esrosedotblog

I am a lot more interested in the doings of the Catholic Church than you might imagine.

Without getting into the faith side of it, the Church is a huge institution which umbrellas a lot of difference in what it believes, who gets to say what the beliefs are and how they are practiced.

For years, I worked with priest/managers who went to our programs and learned new skills for application back home. They made a lot of difference to the world around them.

Today some of those change makers are rising to the top.

U.S. Bishops Struggle to Follow Lead of Francis

The Church has historically been seen as conservative and hard on its reformers. And yet, the reformers are winning around the world.

Humans are inclined toward faith and spiritual ways of life. Where the Church can help this happen as an individual pilgrimage it is to cheered and supported.

I went to mass a lot when I was in college and then later on when I worked with priests who wanted to make changes, I was struck by the good works that these people were able to do.

Sure there is a lot to condemn.

But the spiritual Program that I follow suggests that we be "quick to see where religious people are right".

God knows we can get behind that and cheer the reformers no matter where they work to alleviate human suffering. We can also cheer the keepers of the institution who have kept the flame alive for so long in such an oppressively hierarchical structure, long ago antiquated, but still strong enough to hurt.

Labels: religion

This is what is known as "throwing them a bone".

Catholic bishops in 'seismic' opening toward gays

Seismic.

Really?

Come on fellas. Half of you are gay yourselves. Surely you can come up with something a little less cringeworthy than that.

The Church (they like to be capitalized so I will throw a bone back) is regressive. Or is it retrogressive?

This pope may not be "as bad" as previous ones but he is still a guy who knows nothing about the real lives of real people who do things like divorce, have relationships with others of the same gender or whatever else is on their lists. Pious fools.

Remote from the universe of daily life.

Somehow when a "good" pope comes along people are all agog and good press ensues. Remember the John that was similar? A little of a nice guy then a little of a real prick and so you have it. Back and forth.

I am so out of the stream of religious life and thinking that I just find this stuff all quite bizarre. Do folks really care what the pope thinks or does?

I used to sympathize with liberal catholics who had to put up with this kind of shit but no longer. If they get burned and still stand next to the fire then so be it. I don't mean the fire of the metaphorical hell. I mean the hell of the universal church.

Labels: religion, religionists

This is a nice change of pace.

Religious Group Files a Beautifully Trolly Lawsuit Against North Carolina's Gay Marriage Ban

I tend to hear only the bad shit from the christians but there are a lot of them who are in support of gays. In fact, a lot of christians happen to be gay!

I am mostly disappointed when those who should do not stand up against the right wing bigots.

Filing a suit is going an extra mile and I am grateful for their initiative.

Labels: gay marriage, religion

No movie today. The disc came out of the envelope cracked. Later.

The Methodist preacher who married his gay son is found guilty of "sins". He thinks that he will be defrocked. I am not sure what the sins were but it is a sin that this kind of shit still goes on in any religious denomination. I was brought up as a Methodist and I am ashamed of them on a regular basis. They turned right several decades ago and have never come back. I have to admit I have never been "religious" so growing up as a Methodist is a little like being born in a particular town or some other involuntary event. On the other hand, you can't grow up around it without absorbing some of the stuff. Mostly the social stuff. A lot of disapproving old ladies is what I mostly remember. The theology was pretty thin, hard to figure out. I played piano then organ so I was recruited to participate at that level but I pretty much did the job and didn't pay much attention to the message. Maybe I really wasn't listening because I thought that their technical beliefs (as opposed to what everyone practiced) were fairly liberated. I guess I have that confused with some rather liberal pastors I ran into later on in life. Hard to fathom. But then I am biased. The preacher has four kids all gay. So I guess there will be end of him marrying them. They must have done it to cut him off from the pass. Or something. Bastards. I am reduced to name calling it is so preposterous.

Labels: religion

I have been watching this guy and you could see it coming.

Pope Bluntly Faults Church’s Focus on Gays and Abortion

This guy is cut from a different cloth than any Pope that I have seen in my lifetime.

It is important to understand that not many Catholic people pay attention to the Pope especially in America and a few other modern western countries.

The rabid few Cardinals and Bishops some of whom are now in place because of the last two right wingers will peter out.

But the impact of this will hit hardest in the third world where homophobia and the opposition to birth control are almost manic.

This one signaled change from the beginning. He ditched a lot of the accouterments that made the Pope the subject of constant mockery by non-catholics who do not buy the snake oil at all.

No pope-mobile, no summer "palace", the common touch which was not just PR.

He has installed lieutenants who tend liberal and has already spoken out about the rampant misuse of church funds.

The Vatican has become a disgrace to what is a significant spiritual home for a lot of people.

I have quite devout Catholic friends who I respect deeply and none want anything to do with the church that hates, that points fingers, that supports celibates who are obsessed with sex, that honors single men who hate women. The moralizers, the smug, the superior shits who have drummed any progressive point of view out of the church have created a shortage of young priests, young parishioner and minorities who, while faithful, have been treated like children.

I have hope when I see this guy.

In a way, it is all irrelevant to me. I have a rich spiritual life without any religion but it takes a lot of work and its pursuit, while incredibly rewarding, cannot be handled by a lot of people who have really hard lives and little time to focus on spiritual matters. A good solid church with a social gospel has always given these people a home.

These are Francis' words. A "home for everybody".

No surprise he adopted the name of the universally appealing Saint Francis.

Labels: religion, spiritual life

ORGANIZED BIGOTRY

The Methodist Church has always been filled with bastards. Social control.

Caught in Methodism's Split Over Same Sex Marriage

But they used to be more liberal bigots.

When I was a kid I was brought up in a Methodist Church. Notice I do not say "the Methodist Church".

In our Methodist Church, the social gospel was non-existent. It was a social organization with the usual approval disapproval mechanisms. Not a lot of theology.

I never really understood much of any of it. The Trinity? Huh?

When I was 8 or something my cousin Gordon got me to help him as sunday school secretary so I got out of going to class. We bummed around when we were done counting the money.

Then Gordon got me to be an usher. Hand out programs. Show people to seats. Take off when the service started, go to the diner across the street for a snack.

Our church was really a family deal. My two families on either side were a big element in how the church got run.

But in the background of this kind of liberal loose garment kind of institution there was the church structure and the minister that it provided to you.

Small enough, we got the losers, the drifters, or, sadly, the occasional authoritarian. But we were a back water. The bigger families ran the deal.

Jesus was there alright but he didn't have a whole lot of rules.

I got into some scuffles between the families. I was a busy bee with the gossip and such. But I left there and it all drifted into the past.

Oddly, just when I was free of the church and safely at MIT, I got dragooned into an actual, honest to god sunday school class at the ultra liberal Harvard Epworth Methodist that was run by a philosphy prof at BU. A great guy. He was all about the social gospel, human rights. At that time, they were all fighting a rear guard battle with the institutional church which was trying to get them to throttle it down.

I went there for a year or more and then passed out of the scene.

Some time later, my wife and I joined a small congregation of people who were building a church. When the minister came to our house it was easier to say yes than no and he found out I played the piano and I became the organist. It was fun. Young couples. Social stuff again. Not much theology. This was the Evangelical United Brethren Church which had a liberal history in many respects and less of a hold on their ministers and congregations.

They were on shakey ground institutionally and were, after we left there, sucked up by the Methodists. The Methodist United Church.

I just give all this history to show that in the colonies, distant from the church center, the Methodists were basically good people using the church as a social glue to hold their new or old marriages together, to keep their families within the safe confines of some moral code and, surprisingly, to have a good time together.

But at the center? A bunch of bastards. Hard nosed moral dictators with a bent for punishing their own ministers who strayed.

Lacking the resources to punish the people for their trespasses they kicked their ministers' asses and made a hard conformity necessary for personal success. They always rotated preachers. No one stayed in one place very long and so they were able to gain a fairly tight hold on the young minister's attention to hew, the line.

Somehow, when it came to gay rights, the Methodists became the worst of the non-evangelical non-born-again denominations. They became worse than the southern baptists and, faced with controversy, dug their hole even deeper until today they are being torn apart.

Serves the bastards right.

This marriage thing is going to kill them.

They are big, now, on church trials. Just like the fucking inquisition. Gay has become a central issue. The wrong fight at the wrong time for the wrong cause.

Labels: bigotry, gay rights, marriage equality, religion

BOOK REPORT

First, the books I have not read.

I took a turn with Missing Out: In praise of the unlived life., in which Adam Phillips says that many of us live two parallel lives, one that we have and the one we feel as though we should have or that we missed or something.

It sounded good in the review and it is an interesting idea drawn out over too many pages. I got the point in the Prologue.

I also got that this was a closet atheist book which is OK but then just come out and say it. The implication is that if you have God in your life, you are especially prone to this kind of misguided, frustrated existence where you pine for what you do not have.

I say "bullshit" to that. I have a Higher Power and that presence helps me be where I am and not spend much time on where I am not. It is the essence of my belief. True humility being acceptance of who and what I am. That was just in a reading in the Meeting I went to this morning.

The book is OK. I agree with the premise. And I don't argue about God with atheists. It is futile. And amounts to wanting what I don't have!

I left Adam to his thoughts after the first or second chapter and a quick scan of the rest. Off to the library with this one.

I also bailed on the new book by Kurt Anderson, True Believers.

I had enjoyed his earlier ventures, Heyday in which he followed five people across the US in the mid 19th century from NYC to SFO and all the stops in between. Also Turn of the Century which does a similar job with some dot.com people at, well, the turnover from the 20th to the 21st century.

Both were fun because they told a story of a bunch of people with the overlay of details from the culture at the time. A kind of time capsule.

This book is similar in that it covers the experience of one person and her friends through the 60s. The same tour of the zeitgeist but with more of a plot. Seems the lady was part of a still undiscovered bombing plot. Twist is that she is a well known lawyer who has even been considered for the Supreme Court. This book is the one she is writing about that time. A big break in the big secret. Already I am yawning.

The idea of touring the cultural benchmarks of a time through a sweeping novel is a good one and Anderson has done this with a vengeance.

Fun but eventually boring if you lay too much heavy plot on it.

Too much for me, anyway.

I am also reading as much of a writer named Ron Hansen as I can handle. I liked his two novels of the outlaw west, the second being the one from which they made the Jesse James film. Similar in these are the local color things. The heavily researched historic detail. It was fun but I was sure glad when they arrested all the Younger Gang and then, in the larger, better one, Jesse James. Then I started his collection of short stories. The first being a rundown of Oscar Wilde's few days in Omaha Nebraska.

Yaaaaaawwwn.

Off to the library for all these as well.

Now, the one which is the hottest, bestest, scariest.

Lawrence Wright's Going Clear: Hollywood and the Prison of Belief.

The long awaited rundown of Scientology.

Wright is a serious writer with a Pulitzer in his pocket. He is on the staff of The New Yorker, in fact, this started as a long piece about Paul Haggis who had defected from the "religion" after 34 years membership.

Wright has taken a certain tack here which is very effective. He takes Scientology absolutely seriously. Chapter and verse.

By this I do not mean he swallows it. He reports it. He tells what he has found out about it.

The first section is mostly about J. Ron Hubbard, the kind of cracked but wildly productive author of the textbook and the originator of the structured "church". I put these terms in quotes because they have been the source of much controversy over the years but, at present, as the Scientologists have IRS approval as a religion that is what they are. A church.

Hubbard's life is breathtaking in its drama and sheer craziness. That is not to say that he was not a genius. It appears that he was. But he was also paranoid, egomaniacal and, perhaps, a pathological liar.

Wright does not write to refute or to castigate. This is not an expose. He puts down, to the best of his ability, what happened.

The second part of the book is about the church and how it survives without its founder. There is a lot about David Miscavige the head of the church. A huge lot about the para military Sea Org which runs the widespread network of churches, print shops, movie production and god knows what.

The church has an enormous pile of money. The royalties from Hubbard's book, wise real estate investments and eye popping fees from members to say nothing of volunteer labor for much of its work.

This gets us to Hollywood where the main recruiting mechanism resides these days. Haggis is the entry point here. Tom Cruise, John Travolta and a host of less luminous actors and movie biz people.

Here is my major take away.

Hubbard and his successors and the organization have pretty much built a juggernaut cult of true believers who cannot get out except with the loss of almost all that they have including family.

The organization runs on indentured labor. People have signed away their rights. They do not leave.

There is a huge security net that stalks enemies of the church.

The complexity and immensity of this is overwhelming.

The ending of the book is a drumbeat of malfeasance. On and on. I got queasy and had to get up and walk around. It made me ill to read it. Suppression, repression.

The odd thing is that Scientology is also a technology of wellness. Hubbards formulas and techniques while not unique or new are effective. Even of those who have left the church still practice its fundamentals.

It is seldom that a non-fiction book is as exciting as this one is. Amazing.

Everything that I sort of thought about it is confirmed and then some and then some and then some.

Wright is careful in his sum up to give the devil its due.

I think that he has not had the harrassment that others have in writing about the church is a credit to the fact-check mode of journalism so deeply inshrined at The New Yorker.

It is dangerous to out the Scientologists. They will come after you. They will sue, harass, intimidate, even imprison those who have "blown", that is, left the church and become active in resisting it.

I liked this a lot.

Labels: books, religion

THE VATICAN DRAG

The late Tom Lehrer who was also gay.

Labels: fun, religion

PAPA!

The fucking pope resigned. Good riddance.

Old and frail. Sure. But since when was that a reason.

Most of them are too old to even understand the world they got old in. It passed them by.

This guy was worse than most.

Even if you get by the absurdity of having some big daddy running things with "moral authority" as they do, this one was audaciously and conspicuously conservative.

Could they do worse? Maybe not. He hit the bottom. Although once he almost said it was ok to use a condom but then they pulled him back from the precipice.

A ray of light that was quickly extinguished.

A guy at the gym said that maybe they would pick Dolan, the NYC cardinal. That he would be much better. I just gave him a look and said that they all hated me equally. Of course that is not true. But mostly. And anyone who doesn't hold the line on "the gays", never mind all the rest of it, will be shown the door.

To even discuss this goes against the grain for me.

The pope is nothing to me and, really, nothing to a lot of other people in the world. Even catholics.

I will not rehearse the ancient lines against the church and its arrogant bullshit.

Let this one go. Let the other one come in. Live your life. Let them go. Anachronisms.

Labels: evil bastards, religion

END ZONED

Americans can make a fad about anything and once that happens, a website is sure to follow.

I am fascinated with this.

My latest discovery is

TEBOWING

Football player, heavy christer, comes in toward the end of a game and performs miracles. Just like our lord and savior. Evidently. And in the spirit of the thing he drops to pray. The half kneel.

I know that you know all about this but I am writing for a few people who do not live in our christian country or, perhaps, as I, have no interest at all in the sport, or moreover, are repulsed by such behavior in public, reinforced at it is by his tiresome witnessing for the lord in post game interviews.

My interest is in the hilarious cult of "tebowing" in which people find the most amazing goddamned places to do the act and mostly, as far as I can tell, with a strong sense of irony and even mockery. To say nothing of irreligiosity.

Many are hilarious. All a lot of fun.

There are a shit load of them. I go to the site every day to keep up with the torrent of submissions.

Here is the man who started it all.

Labels: christist watch, fun, religion, sports

STILL PUSHING IT

When I was elected Moderator for the Town of Plymouth (MA) Town Meeting, the first thing that I did was eliminate the invocation from each session.

It was surprising that no one said anything about it.

For years, they had some sky pilot come in and try to cover the crowd with his brand of crop dust.

Ecumenicalism was a big deal at that time. So were churches, much more than today. Remember that? Every one did their thing, or not, in their own way in their own place. No one prevented a congregation from devoting a Sunday worship to meditation on participatory government.

But anyone could see that it was not an appropriate mingling of the sacred with the profane. First of all, there is nothing sacred about some guy lording it over other people as though he knows something they do not. Or has a pipeline to god.

And second, there is nothing profane about people coming together to solve local problems in an orderly way.

God, as people understand their higher power, is welcome to participate for each of them, in their own way. I figured that they could say their own prayers which would be much more meaningful than if it was led by some pious professional. Professional piety.

I had sat through sessions in which the preacher had gone on well beyond the prescribed purpose and time of the Meeting. And I was having none of it.

And, not a peep from anyone. Some amused grins but not one protest.

Now look at this.

Omitting Clergy at 9/11 Ceremony Prompts Protest

They just don't fucking get it. Most people do not want to have it shoved down their throats. The sermon, the mealy mouthed devotions, the sanctimonious superiority, the blatant hypocrisy.

I have actually enjoyed the company of a few preachers in my time. But they were the exception. Rare was it to find one of them that wasn't on a power trip.

In this day and age, the culture wars are on again. The religionists want to have their say in everything. They don't see that most (this is true, most) of us don't want it. Or need it either.

There is enough bloviation about 9-11 anyway. We are so not over it. The memorials, the ceremonies, the reliving of old wounds. The goddam christians against the muslims all the rest of it.

Three cheers for Bloomberg, a blatant secularist, who has had enough as well. The best approach to this is to do nothing as anything they do will lead to the next level of bullshit, namely the arguments among the religionists themselves. Muslims, jews, christians, I have had about enough of that too.

Labels: christist watch, religion

THE DALAI LAMA WALKS INTO A PIZZA SHOP......

They think that it is the pizza that is lost in translation but I think it is the Oz accent, meself.

Labels: fun, meditation, religion

WE ARE EVERYWHERE

Even in christian universities.

Even on Religious Campuses, Students Fight for Gay Identity

I like the part where they ask "why go to a christian university if you are gay?".

Good answers.

This shit is so painful for the people involved.

But it is like sticking a patch on a gusher. It will only hold so long.

My personal experience is that there are many gay men in evangelical religions. Many of them went there because they thought religion was the answer for the "curse" of homosexuality. It didn't work.

I also know many ex-evangelicals. Same thing.

Some god people are sure hateful.

I was surprised that Baylor is a religious university. Many colleges who have a religious beginning and history are finessing that for present admissions. I have grandkids going to college next year. I was surprised to see that several apparently secular colleges are actually religious with a bit of a bent toward preaching and churchy stuff.

Under the radar.

I think that many religious colleges like other than evangelical religions have started to soft pedal their affiliations and traditions because they do not want to be painted with the same brush as these more overt mind control outfits are. For what else is it? There is no match for the bubble which evangelical kids are brought up in. But the instincts will cry out. You cannot stop it. And being queer is as instinctive as the desire for food and shelter.

I know they don't believe this. But take it from someone who spent years trying to go in a different direction. It doesn't work.

Labels: gay identity, religion

THE CULT

Many years ago, I was walking on Boylston Street in Boston and a guy came up to me and asked if I would like to take a test.

There was some other folderol about what it would do and reveal and all. He was pretty good about it.

It wasn't like the Moonies where they wanted to take you to their place for a meal. But, to take the test, you did have to walk a short distance, I think to Commonwealth Avenue, to take the test.

I declined.

That was my first and only direct contact with Scientology or a Scientologist.

Since then, to my knowledge, I have never met anyone who has anything to do with this organization. And I have met and worked with a lot of people.

I certainly paid attention when I read about their emergence in to the public sphere. Sometimes in a positive way for them, publicity and all, but often not. They seem to attract negative attention.

Many people have written about "the church" with varying degrees of success, often attracting lawsuits. Many of these articles and books are by defectors with an axe to grind and documents that have been stolen. They are easily discredited.

It has been known for a long time that the Hubbardites seek to recruit celebrities and have worked very hard on this particularly in LA and Hollywood.

We know of some prominent but fading stars who have taken it up.

But most recently, the very prominent Paul Haggis resigned from the organization in a very public way. Now, in the New Yorker, a thoroughly researched and very long, almost exhausting but never boring article has been published.

The Apostate—Paul Haggis vs. the Church of Scientology by Lawrence Wright

I bring this up because I found it fascinating on several fronts.

First and foremost is in the way that Scientology has evolved, like many churches, from a relatively informal set of principles by an interesting, if perhaps crazy guy, into a highly organized, very authoritarian organization with enforcers and lawyers and all the tools to maintain its "sanctity".

It is also interesting to read about Haggis indoctrination as a troubled young man and his failure over some 35 years to examine his beliefs in any way. Then, disruption and a failure to get answers to some pretty basic questions that he had about the outfit.

Third, I am interested in the celebrity angle. Except for a few people, the "celebrities" who belong to Scientology are not very well known. They are moneyed, very important to Scientology, but are, by and large, behind the scenes people who are given a special center to attend to their duties and, as bigger money makers, to burnish the church's image as well as to supply a whole lot of money.

Finally, I find the story of the young David Miscavige (above), the head guy, very interesting. An organization man, not a guru. A dictator, not a service oriented leader.

It is worth some time. It goes beyond the immediate sensationalism of the Scientologists and where they are going. It shows a great deal about human nature and our capacity to believe in the most outrageous stuff and to believe so much as to sell ourselves out literally and figuratively.

Labels: cults, culture, religion

A NEW RELIGION

It is amusing to see that the atheists are proselytizing.

Atheist Groups Promote a Holiday Message: Join Us

What next?

A holiday?

Particular holiday decorations.

Meetings? Ceremony?

Someone to lead the meeting and to say a few words?

People love to organize and recruit others, no doubt about it.

I know. It is nice to gather with others who have the same views.

If they want a bishop type thing. There are a few people turning out books who are likely candidates.

I like the way that people emulate the very people that they are critical of.

Of course, they do not think that they are proselytizing. Or any of the rest.

It is easy to see how, in this time of hyper-religiosity it makes some sense to gather together even if for mutual protection. Those jesus people are pretty fervid about what is right and wrong. Smiting is just around the corner.

But this seems to be more than gathering to me. It is fine but don't be hypocrites about it.

Labels: atheism, religion

BLAMING THE MESSENGER FOR THE MESS

The RCs are not doing well this week. The scandal about handling child abuse spreads. More coverups are found. The black tide begins to lap at the pope's feet.

And so, what is the reaction in this week that is supposed to be holy? Attack and deny.

Vatican Lashes Out At The New York Times Over Sex Abuse Coverage

This is an AP story.

This is familiar territory.

The holier than thou thing gets old.

Ratzinger was said to be a poor choice for exactly this kind of situation. They just never thought it would go this far.

Infallibility fosters some pretty deep denial. They seem to forget that the whole idea of divine right is shaky even to their own people.

I read somewhere that the whole resurgence of this stuff also threatens the drive to beatify the polish guy we had last time.

Let's face it. We are dealing in politics now.

The pope is a head of state. He is liable. He says not but still.

They are playing hard ball. I suspect they will get hard ball back.

This is so sad for people who practice the Roman Catholic faith. A rotten leadership. No attention paid to critical issues within the Church.

I know many people who are torn by this scandal and the official response to it.

The political is truly personal and when it touches home it is quite painful.

They don't seem to get that either. Hierarchy is hierarchy. The bottom does not matter.

All the pretty dresses and hats and staffs aren't going to keep reality away.

This is not new. They are just repeating on a world scale what occurred in the US, first in the local dioceses and then nationally.

In 1992, Cardinal Bernard Law, archbishop of Boston, said, "By all means we call down the power of God on the media, particularly the Globe." It was a public excoriation for the paper's relentless criticisms of the Church's handling of abuse cases.

In a sense, the power of God did come down on The Boston Globe: it became an unwitting instrument through which the Church was forced to face -- for the first time on a nationwide, mandatory, system-wide basis -- the crimes of its priests and the sins of the bishops who had shuttled them from parish to parish in decades past.......James Martin, SJ is a Catholic priest and the author of The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything.

It's Not About the Media

Labels: christist watch, religion

OLD MOTHER HUBBARD

Scientology has always interested me. Not in the "I wanna be in it" sense but, rather, from total surprise that this kind of thing can flourish and gain adherents.

Today, the NYTimes weighs in.

Defectors Say Church of Scientology Hides Abuse

Oddly, not a lot is new except that the defectors keep defecting. And the twist that they are "battling" for a return to the true Scientology. Schism.

I suppose that it is hard to write something like this without raking up all the history. It is so improbable that you have to keep saying it to remember that people are deeply into this stuff.

It is just very interesting to see how cults work.

Abuse of members is not new. Nor is the basic terms of membership which can look like imprisonment. Turning over your passport and all. The money pledges.

Ron Hubbard was probably crazy. Or one of the more successful con men in the long history of religious scams.

One must admit to his innovative prowess. Thetans. Eternity. Long shots in the odds against getting people to follow you. A good way to sell books which, as it happens, that was what L. Ron was up to at the time.

There is not a lot to say about it. I was surprised to see that, despite claims to the contrary, the church membership is shrinking.

They have always claimed millions. Or "hinted" at it as the internal goings on are "secret". Not so, says a recent survey. More like tens of thousands in the US.

So there it is. Interesting. Not too worrying. Mostly a case of people doing shit to themselves. Signing up to be misled.

Except for the kids. Born to it. Which some of these defectors are. Children of devout Scientologists. Brought up in the church. But it seems that some of them are beginning to take care of themselves. Nice. Good luck.

Labels: religion

BAD BLOOD

This is interesting.

Muslims Won't Play Together

I knew this. The muslim world is anything but monolithic. Not that the christers are all that together. But the muslims carry a particular inability to work together along even tribal let alone international lines.

It took only 24 years after the origin of the faith for schisms to develop. Assassinations. Perfidy.

I am just saying.

No religions mix well. The thing that makes muslims so difficult with each other, I think, is that they are so religiously intent. Absolutely humorless. At least christians have some good jokes about themselves.

The rest of the world is, well largely, irreligious. That works. Dogma doesn't.

A lesson for those who want church and state to get along better.

Labels: religion

THE MISSIONARY POSITION

It has been awhile since I gave the christers a good bashing.

Here is a good opportunity.

The Missionary Impulse

Doing "good" for others and "bringing them to the word" has always been a good money making proposition.

Missionaries, by their very job description, are cultural aliens bent on erasing the norms and beliefs of others no matter what it takes. Even some hellacious solutions.

The people who got their hands caught in the cookie jar in Haiti were, clearly, up to no good. But the missionary always clothes his motives with the soothing words of their religion.

I have known a few missionaries. They came back to the States after serving abroad. A lot of them were just dupes. Caught up in the "doing good" impulse. Carrying out the evil designs of their higher authorities. A lot of them were manipulative bastards who tried to run their holy scam on people back home.

To a man or woman, not one of them had a clue how to run their own lives or exist in a society of equals.

I am sure that somewhere, somehow, there are some "missionaries" doing some kind of good. Surely some of the people working in Haiti are doing so. But Haiti is already a country so yoked to catholicism and the voodoo stuff that a missionary here or there can't hurt it much more. Just keep it in the same subjugated place.

If you want to know what the religionists and the christers are up to, just follow the money.

Labels: christist watch, religion

WELL WE KNEW IT ALL THE TIME BUT IT IS NICE TO SEE HOW THEY TRIED TO KEEP A LID ON IT

PROP 8 TRIAL TODAY CALLED 'EXPLOSIVE'

Mormons.

Labels: religion