But which core values? Yours, or...yours?

Hermant Mehta, The Friendly Atheist, had a fascinating take on an incident that occurred a while back.  It seems that in a recent debate, a young man, Chad, challenged Mr. Marcellino (the Christian debater) about the fate of people who do not know Christ.

You know, the question of Hell, and god sending those unfortunates straight there for eternity.

First, though, Mr. Clifton had asserted earlier in the debate that he didn't think Hell was forever.

Then, later, he admitted, at Chad's questioning, that he is a believer that the bible is literally true.

Chad followed that up by questioning Marcellino’s claim from earlier in the debate that Hell wasn’t really forever — doesn’t the Bible say it is? 

Marcellino: … Forever doesn’t really mean forever.Chad: … you said it was all literally true.Marcellino: Well, yeah, it’s not literally English true. It’s Hebrew and Greek. So you have to get into the Hebrew and Greek.

Apparently, Chad has done this before, challenging Christian debaters and flummoxing them into stumbling and making idiots out of themselves.  The Friendly Atheist has covered these debates, so if you want to actually see the video, go to the link above and watch.  It's cool!

Go, Chad!

Great stuff!

But that's not exactly what this post is about, though it did spark the old noggin a bit.

I've seen a lot of debate lately about whether the Progressive agenda, including Atheism, is really progressing (pardon the pun), or whether the right wing backlash has got us on the run.  Certainly, the narrow polls in this election are cause for concern, as there is a very real possibility the Republicans could win the Senate.

Or so the pundits say.  I do remember that the last election surprised a lot of pundits and pollsters alike.  Anybody remember the epic meltdown of Carl Rove on Fox?  It was, truly, something to watch!

I am, quite naturally, an optimist, even though I do take the engineer's position about that proverbial glass of water - I still insist the damn thing is just not the right size... but I digress.

One needs to take the long view in these things.  Cultural changes do not take place overnight, even though we did manage to upend things in the 60's pretty quickly.  Today's backlash is a direct result of the 60's, and it is a doozy!  But, it isn't the end of the struggle.  Not by a long shot.

227 years ago, the United States Constitution was ratified.  That is, arguably, the greatest success for the men of the day in their struggle for the spread and the social acceptance of the principles of The Enlightenment.  But the road leading to that day was long and bloody.  Historically, the enlightenment began with the Crusades, believe it or not.

Before that time, Europeans were pretty much (except for merchants, mostly) confined to Europe, and didn't do much traveling.  Travel was hard, dirty, and dangerous, and getting anywhere really interesting took months, and often years.  The nobility of Europe were mostly interested in warfare, politics and religion, pretty much in that order.  Few of them were literate, as most of their time was spent in the practice of martial arts, if not actively engaged in real fighting.  The rest was often politics and such.  There was a day when learning to read was actually discouraged for the nobility, as it was considered beneath their position.  That's why they hired monks and learned priests to do their paperwork.

Much of that was the Church's fault, because really, they wanted the ability to read strictly in their purview, which allowed them to interpret Scripture.  If you couldn't read, you had to take the priest's word for what was even written there!  In fact, in the earlier centuries of what we call the Dark Ages, learning to read was actually forbidden by the church.

But when the nobles who answered the Pope's call for the Crusades got to the Holy Land, they didn't find barbarous savages as the Church taught, but very learned Muslim nobility, who had safeguarded many ancient writings over the centuries.  Documents in Greek and Latin, often predating the Church, many of which were long lost writings of Greek philosophers.  Histories, too, in both Greek and Latin;  a lot of these men learned those languages, and took some of these documents to Europe when they went home.

The principles they learned, the ideas the Greeks had struggled over and debated about changed European thought and culture forever.

Looking at European history since those times, one can clearly see the slow but long term steady change from a society dominated by the Church and theocratic rule to one ruled by secular authorities which eventually denied the Church any secular authority at all.

Today, Europe is even more secular than the US, with some countries boasting fewer than 20% of their populations claiming religious belief.

I am not going to dive into the whys and the wherefores of how this took place, I'm not an historian.  But it is sufficient to this discussion that it HAS taken place, and the progression of western culture from the conservative and the intolerant to a newer more liberal set of principles is easy to see.

It wasn't an easy road, and it wasn't a straight one.  There was much backsliding and a lot of blood was spilled along the way.

But as of today, the culture wars (as Ed Brayton puts it) are still slowly and jerkily moving us forward, even if it is like clawing your way up a steep hill in the mud, fighting gravity every inch of the way.

American culture has moved through the 18th and 19th centuries, forging a new set of unique values. Values built on the movement of millions of Americans across this continent which has cemented our belief in the worth of the individual.  Past migrations across places like Asia were based on mass population movement.  Entire cultures were displaced and forced to move into other parts of the world, but they moved as a people, in groups.

In the US, we did it often as individual families or small groups.  Sometimes one by one, these brave people made names for themselves and the stories of their travels are legend.  They depended, though, on each other.  On the frontier, the old traditions of breaking bread together around a fire were rediscovered, and the ideals of helping those in trouble were there to ensure that everybody had help when they needed it.

Individualism tempered by tolerance and charitable assistance where trouble struck has always been an American value.  We are, therefor, a proud people.  We pride ourselves on being independent.  On not being led around like sheep.  The watchword for early America was Caveat Emptor - let the buyer beware.

We have a sense of fairness, of balance.  American frontier justice was swift, but fair, mostly.  It had to be.  Early communities depended on that.  Religion was an individual thing.  Preachers were rare, priests even more so.  With so few to preach at them and so much to do simply to survive, religion just wasn't very important in large part, until civilization caught up.

But by then, the principles were set, spread by the media and popular books and newspapers, extolling the "Manifest Destiny" of this country to spread west.  The exploits of the pioneers were read voraciously throughout the US and even overseas.  The principles of individualism and their liberty from authoritarianism were well set by the middle of the 19th century.

So, you say, just what does all this have to do with a young man named Chad and an embarrassed Christian debater?

Plenty.

The modern American Evangelistic movement likes to pretend it is a monolithic movement, spreading like wildfire and taking souls from Satan daily.

But it isn't.  There are at least three types of evangelicals.

The Fundies - committed believers.  Literal bible believers, they are the soul, if you will, of that movement.  They set the tone.

The Moderates - they talk the talk, but rarely walk that walk.  They make all the right noises, but really?  All they do is check the right boxes on those national polls, so jesus will win.  But they either stay at home Sunday or just pretend.

Then you've got The Cognitively Screwed.  Guys like the debater, Mr. Marcellino.  He knows the Scriptures by heart, he is admired by his peers and his fellow congregants.  He talks with Jesus!

But, deep in his heart, he is still imbued with those core American values.  The sense of fairness, the core belief in an individual's rights to his own mind, without being forced into a mold.  He is, in short, uncomfortable with the idea that anybody should be tortured forever for a short term sin.   Particularly if they never knew what a sin was!

His values aren't biblical.  His values are informed by The Enlightenment, as formulated by the American Revolution and forged in the heat of the American Frontier.

But he can't admit it.  He is also an Evangelical.  He MUST believe in the infallibility of the Scripture.  It is pounded into his mind every Sunday, but his American values are in his mother's milk.  His culture insists that America is the greatest country in the world, with the greatest values.

But those American values conflict with his Evangelical values.

So, when he gets confronted by someone like Chad, his mind cannot deal with that conflict.

There are millions of people like Mr. Marcellino.  Hard core fundies, until their core values are conflicted with their religion.  Then, they are confounded as to where to turn, what to think.

To me, that is encouraging.  The more we see people who are supposed to be very religious being confronted and failing to even reconcile basic beliefs, the more we will see those reconciliations being resolved in a way we will think of as favorable.  Many people doubt their religion.

It is our job to confront them and help them resolve those conflicts reasonably.  That way, Progressivism WILL win.

Just don't expect it to be overnight.

Shattered feet of clay.

It is always unsettling - and a bit sad - to see an icon fall.  Our society so badly needs its heroes and icons, and when one's feet of clay are finally exposed, a lot of people are often terribly disappointed.

But some icons need to be exposed, because the things they represent are so sordid and harmful to society, yet have been touted as being good.

Mother Teresa is one such icon.

Her public figure has always been a saintly one, so loving, so giving, the head of an order (which she established) devoted to caring for the poverty stricken in need of medical attention, and possessing over 400 missions around the world. Such goodness, such devotion to poverty, she was depicted as living as poorly as her charges.

Christopher Hitchens exposed her for what she really was - a hollow figure, callously sequestering millions of donated dollars, refusing to provide the medication and care her charges so badly needed, she essentially forced them into the suffering she felt was so central to her public faith.   But when she needed care, she got it at an American hospital.  One of the best, at that!  Flew first class, was feted by the high and mighty.  Especially by dictators and warlords, who lavished her with donations, which she gladly took and often funneled directly to the Vatican.

And talking about her public faith; privately, she agonized over a disbelief she admitted in letters and private writings, one which could never be made public.  In reality, she admitted she never heard Jesus or God speak to her, and wondered if they even existed.

Now, in a peer reviewed study, two Canadian researchers have revealed new information, corroborating Hitchens completely, and totally exposing the raw truth of her perfidy at allowing a media campaign which twisted her into a public saint.

What is worse is that the Roman Catholic Church not only allowed that campaign, but probably orchestrated it in a callous and deliberate attempt to create another saint.  A figure meant to illustrate and illuminate the church's dogma of poverty and suffering, which it claims brings its adherents closer to God.

A dogma which, in actuality, simply controls its members by helping them to be happy in their poverty, fooling them into complacence and compliance.

When I write about harm from religion, this is what I am talking about.  Policies and actions which take a true shameful condition of millions of people around the world - one which could be alleviated - and turns it into a control measure to avoid those unhappy people from upsetting the current political order.

While the current Pope talks about how terrible secular capitalists are about hoarding money and perpetuating poverty by paying poverty level wages, the organization of which he is the absolute monarch is busy propagandizing those unhappy poverty stricken millions into believing that their plight is a blessed one to be embraced instead of improved upon.

In the meantime, the world marches on, pouring billions and billions of monetary units around the world into military capabilities with which to grind those unhappy millions into human paste.

Thank you, Mother Teresa.  On behalf of a frustrated world population which yearns for a world at peace, thank you for helping to perpetuate a world at war.  A world which encourages poverty and suffering.

Like you did.

Aaghhh! Demons!

Ah, but which is the demon?

Is it a malicious evil being out of medieval church belief or is it the exorcist himself - or maybe just the belief?

According to this ABC News article, exorcism is widely believed in the US.  In Africa, demonic possession is so much a part of the social fabric, you are probably a bit strange if you don't believe in it!

But for my purposes today, the focus will be on the Catholic Church.  It seems the Pope has accepted the rite of exorcism and a group of priests who practice it as an integral part of Catholic Dogma.

Pope Francis is said by some to have performed an exorcism on this young boy.

Obviously, that means that the Catholic Church really, truly believes in the existence of demons.
This is not good, folks. This is medieval stuff, superstition.

By now, we should be so far beyond this, it should be laughable.  We live in the 21st century.  We fly in aircraft that hold 500 people at a time from one side of the planet to the other.  We have cured diseases that killed people for centuries, and delved into the very DNA that makes us human.  We've flown to the moon and gazed through the eyes of our robots at the furthest reaches of our solar system.

Even in the US, people really, truly believe in demons.  Look at this Catholic forum on exorcism.

But I'm not laughing, because in Africa, they still BURN witches. Exorcisms are, literally, torture sessions where priests torture children, in the guise of driving out demons.  Beatings, burnings, cutting.  (Not Catholics, by the way, from what I saw.)

This is evil, incarnate. I don't care how reasonable Pope Francis seems to you, this drives that right out of the conversation.  The belief in demons is superstition.  It is worse than believing in ghosts, it assigns the designation of evil to invisible yet supposedly powerful beings in order to prevent human beings from looking into the true reasons why people do bad things, and as in the exorcisms in Africa, give people an excuse to torture innocent children which hides the actions of malicious adults who would be the true perpetrators.

I suppose the RCC doesn't condone torture as a way to exorcise demons.  Not any more, I'd hope, at least not physically.  But to have the most powerful and pervasive Christian Denomination in the world tell the entire planet that it believes, as part of its dogma, that demonic possession is real and can be "cured" by a ceremonial ritual gives the others an excuse to continue to practice the worst of the rituals that DO involve torture.

Until now, my picture of the Catholic Church as an organization that condones some evil was limited to the child abuse scandal.  That the Church itself, as dogma, didn't condone the abuse, but that it was condoned by the priests and higher ecclesiastical ranks as individuals - a kind of invisible, good-ole-boy network from the remote past that would be hard for the "good" priests to root out.

Not any more.  This is rot of the highest order, straight from the top, condoning and actually teaching superstitious dogma as fact.  In your face, institutionalized evil incarnate.

For me, the Pope just stripped his friendly face completely away and exposed the ugly underside of religion.

Raw, unadulterated superstition.

#childabuse, #cruelty, #mentalhealth, #HarmfromReligion, #Religion, #RomanCatholicChurch,

Correction to the Irish Mother and Child Home story

I was drawn to a story this morning posted in the Irish Times regarding the horrific tale of the almost 800 infant/child skeletons found in the septic tank at a Mother and Child Home (as they are known in Ireland - actually homes for unwed mothers and "illegitimate" children) by a researcher doing genealogy a while back.

It seems that many of the stories which have been spread from the original article misinterpreted some of the facts.  The linked to article sets us straight.  Most of the infants and children buried at the Tuam home were buried in a cemetery within the grounds of the home, not IN the septic tank.  According to an interview of one of the boys who originally found the tank and it's occupants, there were no more than perhaps twenty bodies within the tank itself.

There are a couple of  implications of this correction, but rest assured, lessening of the fault of the Roman Catholic Church in the existence and the terrible conditions in these homes is not one of them!

It does lessen the horror somewhat to know that most of the children who died there were at least accorded some modicum of decency in death, if not in life.  It increases the chances that conditions in most of the other homes may be found to be no worse and perhaps even a bit better.

On the other hand, the environment inculcated by the Church allowed an atmosphere to develop which allowed at least one and perhaps a small cabal of abusers to cause these children - as few as five or as many as twenty - to be disposed of in a septic tank sewerage and apart from the normal burial procedures at that one home.  What abuse and neglect caused these deaths, we may never know, but still, the fault lies with the Institution which allowed the abuse to occur and continue as long as it did.

There is no doubt that any story is at once too simple and also often incorrectly reported at first glance.  This one is not an exception.  I am sure that even in these institutions of callousness and indifference, there were individuals who did their best to mitigate the cruelty and intolerance showed by the institution and its rules towards a badly mistreated underclass.  Even amidst the horrors of the Holocaust, there were stories of the occasional kindness by even the worst of the criminals who staffed the camps.  It is and has always been possible for good people to be trapped by circumstances in a terrible place and time where their ability to mitigate the damage is limited to individual kindnesses on an occasional basis. I am sure, once the story of these homes is finally told, we will hear of people who were kind, even heroic in their attempts to fight the indifference and the horrors they were faced with in an institution whose purpose was the denigration and enslavement of an underclass of officially detested women and their children.  People will, after all, be people, and even in terrible circumstances, the basic goodness of mankind will often show itself.

But let's make no mistake.  The basic reasons these homes existed was to warehouse and make disappear the detritus of a society which considered them to be a sinful and evil mistake.  A society which was outlined in my post on my Facebook page yesterday describing the social institutions built by the Roman Catholic Church within Irish society in the first half of the twentieth century.

There is and can be no lessening of the fault and the guilt of that institution by the revelation of this article that some have misinterpreted the story of the children's' burials in the Tuam Home.  This story must be and more than likely will be investigated and eventually told in all of its horror, frightful detail and the occasional lighthearted story of heroism or courage in the face of adversity.

It will be at once more complex and nuanced than we have seen at first glance, and yet, we must not lose sight of the basic lesson we should take away from it.

The entire edifice of Irish society which enabled these homes to exist - which in fact required them to be built - is the result of the Roman Catholic Church and the teachings and dogma of that institution resulting from the interpretation of Christian Scripture by the Church Hierarchy of the day.  Teachings and interpretations which continue virtually unchanged to this very day and age, and which would, if that institution had its way, require the very same kinds of homes to continue to exist into the future.

Interpretations which could, at any time, be re-examined and reinterpreted to end that terrible intolerance.  If the teachings and dogma of that bygone age continue, it is by the willing and intentional decisions made by current Church Fathers (read: Pope and Cardinals) to continue the horror.

They have a choice, and it seems they've already made it.

Time to come clean, or just clean house.

By now, many of you have seen the latest news from Ireland, about the almost 800 bodies of infants and children found in a septic tank on the grounds of one of Ireland's many "mother and child" homes maintained at government expense by the Catholic Church across Ireland during much of the early 20th century.

What you may not understand is that those kids were tossed in without ceremony, without last rites, unwanted in death as they were unwanted in life.  When the site was discovered by accident in 1975, it was re-covered by a new concrete slab, and Catholic prayers were said over it, quickly, by a priest before it was again forgotten and ignored.

Bad enough that women were enslaved by the church at the expense of the theocratic Irish government of the time, forced to work for little or no money, and had their children ripped from their arms simply because they became pregnant out of wedlock.

Bad enough that Catholic priests have, for a length of time unknown to all, sexually molested the children of even their most devout followers, and covered up the facts through Church approved rules and regulations to prevent public discovery of these sad and outrageous actions.

But to discover that the Church in Ireland, at countless homes scattered throughout that long suffering country, was actually killing these children through willful neglect, is simply beyond the pale of what a civilized world should accept.

Now we find that at least at one such home, the children so callously killed through willful neglect were also shamefully tossed into a septic tank like so much human feces.

Was this a common practice?  Were all such children disposed of so casually?  How widespread was this practice?  Are they almost all in unmarked, unsanctified mass graves?

Now, a UK based media outlet has asked those questions, and is demanding accountability.

While I think it is about time this is finally brought to light, I would take it further.

How many other countries have seen similar such homes and similar conditions?  This cannot be a phenomena unique to Ireland.  This was an intrinsic, imbedded and very authorized practice throughout that country, indicating that the Church Fathers (read:  College of Cardinals) not only approved, but allowed it to occur and made it official and part of the Church bureaucracy.

What part of the enslavement of women and the neglectful death of children was covered by the New Testament?  Where are the words of Christ that allowed and approved of the death of children for the sins of their parents?  Where is the justification in the teachings of Christ for this complete and utter failure of the church to stand up for its dogma and it's teachings?

Not to mention the shameful coverup of its crimes by throwing the bodies into a septic tank.

It is beyond time for the world to stand up and demand that the Roman Catholic Church come clean.  Time for it to admit to its crimes, worldwide, and to take real, measured actions to atone for the crimes of its past, by funding the uplifting of the poor of this world through the sale and liquidation of church wealth and property it has accumulated and hoarded for almost two millennia.

Time for an abject apology and real atonement.  Or it's values mean nothing, and it's teachings are mere window dressing for its real goal - collecting and hoarding wealth.

Shameful, indeed.

Today, the Supreme Court of the United States of America took the next step towards the dismantling of the Bill of Rights.  For years, they have chipped away at various parts of it, mostly having to do with citizens' rights in encounters with the police and other parts of the Justice System.

Today, they dealt a body blow to the First Amendment.

In a case brought in regards to a city council holding sectarian prayers (specifically Christian prayers mentioning Jesus) at the beginnings of city council meetings, they basically said it's ok.

Let's look at that again.

They said it is OK for a governmental body made up of elected officials to hold sectarian prayers.  That it is ok to push citizens of other religious beliefs into an official second class citizenship status by virtue of having to listen to prayers endorsed by the majority of those elected officials.  And by virtue of some of the language in the majority opinion, it is the right of the MAJORITY to force their religion into those prayers.

So, how long will it be until a small town somewhere becomes dominated by Muslims who then endorse a specifically Islamic oriented prayer - thereby causing redneck heads everywhere to explode with rage upon discovering that a five justice majority consisting of all Catholics ruled that such a display of sectarian religious ceremony is legal and supported by their precious Constitution?

I sincerely hope that is within the period of my lifetime.  I really, really want to watch the fun, especially when Scalia's head is among them...

If he can even remember how he voted on this ruling by that time!

Saints preserve me, I think I'm beginning to agree with the Pope!

In a recent blog post, "Popes come, Popes go", I cautioned against believing too much in the newly minted Pope's statements about how the church should pay more attention to how it cares for the poor, noting that I believe he is trying very hard to bring the flock back into the fold, so to speak.

I still stand by that post.  No matter how much sense this new guy makes in his public statements, he is still the head of the oldest and most conservative bureaucracy in the world.  He is still the monarch of one of the oldest surviving monarchies, and most definitely the only one with anywhere near absolute authority.  At least in theory.

But dang it, his statements sound so good!

The cyberwife and I were talking today about some of the recent posts we've seen on Facebook about right wing political statements we've seen, discriminatory laws we've seen getting either passed or proposed, the terrible time many people are having just staying above water on the bills, and juxtaposing all that with our own circumstances and my eventual retirement in a few years.

We are very lucky.  Lucky to be born white.  Lucky to be born in First World countries where we were able to get good educations, and have been able to help our children get well on their way to being productive adults as lucky as us.  Fortunate to have an income better than most Americans (though not wealthy, and burdened with more debt than we should).

And as a Fed, destined to have a decent retirement after over 40 years in service.  (So, don't think I didn't EARN it!)

But darn it, so damn many people who have worked just as hard as I, or harder, don't have either a decent income or are unable to look forward to any retirement, much less a good one.  Or even a half-assed one, for that matter.

We live in a house that we bought a couple of decades ago when we had three teenagers, and really needed the space.  Now, with them gone, we rattle around this house like two quarters in a can.  The technology we use to heat and cool this space ensures that we must heat/cool the entire space, regardless of how much we use.

That's not all.

In looking at our entire livelihood and lifestyle, it is plain that living in this capitalist country, in order to protect ourselves, provide for our own welfare and look out for our future, we must live in a way that is, essentially, selfish.

We live in a house that is too big.
We use too much energy to heat/cool it.
We tend to buy/consume too much food.
We use a transportation system that costs too much and uses too much fuel.

In order to protect our lifestyle, we cannot bring in strangers in frigid weather who need a warm place to sleep, because that would place our lives in danger.  The amount of money we can afford to donate to causes that help such people is, really, not nearly enough.

Why?  Because as the Pope says, we live in a country under a capitalistic system that cares only for the almighty dollar.  People do not count.  Wasted resources do not count.  There is no effective way to force this system to change in time to keep more people from dying in poverty.

We are, in short, trapped.  Like most Americans.  Trapped in a system that doesn't care about us, doesn't care about the poor or the unfortunate, or the sick or the mentally ill.  A system where only money talks.

It forces me to live in guilt, feeling that I am using too much energy and other resources (which I am), but also knowing that if I don't, I run the chance of losing all that and ending up in poverty.

And I hate that.  I want to live in a society that cares for the less fortunate.  One that provides good, solid and low cost health care for all its citizens.  One that provides a good roof overhead and three squares a day for everybody.   Someplace that will pick me up if I stumble, and gives me a way to pick up my neighbor if he/she stumbles instead without jeopardizing my livelihood or my safety.

One that doesn't tell people who need help that they don't deserve it.  A society which allows people their personal freedom to determine their own future, without coercion, without shaming, without making them feel like second class citizens.

Is that too much to ask?  Is it?

Vatican in trouble over child abuse again.

Here's an interesting update on the state of the child abuse scandal that has engulfed the Roman Catholic Church in recent years.  Representatives of The Holy See on Thursday will appear before a U.N. committee in Geneva on its implementation of the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child in order to answer questions about the Vatican's involvement in the scandal.

The linked story at the Washington Post gives the details, so I won't go into the nuts and bolts of the issue here.   If you are interested, follow the link and read the WP's story.

What I want to talk about is this:

The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said Wednesday that the Holy See ratified the treaty because of its longstanding commitment to caring for children, in the fields of education, health care, refugee services and other outreach to families in need. He said that while abuses had occurred at the hands of churchmen, it was important to distinguish between where the Holy See bore responsibility and where local authorities must intervene. 

“The Holy See is not an organization in which all the priests or Catholics of the world are employees. It’s a big religious community,” he told The Associated Press. “Every member of this community has responsibilities as citizens of the country where he or she lives and with the authorities of that country.”

Emphasis mine.

And yet, to date, the Holy See has refused to encourage its bishops to report abusers to local authorities, hiding behind the lack of laws in many localities requiring such reporting.  In fact, in past cases in the US, even in States where the reporting of suspected abuse is required, such reporting has failed to take place, and the Church has often moved the abusers to new locations where they often have engaged in new cases of abuse.

This stance is outrageous!  It is widely known and accepted that the church hierarchy is in full administrative control of every priest consecrated in its name worldwide.  In fact, just recently, the Pope excommunicated a priest for his consecration of a female priest.  That is definitely a case where local "control" was jumped over and the central authority of the Pope was invoked.

The church may use legal and financial means in different countries to hide and or obfuscate the reality of its worldwide control, but the fact is, a Catholic priest anywhere in the world has to submit to the authority and control of the Pope.

The Roman Catholic Church has been and is still now refusing to respond to this worldwide crisis of the abuse of children in any meaningful way.  It has, in fact, seemingly circled the wagons and hunkered down for a long siege, apparently hoping that it can survive this by stonewalling until public attention goes away.

This very clearly signals that the new Pope, no matter how newly nice or concerned he seems to be, is still either unable to control his kingdom, or is not as concerned in reality as he would have you think from his public persona so recently scrubbed clean.  I have warned that he is still mainly concentrating on cleaning up the public face of his church for the purpose of stemming the tide of Catholics who have been running out the door, taking their money with them, and this current position of the church has not changed my mind.

In fact, I believe that one of the reasons so many Catholics are still running for the door is because of the Church's stance and reactions to this crisis.  How can one continue to support an organization which preaches the love and devotion of Christ for his people when it not only refuses to stop the abuse of its most vulnerable and youngest members, but protects the monsters who conduct that abuse - nay, even propagate that abuse by allowing them to move to new locations to seek new victims?  One that even refuses to defrock and remove abusers from its ranks!

I am convinced that the Church, at its highest levels, not only refuses to respond to the crisis in ways the public demands, but does so because it is still of the opinion that the Church is above secular law and can weather this crisis like it has weathered so many in the past.  They believe it can stonewall outsiders and just outlive the crisis.

They do have a point - this is a bureaucracy that can trace its roots back to the Roman Empire through an unbroken line of church authorities going back to the 4th century - around 1700 years!

That IS a long time, and it HAS withstood a lot of such critical problems in the past, and its international worldwide organizational reach is one reason why.  Because of the fragmentary nature of the organization of the world's political States into many separate sovereign entities, they HAVE been above secular law for much of that existence.  They think that this crisis is no different, and are depending on their international stature to continue to provide them with relative immunity based on that power and reputation.

But this crisis is different from past crises.  In the past, information was hard to disseminate.  People didn't tend to get an international sense of things, even with the new advent of TV, because that took the news media getting that sense and providing the story.

Today, we've got the Internet.

Today, information takes mere minutes to cross oceans where in the past it took hours, days, or weeks.  You've heard the old saying that bad news is all over town before good news has a chance to put its shoes on?  Today, good news doesn't even have time to turn off the alarm clock before the bad news is across the globe.

The Internet, as a global communications network, enables people to organize along lines of interest globally.  This time, the RCC is not faced with a few isolated local authorities it can ignore with impunity.  It is faced with global attention.  People all across the world are watching and evaluating the Holy See's actions and words, and if many many people don't see a marked improvement in the Vatican's position, more and more people will keep running for that door.

No matter how nice the Pope is, nor what color his shoes may be.

I'm Back! (and, what about that Pope, huh?)

Well, It has been a wonderful two weeks, hobnobbing with family, helping my oldest cyberdaughter care for her new twins, and generally being lazy and playing the new grandfather!  If you don't have grandkids, I recommend it!  (That requires that you first have kids.  If you haven't done that yet, I suggest you get started - fast!  Grandkids are too wonderful to miss...)

I was under the impression that coming up with a subject to expound upon might be hard to do, but fortunately, one of the usual suspects has given me plenty to talk about.

What about that Pope, huh?   Ain't he just hunky dory?  Or maybe just real cool?  These days, I hear a lot of atheists and others singing his praises and saying that it's about time someone from that ancient bureaucracy finally stood up and got people started back down the road Christ laid out for them way back when.

On that very short note, I agree - totally.  it IS about time the head of that organization got people thinking about the message of their alleged founder instead of this new fangled plutocratic message the Republicans have been spreading around.

On the other hand, I also feel like a Mac user, chanting outside Micro$oft headquarters, "As long as it takes!" referring to keeping M$ CEO Steve Ballmer on the job as long as it takes for him to finish running that company into the ground.  (Oh, yeah, I AM a Mac user, although I haven't done that particular chant in front of M$ HQ yet...)  But you get the point - as long as the Church keeps running with the GOP's plutocratic platform, the more folks will continue to leave the RCC like rats from a sinking ship, and this guy is trying very hard to turn that around.

I am glad he is saying these things in part because I think it is important that people who believe in the simple, uplifting message of love the more liberal Christian groups believe in, the better off this country will be in the short run.  The hateful message of the modern Conservative movement is bad for business, bad for government and terrible for the average American, and it badly needs to be countered by reasonable people.

But, in the long run, the more people leave Christianity, I believe the better off we will be because the more people will be using reason and science to decide public policy matters, and not an ancient late bronze age religious tract.  I mean, come on, people can be stupid enough when they ARE using reason and science - that isn't a panacea for stupidity - but once you throw in superstition and ignorance, all bets are off!

So I move forward with mixed feelings about this Pope.  On one hand, he IS a very reasonable sounding guy.

On the other, he DID excommunicate a supporter of female ordination just a bit ago.  Not exactly designed to reassure the uncertain masses sitting on the fence, trying to decide which way to lean.

My own advice:

Be happy he is making the Republicans sound like the money grubbing, soup line hating, capitalistic high rollers using $100 bills for lighting big Cuban cigars that they are!  But be aware that at the same time, that marketing largesse for the poor is tempered by the cold hard fact that it is intended to slow or stop the massive bleed-out of membership the RCC has been experiencing in recent years.

It comes with a price - toe the company line or else.  Pope Francis is not going to turn the Catholic bureaucracy around in the next 180 days, or even the next few years.  It isn't his intention!  Oh, yes, he'll get what he can for the poor he does seem to care about, but you'll notice that while he is living in a much more frugal looking set of digs than his predecessor, they haven't put any of those fabled treasures in the old digs out on Craig's List to raise money for the poor.  I'd bet dollars to donut holes that all that cash Mother Teresa sent the Vatican is still sitting in the fat bank accounts it landed in, and probably won't even raise interest money for helping the poor folks it was donated for.

If it ever does, and you start seeing entries on Craig's List for Vatican gold and art works, then you'll see me alongside you in the cheering gallery.

Until then, color me skeptical - or maybe cynical is a better word.

More evidence of harm by religion.

Well, we're back at sniping at the Catholic Church.

A theme of mine has always been how religion (ANY religion) can be harmful to humanity.  That the very precepts that make it what it is are so easily manipulated into something that supports violence, bigotry, patriarchy and other evils that it should be seen by humanity as inherently harmful and chucked into the waste bins of history.

Yes, I understand how those same precepts are often used for good, and that there are millions of people who do good obeying those same ideals.

The problem is, when people, individually, obey those ideals and do good, they are doing it one person at a  time.  When church officials and politicians use them to justify evil, that evil affects often millions of people at once.

Case in point.

Remember the hurricane in the Philippines a while back?  Remember how that monster was the biggest, well, typhoon (not hurricane, that is in the Pacific) to hit land with the highest wind speeds EVER?

The destruction, as you might imagine, was equally historic in scope.  Countries around the world have been sending assistance and money to help.

So, what does the Roman Catholic Church, the oldest, richest most influential church in the world do to help?  Does it send money?  Food?  Medical supplies?  Remember, the Philippines is a big follower of the Catholic Church!

No.  It sends rosaries.  And bibles.  So, when the Pope twitters to his followers that they need to help too, what does he advise?  Sending money or food?  No, he suggests prayer.

He could have suggested prayer AS WELL AS sending money or food.  But, I guess that would have taken up valuable shipping space that might have been used for his rosaries and bibles instead, huh?

Or maybe would have sent his tweet over the character limit, so they had to leave that part out...

See what I mean?  Instead of sending real assistance that survivors of a natural disaster really need to continue being survivors, they send useless crap, and let their followers do a simple prayer instead of money, letting them think that by doing the Pope's bidding, they've done something to help!

Instead of using valuable shipping space for valuable survival supplies instead of useless crap or sending money, which is the most valuable assistance ever.

Thus preventing real assistance from getting to where it needs to be sooner.

Folks, this is real harm.  This is not helping, even if you think prayer does some good.  But prayer doesn't increase shipping cubage.  It doesn't buy food, or medicine or temporary shelter.  It doesn't bring in doctors and the medical facilities that allow them to do their jobs.

It merely lets people thousands of miles away essentially talk to themselves, thinking they'e done some good.  Instead of nothing substantial.

Harm, pure and simple.  An excellent example.

Thanks for listening.

Popes come, Popes go...

This last Monday, Pope Francis was quoted as making an amazing statement.

According to Radio Vatican, the Pope said:

“In ideologies there is not Jesus: in his tenderness, his love, his meekness. And ideologies are rigid, always. Of every sign: rigid. And when a Christian becomes a disciple of the ideology, he has lost the faith: he is no longer a disciple of Jesus, he is a disciple of this attitude of thought… For this reason Jesus said to them: ‘You have taken away the key of knowledge.’ The knowledge of Jesus is transformed into an ideological and also moralistic knowledge, because these close the door with many requirements. The faith becomes ideology and ideology frightens, ideology chases away the people, distances, distances the people and distances of the Church of the people. But it is a serious illness, this of ideological Christians. It is an illness, but it is not new, eh?”

I am reminded of a photo meme on Facebook that pops up occasionally that quotes President Carter as saying:

"If you don't want your tax dollars to help the poor, then stop saying you want a country based on Christian values. Because you don't."

After searching for a bit, it seems that the statement was made by John Fugelsang, but comments indicate that Carter has made statements of that nature, including his "resignation" from the Southern Baptist Convention.

Another photo meme is attributed to a popular comedian, Stephen Colbert:

The Catholic Church is an old, monolithic institution.  It is, arguably, the oldest organized institution in the world, and is certainly the oldest monarchy to survive into modern times.  As such, the Pope is the titular head of that institution and supposedly sets the tone, direction and the goals of it during his reign.

That said, its history shows that when a Pope bucks the general trends and opinions of the rest of the church hierarchy, it doesn't always go his way.  Popes have, in medieval times, even been murdered for bucking powerful internal factions of Cardinals.

Now, that doesn't mean that I am saying that this new guy in in danger of his life.  This IS the 21st century, after all, and one would hope that after around 1800 years, it would have matured to the point that internal differences of opinion might be settled in a more - civilized - manner!  I am noting this because the direction this new Pope seems to be trying to steer the Church is a radically different direction from recent Popes' policies, and seems certain to anger church groups on the radical right fringes of Catholicism, many of whom got privileged treatment from the last couple of Popes.

Be careful, though as you are tempted to cheer this new guy.  Don't think for a moment that he is changing Church dogma or teachings.  He isn't.  He is merely warning the men who control powerful parts of the church under his direction that their past very public focus on very conservative teachings is driving rank and file Catholics away.  Those very conservative teachings are still there, still in affect, but he wants to focus instead on the kinder gentler things most Catholics DO support.

A sort of misdirection, if you will.

"Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!"  I can hear the famous line from the Wizard of Oz still ringing out, desperately trying to divert attention from the revelation of his subterfuge by the little dog.

It didn't divert the attention of his audience then, and it won't work for the Pope now.  The curtain has been pulled back, their true nature has been revealed by the light of public scrutiny.  As long as the Conservatives in the Republican Party in the US are stupid enough to keep ringing the bells of extreme right wing fundamentalism, and the US Council of Bishops keeps on helping them pull the rope, the words of the new Pope may sound nice, but they won't fool many.

In OUR world, unlike the fictional Oz, there are many more than just one man behind that curtain, and we desperately need to pay attention to what they say.

At First, It Looked Good. Now? Not So Much.

A while back, the word went out that the Pope had made some changes in Vatican law that criminalized child abuse.  Yay!!

In the Vatican.  Not everywhere, just the Vatican.  So, not so yay.

Now, the word is out (now that the verbiage of the new laws are now public) that it isn't such good news after all - it seems that simply reporting any sex crimes is now illegal!

According to the new laws, revealing or receiving confidential Vatican information is now punishable by up to two years in prison, while newly defined sex crimes against children carry a sentence of up to twelve years. Because all sex crimes are kept confidential, there is no longer a legal way for Vatican officials to report sex crimes.

Whoa!  All of a sudden, it isn't "yay" at all.  It is rather more in the character of "Boo"!

Of course, there is an explanation of sorts:

“We didn’t mean for this to happen, obviously,” lamented Vatican foreign minister Monsignor Dominique Mamberti. “It’s quite the papal pickle that His Holiness has placed upon our heads. Sex crimes are more illegal than ever, but technically it’s illegal to report them.” Mamberti said that the simultaneous passing of each law is merely a coincidence and insisted that the Church is not trying to protect itself against further embarrassment, but critics outside the Vatican are skeptical.

Skeptical?  Why would we be skeptical?  Could it have anything to do with the fact that almost every case of child abuse we know about was reported OUTSIDE of the Vatican, and thus the new laws won't have any more affect than trying to use a popgun to sink a battleship?  Or that the Church has done everything but commit murder to prevent word of sex crimes of any kind to get out to the public - much less reported to authorities?

Nah.  Couldn't be.  Right?  Right?

As the Holy See moves to clarify the law, Mamberti has warned would-be offenders within Vatican walls that they “are still subject to the most watchful eye of all: the eye of God..."

 Ok, now I know we're in trouble.

One horror - two lessons

Today's post is about a particularly disturbing thing that has come to my attention.  Via Ophelia Benson's blog Butterflies and Wheels at FreeThought Blogs, there comes a revelation from Ireland that the Catholic Church, in partnership with the government of Ireland, between the years of  1960 and 1975 as over 25,000 children passed through Irish Catholic orphanages, allowed pharmaceutical companies such as GlaxoSmithKline to proceed with vaccine trials on those children without their knowledge or consent.

Now, this kind of thing is disturbing enough, that a sovereign nation's government could allow any kind of human trials to take place without industry standard consent, but for these trials to take place without public knowledge or proper oversight is astonishing.

This reveals two very disturbing problems.  First is that this is a clear case of the conflation of Church and State producing a situation where the public health and welfare has been not only ignored, but abused.  By BOTH church and state.  This alliance between the two was so taken for granted by the two most powerful organizations in Ireland that nobody saw a requirement to adhere to either law or commercial health or medical standards for patient consent.

If this alone doesn't disturb you, your moral compass isn't just broken, it's shattered.

The next issue is that this illustrates perfectly the fact that religion, as it gains power and influence, allows for such moral outrages as this, creating immense damage and harm to the people it is supposed to care about.  But being both too big for its britches and conflated with the secular power, it allows itself to ignore its responsibilities and to become a law unto itself.

Now, if all this just fine with you, then you won't care that the radical right wing of Christianity in the US is trying to create just such a theocracy for itself.  So, then you can just go on and ignore this.

But if you do care and don't want this to happen in this country, then please pay attention to politics and help vote the Conservatives out of office.  Your children and theirs depend on your actions today to protect their future interests!

The new Pope and how I still oppose Christianity.

I gotta say, this new Pope is a different kinda guy.  Anybody who can get elected to the highest position in an organization that is still considered an absolute monarchy, which is well known for imprisoning its office holders in almost two millennia of tradition and still figures he can stand up the entire Curia on a concert date can't be all bad.

Pope Francis has earned a rep as a stand up kinda guy that tends to live the monastic life his religion's purported founder said is the right way to live.  Which isn't easy when one is the head of a church whose real estate holdings in the center of Rome are, in both real property and contents, worth multiple billions of dollars at the very least.  Not to mention its property holdings world wide.

He lives in a small guest house, in a small suite at that, and hasn't spent a single night in the spacious papal apartments, nor does he wear the gaudy white-and-golden crap his predecessor did.  His ring, I understand, is silver, not gold.

One could almost say he is trying to live the common life.

But really?   Does any of that matter?  One can argue that the little things like that, which show "humility", do matter, and to be fair, when they do live the high life and wear the gold and the fancy clothes and the red shoes and live amongst the finery collected over almost two thousand years it does seem to send a totally different message.

One that says they don't really care about the common man and woman on the street.

But does living a simpler life, clothing and regalia of office really send the opposite message?  Is that enough?  Is it enough for the man to stiff the Curia by not showing up for a fancy concert in order to let everyone see that he is a different kind of pope?

Or is it merely window dressing?

To be frank, I don't know.  I do tend to be cynical about it, and it does seem that the Curia's obsession with their wealth is taken pretty seriously.  They don't seem to care about how it is perceived.

In all fairness, Francis does seem to care, in the way he refuses to bow to tradition and eschews the trappings of power and privilege.  I guess if one is a powerful message of "don't-give-a-shit", one can argue that the opposite one is as powerful a message of "yes-I-do".

Unfortunately for the new pope, there is more to caring than living the apparently simple life.  Yes, it does send the message that one should pay closer attention to Christ's teachings but if that is the message Francis wants to send, then he has much further to go in getting that message across.

If he wants to say to his faithful that he cares, then he needs to change the teachings of his church that are so painful and harmful to so many of them.  Things like how harmful condoms are.  Or how contraceptives are sinful.  How about the message that women are second class citizens because they cannot be priests?

To be frank, were I a woman, I wouldn't care if he walked around in a loincloth and barefoot - as long as he calls me less than fully human, he may as well be wearing all that gold filigree for all the good his choice of wardrobe will do him.

Same thing for those who do not fit the "normal" gender identities.

What counts is where the rubber meets the road.  Will he change the radical right wing direction his church has been madly veering in for the last three popes?  There are reasons why the RCC cannot attract enough priests and why their pews are getting emptier and emptier as the years go by, and whether or not the pope wears Prada doesn't make a hill of beans towards explaining either of those problems.

What will tell is who he appoints in the positions that will matter in how the Curia is run while he is office.  Whether they are conservatives who will maintain the same direction of radical fundamentalism or whether they will be more progressive and move the church towards a new direction.

Not to mention whether he can survive without getting "ill".

What this guy says...is what I mean.

I've had a hard time explaining my opposition to the Roman Catholic Church to some folks, who just don't understand my opposition to the hierarchy, not the people.

So, I am going to try one more time, but this time, I've got somebody else to help me put it in better terms, and perhaps those who have misunderstood can better see my points.

So, here goes.  This article, by Andrew O'Hehir, at Alternet, is entitled, "Is Pope Francis a Fraud?"  It sounds rather sensationalist, and to a degree, I suppose it is.  The money quote for that sensationalism is this:

Fox believes that the last two popes, John Paul II and Benedict XVI, departed so far from both the letter and spirit of Vatican II — which should have been viewed as the authoritative teachings of the church — that they should be considered “schismatic,” or illegitimate.

That is, indeed, a sensational argument, and it has undoubtedly raised a few eyebrows!

But where this article illustrates my points begins here:

Fox argues, in essence, that the Schillebeeckx doctrine means the official church no longer exists or, to put it another way, that the power of the church has been diffused and now belongs to everyone. “What it means is that every cardinal, priest and bishop anointed in the last 42 years is illegitimate. What that means to the Catholic in the pew is, ‘Hey, there’s no one looking over your shoulder!’ If you’re trying to live out the principles of Vatican II, combined of course with the Gospels, that’s what the church is. The church is the people.” 

I was raised with this as the point of a church.  A church isn't the preacher or his boss - it is the people who gather together in harmony of belief.  And yet,

In the Vatican councils, they defined the church as the people, not as the hierarchy. Under these last two popes, it’s all about the hierarchy.” 

Emphasis added by yours truly.  THIS is my point, and this is why I oppose the RCC of today, and criticize it.  The agenda of the current leadership of the church has nothing to do with the welfare of the people who make up the church, who support it by their presence every time they go to Mass or who drop their money into the collection plate as they do.  Their agenda is all about maintaining the past.

Fox insists that he’s not alone in believing that the authoritarian reign of the last two popes represents a kind of illegitimate intra-Catholic coup d’état. He says he got the idea from the late Edward Schillebeeckx, a prominent liberal Dutch theologian and Dominican priest who managed to remain inside the church, at a private lunch in the late 1990s. “He told me, ‘I and many other European theologians feel that the present papacy’ — that would have been John Paul II — ‘is in schism.’

Put another way,  and I repeat in part:

Fox argues, in essence, that the Schillebeeckx doctrine means the official church no longer exists or, to put it another way, that the power of the church has been diffused and now belongs to everyone. “What it means is that every cardinal, priest and bishop anointed in the last 42 years is illegitimate. 

For me, if the church had gone this way, the only argument I'd likely have with it is the fact of its belief in the supernatural, which is a whole 'nother conversation:

Fox imagines a grassroots-based, decades-long popular uprising within the church, one that would install female priests and openly gay priests and married priests, would reclaim the spirit of Vatican II and ultimately render the repellent and backward hierarchy irrelevant.

But that isn't what has happened.

That’s a lovely idea too, but in the meantime we have the realities of political power, and a new pope with a soft spot for dictatorship and a hatred of gays at the reins of a decaying right-wing junta with especially fancy uniforms.  

And so, I continue my criticism of the church as I see the opportunity, not as a criticism of the people who are the real church, but of the decaying right wing junta with especially fancy uniforms.   I criticize them, not simply because of their clinging to old fashioned conservative ideals of a bronze age religion, but because the specific policies, such as anti-contraception, anti-abortion and misogynistic views of women, are harmful not only to women, but to the entire world in which they have such outsized influence.

Repeating here, once again, I criticize ANY religion which pushes these kinds of policies, and that does include any of them who do so.  Most do, or at least have extremist factions which do.  To the extent which their dogma and theology allows and supports such interpretations, even if considered extremist, I also include that theology in my criticism.

To those who believe such theology, whilst cherry picking the nice stuff and rejecting the less attractive, I will accuse you of supporting the bad guys, because by the fact of your admitted belief, you legitimize their belief of the bad parts.

If some day, the religions of the world begin to purge their religiously sacred texts of the violence, misogyny, intolerance and hatred that infuses them as leftovers from a less tolerant period of human history, I will applaud them and sit back and begin to relax a bit, for that purging will reject and denounce those parts and the people who believe in them.

But don't think that will stop the extremists, they'll just keep on keepin' on, because hatred is all they know.

Not a European Pope, but kinda sorta maybe...

Born in Buenos Aires of a father who was an Italian railroad worker.

So, yeah, he was born in the country and raised there, but he's got Italian blood, so at least that settles the bigots in the church who couldn't abide the idea of a "foreign" pope of hispanic blood, but were increasingly under pressure to select a non-European Pope.

So we still have yet to see a non-white pope.

To his credit, he's a Jesuit, who are known for their vows of poverty and caring for the downtrodden the poor and the less fortunate.  I mean, this guy even took the bus and cooked for himself!

But he fits the conservatives' requirements, as he is strictly anti-gay, so I would assume he also fits the anti-condom, anti-birth control etc., misogynistic ideals of the conservatives as well.  We shall see as time goes on.

I mean, ONE DAY?  The food at these conclaves must be getting really bad, or somebody was missing their Facebook fix...

Selection has begun!

Well, the College of Cardinals has started their conclave to elect a new Pope.

This may be interesting, historically, as the Holy See isn't the only absolute monarchy to elect its head of state.

Past elective monarchs include:

Greece
Rome
Serbia
Holy Roman empire
Poland-Lithuania
Venice
Malta
Macedonia

These were all ancient examples, of course, and there are few examples of such today, as only Malaysia and The Kingdom of Cambodia elect their monarchs in our modern world.  Feudalism is a dying form of government.

As for the Pope, since the 19th century, the interregnum, or as the RCC calls it, the Sede vacante has varied in length.  For each of the following Popes, here is the length of the interregnum before his election:

Pius VII         207 days

Leo XII         39 days

Pius VIII         49 days

Gregory XVI 63 days

Pius IX         15 days

Leo XIII         13 days

Pius X         15 days

Benedict XV   14 days

Pius XI         15 days

Pius XII         20 days

John XXIII 19 days

Paul VI         18 days

John Paul I 20 days

John Paul II 18 days

Benedict XVI 17 days

So, the chances are the we may see a new pope in just a few days, or this could drag out for the better part of a year.  I am sure that this has been picked apart ad nauseum by the press, and to tell you the truth, I just can't bring myself to read about it that much.

Not that I don't care.  It isn't, of course, my primary care or even in the top ten, but given that the man who is finally chosen will determine the course of that organization for the next ten years at least, and possibly beyond, if he is young enough, yes, that is enough to make me give a damn about who the man finally chosen is and what his politics will be.

My fondest hope is that they inexplicably choose a fairly liberal Pope who will at least halt this slide to the right and fanaticism of the past two, but to hope for that is, I think, futile.  The conservatives do still seem to have a fairly solid grasp on the reins of power in that body, and likely will for some time to come.

In a way that is bad news, since it signals the continuance of the strident opposition of the RCC against all progressive movements around the globe.

It is good news from the perspective that such strident conservatism will most likely continue the loss of victi... er, members as time goes by.  This is only the beginning, and it can only mean good things for folks like me in the future.

Excuses, excuses...

I have tried, in the past, to pull my "punches" when talking about Catholics and the Church regarding the recent scandals making the news.  I've tried to make the point that every person who walks into any organization, much less a church, and does business with it or follows its principles in an active and cooperative way is usually seen as supporting that institution.  Support, in this case means that one generally believes in what the group stands for and supports its activities.  Another way to say it is to note that one condones the group's actions and the actions of the people who run it.  I've tried to keep from saying what I really think, just to save some hurt feelings.  But I can't any longer.

Now, an argument I've run into repeatedly by Catholic apologists and/or supporters is that the "evil" men who have been caught up by the recent sex scandals are just that - evil men - and are acting on their own against the teachings of the church.  So, no evil intent accrues to the church itself.

I beg to differ!

A perfect example is the now retired Cardinal Keith O'Brian and the accusations against him by a former priest and three priests regarding his actions over thirty years ago.  There are plenty of people who will say that the accusations are old and stale, that the man's entire career should be taken into account instead of just a few unfortunate incidents decades ago.

I have the feeling that if the man was brazen enough three decades ago to solicit sex from other priests, albeit younger and more vulnerable than he, that it probably wouldn't take much to find a few more perfectly willing partners along the way, if not even a few more unwilling ones.  Sexual predators, whether gay or straight, do NOT stop preying on the vulnerable, especially when they keep getting away with it!

Let's face it - the culture of the priesthood of the RCC is a rarified one, almost 1800 years old with traditions and ways of doing things that are undoubtedly all their own.  The truth about that organization is one mentioned in the ABC News tonight - it is a feudal monarchy.  Each man in that hierarchy represents a rank in that hierarchy that begins with the lowly priest and ends at the top with the Pope, and the Cardinals are, as they are described - the Princes of that church.

Within that culture, they are the law within their own demesne, second only to the Pope, who is known to keep his hands out of the Cardinals' affairs to a remarkable degree.  They answer to no one, and their power over their underlings is absolute.  Absolute, because the Church has always chosen to claim that it and it alone, is above secular law.

And when people consider themselves above the law, they begin to do strange things.  The recent scandals expose what kinds of things they will do.

Rape young children.
Buy the services of those who sell their bodies for cash.
Engage in homosexual activities even as they condemn that lifestyle in public.

To top it off, the men who run that hierarchy control all that.  What, you don't think that each Cardinal doesn't know the sexual proclivities of his priests?  They live in a culture in which the higher officials control every aspect of the lower ranks' lives.  Everything!  It would be a wonder if they failed in just this one narrow subject, now wouldn't it?  After all, that knowledge is power, since the official line of the RCC is one of celibacy, the knowledge that one's underling is engaging in forbidden fun is power over that person, allowing the knowledgable boss to control that person absolutely, by being able to destroy that person's career in a heartbeat!

The flip side of that power is that once exposed, one runs the risk of public ruin oneself!  Just ask Cardinal Mahoney about that one...

I know that much of this is, officially, supposition.  I cannot prove any of this.  But this kind of activity is known to have existed in monarchial systems throughout history, and the known history of the church exposes similar kinds of Machiavellian maneuverings in the past.  There is no reason to believe that today's church authorities are any different than their predecessors.  Absolute control is absolute control.

Keith O'Brian is a perfect example, because for thirty plus years, he has been able to act out his fantasies, suppress its exposure and publicly excoriate people who are publicly acting out what he does in private.  The word hypocrisy is really too mild a word for that kind of perfidy and yet, at the same time, this man controlled, absolutely, the lives of the priests and other authorities below him.  He controlled the administrative apparatus, the human resources system, the theological apparatus that held the entire church of Scotland together!  You cannot tell me that his actions over the years were simply accidental, that he really didn't mean to hurt anyone or act in a hypocritical manner.  No, his actions can only be purposeful and deliberate.  You can bet your bottom dollar his bosses knew all about it too.

Does the word credibility mean anything these days?


In a very real way, these men ARE the church.  The people who they minister to may be the body of the laity, but they answer to and are bound by the word of those august men in red and black when it comes to matters of the soul and the word of god.

They teach kindness, love and helping the poor, all the while literally controlling a system that allows child abuse and not only tolerates sexual predatory practices against their own members, but publicly denounces gays who openly practice what they do or tolerate in secret.  All things which are officially denounced by the very theology they teach to their laity.

Yet, countless rank and file Catholic laity ignore these things, calling their religion a "way of life" as if that excuses their willingness to look the other way as if each scandal is a solitary and isolated thing that bears no relation to the overall organization that has housed and nurtured those scandalous activities for centuries.

No.  You cannot continue to treat these things like a hidden family scandal caused by the lone black sheep.  These men are not only the men who control your church, but they set the doctrine of that church.  It is within their power to change anything about that doctrine they wish, and they have the power to admit all and end it with the stroke of a pen.  But they do not.  They prevaricate and try to continue to stall until the public forgets and it all blows over.

Yes, they have taken some actions to allow some positive policies at the lower levels to protect children and handle the abuse cases better.  I am sure that there may be more that I am unaware of.

But it came after the exposure of their activities to public scrutiny and public condemnation.  None of the admissions of abuse have been wiling, open and unforced.  As a result, thousands of Catholics have left the church, and more are undoubtedly considering whether they can stay in light of the continuing scandals.

These are the people I can feel some compassion for.  They have the strength to admit the truth and the gumption to realize that their continued support for the church allows it to keep dragging its feet.

I am tired of hearing that these are evil men and each case is an isolated one that sheds no culpability on the church itself.  Yes, they ARE evil, but if they are and their actions are evil too, then how can the church escape that taint?  How can one believe a hypocrite - once his hypocrisy is exposed, nothing else he says or does has any credibility.  Even where he is supposedly acting rationally and in total compliance with policy, how can one keep from wondering how much more he has lied about?

I am sorry if this hurts some feelings, but I cannot and will not stay silent in the face of apologies which soft pedal the issues.

As a writer, if I do not write things which make some people uncomfortable or even angry, I have failed at my job.  If you're feelings are hurt, it isn't my fault, I have no control over the feelings or the thoughts of others.  I can only write what I see and feel to be true from my perspective.  If all I write is stuff you agree with, why write at all?  We could just go have a beer and denounce the evil bastards we disagree with.

But that wouldn't make you think about it, would it?

Going out...well, not in style, but at least with some dignity.

In the recent flurry of news about the Roman Catholic Church, there has been a lot of bad news that is causing a lot of headaches in the Catholic hierarchy, and a lot of heartache in the laity.  Not the least of these reports was the recent report about the Scottish head Prelate Cardinal Keith O'Brian, and allegations of his sexual misconduct with three young priests in the 1980's.

Now, I have always been one to chortle over the revelations of strict anti-gay advocates having been caught in the act of practicing that of which they preach against, and the initial reaction of mine was just that the other day. But having had a couple of days to let it swirl around in my head and mix with the other news stories about his fellow prelates, including the up and coming resignation of the Pope, today's news that he was forced into retirement by the Pope and that he now does not plan to travel to Rome to take part in choosing the next one made a surprising difference in my attitude.

I kind of didn't expect to hear myself say this about Ratzinger, but - Bravo!  This is exactly the kind of reaction an organization under the gun about members' misconduct should be doing: taking a hard line on that misconduct, even if it means rolling the metaphorical head of a high ranking official.

The good news is kind of tempered by the thinking of a lot of folks that this is simply to prevent the good cardinal from distracting the press/media from what the church really wants them to pay attention to - the election of the next Pope, but one hopes that this means that cooler heads are now getting some traction in the public relations department by getting the top dogs to listen to reason.

An additional caution to my thinking was that the allegations are just that, allegations.   Until proven or admitted to, he really should get the benefit of the doubt, at least from a legal standpoint.  Obviously, since the church isn't a government and is his employer, they've the right to can him if they wish.  Not an unusual thing for people accused of unethical behavior.  Not that he's been canned, just "retired" early, if only by a few weeks, and denied the honor of attending what is probably going to be the only papal conclave within the rest of his life.

Now, there are demands that the other prelates under clouds of suspicion, the Irish cardinal and Cardinal Mahoney of LA be "uninvited" for the conclave as well.  Both are accused of condoning the sexual abuse of children and moving priests and protecting them.  Additionally, the Irish fellow is also under the cloud of the Magdalene Laundry scandal.

We'll see how that plays out.  Obviously, the non attendance of all three of these gents would slim the ranks of the more conservative cardinals.  what affect that would have I can't pretend to know, but I'll take what I can get.

Both should stay at home and allow the untainted ones to make the choice.  At least that would eliminate the possibility of the future Pope being rumored to owe any favors to any of those men for his election.  Any lowering of the possibilities of further corruption at the top gives the whole organization more credibility.

And the outgoing Pope should get the benefit of doing something right in his last week.

Really? This is your answer to the world? Sigh.

Much has been written about the sexual abuse scandal roiling through the Catholic Church.  I've written about it here.   I've even noted that other organizations have been plagued by similar problems.

But there are two things that distinguish between an organization that nobody blames for an instance of sexual abuse of a child and one which deserves the full condemnation and blame that can ever be heaped upon it.

Attitude.

No, they don't understand.

My main problem lately with the RCC has been just that.  The failure of the RCC to fully, completely and transparently deal with the fact that pedophile priests within their ranks (not by far all priests, mind you) have not only been active, but have been protected by the hierarchy over the years, being moved from parish to parish to avoid discovery, not only by their parishioners, but by local law enforcement.

The fact of the existence of these actions is bad enough, but to date, the poster "child" for this entire scandal is Cardinal Mahoney of LA, now retired, and also recently removed from all pastoral and administrative duties, even in retirement, after the full brunt of documents were revealed in the current lawsuit over the scandal.

But I am here to reveal to you what was merely hinted at yesterday on the ABC Evening News regarding Mahoney's blog.

He starts out bravely.

One very insightful and powerful Address has sustained me over these past difficult years as all of us in the Church had to face the fact that Catholic clergy sexually abused children and young people. 

Entitled On Carrying A Scandal Biblically it was first delivered in late 2002 by Father Ronald Rolheiser, O.M.I., in Canada.  The Address was edited into an article, and is readily available on his website.

 Sure, even Cardinals under fire need some form of support, and there's a lot of places online where one can find inspiring things to sustain oneself in times of mental hardship.

But, keep reading:

There is nothing else in print which has so captivated my heart and soul, and served as the basis for countless meditations and reflections.  I recommend it to anyone who is searching for a truly counter-cultural approach at dealing with this terrible sinfulness which has overwhelmed all of us in the Church.

"Counter-cultural" approach?  Hmm.  Go on.

You will never find the Rolheiser approach even mentioned in any news media, since it is not about condemning others, but about how disciples of Jesus are called to carry and live out a terrible scandal day by day. 

He calls our suffering what it really is:  painful and public humiliation, which is spiritually a grace-opportunity. 

 Wait, hold it. Here, we begin to see the real problem, as illustrated by Captain Sparrow.  This isn't about you, Mahoney or your "suffering" upon being exposed as a law breaker.  This about your criminal actions in protecting other criminals.  This is about ending your criminal activities.  This is about you and your fellow bishops, archbishops and cardinals admitting your past actions and officially, publicly and finally, for all time, ending your organization's criminal activities in supporting these pedophiles and their heinous activities and hiding them from public view.

But, wait, read on!  There is more that fully exposes the real attitude problem.

I have tried to live out--poorly and inadequately far too often--his two implications of humiliation:

1. the acceptance of being scapegoated, pointing out the necessary connection between humiliation and redemption;
2. this scandal is putting us, the clergy and the church, where we belong--with the excluded ones; Jesus was painted with the same brush as the two thieves crucified with him.

 No.  Full stop.  Nobody is being scapegoated.  You, cardinal Mahoney, the entire Church Hierarchy, all the way to the Pope are being blamed because you not only failed to stop the abuse, but under the full authority of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith over Ratzinger's signature, hid the abuse,  and moved the offending priests to both avoid public exposure and prevent the arrest and prosecution of those offending priests.  You did it, not as"bad" individuals, or as men failing your god, but you did it in full understanding of the criminality of your actions and the actions you were protecting, and you did it using the full authority of your organization's hierarchical power, as delegated from the Pope, your absolute monarch.  You did it, arrogantly asserting that your church and all of its priestly hierarchy are above secular law, all over the world!

You are astoundingly presumptuous and arrogant by even suggesting that this puts you in league with your founding figure's travails - your church teaches that he was innocent and without blame!  You, yourself have probably pointed this out thousands of times in preaching to your flocks over the decades of your ministry!  How in the world can you, of all people, have the presumption to compare your current situation, accused of felonious, criminal activity with that of your innocently proclaimed god!

That's not all.

"Jesus models this for us.  He took in hatred, held it, transformed it, and gave back love; he took in bitterness, held it, transformed it, and gave back graciousness; he took in curses, held them, transformed them, and gave back blessing; he took in betrayal, held it, transformed it, and gave back forgiveness."  That's what it means to ponder biblically.

What a pile of crap.  I'm sorry for the blunt language, but that is the best way I can find to describe this tripe.

There is no forgiveness possible for a man, or an organization, which has the chutzpah to compare themselves and their "suffering" by public humiliation in the exposure of their criminality with the proclaimed innocence of their god and the story of his humiliation and crucifixion.  There is no comparison, and any person who accepts his words without utter disgust and contempt either isn't thinking very deeply or at some level has to condone the RCC's actions fully and completely.

The depths to which these people have fallen is astonishing, and the fact that more Catholics haven't risen up and made their disgust and anger known is frankly a puzzle to the rest of the world.

These people no longer represent their god.  These people can no longer claim the moral right or the standing to preach to the rest of us about how innocent and pure their crucified god is supposed to be.

If that god were real, he would denounce these monsters.  He would clean the world of the stain that organization represents upon his church and his reputation.  If he were real, his very hand would wipe them from the face of the earth.

Somehow I just don't see that happening.