Priest Alert: They Aren’t Just After Your Kids Anymore. (part III)

The scariest thing about the most recent nonsense wherein a candidate for President of the United States has announced that he does not think there should be a separation of church and state—read that “of government and religion”—in our country is that a lot of Americans seem to agree with him.

This may be what happens when you quit teaching Civics in public schools. Kids in school now do not know what a floppy drive is, or was, and they certainly do not know much about just why, and just how, our nation was formed.

For some time now, the Religious Right has been trying to get rid of public schools so vouchers can be approved so children can go to the religious school of their parents’ choice. Quit having class in Phys Ed, Geography, Math, Evolution, and cut out music programs, and before too long a self-fulfilling prophesy will be achieved and, because the public schools are producing morons who cannot cipher or think critically about anything, people will accept vouchers.

This is the way religion can create a theocracy. Little bite by little bit. And before too long, the Priests are making all of the rules. The inmates will be running the asylum. Faith based programs will pick up, and before too long churches will be running the country. Fundamentalist Protestants know this, and the Catholic Church well understands—better than the poor dumb Protestants whom the brilliant minds of the church have managed to persuade to take their side on the question of abortion. All so that the infallibility of the Pope on the issue of abortion can be upheld and no longer challenged. The church has been there before and religionists have learned how to avoid certain mistakes that may make citizens not want to trust their priests.

Christianity became the dominant religion of Europe after the collapse of the Roman Empire. And church and state became one. The Holy Roman Empire was born.

A thousand or so years of religious rule then came to pass, in what we call the “Dark Ages.”

Our nation has been infected by a bad dose of religion. Australia got the convicts, and we got the Puritans. And today we suffer from their influence on our lives and government.

But to put fundangelical ideas to work in the government of our country is not only highly unwise, such is also screamingly unconstitutional.

Our founders knew what horrors could be wrought by religion. The hanging of women in Salem who were shamefully convicted of the imaginary crime of being witches is only one example. Read “The Crucible” for horrifying details.

I do not intend to provide a list of black collar crimes and religious horrors. This history is easily accessible, so far anyway, and we need not correct or refute some Jesuits who are posing as atheists on these pages to tell us just what is wrong about our clear understanding, not only of the truths of their faith that are seen as bad and wrong, but as to the true truths about their faith.

The Catholic Church has already paid out huge amounts of money in settlement of lawsuits brought against it alleging that priests of the church have committed unspeakable crimes against children.
If gold rust, what will iron do?

Would the Church have settled these cases if the facts were on their side?

Do Americans need to learn the hard way just why we have a First Amendment? The first words of the Bill of Rights are: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion…” That was not added without reason.

Note that it prohibits “establishment of religion,” not “establishment of a religion.” That is really important.

As before in this rant, please understand this is all satire and humor directed at an imaginary evil. Isn’t it?

This writing contains exactly 666 words. Neat, huh?

Edwin Kagin © 2012.

The rule of law held, and Roman Catholics who had been excluded from our new republic, and its guarantees that one may believe or not as they choose, gave way to welcome Catholics, and persons of any other religious flavor, to the land that had made real the Enlightenment vision that government can be, and should be, run without approval from any religion or religious authority.

There still remained a fear that if a Catholic was elected President of the United States, the will of the church would be revealed to that Catholic President and that this President would then subordinate our Bill of Rights to the dogma of the church.

Until John F. Kennedy, a Catholic, ran for President of the United States.

Here is what Kennedy said to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association on September 12, 1960:

“But because I am a Catholic, and no Catholic has ever been elected President, the real issues in this campaign have been obscured–perhaps deliberately, in some quarters less responsible than this. So it is apparently necessary for me to state once again–not what kind of church I believe in, for that should be important only to me–but what kind of America I believe in.

I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute–where no Catholic prelate would tell the President (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote–where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference–and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the President who might appoint him or the people who might elect him.

I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish–where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source–where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials–and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all.

For while this year it may be a Catholic against whom the finger of suspicion is pointed, in other years it has been, and may someday be again, a Jew–or a Quaker–or a Unitarian- -or a Baptist. It was Virginia’s harassment of Baptist preachers, for example, that helped lead to Jefferson’s statute of religious freedom. Today I may be the victim–but tomorrow it may be you–until the whole fabric of our harmonious society is ripped at a time of great national peril.

Finally, I believe in an America where religious intolerance will someday end–where all men and all churches are treated as equal–where every man has the same right to attend or not attend the church of his choice–where there is no Catholic vote, no anti-Catholic vote, no bloc voting of any kind–and where Catholics, Protestants and Jews, at both the lay and pastoral level, will refrain from those attitudes of disdain and division which have so often marred their works in the past, and promote instead the American ideal of brotherhood.

That is the kind of America in which I believe. And it represents the kind of Presidency in which I believe–a great office that must neither be humbled by making it the instrument of any one religious group nor tarnished by arbitrarily withholding its occupancy from the members of any one religious group. I believe in a President whose religious views are his own private affair, neither imposed by him upon the nation or imposed by the nation upon him as a condition to holding that office.”

(Read more: http://www.beliefnet.com/News/Politics/2000/09/I-Believe-In-An-America- Where-The-Separation-Of-Church-And-State-Is-Absolute.aspx#ixzz1oGc07Ex0)

So, then enter Presidential candidate Rick Santorum who says that Kennedy’s statement on church/state separation makes him want to vomit.

Clearly Rick Santorum is no Jack Kennedy.

Article VI of the Constitution of the United States says: “…no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.”

What part of “no” don’t they understand?

Why is someone who speaks treason even given audience by liberty loving Americans?

Let us say the view became popular and implemented that some god’s laws could completely trump laws made by sober people in serious contemplation of real consequences.

If one is a church, then that church gets to get away with a great multitude of things that would get those not so attached to a church thrown in jail for awhile.

It’s simple. Your churches make their own rules and the civil authorities stand powerless before them.

If your church rule says it is okay to have sex with children, well “that’s that” said the grammarian. Secular authority that wants to give everyone “equal protection of the laws” will not interfere. So long as We the People put up with this, black robed evil will continue.

And if the laws of god control, please fantasize a world where those who do not believe are seen as enemies of the state. How could atheists possibly be pleasing to god? Therefore, god must be angry because we permit that which annoys him.

How to fix this? Get rid of the atheists. Let the priests tell you what laws you should make, break, or follow.

Then the priests will not just have your children. They will have you and everything you own as well.

 

Remember, all of this monologue is only humor and satire.

 

Edwin Kagin.

Some years ago in Philadelphia, center of the birth of America and its freedoms, I was shown a “safe house” for Catholics who came to these shores, during colonial times, when they were not welcome to do so. Seems liberty loving Protestants thought an influx of Roman Catholics to America would endanger the very freedoms the Enlightenment, the Protestant Reformation, the spirit of religious freedom, and the right to have no religion, a right our nation was set up to protect and defend.
It was amazing. How, thought I, could our founders, who wanted religious freedom, possibly fear Catholics and want to exclude them from our shores?

It was feared, at that time, that, with a sufficient number of Catholics in place, the Roman Catholic Church could perhaps take over our government and take away the right of the people to choose which, if any, religion they wanted to follow, without interference by the powers of the state. This principal is known as “separation of church and state,” and is a basic tenet of our freedoms.

Rick Santorum may be unique among politicians for his forthright admission that he wants the United States to be run by his religion. Usually, they tap dance around their true intent. But not Rick. He doesn’t see us as a nation of laws; he sees us as a nation of sins.

And we now have priests and bishops of the Catholic Church telling people for whom, and for what, to vote.

Legislators who are members of the church are subjected to being condemned by the priests to eternal damnation unless the elected representatives vote as the church demands. How can this be seen as anything other than a criminal attempt to intimidate elected officials?

According to reports, the Catholic Church is getting tooled up for the American Religious Civil War (ARCW) by finding lawyers to argue that a takeover of the government by the church is not a violation of church/state separation.

While crying to keep big government out of our lives, the theocrats pass laws telling people what they can and cannot do with their sex organs, and who they can and cannot marry.

And, even more frightening, they tell our lawmakers that the rights of the unconceived need to be protected. And this, in their view, is morality.

In that this monograph is only humor and satire, as are any to follow, and in that everything said is my personal opinion, those who call atheists evil, deranged, depraved, and dangerous really have no cause to complain.

It is time to be afraid and it is time to do something while we still can.

It is my opinion that the church rulers really could not care less about the rights of a fetus or about who marries whom. What they appear to care about is power. Good old raw power. Banks, land, hotels and other buildings, gold, and cash.

Once they have taken over by getting laws passed making absurdities true and giving themselves complete power, they will no longer care what happens to the frozen embryos they were saving before those collections of cells became people by legal actions enforcing the Church’s understanding of divine decrees.

If the Catholic leadership wants to have input into laws, let them pay taxes like others not so blessed. Let them pay taxes on their real estate and on their gilded wealth.

Why should those who neither sow nor reap dine for free at the table reserved for “We the People?”

And if the Catholic Church has an embassy in our country and states that it is an independent country subject only to its own laws and rules, then why are its agents, the priests and bishops of the church, not subject to having to register as foreign lobbying agents attempting to influence our legislation?

And just why, pray tell, is it not treason to advocate ignoring our Constitution and laws to be able to do what one wants?

The answer appears to be that they can do it because they are the Church.

Time to straighten out some things.

Edwin Kagin
© 2012.

Tomorrow is the second Friday of “Lent.”  Lent is very important to Xians, particularly Xians of Roman Catholic persuasion.  Every Friday of every Lent, I try to go to a Catholic fish fry.  Such are held all over the place in Catholic churches.  Some of these feasts are better than others.  I try to go to a different one each Friday of Lent.  The Friday just before Easter is “Good Friday.”  A fish fry eat out would not seem respectful when one should be suffering thinking of the “passion” of Jesus being crucified, so they aren’t conducted that Friday.  Anyway, you should know the rest.  In any case, here we present:

ON EASTER

The things you are liable to read in the Bible, they ain’t necessarily so. Porgy and Bess

Easter is the High Holy Day of the Christian religion. In its many manifestations, Easter celebrates the myth of the reanimation from death of the god Jesus, aka the Christ. Like its womb mate Christmas, Easter is a marvelous blend of Christian and non-Christian nonsense. The Christian side is represented by “Handel’s Messiah” and hot cross buns (a seasonal pastry with a sugar cross on it) and the non-Christian nonsense side by “In Your Easter Bonnet…” and hunts for Easter Eggs (dyed boiled eggs in the shell–laid, young minds are taught to believe, by rabbits. Some hold the rabbits don’t lay the eggs, only deliver them. What do you think?).

To understand the phenomena of Easter, one must understand the Christian “Gospels.” These four small propagandist tracts, written long after the supernatural fact, by unknown authors who did not know Jesus, contain the only known evidence for the existence of Jesus. Believers will argue other historic proofs, but these are provable forgeries added centuries later by pious priests who copied or translated Jewish, Roman and Greek texts. If the ancient writers had deliberately omitted Jesus merely because they had never heard of him, this error was often fixed for later Christian editions. The only evidence for Easter beliefs comes from the gospels.

Here’s a neat bible study exercise for non believers. It will help you learn something of the Christian belief system and will prove useful in the American Religious Civil War when believers try to force you to play in their sandbox. Read all four gospels and, including every fact contained within them, write a concise, non-contradictory chronology of what happened between the time Jesus was crucified on a stake (the Greek word translates “stake” not “cross”–tell that to your preacher and watch him ring them bells) and the moment he went up to Heaven. Then you will know what Christians believe. To make the challenge more exciting, be sure to include facts, for the same time frame, from “The Acts of the Apostles” and from the letters of Paul. Paul really got Christianity going. He claimed to have seen Jesus after Jesus had gone to Heaven. Lots of people believed him. Lots of people believed Joseph Smith too. Joseph Smith wrote “The Book of Mormon” and claimed an angel helped him translate buried gold plates the angel later reburied. At least Paul had honest delusions.

The reason the death of Jesus is of importance to Christians is because if they believe Jesus died for their sins they get to live forever with him when they die. Because Jesus survived death, believers will too. Somehow Jesus’ “sacrifice” doesn’t seem like such a big deal, being a god and all, and getting to come alive again after being dead only one day and two nights. Many people have died for others and have stayed dead. There should be no shortage of volunteers willing to die to save everyone forever and be worshiped as a god if they could come alive again after being dead between Friday evening and Sunday morning.

Once you finish the bible stories about Jesus, you may well wonder how anyone could believe this stuff, and you should understand why the events were omitted from every other history of that time. When Jesus died on the stake, the bible reports that dead people came out of their graves (whether decomposed or not isn’t revealed), walked around the city and were recognized by many. This should have provoked some interest by the scandal sheets of the day, but no other reference is found of it. We might wonder if the risen dead sued to get their property back from their useless heirs.

You will note from your Easter biblical studies that the primary witness to the resurrection of the Christ was one Mary Magdalene, a woman thought to be a prostitute who had been possessed by seven demons, i.e., she was nuts. Wouldn’t it have been nice if the risen savior of the world had appeared in all his glory to the Roman Senate where literate rational humanists could have recorded an accurate account of this miracle? Why have your immortal soul hang in the balance on less than credible evidence? Should one accept that laws of nature have been broken and that a dead body has come alive again on the word of a deranged hooker? Would a just, rational, compassionate god condemn one to eternal torment for doubting such evidence? Clearly the Senate, or even a meeting of the Aqueduct Committee, would have been a better place to break the good news of salvation.

But we are not dealing with a rational god or even decent moral behavior in the Easter story. The god the myth says was the father of Jesus believed in child sacrifice. Previously content with blood drained from the slashed throats of sheep, goats and such, god needed more gore to save everyone. He wanted his own kid killed as a blood sacrifice for the sins of the world. This is what little children (kids) are taught in Sunday School (that’s where Christians violate the Fourth Commandment by worshiping on the first day of the week instead of the seventh as god ordered–no wonder we are in such trouble).

But if child murder for the sins of others isn’t bad enough, consider this. Christians celebrate the death and rebirth of the god Jesus in a grotesque cannibalistic ritual of (symbolically if Protestant; for real if Roman Catholic) eating his flesh and drinking his blood! This bizarre custom is known as “Holy Communion”–dare we call it “swallow the leader?”

If Jesus rose from the dead, and if he went to Heaven, and if Heaven is outside the known universe, and if the laws of nature invented by god apply to god, then Jesus could not travel faster than the speed of light. If he left for Heaven two thousand years ago, he isn’t there yet, and won’t be there for some time. Therefore, we really need not concern ourselves at this point about his return to earth. Presumably he will return sometime after he gets there.

So now you know about Easter. You will probably be a happier and better adjusted human being if you stick to the Easter Parade and pass on the eating of human flesh and blood. And please remember that this disgusting rite is practiced in buildings owned by Christian groups who do not have to pay taxes on their property or income.

And the next time some un-American lunatics want to have forced Christian prayer in public schools, tell them you are a spiritual vegetarian.

Happy Easter.

Edwin Kagin ©