If The Rapist Was A Priest, He’d Just Get Transferred

This makes me proud to a Catholic:

A senior Vatican cleric has defended the excommunication of the mother and doctors of a nine-year-old girl who had an abortion in Brazil after being raped.

Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, head of the Catholic church’s Congregation for Bishops, told the daily La Stampa on Saturday that the twins the girl had been carrying had a 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.

Re, who also heads the Pontifical Commission for Latin America, added: “Life must always be protected, the attack on the Brazilian church is unjustified.”

The row was triggered by the termination on Wednesday of twin foetuses carried by a nine-year-old allegedly raped by her stepfather in the Brazilian state of Pernambuco.

The regional archbishop, Jose Cardoso Sobrinho, pronounced excommunication for the mother for authorising the operation and doctors who carried it out for fear that the slim girl would not survive carrying the foetuses to term.

Yes, the twins were innocent people (or at least pre-people). But SO WAS THE VICTIM. This wasn’t a choice between life and non-life. Someone was going to die: Either the two fetuses or the living breathing nine year old girl who was forced by a rapist to carry the two fetuses.  The girl and her mother chose her life. This was a horrendous situation. No one can claim to know with certainty what the “right” thing to do was. It’s outrageously arrogant to say choosing one life rather than the other is so completely evil that the it justifies excommunication.

But if that doesn’t make you mad, (or if you think my post title is unfair) make sure you read the next part:

[The archbishop] also said the accused stepfather would not be expelled from the church. Although the man allegedly committed “a heinous crime … the abortion – the elimination of an innocent life – was more serious”.

To be clear, I am both Catholic and pro-life. Even so, that is some abso-fucking-lutely insane reasoning, even if you think the mother sinned in authorizing the abortion. The mother, forced to choose between the potential lives created by a child rapist and the real, present, independent, and breathing life of her daughter chooses the latter and is therefore more evil than the rapist who caused the whole situation? And then she gets excommunicated while the piece of shit who raped the poor girl says a few Our Fathers and gets right back in line for communion? Really? That makes sense? You can defend that? Isn’t there something about a millstone and the rapist’s neck that applies here?

“If anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him if a large millstone were hung around his neck and he were drowned at the bottom of the sea.”

Good Lord, words fail.

What’s truly aggravating is that as a Catholic, you can’t just dismiss this as the ignorant behavior of some third world barbarians. The vatican itself defends these actions. This insanity has official sanction. And if they can be this mistaken about this issue, why should I listen to them about anything else?

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That Would Eliminate A Lot Of Sermon Topics

This stunningly ignorant statement from the Confraternity of Catholic Bishops would also be the end of free speech. Period.

The same Bill of Rights which protect freedom of speech also protect freedom of religion. The Founding Fathers did not envision a freedom FROM religion, rather a freedom OF religion. In other words, our nation’s constitution protects the rights of ALL religions, not one and not just a few. Attacking the most sacred elements of a religion is not free speech anymore than would be perjury in a court or libel in a newspaper.

. . .  Individual freedoms are limited by the boundaries created by the inalienable rights of others. The freedom of religion means that no one has the right to attack, malign or grossly offend a faith tradition they personally do not have membership or ascribe allegiance.

Uhh, yeah, we do. Sorry if you don’t like it, but this is America, not Afghanistan. There is no “your speech hurt my feelings” exception to the First Amendment. If there was, there would be no such thing as free speech. Everyone, religious and non-religious, would constantly have to watch their tongue, lest they offend someone else’s religion. Sure, it’s good manners not to intentionally offend people. But the law does not enforce manners. Nor should it.

BTW, If you don’t know, the specific occasion of the Bishops’ anger is two recent incidents in which people removed a consecrated host from a church. The first one occurred in at a public school in Florida. A student took the host to protest student fees paying for religious services. National Catholic Blowhards called for the student’s expulsion. Regular thugs just sent death threats. In protest of the insanity, University of Minnesota Professor P.Z. Myers asked for readers of his blog to send him a host, which he then destroyed. National Blowhards called for his firing and regular thugs sent death threats.

In my opinion, not only are the thugs and blowhards dead wrong about the law and freedom, but they don’t even really understand their own theology. Sure, no one but a good Catholic is supposed to take communion, and sure, the host deserves all respect. But isn’t this thing supposed to be God? Can’t he take care of himself? In other words, all the regulations are not to protect God, but to protect the handlers. They make us treat the host with respect not because God needs our respect, but because we ought to respect God. Not following the regs, then, won’t hurt God, it will hurt us. Accordingly, the focus ought not be on defending God, but on rescuing those who defame him. Rather than call for Myers’ death, the faithful ought to have prayed for his soul. Or if that’s too mushy, how about just letting the whole thing be, leaving God to deal with Myers and the student? Surely either of those options would be more productive than calls for death and civil enforcement of religious laws.

Our Church Dilemma

One of the nice things about our house is that we are about a half a block from our local church. That, it turns out, is also one of the drawbacks. The services are atrocious, but because of the proximity, I feel compelled to attend.

The renovations to the sanctuary, landing masses in the elementary school’s all purpose room, have caused part of the problem. Fluorescent lights, dropped tile ceilings, the absence of windows, and an incense overpowering aroma caused by the rubberized floor that is very similar to what you get in your local Goodyear store all eliminate anything even remotely close to a reverent atmosphere. But this is temporary, and the new sanctuary should be very nice.

The big problems are the music and the priests. As for the former, all I can say is imagine some simple backwoods Baptist church in which some eighty year old self taught pianist leads music from behind an upright piano while the six member choir sings in multiple keys, and you’ve got our music. Worse, they’ve chosen all kinds of teeny bopper type tunes for the responses and such. The music frequently clashes with what ought to be the mood.

As for the priests, one of the two priests is decent enough. His homilies can be interested, though they are always long winded. The other guy though, is unbelievably bad. To start, he has one of those aspirated high toned “I’m so holy” voices. That is then made worse by what can only be marbles in his mouth, so mumbly is his speech. He is also very long winded and has a terrible habit of chasing rabbit trails. Today, for instance, it took him nearly ten minutes to announce at the end of the mass: 1) The red mass is Friday, and 2) the dedication of the new sanctuary has been moved to July. Several people left while he was wandering through these two apparently simple things. Oh, he also frequently forgets to turn off his microphone, meaning we all get to hear his snorts, sneezes, and hacks broadcast throughout the church.

Anyway, there are two other churches in town that ought to be much better. But then we’d have to load up and drive. That isn’t a big deal now, but when the kids get older, it would mean we would be forced to hang around for adult education while the kids go to parish school of religion. The big bonus here is that we (well, mostly me) could go home and tell the kids to follow when they get done.

So I don’t know what to do. Walk to church but endure masses that had they been my first exposure to Catholicism would have ensured I remained a Baptist? Or, get a more worshipful and dignified experience, but have to load up and drive, and then one day have to sit through the Catholic version of Sunday School? Maybe I could just watch a certain amount of EWTN every week and be done with it.

Right Wing Loonies Repent

Here’s the article about how and why three big name evangelicals eschewed the movement. One quote, from Frank Schaeffer (son of Francis Schaeffer), resonated with me:

“There were three kinds of evangelical leaders: The dumb or idealistic ones who really believed. The out-and-out charlatans. And the smart ones who still believed — sort of — but knew that the evangelical world was sh*t, but who couldn’t figure out any way to earn as good a living anywhere else.”

I have no idea whether this description is accurate, I can say, though, that one of the big reasons I left a very evangelical divinity school for law school was premonitions about becoming the second type. Beginning in college and accelerating through divinity school, I lost most of my respect for the leaders and “thinkers” I had hoped to emulate in the evangelical movement. Most of the ideas also lost their prominent place in my mind. As the doubts grew, of course, so did questions about what I was going to do with a degree from an evangelical school. I could fake it and go get a job in that world, or I could say “bye-bye” and do something else. Not wanting to be a fraud – or end up like the Rev. Clarence Arthur Wilmot – I left for law school. Proving that nothing in life is beyond the Simpsons, I felt a bit like Jimbo did towards Homer at the end of “Homer the Vigilante:”

You let me down, man. Now I don’t believe in nothing no more. I’m going to law school.

I’ve since repented of that, too.

“Vogue” Is The Ninth Gayest Song Of All Time

According to this list, anyway.

Not sure what the criteria are, but the song I think is the gayest of all time is in the Baptist Hymnal: “In the Garden.” If you aren’t familiar with it, here’s the first verse and the chorus:

I come to the garden alone
While the dew is still on the roses
And the voice I hear, falling on my ear
The Son of God discloses

And He walks with me
And He talks with me
And He tells me I am His own
And the joy we share as we tarry there
None other has ever known

It gets worse in verse two:

He speaks and the sound of His voice
Is so sweet the birds hush their singing
And the melody that He gave to me
Within my heart is ringing

I don’t care if “He” is actually God; no hetero man can sing that song and retain even an ounce of manliness. Gardens and dew and melodious voices, add perfumed silk sheets and rose petals and the result is a perfect romance novel. Gay.Gay.Gay.G-A-Y.Gay.

Never again having to sing stuff like that is why I became Catholic.

Non-Response To The Atheist

Last week some wicked ‘ol Atheist dared suggest that goodness can and does exist in a world without God. Today the Times advertises a response – from a local named David Burroughs – but what we get is nothing more than this:

Loosely based on an idea posed by C.S. Lewis in defining Moral Law, I support the idea God writes the tune and we play the keys. I believe in the good in every person and have expressed this before in my writing. I had the privilege of meeting Wielenberg [the Atheist] and find him to be a very good person who speaks warmly and lovingly of his two sons. To answer the question as to whether a person can be “good” without God, I would say yes, but to say our makeup is absent of God in what drives our basic nature is as valid as to deny our genetic composition.

And? This just a bald assertion; there is no attempt at any kind of argument in favor of his position. In fact, I am not even sure what his position is. Because Burroughs mocks the idea that our “makeup” could be “absent of God,” I guess he’s arguing that God must be part of our makeup. I have no idea what that is supposed to mean.

And whatever it means, it’s a non-response to the Atheist’s argument, which was simply that God is not necessary for good to exist; that right and wrong exist independently of God. That position has nothing to do with whether God exists, or whether or not God is somehow part of each human’s “makeup.” That right and wrong exist apart from God, I think, is a position that any theist could hold. Probably many theists do hold that position. For instance, Christians who hold to the penal (heh heh, I wrote “penal”) substitution theory of the atonement often speak about Christ’s sacrifice being necessary to satisfy a moral law. That is, there is a law so powerful it required God himself to satisfy it. God is bound by the law. It exists apart from him. The Atheist, like the Christians holding that theory of the atonement, thinks that there is a universal binding moral law. He just disagrees about whether any God needs to bother with it.

To be fair, Burroughs does promise to make a detailed argument when he speaks at Centenary Monday night, but if his talk is anything at all like his editorial, he won’t be responding to the Atheist.

Scandalous Author Published In Shreveport Times

Who could that be, you ask? It’s a brief editorial by an atheist arguing that contrary to a popular right wing talking point – most recently used by Mitt Romney in his “I might be Mormon, but at least I’m not an atheist” speech – belief in right and wrong does not require belief in God. The author’s name is Eric Wielenburg, and he was in town to give a talk on the same subject at Centenary College. The article was, I thought, very interesting and the argument correct. If God can exist without a creator, why can’t moral laws exist without a creator?

As someone familiar with the Times and it’s average reader, though, my main thoughts upon reading the article were: 1) Wow, I’ll never again accuse them of putting a desire for subscriptions above a desire to report the news; 2) I wonder how many cancelled subscriptions they’ll get for this, and; 3) I can not wait to read the letters to the editor.

As for the third point, I was certain that the vast majority, if not all, of the letters would attack the author for being an atheist and that none would actually deal with his arguments. And sure enough, when I checked the on-line comments this was the very first one:

Does anyone know what individual is responsible for inviting this atheist to speak at Centenary and where the funds (paying for his visit) come from?

Amazing. No attempt to refute the argument, just try to silence the speaker. Stunning ignorance. To their credit, the rest of the comments explained why it is a good idea to hear differing views. None have yet, though, managed to discuss the actual issue. The best we have so far is an argument over whether or not we should even hear the guy. On the one hand are folks who want to just string him up. On the other hand are people who want to actually let him speak. No where yet, though, is anyone who wants to actually try to deal with the issue.