CNN has a relatively new religion blog. Maybe you’ve heard of it … but more likely, you haven’t. If not, don’t worry — you aren’t missing much. The kind of pablum this blog conveys is hardly worth your notice, and I mean that regardless of what your own religious viewpoint (if any) is. It’s just not that great.
What’s really amazing, if you pay close attention to these “reports” about the “resurrected Ted’s” incredible success, is that it’s all self-reported. That’s right. We only have Pastor Ted’s word on how great he’s doing and how great he is. There is no “investigation” here, none of the cutting-edge, incisive, insightful and analytical journalism one (presumably) expects of CNN.
Clearly CNN’s new “Belief Blog” is little more than a P.R. engine for Pastor Ted “I’m-not-gay-even-if-I-hired-gay-prostitutes-to-service-me” Haggard. Then again, CNN hooked up with Stephen Prothero, who’s on the record as demanding mandatory Bible classes in public schools.
Yeah. These are the kinds of people CNN is now carrying water for. An unrepentant cretin, and a militant Christian.
I guess we can chalk this one up as yet another journalism fail. Sigh.
If you live in the Burlington [Connecticut] area, no doubt you have heard of the Green Lady of Burlington. But, her only claim to fame is she’s boring!
No tales of being scared out of your pants in the middle of the woods.
No disembodied heads popping out of teapots.
No terrifying bedroom appearances in the middle of the night.
She just slowly fades in, smiles at you like Mona Lisa and then slowly fades out in a green haze.
Wow. What cutting-edge journalism. A news story about a ghost story whose main feature is that it’s totally unremarkable! A non-newsworthy version of a non-story. What an incredible waste of time and space in a newspaper and on a Web site!
This report even includes putative “proof” the Green Lady of Burlington (CT) exists:
Below is a YouTube video of a visit to the graveyard by Barry Dillinger, with the only recorded EVP ever made at this site. She sort of moans. Turn your volume up to hear it. …
I don’t know what you heard, but I didn’t hear a damned thing. But even if I had … who’s to say that it couldn’t have been something uttered by a living (not dead) person off-camera? This video — even if it did contain any discernible “moaning” sound — does not constitute “proof” of the Green Lady of Burlington’s existence. Far from it!
It would be nice if the RC refrained from this kind of bullshit reporting. But given they have a history of offering this kind of “news,” I don’t expect they plan to stop any time soon. More’s the pity.
Odd things are happening at the Deep River Public Library.
Staff member Pam Ziobron was working by herself late one Saturday. She had shut off all the lights except for the one at the circulation desk, where she was standing, when she had a strong sense that she wasn’t alone.
“It was just a feeling. … It was just so light and airy, like a female coming down the stairs. It was very, very real,” Ziobron said.
Oh well. I guess there’s no question about it, then. Whenever you get those “feelings … like a female coming down the stairs,” then it can’t possibly be anything else, now, can it?
The article goes on to cite a couple of “haunting” stories in the Deep River library, none with any better evidence than Ziobron’s. It also goes on to cite a presumed expert on the subject:
Michael Dionne, founder of Full Spectrum Ghost Hunters, said that about 1 percent of the cases he investigates are paranormal.
And of course we know Dionne can’t possibly be wrong about that, because … well … he makes a name for himself going around talking about the paranormal and electromagnetic fields and all. Right?
Wrong. These ad hoc, self-appointed “experts” have no objective, verifiable basis for any claim they make. Yet the Courant — which has the distinction of being Connecticut’s newspaper of record — touts one such person as having indisputable veracity.
Sheesh. What bilge. Get with it, Courant, and report some news, not useless tripe like this.
One member of the Roman Catholic hierarchy has come up with an innovative way to handle mass media reports on the ongoing Roman Catholic clerical abuse scandal. I call it the “Three blind mice solution” to the problem. Specifically, he has decided not to subscribe to a local newspaper which has reported and editorialized on it. Oregon Live reports on Portland Archbihop John Vlazny’s approach (WebCite cached article):
The Most Rev. John G. Vlazny, archbishop of Portland since 1997, canceled his subscription to The Oregonian on Wednesday and asked Catholic pastoral ministers to do the same.
In a statement e-mailed to priests and lay ministers, Vlazny said a March 31 editorial was “the last straw.” …
Vlazny cited a March 29 syndicated column by E.J. Dionne Jr. and a March 30 editorial cartoon by Jack Ohman of The Oregonian depicting Pope Benedict XVI as deaf to demands that he “do something about pedophile priests.” The cartoon “was a portrayal dripping with hostility, an attack against our high priest, our universal pastor, our faithful teacher, the one person who, in the eyes of the world, symbolizes all that we are and do as Catholics,” Vlazny wrote.
I call this the “three blind mice” solution because it’s reminiscent of the famous nursery rhyme of the same name. He hopes, I guess, that the problem will go away, if the mass media — including the Oregonian — will just stop bringing it up. Barring the Oregonian stopping its reportage, he hopes that not having to read about it, himself, might also magically end the scandal. That way he doesn’t have to get off his sorry, whining little ass and actually do anything about it.
Unfortunately for the Archbishop, reporting on what the Pope is — or is not — doing about the scandal, and even opining that his actions are deficient, is not “an attack.” It is a statement. “An attack” is something else entirely, usually physical in nature. Also, not listening to something does not make it go away. Only small children believe that; believing it’s possible is a sure sign of immaturity.
Archbishop Vlazny’s anger is misplaced, in any event. Instead of complaining about the Oregnonian‘s reporting and editorials on the scandal, maybe he should rage and fume — instead — at the priests who abused children in their care, at his fellow bishops and archbishops who purposely allowed it to happen, and at the popes (from Paul VI onward) who knew about the problem, but chose to let it fester instead of dealing with it.
What a fucking crybaby. Boo hoo hoo. With all due respect, your Excellency … grow up, OK?
As the Shroud of Turin is put on public display for the first time in 10 years, new data reveals more than just a flat image embedded in the ancient cloth, but an astonishing, three-dimensional, sculpture-like figure. Using the principles of physics, cutting-edge digital technology, and the revolutionary CGI process pioneered in Stealing Lincoln’s Body, HISTORY brings that image to life, unveiling the most accurate representation ever seen of what many believe to be Jesus Christ.
There’s just one tiny little problem with using the Shroud of Turin as an indicator of what Jesus Christ must have looked like, and that is that it doesn’t contain a picture of him! The Shroud has been tested scientifically, multiple times, and each timehas been shown to date only to the Middle Ages — the middle of the 14th century, to be exact. There is overwhelming and abundant evidence that the Shroud is not a 1st century BCE burial cloth with a magical photo of Jesus on it, but rather, of medieval manufacture, very likely a pious fraud. It’s time for Christians who worship the Shroud, to put away their beliefs in this phony artifact and stop using it to prop up their nonsensical metaphysical beliefs.
Lots of mass-media stories lately have brought up the possibility that the scandal-plagued and increasingly-discredited Pope Benedict XVI might resign. It is, after all, not unheard of for politicians or heads of corporations to resign when confronted by situations of this sort. However, most of these same stories — such as this one by ABC News — conclude that the Pope cannot resign:
Experts in canon law say only a heavenly bolt of lightning can take the former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger from power as the supreme leader of the Roman Catholic Church.
“The only person who can fire him is God,” said the Rev. Thomas Doyle, who worked at the Vatican embassy in Washington, D.C., and was one of the first whistle blowers when the sex scandals broke in 1984.
“A pope is never forced to resign, not under the current canon law,” said Robert Mickens, the Vatican correspondent for the Tablet weekly. “A pope can voluntarily resign, but it’s interesting… Who would take his resignation?”
With all due respect to Fr Doyle and Mr Mickens, however, the idea that the Pope cannot resign, is bullshit. It is, in fact, possible. It’s explicitly stated in canon 332 §2 of the Code of Canon Law:
Should it happen that the Roman Pontiff resigns from his office, it is required for validity that the resignation be freely made and properly manifested, but it is not necessary that it be accepted by anyone.
Thus, the answer to the question Mickens asks, i.e. to whom would the Pope tender his resignation? is: No one! He doesn’t have to give it to anyone. He merely has to disclose that he’s resigning. That’s all that’s needed, nothing more.
It is also not true that no Pope has ever resigned. In fact, it’s happened multiple times. The last such occasion was when Pope Gregory XII resigned in 1415, an act which effectively ended the Great Western Schism — a particularly uplifting period in ecclesiastial history, a time when two, and later three, popes contended for control of the Church and of Europe.*
Granted it’s been a little over 6 centuries since this last papal resignation, but the canon law permitting it to happen is still there, and can still be used by Benedict XVI, if he chooses to do so.
None of this is impossible to research; the information I provide here is available to anyone on the Internet if they simply take a few minutes to find it. So I suggest the reporters at ABC News — and all other outlets — actually look into it before writing stupid news stories that report untruths as fact.
* The part about the Western Schism being “uplifting” is, of course, sarcasm. The truth is that there was very little good about it … except that it exposed the political, structural, bureaucratic, and moral bankruptcy of the Church at that time. The grotesque debacle known as the Cadaver Synod served much the same purpose as well, as did the period soon after it, known to the Church as the Saeculum obscurum.
A testament to the awesome power of belief in metaphysical gobbledygook like “psychic powers” is the persistence of famous “psychics” like Sylvia Browne. She has made a career out of making predictions that always fail to come true, yet she continues to make media appearances as though she were still a credible predictor. She’s been on the Larry King Show many times, and for years, was a weekly guest on the Montel Williams Show (which recently ended its run). No one — not one single person — in the mass media ever asks her any hard questions, such as how she could have been so very wrong about the Sego mine disaster in 2006 (WebCite cached article). The mass media, in fact, make a lot of money foisting people like Browne on the (largely gullible) public, so they have no incentive to want to make her look bad, even if that happens to be very easy to do, because she’s so frequently wrong.
The most extensive study of alleged psychic Sylvia Browne’s predictions about missing person and murder cases reveals a strange discrepancy: despite her repeated claim to be more than 85 percent correct, it seems that Browne has not even been mostly correct about a single case. …
According to Browne, “my accuracy rate is somewhere between 87 and 90 percent, if I’m recalling correctly.”
This article disputes that statistic by examining the criminal cases Browne has performed readings on. This research demonstrates that in 115 cases (all the available readings) Browne’s confirmable accuracy was 0%.
The analysis was rigorous and exacting, and the report fairly specific in its findings:
In the 115 cases reviewed with Lexis-Nexis and newspaper sources, Browne was wrong in twenty-five cases, and the remaining ninety either have no available details about the case outside of the transcript or the crime is unsolved so there is no way to confirm Browne’s claims.
The following data is organized as a list to allow the reader to independently research the names. Importantly, since Lexis-Nexis and similar Internet sources mainly gather information about recent events, one should keep in mind that she says she’s at the top of her game. In June 2009, Browne told Seattle Weekly about her psychic ability: “I think you get better, like anything else you get better with time.”
We welcome Browne to supply independent proof of just one case that was she correct about.
Browne has a history of being wrong or unhelpful in many predictions. In the course of this research, we examined a variety of sources to study Browne’s involvement with law enforcement. In these readings, Browne was sometimes paid by some families of the victims, charged at least one police department $400, and received money as well as publicity from her appearances on television.
The report ends with a complete catalog of all 115 cases examined, as well as a full explanation of how and why she was wrong, in the 25 they were able to verify. There is little to dispute here, although I’m sure that Sylvia Browne’s “true believers” will immediately and categorically dismiss this analysis as merely the work of “skeptics” (and you know how horrible those “skeptics” are!) and refuse even to begin to acknowledge even one of the points it makes. Nevertheless, the only rational conclusion one can reach … based on the objective and verifiable evidence presented … is that Sylvia Browne is wrong. Flat-out wrong! And her continued claims to be right 87-90% of the time, makes her a liar; and since she makes money being a liar, this in turn makes her a fraud.
The willful complicity of the mass media in Browne’s fraud scheme makes them her co-conspirators … but that’s another matter, to be addressed some other time.
Raised as Scientologists, Christie King Collbran and her husband, Chris, were recruited as teenagers to work for the elite corps of staff members who keep the Church of Scientology running, known as the Sea Organization, or Sea Org.
They signed a contract for a billion years — in keeping with the church’s belief that Scientologists are immortal. They worked seven days a week, often on little sleep, for sporadic paychecks of $50 a week, at most.
But after 13 years and growing disillusionment, the Collbrans decided to leave the Sea Org, setting off on a Kafkaesque journey that they said required them to sign false confessions about their personal lives and their work, pay the church thousands of dollars it said they owed for courses and counseling, and accept the consequences as their parents, siblings and friends who are church members cut off all communication with them. …
They soon discovered others who felt the same. Searching for Web sites about Scientology that are not sponsored by the church (an activity prohibited when they were in the Sea Org), they discovered that hundreds of other Scientologists were also defecting — including high-ranking executives who had served for decades.
The large number of recent defections from the CoS likely explains this rash of newspaper stories on Scientology’s abuses. At any rate, the story acknowledges that the “average” CoS member may not be aware of all of this:
The defectors say that the average Scientology member, known in the church as a public, is largely unaware of the abusive environment experienced by staff members. The church works hard to cultivate public members — especially celebrities like Tom Cruise, John Travolta and Nancy Cartwright (the voice of the cartoon scoundrel Bart Simpson) — whose money keeps it running.
But recently even some celebrities have begun to abandon the church, the most prominent of whom is the director and screenwriter Paul Haggis, who won Oscars for “Million Dollar Baby” and “Crash.” Mr. Haggis had been a member for 35 years. His resignation letter [cached version], leaked to a defectors’ Web site, recounted his indignation as he came to believe that the defectors’ accusations must be true.
The Times continues by relating the Collbrans’ harrowing story of trying to leave Scientology, which included impediments such as taking their passports so they couldn’t travel. It also recounts things like beatings of Scientology members and employees, some at the hands of the head of the CoS, David Miscavige.
Marvelous people, eh?
I wonder if the CoS will try the same stunt they attempted with the St Petersburg Times and try to hire other reporters to investigate the New York Times. Even if they do, I’m betting they will also refuse to reveal the contents of that investigation.
CNN has a relatively new religion blog. Maybe you’ve heard of it … but more likely, you haven’t. If not, don’t worry — you aren’t missing much. The kind of pablum this blog conveys is hardly worth your notice, and I mean that regardless of what your own religious viewpoint (if any) is. It’s just not that great.
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