Miscellanea Agnostica

In his continued effort to encourage the world to forget the abuse of children at the hands of Catholic clergy which took place around the world at least for decades, if not centuries, and which has been systematically covered up the the Catholic hierarchy for as long, Pope Benedict XVI keeps railing sanctimoniously about the evils of “secularism.” CNN reports on his latest outburst, when he dedicated a new church in Barcelona, Spain (WebCite cached article):

Pope Benedict XVI defended religion from critics Sunday as he dedicated the Sagrada Familia church, a still-unfinished emblem of the Spanish city of Barcelona.

“This is the great task before us: to show everyone that God is a God of peace not of violence, of freedom not of coercion, of harmony not of discord,” he said.

And he pushed back against what he sees as increasing secularism in the world, saying, “I consider that the dedication of this church of the Sagrada Familia is an event of great importance, at a time in which man claims to be able to build his life without God, as if God had nothing to say to him.”

Benedict would, of course, carry much more moral authority, if only he would finally come clean about the Catholic clerical child-abuse scandal, admit the hierarchy’s complicity in the crimes of abusive clergy, and hand over for prosecution all guilty priests, monks, nuns, and bishops remaining in the Church.

I know, fat chance that will ever happen. Nonetheless, until he does so, the Pope does not have the moral authority to pass judgement on the putative evils of secularism, or of anything else, for that matter; he remains the head of an organization with nearly the same moral fiber as the Mafia.

The Pope also could not help but spew more ridiculousness concerning same-sex marriage, which Spain recently legalized:

He also defended the traditional family, after Spain’s Socialist government legalized same-sex marriage.

“The generous and indissoluble love of a man and a woman is the effective context and foundation of human life in its gestation, birth, growth and natural end,” he said.

The Pope suggests, here, that marriage is about procreation. As I pointed out way back in 2008, however, this is not the case, as millions of childless married couples around the world can attest. If the Pope — and other marriage advocates who also love to spew the “marriage-is-only-for-making-babies” canard — are correct, then all those childless married folks should be forced either to divorce, or to have children. If he — and those other marriage advocates — are not willing to do that, then they aren’t being true to their own stated philosophy.

At any rate, it’s long past time for Benedict XVI to stop wailing and moaning about “secularism” and finally put his own house in order. This would, of course, be the Christian thing to do, following Jesus’ own teachings:

Why do you notice the splinter in your brother’s eye, but do not perceive the wooden beam in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, “Let me remove that splinter from your eye,” while the wooden beam is in your eye? You hypocrite, remove the wooden beam from your eye first; then you will see clearly to remove the splinter from your brother’s eye. (Matthew 7:3-5)

Why do you notice the splinter in your brother’s eye, but do not perceive the wooden beam in your own? How can you say to your brother, ‘Brother, let me remove that splinter in your eye,’ when you do not even notice the wooden beam in your own eye? You hypocrite! Remove the wooden beam from your eye first; then you will see clearly to remove the splinter in your brother’s eye. (Luke 6:41-42)

It’s long past time for the Pope to read his own holy book and then do what it tells him to do. (The same goes for every other Christian in the world who thinks s/he’s entitled to tell everyone else what to do, but who refuses to abide by those teachings him/herself.)

Photo credit: Katonams / Wikimedia Commons.

Tags: amoral, barcelona, barcelona spain, benedict xvi, catholic church, gay marriage, marriage, morality, morals, pope benedict, pope benedict xvi, procreation, roman catholic, roman catholic church, sagrada familia, sagrada familia church, same-sex marriage, secular, secularism, secularist, secularists, spain, vatican, vatican city

The robed denizens of the Vatican have, once again, provided a stark example of their undeniable moral bankruptcy. Still in the throes of evading responsibility for the scandal of decades of child-abuse by Roman Catholic clergy, which was systematically covered up by the Church’s hierarchy, the Vatican has chosen to make its stand … against an ex-model.

That’s right. An ex-model.

The person in question is Carla Bruni, wife of France’s president Nicolas Sarkozy. Time magazine’s NewsFeed blog reports on the Vatican’s objection to her presence (WebCite cached article):

Ahead of President Sarkozy’s 30-minute audience with the Pontiff earlier this month, Vatican officials sent the French ambassador a message saying: “Carla Sarkozy is not welcome in the Vatican [cached].” The message, which led her to stay in Paris, is said to be over the Pope’s fears that more racy photographs of her days as a catwalk model would emerge. Nude and semi-naked pictures from her days as a model are regularly published in the media. In one, she’s seen posing in just a pair of knee high boots and a diamond ring. (The U.S. didn’t seem to mind [cached].)

Benedict XVI clearly suffers from a raging case of Cranial-Rectal Inversion: While the Pope objects to an ex-model (GASP!) daring to walk around in his sacred city-state, His Holiness has no problem letting in priests who abuse children. Among the Vatican City’s more (in)famous residents is Cardinal Bernard Law, who — as Archbishop of Boston — not only permitted the abuse of children in his archdiocese, he moved priests around so as to prevent them from being discovered, and (for a while at least) attempted to shield priests in his archdiocese from being prosecuted.

If you need any other example of the Roman Catholic Church’s blatant lack of anything resembling values, well … here you have it.

Need I point out, also, that it’s not necessarily even the case that hanging around with ex-models is not permitted to priests? After all, Christian legend has it that one of Jesus’ own followers, Mary Magdalene, was a prostitute! If Jesus could have prostitutes around him, then surely an ex-model is not off limits!

Photo credit: Down Town via Hervé Corcia.

Tags: benedict xvi, bernard law, carla bruni, catholic church, catholic clerical abuse scandal, christ, christian, christians, france, mary magdalene, nicolas sarkozy, pope benedict, pope benedict xvi, roman catholic, roman catholic church, vatican, vatican city

On his trip to the UK, Pope Benedict XVI keeps conjuring up idiotic things to say. Yesterday I blogged about his insinuation that atheists and secularists are Nazis. Today, he incorrectly whined that religion — especially Christianity — was being “marginalized.” Voice of America reports on his latest bilge (WebCite cached article):

Pope Benedict XVI voiced his concern Friday at the increasing marginalization of religion, particularly of Christianity, in a major address in Westminister Hall, attended by British politicians, businessmen and cultural leaders. …

Pope Benedict on Friday defended what he called the legitimate role of religion in the public square.

Note, this is pretty much the same mantra that the Religious Right within the US has been spewing endlessly — and erroneously — for decades. The problem is that it’s just not happening! So long as the majority of people in the occidental world are religious — which is the case — then it is logistically impossible to truly “marginalize” religion or eliminate its influence on “the public square.”

It cannot be done.

I do admit that the amount of control religion had, has been reduced. Through the Middle Ages, Christianity ran the show. It dominated people’s hearts and minds, and for a good deal of that time, it was politically dominant, as well as being psychologically dominant. Beginning with the Age of Enlightenment, however, and continuing into the 21st century, this has changed, though, and the Pope — as well as other hyperreligious folk — are not mature enough to handle it.

Just because religion no longer controls the puppet strings of society, does not mean it no longer has any influence. It simply means it’s not quite as commanding as it once was. The Pope needs to grow up, accept that, and then perhaps his Church can move into the modern era.

Photo credit: Catholic Church (England and Wales).

Tags: benedict xvi, catholic church, christian, Christianity, christians, great britain, holy see, pope, pope benedict, pope benedict xvi, Religion, religion and society, religion in society, roman catholic, roman catholic church, society, uk, vatican, vatican city, westminster hall

The tactic of using a reductio ad Hitlerum — or an appeal to Hitler or the Nazis — to condemn one’s opponents and ostensibly “prove” they’re bad or wrong, is decades old. It’s not logical, of course, since comparisons to Hitler and the Nazis are rarely based on facts. I’ve caught people at this particular fallacious game before. I assumed back then, that I would again.

And I did.

This time the perpetrator was none other than Pope Benedict XVI, on a state visit in the UK. As the BBC reports, he attempted to link atheism and secularism with Nazism (WebCite cached article):

A speech in which the Pope appeared to associate atheism with the Nazis has prompted criticism from humanist organizations.

However, the Catholic Church has moved to play down the controversy, saying the Pope knew “rather well what the Nazi ideology is about”. …

In his address, the Pope spoke of “a Nazi tyranny that wished to eradicate God from society”.

He went on to urge the UK to guard against “aggressive forms of secularism”. …

He said: “Even in our own lifetimes we can recall how Britain and her leaders stood against a Nazi tyranny that wished to eradicate God from society and denied our common humanity to many, especially the Jews, who were thought unfit to live.

“As we reflect on the sobering lessons of atheist extremism of the 20th century, let us never forget how the exclusion of God, religion and virtue from public life leads ultimately to a truncated vision of man and of society and thus a reductive vision of a person and his destiny.”

First, let’s get this right out of the way, up front: The Nazis were not atheists; their movement was not an atheist one; and they did nothing whatever to abolish religion. The religion of members of the Nazi party was, as far as can be told, similar to, if not the same as, that of the population of Germany as a whole; the majority of them were Christians (with Lutherans and other Protestant churches dominating, and a large minority of Catholics). Whatever the individual religious beliefs of Hitler and Goebbels and Göring and Himmler and the rest of that crew may have been, the majority of the Germans who (initially at least) obeyed and supported them, were Christians.

Far from trying to eradicate religion from the lives of Germans, the Nazis actually got themselves involved in Christianity at its most basic level. They welded Germany’s Protestant churches into a federated entity under their own control, the Reichskirche. Hitler’s party also negotiated a formal accord with the Roman Catholic Church (i.e. the Reichskonkordat). There is no logical way that either of these acts could possibly be viewed as the product of an inherently anti-religious or anti-theistic regime.

Next, the Pope, Joseph Ratzinger, grew up in Germany during the Third Reich. He knows what Nazism was, and who the Nazis were, at least as well as anyone on the planet. Thus, he knows full well what I just said — that the Nazi regime was not an atheistic one — and therefore has zero excuse for having made this comparison.

Third, as I pointed out in my earlier post on this matter, details matter. You can’t call people Nazis — or imply somehow that they’re Nazis — unless you can point to some details of their actions or policies that match those of the Nazis. I’m not aware of any atheist militias (similar to the Sturmabteilung or “brownshirts”); I’m not aware that atheists are locking people away in concentration camps (emulating the Nazis’ policy of rounding up “enemies” and keeping them out of the way). I’m not aware that atheists have outlawed labor unions or rival political parties (both of which the Nazis did). I’m not aware that atheists have ever done anything even remotely close to what the Nazis did.

Fourth, in addition to being honest about the Nazis’ religious motivations, we also need to be honest about the anti-Semitism that drove them: If not for centuries of Christian hatred for and vilification of Jews, the Nazis would never even have dreamed up the Holocaust, much less carried it out. While Christianity may view Judaism as a “rival contender” religion, and the mere existence of Jews as an insult to its teaching that Jesus was the “Messiah,” atheism has no particular motive to despise Jews so especially. None.

I get that the Pope dislikes atheists. It’s OK, this is a free world and he’s entitled to hate anyone he wants, for any reason he wants. He is not, however, entitled to lie about those he hates … especially when he, personally, knows his claims about them to be untrue.

Photo credit: Wikipedia.

Tags: appeal to hitler, atheism, atheist, atheists, benedict xvi, catholic church, fallacious, fallacy, germany, hitler, holy see, humanism, humanist, humanists, illogic, logic, nazi, nazi germany, nazis, nazism, pope, pope benedict, pope benedict xvi, reductio ad hitlerum, roman catholic, roman catholic church, secular, secularism, third reich, uk, vatican, vatican city

I think I’ve been too lenient on the Roman Catholic Church, over the past couple weeks. I posted just a little while ago that it seemed the Pope might have been just a little more contrite about the clerical child abuse scandal that’s plagued his institution for the past 10 years or so and has reached full-boil since late last year. Clearly, I underestimated the R.C. Church’s hypocrisy. You see, a couple weeks ago, Belgian authorities raided Church facilities looking for documentation concerning this scandal within their country. The Vatican responded by throwing a tantrum. Der Spiegel reports on the raid and the Church’s furious reaction (WebCite cached article):

But now that secular investigators have decided to take action, [Pope Benedict XVI] has condemned the “surprising and regretful” circumstances of the Belgian raid. In a message of solidarity with the bishops in Belgium, Benedict argued in favor of cooperating with the secular justice system, but he insisted on the church’s right to conduct internal investigations.

Benedict’s allies in Rome wasted no time in ensuring that relations between the Catholic Church and the secular world took another turn for the worse. The Italian bishops’ newspaper Avvenire sees the desecration of the graves as a “brutal act that strikes right at the heart of the church.” Cardinal Secretary of State Tarcisio Bertone — the second most powerful man in the Vatican — expressed outrage at the fact that it was possible to hold venerable bishops for so long without food or drink, “as if they were children.” Not even under communism were church officials treated as poorly, he said.

Essentially, then, the Church has reasserted that it is above the law of the land in all the countries in which it operates … a principle which it had asserted in the Middle Ages, often successfully, but which over the centuries — especially after the Reformation — it had been forced to concede.

Apparently, that all went out the window, when Belgian authorities decided to investigate the R.C. Church as it would have any other institution that may have victimized Belgians. That can’t be permitted, in the eyes of the Vatican.

But while the Church rages and fumes and stamps its feet that it’s being investigated by secular authorities over accusations that it may have victimized people, the Church has a completely opposite view of secular authorities, when it is a possible victim of a crime. The archdiocese of Hartford, here in Connecticut, called on the state to investigate and prosecute a priest who may have embezzled money from the Church, as the Hartford Courant reports (cached):

A well-known Roman Catholic priest who stole $1.3 million from the Sacred Heart parish over seven years said he “had grown to hate being a priest” because the Archdiocese had given him the “worst church assignments” where he would “have to fix problems made by the previous priests,” according to his arrest warrant. …

Waterbury [CT] police launched an investigation after the archdiocese came to them May 27 and said it had uncovered unauthorized payments from church funds to accounts held by Gray and other suspicious transactions, according to the affidavit, which was prepared by Waterbury Police Detective Peter Morgan.

So the Roman Catholic Church is more than happy to ask those evil “secular authorities” to help them out when they need it … but not willing to cooperate with them when their own misdeeds are being reviewed.

I can only think of four words to describe this: Hip. Oc. Rih. See. You know … the tendency to say one thing but do another? You know, that all-too-common human compulsion, which the founder of the Church’s own religion — Jesus Christ — himself, in the flesh, and in clear, unambiguous terms, specifically ordered his followers never, ever to engage in? Yeah. That “hypocrisy.”

Is anyone now not clear on what a festering sewer full of assorted putrid vermin the Vatican is?

Photo credit: Homini:).

Tags: archdiocese of hartford, belgium, benedict xvi, catholic church, catholic clerical abuse scandal, christian, Christianity, christians, clerical abuse, fr kevin gray, holy see, hypocrisy, hypocrites, pope benedict, pope benedict xvi, raid, roman catholic, roman catholic church, secular, secular authorities, vatican, vatican city, waterbury CT

Perhaps as a way of diverting people’s attention from the clerical child-abuse scandal that’s been plaguing his Church for a long time now, Pope Benedict XVI has decided that the world is just too “secular” for his taste, and is establishing a new wing of Vatican bureaucracy in an attempt to correct that problem. The AP via Google News reports on his new missionary effort (WebCite cached article):

Pope Benedict XVI is creating a new Vatican office to fight secularization and “re-evangelize” the West — a tacit acknowledgment that his attempts to reinvigorate Christianity in Europe haven’t succeeded and need a new boost. …

Benedict said parts of the world are still missionary territory, where the Catholic Church is still relatively unknown. But in other parts of the world like Europe, Christianity has existed for centuries yet “the process of secularization has produced a serious crisis of the sense of the Christian faith and role of the Church.”

The new pontifical council, he said, would “promote a renewed evangelization” in countries where the Church has long existed “but which are living a progressive secularization of society and a sort of ‘eclipse of the sense of God.’”

The Pope and his minions appear to believe that “secularization” has caused Europeans (in particular) to have become unaware of Christianity and the Roman Catholic Church … in spite of the fact that Christianity is nearly two millennia old and for some 15 or 16 centuries was by far the dominant religion of the occidental world. I’m not sure what the folks at the Vatican think happened, to make everyone suddenly and magically “forget” about something so deeply ingrained in western culture … but it seems they think it has.

Could it be — rather — that the occidental world, and Europe in particular, are actually fully aware of Christianity’s existence and its nature, and have made a conscious and rational decision to reject it, based on its far-less-than-stellar history?

As for myself … if the Pope and his religionist minions want me to convert to Catholicism, they’re going to have to make me do so.

Photo credit: Catholic Church (England and Wales).

Tags: benedict xvi, catholic church, christian, Christianity, christians, evangelization, evangelize, holy see, missionaries, missionary, pope benedict, pope benedict xvi, propaganda, religionism, religionist, religionists, roman catholic, roman catholic church, scandal, secular, secularization, vatican, vatican city

Pope Benedict XVI has come one tiny step closer to contrition over the Catholic clerical abuse scandal, and asked for forgiveness, as the New York Times reports (WebCite cached article):

Addressing the sexual abuse crisis from the seat of the Roman Catholic Church before thousands of white-robed priests, Pope Benedict XVI on Friday begged forgiveness, saying the church would do “everything possible” to prevent priests from abusing children. …

The pope did not outline specific actions that the church would take to combat abuse, as many had hoped — and as Benedict had pledged at an audience in April. Nor did his remarks go much beyond what he had already said in a letter to Irish Catholics in March and in a private meeting with victims of sexual abuse on Malta in April.

But it was the first time that Benedict had asked forgiveness for the crisis from St. Peter’s Square, the heart of the church itself, and on an occasion focused on priests.

Even so, the Pope could not help but try to evade responsibility for everything that happened:

The pope said the Devil was behind the scandal, saying it had emerged now, in the middle of the Vatican’s Year of the Priest, because “the enemy,” or the Devil, wants to see “God driven out of the world.”

“And so it happened that in this very year of joy for the sacrament of the priesthood, the sins of priests came to light — particularly the abuse of the little ones,” the pope added.

So you see, once again, the Vatican’s thinking implicit behind everything that’s happened … this is not really a failing of the Church and by the Church. It is, instead, an external affliction, imposed on the Church from outside it, by the Devil; in other words, it’s part of an ongoing spiritual struggle between the godly Church and the Forces of Darkness, and it’s the clergy who are its real victims (having popped up during the Year of the Priest). The “little ones” or children who were abused, are merely incidental players in this drama, in the Vatican’s eyes.

So while I can say the Pope has become more contrite about this scandal than he has been in the past, by not accepting full responsibility for it, I cannot really say is truly 100% contrite yet.

Photo credit: Catholic Church (England and Wales).

Tags: abuse scandal, benedict xvi, catholic church, catholic clerical abuse scandal, child abuse, clergy, clergy abuse, clerical abuse, devil, holy see, pope benedict, pope benedict xvi, roman catholic, roman catholic church, scandal as a spiritual attack, scandal as a spiritual war, sexual abuse crisis, spiritual attack, spiritual war, st peter's square, the devil, vatican, vatican city

To date the Roman Catholic Church — and specifically, the Vatican which heads it — has consistently disavowed any responsibility of the Church in the clerical abuse scandal which has dogged it for some time and which really heated up during the last year (since the release of the Ryan Report). The Vatican, through various spokesmen, has instead blamed it on any number of other external agents, including (for example) Jews, and has even claimed there is no problem at all, that abuse claims were all trumped up by anti-Catholic people and groups, ranging from gays and abortionists to “masonic secularists” and “great newspapers.” These attempts at deflection have, for the most part, failed miserably.

It is, therefore, remarkable that none other than the Pope himself has finally admitted that the problem is real and that it was born within the Church itself. The AP via Google News reports on this admission (WebCite cached article):

In his most thorough admission of the church’s guilt in the clerical sex abuse scandal, Pope Benedict XVI said Tuesday the greatest persecution of the institution “is born from the sins within the church,” and not from a campaign by outsiders.

The pontiff said the Catholic church has always been tormented by problems of its own making — a tendency that is being witnessed today “in a truly terrifying way.” …

In a shift from the Vatican’s initial claim that the church was the victim of a campaign by the media and abortion rights and pro-gay marriage groups, Benedict said: “The greatest persecution of the church doesn’t come from enemies on the outside but is born from the sins within the church.”

Note that the Pope still calls this scandal a “persecution.” This is entirely in line with my own hypothesis that the Church views this scandal primarily as a spiritual contest with the Forces of Darkness; i.e. as a diabolical “attack” on the divine institution. That dimension remains the case. What has changed is that the Pope has admitted that this contest was generated from within the Church. The Pope is no longer blaming external agents for it, nor is he suggesting that it never happened, that it was merely a fictional construct woven out of whole cloth by people who hate the Catholic Church.

Thus, his admission is a step in the right direction. It’s merely one step, to be sure, but a definite step nonetheless. As such, it should be welcomed, as the step (only) that it is.

Photo credit: AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia.

Tags: benedict xvi, catholic church, catholic clerical abuse scandal, child abuse, clergy abuse, clerical abuse, holy see, pope, pope benedict, pope benedict xvi, portugal, roman catholic, roman catholic church, vatican, vatican city