Once upon a time, everyone trembled in fear at the thought of antagonizing the Church of $cientology. Everyone knew their response to any criticism would be heavy-handed and unconscionable, and that they’d harrass you persistently if you ended up on their enemies list. That’s changing, though, and the stupidity and viciousness of the cult is seeing more and more exposure. The latest is Lawrence Wright’s big exposé in the New Yorker and upcoming book on the subject. The article is well worth reading, all 28 online pages of it.

I hope the book casts a wider net, though. The New Yorker article focuses almost entirely on Paul Haggis, the recent apostate from the cult, and the impression I got from the article was that he is a flighty flibbertigibbet, a gullible enthusiast who’s been insulated from the consequences of bad decisions by an overpaid career as a Hollywood fantasist. I came away from it really disliking Haggis, and almost feeling like he deserved to be sucked into an all-devouring celebrity religion.

Which is really unfair…$cientology is being investigated for brain-washing and human trafficking, and these techniques do destroy human lives.

Thomas Euteneuer was an up-and-coming star of the Catholic priesthood: he was a charismatic fellow who appeared on radio and TV and other media to fight for the dogmatic Catholic position on just about everything. He was a crusader against homosexuality, against sex outside of marriage, against contraceptives, against abortion. He was also an official Catholic exorcist, which tells you right there that he was batty all the way through.

But then he was suddenly dismissed from his position on the board of an anti-abortion group, stepped down from one diocese and was transferred to another, and went quiet. There was a conspiracy of silence to keep his crimes, whatever they were, hidden away. That has changed recently, thanks to constant pressure from many angry Catholics, and a few statements have emerged from the church and from Euteneuer himself. They don’t clarify much, and in fact leave me even more curious.

What we know is that whatever Euteneuer did, it was dire — you can rape children in the church and the wheels of Catholic justice turn slowly, but Euteneuer did something that got him whisked out of the public eye surprisingly abruptly.

Whatever it was, it had something to do with his job as an exorcist.

The circumstances that led to my departure from HLI were related exclusively to my own decisions and conduct within the ministry of exorcism that I carried out independently from my responsibilities at HLI.

Hmmm. Curious. Even curiouser, his crime was sexual.

My violations of chastity were limited to one person only, an adult woman;

The violations of chastity happened due to human weakness but did not involve the sexual act;

We also have some other accounts that suggest these events occurred multiple times.

Father [reportedly] admitted to having ‘an inappropriate relationship’ with an employee in his letter of resignation [and] a second woman [apparently] came forward to say that Father had engaged in sexual activity with her — not intercourse, but close to it — while he was performing some type of exorcism prayer(s).

Catholic prayers must be kinkier than I ever imagined. I admit it, I do have a somewhat dirty mind, but looking at that list of admissions, I am totally stumped about what Euteneuer actually did … which is actually amplifying my imagined creepiness of whatever it was. I’d speculate further except that there is a victim involved: as much as Euteneuer may deserve some contempt, the victim deserves some respect.

Which brings me to the really weird part. Everything I’m reading about this situation contains these insistent declarations that the act involved an ADULT! WOMAN! Even the Catholic bishop’s statement about the case emphasizes this.

Euteneuer has been undergoing intensive evaluation and counseling to address admitted inappropriate crossing of adult heterosexual boundaries on the occasion of carrying out his priestly ministry.

See? ADULT! and HETEROSEXUAL!

This bugs me. It’s like they’re saying, “At least it wasn’t gay sex, and it didn’t involve a child.” They’re trying to reduce the magnitude of whatever perversity was committed. And it’s as if they’re reassuring everyone that it wasn’t that awful homosexuality was committed.

And weirdest of all, it’s as if they’re saying that because a woman was the victim, it wasn’t so bad. Women are the designated victims; oh, sure, it’s not good that he was abusing a woman, but it would have been even worse if a man was hurt.

And then there are the people rushing to defend this priest…by attacking the victims.

I think these women are shameful. Their attack will probably backfire on them. They are possessed with evil and it seems that they are getting worse whenever someone disagrees with them. They seem very vindictive in character and self righteous. They don’t seem credible to me.

I have known Fr. Tom personally for more than 13 years and I can assure you of Father’s devotion to the unborn. I have never seen him falter in his ministry as a priest. Being exposed to demons is not an easy thing. Sometimes the demons will purposely twist the bodies of their victims that will have their sexual parts touch the one who is trying to remove the demons. This, I am sure must have happened several times to Father Tom. Many of the women who are possessed also have other mental problems like ADHD and Bi-polar and these people lie very often just to get attention.

Even when the church acts quickly to stop a predatory priest, they just can’t do it right. It’s all those demon women and their wicked ways.

A trite phenomenon is taking place in a church in Bakersfield:

According to Tom Dorlis, the vice president of the parish council for St. George Greek Orthodox Church, back in 2007, around the time of the financial crisis, a portrait of the Virgin Mary, from Hawaii, started to cry an oily substance that smells like roses. Parishioners at the church, located at the intersection of Truxton Avenue and ‘U’ Street, said there’s no doubt that the weeping icon is a gift from god, whether you’re a believer or not.

I doubt it.

That phrase, “around the time of the financial crisis”, tells me everything I need to know.

It’s a regular business.

The icon- originally from Hawaii- is a smaller copy of the ancient original which has been at a monastery in Greece for over a millennium. Other copies have been produced in Montreal and Moscow. Some of those weep myrrh as well.

I wonder if they come with instructions on how to put a drop of a thick, oily substance on the painting at night, when no parishioners are around, so that it will ooze fragrantly during the day, when they are? Seriously, anyone taken in by the ancient stunt of the weeping/bleeding statue/painting is a frackin’ moron.

Lots of people are sending me this news story about Stephen Green, the British evangelical Christian fanatic. In case you’ve never heard of him:

Green, 60, is founder and director of Christian Voice, a fundamentalist group he set up in 1994, whose website thunders against the vices — family breakdown, crime, ­immorality and drink among them — that are ruining the lives of ‘real people’. Green’s ­pronouncements are often outrageous. For example, after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans in 2005 and killed more than 1,600 people, he claimed it was a result of God’s wrath and had purified the city.

I could stop right there, couldn’t I? You already know how this will end: Green will turn out to be some kind of pathological monster when the cameras aren’t rolling in his face.

Caroline Green was often punished by her husband Stephen for failing to be a dutiful, compliant wife, but his final act of violence against her — the one that prompted her long-overdue decision to divorce him — was all the more chilling because it was coldly premeditated.

Stephen Green wrote a list of his wife’s ­failings then described the weapon he would make to beat her with.

‘He told me he’d make a piece of wood into a sort of witch’s broom and hit me with it, which he did,’ she recalls, her voice tentative and quiet. ‘He hit me until I bled. I was terrified. I can still remember the pain.

‘Stephen listed my misdemeanours: I was disrespectful and disobedient; I wasn’t loving or submissive enough and I was undermining him. He also said I wasn’t giving him his ­conjugal rights.

‘He even framed our marriage vows — he always put particular emphasis on my promise to obey him — and hung them over our bed. He believed there was no such thing as marital rape and for years I’d been reluctant to have sex with him, but he said it was my duty and was angry if I refused him.

‘But the beating was the last straw. It ­convinced me I had to divorce him.’

Ah. So he was a vicious judgmental control freak who felt a profound sense of privilege for being a Christian man. But you could already get that from the first paragraph I quoted.

Next big item of non-news: the media continues to flock about Stephen Green, flogging his sensationalist hatred to the public, despite his patent hypocrisy.

The Vatican claims to want to talk with atheists, so they’re having a conference. How nice.

The Vatican announced a new initiative aimed at promoting dialogue between theists and atheists to be launched with a two-day event this March in Paris.

The Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Culture will sponsor a series of seminars on the theme of “Religion, Light and Common Reason,” at various locations in the city, including Paris-Sorbonne University.

The odd thing is that I don’t know of any atheists who’ve been invited, nor has the Vatican made any mention of who will be there. So who is this for? Are they going to actually bring in some of the argumentative atheists who have deep differences with religion, or will they just stock the place with atheist-butteries and nice atheists who love the church?

And what will they do there?

The events will conclude with a party for youth in the courtyard of the Cathedral of Notre Dame, followed by prayer and meditation inside the cathedral.

Oh, right. Two days in Paris and we’re going to hang out in a medieval church and pray. If they want to have a dialogue, they should split the events between religious la-de-da, organized by the Catholics, and secular indulgences in the fleshpots of the city, organized by local atheists. Then we’ll see which worldview wins.

But this isn’t about learning anything about how us atheists think. It’s about converting us, and is fundamentally inimical to atheism. It’s definitely not about “promoting dialogue”.

The pope has made turning back the tide of Western secularism one of the major campaigns of his papacy. The Vatican last year established the Pontifical Council for the New Evangelization to focus especially on promoting Christianity in Europe.

Good luck with turning back secularism by burying yourselves in an old stone relic and mumbling at Jesus, fellas!