Ethics and Catholicism

I have just finished reading James Caroll’s article on the recent political moves by the Catholic Church here in America. These are moves designed to frighten and intimidate and to oppress and harm, and they are being done in the name of God.

The list, from the article:

• Bishop Thomas Tobin of Providence “respectfully” tells Congressman Patrick Kennedy to refrain from receiving communion, a harbinger of what every pro-choice or pro-gay-marriage Catholic politician faces.

• Archbishop Donald W. Wuerl of Washington threatens to cancel Catholic provision of services to the homeless and poor if the D.C. City Council passes a law giving equal rights to gays.

• The Vatican, uneasy with the relative liberalism of American nuns, launches an intimidating investigation of U.S. religious orders of women, which, when criticized by Maureen Dowd, prompts New York Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan to complain of anti-Catholicism in the New York Times.

• In October, Rome violates a generation-long tradition of inter-denominational respect to invite disgruntled conservative Episcopalians to join a special new wing of the Catholic Church. Hostility to gays and rejection of equality for women trump theology, tradition, and even courtesy.

• Last week, more than a dozen of the most influential U.S. Catholic bishops (including Dolan and Wuerl) join far-right-wing Evangelicals like James Dobson in “The Manhattan Declaration: A Call to Christian Conscience.” Its co-author Chuck Colson (of Watergate fame) describes “a hierarchy of issues,” but the Catholic Church now has an issues hierarchy.

• On Capitol Hill this month, the Catholic bishops make clear their readiness to scuttle the entire package of health-reform legislation if they do not get their way on abortion restrictions. Health-care reform hangs in the Senate by a thread, which the bishops prepare to cut.

The Church has long since abroggated any moral authority as far as I’m concerned. They have a long legacy of evil that begins with the latter days of the Roman empire and extends all the way up until now. One need only look at the threats made to the DC government on charity work to see behavior that is un-Christ-like in the extreme (the same Christ who, according to myth, tended to everyone, even Romans).

Caroll believes this recent set of moves on the part of the church are primarily about deflecting attention away from things like the various rape and abuse scandals worldwide, particularly in places like Ireland.

The Catholic Church is such a fundamentally evil, immoral and all-around fucked-up organization that I’m seriously curious about something: for those of you who are Catholics, and who are against some of the tactics of your Church or some of the things they preach (like not allowing condom use and the like), how do you justify staying with the Church? Why not shop around and go to a church that’s more in line with what you believe to be right than continuing to support a church that does so much that’s wrong?

The only thing that pleases me about this whole story is that the more the Church does shit like this, the more support they lose worldwide, especially in places like Europe. I sincerely hope I live to see the day the Vatican has to file for financial bankruptcy. Their moral bankruptcy has already happened.

Those Stupid Swiss

Die Schweiz uber alles!

Guys, I’d expected better of you, thought goodness knows why. I mean, have you Swiss lost your minds? Are your brains as full of holes as the cheese that bears your name?

I’m referring to the recent referendum banning construction of minarets in Switzerland. Apparently the four (4) that currently exist are more than enough, thank you, despite the hundreds of thousands of Muslims that live in the country. What, you people want to alienate and piss them off?

What the hell is wrong with you people? I understand it can be annoying to sit there listening to a loudspeaker blaring away in another language (I live right next to a Hebrew school and frequently hear chanting in Hebrew over their loudspeaker), but the minarets in Switzerland don’t even do the calls to prayer.

There’s no excuse for this. It would be different if you people had passed a law banning all religious buildings (though that would also be bad), but instead you passed something like this horrible thing.

I really expected better of you people.

Living to 1000

On CNN.com there’s an article about the idea of people living to be one-thousand years old. The article asks the rhetorical question of wheather or not this is a good idea.

Well, yes, of course it is. Living to be one thousand, or older, is a great thing! Imagine all that you could see, all that you could do. Imagine knowing that you can’t foist the problems of today off onto the next year/decade/century, because you’d probably live through them.

Me, I’d love to live to be a thousand. That’d have me kicking off in 2972! As long as I’m in decent health mentally and at least able to get around physically, hell yes, I’d love to live that long!

Longer, even. Why stop at one thousand? Why not go to two? Or twenty? Hell, why not live forever?

Sure, people say that death is what defines life, and that’s true to a point, but it’s not what defines living. If I knew I wasn’t ever going to die, or at least that the odds of doing so were very, very small, well… damn! That opens the door for just about anything!

Of course there’s always the doomsayers who go off on the problem of overpopulation (eat it, Malthus!), dwlindling resources, etc, but so what? We’ll overcome those things. Hell, if people living now, knew they’d be alive as we approached the year 3000 you can damn well bit there’d be a lot more concern about solving problems like global warming.

So by all means let’s live to be a thousand. If all goes well, I’ll buy you all dinner on my 500th birthday! April 18, 2472! Mark your calendars!

Wow, Some People Are Very Stupid

People like Indonesian Communication and Information Minister Tifatul Sembiring who blamed Indonesia’s recent string of natural disasters on television programs that “destroyed morals”.

From the BBC:

His comments came as he addressed a prayer meeting on Friday in Padang, Sumatra, which was hit by a powerful earthquake in late September.

He also hit out at rising decadence – proven, he said, by the availability of Indonesia-made pornographic DVDs in local markets – and called for tougher laws.

Right, that’s why America, which probably has a billion times the amount of porn, is currently being wiped off the face of the map by all these earthquakes, volcanoes, hurricanes and the other things that aren’t really happening on a national scale.

This is like Pat Robertson blaming 9/11 on the gays, except that this guy is a government official.

To the good people of Indonesia, who I know read my site, please get together and find a way to get this ass out of your government. You deserve better.

Ein Volk, Ein Führer, Ein Buch!

What matters more to you: content or the way you get it?

I ask this question because Alan Kaufman at the Evergreen Review seems to believe the delivery method is the most important. So important that he even invokes Godwin’s Law on himself when talking about the current trend of books moving from paper to devices like the Kindle.

All physical books must go up the chimney stack. Such was the methodology of the SS who forced their prisoners to run naked races round and round the barracks yard in the Polish winter, a race that no one was meant to win.

The book is fast becoming the despised Jew of our culture. Der Jude is now Der Book. Hi-tech propogandists tell us that the book is a tree-murdering, space-devouring, inferior form of technology; that society would simply be better-off altogether if we euthanized it even as we begin to carry around, like good little Aryans, whole libraries in our pockets, downloaded on the Uber-Kindle.

What an ass.

He seems to believe that e-books are responsible for bookstores closing. They aren’t. The vast majority of the population that reads doesn’t have e-readers, but they do often buy their books online, and that’s what’s killing bookstores.

He also seems to believe that e-readers hearld a new age where only the biggest, most important authors get published. This is nonsense. If that was the case, I won’t have a short story for sale in the Kindle store (for those who don’t have a Kindle, download the free Kindle ap for the PC and then you can read my story if you like).

The writer of the article is simply wrong, and comparing the transition from paper to e-readers to the Holocaust is just insulting on many, many levels.

Further, everything is starting to digital. Does it really matter if the movie you are watching is on cable, on a DVD, on a DVR or some sort of streaming video format? Does it matter if music comes to you as an MP3, a CD, or on a record? The content is basically the same across the various delivery systems. The content is what matters.

For fun, here’s a poll:

Was Jesus Ever in England?

Almost certainly not. Almost certainly, he never actually existed. I say that since the edvidence for either of those notions is the same: none.

Yet that hasn’t stopped some Scots loon from going on about the notion that Jesus visited Britania at some point.

The loon in question talks about how it’s not out of the question that Jesus would’ve come to England, and I suppose it’s technically possible. But it’s highly unlikely. Most people even in Roman times, heck, even up until just a few decades ago, didn’t go more than a few miles from where they were born.

Favorite quote:

“He needed to go around to learn bits and pieces about ancient wisdom, and the druids in Britain went back hundreds if not thousands of years. He probably came here to meet the druids, to share his wisdom and gain theirs.”

Yes, because if there’s one thing that we know about the Romans, it’s that they just loved the druids. I seem to rememer Julius Caesar, in particular, was a great fan. Plus we all know how much Jews and Christians have loved learning wisdom from other religions.

This concept is not just bad history, it’s not even good theology.

The Whole Adam Lambert Thing

I’m largely indifferent to Adam Lambert. Sure, he’s hot, he’s gay and I’d totally hit that, but I probably won’t ever get the chance to, so who cares?

I'd hit that up one side and back down the other!

That said, I do find the recent fufurrah about his performace at the AMA’s to be really amusing.

See, he was performing on stage, singing some song or another, and started doing things like kissing one of the other (male) people on stage, doing some crotch grinding and the like. It was all fairly tame, frankly, by the standards of what goes on at such performances.

Ah, but in this case it was a gay man… with other men! Think of the children!

Adam Lambert did think of the children. He was asked by someone on CBS’ The Early Show if he thought he needed to apologize to his fans in general and the children (won’t someone please think of the children?!), to which Lambert replied with “Nope“. Good on him!

Lambert doesn’t have anything to apologize for. He didn’t do anything worse that someone like Madona, Brittney Spears or any of the other, generally female, singers out there. They do it and no one really minds (or they just get turned on). But when an openly gay man does it? Horror!

Oh, well. I’m sure that somehow our nation will find the strength to move on. We managed to survive the Crisis of Janet Jackson’s Nipple. If we lived through that, we can handle this.

Be strong, America!

Gobble, Gobble! Time to Gobble!

Not bothering to post much today. I have to work. I get what amounts to double-time-and-a-half, though, so that helps. Having to be there at 7am when I normally don’t even wake up until 9:30 does not help.

I am making dinner! I’ll be having a tasty turkey, some mashed potatoes and gravy, corn, Jell-O for desert and the usual snacky things like olives, some veggies and deviled eggs. Most importantly, I’ll have my friend Rob over for dinner!

So a bit of today, but mostly ! Meantime for a bit of fun, check this cute article on Snopes about some of the problems some turkeys have had making their turkeys.

Vampires in Heat

Yeah, not much to say about this, other than if Robert Pattinson actually opened his eyes all the way at any point, I think his career would end.

Christian Terrorists Attack Police Station

A police station in Belfast was attacked by Christian terrorists recently. They were part of a “rogue” Irish Republican Army group. For those keeping track, that’s the main Catholic group of terrorists there, as opposed to the various other Catholic groups and their enemies, the various Protestant groups. They’re the sides in what the British simply refer to as “The Troubles“.

Of course the MSM won’t refer to these terrorists as “Christian” terrorists. Because we all know Christianity is a religion of peace (or pieces, if you’re in the IRA). But when something that may or may not be about religion, like the Ft Hood shootings, happens, they can’t talk about the suspect’s religious background fast enough, since, after all, he’s a Muslim!

Now I do think the Ft Hood shootings were likely motivated by religion, but so was this Belfast attack. The IRA were, and this rogue group are, Christians and terrorists. Always remember that. The Muslims aren’t the only ones with evil, petty, cruel jerks out there.