Details of some high-level Catholic tribunal and how it handles the most grievous sins have been revealed. In a very strange overview, we learn that murder and genocide, while truly horrible crimes, can be handled by lower members of the hierarchy. There are a few that only this tribunal and the Pope are qualified to cope with. They are briefly listed: trying to assassinate the Pope, a priest spilling the beans about what is said in the confessional, priests having sex, and abortionists becoming priest. But there is one other crime, which the article dwells on:

Defiling the Eucharist, which Catholics believe is the body and blood of Christ, is also considered a sin of extreme gravity and one which is on the increase, the high-ranking members of the tribunal said.

Cardinal Stafford said there had been a rise in incidents in which people would receive Communion and then spit it out or otherwise desecrate it, sometimes in Satanic rituals.

In July last year an American academic, to make a point about freedom of thought and religion, drove a nail through a Communion wafer and then threw it in a rubbish bin.

Paul Myers, from the University of Minnesota, said later: “I pierced it with a rusty nail. Then I simply threw it in the trash. Question everything. God is not great, Jesus is not your Lord.”

Such sins, which can only be dealt with by the Pope, acting through the tribunal, bring automatic excommunication from the Church. If the Pope decides to grant absolution, the excommunication is lifted.

But how can I be excommunicated from a church to which I’ve never belonged?

And aren’t their priorities a little screwed up that they consider genocide a lesser offense?

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Pough sent along an illustration that I must use.

The Indianapolis Star has been running a pointless little prayer on page A2 of the newspaper for years. Not any more; the editor has decided to discontinue it. It isn’t because it has suddenly become a mouthpiece for militant atheism, though:

We appreciate that this has been a long tradition in The Star. But we are re-evaluating our mission and all that we do. I believe that prayer is a very personal thing and that offering prayers is something for individuals and their churches. We are a newspaper, not a church.

Also, we do live in a society in which there are many, many different beliefs. We respect all religions, and the prayer was written only from the Christian perspective.

Because of those issues, we have decided to drop the prayer. I’m confident that people will continue to offer their own prayers reflecting their own lives and faith needs.

Good for the Star! As you might guess, this decision has triggered lots of complaints. Here’s one that I thought was very funny.

Very disappointing decision. If you are able to print the horoscopes, then you should print a prayer …please reconsider.

They are on a par with horoscopes, aren’t they? Just as ineffective, and just as ridiculous…but that’s not an argument for keeping either of them.

The Christian Anti-Defamation Commission is angry.

It is time for the Christian bashing to stop and for Christians to no longer be treated like second-class citizens.

Second-class citizens who are virtually the only people who can get elected to political office, who whine piteously if anyone fails to kneel before their sacraments, who also claim that this is a Christian nation, who use their faith to justify war, corruption, oppression, greed, and who use their privileged position to deny non-Christians basic rights. Yeah, right. They’re a gang of hypocritical thugs with a persecution complex. It it time for Christian bashing to increase, I should think.

Now they’ve compiled a top ten list of Christian bashing in America for 2008, and oh, it is a pathetic thing. It is largely a list of people who mocked Christian excess: first on the list is the Proposition 8 Musical, starring Jack Black as Jesus. Bill Maher gets mentioned twice. I am in there for throwing a cracker in the trash. A sports announcer used obscenities. Come on, where are the lions? There aren’t any.

Most ridiculous of all, they have to invent slurs. Apparently, Barack Obama’s very existence is an example of Christian bashing.

According to research into President Elect Obama’s own statements about faith, and an examination of Obama’s position on moral issues, CADC has determined that by any biblical and historic Christian standard, Barack Obama is not a Christian, although he claims he is a “devout Christian.”

That’s it. Because they’ve redefined Obama’s beliefs as non-Christian, the fact that he holds those beliefs constitutes a defamation of Christianity. Poor pitiful CADC.

Charlie Daniels has chimed in with a little squeak of outrage at Newdow’s lawsuit. His post is titled “He Must Be a Miserable Man“, and I think it must be self-referential since it is an astonishing collection of stupidities. Foremost, here’s one that I can’t believe anyone would say:

If we deny God His rightful place in the affairs of this nation should we expect Him to intervene when we need protection? Just what do you think has kept us safe from terrorist attacks since 9/11? It certainly wasn’t the atheists.

I expect atheists did contribute, as did Christians and Muslims and other Americans. What does Charlie Daniels think has prevented further attacks? Does he seriously believe there’s an invisible man flicking away terrorists at the border?

I’m actually most curious about the logic behind the claim that a god gets credit for the absence of hijackings in the last seven years, though. What was he doing in 2001? Napping?

Somebody else is being denied the right to marry. A woman who worked at a Catholic high school was fired because her fiance was divorced.

Doesn’t that just make you feel all warm inside? Our wanna-be overlords of the high priesthood promise us a future of arbitrary regulation of our private lives.

Yeah, the Pope babbles dicta against people who are different from him, so what else is new?

In comments at the Vatican that are likely to provoke a furious reaction from homosexual groups, Benedict also warned that blurring the distinction between male and female could lead to the “self-destruction” of the human race.

In his address to the Curia, the Vatican’s central administration, he described behaviour beyond traditional heterosexual relations as “a destruction of God’s work” and said that the Roman Catholic Church had a duty to “protect man from the destruction of himself”.

It is not “outmoded metaphysics” to urge respect for the “nature of the human being as man and woman,” he added.
“The tropical forests do deserve our protection. But man, as a creature, does not deserve any less.”

Hang on, wait. So Catholics are like trees, and gay people are like chainsaws, or something? And the gays are engaged in clear-cutting church congregations? Homosexuals are out to EXTERMINATE the whole HUMAN RACE?

Wow.

The Catholic Church teaches that while homosexuality is not sinful, homosexual acts are. It opposes gay marriage and, in October, a leading Vatican official described homosexuality as “a deviation, an irregularity, a wound”.

Well, yeah. A chainsaw can do some pretty nasty damage.

People take the pope rather seriously, I hear. I don’t know why — the man is a kook.

This is not an auspicious beginning. Guess who is going to deliver the invocation at Obama’s inauguration? None other than the smilin’ face of right-wing fundamentalism, Rick Warren.

As we’ve pointed out several times before, in 2004 Warren declared that marriage, reproductive choice, and stem cell research were “non-negotiable” issues for Christian voters and has admitted that the main difference between himself and James Dobson is a matter of tone. He criticized Obama’s answers at the Faith Forum he hosted before the election and vowed to continue to pressure him to change his views on the issue of reproductive choice. He came out strongly in support of Prop 8, saying “there is no need to change the universal, historical defintion of marriage to appease 2 percent of our population … This is not a political issue — it is a moral issue that God has spoken clearly about.” He’s declared that those who do not believe in God should not be allowed to hold public office.

Obama had a chance to set a non-sectarian, progressive tone at this event, and he has chosen to kow-tow to the wretched evangelical movement.