It may appear that I have some special animus towards the Catholic Church but I have no particular grudge with them. I was raised a Catholic but never experienced any abuse. My experience with them was ordinary and mundane. They are simply the biggest religious institution in the world and therefore the biggest and easiest target. And irrationality is a staple of any faith-held system of belief or dogma which often leads to human misery. Hence the numerous comments.
Right now the Church is experiencing in various European countries the same scandal that has rocked the US - that of pedophile priests and the inevitable coverup by the Church hierarchy.
The Pope apologized in that special papal manner: The Pope said Irish bishops "failed, at times, grievously," and "serious mistakes were made" when confronted with clerical sexual abuse. He called the abuse, which was outlined in devastating detail in two investigations released last year in Ireland, "sinful and criminal." (Go to http://www.aolnews.com/world/article/pope-apologizes-to-irish-catholics-and-orders-vatican-probe/19407682 .)
But the Pope did not admit that the Church hierarchy had any culpability; the organized and papally directed obfuscation remained off limits and not apologized for. What else did anyone expect?
But the Pope went further; The Pope cited the country's long history of "persecution" and "recent decades of secularization" as some of the many cultural and societal factors that left Irish Catholics more vulnerable to "the disturbing problem of child sexual abuse."
So it was "secularization" that caused priests to rape children and for their superiors to cover it up!
It could not have been Church policy, could it?
From the Guardian: "Pope Benedict XVI faced claims last night he had 'obstructed justice' after it emerged he issued an order ensuring the church's investigations into child sex abuse claims be carried out in secret.
The order was made in a confidential letter, obtained by The Observer, which was sent to every Catholic bishop in May 2001.
It asserted the church's right to hold its inquiries behind closed doors and keep the evidence confidential for up to 10 years after the victims reached adulthood. The letter was signed by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who was elected as John Paul II's successor last week." (Go to http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2005/apr/24/children.childprotection .)
The Pope is, in my opinion, a liar and, in my opinion, has been an active enabler of the sexual abuse of children.
ADDENDUM: 3 27 2010: (From AOL News)-- "Just days after Pope Benedict XVI chastised Irish bishops for covering up clerical sexual abuse in Ireland, new documents suggest he did nothing to discipline a Wisconsin priest he knew had molested scores of deaf boys -- and may have blocked a church trial in the case." (Go to
http://www.aolnews.com/article/pope-allegedly-knew-about-wisc-pedophile-priest/19414010 .)
While the media struggles to admit the obvious, which is the Pope has covered up child rape in the past, these stories just seem to keep multiplying.
I'm shocked.
Showing posts with label Catholic Church. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Catholic Church. Show all posts
Saturday, March 20, 2010
Monday, March 8, 2010
The Pope's Silence: Fundamentalists Running Wild
You know, I really wish that it wasn't necessary to write stuff like this. It is not a pleasant task to dwell on how immoral the world's largest religious denomination's hierarchy is, while at the same time noticing that other denominations and religions are, well, even worse!
Here's how the Catholic News Agency described a recent meeting of Pope Benedict and Ugandan Bishops at the Vatican in early March 2010: "Pope Benedict XVI met with the bishops of Uganda this morning in the Vatican on the occasion of their “ad Limina” visit to the Holy See. He urged them to be strong in renewing evangelization in the east African country and resisting "the seduction of a materialistic culture of individualism.'"
By "materialistic" culture, the Pope does NOT actually mean money or a possession-centered culture; as we all can see, the religious love money as much or more than the rest of us. How much money does the Vatican have, anyway? What the Pope actually means by a materialistic culture is one that is reality-based and not supernaturalism-based.
Great advice, huh? Who needs reality? Who needs a morality based on whether a behavior makes the world a better place? Not the Pope, apparently. He thinks we should just obey him since he has the direct line to God, like so many others.
And no, this is not the specific point of this little article. There is quite a miserable thing going on right now in Uganda that the Pope made no mention of in his meeting with the Ugandans.
From the AFP: Hundreds of anti-AIDS campaigners on Monday urged Ugandan lawmakers to reject a proposed anti-gay law calling for tough penalties against homosexuality, including the death penalty.
Around 400 activists presented parliament speaker Edward Ssekandi with a petition, criticising the bill as a violation of Uganda's constitution... But the parliament speaker said the bill had to undergo the due process...
The bill, which has sparked widespread international condemnation, would criminalise public discussion of homosexuality and could penalise an individual who knowingly rents property to a homosexual. It also calls for the death penalty for "aggravated homosexuality", in cases of rape of a minor by a person of the same sex, or where one partner carries the virus that can cause AIDS (Ed.'s note: The law does not equally apply to heterosexuals). Homosexuality is already illegal in Uganda, punishable by life imprisonment in some instances.
So while the bill to seriously criminalize homosexuality is working its way through the Ugandan government, the Pope chose to say nothing about it during his visit with the Ugandan Bishops.
Why?
Could it be that the Pope thought that opposing the law might somehow lose the Church some followers in Uganda or lessen the Church's influence with the government? We know from past actions that he is not afraid to interfere with the legislative process in various counties. In the past he's called gay parenting "child abuse." He opposes efforts to legalize gay marriage around the world. He's not usually reticent on such important matters.
Actually, the reason does not matter. What matters is that the Pope had a chance to do something good in the "materialistic" real world but chose instead to only address irrelevant spiritual concerns.
And here is the kicker: The Pope's crime is only silence; by speaking out, he might actually have helped some poor soul.
Other religious denominations however, such as fundamentalist Protestants and Muslims, are actually promoting the law that could imprison or kill gays. They are not fringe believers; they are in the Ugandan mainstream politically and are supported by a number of American Christian fundamentalist preachers and politicians too. While the American supporters are not directly promoting the "kill the gays" law, they are also not denouncing and disowning their protege's from Uganda.
Once upon a time, the US supported religious fanatics in Afghanistan who opposed the USSR. That turned out badly. Now we are supporting Christian fanatics in Uganda and the ugliness has already begun.
We never learn.
The Pope's silence is bad; and that's religion's best face on the subject. What a disgrace.
Here's how the Catholic News Agency described a recent meeting of Pope Benedict and Ugandan Bishops at the Vatican in early March 2010: "Pope Benedict XVI met with the bishops of Uganda this morning in the Vatican on the occasion of their “ad Limina” visit to the Holy See. He urged them to be strong in renewing evangelization in the east African country and resisting "the seduction of a materialistic culture of individualism.'"
By "materialistic" culture, the Pope does NOT actually mean money or a possession-centered culture; as we all can see, the religious love money as much or more than the rest of us. How much money does the Vatican have, anyway? What the Pope actually means by a materialistic culture is one that is reality-based and not supernaturalism-based.
Great advice, huh? Who needs reality? Who needs a morality based on whether a behavior makes the world a better place? Not the Pope, apparently. He thinks we should just obey him since he has the direct line to God, like so many others.
And no, this is not the specific point of this little article. There is quite a miserable thing going on right now in Uganda that the Pope made no mention of in his meeting with the Ugandans.
From the AFP: Hundreds of anti-AIDS campaigners on Monday urged Ugandan lawmakers to reject a proposed anti-gay law calling for tough penalties against homosexuality, including the death penalty.
Around 400 activists presented parliament speaker Edward Ssekandi with a petition, criticising the bill as a violation of Uganda's constitution... But the parliament speaker said the bill had to undergo the due process...
The bill, which has sparked widespread international condemnation, would criminalise public discussion of homosexuality and could penalise an individual who knowingly rents property to a homosexual. It also calls for the death penalty for "aggravated homosexuality", in cases of rape of a minor by a person of the same sex, or where one partner carries the virus that can cause AIDS (Ed.'s note: The law does not equally apply to heterosexuals). Homosexuality is already illegal in Uganda, punishable by life imprisonment in some instances.
So while the bill to seriously criminalize homosexuality is working its way through the Ugandan government, the Pope chose to say nothing about it during his visit with the Ugandan Bishops.
Why?
Could it be that the Pope thought that opposing the law might somehow lose the Church some followers in Uganda or lessen the Church's influence with the government? We know from past actions that he is not afraid to interfere with the legislative process in various counties. In the past he's called gay parenting "child abuse." He opposes efforts to legalize gay marriage around the world. He's not usually reticent on such important matters.
Actually, the reason does not matter. What matters is that the Pope had a chance to do something good in the "materialistic" real world but chose instead to only address irrelevant spiritual concerns.
And here is the kicker: The Pope's crime is only silence; by speaking out, he might actually have helped some poor soul.
Other religious denominations however, such as fundamentalist Protestants and Muslims, are actually promoting the law that could imprison or kill gays. They are not fringe believers; they are in the Ugandan mainstream politically and are supported by a number of American Christian fundamentalist preachers and politicians too. While the American supporters are not directly promoting the "kill the gays" law, they are also not denouncing and disowning their protege's from Uganda.
Once upon a time, the US supported religious fanatics in Afghanistan who opposed the USSR. That turned out badly. Now we are supporting Christian fanatics in Uganda and the ugliness has already begun.
We never learn.
The Pope's silence is bad; and that's religion's best face on the subject. What a disgrace.
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Why We’re Secular, part 240
The dogmatic just don’t get it, do they? If they did, then they wouldn’t be dogmatic! Of course, the circular logic of a dogmatic belief system is successful in preserving itself precisely because a central tenet of an enduring system of dogma is that its assertions are beyond question; or, cleverly, beyond our ability to question; or even more cleverly, that belief in that dogma is a “gift” of some sort, hence the inability of dogmatic believers and followers to break free of whatever arbitrary and capricious system of dogma that entraps them.
Dogma need not be the full foaming-at-the-mouth kind that motivates terrorists and other zealots. Dogma can, in fact be totally mainstream and socially acceptable in polite company, but its acceptability renders the acceptor incapable of arguing against competing dogma even if it is indeed full foaming-at-the-mouth style dogma. A baseless and faith-held belief system has as much reason to support it as the next one.
Take for example our old friend, the God Squad’s Rabbi Marc Gellman. Considered a “moderate” by many, he seems unable to recognize the pointlessness of even bothering to use reason or logic (even poorly) when answering religious questions. Check out this exchange which appeared in Newsday on Saturday, March 07, 2009:
Question from a reader: I'm sorry that as a Jew you cannot accept the biblical fact, but Jesus Christ is the Messiah, and He came to save the world from sin and give us eternal life. If you accept this, you are saved; if you don't, then you're not. The scripture is clear that we are told these things so we may know that we have eternal life. Can't you acknowledge this truth? – B. via email
Answer: Not.
Does Rabbi Gellman realize that his answer to this reader’s question would suffice as an answer to his own question posed to an atheist on whether they could accept that God exists? Duh, I guess not!
The implications of faith-inspired tunnel vision and dogmatism encapsulated in this little exchange are mind-boggling and apparently totally lost on Rabbi Gellman. If he did see the implications he’d immediately become agnostic and understand he has no answers worth offering on the question of the existence of God.
Consequently, the need to continually justify his dogma often leads him into vicious and slanderous territory. Readers of the INQUIRER are well aware of his past attacks on non-believers (and his left-handed apologies). In the same column as his dogmatic rejection of salvation from a concerned dogmatic Christian letter writer comes the following piece of nuttiness:
Question from a reader: Considering, over many centuries, events like the Inquisition, countless and unceasing religious wars, the Crusades, 9/11 and the recent Mumbai killings, can you say that, on balance, religion has caused more good than bad things to happen? -- A., Melville, N.Y. via email.
A: Group A: (Mother Teresa, Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Pope John XXIII, Pope John Paul II, Billy Graham, and Father Tom Hartman)
Group B: (Mao, Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, Idi Amin)
My conclusion: Group A wins over Group B.
(Go to http://daily-journal.com/archives/dj/display.php?id=436492.)
What is implied by these two groups and by what random process did he select the groups? Group A has two genuine heroes, Martin Luther King Jr. and Gandhi, two homophobic Popes who believe that condom users deserve eternal damnation, a religious fanatic who believes that any woman who uses a contraceptive is incapable of love, an anti-Semite and a close friend of the Rabbi. You could ask yourself however, where are noted theists bin Laden and David Koresh?
Group B does indeed have all villains but includes Communists, a Muslim and a Catholic.
Oh yeah, I get it – in Group B they’re all really atheists because they are evil no matter whether they actually believe in God or not. The actual facts are irrelevant. I did notice that noted non-theists Christopher Reed, Pat Tillman. Albert Einstein, Mark Twain, Robert Ingersoll, Carl Sagan, Bertrand Russell, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Kurt Vonnegut and John Lennon were omitted from Group B; it must have been an oversight!
But in the same newspaper edition that Gellman is attempting to claim that Group A (the “religious”) are better than Group B (the “atheists”) we have the following reality checks:
Senior leaders of Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah offered international support Friday to Sudan's president after he was charged with war crimes in Darfur, a sign that the bid to prosecute him could sharply radicalize his regime.
For a third straight day, President Omar al-Bashir's supporters marched and vowed to defend him against what his government called a "colonial" conspiracy to overthrow him. Hundreds emerged from mosques after Friday prayers, chanting "jihad," or holy war, and shouting, "With our souls and blood, we will sacrifice ourselves for you, al-Bashir."
After the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant Wednesday for al-Bashir, Sudan's government responded by expelling 13 of the largest aid organizations in Darfur.
The U.N. human rights office said in Geneva that it was examining whether the expulsion could itself constitute a war crime.
The order opened a giant hole in the safety net that has kept many Darfur civilians alive during six years of war in the vast, arid region of western Sudan. Without the groups, 1.1 million people will be without food, 1.5 million without health care, and more than 1 million without drinking water — and outbreaks of infectious disease are a greater danger, the U.N. said.
"To knowingly and deliberately deprive such a huge group of civilians of means to survive is a deplorable act," said its spokesman, Rupert Colville. "To punish civilians because of a decision by the ICC is a grievous dereliction of the government's duty to protect its own people…"
Jennifer Cooke, head of the Africa program at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the Western reaction "may drive al-Bashir further to the hard-line radicals."
"He is framing the ICC's decision as yet another Western attempt to undermine the sovereignty of a Muslim developing state," she said. "And realizing he can rally support, whether from the Arab League or more radical elements, and possibly the (African Union), it gives him less incentive to move back on his decisions." (Go to http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iZQb2negfyNKgNesbro4mnMW1AHAD96OPMUO0 .)
Yes, support is lining up behind al-Bashir on a religious basis with supporters of al-Bashir depicting the “secular West” as colonialists when their only true motivation is mere religious chauvinism. (This is not to say that the religious elements in the “West” do not at times exhibit the religious chauvinism as well.)
If a religious “moderate” takes exception to the above story as non-representative, we offer another story regarding the supposedly non-extremist Catholic Church, the largest church on earth:
“The Vatican has defended the excommunication of those involved in helping a nine-year-old girl get an abortion in Brazil after she was allegedly raped by her stepfather.
Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, the head of the Roman Catholic Church's Congregation for Bishops, told the Italian daily La Stampa over the weekend that the unborn twins the girl was carrying had the right to live.
"It is a sad case but the real problem is that the twins conceived were two innocent persons, who had the right to live and could not be eliminated," he said.
The senior cleric's comments come after Brazil's president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, criticised Jose Cardoso Sobrinho, the Brazilian archbishop who excommunicated the girl's mother and the doctors involved in aborting the baby, but not the stepfather who allegedly raped the girl.
Lula said that as a Catholic, he deeply regretted the archbishop's "conservative attitude".
"It is not possible to allow a little girl raped by her stepfather to have that child because it could put her life at risk," he said.
"I believe that in this sense, medicine is more correct than the church."
But the cardinal said "life must always be protected, the attack on the Brazilian church is unjustified".
The nine-year-old from the northeastern state of Pernambuco in the world's largest Roman Catholic nation, was found to be four months pregnant last week after allegedly being raped by her stepfather.
Abortion is a crime under Brazilian laws except in cases of rape, if the woman's life is in danger or if the foetus has no chance of survival
Doctors said they decided to terminate the pregnancy because the girl's life was in danger due to her young age, and because she was carrying twins.
But Sobrinho, the archbishop of Olinda and Recife, in declaring the excommunication, said the abortion went against "the law of God".
The stepfather was not excommunicated because the church said that his action, although deplorable, was not as bad as ending the life of an unborn child.
"It is clear that he committed a very serious sin, but worse than this is the abortion," Sobrinho said.
Under church law, excommunication is automatic for followers who have, perform or help procure an abortion.” (Go to http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2009/03/20093911932836487.html .)
Let’s summarize: the Roman Catholic Church position is that the raped 9 year old child should risk death so that the product of her rape not be terminated – not that they have a good chance of surviving this pregnancy anyway! In other words, a form of involuntary human sacrifice to an angry God! Yes the girl and her doctors would go to hell, but her rapist just needs to turn to Christ and he’ll be welcome in heaven!
To the reader; ask yourself what is the cruelest thing that a person could do to another person? The easy answer by definition would be to consign another person to an eternity of the ultimate in torment, misery and suffering. The Roman Catholic Church, believing in the reality of hell, has purposely and willfully committed the cruelest act possible; this is the horror of what they think they have done via ex-communication! And they have no remorse! They’re, in fact, righteous about their infinite punishment to a finite “crime.”
But wait! You might argue that an abortion, even to save the life of a child, is somehow immoral. Let’s go with another example of the “moderation” of the moderate and non-radical or extreme Roman Catholic Church, the world’s largest church.
While visiting Cameroon, where AIDS is a huge problem, the Pope said about the battle against AIDS, “You can’t solve it with the distribution of condoms. On the contrary, it increases the problem.” (Go to http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iLJ2gzRRfTYc_YuS7r1yuwnmne-gD970K3CG0 .)
France’s health minister, Roselyne Bachelot said that the Pope “proffered a monstrous scientific untruth.” In other words, the Pope lied.
Rebecca Hodes, head of policy, communication and research for Treatment Action Campaign in South Africa said the Pope should be promoting condom use if he wants to help fight AIDS. “Instead,” she said, “his opposition to condoms conveys that religious dogma is more important to him than the lives of Africans.”
While the Pope lies, people die.
In the meantime, back in the US, one of the leading activists on behalf of the suffering people of Darfur is actor George Clooney.
Here is a quote from Mr. Clooney: "I don't believe in Heaven and Hell," he says. "I don't know if I believe in God. All I know is that as an individual, I won't allow this life -- the only thing I know to exist -- to be wasted."
Rabbi Gellman, where does Mr. Clooney go: Group A or B and where does the pious al-Bashir and all his sanctimonious supporters belong?
To give you a clue, in recorded history, probably no war has been fought in the name of a non-belief (not counting self-defense) such as atheism or a failure to believe in capitalism. Wars are motivated by a strong positive belief in an economic system or religion or a form of nationalism; by something that compels many to give up their lives for an idea – in other words, a dogma.
Doubt leads to introspection and consideration of all the possibilities; it is certainty that can lead to fanaticism.
Advice to Rabbi Gellman: he should begin to appreciate the non-dogmatism of secular humanism.
At least we don’t think he deserves to rot in hell forever for his failure to accept the alleged “Truth” as some of his “fans” do.
Dogma need not be the full foaming-at-the-mouth kind that motivates terrorists and other zealots. Dogma can, in fact be totally mainstream and socially acceptable in polite company, but its acceptability renders the acceptor incapable of arguing against competing dogma even if it is indeed full foaming-at-the-mouth style dogma. A baseless and faith-held belief system has as much reason to support it as the next one.
Take for example our old friend, the God Squad’s Rabbi Marc Gellman. Considered a “moderate” by many, he seems unable to recognize the pointlessness of even bothering to use reason or logic (even poorly) when answering religious questions. Check out this exchange which appeared in Newsday on Saturday, March 07, 2009:
Question from a reader: I'm sorry that as a Jew you cannot accept the biblical fact, but Jesus Christ is the Messiah, and He came to save the world from sin and give us eternal life. If you accept this, you are saved; if you don't, then you're not. The scripture is clear that we are told these things so we may know that we have eternal life. Can't you acknowledge this truth? – B. via email
Answer: Not.
Does Rabbi Gellman realize that his answer to this reader’s question would suffice as an answer to his own question posed to an atheist on whether they could accept that God exists? Duh, I guess not!
The implications of faith-inspired tunnel vision and dogmatism encapsulated in this little exchange are mind-boggling and apparently totally lost on Rabbi Gellman. If he did see the implications he’d immediately become agnostic and understand he has no answers worth offering on the question of the existence of God.
Consequently, the need to continually justify his dogma often leads him into vicious and slanderous territory. Readers of the INQUIRER are well aware of his past attacks on non-believers (and his left-handed apologies). In the same column as his dogmatic rejection of salvation from a concerned dogmatic Christian letter writer comes the following piece of nuttiness:
Question from a reader: Considering, over many centuries, events like the Inquisition, countless and unceasing religious wars, the Crusades, 9/11 and the recent Mumbai killings, can you say that, on balance, religion has caused more good than bad things to happen? -- A., Melville, N.Y. via email.
A: Group A: (Mother Teresa, Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Pope John XXIII, Pope John Paul II, Billy Graham, and Father Tom Hartman)
Group B: (Mao, Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, Idi Amin)
My conclusion: Group A wins over Group B.
(Go to http://daily-journal.com/archives/dj/display.php?id=436492.)
What is implied by these two groups and by what random process did he select the groups? Group A has two genuine heroes, Martin Luther King Jr. and Gandhi, two homophobic Popes who believe that condom users deserve eternal damnation, a religious fanatic who believes that any woman who uses a contraceptive is incapable of love, an anti-Semite and a close friend of the Rabbi. You could ask yourself however, where are noted theists bin Laden and David Koresh?
Group B does indeed have all villains but includes Communists, a Muslim and a Catholic.
Oh yeah, I get it – in Group B they’re all really atheists because they are evil no matter whether they actually believe in God or not. The actual facts are irrelevant. I did notice that noted non-theists Christopher Reed, Pat Tillman. Albert Einstein, Mark Twain, Robert Ingersoll, Carl Sagan, Bertrand Russell, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Kurt Vonnegut and John Lennon were omitted from Group B; it must have been an oversight!
But in the same newspaper edition that Gellman is attempting to claim that Group A (the “religious”) are better than Group B (the “atheists”) we have the following reality checks:
Senior leaders of Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah offered international support Friday to Sudan's president after he was charged with war crimes in Darfur, a sign that the bid to prosecute him could sharply radicalize his regime.
For a third straight day, President Omar al-Bashir's supporters marched and vowed to defend him against what his government called a "colonial" conspiracy to overthrow him. Hundreds emerged from mosques after Friday prayers, chanting "jihad," or holy war, and shouting, "With our souls and blood, we will sacrifice ourselves for you, al-Bashir."
After the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant Wednesday for al-Bashir, Sudan's government responded by expelling 13 of the largest aid organizations in Darfur.
The U.N. human rights office said in Geneva that it was examining whether the expulsion could itself constitute a war crime.
The order opened a giant hole in the safety net that has kept many Darfur civilians alive during six years of war in the vast, arid region of western Sudan. Without the groups, 1.1 million people will be without food, 1.5 million without health care, and more than 1 million without drinking water — and outbreaks of infectious disease are a greater danger, the U.N. said.
"To knowingly and deliberately deprive such a huge group of civilians of means to survive is a deplorable act," said its spokesman, Rupert Colville. "To punish civilians because of a decision by the ICC is a grievous dereliction of the government's duty to protect its own people…"
Jennifer Cooke, head of the Africa program at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the Western reaction "may drive al-Bashir further to the hard-line radicals."
"He is framing the ICC's decision as yet another Western attempt to undermine the sovereignty of a Muslim developing state," she said. "And realizing he can rally support, whether from the Arab League or more radical elements, and possibly the (African Union), it gives him less incentive to move back on his decisions." (Go to http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iZQb2negfyNKgNesbro4mnMW1AHAD96OPMUO0 .)
Yes, support is lining up behind al-Bashir on a religious basis with supporters of al-Bashir depicting the “secular West” as colonialists when their only true motivation is mere religious chauvinism. (This is not to say that the religious elements in the “West” do not at times exhibit the religious chauvinism as well.)
If a religious “moderate” takes exception to the above story as non-representative, we offer another story regarding the supposedly non-extremist Catholic Church, the largest church on earth:
“The Vatican has defended the excommunication of those involved in helping a nine-year-old girl get an abortion in Brazil after she was allegedly raped by her stepfather.
Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, the head of the Roman Catholic Church's Congregation for Bishops, told the Italian daily La Stampa over the weekend that the unborn twins the girl was carrying had the right to live.
"It is a sad case but the real problem is that the twins conceived were two innocent persons, who had the right to live and could not be eliminated," he said.
The senior cleric's comments come after Brazil's president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, criticised Jose Cardoso Sobrinho, the Brazilian archbishop who excommunicated the girl's mother and the doctors involved in aborting the baby, but not the stepfather who allegedly raped the girl.
Lula said that as a Catholic, he deeply regretted the archbishop's "conservative attitude".
"It is not possible to allow a little girl raped by her stepfather to have that child because it could put her life at risk," he said.
"I believe that in this sense, medicine is more correct than the church."
But the cardinal said "life must always be protected, the attack on the Brazilian church is unjustified".
The nine-year-old from the northeastern state of Pernambuco in the world's largest Roman Catholic nation, was found to be four months pregnant last week after allegedly being raped by her stepfather.
Abortion is a crime under Brazilian laws except in cases of rape, if the woman's life is in danger or if the foetus has no chance of survival
Doctors said they decided to terminate the pregnancy because the girl's life was in danger due to her young age, and because she was carrying twins.
But Sobrinho, the archbishop of Olinda and Recife, in declaring the excommunication, said the abortion went against "the law of God".
The stepfather was not excommunicated because the church said that his action, although deplorable, was not as bad as ending the life of an unborn child.
"It is clear that he committed a very serious sin, but worse than this is the abortion," Sobrinho said.
Under church law, excommunication is automatic for followers who have, perform or help procure an abortion.” (Go to http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2009/03/20093911932836487.html .)
Let’s summarize: the Roman Catholic Church position is that the raped 9 year old child should risk death so that the product of her rape not be terminated – not that they have a good chance of surviving this pregnancy anyway! In other words, a form of involuntary human sacrifice to an angry God! Yes the girl and her doctors would go to hell, but her rapist just needs to turn to Christ and he’ll be welcome in heaven!
To the reader; ask yourself what is the cruelest thing that a person could do to another person? The easy answer by definition would be to consign another person to an eternity of the ultimate in torment, misery and suffering. The Roman Catholic Church, believing in the reality of hell, has purposely and willfully committed the cruelest act possible; this is the horror of what they think they have done via ex-communication! And they have no remorse! They’re, in fact, righteous about their infinite punishment to a finite “crime.”
But wait! You might argue that an abortion, even to save the life of a child, is somehow immoral. Let’s go with another example of the “moderation” of the moderate and non-radical or extreme Roman Catholic Church, the world’s largest church.
While visiting Cameroon, where AIDS is a huge problem, the Pope said about the battle against AIDS, “You can’t solve it with the distribution of condoms. On the contrary, it increases the problem.” (Go to http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iLJ2gzRRfTYc_YuS7r1yuwnmne-gD970K3CG0 .)
France’s health minister, Roselyne Bachelot said that the Pope “proffered a monstrous scientific untruth.” In other words, the Pope lied.
Rebecca Hodes, head of policy, communication and research for Treatment Action Campaign in South Africa said the Pope should be promoting condom use if he wants to help fight AIDS. “Instead,” she said, “his opposition to condoms conveys that religious dogma is more important to him than the lives of Africans.”
While the Pope lies, people die.
In the meantime, back in the US, one of the leading activists on behalf of the suffering people of Darfur is actor George Clooney.
Here is a quote from Mr. Clooney: "I don't believe in Heaven and Hell," he says. "I don't know if I believe in God. All I know is that as an individual, I won't allow this life -- the only thing I know to exist -- to be wasted."
Rabbi Gellman, where does Mr. Clooney go: Group A or B and where does the pious al-Bashir and all his sanctimonious supporters belong?
To give you a clue, in recorded history, probably no war has been fought in the name of a non-belief (not counting self-defense) such as atheism or a failure to believe in capitalism. Wars are motivated by a strong positive belief in an economic system or religion or a form of nationalism; by something that compels many to give up their lives for an idea – in other words, a dogma.
Doubt leads to introspection and consideration of all the possibilities; it is certainty that can lead to fanaticism.
Advice to Rabbi Gellman: he should begin to appreciate the non-dogmatism of secular humanism.
At least we don’t think he deserves to rot in hell forever for his failure to accept the alleged “Truth” as some of his “fans” do.
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