, where Archbishop Sambi, 71, lives and works.
Full Story: Archbishop Sambi’s Bizarre War of Words With Sex Abuse Protester.
Dadeus Grings: We’re all potential paedophiles, says archbishop
An archbishop has defended the child sex scandal that has engulfed the Roman Catholic Church by claiming it reflects the behaviour of society at large.
Brazilian priest Dadeus Grings also said adolescents are ‘spontaneously homosexual’ and in need of guidance.
He said: ‘Society today is paedophile, that is the problem. So people easily fall into it. And the fact it is denounced is a good sign.’
Full Story: Dadeus Grings: We’re all potential paedophiles, says archbishop | Mail Online.
Exposed: Christian leader caught with male escort says he needed help with his luggage
Update: Escort tells paper Rekers is homosexual
The newspaper that busted a Christian leader with a male escort ran a follow-up story Thursday afternoon:
The male escort hired by anti-gay activist George Alan Rekers has told Miami New Times the Baptist minister is a homosexual who paid him to provide body rubs once a day in the nude, during their ten-day vacation in Europe.
Rekers allegedly named his favorite maneuver the “long stroke” — a complicated caress “across his penis, thigh… and his anus over the butt cheeks,” as the escort puts it. “Rekers liked to be rubbed down there,” he says.
Full Story: Exposed: Christian leader caught with male escort says he needed help with his luggage | Raw Story.
The Language God Talks: The Back Story
Henrik Ibsen once wrote of the “life-lie” of authors, the resolve to create some day an enduring masterwork, the Big One that never gets written. For decades I harbored a title, A Child’s Garden of God, for a book telling of my religious faith in a frame of modern science, not necessarily a Big One, but a work I felt born to give the world. Not being a scientist at all, I was a fool to dream of accomplishing this, but novelists are fools whose dreams every now and then take form, see the light, and last.
My notes on A Child’s Garden of God go back to the 1960s. As they piled up I would comfort myself by recalling what Einstein said when asked how he worked: “How do I work? I grope.” If that was really true, I thought, there might yet be a shred of hope for an aging storyteller getting nowhere, year by accelerating year, with his dream of writing A Child’s Garden of God. At last I decided either to do something about it, or give it up as my life-lie. I first intruded on Professor I. Bernard Cohen of Harvard, who taught the History of Science for 60 years, and told him, in an ad lib farrago lasting perhaps 20 minutes, what I had in mind. “Wow, big,” he commented. “I don’t agree, of course, I think it’s all stochastic, but I’d like to see how you do it.” Years later, still haunted by Garden, I intruded on the famed theoretical physicist Freeman Dyson at Princeton, and harangued him about the project. He heard me out and soberly nodded, saying, “It can work.”
More years passed, more notes piled up. At last I met the man who got me to start writing the book — do or die — Maarten Schmidt of Caltech, who discovered the quasars. At a lunch with him and another Caltech astronomer I knew well, Jewish and utterly secular, I poured out the still-unwritten Garden. My Jewish friend appeared indulgently amused by the idea. Maarten Schmidt listened with an intense far-off look. When I fell silent he said, “It can be done, but it is very, very hard.”
Full Story: Herman Wouk: The Language God Talks: The Back Story.
Exposed: Christian leader caught with male escort says he needed help with his luggage
A Christian leader and prominent neuro-psychiatrist who co-founded the Family Research Council with evangelist James Dobson took a ten-day European vacation with a callboy he met through RentBoy.com and was caught in an airport with the escort by a Miami newspaper.
The escort said he had met George Rekers, professor of Neuropsychiatry and Behavioral Science at the University of South Carolina, on RentBoy.com. Rekers, when confronted, didn’t deny that he’d met the callboy online, but said he had hired him to help him carry his baggage and didn’t learn he was generally hired for “private company” until mid-way through his European vacation.
“I had surgery,” Rekers told Miami’s New Times, “and I can’t lift luggage. That’s why I hired him.” (The paper noted that it didn’t stop him from pushing a “tottering” pile of luggage through Miami International Airport.)
Full Story: Exposed: Christian leader caught with male escort says he needed help with his luggage | Raw Story.
‘Going to Church No More Makes You a Christian Than Sleeping in Your Garage Makes You a Car.’
“Going to church no more makes you a Christian than sleeping in your garage makes you a car.”~~Garrison Keiler
Do you ever wonder what Jesus would say about the sadistic cesspool that is swirling throughout the Catholic disfunctional structure at tsunami speed? Unfortunately, since the New York Times drew attention to the issue in March, the answer to that is getting buried deeper each day under fresh accusations of child molestation, counter accusations, denials and sordid attempts at justification.
It’s been an eye-opener for those attempting to struggle through the damage-control rhetoric coming from the Catholic hierarchy — priests, cardinals, bishops — all running around in such a frenzy that only a guy like Boots Randolph can keep up with them.
Just days after the March 25 Times article by Laurie Goodstein revealing the church’s handling of sex abuse charges against Father Lawrence Murphy who was accused of abusing hundreds of deaf children at Milwaukee’s St. John’s School for the Deaf — Cardinal William J. Levada, who succeeded Pope Benedict XVI as prefect of the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, was on her case. The National Catholic Reporter quotes Levada as saying that Goodstein and the Times were not after the truth; their prey was Pope Benedict himself…
Full Story: ‘Going to Church No More Makes You a Christian Than Sleeping in Your Garage Makes You a Car.’ | BuzzFlash.org.
Why Is God Smiting the Deep South?
When cataclysmic disasters strike, it usually doesn’t take long for TV prophets like Pat Robertson, John Hagee and the late, unlamented Jerry Falwell to pronounce them portentous signs of God’s wrath. Equally predictable: God’s punishments are always closely aligned with the prophets’ right-wing political views.
It’s notable then that with the biggest-ever oil slick bearing down on Gulf Coast beaches and a spate of deadly tornadoes and floods across the South over the past few weeks, interpreters of divine vengeance have been eerily quiet.
Their silence is atypical. For example, within about 48 hours after 9/11, Robertson and Falwell were on the air expressing what appeared to be inside knowledge about who was really to blame for the terror attacks:
Full Story: Pensito Review » Why Is God Smiting the Deep South?.
British Judge: Christian Beliefs Have No Legal Standing
“religious faith is necessarily subjective, being incommunicable by any kind of proof or evidence.”
A top British judge has ruled that Christian beliefs have no standing under secular law because they lack evidence and cannot be proven.
Lord Justice John Grant McKenzie Laws made the declaration on Thursday (April 29) in throwing out a defamation suit by Christian relationship counselor who refused to offer sex therapy to gay couples.
Gary McFarlane protested that he was fired because offering sex therapy to same-gender couples violates his Christian principles.
But Laws said “religious faith is necessarily subjective, being incommunicable by any kind of proof or evidence.” He added that to use the law to protect “a position held purely on religious grounds cannot therefore be justified.”
Full Story: British Judge: Christian Beliefs Have No Legal Standing.
Is Supreme Court’s Cross Ruling Good For Christians?
Evangelicals cheered when a Supreme Court ruling on Wednesday (April 28) allowed a cross to remain as a war memorial in California’s Mojave Desert.
Some Christians, however, caution that a celebration may not be in order.
The high court’s decision was largely based on Justice Anthony Kennedy’s determination that “one Latin cross in the desert evokes far more than religion.” Rather, he said, it “evokes thousands of small crosses in foreign fields marking the graves of Americans who fell in battles.”
In other words, the cross is more than a Christian symbol.
Full Story: Is Supreme Court’s Cross Ruling Good For Christians?.
Founding Fathers did NOT want USA to be Christian nation
Thom Hartmann debunks one of the things that Right Wing Fundamentalists use to claim wrongly that Thomas Jefferson wanted the nation to be a Christian nation. The clincher comes at the very end of this video in that Republicans try to tie religion into politics so they can avoid the fact that they do not wish to talk about economic equality.
Leviticus Loses: The Inevitability of Equal Rights for Homosexuals
Rabbi Irwin Kula :
This past week in synagogues throughout the world, the weekly portion of Scripture included the following verse from the book of Leviticus: “Do not lie with a male as one lies with a woman; it is an abomination.” This proscription has obviously been the source of heated and often vicious debate over the past decades as homosexuals have courageously come out of the closet and forced our culture to wrestle with its full humanity. My colleague Rabbi Brad Hirschfield posted an important and nuanced post on Huffington Post — “Is Homosexuality an Abomination? Wrestling with Leviticus 18:22″ — suggesting that because this cultural change in attitude towards homosexuals is very complex, the debate would be far more productive if people hid less behind Scripture and ideology and focused more on why this particular issue is so important to them personally. In Rabbi Hirschfield's words, “compassion for an idea is hard to generate, but compassion for a real person is less so.”
It strikes me that the way human rights issues have played out since the beginning of modernity — which, not surprisingly, coincides with the separation of church and state — should give us all reason to take a deep breath. There is a sort of humbling inevitability to the process of inclusion and to where we place ourselves along the continuum of human rights debate. One of the many ways to characterize the modern experience is the ongoing expansion of human rights and the increasing inclusion of marginal populations. The modern political and social dynamic in both general society and within religious communities has been the same: Marginal classes of people are brought inside legal frameworks and given equal rights. Whether recognizing the full humanity of Jews, African Americans, other ethnic and religious groups, women, the physically challenged, and now homosexuals, the process has been the same. First, a small group within the marginal group realizes they are in fact oppressed, that in profoundly unjust ways they are not treated as full human beings equal before the law. This small group begins to “cry” out for freedom. The initial reaction within the marginal group is usually fear of rocking the boat while the reaction of the dominant class is dismissive if not often brutal. But injustice once realized and freedom once tasted, even if only in one's heart and mind, is very hard to put back into a box, and so a process begins within the marginal class, educating its own people to see their plight and organizing increasing numbers of people ready to fight for inclusion and fairness. At some point very small numbers of people from the dominant class begin to see the light and realize that fellow human beings just like them have been denied equal rights simply because they are different. If the modern period is of any evidence, once this movement perceived as one of human rights begins — though it may entail great struggle, sacrifice, and bitterness — it inexorably results in the marginal population being given the same legal rights as the majority population. So America of 2010 is far more inclusive than America of 1810; classes of people denied equal rights and barely seen as human in 1810 have gained their rights by 2010.
Full Story: Rabbi Irwin Kula: Leviticus Loses: The Inevitability of Equal Rights for Homosexuals.
Coral Ridge Ministries Socialism Special
Is socialism biblical? Is life better when Washington runs Wall Street and Main Street? A stunning new documentary from Coral Ridge Ministries offers answers at a time when socialism is on the march in America with business bailouts and government-run health care. Featuring footage from Cuba and Venezuela, and experts who once toed the socialist line, Socialism: A Clear and Present Danger gives you an illuminating look at the real-world results of Marx and his many followers and why their failed ideas violate God’s Word.
Potential Noah hoax could make Christians look gullible
A group of Chinese and Turkish evangelical explorers said Monday they believe they may have found Noah’s Ark — four thousand metres up a mountain in Turkey.
However, the Christian Science Monitor reports that “a longtime ark-hunter” who is “a member of Noah’s Ark Search LLC” and has “gone on a number of expeditions to Mount Ararat” has “serious doubts.”
The team say they recovered wooden specimens from a structure on Mount Ararat in eastern Turkey that carbon dating proved was 4,800 years old, around the same time the ark is said to have been afloat.
Full Story: Ark hunter: Potential Noah hoax could make Christians look gullible | Raw Story.
Brazilian priest on pedophilia charge
BRAZILIAN authorities overnight charged a 74-year-old Catholic priest with pedophilia after eight children in his church choir accused him of sexual abuse.
Father Jose Afonso De is being prosecuted for allegedly assaulting children aged 12 to 16, Sao Paulo state’s public prosecutor’s office said.
He has denied the allegations but has been suspended by his diocese.
The indictment adds another smear to the Catholic Church’s reputation worldwide as it struggles with a series of pedophile accusations against its priests in the Americas and Europe.
Full Story: Brazilian priest on pedophilia charge | News.com.au.
Bishop Thomas Tobin Yanks Rhode Island Hospitals From Health Reform Group
A Roman Catholic bishop in Rhode Island has withdrawn two hospitals sponsored by his diocese from membership in a Catholic hospital group that supports health care reform.
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops opposed reform because of fears it would allow public funding of abortion. The Catholic Health Association supported the bill.
The Diocese of Providence on Wednesday released a letter written March 29 by Bishop Thomas Tobin to Sister Carol Keehan, who leads the association.
Tobin says the group’s support provided an excuse for members of Congress to pass health care reform and caused a scandal.
Full Story: Bishop Thomas Tobin Yanks Rhode Island Hospitals From Health Reform Group.
Exposing the Christian Right’s New Racial Playbook
A diversity summit at Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University reveals that the religious right’s survival depends on the black and the brown.
NOTE: A reel of video highlights of the Freedom Federation Summit, filmed and compiled by Sarah Posner, appears at the end of this article.
“When God has drawn a line of distinction, we should not attempt to cross that line. The true Negro does not want integration.”
That was the assertion made by a young Rev. Jerry Falwell in a sermon he preached at his Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Virginia, 1958, four years after the Supreme Court struck down school segregation in Brown v. Board of Education. But at a gathering of the religious right earlier this month at the late preacher’s Lynchburg compound, integration was not only the topic of the day, but touted as the future of the conservative Christian movement.
Full Story: Exposing the Christian Right’s New Racial Playbook | News & Politics | AlterNet.
Chile Catholic church hit by abuse claims, bomb
Chile’s Roman Catholic Church was shaken by a series of dramatic televised interviews of men alleging they were abused by a respected former priest, followed hours later by a bombing that damaged a church’s facade.
Four men detailed their claims – which also are the subject of police and church investigations – on a state channel Monday night. Now adults, they said the alleged abuse by Father Fernando Karadima began about 20 years ago when they were between 14 and 17 years old, in his residence at the Sacred Heart of Jesus church in an elegant neighborhood of Santiago.
Dr. James Hamilton, now a surgeon, said between sobs that the abuse began with an act of masturbation when he joined the priest’s Catholic youth group and continued for years.
Full Story: News from The Associated Press.
Church of Scientology blasts Russian government for ban on L. Ron Hubbard writings – Yahoo! News
The controversial Church of Scientology has been called many things, but it’s a safe bet that no one had previously deemed it a threat to the Russian spirit.
No longer. Under a new law empowering the Russian government to ban written work categorized as “extremist materials,” the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office has declared that the work of L. Ron Hubbard, the American founder of Scientology, belongs on a list of materials “undermining the traditional spiritual values of the citizens of the Russian Federation.”
The law lays out fines of 3,000 rubles ($100) for anyone in possession of such materials, or a jail term of up to 15 days — with harsher penalties imposed on repeat offenders and/or those with a criminal history.
Full Story: Church of Scientology blasts Russian government for ban on L. Ron Hubbard writings – Yahoo! News.
The New Christian Right and Christianity
The Weird Theology of Glenn Beck and His Cohorts
It is an unfortunate truth that organizations ranging from the mildly amusing to the extremely dangerous have all co-opted the term ‘Christian.’ Christian Right, Christian Coalition, etc., all use the term without, apparently, knowing what it means. It has reached a point where even Christians cringe when they hear the word in political commentary.
A few examples will suffice.
There is currently a case working its way to the Supreme Court involving the Christian Legal Society chapter at Hastings, a branch of the University of California. Hastings stopped funding this organization in 2004, when the society required its members to sign a statement of faith, and excluded all those who would not do so. Also excluded automatically are homosexuals.
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The Christian Coalition, on its website, has ‘Action Alerts,’ opportunities for its adherents to further the causes it espouses. As of April 19, 2010, two of the top three ‘Action Alerts’ pertain to opposing health care (‘Last Chance to Say ‘NO’ to Healthcare Takeover;’ ‘Critical House Vote Coming up on Obamacare’), and the third to discrimination against gays and lesbians (‘Help us Defend ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’).
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Sarah Palin, the current darling of the Christian right, preaches abstinence as the most effective sex education, says that U.S. military “is a source for good throughout the world,” and, during her embarrassing campaign for vice-president, talked about how God blessed the U.S. with oil.
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Glenn Beck, also wildly popular with the so-called Christian right, has said that people should leave their churches if those churches preach social justice.
Full Story: Robert Fantina: The New Christian Right and Christianity.
Republicans: We’ll Call Wall Street Reform A ‘Bailout’ No Matter What
Financial Regulatory Reform: Democrats Experiencing Health Care Deja Vu
Republican leadership made it clear on Tuesday that, even if Democrats drop from regulatory reform legislation a suddenly controversial $50 billion fund to help wind down failing banks, they will still denounce the bill for including an unlimited bailout.
The announcement, which came in the form of an email from House Minority Leader John Boehner's office, is yet another indication that the GOP is edging towards a major fight on regulatory reform. And it left Democrats with a queasy feeling of déjà vu. As with health care reform, the White House is telling congressional Democrats not to make too big a fight over a controversial provision. But it remains unclear — at least to those on the Hill — exactly what the party is getting in return for backing down.
“The pressure from the White House on the bailout fund is frustrating,” said one Senate Democratic aide, who asked to remain anonymous to discuss negotiations. “Why drop a $50 billion fund if [Republicans] are still going to say it is in there?”
Full Story: Financial Regulatory Reform: Democrats Experiencing Health Care Deja Vu.
The Lutheran Church Embraces the LGBTQ Community!
George Bernard Shaw once said, “Certainly all great truths begin as blasphemies.” On April 11, 2010, those who identify as people of faith and as “non-heterosexual” were given particular cause to celebrate Shaw's wisdom: a most unlikely church has given a most unlikely people a gift of love and truth, and I cannot stop smiling.
After twenty-five years of deliberation, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) Church Council has abolished its anti-gay policies, effective immediately. Following from discussions at the ELCA Churchwide Assembly last summer, the ELCA will now allow people in same-sex relationships to serve as rostered leaders. Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) human beings are no longer considered abominations but blessed church members with full standing. Same-sex partners and families can now fully participate in the ELCA Pension Plan.
Best of all, the ELCA is reinstating people who were removed from ministry positions because they were truthful and came out of the closet, as well as those who conducted holy unions for non-heterosexual couples. The ELCA has practiced restorative justice.
Full Story: Rev. Dr. Cindi Love: The Lutheran Church Embraces the LGBTQ Community!.
Pope: Scandals call for ‘new evangelization’
Pope Benedict XVI said Saturday the Roman Catholic Church had been wounded by sin as he flew to Malta on his first foreign trip since a wave of priest sex abuse scandals broke in Europe and the United States.
“Malta loves Christ who loves his Church which is his body, even if this body is wounded by our sins,” he told accompanying journalists in a direct allusion to the scandals.
The pope’s plane landed shortly after 1500 GMT after the brief flight from Rome to the deeply Catholic
Full Story: Pope: Scandals call for ‘new evangelization’ | Raw Story.
OPS: Well, they really call for jail time, and a big WAKE UP!
Bishop’s Revenge on Nuns
This is the present state of health care– this is why we needed reform…
Arizona has become the first state to cancel its State Children’s Health Insurance Program, which, like other SCHIP programs, is funded jointly by the state and the federal government.
The budget passed by the legislature and signed into law by Republican governor Janice K. Brewer eliminates the $22.9-million program, known as KidsCare, as of June 15th. The program served 38,000 children living in families with incomes between 100% and 200% of the federal poverty level ($22,000 to $44,000 for a family of four).
This is the reality that Catholic nuns are well aware of, since so many of them spend their days patching holes in the social safety net with their unpaid or underpaid highly skilled labor. This, no doubt, is the reason that American nuns gave crucial last-minute support to health care reform. And the nuns are being made to pay…
Bishop Lawrence Brandt of the Catholic Diocese of Greensburg has declared that religious sisters from communities whose leaders endorsed the final version of the national health care reform bill can no longer promote their recruitment events in his parishes or in the diocesan newspaper.
The nuns are claiming what sounds like equal rights of conscience…
Full Story: Bishop’s Revenge on Nuns « Kmareka.com.
Religion Scholar RESIGNS After Endorsing Evolution
A prominent Old Testament scholar has resigned from a professorial position after he was recorded on video endorsing evolution.
Until several days ago, Bruce K. Waltke was a professor at Florida’s Reformed Theological Seminary. But after the school found out about his video blog (the video has since been removed at Waltke’s request) on the website of the BioLogos Foundation, which promotes harmony between science and theology, he lost his job.
According to several people who saw the video, Waltke said that Christianity’s continued denial of evolution will “make [them] a cult.”
Waltke’s discharge speaks to just how profound the chasm is between scientists and theologians.
Inside Higher Ed reports:
Full Story: Religion Scholar RESIGNS After Endorsing Evolution.
East Longmeadow priest James Scahill calls for Pope Benedict XVI to resign
A Roman Catholic priest from western Massachusetts who’s been a longtime critic of the church’s handling of the clergy abuse crisis has called on Pope Benedict XVI to step down.
The Rev. James Scahill of St. Michael’s in East Longmeadow in his sermon on Sunday also demanded greater protection of children and greater accountability from church hierarchy.
The pope has been subjected to intense criticism recently for the way he has dealt with some abuse cases. Scahill said because he has violated an important tenet of faith by not being truthful, the pope should step down.
Full Story: East Longmeadow priest James Scahill calls for Pope Benedict XVI to resign | Massachusetts Local News – MassLive.com.
Catholic Church Tries to Quiet Pedophilia Scandal with New Policy, While Atheists Push for Pope’s Arrest in the UK
The church drops its defense posture, edits its guidelines to read that church leaders should report clerical sex abuse to civil authorities.
For the first time in canonical history, the Vatican has made clear in public guidelines that bishops and other church leaders should report clerical sex abuse to local authorities if required by law.
The move is a departure from recent church statements, which claimed the sex abuse accusations were part of a conspiratorial effort to undermine the pope and the Roman Catholic Church.
As a steady stream of church sex abuse cases come to light, Pope Benedict XVI’s handling of confirmed molesters before he became pope in 2005 has been severely questioned. Just this weekend, a 1985 letter bearing his signature confirmed many critics’ allegations. In that letter, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, as he was then known, resisted calls to defrock a known pedophile priest in Northern California.
Ratzinger wrote, on behalf of the Catholic Church’s doctrinal office, which he headed: “This court, although it regards the arguments presented in favour of removal in this case to be of grave significance, nevertheless deems it necessary to consider the good of the Universal Church.” He then suggested that the priest in question be provided with “as much paternal care as possible.”
Shroud Of Turin Going Back Up Before The Public
The long linen with the faded image of a bearded man is the object of centuries-old fascination and wonderment, and closely kept under wrap. Starting Saturday, and for six weeks, both the curious and those convinced the Turin Shroud is the burial cloth of Jesus Christ can have a brief look.
By late Friday, 1.5 million people had reserved their three-to-five-minute chance to gaze at the cloth, which is kept in a bulletproof, climate-controlled case. Organizers said earlier this year they hoped some 2 million pilgrims and tourists would see the linen during the special viewing from April 10 to May 23.
That number doesn’t include Pope Benedict XVI, who will fly up to Turin, Piedmont’s capital, in northwest Italy, on May 2 for a day trip to pray before the shroud.
Full Story: Shroud Of Turin Going Back Up Before The Public.
Letter shows future Pope Benedict resisted defrocking molester priest in Calif. in 1980s – latimes.com
Four years after a California priest and convicted child molester asked to be defrocked, his bishop pleaded with the future Pope Benedict XVI to remove the man from the priesthood. Then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger replied, urging caution.
“Consider the good of the Universal Church,” Ratzinger wrote in a 1985 letter to Oakland Bishop John Cummins. “It is necessary for this Congregation to submit incidents of this sort to very careful consideration, which necessitates a longer period of time.”
Two more years would pass before the Vatican acted on the Rev. Stephen Kiesle’s request to leave.
Full Story: AP: Letter shows future Pope Benedict resisted defrocking molester priest in Calif. in 1980s – latimes.com.
Norwegian Bishop Resigned Because of Abuse
In May, the leader of Norway’s small Catholic community unexpectedly resigned with little explanation. The Vatican on Wednesday said why: he had sexually abused a boy in the early 1990s.
It was the latest case to emerge in a clerical sex abuse scandal that has been churning through Europe in recent months, putting the Vatican on the defensive and forcing bishops across the continent to confront the issue.
The bishop, Georg Mueller, 58, left his diocese in June, has since undergone therapy and “no longer carries out pastoral activity,” according to a statement by the Rev. Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman.
Full Story: Norwegian Bishop Resigned Because of Abuse – NYTimes.com.
Jewish Group Launches Twitter Protest Against Glenn Beck
Tweet justice for Glenn Beck?
Beginning at 9 a.m. Wednesday morning, and for the following 24 hours, the Jewish Funds for Justice plans to tweet the heck out of Glenn Beck.
The social justice group plans to unleash a “Twitterstorm” on the Fox News host to protest his recent remarks mocking the faith-based idea of “social justice.” JFSJ has collected more than 1,500 haikus (Haik U Beck, they call it) mocking Beck.
The group plans to start tweeting the verses to Beck's personal Twitter account, one every minute, “to confront Glenn Beck about his bizarre and incongruous opinion that there is no place for social and economic justice in religion.”
Full Story: Under God: Tweet justice for Glenn Beck? – David Waters.
Catholic League president: Priests aren’t pedophiles, molesting children is ‘what gays do’
In other words: Priests aren’t pedophiles, they’re just gay!
In another coup for the seemingly part-time political pundit Bill Donohue, CNN broadcast on Tuesday a conversation about the Catholic church’s thousands of pedophilia scandals that would be awkward to even over-hear in public, let alone broadcast nation-wide.
That’s because Donohue, who presides over the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, decided to take the matter of a 14-year-old’s sexual abuse to a level of technicality where none of his fellow contributors really cared to tread.
Objecting to the term “pedophilia” being used to describe the rampant claims of children being sexually abused by priests and nuns, Donohue instead called the acts “homosexuality,” later suggesting “that’s what gays do.”
Full Story: Catholic League president: Priests aren’t pedophiles, molesting children is ‘what gays do’ | Raw Story.
OPS: Insane desperation!
Is Vatican Guilty in Child-Sex Scandal?
By Robert Parry -
Often the worst scandals are ones that have become engrained as business as usual within an organization or a society, not entirely accepted but tolerated by the Old Boys Network in command, like racial segregation, anti-Semitism, bias against women – or in the case of the Vatican, pedophilia.
No one’s suggesting that child rape is to the Catholic Church hierarchy what the casting couch is to a Hollywood producer – one of the job’s expected side benefits – but it is troubling that the chief reaction to new revelations about the sexual abuse of boys by Catholic priests was to rally in defense of Pope Benedict XVI.
If the Vatican truly took the under-age rape charges as seriously as it should – and they have been spilling out now for several decades – there would have been a full-scale investigation and a purging of Church officials who had any role in tolerating or covering up these crimes. In the vernacular, many heads would roll, including those of senior Vatican leaders.
Yet, one of the leaders implicated in the cover-up is Pope Benedict, both when he was German Archbishop Joseph Ratzinger and later when he served as chief of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
Full Story: Consortiumnews.com.
Bob Schieffer: Catholic Church has More than PR Issue
On this Easter Sunday, the Catholic Church faces more scandal surrounding child sex-abuse. As Bob Schieffer notes, the Church’s problem is not PR but it’s cover-up.
The Church’s Easter: What Needs to Die in the Catholic Church so That it May Live
Rev. James Martin, S.J.: -
This year the religious symbolism of Easter could not be more resonant for the Catholic Church. Each day from Good Friday to Easter Sunday offers the Church a profound spiritual message as it confronts the horrific effects of the crimes of clerical sexual abuse, which have convulsed the church, first in the United States, and now in Europe.
Start with Good Friday, the day that commemorates the death of Jesus of Nazareth. On that day, Jesus willingly surrendered himself to his fate, which would lead to his brief trial, his grueling torture, his arduous walk to Calvary and his ultimate crucifixion. The Catholic Church, too, is undergoing a kind of crucifixion.
But not in the way that you might think. And not in the way that you might think of “the church.”
Full Story: Rev. James Martin, S.J.: The Church’s Easter: What Needs to Die in the Catholic Church so That it May Live.
US Cardinal protected child abusing priest: document
US Cardinal William Levada, a staunch defender of Pope Benedict XVI in the paedophile priests scandal gripping the Vatican, reassigned a US priest and alleged child molester in the 1990s without warning his parishioners, court documents showed.
In a sworn testimony in 2006 about his time as Archbishop of Portland, Oregon (1986-1995), Levada said he decided to reassign the offending priest after he underwent therapy.
“The abuse in question had happened 20 years before, or so… the recommendation of the therapy was that he was not at risk for re-abusing and that it would be prudent to reassign him… and prudent also to put conditions that would make sure that he would not be overstressed to do some inappropriate behavior,” Levada testified.
Full Story: US Cardinal protected child abusing priest: document – Yahoo! News.
More Evidence Emerges That Pope Benedict Helped Shield Pedophiles Before He Became Pope
The abuse cases of two priests in Arizona have cast further doubt on the Catholic church’s insistence that Pope Benedict XVI played no role in shielding pedophiles before he became pope.
Documents reviewed by The Associated Press show that as a Vatican cardinal, the future pope took over the abuse case of the Rev. Michael Teta of Tucson, Ariz., then let it languish at the Vatican for years despite repeated pleas from the bishop for the man to be removed from the priesthood.
In another Tucson case, that of Msgr. Robert Trupia, the bishop wrote to then-Cardinal Ratzinger, who would become pope in 2005. Bishop Manuel Moreno called Trupia “a major risk factor to the children, adolescents and adults that he many have contact with.” There is no indication in the case files that Ratzinger responded.
Full Story: More Evidence Emerges That Pope Benedict Helped Shield Pedophiles Before He Became Pope.
Why Are Pedophilia-Hiding, Child-Abusing Church Fathers Allowed to Write Laws About Women’s Bodies?
The moral authority granted the Catholic Church in the secular world is the most repellent aspect of the current crisis.
Papal Indulgences -
My favorite moment of the whole child abuse scandal in the Catholic Church was when Father Klaus Malangré suggested that Peter Hullermann, the redoubtable German pedophile priest, might be sent to work in a girls’ school. No boys, no molestation. Or, in churchly language, no occasion of sin. Problem solved! Plus, the good father would spend his life warding off female cooties. Malangré must not have heard about priests–and they do exist–who abused both male and female children. Nor had he learned the lesson of Watergate: the cover-up is worse than the crime.
The church has yet to learn that lesson. There is a positively Nixonian smarmy truculence in the response of church hierarchs to the ongoing scandal, which now involves Pope Benedict XVI himself. On Palm Sunday, New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan urged worshipers at St. Patrick’s Cathedral to show “love and solidarity for our earthly shepherd now suffering some of the same unjust accusations, shouts of the mob and scourging at the pillar, as did Jesus.” On his blog, Dolan explains that what gets Catholics angry is not just the molestations themselves but also that “the sexual abuse of minors is presented as a tragedy unique to the Church alone.” Oh, really? Does the name Mary Kay Letourneau mean nothing to him? This man needs to read the tabloids, which have for years featured an endless parade of molesting teachers, doctors, dentists, therapists and scout leaders. To go by the news, looking at child pornography on one’s office computer is so common, it’s a wonder anyone finds the time to abuse real kids. At this late date I doubt anyone is unaware that the sexual abuse of children is a widespread phenomenon.
The difference is, when other professionals who work with children are caught out, justice takes its course. People are fired. Licenses are lost. Reputations are ruined. Sometimes jail is involved. No human institution is perfect, and it would be foolish to suggest that incidents are always investigated and that abusers who don’t happen to be priests are never protected by colleagues or superiors. Still, it’s probably safe to say that if a principal was accused of overlooking a child molester in his classrooms or recycling him to other schools, nobody would compare his suffering to Christ’s.
Full Story: Papal Indulgences.
Moreno struggled to defrock 2 priests
The late Tucson Bishop Manuel D. Moreno, often characterized as a poor advocate for sexual abuse victims, struggled with both canon law and Vatican mandates in his efforts to defrock two local priests, documents obtained by the Arizona Daily Star show.
In one case, Moreno pleaded with then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, for help in removing the Rev. Michael Teta, who was convicted by the church in 1997 of five crimes including sexual solicitation in the confessional.
“I make this plea to you to assist me in every way you can to expedite this case, because the accused was a priest in whom I had great confidence at one time, but who, unfortunately, worked among our former seminarians, and, terrible to say, evidently corrupted many of them,” Moreno wrote in an April 1997 letter to Ratzinger.
Full Story: Moreno struggled to defrock 2 priests.
OPS: Is he fishing to be the next Pope? Good Pope, Bad Pope?
Why Evangelicalism Is Failing A New Generation
We are in the midst of a shift in American Christianity, as Evangelicalism is failing to reach a new generation. For the last couple of decades, Christians looked to the Evangelical movement to show us how to gain new members and keep our churches relevant. They showed us how to attract young members. Even stodgy denominational congregations could not hide their curiosity when megachurches took root in our nation’s religious landscape. They watched as families drove to the sprawling parking lots of the giant suburban church — the one with the rock band, theater seating, and that charismatic guy at the center of it all. Evangelical talking heads began to pop up on news programs, claiming that they represented vast swaths of the American population. But now those megachurch crowds are graying and there is something about Evangelicalism that is not transferring to a new generation. The shift is well documented: everyone from Christine Wicker, to Robert Wuthnow to the Barna Group is pointing out the change. Many who grew up in those packed seats, clapping along with the praise band, are abandoning Evangelical congregations. Why is that? The robust churches had it all — large staffs, great programs, and engaging preaching. Why would a new generation, including me, leave that behind?
Full Story: Carol Howard Merritt: Why Evangelicalism Is Failing A New Generation.
The Catholic Church’s Dirty Little Secret
Now What?
More than 40 years ago I, was automatically excommunicated from the Catholic Church for “attempting marriage.” Our “attempted marriage” was conducted at my parents’ home with four priests presiding together with my bride, the former Sister Maura Killene of Maryknoll who had served in Southern Chile. We have now celebrated four decades together and now have two children and five grandchildren. There is nothing “attempted” about it. It is a wonderful marriage followed by a life of full-time work for justice and peace.
The excommunication has never upset me, mostly because of the guidance of my mother who had admonished me to “take it with a grain of salt.” This was her comment on many ecclesiastical directives, including celibacy. She was very disturbed that I went off to the seminary to become a priest in the first place.
”Why don’t they marry? It’s not normal,” she insisted. Both of her parents were born in Italy and they had a wonderful understanding of the irrationality of Canon Law. That’s right. They loved their church and were very comfortable criticizing it and even making fun of it. But as is becoming increasingly clear amid almost daily revelations of sexual abuse among the clergy, much of church behavior is really not funny.
Full Story: The Catholic Church’s Dirty Little Secret – NAM.
Jewish Teen Considers Passing Over His Faith
It’s a mother’s worst nightmare. You raise your son to embrace family traditions, and then, at seventeen years of age, he sits you down and tells you he wants to leave it all behind. On this Passover, Youth Radio’s Joshua Raifman of Piedmont, California, is thinking about abandoning Judaism. And no one in his family, including him, is quite sure what to think about it …
My Bar Mitzvah happened around this time of year, right in the middle of Passover. It was the culmination of eight years of preparation at Hebrew school. And it’s probably the most Jewish I’ve ever felt…
But I’m 17 now, and as lazy as it sounds, I’m indifferent to being Jewish. My mom doesn’t like the idea very much.
Full Story: Youth Radio — Youth Media International: Jewish Teen Considers Passing Over His Faith.
Pope-appointed bishop accused of ritually beating orphaned children
The child abuse scandal rocking the Vatican grew yet again Wednesday when former children in a German orphanage submitted written statements that a German bishop habitually beat them.
The Bishop of Augsburg, Walter Mixa, was a controversial conservative churchman appointed by Pope Benedict in 2005 and has been called his friend.
According to the statement, Mixa used to hit and degrade the children repeatedly during sessions of punishment at the Catholic orphanage. Among other details, Mixa is accused of using a carpet beater on the bare behinds of victims as he screamed: ‘Satan is in you and I must drive him out.’
Full Story: Pope-appointed bishop accused of ritually beating orphaned children | Raw Story.
Letter shows Pope Paul VI knew of child abuse decades ago
Further revelations of the Vatican’s inaction to address pedophilia may tarnish not only Pope Benedict’s reputation, but that of Pope Paul VI.
According to a newly released letter, Pope Paul VI and the Vatican knew about clergy abuse of children almost 50 years ago.
The 1963 letter is from the head of a Roman Catholic order dedicated to the treatment of priests who had committed pedophilia. In it, he tells Pope Paul that he recommends removing the priests from active ministry.
Full Story: Letter shows Pope Paul VI knew of child abuse decades ago | Raw Story.
Vatican Offers Three Reasons Why It’s Not Liable For Abuse
Dragged deeper than ever into the clerical sex abuse scandal, the Vatican is launching a legal defense that it hopes will shield the pope from a lawsuit in Kentucky seeking to have him answer attorneys’ questions under oath.
Court documents obtained Tuesday by The Associated Press show that Vatican lawyers plan to argue that the pope has immunity as head of state, that American bishops who oversaw abusive priests weren’t employees of the Vatican, and that a 1962 document is not the “smoking gun” that provides proof of a cover-up.
The Holy See is trying to fend off the first U.S. case to reach the stage of determining whether victims actually have a claim against the Vatican itself for negligence for allegedly failing to alert police or the public about Roman Catholic priests who molested children.
The case was filed in 2004 in Kentucky by three men who claim they were abused by priests and claim negligence by the Vatican. Their attorney, William McMurry, is seeking class-action status for the case, saying there are thousands of victims across the country.
Full Story: Vatican Offers Three Reasons Why It’s Not Liable For Abuse.
Dissident Female Catholic Bishop Calls for Pope to Resign over Sex Abuse Scandal
Dissident Female Catholic Bishop Calls for Pope to Resign over Sex Abuse Scandal
The Vatican has denied a series of media reports alleging that Pope Benedict, before being elected pontiff, may have looked the other way in cases of abuse in his native Germany and in the United States. Last week, the Vatican strongly defended its decision not to defrock the Wisconsin-based priest Father Lawrence Murphy, who abused some 200 deaf boys in the 1950s and ’60s. The National Catholic Reporter says the Pope must be ready to answer questions and called the scandal “the largest institutional crisis in centuries, possibly in church history.” We speak to Bridget Mary Meehan, spokesperson for Roman Catholic Womenpriests.
Free: Audio/video streaming, MP3 download and transcipt
Full Story: Dissident Female Catholic Bishop Calls for Pope to Resign over Sex Abuse Scandal.
OPS: that’ll teach ‘em to allow women in the priesthood
Christopher Hitchens Slams Vatican, Pope Over Sex Abuse Scandal (VIDEO)
Christopher Hitchens, whose antagonism towards religion is well-established, had harsh words for the Catholic Church, and the Pope in particular, during an appearance on “Morning Joe” today.
The most recent scandal that has erupted over the priest who molested over 200 deaf boys, Hitchens said, proves that “the fatal taint” goes all the way to the top:
A school for children who can only use sign language. 200 of them have their childhoods completely wrecked by this priest, and entreaties are addressed to the man who is now Pope, Cardinal Ratzinger, the man who was saying at the time that the only problem with the scandal was there was a press campaign against the church. The abuse was not the problem, the torture the rape; only the revelation of it. Nothing happens except that he forgives the priest who asked for forgiveness before he dies.
I wrote then and I believe now that the fatal taint went straight to the top at that point, and now we have as head of the church someone who’s personally as well institutionally responsible for knowing of this, covering it up and protecting, not the children, but the predators.
Full Story: Christopher Hitchens Slams Vatican, Pope Over Sex Abuse Scandal (VIDEO).
Losing their religion? Catholicism in turmoil
Sex abuse scandal prompts soul-searching across the globe
An Austrian priest avoids mention of Pope Benedict XVI in his Masses. A Philadelphia woman stops going to confession, saying she now sees priests as more flawed than herself. British protesters call for the pontiff to resign.
As the faithful fill churches this Holy Week, many Roman Catholics around the world are finding their relationship to the church painfully tested by new revelations of clerical abuse and suggestions Benedict himself may have helped cover up cases in Germany and the U.S.
There are fears that for those whose commitment is already wavering, the scandal could be the final blow, and a growing chorus is clamoring for the church to embrace full transparency, take a hard line against pedophiles, and reconsider the rule of priestly celibacy.
Full Story: Losing their religion? Catholicism in turmoil – World Faith- msnbc.com.
Jane Spahr Charged By Church: Presbyterian Minister Performed Gay Weddings, Church Says
A retired Presbyterian minister in Northern California is again facing charges she violated church law when she officiated at the weddings of gay couples.
The Rev. Jane Spahr was acquitted two years ago of similar charges when the church’s Supreme Judicial Council found that she did not violate denominational law because they were not real marriages.
This time, the same-sex marriages at issues were legal in California. Spahr’s lawyer says it’s unprecedented that the church is trying to sanction a minister for performing legal marriages.
Full Story: Jane Spahr Charged By Church: Presbyterian Minister Performed Gay Weddings, Church Says.
The Pope’s Gotta Go
Mike Whitney -
Pope Benedict should do everyone a favor and resign. By hanging on, he’s just dragging the church through the mud. Who knows; maybe he thought he was doing the right thing by covering up the incidents of sexual abuse? Maybe he thought it was a sign of loyalty to the church he professes love. But that’s beside the point. The Catholic church is in the “moral authority” business, and the public’s confidence has been destroyed. How can people trust the advice of spiritual leaders who can’t even be straightforward on an issue as basic as child rape? Everyone knows what Benedict has been up to. Everyone knows he’s been trying to sweep the whole thing under the rug. But all he’s done is torpedo the church’s credibility and prove that he’s unfit to lead. That’s why he’s gotta go.
The allegations of sex abuse are still popping up everywhere. In Wisconsin, Father Lawrence Murphy abused as many as 200 boys at a Milwaukee school for the deaf. One of the victims, Arthur Budzinski, has been all-over TV telling his story and blaming the pope, who was overseeing abuse cases at the time.
Here’s what Budzinski’s daughter Gigi said in an interview on CBS:
“The pope knew about this. He was the one who handled the sex abuse cases. So, I think he should be accountable, because he did nothing.”
Full Story: The Pope’s Gotta Go | The Smirking Chimp.
The Catholic Church is a Criminal Enterprise
Matt Taibbi – …in defense of Pope Benedict; the archbishop’s incredibly pompous and self-pitying rant is some of the most depraved horseshit I’ve ever seen on the internet, which is saying a lot.
The Holy See’s reaction to both stories has been swift. An unsigned editorial this week in the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano attacked the New York Times by name, accusing the paper of willfully ignoring the “truth” of Ratzinger/Benedict’s record and of attempting “to instrumentalize, without any foundation in fact, horrible episodes and sorrowful events uncovered in some cases from decades ago.” The media, it continued, showed a “despicable intent of attacking, at whatever cost, Benedict XVI and his closest collaborators.”
Earlier in the week, New York’s archbishop, Timothy Dolan, used his blog to dismiss the New York Times reports and defend the pontiff’s record by arguing that authorities outside the church also are culpable. Stories about sexual abuse by priests were “fair” if “unending,” he wrote. But he condemned the media for portraying child sexual abuse “as a tragedy unique to the church alone. That, of course, is malarkey.”
via A pope with a problem – latimes.com.
Anyone who’s interested in losing his lunch should read the above-mentioned blog entry by New York archbishop Timothy Dolan in defense of Pope Benedict; the archbishop’s incredibly pompous and self-pitying rant is some of the most depraved horseshit I’ve ever seen on the internet, which is saying a lot.
Full Story: The Catholic Church is a Criminal Enterprise – Matt Taibbi – Taibblog – True/Slant.
For Years, Deaf Boys Tried to Tell of Priest’s Abuse
They were deaf, but they were not silent. For decades, a group of men who were sexually abused as children by the Rev. Lawrence C. Murphy at a school for the deaf in Wisconsin reported to every type of official they could think of that he was a danger, according to the victims and church documents.
They told other priests. They told three archbishops of Milwaukee. They told two police departments and the district attorney. They used sign language, written affidavits and graphic gestures to show what exactly Father Murphy had done to them. But their reports fell on the deaf ears of hearing people.
This week, they learned that Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, received letters about Father Murphy in 1996 from Archbishop Rembert G. Weakland of Milwaukee, who said that the deaf community needed “a healing response from the Church.” The Vatican sat on the case, then equivocated, and when Father Murphy died in 1998, he died a priest.
Full Story: For Years, Deaf Boys Tried to Tell of Priest’s Abuse – NYTimes.com.
Hitchens: Pope Benedict wants ‘wiggle room’ for ‘rape and torture of children’
The Catholic Church is in serious trouble and may have nowhere to run, depending on who you ask.
“I warned them about all of this,” declared author Christopher Hitchens, appearing on HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher on Friday night. “Nothing good can come of a church that has as its’ slogan, ‘Leave no child’s behind.’ And then they went and chose as pope the man who was personally responsible, in his dioceses, and institutionally responsible for the cover-up. So now, there’s no escape.”
The child rape scandals that have savaged Catholic ranks for years starting in the United States, then flaring up in Ireland, Germany, Italy and other locations around the world, have finally come to implicate Pope Benedict XVI, according to recent reports.
Full Story: Hitchens: Pope Benedict wants ‘wiggle room’ for ‘rape and torture of children’ | Raw Story.
