excellent conversation - - Christian and Muslim

An Excellent conversation and video dudes, between a Christian and a Muslim.

We could both be wrong about God: Jesus

Ricky Martin comes out of Closet

The last thing I thought I would be writing about would be a Puerto Rican Pop Singer but here I am. I am no Ricky Martin fan to be honest but that sentiment here is irrelevant.

From others who like his music or who know his personality I had already heard that he was Gay. No big deal. Who did not already know? Strange thing is that he has been living behind a public mask of sorts for many years.

Ricky Martin announces he is gay

In his website he wrote: "To keep living as I did up until today would be to indirectly diminish the glow that my kids where (sic) born with."

He may just be generating interest in a book he is writing etc. And of course, most famous singers hit a wall around the age of forty whereby their fan base melts away. Got to reinvent yourself.

Martin has two sons born to a surrogate mother in 2008. I have seen this before in some high profile gay people whereby they adopt or have surrogate mothers produce a child.

The Parenting instinct is a strong one. For people who are perhaps cheated out of the “normal” life of the other ninety odd percent of humanity, why not do some social catching up of sorts in building one’s own life to satisfy oneself and try to conform to social norms as well. Nobody likes being an outsider.

Kudos to Ricky, for coming around to reality and to not living one’s life in a total lie.

Putting Martin aside, the flip side of all this has to do with Christians who want to keep Gays from marrying.

I do not know the personal life of this pop singer but apparently a parenting instinct is being followed. Some sort of natural law is in place. Problem with natural law is that nobody has re-examined it on the religion side of any equation for thousands of years.

On the secular side, Darwin’s view of the world, and it’s natural laws, is a hundred and fifty years old.

The whole Christian right argument about marriage has been that it can only be between a man and a woman. And because in the ancient past marriage was the only logical, socially acceptable way to reproduce and nurture offspring.

That with science, in a secular world, some assumptions about marriage are obsolete. Obsolete in the sense that children can be produced without marriage or two opposite sexes in direct or total connection.

Parenting is a real issue in the concept of marriage and not the lineage idea attached to claims of property. Somehow the political or religious right is always obsessed about property first and foremost. Property I can assure you is nowhere mentioned in so-called mythical Natural Law.

With parenting not an issue for some gay people who can afford surrogate mothers and nannies, the other part of the equation regarding gay marriage is one of companionship.

I am not too hip on every phrase in the old/new book but I do not think that lifelong companionship is emphasized too much in the writings of men only over the centuries.

Never the less, there is a gay man, a pop singer with two kids. Why would his marriage in theory to someone of the same sex be a sin and or a crime?

Marriage is a civil secular institution.

To Life !

Obama - White House - Passover

For the second year in a row in the private family quarters of the White House, Passover Seder will be celebrated by Jewish White House staffers along with the President and First Lady in attendance.

Obamas mark Passover with private Seder

The most sacred of the Jewish holidays and ceremony around a private family table will mark the tolerance and curiousity and reverence that the President of the United States gives to the root faith of monotheism.

With a Muslim, non-believer, Christian, potpourri of personal family traditions, Barack Obama gives additional voice and witness to the belief in the Deity/Creator force with attendance at Seder today at sunset.

Witness and testament also to the need of all humanity to be delivered from the slavery of political, economic injustice as well as well as deliverance from tyranny over the minds of Men and Women.

The Sacred and the Obscene

I am old enough to remember when Richard Nixon stonewalled the federal prosecutors and the press over his crimes committed in the Watergate Scandal.

Having recently seen the movie Frost/Nixon, you see that Nixon said something to the effect that anything a President does is not a crime - The Nixon Defense so to speak. Nixon in the role of American King Richard I was a tragic figure worthy of a Shakespearian play.

As I see this VaticanGate sex abuse scandal unfolding at the feet of Benedict XVI, I cannot but help see similarities in the major hubris with which kings treat their crimes against the state and humanity. Benedict is stonewalling. He is running out the clock of his papacy because as a man of his age, he does not have much longer to endure or having to keep the modern world from his Ivory Tower world of fantasy and religion.



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With a mere lengthly papal letter of apology to the People of Ireland for the thousands of sexually abused children over decades of religious institutional authority – it got met with a big Irish YAWN. The Irish problem was that the state outsourced tens of thousands of orphans to slavery workhouse, sweatshop conditions of church institutions and the kids also got buggered as well in that bargain with the devil.

A letter from a lifelong bureaucrat in the Vatican does not hack it for the Irish or for the rest of Humanity as well.

This papal letter post scripts a long, concise and documented account of abuse by Irish clergy that was conducted by present day civil appointed authorities in Ireland. Those recent reports came to light in a secular day just as this sexuality problem, scandal, of celibate priests goes into its second decade, first in the United States and now leapfrogging to Europe.

The Ireland issue has triggered a Eurpopean bursting of the dam of silence over clerical buggery in many countries including the native Germany of the Pope. His deafness while at meetings about a certain German buggering priest that went on until last week was the hallmark of his Archbishop of Munich job done so well that they promoted him to the Vatican in the early 1980’s.

Sex abuse scandal in US, Italy taints papacy

Revelations that the Vatican halted the investigation of a Wisconsin priest accused of molesting some 200 deaf boys have eerie echoes in Italy, where 67 deaf men and women accused two dozen priests of raping and molesting children for years.

Only now — a year after the Italian case became public — is the Vatican directing the diocese to interview the victims to hear their testimony about the accusations, The Associated Press learned Thursday.

The two cases are the latest in a burgeoning abuse scandal on both sides of the Atlantic that now threatens to tarnish the papacy itself. The office charged with disciplining clergy was long led by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, and a church prosecution in the Wisconsin case was stopped after an appeal to Ratzinger.

And:

On Friday, The New York Times reported that the future pope was kept more closely apprised of a German priest's sex abuse case in 1980 than previous church statements have suggested.

The case of the German priest, the Rev. Peter Hullermann, has acquired fresh relevance because it unfolded at a time when Cardinal Ratzinger, who was later put in charge of handling thousands of abuse cases on behalf of the Vatican, was in a position to refer the priest for prosecution, or at least to stop him from coming into contact with children, the Times said.

Cardinal Ratzinger was copied on a memo that told him that a priest, whom he had approved sending to therapy in 1980 to overcome pedophilia, would return to pastoral work within days of beginning psychiatric treatment, the Times said. The priest was later convicted of molesting boys in another German parish.

Priest 'abuse victims' speak out

Three deaf men who say they were repeatedly abused by priests as children have confronted an Italian church diocese about why it has not punished their abusers, saying they want justice.

The three men appeared on a prime-time talk show on Italy's state-run RAI TV, squaring off with the spokesman of the Verona diocese amid a swirling global sex abuse scandal that has inched closer to Pope Benedict XVI.

The spokesman, the Rev Bruno Fasani, said he hoped the confrontation would be constructive and he welcomed meeting the men for the first time.

But the former students of Verona's Antonio Provolo Institute for the Deaf refused to shake his hand during the show. One of the three, Dario Laiti, 59, said he couldn't bring himself to greet the prelate. …

Advocates for the victims, however, said the diocese investigation was fatally flawed because no one interviewed the former students.

The pope’s handling of German matters perhaps triggered a matter whereby the Vatican guy Joe Ratzinger squashed an investigation of an American priest that abused over two hundred deaf children in an institution of the deaf for many decades in the Milwaukee diocese.

The deaf in Italy are now talking out – out of frustration of not being heard – after the statutes of limitations have passed. The victims want closure and not forgiveness for their sin of tempting good priests to sin – or at least that is the medieval view from the Vatican on all this fuss about the mere abuse of children at the expense of the church’s prestige and “good” name.

Joe Ratzinger was the best of the best that John Paul II could put in charge of keeping the lid on this worldwide, decades - centuries long secret obscene behavior of the clergy.

Joe Ratzinger, the best of the best, has turned out quite mediocre and flat in light of victims who do not want a sacred letter of apology but instead want secular, human justice.

Real World – 1 --- Vatican – 0

Blasphemy and the Last Supper

I think the concept of blasphemy is archaic and obsolete in light of the free speech and expression as mandated by law in our Constitution.

Still the concept for Muslims, if enacted by U.N. international law, would put Danish Newspapers and Danish Cartoonists in the category of criminals. I cite the recent hubbub regarding the image of Mohammed as a terrorist depicted in a Danish cartoon.

Terrorism and blasphemy are in the eyes of the beholders. The Global Town Square should be neutral in the enforcement of blasphemy concepts across national borders which also usually reflect national local feelings or religious local beliefs.

I think it inappropriate that the local minority Muslims in Denmark made an international issue over the cartoon. A minority has no right to impose privileged or entitled status of private religious opinion on the majority.

Perhaps in a more civil world, the occasion to insult will be reduced in the interests of respect of the rights of others both locally and internationally.

Thomas Aquinas says that “it is clear that blasphemy, which is a sin committed directly against God, is more grave than murder, which is a sin against one's neighbor. … it is called the most grievous sin, for as much as it makes every sin more grievous.” Wikipedia

Of course, in the recent Texas School Book deal to replace Aquinas for Jefferson is a poor choice IMHO. Aquinas is really a very abstract medieval theologian and obsolete on many of his opinions. Banning Jefferson in Texas will only excite, entice the curious to find the father of modern revolution and enlightenment.

Regarding the above image of a censored in France and Italy clothing advertisement in 2005, I take exception to it being banned in the name of Blasphemy.

The Last Suppers

BBC News:

France's Catholic Church has won a court injunction to ban a clothing advertisement based on Leonardo da Vinci's Christ's Last Supper.

The display was ruled "a gratuitous and aggressive act of intrusion on people's innermost beliefs", by a judge ......

The authorities in the Italian city of Milan banned the poster last month ......

Italy's advertising watchdog said the ad's use of Christian symbols including a dove and a chalice recalled the foundations of the faith and would offend the sensitivity of part of the population.

The Catholic Church used a similar argument against the advert, which also shows two of the apostles embracing a bare-chested man in jeans.

"When you trivialise the founding acts of a religion, when you touch on sacred things, you create an unbearable moral violence which is a danger to our children," said lawyer Thierry Massis.

"Tomorrow, Christ on the cross will be selling socks."

I find that the DaVinci Code the book, while a pile of myth and speculation, opened a true door not to enlightenment but in opening the mind up to all the possibilities of ancient myth and how it all could have been rewritten differently especially in the New Testament that is.

With the current meltdown in the Vatican over cover-ups and conspiracy over sex abuse crimes worldwide, the concept of private “church” matters (the way these crimes were treated) comes into question with the “infallibility” invoked in this covering up of crimes against children.

Getting back to the DaVinci Code, what would the world look like if women had been the predominate sex throughout history?

Getting back to the Vatican scandal, I think this image above from 2005 is more appropriate now with the image of an aroused and or prostitute male figure in place of the John/Mary figure of the DaVinci Code’s interpretation of DaVinci’s Last Supper mural.

Even more appropriate in the symbolism of that john/mary/prostitute image is that modern image being embraced by the Peter figure of that famous original icon image and with Judas’ legs intertwined in the whole mess.

Any good Christians feeling betrayed these days, as if by Judas, but instead by the Chair of Peter?

Blasphemy is not always a crime especially if it tells or depicts the Truth.

Vatican - Too Big to Fail - or Fall ?

Through the various phases of Christianity in the past has been the layered effect. Layer by layer, each group or hierarchical agenda got added, subtracted, fused, misused, slammed, bammed and flimflammed.

Somewhere along the time line, a reformed Judaism of Paul got fused with the floating message of Jesus. After that, Constantine fused, morphed Christianity into a palace decoration and political tool. Through the dark and middle ages, the various centers of Christianity, mostly in or near Turkey faded from economic and also religious importance.

The wave of Islam that overtook the obsolete Roman city view of things in the middle east reduced Christianity to two centers of hierarchical importance, Constantinople and Rome.

Constantinople was the Roman Empire’s primary capital as the city of Rome faded into an unstable backwater destroyed and plagued by vandals and barbarians for a thousand years.

Somewhere along the timeline around 1040, a schism happened between Rome and Constantinople. I have not done much research on it because anything I read will have been written in the west and tell the western version of what caused a break with the eastern church. All I do know is that it was probably about power and money and on both sides to some extent.

Following timelines, one sees the western church shortly thereafter start the Crusades to bypass Constantinople and this inability to militarily hold onto the holy shrines of the so-called holy land.

The motivation was not so much salvation as promised by the pope to all soldiers headed east as it probably was the hope that Rome could reestablish its economic as well as religious importance and prestige in the total of Europe. The crusades were about power and money. The shiny trinkets and relics sold to tourists was a sideshow to the religious political power game being played on a world scale.

One of the crusades managed to sack Constantinople and under the flag of Venice. That sack weakened the walls of Constantinople and the city never got over the sack. The city fell something like two centuries later to the Ottoman Turks, a new rising empire on the make which happened to be Muslim. It was not a Muslim crusade, it was a power grab - and an indirect gift from Rome.

Rome by default was now the center of Christianity. Part of the schism in 1040 had the west or Rome start the celibacy thing out of the blue as official policy. The celibacy thing was never imposed within the eastern Christian church which allows its clergy to marry to this day.

Rome further split into schism in 1517 with Martin Luther. Henry VIII split for political and economic reasons. The princes and kings of northern Europe went the way of Protestantism as much for power as for a cultural difference with the Mediterranean culture of Rome and its church.

The church of Rome countered the Protestant Reformation with a Counter Reformation in the Council of Trent shortly thereafter and set dogma into the cement of the Catechism. All dogma and answers to the laity were in several hundred pages of the Catechism. If it was not found there, you had no reason to ask anything else. Shut up, be a good catholic or join the Prots.

There is one thing in the present child abuse meltdown in the Catholic Church that keeps coming back to me. That is how a priest, any priest who memorizes hundreds of pages of boilerplate religion and serves in the rituals and functions of the church is too valuable a church asset to defrock over the mere sin – crime – of rape and abuse and against defenseless children.

In a way, priests are part of the Too Big To Fail bullshit mismanagement concept that the bullshit American banks are now touting. Was the Vatican a model for this style of management for these banks?

Too valuable to defrock – too big to fail – they all speak of too important – more important than the child or the individual that somewhere on the timeline Jesus thought was the most important part of the original Christian religious equation.

Looking at this private all male – love of penis – cult that rules the Roman Catholic church of Rome in the Vatican, it is a hard nut to crack. Hard nut to crack even in the light of reality and civil authority and common sense and modernity.

The RC church looks as the growing numbers in Latin America and Africa and Asia and knows that in fifty years, the bullshit the enemies of the church are trying to saddle them with will go away. Bullshit to the bishops over the rape of children as not important as compared to the – too valuable an asset / too big to fail – “celibate” priesthood.

The RC church, the entity, whatever it is, will be, endures even if its soul and moral authority evaporates into nothing. The numbers are there. Just God help all the future victims of this infallible corporation and the rest of humanity for the rest of time.

It becomes increasingly evident that the Church of Rome will be replaced in the United States by bona fide legitimately ordained men and women in the Independent Catholic Church Movement – now still splintered but it will come together in the vacuum of the void of moral authority now emanating from Rome.

Men and women priests of several independent Catholic organizations that have survived, broke away after Vatican I under the slavery loving pope Pius IX, will grow.

That these organizations have survived with a purpose from the Holy Spirit to one day replace the corrupt and demon filled buildings and obsessions of the Vatican City political state.

All this is waiting to be fulfilled if Rome continues to do nothing about the corruption and seeming hatred of people, children, women – in the present Too Big To Fail Vatican Power Equation.

Tea Party is a Bust !

The American Mainstream Media MSM focuses cameras on mice and call them elephants.

The Tea Party is a bust!

For all the bellicosity of Rush and his forty million dollar salary, you can only get a few hundred Tea Party-ers out to a few rallies. Oh the signs and the rage are so 1840.

Radio is so 1940.

Tea is so English.

Glenn Beck is so Soupy Sales.

Technology rules the day. There is a thing called Wave Mobs – Flash Mobs. It is where you text on your cell phone or twitter and create events like a crowd at a disco in London.

Or you can have rival gangs in Philly meet up within minutes of a text to terrorize the citizens downtown or have an old fashioned rumble. Sounds like something out of the Clockwork Orange.

Mobs Are Born as Word Grows by Text Message

The future has arrived.

Considering all the brouhaha poured out in the last year over our first African American President and the fight for Health Care Reform – the Whig Party aka the GOP produced Jack Shit in the way of any assistance to frame a much needed piece of domestic legislation against the hegemony of the corporations.

The Tea Party tells people to go out and break windows. Also high tech to them, their blunderbuss has been pulled out of the attic and is being cleaned.

Can anybody in the Whigs/GOP Party or the Tea Party text or even know how to spell t-e-x-t ?

It is totally Politically Incorrect of me to say it. But the GOP and the Tea Party movement is a total total bust! They should stay at home on the couch and let progress pro-gress into the future.

Have a nice day.

Senator Jim DeMint has met his Waterloo

Screw the death threats from p*ssies who strike in the middle of the night (from the right)!

America celebrate!

Jim DeMint has got some major crow to eat!

Senator Jim DeMint (R-South Carolina) said:

“If we’re able to stop Obama on this (Health Care Reform) it will be his Waterloo. It will break him.”

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Kristallnacht – Tucson - USA

Our democracy is fragile. It is very disheartening that elements of the mainstream media that I term Hate Radio and Hate News are on a 24/7 bellicose attack on all things government.

It is time for some ambitious district attorney, democrat, republican, independent somewhere to bring Roger Ailes of FOX NEWS and Sarah Palin up on some conspiracy, incitement to commit violence charges.

Palin of SarahPAC, a charity of sorts for has been half-politicians who openly - hint, hint, wink, wink - advocates violence against the elected representatives of the government with target crosshair symbols on her web page against Democratic enemies and their seats up for re-election in Congress.

Ailes of course, the man who helped get Nixon elected with false advertising is the model for the main Jon Hamm character in the AMC cable show “Mad Men”. As president of a “news” department at Fox, he is the one ultimately involved and responsible for incendiary language coming out of the mouths of paid actors on his news programs.

What's Behind The Wave of Right-Wing Health Care Violence?

I am particularly hurt by the attack on Representative Gabrielle Giffords congressional office in Tucson in the middle of the night, early Sunday Morning with a brick through that window.

In total five windows seemed have been smashed across the country. Three at local democratic party offices. Two were against the offices of two congresswomen. An article in the Christian Science Monitor which I thought to be a balanced honest paper showed its true colors by playing down, ignoring the violence against Congress Women and then quotes Rep Boehner out of context, like he really deplores violence.

That article was questioning the validity of vandalism on the property of Congressman Tom Perriello’s brother after his brother’s address was posted online as the Congressman’s address. The address was posted in the hopes that some moron would do violence against Tom Perriello or his family.

Was Rep. Tom Perriello targeted for his vote on healthcare bill?

Hitler and his brown shirts before they came to power were nothing more than street thugs, throwing rocks, breaking windows, intimidating, bullying etc. not unlike the Tea Party movement that the GOP hopes to nurture and absorb rather than let it become independent and free to destroy the presently comatose Grand Old Party.

Representative Giffords in the 8th district of Tucson is Jewish and married to an active duty serviceman Mark Kelly, also an astronaut.

My interest in Tucson is having lived there for close to a decade in the recent past. The thing is with two corporate whores liked Jon Kyl and John McCain hogging the two senate seats of Arizona, the only address most citizens have in petitioning the government with legitimate grievances is through the one liberal congressperson that usually represents the one solid liberal corner of the state in Tucson.

So when I hear that the closeted brown shirts like Sarah Palin has a bulls eye target on Representative Giffords, I say Fuck You Sarah and Fuck the Horse you rode into town on. Half baked, half educated, half governor of Alaska.

No bunch of thugs is going to take our democracy away from us like the Nazis took Germany in the thirties.

Vandalism, thuggery, bullying and the breaking of windows by in the middle of the night cowards says an awful lot about Roger Ailes cash cow audience at Fox “News”.

John Boehner - a Man of Color

Health Care Reform made it in the House this past weekend. Teabaggers were on the steps of the Capitol building this past weekend yelling “Kill the bill nigger!” at Black U.S. Representative John Lewis, a man who fought in the front lines of the Civil Right fight of fifty years ago.

Zero Republicans voted for Health Care Reform for all Americans. Zero!

With offensive placards showing President Obama as the “Joker” or “Hitler” at a Tea Bag rally on the Capitol steps some months ago, House Minority “Leader” John Boehner spoke at that rally and denied having seen anything offensive.

It goes without saying that he heard no offensive remarks hurled at a Civil Rights Veteran on the Capitol Steps either this past weekend.

Why should a Republican apologize for the marginal right wing of their party called the Tea Party? Why should any Republican apologize for nothing. Zero – remember.

The only thing left for the “Party of No” is a painted on orange sun tan that John Boehner (Boner, Bayner – however he pronounces it) proudly exhibits.

On top of that, the latest Harris Poll has a close to majority of Republicans and or 25% of the adult American population that states belief that Barack Obama is not a native born American, without a birth certificate, and that he is a Muslim.

Also:

38 percent of Republicans, and 20 percent of Americans overall, agree that Obama is "doing many things Hitler did”

And 24 percent of Republicans, and 14 percent overall, agree that Obama "may be the antichrist”

Which brings me back to basic American education. We must do something radical to offset this love of ignorance in the heartland. We must once again teach geography to children. It really does teach a basic analytical level of looking at and interpreting data.

Of course I also read a quote somewhere perhaps from a poll as well that:

70% of American women have never had an emotionally satisfying relationship with a Republican.

Which brings me back to the face of the Republican Party - John Boehner.

I am curious John, is it a full body tan or are there any bikini tan lines underneath the clothes?

Makes me sound a bit weird but I can remember the segregated swimming pools in Philly from when I was a kid. I remember that if you were too tan or sunburned, it was normal practice at the entrance gate for the attendant to ask you to expose the tan line beneath your swim suit to gain admittance.

I know John thinks that his orange face looks sexy to him in his mirror but what is his real game? Does he want to look like Barack Obama? Are you deep down a man of color John?

Does John Boehner have penis envy of Barack Obama?

Of course only the guys in the House of Representatives members only gym would know in the locker room if Boehner has a full body tan or not.

More than likely they are exposed to his big shiny white ass and his tiny white schlong. (so much for false advertising John to the general public-I have my sources)

This general hubris of the dying GOP is going to find a gravesite if in 2010 or 2012, the Tea Baggers break loose of the GOP and put their names of candidates on state ballots. If that is the case, then within a twenty year period the national Party will have been in at least two elections where over ten percent of the national vote goes to a third party. If that happens, the GOP will be DOA. What happens after that is anybody’s guess.

I will say that the encouragement of ignorance by Rupert Murdock’s FOX “NEWS” misinformation/entertainment species will help in the final gasp of the GOP.

And I am reminded of a quote from the nineteenth century about all matters current on the American agenda.

"Ignorance breeds monsters to fill up the vacancies of the soul that are unoccupied by the verities of knowledge."

Horace Mann, Educator, 1796-1859

Nuns Trump Bluedogs like Stupak

Here is a story worth retelling. An interesting article in Salon magazine about how women in the Catholic church in the form of nuns are a mighty force to be reckoned with these days.

Defeated and humiliated by the the hierarchy for their support of Geraldine Ferraro's Vice Presidential "Pro-Choice" bid in 1984, the women have plowed on for women's issues, pro-humanity views in the public arena.

Rep. Bart Stupak, (D- Michigan), frat house member of the “C” street fundie crowd, bellyached and threatened to sink Healthcare without an Executive Order to spell out, redundant/moot with the new law, specific continuity of the entrenched anti-abortion agenda.

Indeed the article states rightfully so that – ”Abortion has become the "evil of drink" of this century, and legal prohibitions against it always fail as dismally as the 18th amendment banning alcohol did.”

While the boy bishops keep sending out their holier than thou misogynist messages of more abortion regulations and also being against healthcare coverage for the poor and all Americans, nuns have campaigned for passage of Obama’s Healthcare reforms.

Catholic healthcare scoreboard: Nuns and laity 2, bishops 0

The healthcare reform debate in Congress has brought to the fore a sharp division within the Catholic Church. The lines are drawn by gender: Catholic bishops focused on the unborn on one side; Catholic nuns advocating for the already-born on the other…

Many nuns feel they have little to lose in challenging bishops because they have been treated so shabbily by their hierarchy. Many of America's nuns supporting Obama's healthcare initiative were, until recently, among the "uninsured" that the bill addresses. Only in the past two decades have US bishops taken up an annual collection to pay for basic health insurance for nuns, and for their decades of unpaid Social Security…

Today, as when nuns and others first challenged Rome on abortion in ‘84, too many women are dying from breast cancer, ovarian cancer, overlooked cardiac crises, ignored psychoses that may lead to suicide, domestic abuse injuries and deaths, and a host of other illnesses, injuries and fatalities a national health plan might help identify, diagnose, treat, avoid and even cure. Women are uninsured in larger numbers than men, and their children go uninsured, and untreated, with them. The already-born need care and compassion in the purest form of "respect for human life.”…

The majority of American Catholics -- often led by the nuns of their childhood -- have always chosen reasonable responses to complicated and personal life challenges, even when their clergy have seemed unable to do so. Such a rational approach is the best example of the appropriate and rightful exercise of free will and conscience. (Both of these are basic to Catholic teaching, in which they are called “the sense of the faithful.”)

There is life and morality within the RC church. The Catholic blogosphere and non-profit organizations such as the Catholic Health Association can be a force for good.

The cheerless out of touch bishops cannot rule by decree anymore. The GOP may have the bishops but Social Justice has the nuns and average Roman Catholics when it comes to everyday practical matters regarding life.

Laura Silsby - Last Baptist

Laura Silsby who dropped everything in the middle of a personal financial meltdown to do God’s work and pick up and save “33” Haitian orphans is still in jail.

All Haiti 'orphan' children reunited with parents

PORT-AU-PRINCE — The 33 Haitian children at the center of a US abduction row have finally been reunited with their families, but the fact that not one of them turned out to be an orphan raised fresh concern.

SOS Children's Villages, the international aid group caring for the children since the drama erupted seven weeks ago, said Wednesday it was only right for them to be handed back to their families.

"It has turned out that all of the 33 children have parents. SOS Children's Villages is convinced that in most cases, the best place for a child to be cared for and protected is within the family," the group said in a statement…

The national director of SOS Children's Villages, Celigny Darius, suggested the high-profile case, which diverted valuable media spotlight off the massive relief effort in Haiti, had raised serious questions…

SOS Children's Villages, which has looked after the 33 since January 30, is now free to focus solely on almost 500 other children in its care, many of whom were simply handed to aid workers at the gates of the compound.

Ms. Silsby is the last of ten Baptist Missionaries in Haitian custody who arrived on a wing and a prayer to do missionary work on the natives whether they needed it or not - whether the children abducted were orphans or not.

Last Baptist held in Haiti faces new charge

Laura Silsby, a businesswoman from Boise, Idaho, and leader of the mission volunteers drawn from members of four Southern Baptist churches in Idaho, Kansas and Texas, faces a new charge of "organization of irregular trips" under a 1980 law restricting travel out of Haiti…

She already could stand trial on charges of kidnapping and criminal association in the Jan. 29 attempt to take 33 Haitian children to a temporary orphanage in the Dominican Republic without proper paperwork. According to the Associated Press, Judge Bernard Saint-Vil said he has until early May to decide whether to release Silsby or to order a trial.

This is on a more secular level where people think that “God’s law”, made up or real, trumps the laws of men and nations.

The same idea on another level is at work with the Vatican and its institutions that are currently in hot water over child abuse.

It would seem that in Christianity, that crimes against children are discounted when you put God into the equation of Charity. And at the same time, you take children and or the laws of nations and people out of the same social equation.

Christianity in theory and in practice sometimes does not appear to be uniform or the same across the board. Or at least that is how an outsider might look at it?

Perverted Corporate Culture of Vatican

The name Jesus was quite common in first century Judea. So too the name of Mary was quite common. So common in fact that in recent light of the corporate culture of the Vatican and the hierarchy it selects and appoints as bishops makes me wonder.

I have to wonder which Jesus founded the church of Rome? Was it Jesus the moneychanger? Was it Jesus the Pharisee? Jesus the high priest? Or was it Jesus the poor country preacher?

On an aside, I look at somebody like the Dalai Lama, the head of a religious sect, he imitates the founder which would be Buddha. The various Muslim sects and their Imams would seem to at least look like and act like the seventh century political and religious founder. Who does the pope imitate except maybe a crony high priest of the secret Personality Cult of Constantine?

The crowd at the Vatican in terms of corporate culture are more like the U.S. Congress, totally out of touch with the common voting constituent or in the Vatican’s case, out of touch with the common faithful. This, as in the case of the current clergy sex abuse scandal rocking the European RC church structure.

There is enough being said in the Press about this current scandal that reaches right into the CEO’s office. I am not as eloquent or as precise as some British Articles I have read in the past few days. I believe British interest has to do with the proximity to Ireland. The truly shameful breakdown of humanity amidst the closeted confused sexuality of clergy and hierarchy breaks my heart.

It no doubt is true that the Brits were insulted by this little pope, who once swore allegiance to Adolph Hitler, and threatened a hostile take over of the Church of England in recent months. Such is the nature of corporate cultures and so too the nature of a still free press to react.

The Brit Press is doing a bang up job that I cannot remember the American Press doing in decades – not since Watergate I think. As I said, I do not want to write much more on this subject except to say that as I started life in the ranks of the common faithful of that church, I feel for the people on the ground who have kept faith with the message of Jesus in spite of the queer aspects of their hierarchy.

The RC church will survive. Though I would say that even if they lifted celibacy today, it would take fifty years for the institution to recover any legitimate claim to moral authority, with reference to these recent and ongoing scandals.

We are witnessing something historic in these current scandals in each European country. We are witnessing the implosion of a corporate culture that took over Christianity after the fall of the Mother Church in Constantinople in 1453 when it fell to the Muslim Turks. This is a corporate culture that has existed these past five hundred years through wars, corruption, reformations, counter-reformations, and an aversion to common sense and or science.

Like the aftermath of Watergate, many, many books will now be written and this period dissected in post mortem of the situation.

As such I have to make a statement here. I have partially defended Pius XII in my blog saying not positive things but things in partial defense of his actions towards some Jews, real or imagined, during World War II and the Holocaust.

I withdraw all statements regarding that pontiff. I have come to the conclusion that considering the preset corporate culture of the Vatican, the corporate culture of the Vatican 1939-1945 was no different than it is today.

Pius XII or his Vatican cronies could not have saved one Jew in World War II intentionally. By default maybe but not intentionally. It is not in the nature of the corporate medieval beast of the Vatican to do so.

I say this knowing that thousands of Jews were saved by the simple humanity, some of simple faith in the RC church, and of people on the ground of all faiths and creeds simply because it was the human thing to do. It was the right thing to do. It had nothing to do with Canon Law.

The Vatican in WWII could not save a single Jew. This, in the same light that the buggered hierarchy of the RC church exists only for its own pleasure and prestige - a real institution uncovered and exposed in this current round of scandal.

An institution that could not save a single catholic child from perversion and buggery could in no logical sense have saved any outsiders, past or present, including Jews.

Joe the pope, sorry kids, tough luck

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Dear Irish Victims:

Sorry you were buggered by your religious superiors.

Tough luck that this is, was an Irish problem.

A little while back it was an American Problem.

It is not a Vatican problem.

Cardinal Brady will not resign.

He is needed to manage the road back from your Irish problem.

Might even become pope (pope material if you know what I mean).

Yours truly,

Joe the ...

Joe the pope, sorry kids, tough luck

ATHEIST - AGNOSTIC - ARELIGIONIST

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A T H E I S T

A G N O S T I C

A R E L I G I O N I S T

?

(ar-e-lig-ion-ist)

The term Cultural Christian means a lot of things these days. Looking through a search of the subject on the Internet, I believe the fundamentalists have out blogged the day and anybody or anything that calls themselves a Cultural Christian is going to Hell with Richard Dawkins, the Brit, famous first for being an Atheist and second for being a scientist.

Anyway I have a fall back plan. Since I have written a lot about my quest for a new definition of God in this emerging Global culture that is increasingly less theistic and more materialistic or even humanistic, a new term for me is in order.

The title shows three terms, two of which already have definitions and are in the lexicon on the language.

Atheist is broken down into A and Theist, meaning without theism or denial of the traditional concept of God.

Agnosticism is broken down into A and Gnostic, meaning without knowledge and implies a doubt about the concept of God. Also means that there is no proof of God as in a modern scientific approach to any theory.

Areligionist is broken down into A and Religionist, meaning without religion. A religionist is one addicted to a need to have a rulebook on the side of the Theist issue.

Since I do not see anything in a dictionary yet, let me add my preferred pronunciation of the word as (ar-e-lig-ion-ist) as opposes the Atheist sounding pronunciation of (A- re-lig-ion-ist) – don’t want to get swept up anymore in the Dawkins heretic burning phenomenon from the right.

Being Areligionist means not believing in any man made rule book about the God thing, the definition of which I am still plotting.

Religionist fanatics like Saul of Tarsus are part of the present failure of Christianity along with the emperor god Constantine’s hijacking of the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth to help redecorate his palace, on a coffee table so to speak, in Constantinople. If he really was a Christian, which I doubt, would he not have named the greatest and newest city in his empire Jesusopolis or Christianopolis for his new found god and not for himself?

There are as many rule books and searches for spirituality and or God as there are people on the planet. We no longer have to be stuck with “sacred” writings written in tents or caves or Roman Empire army barracks.

Time for a change in the way humanity approaches the sacred as free individuals instead of as in shackled groups, tribes, clans, packs, as in the past.

The Present Burnout of Christianity

The present burnout in Christianity is the result of many factors.

One, the fundamentalists, the literalists have been waiting in high gear for the end of the world for forty years now and two thousand years before that. I can remember before cable TV there was a Saturday night gospel show on a UHF channel called “The King is Coming”. Of course to a raised Catholic, somebody reading the book of revelation, it was an education of sorts. It must have made money because it has had a lot of imitators since.

The fundamentalists are a breed of people in the rural areas and on the sidelines of modern society in the big cities. With television you can transport their isolationist bubble into the minds of people in the cities. This whole hate of success and love of the end of the world scenario is something best left to psychologists. But after forty years, fatigue has set in because the last book of the bible is so vague. God and Jesus are just not cooperating in the end of the world obsession for the losers and the world haters of fundamentalism.

World hating and deferring on important life decisions like climate change are an institutionalized arm of fundamentalism not really found in any bible but don’t try and tell that to any fundamentalist.

So too fatigue for the RCs with their promises of change in Vatican II stalled for four decades over their command to have their morals as part of law of the land in the abortion issue. The abortion issue started when birth control, born of science and a need for it in a crowded polluted age, got stuck in neutral amidst gritty local politics.

While the RC faithful have been waiting for the lifting of celibacy and a golden age in faith, the fat corrupt bishops just keep selling off property one lawsuit at a time. The hierarchy of the RC church worships the golden idol of their own hierarchy and will do so until the last piece of property has been sold.

The mainstream Prots have cash and old buildings but if you look at the British or European version of entitled religious and official and semi-official government status, the Prots have not gone very far on their own since Martin Luther. The RCs may have come up with their own hundreds of pages of boilerplate belief in the Council of Trent, the Prots have their own version of boilerplate faith as well.

The main reason for so many years of study in any seminary is memorization and the PC way to talk about the bible and or God and or Jesus. God and Jesus are merely stage props in the talk the talk and the walk the walk of mainstream religion.

Sad to say, there would appear to be no unified Christian message to the world two thousand years after Jesus.

The smug science and industry successful west has atrophied over the ages. Islam, while not a superior belief system has the energy at the moment. The energy is born of hate and conflict of it bumping up against the godless capitalist west as exemplified in the metaphoric movie Avatar. Which leads to a brief reaction to that movie as a coded message of redemption for the whole human race in this decayed age of materialism and blind adherence to the centuries old boilerplate beliefs of both Christendom and Islam.

If you are half way religious you see a religious theme in Avatar. If you are from the second or third world you see a brutally unfair military that wants to destroy everything not American. Nature is the enemy because it is not certified as an acceptable PC religious experience. If you are a godless capitalist, greed is the important factor. Avatar plays on many levels.

Boilerplate religionists want to waste time on words. It has to quack like a duck and be labeled like a duck before it is a duck. No wonder the old religion is dying if you need a patent from the government before you can begin to have any heart felt communication with the divine through nature or even through yourself.

Which brings me to the future of any religious beliefs. We have come to a strange fork in the road. In the age of the Internet, individual reaction to the split second interface with knowledge, images, political and social concepts flash around the planet faster and more often than heartbeats.

Control of the Internet is coming in it being taxed, fees added, and censored. In the meanwhile new ideas as revolutionary as the 95 Theses or the science of a printing press as it was in it’s day five hundred years ago are occurring all around us in virtual time and presence – even if we are not aware of these milli-second, millimeter paradigm changes into our new global culture.

Global interface consensus is the future eyes, ears, and perception of a future human race. That race has piggybacked over many cultures and many belief systems to this point in time. It would all seem to be part of a creative force in the universe and in compliance with a concept of evolution as a positive force of the Creator.

How the world sees itself and functions for the next five hundred years, the outline of thoughts and protocols are being formed in these early years of the 21st century of a global common era.

Look forward. Be positive. Be creative. Act with love for one’s local and global neighbor. Think. Be wise. Be fruitful.

Let social justice rule and multiply.

Pax – Mundo - Humanitas ! (Peace – Global – Humanity)

Christian Newism

With elements of the Tea Party movement not interested in a moral agenda as opposed to sound fiscal responsibility, the GOP might be on the road to recovery after forty years of phony moral spouting, family value politics. Fundamentalist Christianity may no longer have a strong foothold in the GOP.

With the Vatican imploding over institutionalized criminal child abuse and a total lack of vocations to fill its ranks, where does it go except into the wilderness for another century or two and away from evil modernism and humanity sketched out and framed by Darwin.

The Medieval conservative model that John Paul II pushed for decades has failed. He was wrong. The Spirit was not in sync with his backward looking agenda.

There are voices calling in the wilderness so to speak. There is the New Christianity of Brian McLaren that looks ahead and dates us in a post-modern era of faith.

Postmodernism in architecture is taking us from the glass boxes of a post WWII era to the swirling metal clad buildings of Frank Gehry wrapped around odd shapes and spaces. I have only seen pictures of these structures. Have not been in one yet. The Jury is still out on that one.

There is of course the so called Emergent Church Movement which is trying to move away from the boilerplate theology that worked in the past few centuries and is now dead in the water as far I am concerned. My own minimalism is in some way similar and under the umbrella of such a movement name or description.

The biggest obstacle in a future Christianity is to get people out of their bibles and into the community or being in tune with needs of the community. Social justice should not be a dirty word nor should it be the sole mission on any given church body.

There is a leading voice in this new or future Christianity in Brian McLaren, author of A New Kind of Christian. Of the many voices or methods emerging, McLaren’s approach is often criticized as being light in doctrine and in favor of "generosity" and "conversation."

Someone shared their notes with me who attended a McLaren Seminar last week:

The seminar went well and he is a very good speaker as well as author. Never once ruffled my feathers but I was surrounded by pastors and student wannabe pastors of many stripes..mostly mainline prot's. The question and answer sessions were excellent and he never flinched as some were fairly critical of his post modern outlook. He is out there on the far left and that suits me to a tee. Did a half hour on how the churches/propped up and supported slavery in America using the words in the bible as law instead of the words of love of Jesus.

In other words, the bible while perhaps divinely inspired is a document that does not age well in some areas. It dates itself. The bible is outdated in terms of the concept of slavery in this modern, post-modern world.

The future Christianity needs a new softer approach to the bible as word of God, along side and sharing defintion as a truly human document. The God speaking in a dialogue may be perfect. The listeners, the writers are trapped in the prejudice of their age. Some ideas need to be judged within the context and validity of a timeline.

Rereading some of my notes on this subject and in reference to McLaren, I am impressed more on his content, consistant in the face of opposition. It is his planting of seeds and the long term plan that will win his ideas respect over time.

For myself, the Fall, original sin and hell are irrelevant. With the virgin birth and divinity you cannot throw out the myth with the bath water. In terms of a more united Christian message and other world faiths wanting to read Jesus at least in the context of him as a moral teacher as Jefferson addressed him, that is where the Christian faith will be in a few decades.

With the Vatican imploding, and the irrelevance of worshipping the bible instead of using it as a guide to life for the fundies, the biggest problem is in local pastors able to sit down with the church next door so to speak and be tolerant of gaps in another's faith and different from the old pure boiler plate faith that stood for centuries. The street talk has to change with the times. It is not the middle ages.

A paradigm shift is necessary in local pastors to embrace humanity more openly and more clearly and show respect and get respect in return is a step toward establishing the new global town square of the future. That town square needs a minimun of heart felt faith and or religion to function. Whatever religion is, it has been with us for tens of thousands of years. It is how we use it and not let it use us - is the important part of any balanced social equation.

The state of Christianity going forward into the True Global Town Square of All Nations is one that is managed well and from the bottom up in terms of consensus instead of any hierarchy or understanding set in Roman concrete.

It is a whole new world.

Benedict XVI – failed CEO - Criminal Front Office

What we have in the Vatican in the midst of the European dam burst on sex abuse by RC clergy is American Style Management which in reality these days is American Style Mismanagement. Gross mismanagement.

There is somebody in Germany who comes forth and says he got molested by a priest under Archbishop Ratzinger’s jurisdiction and tenure. After some delay, hemming and hawing, some underling has fallen on his sword for the commander in chief and stated that he made the decision to house this molester away from his parish etc. and then the “priest” went on to molest more children unimpeded for another thirty years.

Joseph Ratzinger is a liar. You don’t get to the Vatican by being a lazy shit in the front office and not know what the underlings are doing in the back office especially when that nothing is criminal conduct of an employee.

Let’s wait for the next abused child turned adult to come forth. I cannot believe this is an isolated incident. It is only one that has come into range of the media.

Joe the Pope will not resign from his criminal activity in the name of Christ. And this is where the RC church must turn on a dime and examine its future role in society if any.

This molesting sideline by a small percentage of its clergy has been swept under the rug for so long, that it is now considered part of the Sacred Tradition of the RC church?

Problem in the past is that this has all been dealt with as a sin to be forgiven and not as a crime, which it is in most countries of the world. That church operates without respect of the nations of the planet. It looks upon itself as a theocracy answerable to nobody. That the recent experiments in the last few centuries in democracy and humanism etc. are attacked under the label “modernism” and modernism is to be shunned.

The Pope and his church have "brought only evil to the world” as said of Islam some years back by this same religious hack.

Vatican Sees Campaign Against the Pope

In Germany, a man whose case has raised questions about the actions of the Munich Archdiocese when Benedict was the archbishop there said Saturday that church officials had told him that the priest who abused him in 1979 would not be allowed to work with children again. Instead, the priest was allowed to resume full duties almost immediately, and went on to abuse more children.

The Vatican also sought to defend the pope against criticism that a Vatican rule requiring secrecy in abuse cases was tantamount to obstruction of justice in civil courts. …

The archdiocese said in a statement on Friday that the priest was moved to Munich in 1980 for therapy with the approval of Archbishop Joseph Ratzinger, the man who later became Pope Benedict. But the priest was soon reassigned to pastoral work by Archbishop Ratzinger’s deputy, Vicar General Gerhard Gruber, and was later convicted of sexually abusing minors. “You see how they just kept moving him around,” Wilfried F. said. “He could keep doing it like before.”

The archdiocese has acknowledged making “serious mistakes” in handling the case. In a statement, the former vicar general took full responsibility for the decision to reinstate the priest to pastoral work.---New York Times By RACHEL DONADIO and NICHOLAS KULISH Published: March 13, 2010

And an article from 2006 to illustrate how this ongoing criminal infestation continues and continues:

Pope 'led cover-up of child abuse by priests'

The Pope played a leading role in a systematic cover-up of child sex abuse by Roman Catholic priests, according to a shocking documentary to be screened by the BBC tonight.

In 2001, while he was a cardinal, he issued a secret Vatican edict to Catholic bishops all over the world, instructing them to put the Church's interests ahead of child safety.

The document recommended that rather than reporting sexual abuse to the relevant legal authorities, bishops should encourage the victim, witnesses and perpetrator not to talk about it. And, to keep victims quiet, it threatened that if they repeat the allegations they would be excommunicated.

There are good Catholic Christians out there who must endure the burden of this cross from all its corrupt bishops who routinely cover up crimes against children in the interest of protecting their vested interest in that institution.

I pray they have the strength to endure and throw these bums out into the street and into jail where they belong.

Murdock Court Jester Glenn Beck in role of ANTI-CHRIST

FOX entertainment/news now has a quasi-religious preacher in Glenn Beck. He is preaching that Jesus loved the rich and hated the poor so to speak. I am sure that he has proven it on his black board in mesmerizing rhetoric. Beck’s background as half Catholic and half Mormon is no doubt the model of the future American State Religion after the GOP takes the government back for the forces of good – that is - all moneyed interests.

Reverend James Martin S.J. is a funny guy or at least when he plays the role of Robert Colbert’s Chaplain when he appears on Colbert's show. He got more serious last week in addressing an appeal by pope Rupert’s bishop Glenn Beck to turn his entertainment news game show host personality - into focus - and to target human decency and the social justice of the Gospels as dirty profane words and ideas.

Human decency and social justice were issues long before the gospels. Jesus in essence was killed because of these ideas that presented a challenge to the corrupt Temple Hierarchy. Looking at the corrupt hierarchy of the present Vatican administration, one can see the arrogance and a hint of what Jesus was up against in his time.

In our time, social justice and human decency remains the unfinished work of Jesus and is an ongoing work for all people of all creeds on the planet that have a focused and balanced vision of the future goals of humanity for the good of all, not just some.

Glenn Beck to Jesus: Drop Dead

I beg you, look for the words 'social justice' or 'economic justice' on your church Web site. If you find it, run as fast as you can. Social justice and economic justice, they are code words. Now, am I advising people to leave their church? Yes… Glenn Beck

Glenn Beck's desire to detach social justice from the Gospel is a move to detach care for the poor from the Gospel. But a church without the poor, and a church without a desire for a just social world for all, is not the church… James Martin S.J.

There is a challenge from the Rev. Jim Wallis to debate Glenn on his program regarding his Anti-Christian, Anti-Christ platitudes delivered on behalf of the ruling moneyed classes who fear social justice for the masses.

Evangelical leader takes on Beck for assailing social justice churches

An evangelical leader is calling for a boycott of Glenn Beck's television show and challenging the Fox News personality to a public debate after Beck vilified churches that preach economic and social justice.

The Rev. Jim Wallis, president of Sojourners, a network of progressive Christians, says Beck perverted Jesus' message when he urged Christians last week to leave churches that preach social and economic justice.

Wallis says Beck compared those churches to Communists and Nazis…

"He wants us to leave our churches, but we should leave him," Wallis says of Beck. "When your political philosophy is to consistently favor the rich over the poor, you don't want to hear about economic justice."

Social and economic justice is at the heart of Jesus’ message, Wallis says.

Jerry Falwell Jr., fat off his father’s cash cow church preaching business is in agreement with Anti-Christ Beck who is vying to succeed the great god Limbaugh as high priest of the Pro-Money/Anti-People interests of the establishment – in his new GOP Religion?

Anti-Christ is an obsolete term as far as I am concerned. But when such raw, naked, hatred for humanity in general (evil) is presented on FOX NEWS – it is a major force to be dealt with by all men and women of good conscience for the sake of the future of our republic.

I urge all to not only boycott Beck but the ARK of SATAN as well – which is FOX NEWS.

Glenn Beck is more than mere mental masturbation and entertainment. He is dangerous – potentially harmful to all humanity. He is the current American Anti-Christ.

Vatican’s “Omerta” – Criminal Code of Silence

In the wake of child abuse disclosures unfolding across Europe, Archbishop Christoph Cardinal Schonborn of Vienna is quoted in writing and makes a link between the RC church’s practice of Celibacy and Pedophilia.

Archbishop links priestly celibacy and Catholic sex abuse scandals

The Archbishop of Vienna today said priestly celibacy could be one of the causes of the sex abuse scandals to hit the Catholic church.

In an article for Thema Kirche, his diocesan magazine, Christoph Schonborn became the most senior figure in the Catholic hierarchy to make the connection between the two and called for an "unflinching examination" of the possible reasons for paedophilia.

Another article by Italian journalist Lucetta Scaraffia in the "semi-official" Vatican’s L'Osservatore Romano newspaper is making comment on the lack of females in the Vatican as a social force to break down the predominately all male culture and the mafia like code of silence surrounding the ongoing and seemingly never ending abuse issue.

Writing in L'Osservatore Romano, Lucetta Scaraffia said women might have helped remove the "veil of secrecy" surrounding the abuse.

(He) used the word "omerta" – the Mafia code of silence – to describe the conspiracy involved in hiding the offences.

"We can hypothesise that a greater female presence, not at a subordinate level, would have been able to rip the veil of masculine secrecy that in the past often covered the denunciation of these misdeeds with silence," she said.

"Women, in fact, both religious and lay, by nature would have been more likely to defend young people in cases of sexual abuse, allowing the church to avoid the grave damage brought by these sinful acts."

Father Bill Breslin and his Cafeteria Dogma

Reading Father Bill Breslin’s Blog, regarding his disposal of children he does not like out of his Sacred Heart of Jesus School in Boulder Colorado, says something to me.

The Heart of the Matter

If a child of gay parents comes to our school, and we teach that gay marriage is against the will of God, then the child will think that we are saying their parents are bad. We don't want to put any child in that tough position - nor do we want to put the parents, or the teachers, at odds with the teachings of the Catholic Church. Why would good parents want their children to learn something they don't believe in? It doesn't make sense. There are so many schools in Boulder that see the meaning of sexuality in an entirely different way than the Catholic Church does. Why not send their child there?

I am reminded of the words of Saint Paul – Romans 13:1-7 – and obeying civil law.

1Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God.
2Consequently, he who rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves.
3For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and he will commend you.
4For he is God's servant to do you good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword for nothing. He is God's servant, an agent of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer.
5Therefore, it is necessary to submit to the authorities, not only because of possible punishment but also because of conscience.
6This is also why you pay taxes, for the authorities are God's servants, who give their full time to governing.
7Give everyone what you owe him: If you owe taxes, pay taxes; if revenue, then revenue; if respect, then respect; if honor, then honor. (NIV)

I see that Colorado shot down Domestic Partnership by a very slim margin in 2006.

You may not be breaking the law yet in Colorado Father Breslin with your institutional Homophobia. When Colorado does legalize Domestic Partnership and or Gay Marriage, you will have to obey the law as the Apostle Paul compels and does not suggest, or you will have to close your teaching institution if you continue to discriminate.

You all talk about cafeteria Catholics choosing what to believe. I think it matches the Cafeteria Dogmas of clergy these days who will fight tooth and nail to prevent abortion and then shrug their shoulders with total indifference once a child is born.

Something missing in that equation I think. Namely true Humanity aka Christianity.

Sede Vacante - Benedict XVI

The Roman Catholic Church has not had a real, human or decent pope since John XXIII.

Sede Vacate. The chair of Peter remains empty.

On and on it goes..Joe's own brother an abuser. Apple doesn't fall far from the tree... Anonymous Comment to my e-mail

The pope is not guilty of his brother's sins. The tsunami of corruption that now is the hallmark of the Catholic past and present will not go away with apologies or insincere attempts to reform this corrupt dysfunctional system of rule.

Pope's brother admits to slapping as abuse reports grow

BERLIN (AP) — The pope's brother said in a newspaper interview published Tuesday that he slapped pupils as punishment after he took over a renowned German boys' choir in the 1960s. He also said he was aware of allegations of physical abuse at an elementary school linked to the choir but did nothing about it.

The Rev. Georg Ratzinger, 86, said he was completely unaware of allegations of sexual abuse at the Regensburger Domspatzen boys choir, part of a string of charges of sex abuse by church employees across Europe in recent days.

It is very sad. The partial admission does not shade the overall genetic corruption and abuse of the system.

I get a sense of panic in the official words. The wagons are circled. Nothing will change. Benedict's pontificate is over. He is a failure figuratively as well as literally.

With the return to a Medieval mentality of present and recent hierarchies, comes the medieval "Pornocracy" - the rule by whores (bishops) of the Church.

"Absolute power corrupts absolutely."

Watch the race to the doors out of the temples, and more local scandals, the bishops with their pockets full of cash now deserting a sinking ship. Maybe a few indictments will happen etc. Yeah right.

Sad. Very sad.

Confused Sexuality - Archdiocese of Denver

The DOMA (Defense of Marriage Act) said two things. It says that no state had to recognize marriages recognized in other states. It also went on say that the federal government, inside the beltway that is, defines marriage as between a man and a woman. That was 1996 and Clinton signed it because the polls said it was what prevailing opinion was at that time.

There no is DORA (Defense of Religion Act) whereby tax free religions can discriminate against a pre-school aged child from enrollment in Sacred Heart of Jesus Catholic school in Boulder Colorado. The child has two lesbian parents.

Last week the school singled out the child and told the parents that the child could not attend the school next year once the sexual disposition of parenting was discovered. No other parents must pass a morality test as to adultery, single parenthood with child out of wedlock etc.

Archbishop Charles Chaput of Denver, a signer of the Manhattan Declaration, proudly enforces this discriminatory policy. Some of us are no doubt more equal in God’s eyes than others.

Groups protest decision not to re-enroll child of lesbians

Gay and lesbian groups are attacking a decision by the archdiocese of Denver, Colorado, not to re-enroll a child in a Catholic school in Boulder, Colorado, next year because the child's parents are lesbians.

The issue centers on the Sacred Heart of Jesus School, where the pre-schooler is currently enrolled.

"The Archdiocese of Denver has acted very unjustly in singling out this child for exclusion," said DignityUSA Executive Director Marianne Duddy-Burke in a written statement Monday.

"Until every student's parents are tested on Catholic teaching, this action by Catholic officials cannot be understood as anything other than discrimination on the back of a child. At a tender age, this child has learned that Catholic officials are willing to inflict pain on children and families."…

"To allow children in these circumstances to continue in our school would be a cause of confusion for the student in that what they are being taught in school conflicts with what they experience in the home.

I think the key word here is “confusion”. I do not think that a child would be confused by the reality of having two presumably loving parents. The confusion would no doubt come when the child would realize the hypocrisy and Confusion of Sexuality and Confusion of all things Sexual which is the present day hallmark of the Roman Catholic Church.

Sacred Tradition since 1968 and the Confused Encyclical Humanae Vitae about sexuality and birth control sets the tone of these social issues spilling into the public domain to this day.

Morning Joe Scarborough said it best, that these social issues such as abortion and gay marriage are an obsession and have crowded the airwaves and political agendas at the expense of needed real government actions in unemployment, jobs, and economic recovery.

This obsession with sexuality and lack of your privacy is fueled by tax free dollars from all right wing Christian fundamentalists. The Mormons and their millions to pass Prop 8 against gay marriage in California, was to mask widespread, to this day, polygamy in Utah and several other western high Mormon population states.

The Catholics channeling money into hate non-profits with the Mormons and fundamentalists, in conjunction with the Manhattan Declaration covenant (Coven), in this case victimizing children of LGBT parents, masks the ongoing confused sexual identity of the clergy and teachings of the Roman Catholic Church.

Creative Hate - Wash DC Catholic Charities

It is a whole new world out there for creative hate. If you got the gold, bucks, non-profit and Madison Avenue Consultant you can do anything in America – including Creative Hate.

The Archdiocese of Washington D.C. is digging in, probably renting Cheney’s old bunker and will now be openly committing indirect “Civil Disobedience” as mandated by their multi-faith document, the Manhattan Declaration.

Washington's new Gay marriage law will not be tolerated by the RC Archdiocese on the feeding end of millions of civil tax dollars for helping the poor and homeless. It's inhouse specific charity program will now openly discriminate against all forms of marriage. Throw the baby out with the bath water. "Charity" does indeed begin at home.

"If I speak with the tongues of angels and men and have not Charity - I am nothing!" - Bishop Wuerl.

One has to wonder if Catholic Charities is self insured or this little brainstorm got cooked up in the a big healthcare insurance company to cut down costs?

Employees of Catholic “Charities” cannot add a spouse if one now marries either heterosexually or homosexually in the District of Columbia.

D.C. is not a state. It is a territory of sorts lost in legal limbo or at least in terms of one man, one vote on the federal level. To add to this old southern plantation territory is the RC church’s new get out of my house hate program toward it’s employees that would dare do what is legal and engage in a civil Gay marriage.

Where does the madness end???

To Avoid Funding Gay Marrieds, Catholic Charities Denies Benefits to All Spouses

Today (March 1, 2010), Catholic Charities President and CEO Edward Orzechowski sent out a memo to staffers informing them of the change to the health care coverage, which will go into effect tomorrow.

In short: If you and your spouse are already enrolled in Catholic Charities health coverage, your spouse will be grandfathered in. Starting tomorrow, however, new employees (or newly married employees, hint hint) will not be allowed to add spouses to the plan. So: Longtime employees will receive the spousal benefits they’ve always had; Catholic Charities will get to keep its pool of covered spouses gay-free; only fresh employees and gays will feel the sting on this one.

Self-Hating Gays in the Vatican?

I have been trying to avoid saying anything about the Vatican or Joe the Pope.

With this recent dam bursting in Netherlands and Deutschland, one has to wonder how they kept the abuse under wraps for so long.

There is also an article about some California local state senator being more or less caught in the act of revealing his secret sexual identity. With a DUI (drunk under the influence) driving charge and eyewitnesses coming out of the woodwork outing him – having seen him frequent gay bars – the cat was out of the bag.

Even with being caught he has now outed himself on the radio and defends his anti-gay voting record as doing what his conservative voting constituency wanted of him.

Ashburn says he's gay, defends vote record

Of course Republican state Senator Ashburn is using the Democratic defense – The Dems of voting for abortion legislation even if one is personally against it - and now with the GOP voting against gays even if gay. Political expediency, pocket book, meal ticket issues. Hypocrisy on both sides of the aisle.

How does the California story fit in with the Vatican? I cannot but help feel that the California senator is or has been a self-hating gay all of his life. I cannot help but feel that most of the clergy in the Vatican are closeted lifelong self-hating gays as well. That to come out means loss of job income, meal ticket and pension. And not to mention loss of a large dose of mutual peer respect.

When you have trained for ten to twelve years to memorize and regurgitate boilerplate religion, what other skills do you have to find another job?

The abuse cases in the Netherlands and Germany are a boil over with enough general press coverage that people are willing to come out of the fear of an abuse situation that existed, was prevalent, and the norm in Catholic institutions for decades.

The institutions, religious orders, in Europe and America that have a large measure in the abuse issue used to have junior seminaries – meaning boys as early as age ten were being trained in the boilerplate Council of Trent Catechism.

While Junior Seminaries are not the norm in Europe and America these days, they are in full swing in South America and Africa. A whole bunch of perhaps closeted self-hating gays are ready to get a work visa and preach and practice in Europe and America where the natives have little or no interest in religion these days.

The reason for a lot of poor, starving, ten year olds to join the RC church's clergy is to get a meal ticket for life. The sex thing is a side issue. Bury that and have your buddies in the Vatican cover up for you too etc.

Rather than being a bunch of self-hating gays, the RC church before it is legally pronounced DOA (Dead on Arrival) – no church buildings or congregations left in Europe or America - the hierarchy better get a handle on modern sexuality and stop looking to Constantine’s fourth century Roman Empire Army Manual as a guide to life here and the here after.

Flying Spaghetti Monster in the Sky

And now for something completely different as the narrator used to say on Monty Python’s Flying Circus.

I read a lot of comments on the Cif (comment is free) Belief section of the British Newspaper online – Guardian UK. The most successful writer there would appear to be Andrew Brown, editor of Cif Belief. His interests are all over the religious universe but a lot of times it is basically religion touching the realms of science and evolution.

Well anyway, the comments are sometimes more enlightening to me that the article itself. But there was a phrase I kept hearing between the writer and some of the regular commenters and that was “Flying Spaghetti Monster”.

I am no dummy but these days I get tired of looking up all these texting abbreviations – IMHO – etc., so I just assumed or even imagined that FSM was a character on Sesame Street or the like. Fool is me.

I am behind on the curve on this one folks? You already had heard of this new deity and religion? Perhaps the Minister of Silly Walks told you before me.

But lo and behold, Flying Spaghetti Monster is a real deity and the basis of a new religion that challenges Creative Design for equal time in American redneck States' education curriculum.

Flying Spaghetti Monster

The Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM) is the deity of the parody religion the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster or Pastafarianism. Created in 2005 by Bobby Henderson, it was originally intended as a satirical protest against the decision by the Kansas State Board of Education to require the teaching of intelligent design as an alternative to evolution in public schools.

In an open letter sent to the Kansas State Board of Education, Henderson parodied the concept of intelligent design by professing belief in a supernatural creator which closely resembles spaghetti and meatballs. Henderson further called for his "Pastafarian" theory of creation to be allotted equal time in science classrooms alongside intelligent design and evolution. He explained that since the intelligent design movement uses ambiguous references to an unspecified "Intelligent Designer", any conceivable entity may fulfill that role, even a Flying Spaghetti Monster.

After Henderson published the letter on his website, it rapidly became an internet phenomenon and a symbol for the case against intelligent design in public schools.

Whatever. Join up if you wish. These days everybody’s got their own religion or obsesssion with pasta and ramen noodles. In all fairness, I did start this out on a quote from Monty Python etc.

Jesus and the Womb of God

This is where I get creative and inspired and perhaps even mystical.

Creative is a dirty word in American business. I learned that the hard way. It shows signs of intelligence which is verboten in our present American fascist state of things left undone, half-assed in the political and religious forums now abandoned to MBAs, PhDs, lawyers and hedge fund managers.

I am inpired by my recent postings on the forgotten female half of our civilisation. I use the British/European spelling. There is no civilization left in the American myth. But that is another story. (sorry for the negative aside)

If you look at anything, you can look at it twice and in a totally different light. I like to use the Earp Brothers and the fight at the O.K. Corral in 1881 in Tombstone Arizona as an example of an urban legend being cast into stone. It, the bottom line, was that the Earp brothers were out to make money and blow town. The truth is that they acquired a lot of deeds for land, property and mines.

They wanted to leave but there were bigger crooks than they running the town. Somebody redrew the town map and every lot in town was in dispute and had to be resurveyed. Of course the surveying fee was outrageous and enough to make most people sell out at a discount and leave town. Or you could sue in court.

So while the Earp brothers got entangled in Republican urban politics they crossed paths with the cowboys and rural democratic politics. The demographics have reversed over a century later. While the Earps didn’t mind eating stolen Mexican beef bought off the Cowboys, the Cowboys wanted a little more respect from the Earps while in town. And so it went.

The rest is history or is it? The Urban legend of the good city dweller against the evil cattle rustlers was set in stone by Hollywood. The good guys were the urban crooks and the bad, bad cowboys just drifted away into history.

In dealing with the concept of women in the church or a religious setting, one has to wonder where and how the urban legend of Jesus got set in Stone. At one point Jesus was real and just like the Earp brothers in Tombstone.

Everybody has a story, a direction and a purpose in life. Getting back to Jesus. As I read and read account after account, opinion after opinion, urban legend after urban legend I have strangely come back to some sort of mystical concept of Jesus.

(Here comes the mystical?)

That if the oldest gospel is dated around 70 C.E., then the oral history is being told and few if any living witnesses to Jesus were still around. In a world with a life expectancy of 35 years for the average human beings then and up until the beginning of the twentieth century, then the first and oldest account of Jesus is a third person account of an urban legend.

Let me throw in a little Islamic perspective which says that Jesus did not die on the cross nor was resurrected. That Jesus was assumed into heaven like the legendary prophet Elijah and you have what I mix with the beginning of the Gospel of John.

The beginning of the gospel of John calls Jesus Logos or the word or the reason God comes down to the perception of man.

The gospel of John is much more fluid and poetic in parts than the first three gospels. John is also the start of the Urban legend of the Jews as bad guys and the Jesus posse as the goodie two shoes of that O.K. Corral scenario.

Anyway, I look at the third party account of Mark and realize that if Mark is not a living eyewitness then he is describing Jesus and the perception and assumption of Mark is that Jesus is a man. No. I am not saying that Jesus is a woman. But if a person is writing history later, it is possible that you do not know 100% about who or what your history subject is about.

So if you take the Gnostic concept or poetic license of the Beginning of John 1:1-5 -

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning.

Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.

- You can look at Jesus from a different angle, like looking at a work of true art in a museum. I see some perfections and flaws of the artist so to speak.

That in real time, with a real Jesus preaching a real gospel, Jesus was neither male nor female. Jesus the logos, the word, the reason was standing right in front of you not unlike a space alien and you see, hear and perceive what you want to see, hear and perceive. Or what you are capable of perceiving in matters possibly divine.

If you are a male, you see a male. If you are female, you see a female. Jesus and his grouping of followers were both male and female. In God there is no male or female. In Jesus there is no male or no female as well?

It was not until after he dies or disappears from the scene that petty human traits arise. Suddenly is it not possible that Mary Magdalene was an apostle. Suddenly the gospels or Paul’s obsessions and petty male hang-ups become the things put into stone, into words on paper, a translation. The true and original urban legend fades into obscurity.

The miracle of God’s presence among us in the form of a future man, a humanist man, a divine male/female presence in our midst gets lost in translation.

I do not want to get into the logistics or the semantics of the Trinity which is really a stone age version, interpretation not suited to today’s modern scientific urban global person to deal with in a credible pattern or sense.

Without going much too deeply into this theory of mine which is already probably a half a dozen heresies rolled into one, I look at something rather symbolic of things, of teachings and urban myths and man and his engineering.

I look at the Hagia Sophia, or Santa Sophia, the primary center of Christianity for a thousand years. While this building, this church and the Eastern Rome flourished for a thousand years, they probably were herding domestic animals into the decrepit old Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome in the winter time for shelter throughout the dark western ages while this magnificent building was the one true Church to the civilized worlds in the east. Here too Islam had one of its grandest buildings for close to five hundred years.

Hagia Sophia is related to the word logos or word or reason or touching the purpose of man in response to God and his prophets to the human race. Hagia Sophia is holy or sacred wisdom. The eastern Roman empire would have seemed to have been more attuned into a feminine sense of wisdom, or understanding, and coming from God. This as opposed to the western male view coming to us to the modern day.

The western church is scared shitless of the feminine and the womb - it is where we all came from - figuratively and literally.

When I look at the image above, (click for a larger image), I see wisdom written in stone, in concrete, in mosaics and the “Allah is Great” Quran plagues. I see mankind reaching out to the universe before science or man had a clue or sense about what the universe truly is.

Click on the image above of the Hagia Sophia. It was the center of Christian faith, the premier center for a thousand years. It was a major center of Islam, its grandest mosque, for close to five hundred years. It is the most sacred spot on planet earth to all faiths of the one God concept.

Sacred wisdom, sacred knowledge, the word, the reason, the logos – no matter how you translate it – here is the spot where heaven touched earth directly for fifteen hundred years.

Look at the enlarged image. What do you see? Is it a museum? Is it a basilica, a church? Is it a mosque?

Look deeper. What humankind has left here for all generations to see is the myth of God, the myth of the Prophets like Jesus among others. I would see a cave if I were a caveman.

I see a womb, perhaps the womb of God. I see great mystery. And then I am transported back to reality and it is just a building.

The perception of man toward - God, Jesus, Science, Art are all in their own way part of a formula, a plan, a logos, a reason, a whisper from above and a meaning for all things.

The purpose of life is a mystery. To an artist, life is poetry.