WOMEN MUST BEAR RAPISTS' KIDS

“The path of ideology leads to heartlessness and cruelty.”
Pudinhand Wilson

This CNS April 30 Newsbriefs story reminds us that no matter how earnestly liberal theologians try to soften the edges of Catholic ideology, collection-plate dollars are being used daily to thump thump thump away at women’s reproductive health.

Bishops fight contraception mandate in Connecticut Catholic hospitals

Declaring that "Catholic institutions should have a right to be Catholic," the Connecticut bishops stepped up a campaign urging lawmakers to amend or defeat a bill that would require all Catholic hospitals in the state to provide emergency contraception to rape victims.

Let’s say you’re twelve year old daughter has been raped, she is picked up unconscious and without identification and is taken to a Catholic hospital. They will not administer morning after medication.

In the Church’s opinion, your twelve year old daughter, if she has conceived, has an obligation to carry the rapist’s child to term.

This is now the official policy of the US Supreme Court. They (the Catholic-five) view any abortion as murder. They will commit lesser sins, such as lying to Judiciary Committees, or keeping their fingers crossed when taking their oaths, or misrepresenting their legal opinions, in order to save innocent people (unborn) from being murdered.

If they did less they would face excommunication.

In another CNS story the Pope pleads for priestly vocations.

Pope pleads for vocations as he ordains 22 new priests for Rome

Of the 22 new priests who will serve in the Diocese of Rome, 12 were from Italy and 10 from other countries on three continents.

The Catholic Church flourished in an age of ignorance. Access to information in the Dark Ages, say, was limited to priestly pronouncements. A peasant who was told that the Catholic Church is the one true Church had no basis of comparison.

These days where I live, in San Francisco, even the poorest person who can locomote to a branch library can go on the internet and find out with a few clicks how many religions there might be to choose from.

Anyway, as Roman Catholics, the Five Supremes take moral orders from the head of state of a foreign country. Their loyalty to the Pope supersedes loyalty to any civil authority.

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OH BABY!

This tragic scenario is not impossible.

A mom and dad with their week-old infant are driving to the church where their baby will be baptized as a Roman Catholic.

Approaching them, in another car, is another mom and dad with their own week-old baby. They are returning home after their the baptism, RC, of their child.

There’s a collision and everyone dies including the two babies, one baptized, one
un-baptized.

Traditional Catholic teaching is that God looks differently on the two babies, in terms of the afterlife. The baptized baby goes to heaven, without question.

The unbaptized baby goes to Limbo

To any kind of modern mind this seems absurd. No God worth the title would make this kind of discrimination. The teaching itself is stupid and embarrassing.

So much so that even Ratzinger wants to fudge it, per this CNS story.

Even such a simple issue generates tons of blah blah.

The document, published April 20, critiqued the traditional understanding of limbo, arguing instead that there was good reason to hope unbaptized babies who die go to heaven.

Some people saw that as a reversal of a centuries-old Catholic principle. But rather than announcing a radical break with the past, the commission said it was assessing an issue in theological evolution.

These people are getting paid out of the collection plate for their blah blah on this.

Father Sobrino suggests that at the very least, we should turn off their air-conditioning.

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VIVA MEXICO! (CIUDAD DE)

Mexico City has legalized first trimester abortions. Catholics are upset as a matter of religion (and sex uptightness).

The five Catholics on the U.S. Supreme Court appear ready to rubberstamp any anti-sex, anti-reproductive health laws any crackpot legislative body can come up with.

The practical effect of abortion and contraception restrictions (don’t forget, the Catholic Church is DEAD SET AGAINST the distribution of contraceptives) is felt differently according to class.

As long as there are progressive countries in the world that offer safe legal abortions on demand, a family with the wherewithal can send a wife or daughter to that country to terminate an unwanted pregnancy.

This option is always open to the financially qualified no matter how much they may be opposed to abortion in principal, or for other people.

Only poor women are forced into unsafe, illegal procedures, that is, if they don’t want to cede control of their bodies to an ex-Hitler Youth named Ratzinger who lives in a palace in Rome and dresses funny.

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PERSONAL CONSCIENCE

A nice guy I see on the tennis courts sometimes, I’ll call him Jack, responded to my various comments about religion. (At the time I was just learning about Scientology’s cosmology.)

Jack, who’s education and resume are way more impressive than mine, asked why I was interested in religion.

“Because I root for the underdog,” I said, “and religion is one way the strong bully the weak.”

The story Jack wanted to tell was his own:

“I was raised Catholic, went to parochial schools and a Jesuit college. I always enjoyed my time in church and I went to mass two or three times a week.

My wife was also Catholic, although she wasn’t quite so devout.

My career was going along fine and we had three great children.

My first kid, Julie, was beautiful, smart, cheerful, and athletically gifted. She was offered an athletic scholarship to a prestigious university. She even had a boyfriend we approved of.

She started the summer between high school and college beaming like the sun. Life was incredibly good.

Then, in July, we got the news, Julie was pregnant.

I didn’t really think, I just acted. It was like I was on auto-pilot. I did a little research and found a provider and Julie had her abortion by August.

Only later did I realize that what I had done completely contradicted my allegiance to the Church.”

This was a major event in Jack’s life. When confronted with a real life threat, he did the right thing and abandoned the Church in favor of his daughter’s welfare.

Jack didn’t express guilt about the abortion, or remorse about his mistaken devotion to Catholicism. He was just impressed at the difference between being a sheep in a fold versus being a grown up human being.

This relates to the most amazing post I’ve come across since google-alerting on “Jesuits,” etc.

Diana Mertz Hsieh at Noodlefood discusses a passage in the book, The Closing of the Western Mind: The Rise of Faith and the Fall of Reason by Charles Freeman, which looks at the vow of obedience.

Apparantly, there is some Catholic tradition, that if one vows obedience to a religious superior, and then dutifully obeys that superior, one cannot sin. All responsibility, in the eyes of God, for the actions of the obedient is transferred to the superior.

This was seen as a way of assuring one’s blamelessness at the last judgement, and, therefore, automatic entry into heaven.

The book quotes Varieties of Religious Experience by William James:

One of the great consolations of the monastic life," says a Jesuit authority, "is the assurance we have that in obeying we can commit no fault. The Superior may commit a fault in commanding you to do this thing or that, but you are certain that you commit no fault so long as you obey…

...God wipes it out of your account, and charges it to the Superior. So that Saint Jerome well exclaimed, in celebrating the advantages of obedience, 'Oh, sovereign liberty! Oh, holy and blessed security by which one become almost impeccable!'

Basically, this is the Nuremburg defense. It seems laughable to the modern mind.

A Church that condones, let alone promotes such abdication of conscience is also laughable.

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MAHONY SEE, MAHONY DOO

We'll be on assignment until Friday. Next post Saturday Apr 21.

We'll be inside Cardinal Mahony's see, examining his bishopric. Interview plans are incomplete.

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BROM: DOG ATE HOMEWORK

When you molest children or cause children to be molested, which everyone agrees is the case in the Diocese of San Diego, the law says that the people responsible (the Diocese of San Diego) should make restitution for the damage done. See previous post on sfwillie’s blog.

The Law of God says this.

The laws of the United States and of the State of California say this.

Bishop Brom didn’t like the Law of God in this case—too expensive. So he resorted to the Law of Man, bankruptcy court.

Apparently, Bishop Brom didn’t like the Law of Man that much either. So what does he do? He just breaks the law (apparently) like any corporate crook, as related in this 4-11-07 San Diego Union-Tribune story.

An apparent attempt to transfer church funds without a federal judge's permission was called a misunderstanding in declarations filed in bankruptcy court yesterday by attorneys representing the Roman Catholic Diocese of San Diego.

This (il)legal move—declare bankruptcy, then hide your assets—is nothing new. Satan-worshippers do it all the time.

As the story continues:

At issue is what the judge said was an apparent conspiracy by church officials and their attorneys to create new bank accounts, separate from diocese accounts, without her permission.

Diocese lawyers conceded yesterday that a March 17 letter sent by the Rev. Michael Gallagher to his parishioners at Our Lady of Grace in El Cajon mistakenly said the court had ordered that new bank accounts be established.

They also acknowledged that Susan Boswell of Tucson, the diocese's lead bankruptcy attorney, was unaware that Bishop Robert Brom regularly received bank statements regarding accounts of the diocese's nearly 100 parishes when she told the court otherwise during a March 1 hearing.

But church attorneys and officials insisted there was no intention to misrepresent finances.

By following this path Bishop Brom is foolishly squandering what little moral authority his diocese and the Church in general, have remaining. Why does Bishop Blom still have his job?

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JUST FOR REFERENCE

Joke:

Q. Where is Pope Benedict coming from?
A. Midway between Dachau and Mauthausen.

This CNS throwaway item got me curious.

The first map indicates the general area of Europe where Ratzinger was born. There are three blue markers, with a green arrow hiding behind the middle blue marker.

The second map brings us in closer. We see the city of Munich near the left blue marker and the Austrian city of Linz near the right blue marker.

The green arrow, which is Pope Benedict’s birthplace, is about five miles as the crow flies from the middle blue marker.

Green Arrow--Pope’s birthplace
Left Blue Marker--Dachau concentration camp
Right Blue Marker--Mauthausen concentration camp
Middle Blue Marker--Birthplace of Adolph Hitler

Map three shows the proximity of the birthplaces of two men destined to become world leaders. There are maternity wards in San Francisco that are farther apart than Marktl am Inn (Ratzinger) and Braunau am Inn (Hitler.)

What a coincidence!

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HIT A NERVE?

Apologies are flying at St Joseph’s University, according to this story from KYW Newsradio.

KYW's Ian Bush reports officials at St. Joseph's University are apologizing for the April Fool's parody edition of the student paper, which called Cardinal Rigali "gay" and compared Jesuits to Nazis.

I guess the students hit a nerve.

University president Fr. Timothy Lannon, expressed regret to the Archdiocese:

"He has apologized to the Cardinal personally, and it's my understanding that the editor-in-chief of The Hawk will also be personally sending an apology to the Cardinal."

Lannon apologized because the Cardinal isn’t gay? Or because it’s impolite to bring the subject up? And if he's celibate, what difference does it make?

A man who is secure in his sexuality and in his authority should be able to roll with these kinds of punches.

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VOCATIONAL SEX?

An ongoing question here is why so many pervs wind up as Catholic priests. My assumption has always been unfortunate mismatch between person and career.

With the constant revelations of priest (even Jesuit) sex abuse I’m wondering if there is something more than unfortunate mismatch. Maybe, for some men, the trappings and context of priesthood are necessary to achieve erections.

I used to think that for the molesters, the priesthood was a pathway to sex acts that were just, well, sex acts. I’m so naïve.

Now I’m thinking that some of those boys might have had their little peepees blessed, In nomine patri etc. Probably some kids were told that the priest’s ejaculate is the “real eucharist.”

Many lay people (so called) enjoy role-playing as part of their sex-lives. Come to think of it, there must be couples who role-play priests and nuns.

For some men, just role-playing isn’t enough. They can’t achieve orgasm unless it violates real vows.

This is making more sense.

Here's an episode, as reported in the Baltimore Examiner, courtesy of the Society of Jesus.

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SLICK OR SLACK

Thanks to Mirror of Justice and Inside Higher Ed for sharing this amusing bit of moral slapstick.

Story Outline:

1) First year law student at Georgetown University (Jesuit) applies for summer internship funding from the school (common practice).
2) Her internship is to be with Planned Parenthood.
3) The school denies funding because Planned Parenthood kills babies (supports abortion).
4) School officials help student find outside sources to fund her summer internship (kill babies).

Conclusion: It’s not about babies, it’s about funding sources.

The young woman involved (law student) thinks breach of contract. Also, she thinks discrimination.

As quoted in the insidehighered article she says:

“If the school wants to abide by Catholic doctrine it should do so consistently and prevent all activities the Church disagrees with. This includes prosecutors’ offices that impose the death penalty, gay rights organizations, political candidates and judges that hold positions that disagree with the Catholic church, military law organizations and human rights organizations (the majority of which support reproductive rights, as well)."

A spokesman for Georgetown replied:

“I don’t think Georgetown needs to enact Catholic doctrine on every issue — that wouldn’t be desirable,” he said. “But the most bedrock Catholic teaching is the protection of life. No advocacy group that works against that principle should be supported by the university.”

So, the bedrock issue remains women’s control of their own bodies. Ratzinger says he should have control of women’s bodies (worldwide), and he’s infallible.

In the report Jenny Woodson, the law student, says of the Jesuit University:

“If I ever knew that taking part in women’s rights issues would lead to a chilling effect, I don’t know if I would have ever considered coming here.”

Obvious misogyny. Obvious hypocrisy. With the internet we hear about these things.

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WHAT CATHOLICS BELIEVE: HELL

Heaven for climate, hell for society.
-Twainquotes

You know, the Church considers Hell to be res not spes. According to Jesus, as interpreted by the Catholic Church, there are souls in Hell right now, who will never escape excruciating pain.

This is one reason given by Bertrand Russell for Why I Am Not a Christian. Russell is all like, Who needs a God that creates places like Hell? You know, with Gods like that, who needs Devils!

To use an analogy, God is to Hell, as Hitler is to Auschwitz.

It seems Thomism does some contortions to square the existence of Hell with the doctrine of God’s omnipresence. It’s a humiliating wallow. It would be so much easier to just give up the notion of Hell altogether.

If Jesus said there is a Hell, then Jesus was wrong.

Some might argue that the threat of Hell makes people behave better. World Wars I & II provide contrary evidence. Christians are still the world’s biggest bangers.

I guess the concept of Hell will remain a useful tool for grownups who enjoy scaring children, until that, too, is outlawed by enlightened society.

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