Abuse, Abuse, and Abortion

A trio of recent news items have caught my eye, and I wanted to pass them on as well as some thoughts and comments.


1. A couple weeks ago the US Conference of Catholic Bishops put out a report on the abuse cases happening here in the US. Miranda Celeste does an exceptional job of pointing out what is wrong with the report (actually, exceptional isn't a strong enough word). To sum up, they rely on limited and untrustworthy data from dubious sources, redefine "pedophilia" in order to make their percentages look better, and make numerous attempts to re-locate all the blame on other sources, such as the prevailing culture and lack of training (in how not to abuse children). In conclusion, Ms. Celeste says:

Time and time again we have seen that the Church will do whatever it takes to downplay and/or cover up their failings and crimes. They have shown their willingness to fight dirty, and one of the most useful and effective tools in their arsenal is their dominance of the discourse and conversation (both in the media and elsewhere) about these issues. The Causes and Context study is a textbook example of this: when the media reports its “takeaways” without providing context, they are, in effect, doing the Church’s face-saving dirty work for them.

...

Don’t shut up, even when you feel like you’re repeating yourself. It took me a while to realize that the reason I’ve sometimes been repetitive when writing about this is that the Church itself has repeated the same crimes and the same institutionally sanctioned cover-ups over and over again. They repeatedly refuse to admit their culpability or to face legal punishment when appropriate. And, most importantly, they repeatedly deny outsiders access to their files that contain information on the sexual abuse of children and the cover-ups of that abuse.

Until the day that they allow that access, until the day that the light of public scrutiny is finally able to illuminate and reveal the darkest and most disturbing aspects of the Church, we owe it to the victims to never, ever shut up.

She hits the nail on the head. And, it can not be stressed enough that the crimes of abuse are horrible, but what really gets me going is that the church has facilitated these crimes, covered up these crimes, made excuses for these crimes and cover-ups that point all the blame elsewhere instead of owning up to it, and shown no regard for their actions and made no attempt at atonement or responsibility.


2. And, speaking of abuse, one California mother thought it a good idea to slit her children's throats because of the rapture. Luckily the children were saved and she's incarcerated right now, but this illustrates quite well the real harm that such religiously derived irrational beliefs can cause to the people who uncritically accept such ridiculous beliefs.


3. But, hey, on the lighter side of things, if you ever want to go to a fun, hip, happening place to kill some babies, the Abortionplex is for you!

Would you go back?

So, what would you do if you were running a religion facing multiple scandals and dwindling attendance to the point that you were becoming almost completely irrelevant. Well, if you're the catholic church, you spend money on a website and make ads in order to get people to come back.

Apparently, they've discovered that people can be influenced by television ads, so they've decided to give it a try in order to bring more suckers...I mean worshipers in the door.

Of course, their website is designed to not really address the issues. I mean, in the FAQ on morality, there's nothing in there about how old is too old for young children to be molested by their priests who will then be shuttled around and shielded from both any type of enforcement (law or otherwise.) But, hey, they're giving us "god's words" right?

I really hope that people don't fall for this obvious BS and the church continues to dwindle into oblivion. The catholic church is a beacon of dogma, irrationality, intolerance, and criminal activity. It has been for a long time now and it's high time that civilized, rational folks toss the idea of the church into the waste bin.

They Just Don't Get It

Apparently, the issue of pedophile priests in the Catholic church is all a front to attack the church. Apparently it's the fault of the Jews, the liberal media and intellectuals, homosexuals, or anyone and everyone else. They are pointing fingers, and the fingers are continually pointing away.

And, why not? Why should we hold the people who actually covered up these acts as accountable? Why should we hold the people who aided and abetted these sexual predators as accountable? Why should we hold those who hid the truth from us for so long accountable?

Why? Because people who do the above things, as the Catholic hierarchy has, deserve to be told to go pound sand. They are not moral people as they have repeatedly demonstrated quite capably. They are inhuman and immoral and they should be shunned and prosecuted for their crimes. They shouldn't be defended or held up as examples of goodness and light. Quite the opposite, we should continue to uncover their immoral deeds and hold those crimes up to the light of day. They have no moral standing and they should be left on the scrap heap of history with all the other immoral monsters that we rightly regard with disgust.

No You Can Not Haz Communion

The catholic church is very serious about abortion. They're also very serious about their influence in the politics of this nation. They are so serious that they refuse to allow politicians that don't vote against abortion rights to be cannibals in their churches. This happened in 2004 with John Kerry and has happened again recently with Patrick Kennedy.

So, looking past the absurd notion that the catholic church has any room to preach morality to anyone, what is this really about? It's about the catholic church trying to usurp undue influence over the political process and enforce their sense of "morality" on the rest of the public through unreasonable means. Politicians are there to represent the people, not to be bullied by stuffed up men in silly robes with delusions that they speak for god.

Coming Together for Bigotry

I've said many times that we always see splintering of religious sects into more sects as people's ideas of god come into conflict and there's no way of telling who is right and who is wrong. Well, we may be seeing a case (perhaps the first) of two religions coming together.

It seems that the Catholic church has offered a chance for the Anglicans to come back to them, but not just any Anglicans:

[The pope's] plan announced Tuesday to welcome disaffected Anglicans means he will help an estimated half-million members of Christianity's third-largest sect disappear – Anglicans who have stuck to the flanks of their church like the boils of Job, rejecting its stance on issues like ordaining women priests and blessing gay unions but ecclesiastically having nowhere else to call home.

IOW, they've decided to set their differences aside so that they can unite in bigotry against women and gays!

Too Good

OK, this video is simply too good not to share. Enjoy. (Note: NSFW due to language.)

The pope is an Idiot

Apparently, the pope is now saying that atheists are to blame for global warming. Well, to be fair, I'm not even sure he believes in global warming, and he never actually says those words. He simply blames atheists for ruining the Earth. Remember, this is the same guy who also claimed that condoms are making the AIDS epidemic worse in Africa.

Now, apparently, atheists are greedy people who are destroying the Earth because we're all a bunch of nihilists...or something. I think the rebuttal in the second paragraph is pretty good:

Terry Sanderson, President of the National Secular Society, commented: “This is rich coming from the leader of an organisation that has plundered the world to enrich itself. As he sits in his golden palaces, surrounded by unimaginable luxury and material wealth, he lectures the rest of us about restraint and greed. We have nothing to learn about environmentalism from this hypocrite.”

I mean, is the pope really that idiotic as to not know that the Bible gives dominion over the Earth to humans to do with as we please? That most Xians believe that we don't have the ability to destroy god's favored creation? That the Bible has been and still is used to justify the raping of the Earth and its resources and that religious people tend to be the ones most likely to deny that climate change is happening?

Cynicism

Once again, I'm behind the times by a little bit here. I wasn't aware that the Catholic Church was once again giving out indulgences. (Hat tip to PZ Myers at Pharyngula.) Who are these people kidding?

It's pretty obvious that the Catholic Church has nothing by cynical intentions. With church attendance dwindling year after year in developed nations, they need something to get people back into the pews and guilt them into attendance:

“Why are we bringing it back?” asked Bishop Nicholas A. DiMarzio of Brooklyn, who has embraced the move. “Because there is sin in the world.”

....

Getting Catholics back into confession, in fact, was one of the motivations for reintroducing the indulgence. In a 2001 speech, Pope John Paul described the newly reborn tradition as “a happy incentive” for confession.

“Confessions have been down for years and the church is very worried about it,” said the Rev. Tom Reese, a Jesuit and former editor of the Catholic magazine America. In a secularized culture of pop psychology and self-help, he said, “the church wants the idea of personal sin back in the equation. Indulgences are a way of reminding people of the importance of penance.”

Using guilt and fear of god to coerce people into the church is nothing new, of course, and their Xian brethren are well versed in it as well, but there's also the absurdity that some priest can somehow grant you less time in purgatory. I have to wonder if those priests actually believe that they have this power, or do they know they are fleecing the rubes? Problem is, it leads to quotes like this:

Still, she supports their reintroduction. “Anything old coming back, I’m in favor of it,” she said. “More fervor is a good thing.”

Yes, in a world where people are blowing themselves and others up over their religious fervor, that's exactly what we need. Geez. But, hey, there's some good news in all this:

“The good news is we’re not selling them anymore,” he added.

Evangelical atheism in Peru

I was quite astounded at the arrogance displayed by American evangelicals who travelled to South America to convert "the unreached". These "ignorant" farmers apparently needed to hear the Good News before they died, so as not to burn in agony for infinity. Many Catholic sites have a "pray for them" widget featuring exotic cultures that have not discovered the joys of Jesus and child abuse.

It's this kind of mentality which theoretically justifies the nauseating torture used on Catholics/Protestants/witches in the dark ages: which was done with good intention - 'if we stick weights on Joe heretic until he repents then we're sending him to paradise'.

What confuses me is how Jehovah seems to have got more liberal over the centuries; if it was okay to have a slave or two in the nineteenth century then why has he suddenly gone Democrat about it now? The erosion of religious morality and scientific denial has to end sometime.

Conditional Love

Just a quick post on this subject - since it's already been covered extensively; but did God really have to torture himself to convince himself to forgive own creation? And does he really have to torture those of his own creation that don't believe he did it?

There seems to be a lot of 'torture' in this 'loving' agreement. Maybe God's a sadist.

But then, he can hardly get mad at those people who display anything other than a medieval perception of purity; I won't even get into Catholicism here. They actually believe they perform ritual cannibalisation of Jesus.