The conclave to select the new pope begins next week, perhaps as early as Monday. Apparently the pre-conclave meetings currently in progress are where the real politicking goes on, where informal chats take place and information and gossip is exchanged regarding the various possible candidates for the job, with subtle lobbying being part of the process. [Read more…]
… a letter to the editor in the Plain Dealer yesterday complained about the disrespect shown to Catholics by the Non Sequitur cartoon strip by Wiley that had appeared the previous Wednesday. The letter began:
I thought the mass media were in agreement that insults based on race, nationality, ethnicity, sexual orientation or creed have no place in civil discourse. Apparently, the creator of the comic strip “Non Sequitur” believes the world’s 1.2 billion Roman Catholics don’t deserve such consideration.
An imposter dressed as a bishop tried to get into the meetings being held at the Vatican prior to the papal conclave. Using easily obtainable clothing such as a fedora hat and a purple winter scarf, he managed to look enough like a bishop to fool at least some people.
The role of religion in modern political life is a puzzle. God as an idea worth taking seriously is clearly on life support, at least as far as serious analysis goes. As Andrew Levine says, for a long time in the world of political analysts “the idea that the Creator of all there is would care about the political affairs of particular Homo sapiens, that He (always a He!) would favor some members of our paltry species over others, seemed too preposterous to take seriously” and that “it is hard to see how any part of the Sturm und Drang of modern politics could really be about God, no matter what some political actors do, say, or believe. If their self-representations belie what is plainly the case, they must be deceiving themselves.” [Read more…]
The so-called ‘Arab spring’ posed a bit of a dilemma for people around the world who value both nominal democracy (the right of people to elect their own governments) and as well as true democracy (where fundamental human rights and the rights of minorities and marginalized groups are also protected). [Read more…]
Kimberly Winston recounts the moving story of ‘Samya’, a young woman aged 20 in the US, who left her parents and her five siblings and fears that if her true identity were revealed, she might be killed by her family. Her crimes? “She rejected a marriage arranged by her father, who came to the U.S. from the Middle East when Samya was an infant. And perhaps more serious to her parents: She has become an atheist.” [Read more…]
The process of selecting the new pope is about to begin. The cardinals began today to go through the preliminaries before deciding when to begin the conclave that actually elects the pope. I came across an article by David Gibson that provides some information on the process as well as interesting historical trivia. [Read more…]
The International Humanist and Ethical Union, which describes itself as the world union of humanist organizations, issued in December 2012 Freedom of Thought 2012: A Global Report on Discrimination Against Humanists, Atheists and the Non-religious, its first report on worldwide discrimination against the non-religious. [Read more…]
Christopher Hitchens angered a lot of people with his expose of Mother Theresa in his 1995 book The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice, and he was dismissed by her fans as an angry atheist who wanted to tear down anyone who was held up as exemplifying what was good about religion. [Read more…]
Stephen Colbert promises full coverage of the papal transition while keeping track of the current scandals in the Vatican. [Read more…]
