How does Scientology get away with it, exactly?
It charges money – a lot of money – for everything it does, but it calls itself a religion (one made up by a writer of pulp science fiction) and get a religious tax exemption.
How does it manage that? Why did the IRS say “Ok, you get your tax exemption, what the hell, why not”? [Read more…]
Oh, this is depressing. A 2010 article by Jeff Sharlet (I was browsing him for background on “The Family” and the Ugandan kill-the-gays bill) on how Hillary Clinton moved to the right on abortion at the behest of (gag, choke) “Mother” Teresa and “The Family” at the 1994 (gag, gag) “National Prayer Breakfast.”
HC was at the 58th annual nationalprayerbreakfast in 2010, and there she got nostalgic about the late Albanian nun.
In her address, Clinton sentimentally recalled meeting Mother Teresa at the 1994 National Prayer Breakfast. Mother Teresa had used her platform as guest speaker to chastise the Clintons (standing right beside her, smiles stretched to the breaking point) for their nominal support of abortion rights. [Read more…]
The US Catholic bishops are chastened by their failure to impose their religious views on the electorate last week, and Cardinal Timothy Dolan lectured them yesterday on what to do about it.
To think harder and realize that they should pay more attention to human well-being as opposed to pretended goddy mandates?
Don’t be silly. [Read more…]
There’s a conversation (or a thread) at Christianity Today about the Ugandan anti-gay bill that its sponsors say will pass in time for Christmas, jingle jingle jingle. I just want to look at one comment because it’s such a pure example of how not to think about such things. It’s not at all surprising; don’t go expecting anything like that; it’s just that it’s usefully pure.
I do not advocate killing homosexuals. I think Uganda is on the wrong track here. But I also do not believe that we should glorify a behavior that God has clearly condemned. Sin is sin. Sin is rebellion against God. [Read more…]
Salman Hameed tells us more about that girls’ school in Lahore that was torched by an angry mob because a teacher accidentally photocopied the wrong page of the Koran for an exam. It’s heartbreaking.
He starts with Umair Asim and his passion for astronomy.
But what truly lights up Asim is his passion for public education. During the International Year of Astronomy (IYA) in 2009, Asim helped lead and organise numerous public observations in Lahore as well as in government schools in smaller cities and towns in Punjab. [Read more…]
Via Tarek Fatah…
Two niqab-wearing women assaulted and forcefully cut the hair of a Christian woman on the metro Sunday [Read more…]
The Vatican, shaken to its core by the shocking US elections in which three states voted for legalizing same-sex marriage and no states voted against it, has raced to reiterate its own stupid insistence on the obvious and the wrong.
“In western countries there is a widespread tendency to modify the classic vision of marriage between a man and woman, or rather to try to give it up, erasing its specific and privileged legal recognition compared to other forms of union,” said Father Federico Lombardi.
“It is a question of admitting that a husband and a wife are publicly recognized as such, and that children who come into the world can know, and say they have, a father and a mother,” he added. [Read more…]
Are any of you good at Wikipedia stuff? I ask because Leo Igwe’s entry could do with expansion. I would do it but I’ve never taken the time to learn the many baroque rules there, so I’d be sure to do something terribly wrong.
Leo was appointed a research fellow at JREF a few days ago. That’s very good – the more support Leo gets, the better!
I just published his tribute to Paul Kurtz at ur-B&W.
Late yesterday afternoon my time people in Australia were calling for a royal commission to look into the Catholic church’s coverup of child rape by priests. This morning my time I learn that Gillard has already announced such a commission – though not confined to the Catholic church.
Hmm. Why not confined to the Catholic church? Well because the Catholic church doesn’t want it to be confined to the Catholic church.
Opposition Leader Tony Abbott said earlier today he’d support a “wide-ranging” commission that didn’t focus solely on the Catholic Church. [Read more…]
Detective Chief Inspector Peter Fox explains what the abuse was really like.
A sample from the transcript:
TONY JONES: As we’ve heard, the scale of this abuse in Newcastle-Maitland Diocese over many years is truly shocking. It’s astonishing in fact. 400 victims, 14 clergy charged (inaudible), six Catholic teachers convicted, three priests currently on trial. How does this much evil get concentrated in one small area?
PETER FOX: I don’t think it takes a detective chief inspector to work that out, Tony. Alarm bells were ringing there for me many, many years ago, so much so that I actually detailed a number of reports to hierarchy within the Police Department to launch fuller investigations.
It was quite evident that something was going on. These priests were operating in adjoining parishes abusing children, they were meeting at meetings together. In many cases that I came across, one priest who had previously faced paedophile charges was donating parish money to the legal support of another priest to defend him against those charges.
I had other priests that hadn’t been charged with anything removing evidence and destroying it before we were able to secure it. And we just went around in circles.
TONY JONES: This is actually – this is – as horrific as the litany of sexual crimes against children are, to me one of the most disturbing lines in your letter was along these lines: “I can testify from my own experience the Church covers up, silences victims, hinders police investigations, alerts offenders, destroys evidence and moves priests to protect the good name of the Church.” You’re saying you have evidence of all of this?
PETER FOX: Oh, not only do I have evidence, it’s irrefutable. Most of that is fact that’s been admitted by many of them. We encounter it all the time. For people to sit back and say it’s not going on, they’ve got their head in the sand. The greatest frustration is that there is so much power and organisation behind the scenes that police don’t have the powers to be able to go in and seize documents and have them disclose things to us.
The Mafia, dressed up as something else.