This looks like a really good rule.
Do not allow others to molest children, expose all molesters to authorities, they are the worst garbage to infest any society.
Maybe it was on that set of tablets Moses smashed — it’s certainly a more useful law than the ones about how to cook goats or what kind of clothes to wear or the injunction to do nothing useful on Sunday. But no, that’s from the hobo ethical code.
Isn’t it nice that hobos have a better moral foundation than priests?
Anybody know if this story is true or just an amusing joke? I like it either way.
In a small Texas town, (Mt. Vernon ) Drummond’s bar began construction on a new building to increase their business.. The local Baptist church started a campaign to block the bar from opening with petitions and prayers. Work progressed right up till the week before opening when lightning struck the bar and it burned to the ground.
The church folks were rather smug in their outlook after that, until the bar owner sued the church on the grounds that the church was ultimately responsible for the demise of his building, either through direct or indirect actions or means.
The church vehemently denied all responsibility or any connection to the building’s demise in its reply to the court.
As the case made its way into court, the judge looked over the paperwork. At the hearing he commented, “I don’t know how I’m going to decide this, but as it appears from the paperwork, we have a bar owner who believes in the power of prayer, and an entire church congregation that does not.”
Excellent news: the tide is rising against the Vatican in Ireland. More people are speaking out, the newspapers are publishing pictures of the pope labeled “persona non grata”, there’s a simmering resentment everywhere. It’s leading to comments like this one, which sees a secular Ireland coexisting with religious sentiment, but no longer with the long arm of the Vatican meddling with the state.
Such sweeping changes could occur in what was once Catholic Ireland: the state could become as secularist as France, with all allusion to the Almighty officially excised. Yet even in France, the holy days continue, with Pentecost and Ascension and All Saints, and Lourdes attracting millions.
The Church in Ireland will never be what it was, but the faith, at grassroots level, will not disappear. The people will climb the holy mountain of St Patrick, and come in their thousands to the shrine of Our Lady at Knock, and beggar themselves to provide children with first communion regalia; and when there is a tragedy in a small town, the church and parish priest will still be at the centre of the community, offering age-old comforts, not of the Vatican, but of the faith.
I could live with that kind of arrangement. I detest faith and think it’s a poison of the mind, but I’m not going to march into people’s homes and tell them what they must believe. Atheist resentment is over the fact that in countries like mine, religion motivates bad policy and excessive meddling in people’s private lives.
The Vatican is not happy with Ireland, which is also cool. The pope’s ambassador to Ireland has been withdrawn — which probably causes about as much regret and despair to the Republic as when the English left.
Here’s a perfectly appropriate prayer to start a NASCAR race: he thanks God for GM performance technology, and Ford, and motor oil, and Goodyear tires…he must be hoping for a little kickback from auto suppliers. Aww, it’s funny, anyway.
Is this like some bizarre religion-wide side-effect or something? Because Catholicism and Buddhism seem like such wildly different faiths, but here we go again, chronic incidents of child rape by priests…Buddhist priests. And like the Catholic side of the story, they’ve got some of these priests dead to rights, with DNA/paternity tests and admissions and all kinds of testimony, and once again, it is the crime of the religious hierarchy to both enable it and hide the culprits from justice.
A Tribune review of sexual abuse cases involving several Theravada Buddhist temples found minimal accountability and lax oversight of monks accused of preying on vulnerable targets.
Because they answer to no outside ecclesiastical authority, the temples respond to allegations as they see fit. And because the monks are viewed as free agents, temples claim to have no way of controlling what they do next. Those found guilty of wrongdoing can pack a bag and move to another temple — much to the dismay of victims, law enforcement and other monks.
“You’d think they’d want to make sure these guys are not out there trying to get into other temples,” said Rishi Agrawal, the attorney for a victim of a west suburban monk convicted of battery for sexual contact last fall. “What is the institutional approach here? It seems to be ignorance and inaction.”
Paul Numrich, an expert on Theravada temples in the United States, said that like clergy abuse in other religious organizations, sex offenses are especially egregious because monks are supposed to live up to a higher spiritual calling. The monks take a vow of celibacy.
One serial offender, Boa-Ubol, has been definitively caught with a DNA test — he fathered a child on a 14-year-old girl. His temple chastised him, and claimed that he had left the US to go to Thailand. Where is he now? California. In a temple. Working with children. Reporters can call this rapist and pedophile up and have a conversation with him.
Speaking by phone from the California temple, he [Boa-Ubol ] responded to the allegations involving the 12-year-old and another woman who alleges Boa-Ubol sexually assaulted her at Wat Dhammaram in the late 1990s.
The woman is suing Boa-Ubol, Sriburin and the temple, alleging negligence, intentional infliction of emotional distress and gender violence, and has included the alleged sex abuse of the other girl in her suit.
She alleges Boa-Ubol began assaulting her in the temple and a trailer behind it when she was 14 and continued to do so for nearly a year until she became pregnant.
The monk threatened to kill her father if she told anyone about the sex and provided her with money to keep quiet, according to the lawsuit. She alleged that other monks assaulted teenage girls and witnessed some of the attacks on her.
When she later told a woman at the temple that Boa-Ubol was the father of her daughter, the woman allegedly instructed her to relinquish the child to Wat Dhammaram — a response that caused her to flee the site, according to records.
Here’s another hint: don’t put clueless celibates in charge of judging sexual offenses.
But at Wat Dhammaram, the temple on the edge of Chicago, the monks did not see Boa-Ubol’s alleged abuse of the 12-year-old as cause to strip him of his title because there was no sexual intercourse, said Sriburin, the monk who penned the letter to the girl’s family.
“As long as we don’t know any sexual intercourse, we have no reason to charge anybody on that ground,” Sriburin said. “… We were informed that he just touched body.”
Jebus…I mean, Boo-duh. They really are all rotten through and through, aren’t they?
I’m getting a clearer picture of Jennifer Fulwiler. She’s very much a Catholic, she thinks she’s an expert on atheists, and she likes things in fives. First it was five misconceptions atheists have about Catholics, and now she’s written five Catholic teachings that make sense to atheists. As if she’d know. She claims to have been an atheist once, but her list of stuff that makes sense indicates that she was an awfully Catholic atheist.
Purgatory. Why? “it made sense to me because it explained how heaven can be a place of perfect love, and God can still be merciful to people who had some work to do in that department when they died.” Does she even realize that including speculation about the nature of God and heaven, especially speculation that ignores the monstrous tyranny described in the Bible, means it automatically makes no sense at all to an atheist?
The Communion of Saints. Why? “I didn’t struggle with this doctrine at all—it struck me as an articulation of a spiritual truth known to the human heart from time immemorial.” The communion of saints is the idea that all Christians have a mystical bond with each other, both alive and dead. Magic ESP restricted to people who believe in the right god (the damned don’t get it) is not exactly a truth. What atheist would hear that and think that was perfectly reasonable?
Veneration of Mary Why? when I heard that Catholics place a huge emphasis on the Mother of God, my reaction was basically to shrug and say, “Yeah. Of course.” She even acknowledges that atheists with a Protestant upbringing might find the Mary worship weird, but then blunders on to simply say it’s obvious that we ought to worship the human being who gave birth to all-powerful cosmic ruler of the universe. Errm, we don’t believe in gods, period; the fanciful story that a Palestinian virgin squirted him out of her vagina two thousand years ago in a stable doesn’t strike us as somehow intuitive or even possible.
Salvation for Non-Catholics and Non-Christians Why? “It struck me as fair and consistent” that you wouldn’t get damned if you never heard of Jesus. This is the idea that if you’re a good person, but you’ve never heard of Christianity, you won’t go to hell. Of course, if you have heard of the gospel because some caterwauling missionary or proselytizer bellows at you, and you reject it because the whole shebang makes no sense at all, you will go to hell. This does not strike me as fair, or even sensible.
Apostolic Authority Why? “this one God-guided Church has final authority on matters of doctrine”. She complains that all those other churches had people struggling to interpret and understand the Bible, and all coming up with different explanations. The Catholic Church, on the other hand, tells you to sit down, shut up, don’t question, here’s the one correct answer…therefore, this should be more appealing to an atheist?
Can you imagine what would happen if some well-meaning, kindly, thoughtful Catholic read Jennifer Fulwiler’s post about what would represent common ground with atheists, and then came to me with charitable intent to discuss our shared ideals? The poor thing…it’d be like they were walking into a woodchipper, thinking they were going to get a cup of tea and a cookie.
What has the world come to? Valley Park Middle School in Toronto has made a very special provision to make Muslim students happy: they allow them to use the cafeteria for private prayer (to which I have no objection), and then obligingly segregate the boys from the girls, and because it is so very important, also take the young girls who are menstruating and ostracize them in the back of the room, where they are not allowed to participate. OK, not making them join in a prayer is nice, but the implicit public shaming for their physiological state? Outrageous.
There’s a petition. Let’s add more names to it.
Christian knees are trembling, sensing imminent doom brought on by juvenile fantasy literature. Which is ironic, considering that they worship a big sloppy book that fits perfectly into the genre. Anyway, first there was the Harry Potter series, which turned all the teenagers into Wiccans (what?); then there was the Twilight series, that has led to an upsurge of teenagers drinking blood (I missed that one, too). What next?
Think carefully: What might happen if a “third wave” of popular entertainment inspires gullible teenagers to seek possession by demonic entities, thinking it’s good for them? To those who believe in a real behind-the-scenes war between good and evil, the prospect is truly terrifying.
There are no people with magic powers or functioning magic wands, and there are no quidditch matches on ESPN; vampires aren’t real, and all that can happen with rare instances of blood drinking is a little nausea and the potential transmission of blood-borne diseases.
Demons aren’t real, and inviting one to possess you is just a waste of time that will make you look very silly. And the people believe it’s a peril deserve a little terror, and should lock themselves up in their churches and not come out any more.
Religion leads to moral bankruptcy, and can be used to justify anything. What else can you say when crazy theologians argue for murder?
Rabbis Dov Lior and Yacob Yousef had endorsed a highly controversial book, the King’s Torah – written by two lesser-known settler rabbis. It justifies killing non-Jews, including those not involved in violence, under certain circumstances.
The fifth chapter, entitled “Murder of non-Jews in a time of war” has been widely quoted in the Israeli media. The summary states that “you can kill those who are not supporting or encouraging murder in order to save the lives of Jews”.
At one point it suggests that babies can justifiably be killed if it is clear they will grow up to pose a threat.
Oh, wait. This must be more of that sophisticated theology, because I don’t get it.
(via Butterflies & Wheels)
The Campus Crusade for Christ is changing their name. They’ve decided that they aren’t just about “campuses”, which is great; maybe they can quit poisoning our universities then. They’ve also, after a mere 60 years, realized that “crusade” has negative connotations to a lot of people, so they’re dropping that, too. Their new name?
“Cru”.
Cru? Just cru. Cruel crude crucifiers cruisin’ for crumpet crumbs. I don’t know, I guess they’re just trying to be hip and happenin’, or something, when they’re really just a fusty old antiquity dedicated to dogma.
They’re also rather defensive about the fact that they’ve dropped Christ from their name, but they explain it quite well.
We were not trying to eliminate the word Christ from our name. We were looking for a name that would most effectively serve our mission and help us take the gospel to the world. Our mission has not changed. Cru enables us to have discussions about Christ with people who might initially be turned off by a more overtly Christian name. We believe that our interaction and our communication with the world will be what ultimately honors and glorifies Christ.
That’s so charmingly craven of them! They want to be sneaky when proselytizing, and they recognize that Christ is a major PR detriment to them. Now if only we could get the rest of Christianity to jettison Jesus.
