Showing posts with label ministry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ministry. Show all posts

Sunday, April 11, 2010

Serial Predators vs. Pride of the Pope

I know that you may think I am harping on the Vatican Sex Abuse Scandal too much. I have come to put some things in perspective. I started down this road with articles being sent to me by a person who is a part time lay minister in prisons.

That person, though he never said it directly, probably would realize or hear that a lot of people in prison were abused as children – physically, mentally, sexually. That they were not all abused by the clergy but in civil lay institutions, family care, foster care. That the end result of abuse is in many cases a wasted life of God’s creation on this earth. That to minister to those with the message of hope and the words of hope in Jesus’ teachings is the little bit one can do and work with in ministering to those in prison. Jesus rocks.

All our lives are full of regrets and dead ends. But most of us have had a better break in life because we were not directly abused in our growing up to adulthood. Enough said.

Here is a comment from a victim, "Anne" (she has a name Joe), of the California “serial predator” Stephen Miller Kiesle of California. The victim is a woman – was a girl when abused. I suppose Bill Donohue at the Catholic League might question if she was raped by pulling out his handy Holy Guide to Rape with its point system and measurements of penetration to decide what really, really is rape.

Perhaps that little girl only got slapped around and fondled a few times which would not be a Catholic rape etc. (sorry for my bitterness regarding the inhumanity of the Catholic League and its campaign to erase this clergy sex abuse scandal in the RCC). Right now Bill Donahue’s Neanderthal logic and voice seems to be the only voice of the RCC in America.




It is too bad that the MSM has been gender neutral about the victims of these priests in the RCC. It took a loud mouth comedian like Roseanne Barr to point out the true nature and numbers of both boys and girls victimized in cooperation with the hack bureaucrat hierarchy of the church.

Which leads me to comment on how many American Catholic organizations are dumbfounded by the sheer lack of depth in the Vatican in addressing the church’s fucked up way of hiding crimes against humanity (children).

Lack of Vatican communications strategy on scandal baffles pope's U.S. defenders
Most American organizations facing such a barrage of negative news would long ago have pulled together a crisis management team and made top officials available for interviews to explain their point of view. But the Vatican said such an approach is too commercial for the Church to adopt. "We are not a multinational enterprise, this is clear," the Rev. Federico Lombardi, a Vatican spokesman, said in a telephone interview. "The normal situation of the Church and the Vatican is to help the people to understand the teachings of the Church and the documents of the pope and not to sell particular products."
Joe the Pope – Fire that asshole Rev. Federico Lombardi. Get your head out of your own ass and admit you made a mistake and start over. Fire dozens of crony bishops who facilitated these crimes to persist and fester.

If not – Joe the Pope – this whole thing reeks of Nixon and Watergate. It was not that Nixon did a great criminal thing, it was minor. It was the coverup that was major and brought down the most powerful political figure on the planet. Nixon’s sin was Pride.

Your sin too is Pride. I do not wish to see this scandal go on and on like Watergate. But if your pride is more important than the good of the People of God – the Church – then I hope there is air conditioning in hell and perhaps your roommate will be Dick Nixon.

You can both spend eternity lying to each other about how great you were in life and how what a rotten deal they dumped on you. Have a nice life.

Friday, January 9, 2009

Anti-Semitism, Mel Gibson Style

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I am not comfortable talking about anti-Semitism. I do not feel qualified to talk about the subject and will not attempt to do any lengthy essay. I would like to focus on one slice of publicly displayed anti-Semitism and surrounding the public figure of Mel Gibson with his remarks in July 2006.

Without even going after remarks by his father Hutton Gibson or his own words in a drunken stupor, the basic fact of Mel's anti-Semitic remarks originate with the Constantine Bible - a bible written for a Roman General/Emperor and for the political agenda of that political person - written, assembled three hundred years after the death of Jesus. The Jews and not the Romans supposedly killed Jesus. Whatever.

What I attack here in my simple Christian belief system is the logic or lack of it regarding what this Jesus story means in terms of hating a race for the actions of some individuals, the high priests in Herod’s temple bureaucracy.

My argument is this. Who did Jesus preach to in his three year ministry? I have to say mostly Jews. They were poor working class Jews. Oh there were a few Romans and a few Samaritans but 100% percent of Jesus’ ministry on earth was to 99.9% Jews.

Did Jesus preach his Sermon on the Mount to an empty mount? Did he feed 5,000 non-Jews with loaves and fishes? Did he go to Roman wedding to change water into wine? NO! There were a few Jews present at all these mentioned events. If you look at the Gibson family mindset, they must wonder why Jesus wasted all his time with the - the - the Jews!

How do you separate Jesus from his roots and then say that his roots were not the important part of his ministry? It is all a bit twisted.

Jerusalem and Judea as a political state went out of existence about forty years after Jesus’ time.

Christianity as it got recycled with Greek and or Roman religions lost its Jewish flavor or origins. Or did it?

Did Jews who became slaves after the destruction of the Temple in 70 C.E. go to Rome and then buy their freedom after they helped build the Coliseum in Rome? Did they stay in Rome? This scenario has been suggested by the TV history presenter Simcha Jacobovici.

Jesus planted the seed of faith and of the new faith through Jews who ended up on the other side of the planet and without a homeland.

There are so many rich possibilities for the flowering of faith and continuation of tradition and even with paradigm shifts on a religion and a culture in transit in the first century of the common era.

When some ignorant Irish Mick spouts his mouth off and reiterates the hate of his parents, well maybe that is anti-Semitism.

I think the religious ignorance of who and what Jesus was - and was about for his people, the Jews, is something greatly monumental in the depth of stupidity and vice.

And then again maybe the anti-Semitic remarks were solely and conveniently used as a deal breaker on the proposed Gibson movie about the Maccabees. He just did not have it in him to do a great movie or do justice to that historic era.

Forget about the ministry of Jesus. Just hate a race that everyone wants to make extinct. Well, I do not think that will ever happen. There is something internal about the nature of man and culture and this indirect hated of the imperfectly formed and recycled religion called Christianity. Better to hate its origins than reform its present mess.

As for the Maccabee Movie, better that old Mel could not do it. Who would want to watch Apocolypto with a yamaka on it?