So, a HOLOCAUST DENIER is welcomed back into the fold, but a man opposed to sheer, naked hatred needs to be hounded and prevented from serving the community. 

Excuse my horrified shuddering. Clearly, as an atheist, I just don’t understand.

“I want Catholics in California and beyond to understand clearly the level of unchristian behavior and deliberate malice of which their bishops and cardinals are capable.”

As if they don’t already know.

I wish groups like DignityUSA wouldn’t recruit people into the institution.  I think it’s cruel to invite someone to (re)join a religious organization that works fiercly to remove or deny their human rights.  It’s a particularly offensive cruelty, like the above quote about how much they “love” the homosexuals.  They like being mean.

You can ask Cardinal Roger Mahoney why the Archdiocese is acting more like Tony Soprano than men of true faith.

Exactly how I look at this bunch, from the obsession with money and earthly power, to the omerta surrounding the child abuse, to the personal vendettas, to this kind of shakedown racket (“nice charity ya got there ... wouldn’t want anything to happen to its funding or anything”). With behaviour like that, it’s no wonder that people still wonder whether JP I’s death was due to foul play.

You can ask Cardinal Roger Mahoney why the Archdiocese is acting more like Tony Soprano than men of true faith.

If you’ve seen Deliver Us From Evil you’ll know this is exactly what to expect from Mahoney. Acting like Tony Soprano is acting like a man of true faith.

Actually, this doesn’t surprise me at all.  I have a very good friend/mentor, a Franciscan who officiated at my wedding.  He really is all that priests are supposed to be, and he’s one of the reasons I used to feel pangs of regret for leaving.

He held workshops and taught meditation and had weekly prayer sessions.  The leader of his order was incredibly jealous of my priest’s popularity.  Eventually, after putting up restrictions here and there and not managing to dampen his popularity, he kicked him out of the house.

Now, the reason this is a big deal is that Catholic Orders are different and have different rules.  Franciscans take vows of obedience and poverty.  My friend could not disobey the head of his monastery, nor did he have any funds or way of generating wealth.

He eventually started a 501c3 nonprofit organization and managed to recreate his meditation circles and prayer groups independently, but I’m still stunned by the jealous authoritarian who made him homeless first.

Jealous authoritarians are JPII’s legacy.  He stacked the Bishopry with them and made them Cardinals and made a rule preventing older Cardinals from voting for Pope.  Nearly everyone who elected Ratzi was appointed by JPII.  And let’s not forget that in JPII’s declining years, when he was obviously suffering from Parkinson’s, the men around him were actually in control. 

Ratzi stacked his own deck.

Caren, I always thought Ratzinger being elected by the Cardinals seemed a bit like Dick Cheney selecting himself for the Vice Presidency.

Clearly, as an atheist, I just don’t understand.

Indeed. I see people laying with dogs and then expressing surprise when they wake up with fleas.

Hey,
It’s their money.  They have a perfect right to attach any strings they wish to it.  Father Geof has chosen to be publicly disobedient.  If the Archdiocese believes that this new position enables him to continue his public disobedience, then they have every right to make their position known to any organization that receives large amounts of money from that Archdiocese.

“Father Geof has chosen to be publicly disobedient.”

Exactly!  It’s all about your allegiance to the hierarchy, not that panty-waisted “Christian” do-the-right-thing crap! 

The man tells you to jump, you ask how high.  If they wanted you to think for yourself, why would they have a church hierarchy to tell you what to do?...

“With behaviour like that, it’s no wonder that people still wonder whether JP I’s death was due to foul play. “

Uhhh, Gracchus?  I can’t speak for others but with me there’s no “wonder” about it.  All else aside, when a man who controls an organization wants to look closer at its ties to organized crime and billions of dollars of funds missing from a crooked bank deal suddenly dies under odd circumstances and then the body is handled under even odder circumstances ..... Well, you get the picture.  It’s not so inconceivable, either.  His successor JPII was the target of an organized conspiracy and assassination attempt some years later, surviving only because of a constitution tougher than a Siberian pony’s.

tomonthebay:
What MikeEss said.  Don’t forget, tomonthebay, that Prop.8 was the restriction of a civil right for gays, not a religious one.  The Church had and has no theological place to determine entitlement to secular rights and privileges.  Such conduct is clearly prohibited by Matthew 22:21.

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=matthew 22:21;&version=31;68;

The man tells you to jump, you ask how high.  If they wanted you to think for yourself, why would they have a church hierarchy to tell you what to do?…

Pay, pray and obey.

Unless you’re a priest with Cardinal Mahoney’s blessing and protection. Then it’s prey, and obey.

Cut-and-paste the URL and it takes you right to the quote:
“Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.”

I’ve been reading stories like this in MS mag since the 70’s. Why are we wasting our time? This is really last gasp behavior from an institution of old men who, like our Republican party, is completely out of touch with ordinary people. I don’t know one rc family who goes by the rules, or is aware in any sense what the vatican is up to and allows itself to be influenced thereby.

Let’s concentrate on passing universal healthcare, which will cause the diminution of attendance and involvement in ALL churches as has happened in Canada and the EU.

Wait, let me get this straight…

Priest uses his position of authority to promote tolerance by publicly stating that gays are people too.
Church Response: You’ll never work in this town again!

Priest uses his position of authority to rape and molest children in the parish who trust him.
Church Response: What, again? Meh.

Riiiiight. Makes perfect sense.

I’m from a very Catholic family (we have one priest, one monsignor and another studying to be a priest on my mom’s side) and I honestly can’t explain the Church’s “logic” behind this.
Also, the archiocese’s letter pisses me off, especially as a queer Catholic.

“queer Catholic”

No offence, K8 the Gr8, but isn’t that a bit of a contradiction in terms?  I’m not trying to be dick about this.  It’s the same question that occurs to me when I read Andrew Sullivan’s professions of Catholicism.

Two things. First, just now he notices that [t]hese authoritarian churchmen are threatened by the free expression of ideas which differ from their own?

Second,

... they know that many priests (and bishops) are gay. They take it as a personal affront that threatens not only their power and position, but perhaps even more frightening, it threatens to unmask many of them as closeted gay men.

They know it, but most importantly, Father Geoff also knows it. (Bwahahaha)

The passage of Proposition 8 in the State of California does not diminish in any way the importance of you, our homosexual brothers and sisters in the Church. Nor does it lessen your personal dignity and value as full members of the Body of Christ.

Yes, it does. It says very clearly that we are not entitled to the same rights as heterosexuals. That our desire for companionship, family, and sex is less important than the desire of privileged folk to not be made uncomfortable by our <strike>flaunting our sexuality</strike> existence. You lessen our personal dignity every day you conflate homosexuality and pederasty, homsexuality and bestiality, homosexuality and child rape.

Fuck you and your pointy fucking hats. Sell your bullshit to someone who likes the taste.

You’re looking for sense from skyfairy folks.  Don’t.

I know plenty of individual Catholics who are fantastic people who do wonderful things.  But the Church hierarchy is horrifyingly foul.  It’s long past time that the RCC got torn asunder by RICO prosecutions.

“But the Church hierarchy is horrifyingly foul. “

And indicative, imo, of the fact that religion is merely a way for men to deify themselves.  It’s all men, with lots of money, way to much power and no accountability who believe themselves to not only be right about everything, but in a position to dictate to others on how to live lives that they themselves know absolutely nothing about.

It’s horrifyingly foul and impressively stupid.

LCforevah says: Why are we wasting our time? This is really last gasp behavior from an institution of old men who, like our Republican party, is completely out of touch with ordinary people. I don’t know one rc family who goes by the rules, or is aware in any sense what the vatican is up to and allows itself to be influenced thereby.

I don’t understand why progressives are still even bothering with these backwards churches.  Maybe it’s time to leave and take your money with you.

Hey,
It’s their money.  They have a perfect right to attach any strings they wish to it.

True, but only to a point.  They are his former employers, and they are messing with his ability to gain future employment.

That’s not legal.  Father Geoff could sue them, had he the money to do so.

It’s their money.  They have a perfect right to attach any strings they wish to it.

For example, instead of running up the archdiocese phone bill calling the cops on their pedophile associates,  they preferred to spend it answering civil suits from those associates’ victims.

seeker6079 -
It’s ok, I’m used to being asked this in both progressive and Catholic circles.

I still identify as a queer (bisexual) Catholic for a number of reasons but I realize that I’m what “good” (those who follow church doctrine to the letter) Catholics view as a “Cafeteria Catholic” (which most American Catholics are).  I’m very pro-choice, very liberal, a feminist, bi, want women ordained as priests, and (yes) still Catholic.

Some of it has to do with the fact that I enjoy pissing off the “good” Catholics.  The reason I choose to identify as a Catholic isn’t because I like what it is now.  Rather, it’s because I like what the (very) early Church stood for.  After all, it was quite egalitarian for that time - women were ordained and apostles (St. Augustine called Mary Magdalene the “apostle to the apostles”).  As more people converted to Christianity, women gradually lost their positions of authority within the Church.

(also: I’m diggin the “blaspheme” button :D)

K8 the Gr8:  Thank you for your polite and considered response.

What I bump into is this: there’s people like you and Sullivan who define a Platonic Ideal of Catholicism ... and there’s what is and has been for a millenium and a half.  The term “Catholic” has, I submit, quite accurately come to mean “the authoritarian, bureaucratized quasi-nation-state entity whose headquarters are at the Vatican, Rome”.  To call oneself “Catholic” when one palpably isn’t a practicing, obedient practitioner within that organization is an exercise in semantics, no?  I can call myself Anglican but if I reject the 39 Articles, I ain’t.  I can call myself a “soldier”, but if I’m not in the Army then I’m not.  You may be a Christian, you may even be a better Christian than each and every Catholic bishop and cardinal (and I apologize for any implication that I am damning you with faint praise!) but you aren’t a Catholic.  Words mean things, and that word is “set”.  Why be imprisoned by it?

It’s their money.  They have a perfect right to attach any strings they wish to it.

Sure. And people have a right to publicise it with the inevitable results.

Number of priests in US, 1965 - 58,000.  Number in 2006 - 41,000.  Projected number in 2020 - 31,000 - half of which will be over 70. Half of the Catholic schools have closed since 1965, the proportion of Catholics attending mass has dropped by more than half, finances are murky but apparently shaky.

Yet, supposedly, the number of American Catholics has increased by 50%.  It’s almost as if Catholicism is becoming a cultural identity and people are ignoring the official Church, isn’t it?  Funny that…

Uhhh, Gracchus?  I can’t speak for others but with me there’s no “wonder” about it.

I read a couple of books on Calvi, Gelli, Marcinkus, the P2 Lodge, and Banco Ambrosiano years ago when the issue was still fresh, and I lean toward your view. However, as with the JFK assassination, I doubt we’ll ever have conclusive evidence about who really done the deed. What is clear is that a lot of the RCC hierarchy do think more like Michael Corleone than St. Michael the Archangel.

It’s their money.  They have a perfect right to attach any strings they wish to it.

No, Tom, it’s the Church’s money. And the Church is defined as the sum total of congregants and devotees, not the hierarchy who are supposed to serve them.

To use a business example, if a toady of senior management tried to excuse demonstrably poor decisions at a board meeting by saying “It’s their money.  They have a perfect right to attach any strings they wish to it,” said toady would likely be shown the door along with senior management by the real shareholders.

Add in the dabbling in Caesar’s realm and the thuggish behaviour, and there’s nothing about this that doesn’t stink on ice.

Well, seeker, it’s not really ‘set’ in Catholicism.  For one thing, there are more laity than heirarchy.  And the people are the Church.  The priests are called to serve the people, and they certainly aren’t doing that wrt birth control.  That’s why they are ignored:  the Church has moved on without them.

There’s a tradition of loving the Church and tolerating the hierarchy.  Rome generally doesn’t have much to do with the day-to-day life of a parish.  It’s hard to leave a good parish filled with good people.  There is a tradition that is social as well as religious.  To be honest, the “cafeteria” remark should cut both ways, as ‘conservative’ Catholics pick and choose what they like best as well.

But that’s always been allowed.  Following your conscience is primary, and that’s preV2 theology, not only postV2.  The Pope is not infallible, which means he’s a man and can make mistakes.  He’s not worshipped.

When you know good people who really sacrifice and try to do good works, it’s hard to turn your back on them.  I always felt like the hierarchy was following slowly in the right direction.  That it took way too long, but it would move to be more Christ-like.  I think a lot of “good” Catholics believe the same.  It’s a co-dependent relationship that enables the hierarchy to continue when rational thought would say it shouldn’t.

90% of Catholics use birth control.  It really doesn’t matter what the hierarchy tries to tell people about having sex.  They are celibate, the people are not, and it is utter stupidity to listen to men who have no skin in the game.  They can rail about it and threaten all sorts of “punishments,” but you just change parishes if you end up in one that has an asshole in charge.  It would be better if bad priests/bishops/cardinals/popes were held accountable, but again, Rome doesn’t have much to do with most Catholics’ daily life and most Catholics are fond of their parishes.

As for social progress, JPII taught me that the organized Catholic Church really doesn’t have to move forward.  It can move backward and into irrelevency.  Ratzi, by readmitting the schismatics and continuing to hold “good” Catholics who do things like love their neighbors even if they’re gay or use birth control b/c they love their children and don’t want anymore up as pariahs just put the final nail in the coffin for me.

I love my daughters.  There’s no way any man is going to tell them they aren’t good enough to have an education or to wear pants if they desire.

When I was in my early 20s, I was a Eucharistic Minister at a Mass in honor of my aunt and uncle’s 50th wedding anniversary.  I held the chalice my martyred uncle had made when he became a Benedictine monk.  The priest, who had been like family for decades, had me up behind the altar, doing altar boy chores.

I’d never felt so included in a Mass.  It was a wonderful feeling.  It’s like being wrapped in love.

But even by the time I sat back down in the pews, it started to hit me that the reason I felt so included was that I had been actively EXCLUDED all my life.  And it made me angry.

I always knew there was no reason jerky boys in my class should be allowed to be altar servers while I couldn’t.  My childhood parish was one of the last to allow girls to serve.

There are lots of disfunctional stories like that in my past.  When Catholicism is good, it’s VERY good.  It’s comforting, and the people are a support group for the good times and the bad. 

Unfortunately, Catholicism is often bad, and JPII and Ratzi are determined to make it just as bad as possible.  The type of priests that believe in a Church of love and social justice are few and far between now.  More and more they are obsessed with making people obey and respect them, without understanding respect is earned.  The collar means jack shit if you are embezzling funds or raping/assaulting people.

Seriously, reading Williamson’s screeds and realizing he’s now welcome and no longer a schismatic makes me ill.  It’s probably a good thing overall, since it’s shaken all desire to be an enabler out of me.  No one is belittling my girls, or teaching my son it’s okay to belittle women.

Thank you, Caren.

Gracchus?  I lean towards Oswald as the lone gunman.  (For Kennedy!  I’m pretty sure he has an alibi for JP 1 and 2.)

Have you read Bugliosi’s book on it?  Fascinating, well-researched, well-argued.  It really leaves little to no room for any credible conspiracy theory.

PiaToR:

I’ve seen some good articles in the past on just that membership problem, and they are all in accord on this: the current Catholic Church is on the horns of a dilemma.  Most of their cash comes from the first world and most of their assets are there, and that laity is declining in absolute and proportional and actually observant numbers.  Buuuuttt… most of the laity worldwide is in the third world.  The former is increasingly liberal and the latter is already or increasingly conservative.  If the Church wants to expand its membership and compete with Islam or Evangelical protestantism then it must become more conservative, but such moves result in losses in the first world.

That, of course, leaves aside the fact that in the first world the Church is held fiscally accountable for its misdeeds, something it doesn’t have to worry about in developing companies.

The term “Catholic” has, I submit, quite accurately come to mean “the authoritarian, bureaucratized quasi-nation-state entity whose headquarters are at the Vatican, Rome”.  To call oneself “Catholic” when one palpably isn’t a practicing, obedient practitioner within that organization is an exercise in semantics, no?  ... Words mean things, and that word is “set”.  Why be imprisoned by it?
seeker6079 on 01/28 at 03:49 PM

Um, no, seeker.

I was raised to agree with the very definition of Catholicism you have offered. But it’s not right.

The Roman Catholic church is a faith tradition; one of its features has always been that it professes to be universal—that’s what ‘catholic’ means in this context. It is communal. It has tremendous geographic sweep and did even a thousand years ago. It is supposed to be for rich and poor, kings and peasants, scholars and illiterates, alike.

So it can’t really be a one-size-fits all sort of deal. That, from the point of view of this infidel cultural Catholic, is actually its real strength and value (insofar as it actually has any, which I tend to doubt more and more as the decades go by), not the vaunted lockstep unity the loudmouthed “real Catholics” keep claiming.

For me, the breaking point came in basic doctrine—am I actually a Christian at all? Long ago I realized that no, I didn’t actually believe that Jesus of Nazareth was really God and the “Son of God,” that the Gospels had a special authority beyond the sense we make of them as we might any document, or that the Western Christian tradition (or any other particular religious tradition) had some kind of monopoly on either truth or wisdom.

For nearly a year now I’ve been living with my parents, who are very conservative Catholics and very activist about it. Very occasionally I’ve gone to masses or various kinds of Church-related gatherings. I find nothing and no one there for me.

So perhaps I can’t really understand the mindset of a person of real faith who finds themselves at odds with this or that loudly proclaimed Papal doctrine, but I certainly respect the decision to defiantly stay and be an example of the error of these doctrines. It isn’t necessarily a negation of Catholicism itself, to defy the Pope and hierarchy on a point where one has good reason to believe they are wrong.

Case in point; one of those Catholic gatherings I mentioned was a couple meetings of the diocesian “Life, Peace, Justice” group, which my parents urged me to go to to “show you that there are liberal Catholics who think like you!” Well, they are good and interesting people. I felt out of place, especially at the second meeting, held this past Monday night. Because while these are good, progressive people, they are believing Catholics—and I’m not.

One of them mentioned her prison visitation ministry. She was happy to be able to bring the prisoners hope. Well, I thought that was very good of her,  but cynically felt she must be naive—it seems to me the deck is so badly stacked against felons that offering real hope is either Pollyana optimism or a lie.

At home, talking about it, my Dad hit on a crucial point—that the real hope a Christian ministry brings prisoners is not hope for this world, but for an eternity of happiness in the next. Now I don’t think this woman would be satisfied to offer only that hope—she would also want to see real justice and reconciliation in this world as well. But if she does share that fundamental faith with my father, that Jesus really is God and the Gospels are true, then she has better reason than I do to hope for the kind of justice she and I both long for in this world, and also has a confidence that I don’t share that in any case, ultimate justice and mercy will indeed prevail in eternity.

Well, I’m not a believer, so that does me no good, but I do think that there are plenty of good and intelligent Catholics and I understand why they stay and fight

Consider how the rightists have been telling us progessive Americans the USA isn’t our country, but damn it, it is too—we are Americans, just as much and possibly more so than these clowns and thugs who told us to “Love it or Leave It!” We did love it, often painfully, and we didn’t leave, and here we are.

Well, that’s how many Catholics feel—it is still their Church too, no matter what the Pope says.

Eloquently put, Mark Foxwell.

I don’t mean to sound disrespectful, but the belief many Catholics hold that “It’s their Church too, no matter what the Pope says” sounds like self delusion. If it really is THEIR church, why not revolt and kick the old farts out? The laity that uses birth control may be the majority within the RCC, but the institution is still managed by the hierarchy. The Pope and the Bishops dictate policy and control the RCC’s abundant financial resources. In an equivalent corporate situation they’d be ousted at a shareholders’ meeting. In an equivalent political situation, they’d be voted out of office during the next election. If you can’t do the same with all these authoritarians in funny hats, it’s not really the “people’s Church”, is it?

And yet, still, no matter how gross their behavior, these religious cults get to be the arbiter of all things “moral” in the United States and are the first resort for breathless scandalmongering pundits who want to know what “morality” has to say about consensual private sexual behavior.

You’re absolutely right, Dan, they should be kicked out.  But as I said above, it’s a co-dependent relationship.  It’s not healthy.

Most Catholics are not even going to be aware of Ratzi’s lifting the excommunication, b/c it won’t affect them personally at all.  The Church is the people, and the people like each other a lot.  The Church is family, and a very disfunctional one at that.

It’s somewhat like a corporation, but the right to vote on the leadership is restricted to those with the super special stocks—only the Cardinals (and now only the ones appointed by JPII) are allowed to vote on the leadership.  JPII was Pope for a long time and filled the offices with like-minded men: they are interested in power and in authortarian control much more than in following the teachings.

Look at Fr. Geoff up there.  Why is he doing what he’s doing?  Why does he think he can call himself a Catholic when the Bishop is doing all he can to shut him up and shut him down?

Because he is Catholic and knows that the doctrine is that you follow your conscience.

When I write about how JPII and Ratzi want to return to pre Vatican II, and returning the schismatics is part of that, it’s really a discussion of power.  Vatican II makes it very clear that one of the things that had gone wrong with the Church, that one of the ways it was not fulfilling its purpose was by putting priests above the laity.  The pyramid has to be inverted, with all the millions of Catholics at the top and the clerics at the bottom, serving the people.

This is a stupid example, it will probably only make sense to other Catholics, but once in a while you go to Mass and a priest gets up and rambles on about how people should sing and respond loudly at Mass.  When I hear one of these homilies going up, I know I’ve found a bad place.  First, the priest isn’t really addressing any spiritual need of the people.  Secondly, if he were addressing his parish’s needs, they’d be there, singing loudly.  If they aren’t, if they take off immediately after communion, then they are only there out of a sense of obligation (and there’s your codependence).

In a good parish with a priest who actually cares about performing religious duties or has a gift for oratory, people sing along, respond loudly, volunteer and are a big part of the Mass.  But not all priests are created equally—some are better at fiscal management than at tending to the sick.  Some are incapable of writing/giving a homily without putting everyone to sleep.  Others are gifted speakers, but useless with delegating tasks.

Very few people ever address these practical issues.  Pretty much if a parish is nonresponsive, it’s the priest’s fault for not meeting their needs.  If they were engaged, they would be singing and praying loudly and joyously.  If they aren’t engaged, it’s the priest’s job to find out why not and to find out how to engage them.  That type of self-awareness certainly isn’t much in evidence in the post JPII hierarchy.  This is why you get homilies attacking the people for not singing/praying/responding loudly.  This is why you get birth control lectures.  The Correctors get off on reprimanding the people more than serving them and trying to meet their needs.

That fact alone is a big cause of attrition from the RCC in America.  You still have people who call themselves Catholic, and really ARE Catholic, but are getting nothing from the hierarchy, so they don’t belong to a parish, stop going to Mass except for Christmas and Easter, and are otherwise disengaged.  These people, who would be actively involved in a parish that wanted them, are not going to pay much attention to the schismatics, if they even know who they are.

I don’t mean to sound disrespectful, but the belief many Catholics hold that “It’s their Church too, no matter what the Pope says” sounds like self delusion…
Dan2108 on 01/29 at 12:59 AM

To further distill what I’ve said, and in more Pandagonian-atheist terms—the real question is, is Christianity itself “self-delusion?” Because if it is, we have here the ever-amusing dynamic of crazy versus crazy. And one thing the Romans were always good at was spectacle. Let the games continue!

Or—serious Catholics actually believe that no, their faith is not mere delusion. It’s real, they think. There is a God, the institutional Church has a relationship with God (otherwise they’d be Protestants)—points for the reactionaries (who lately are hearing exactly what they want from the Vatican, and never really got too severely challenged, though obviously some got into snits anyway over Vatican II) and for those who identify their faith as being “obedient to the Pope.”

BUT if God and Catholic tradition are both true and real, then God is God of everything, the whole sweep of human history, the whole geographic reach of the world, and tradition says—God is Love. God made it all. God was Jesus, and Jesus lived a lot more like a hippie than like a magistrate of the Church.

Catholic inclusiveness, claims of universality, actual inclusion of diversity, the weight of 2000 years of institutional history as an active political entity—if you take it all seriously as God’s special handiwork, then it poses dilemmas no matter what political point of view you approach it from. It’s a great big Romanesque-Gothic-Renaissance complex with all manner of Victorian and modernist stuff included somehow—much like the architecture of the Vatican. It professes to be, and the faithful Catholic affirms it is, a microcosm of the diversity, complexity, and apparent contradiction of, Creation itself. So the authoritarians can only be triumphant by visibly vandalizing aspects of their own tradition in which name they operate.

Imagine that you, or I, a Pandagonian progressive, are the Siamese Twin of one of these narrow reactionary Catholics. A horrible image, I know (though very realistic for me anyway—half my siblings side with reaction one way or another) but bear in mind, it also looks horrible to the reactionary twin! That’s the Catholic tradition—both sides are stuck with their nemesis, and they have to learn to get along somehow.

It’s one of those wacky-team cop movies. Spectacle!

And seriously, if I were a faithful Christian—well, “God must love spectacle” is the only approach I’ve found to reconciling the Christian concept of God as Love and a destiny of justice and redemption for the Cosmos versus the obvious problem of Evil.

No particularly appropriate thread to put this in, but I’m sure you’ll appreciate this: World gets its first gay leader.

Dana:
Gay, yes.  But definitely NOT happy!
Good luck to her.  She has a very large mess to clean up.

Thanks for your reply, Caren. I agree with your description and analysis but I beg to differ on the prescriptive side. When confronted with an organization that doesn’t represents me and within which I have virtually no power to change things, my decision is to leave said organization.

It may have to do with my specific background. I was raised as a Catholic in a predominantly Catholic country where the RCC supported and sanctioned the military junta that tortured and killed tens of thousands of people. JP2 had no qualms about giving Communion to the leaders of that illegitimate government. Couple that with all the other things we criticize the RCC hierarchy for, and you’ll see why it was extremely easy for me to stop being a Catholic. The biggest drawback has been a strained relationship with one uncle who’s a Monsignor, but definitely worth it.

I will admit that I haven’t severed my relationship with the RCC completely. I still donate money to the high school (run by Benedictine monks) that I graduated from. They gave me a great education and I can only hope they use my donations to educate others instead of to propagate hatred.