Suddenly

In an article in the 21 December 2010 San Francisco Chronicle a story on the Vatican's sudden interest in helping clerical child abuse victims included the statement: 


 "This month, the Vatican published a letter from 1988 that it said showed that Benedict, then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the head of the Vatican's doctrinal office in charge of handling abuse, had sought ways for swifter punishment for errant priests. At the time, he was unsuccessful."

Interestingly enough, in a Reuters news article on 21 November 2010 there were extensive quotations from His Holiness' new book, including the following: 

 "Suddenly so much filth. It was really almost like the crater of a volcano, out of which suddenly a tremendous cloud of filth came, darkening and soiling everything, so that above all the priesthood suddenly seemed to be a place of shame and every priest was under the suspicion of being one like that too."

Hmmmm. Suddenly, suddenly, suddenly.  Apparently by 2010 the Holy Father had entirely forgot that twenty years earlier he had been in charge of a Vatican office that was supposedly investigating clerical abuse.  So now suddenly suddenly suddenly there is "so much filth".

No, the real purpose of that Vatican office twenty years ago was to continue covering up clerical abuse, just as the church has been doing for centuries.  In this case, though, His Holiness did his job so well that he convinced himself that the abuse hadn't happened....and then twenty years later could describe it as being "suddenly suddenly suddenly" revealed.

Obama's Audacity Revealed

I am sitting here breathless, contemplating Obama's utter evil audacity as explained on a Christian website:

http://www.fivedoves.com/rapture/2008/obama_666_symbol.html

Yes, all you have to do is turn the symbol upside down, decolorize it, recolorize it, triple it, and move a couple of pieces and clearly, there it is: "666".

Faith moves mountains, they say.  Certainly it's needed to decode symbols.

And check out some of the other articles on this site.  They include several absolute, airtight proofs that Obama is the Antichrist.

Who'd have guessed?

For the Bible Tells Me So

I've just watched the 2007 movie For the Bible Tells Me So on DVD and am profoundly moved.  First, at the outrageous hatred of gays taught until fairly recently by all the Christian Churches and still taught by all but four or five of them.

And second, that even though there are some people who are so full of Christian hatred that they disavow their gay children, most parents (at least in this century) ultimately realize that they love their children too much to disavow them, and that a better choice is to simply ignore the hatred their denomination teaches or to affiliate with one of the handful of tolerant denominations. 

The movie focuses on how five sets of parents came to accept their gay  children, so it carries a positive message.

On the other hand, since it reviews the vicious persecution of gays by the Christian church during the last half century, it served to renew and refresh my animosity to that religion even though i continue to admire the individual Christians who can reject the hate their churches teach.

The good news, though, is that i realized that Christian hatred of gays will very soon be going into a rapid decline as the churches find a new and much improved scapegoat to rally their flocks against.

After all, who does God hate even more than fags?  Yes, the Muslims!!!  Sic 'em, Your Holiness!  Maybe it'll take the public's mind off your coverup of your child molesters.

Ahhhh, free free, free at last!

Separation of Church and State

I've made some feeble attempts to address the question of the separation of church and state in response to recent statements by the right wing that this country was founded by Christians and intended to be a Christian country all along.  However, i have never come close to creating an argument as complete and cohesive as "The Conservative Christian Case for Separation of Church and State" written by Jimi Jobin, a graduate of Jerry Falwell's Liberty University and now a pastor in Las Vegas, Nevada.

I'll paste it in here just in case the link above goes bad:

• The Conservative Christian Case for Separation of Church and State
• An open letter to Pastor H. Wayne Williams.
• By Jimi Jobin
  
  Jimi Jobin is pastor of Terra Nova Faith Community in Las Vegas, Nevada. He is an alumni (sic) of Liberty University and is a contributor to the political blog The Briefing.
  
  
• What follows is a response to the actions of Rev. H. Wayne Williams who, in defiance of the IRS Law denying churches the ability to publicly support political candidates, has chosen to endorse Gordon Howie for Governor of South Dakota from the pulpit. Howie has asked for pastoral support and in return has promised to assist those pastors in taking their inevitable IRS trials to the Supreme Court in an effort to end separation of church and state in America.
  
  
  Pastor, I recognize your frustration, and I see how things have come to this. For years America has only shrugged at religion, and recently Christianity has been caught in a violent tug of war between Republicans and Democrats. We feel, as leaders, entitled to make political endorsements. Why shouldn’t we—particularly in a democracy where endorsements translate directly to power—take up our biblically-informed opinion, get behind a pulpit, and urge our people to support a candidate? Why shouldn’t we support the rulers we stand to benefit the most from, and give them a divine leg up?
  
  For the historically minded among us, the reasons for not bringing our spiritual authority into political campaigns are blood red. For nearly 2,000 years our faith forefathers were persecuted and oppressed; not always by the irreligious, but more often by competing tribes within Christianity. Clerics would jockey for favor in the kingdoms of men, then use any clout gained to suppress the views of their theological enemies.
  
  Over and again we stamped out those who did not fit into our au courant idea of orthodoxy and we entrenched ourselves into division, using the steel of our ruler’s swords to proclaim our theological certainty. Christians have killed and tortured more of their own than any other group in history, and this was possible solely because of the unholy union of church and state. Pastors gave rulers their blessing, and rulers returned the favor by silencing the pastor’s critics, a fantastic deal for the pastor who courts the powers, but a dangerous and painful reality for those who do not.
  
  There isn’t a Christian denomination in existence that has not been slaughtered by its theological opponents. The Pope used his political power in Spain to launch the Inquisition. Bloody Mary earned her moniker by burning 300 dissenters of Roman Catholicism at the stake. The Calvinists and Lutherans used their influence over the German princes to commit near genocide of Catholics all over Europe during the 30 Years War. Catholics in the third Crusade almost exterminated the Orthodox church in Constantinople. Anabaptists have been drowned, burned, and exiled under each of the other major sects.
  
  For almost 1500 years, Christians wielded political power to slay one another; until the founding of America. America was the first country without a designated faith, here was the only place in the world where Catholics and Protestants, Radical Reformationists and Orthodox (not to mention Jews, Muslims, non-believers and others) could live as neighbors. An accomplishment not won by better theology nor a love of peace, but because each lacked the ability to oppress one another by controlling the government.
  
  We have created a land where church and state are separated to protect them from one another, not to diminish the role of either. The integrity of the church is jeopardized when politicians can appeal to spiritual leaders and gain their endorsement because the opportunities for abuse and ambition are too rampant. The same quid pro quo corruption that taints those tempted by lobbyists will await pastors when their support can yield inexhaustible American power. This is why America has passed laws to preserve the dignity and purity of the pastoral office, exchanging tax exemption (a unique phenomenon in the world) with the trust that the nation’s charitable goodwill can't be used as a political force.
  
  Christianity has flourished in America, due in large to the inability of any one religious sect to silence the others by electing one of their own. Consider how different things would be if all along pastors had the ability to endorse candidates, if the elected then changed the social landscape to keep the favor of the pastors—like Mr. Howie is promising to do today. What if JFK had been endorsed by the Pope, what might he have done to protestants? What if Billy Graham had used his crusades to call for the reelection of his close friend, Richard Nixon?
  
  Pastors needn’t remain neutral when it comes to social change. Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. championed civil rights, Rev. Charles Finney fought to abolish slavery, and many more contributed to all the progressive reforms of the 19th century, from Women’s Suffrage to Child Labor Laws. But we stir change by stinging the national conscience, by being a prophetic witness for biblical values and obedience to Christ from the pulpit, not by taking the dangerous short cut of merely electing somebody to make a sweeping change in our favor.
  
  Pastors are here to bring the optimism of a better world, a Kingdom of God where it can be on Earth as it is in Heaven. We aren’t here to arbitrate the national discussion, or to be some sort of referee who awards polling points to one side while punishing the other using our immense spiritual clout. Are we willing to compromise our ability to provide hope for the chance to pronounce judgment? Will we use the cross as Caesar did, to dominate political foes, or as Jesus did, to liberate the unseen?
  
  It desecrates our pulpit to yield it to politics. We are called to something higher than to meddle in the affairs of ambitious men. We are not so Holy that we can merely baptize a candidate, and never drink the poison of his words. We do not stump for senators, we do not campaign for congressman, we do not preach for presidents, because the name of Christ is too precious to risk on a common election, no matter how important the issues at stake may seem. We cannot allow Jesus to become a political puppet, a sock on the arm of the statesman. Our role is to translate the values of scripture into the hearts and minds of every American, not to rule those Americans or force our values on them by manipulating the vote. The humble witness of Jesus is weakened when it is communicated through the edicts of rulers rather than the powerful persuasion of changed lives, hearts, and minds. The Kingdom of God cannot be voted into existence.
  
  Pastor H. Wayne Williams, I beg you to take your opinion to the poll and not the pulpit. Encourage your church to lobby their convictions, but don’t let a lobbyist lead your church. Your vote belongs to a candidate, but your pulpit belongs to Christ, so “give unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, and give unto God what is God’s.”
  

[The following is a comment anonymously added to Rev. Jobin's essay.  I'm including it because i have long had an interest in Pope Innocent III's genocide of the Cathars.  And yes, he called himself that without blushing.]

• • • • Religion and politics can be joined only in a society brutal enough to muzzle, maim or murder those whose beliefs don't fit the cookie-cutter theology of the ruling church. The Holy Roman Empire is perhaps history's most frightening example. To take just one of their "Crusades" -- Europe's first example of wholesale genocide was the plan executed by Catholics in the first quarter of the 13th century, when they sought to destroy all the Cathars/Albigensians.
        
        The Cathars had roots in a first-century Christianity -- there were MANY sorts of Christianity in the first few centuries, before the Roman Catholic Church acquired the power to eliminate its rivals. The Cathars' beliefs were completely incompatible with the Roman style. Jesus and Mary Magdalen, they said, had a sexual relationship. Sex should mostly be done for joy, they said -- not procreation. They were pacifists, and were greatly admired by their French Catholic neighbors.
        Many Catholics -- including priests -- converted to the religion of those they called the "Good Christians."
        
        The Church sought to destroy them all, but their Catholic neighbors wouldn't tell the Church's armies who they were. This led to one of the most infamous quotes in the history of religious warfare. When Arnaud Amaury, the Cistercian abbot Pope Innocent III appointed to head his army, was told by the military commander in the city of Beziers that they couldn't identify the Cathars because the local Catholics wouldn't name them, Amaury replied, "Kill them all. God will recognize his own." This same abbot later reported back to the Pope that, "Today, Your Holiness, twenty thousand citizens were put to the sword, regardless of age or sex."
        
        An estimated one million Cathars and Catholics were murdered in the crusade that lasted over twenty years.
        In modern times, we've seen other reasons that really religious people should not want their church married to state power. The overwhelming cowardice of the churches in Nazi Germany was one of the important reasons that, after the war, people lost respect for the churches and drifted away. (The Catholic Church signed the first treaty with Hitler, promising to keep Catholics from political activism. And the German Christian Church (Protestant) was pro-Nazi to the core.) When religions get a slice of state power, they show themselves as capable of brutality and murder as anyone else. For many citizens, this destroys churches' presumption of moral superiority.
      
      [Matte again.  Since i'm commenting, i'll add that the Roman Catholic church set up similar concords with Franco in Spain and Mussolini in Italy, but the reason Franco and Mussolini didn't arrange agreements with the protestants is not because the protestants were morally superior but rather because they were neither unified nor sufficiently numerous to make it worth the trouble to set up agreements.]
      

His Holiness Strikes Again

Last week His Holiness Benedict XVI visited Scotland and chose the occasion to praise Great Britain for standing "against a Nazi tyranny that wished to eradicate God".  His Holiness neglected to mention that he had been a Hitler Youth at that time.

And actually, His Holiness got it slightly wrong.  It was not God that the Nazis wished to eradicate but rather the Jews, and the Nazis were assisted in this matter by Pope Pius XI, under whom in July 1933 the infamous Reichskonkordat between the Roman Catholic Church and the Nazis was drawn up and the two parties agreed to cooperate with each other.   The church actively supported the election of Hitler in November 1933, and its cooperation with Hitler continued after 1939 under the next Pope, Pius XII, who had negotiated the Reichskonkordat while he was still Cardinal Pacelli.

The existence of the Reichskonkordat explains why virtually no Roman Catholic clergy were willing to criticize Hitler - their own Pope forbade them to do so.  Consequently, the only Christian opposition to Hitler came from protestant clerics like Martin Niemöller, and since they were not protected by the Reichskonkordat, they paid the price.

Belgian Atrocities

The actions of the Roman Catholic church in Belgium have been much in the news recently as more and more victims of sexual abuse by priests over the past half century have been speaking out against their abusers and describing instances of abuse that were even worse that those uncovered in this country. 

After all, the priests over here left the littlest kids alone while in Belgium they molested 'em down to the age of two.

Read About It

I find a bitter, bitter irony in that the church heirarchy, who spent decades covering up the molestations of little children, is now putting its energy and untold wealth into political campaigns against the marriage of same-sex adults - no matter whether the adults in question be Roman Catholics, protestant Christians, Jews, Moslems, or even atheists.

They just adored us when we were small children, but they hate us now.

Demonstration

OK, i did it.  My first demonstration.

Last Sunday i quickly lettered a sign reading "You Must Be So Proud", segwayed down to the Noe Valley Ministry, which is that Presbyterian church there on Sanchez between Elizabeth and 23rd, and stood holding the sign with a pleasant smile as the last of the congregation arrived before their 10:30 service.

For those who asked "For what?", I replied, "For convicting Reverend Jane Spahr."

Most did seem to be aware that a few days earlier the reverend had been convicted of heresy (or whatever their church court called it) for marrying several same-sex couples during the few months in 2008 when this was legal in California.  Here's the New York Times article.

Few seemed at all ashamed although one woman did feel the need to point out that this particular congregation was quite accepting of gays.

To my credit, i refrained from asking why in the world any gay person would have the slightest inclination to enter a church whose official policy toward gays was hatred, or for that matter, to worship the god supposedly represented by that church.

If there were a god, it would like me the way it made me.