This vileness has been going on for a long, long time

When I visited Australia last year, the media was all gaga over the idea of an Australian saint — the Catholic church was going to canonize Mary MacKillop (the people I hung out with while I was there, though, didn’t give a good goddamn for the nonsense). Well, now there’s some ironic news going around: during her lifetime, Mary MacKillop had been temporarily banished from the Catholic church and thrown out on the street. What had she done, you might ask.

Go ahead, guess.

A hint: she had complained about and reported some priests in the church. Can you guess what they had done?

Sure you can. Catholic priests doing something wrong, getting angry for being reported? It’s the same old story as always.

Yep, they’d been raping children, nuns made complaints to the Catholic hierarchy (apparently not to the secular authorities), and the church responded as it always does…by transferring the offending priests to a new diocese, a fresh hunting ground.

This was all in 1871.

It’s as if child-rape is a hallowed tradition within Catholicism.

Got student loans? Don’t want to pay them back? Become a priest!

Believers get another phenomenal reward: if they have student loans, they can all be forgiven by working for a non-profit, which includes most churches. I can approve of the idea of rewarding people with debt forgiveness if they dedicate themselves to charitable works, but most priests are more interested in spreading the useless noise of the gospel rather than helping real people, and most churches do not deserve their status as a charity — and if they do, they ought to open their books to the same level of scrutiny as a secular non-profit, and they typically don’t.

Say, why don’t we forgive the student loans of people who go to work in science or education, instead? Maybe we should be giving incentives to teachers rather than preachers.

Grow up, Gateshead

How can you simultaneously be such leaders of advancing secularism and pandering cowards to the demands of religion? The police have arrested 6 people who posted a video of a Koran-burning. They did not break into a mosque and steal somebody else’s book, they had their own copy and destroyed it … they did nothing illegal. But they’re still arrested, and the police are making excuses.

In a joint statement, Northumbria Police and Gateshead Council said: “The kind of behaviour displayed in this video is not representative of our community as a whole.

Our community is one of mutual respect and we continue to work together with community leaders, residents and people of all faiths and beliefs to maintain good community relations.”

Oh, bugger that. If you want to maintain good community relations, you do it be allowing every member freedom of conscience in all matters that do not cause harm to others. You do not accomplish an atmosphere of tolerance by telling one group that they have the privilege of imposing their religious requirements on everyone else.

That settles it. I have a copy of the Koran at home right now. I will not have a copy tomorrow, because I will not respect a religion of such intolerance enough to allow their propaganda a space on my bookshelf.

And if I had a relic representative of the pious ninnies on the Gateshead city council, I’d destroy that too.

There must be a law

Something like, “The probability that a religious leader is a sex offender is directly proportional to the the virulence of his homophobia.” It’s happened again.

Two young men in Georgia said Tuesday that the pastor of a 33,000-person Baptist megachurch, Bishop Eddie L. Long, had repeatedly coerced them into having sex with him.

In two lawsuits filed in DeKalb County, the men said that Bishop Long, a prominent minister and television personality, had used his position as a spiritual counselor to take them on trips out of state and perform sexual acts on them.

It’s gotten so I can’t see any of these crazy god-wallopers and not assume they’re going to leave the podium and run off to a back room to do exactly what they’ve been railing against. It’s sort of like a Dorian Gray scheme: they’ve got a lilly-white sanctimonious face for the public, and what they reveal when off-camera and out of sight is something sickeningly depraved. What Pope Ratzi does behind closed doors must be nightmarish.

Who was on the Nazi’s naughty list?

Since the pope has declared that the source of the Nazi evil was their atheism, we ought to be able to see that in their laws. Here are the guidelines for banned books in Nazi Germany. A few of them stand out.

Recall that many creationists claim that the horrors of the Holocaust were inspired by Charles Darwin? I don’t quite understand, then, why ol’ Chuck was on their list of banned authors, along with Ernst Haeckel.

6. Schriften weltanschaulichen und lebenskundlichen Charakters, deren Inhalt die falsche naturwissenschaftliche Aufklärung eines primitiven Darwinismus und Monismus ist (Häckel).

6. Writings of a philosophical and social nature whose content deals with the false scientific enlightenment of primitive Darwinism and Monism (Häckel).

They must have banned religious books, then. But no…it banned books that ridiculed religion.

c) Alle Schriften, welche die christliche Religion und ihre Einrichtungen, den Gottesglauben und andere einem gesunden Volksempfinden heiligen Dinge verhöhnen, verumglimpfen oder verächtlich machen.

c) All writings that ridicule, belittle or besmirch the Christian religion and its institution, faith in God, or other things that are holy to the healthy sentiments of the Volk.

Richard Dawkins can be proud that The God Delusion would have been banned by Hitler, while all the fleas that follow him would have been heroes of the Reich.

The Iranian Official Perspective

A reader, who apparently did some work for Iran some years ago, now regularly gets missives from the Iranian embassy, and he forwarded this one to me. It’s about Iran’s official response to the proposed Koran burning in Florida.

I’ve checked out the email headers and can verify that at least it came from the purported source and there is an Iranian embassy at that address, but I can’t vouch for the full legitimacy of the email.

Subject: Supreme Leader’s Message

Dear Sir/Madam

Please find attached the text of the message of the Supreme Leader of the
Islamic Republic of Iran on the desecration of the Holy Quran in the United
States.

Regards

In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful

“It is we who sent down the Koran, and we watch over it,” says God

the Mighty, the Wise [Holy Quran, 15:9]

Great Iranian nation, great Islamic Ummah!

The insane, revolting insult to the Holy Quran in America, an incident
occurring under the security provided by the US police, is a major tragic
event that cannot be considered merely as the foolish act of a few worthless
mercenaries. This is a preplanned act by those who since years ago have put
Islamophobic and anti-Muslim policies on their agenda and have tried to
combat Islam and the Quran in numerous ways resorting to a myriad of
propaganda means and campaigns. This is another link in a chain of shameless
measures launched with the blasphemy of Salman Rushdi, the apostate,
followed by the insult of the base Danish caricaturist, tens of anti-Islamic
movies produced in Hollywood and now crowned by this disgusting show. Who
and what is behind such evil acts?

Looking into this trend of evil, as manifested in recent years in atrocious
operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, Lebanon and Pakistan, leaves no
doubt that it is designed and masterminded by heads of world imperialism and
Zionist think tanks which have the highest degree of influence in the
government, the military and security agencies of the United States as well
as Britain and some other European countries. These are those at whom the
finger of suspicion of independent truth-finding groups and individuals is
pointed in the case of the attack on the Twin Towers on September the 11th.
The then-president of the US, a criminal, was provided with the pretext to
invade Iraq and Afghanistan; he declared a Crusade and, reportedly, has said
yesterday that with the Church entering the stage the Crusade has truly
begun.

What is aimed at through the recent repulsive incident is, on the one hand,
to take the confrontation with Islam and Muslims to the populace in the
Christian community, to give it a religious coloring and entrenching it with
religious zeal and sentiment by involving the church and, on the other, to
divert the attention of the Muslim nations, enraged and hurt by this hideous
effrontery, away from the issues and developments in the Muslim world and
the Middle East.

This vengeful act is not the beginning of a trend but another stage in the
long history of antagonizing Islam headed by Zionism and the US government.
Now all the heads of world hegemony and impiety are ranked against Islam.
Islam is the religion of human liberation and spirituality, and the Quran is
the book of compassion, wisdom and justice. It is incumbent upon all
free-spirited people of the world and all the followers of the Abrahamic
religions to side with the Muslims in countering these heinous anti-Islamic
policies and acts. Empty, deceitful words cannot exonerate the heads of the
American government from the charge of involvement in this ugly phenomenon.
For years those things held sacred by millions of oppressed Muslims in
Afghanistan and Pakistan, in Iraq, in Lebanon and Palestine have been
desecrated, all their rights and their dignity trampled on. Hundreds of
thousands killed, tens of thousands of men and women captured and tortured,
thousands of children and women kidnapped, and millions injured and made
homeless – all victimized for what? And with these wrongs, why does the
Western media represent Muslims as violence incarnate and Islam, and the
Quran, as a menace to humanity? How can one believe that this vast
conspiracy could be made possible without the support and involvement of the
Zionist circles in the US government?!
O Muslim brethren and sisters in Iran and all over the world!
It is necessary to draw the attention of all to the following points:
First, this incident and similar ones show that what is now being targeted
by the global hegemony and world Imperialism are the very foundations of the
dear Islam, and the Holy Quran. The manifest enmity of the arrogant world
powers towards the Islamic Republic of Iran is because of the manifest
resistance of Iran against them; the claim of these powers in not being the
enemies of other Muslims, and of Islam, is a big lie, a satanic deception.
They are the enemies of Islam, whoever believes in it, and whatever
signifies it.

Second, these spiteful acts against Islam and Muslims stem from the fact
that since a few decades ago the light of Islam has been shining brighter
than ever, its grip on the hearts and souls in the Muslim world and even in
the West has been stronger than ever before. It stems from the fact that the
Islamic Ummah is now more awake than ever and is determined to free itself
of the shackles of two centuries of colonialism and interference. The
incident of insulting the Quran and the Great Prophet of Islam despite all
its bitterness bears great tidings. The bright sun of the Quran will shine
brighter than ever.

Third, we should all know that this incident has nothing to do with
Christianity and the Church; we should not regard the puppet-like acts of a
few idiotic and mercenary priests as those of Christians and church men. We
Muslims will never commit similar acts against what are held sacred in other
religions. Conflict between Muslims and Christians, on a popular scale, is
what our enemies and the stagers of this insane show are after. What the
Quran teaches us is diametrically opposed to this.
Fourth, today the protests of all Muslims are directed at the US government
and American politicians. If they are honest in their claim of not being
involved in this, they must duly punish the main planners and operators of
this heinous crime who have hurt the feelings of one and a half billion
Muslims the world over.

And peace is on him who follows piety.

Sayyed Ali Khamenei

September 13, 2010

I found two things very funny.

They say they’ll never commit similar acts, i.e., desecrate holy books, as if that makes them better people. But instead, they issue fatwahs demanding the death of people like Salman Rushdie, and riot with signs advocating violent acts against other people! I’m not exactly dazzled by their standards of morality. I’d piss on a thousand holy books before I even consider advocating beheading someone.

That last line slays me. One and half billion people are “upset”! It sounds to me like one and a half billion children need to get a life.

Molly Norris in hiding

The cartoonist who created the idea of a “Draw Mohammed Day” (and then retracted it after receiving many death threats) has had to drop out of sight because of continued threats to her life.

The gifted artist is alive and well, thankfully. But on the insistence of top security specialists at the FBI, she is, as they put it, “going ghost”: moving, changing her name, and essentially wiping away her identity. She will no longer be publishing cartoons in our paper or in City Arts magazine, where she has been a regular contributor. She is, in effect, being put into a witness-protection program–except, as she notes, without the government picking up the tab. It’s all because of the appalling fatwa issued against her this summer, following her infamous “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day” cartoon.

Come on, Islam. Targeting defenseless cartoonists is your latest adventure in bravery? That’s pathetic. It’s bad enough to be the religion of hate, but to be the religion of cowardice ought to leave you feeling ashamed.

The Pope has landed, immediately recites anti-atheist canard

Well, what can we say? I thought Catholics were supposed to be scholarly, but Pope Ratzi babbled out a lot of ahistorical nonsense in his first speech on his UK tour.

Even in our own lifetime, 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. I also recall the regime’s attitude to Christian pastors and religious who spoke the truth in love, opposed the Nazis and paid for that opposition with their lives. As we reflect on the sobering lessons of the atheist extremism of the twentieth 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 to a “reductive vision of the person and his destiny”.

Britain is now one of the most secular countries in the world, and yes, they stood up bravely against the Nazis…we cannot say the same about the Catholic Church, which had a complicated relationship with Nazi Germany that can’t be called quite collaboration, but also can’t be called opposition. The Nazis did not try to eradicate God from society — read Mein Kampf. It is not an atheist tract at all. The population of Germany was largely Catholic and Protestant, with very few open atheists.

Oh, well, we knew he was going to spew lies. That’s nothing new. He’s the pope — he doesn’t care much about truth.

Ah, but it’s only a few bad apples

That’s the usual excuse we here from defenders of Catholicism — that the accusations of pedophilia and sexual abuse are only the work of a tiny minority of rotten people. I can accept that it’s a small minority that are the actual perpetrators, but the culture of the church protects its own…and the privileged, special, precious people aren’t the congregation, it’s the priesthood.

Belgium has plumbed the depths of its own local apple barrel, and made a horrifying discovery.

“We can say that no congregation escapes sexual abuse of minors by one or several of its members,” the commission concluded.

The 200-page report, published on Friday, contains testimonies from some 124 anonymous victims, revealing that abuse for most began at the age of 12.

It noted a “high number of suicides” with 13 deaths and six attempts attributed to “sexual abuse by a cleric”.

Every congregation has a horror story about an abusive priest. That says something. This isn’t about a rare event — it’s about a common risk associated with growing up Catholic in Belgium.