I'MMA LET YOU FINISH
1
Remind me-- what fucking century is it that we're living in?
Sovreign Eye:
Methinks we be living in the 16th. Hast thou forgotten?
Bah. No sign of nuance, no sign of the complexity of the whole issue and people's attitudes.
Gotta love CNN sometimes.
If I'm not mistaken, the Catholic Church is also opposed to the death penalty. Will pro death penalty Republican Catholics be refused communion? This needs to be asked loudly! Time to stop playing defense.
I like this post because it's helpful -- helpful, that is, in combatting yet another of the Right's weapons in (what I can't help but feel) is its war against me an my friends -- left-liberal, tolerant, intellectually-oriented, etc., etc., etc.
To draw your attention to something that's not at all helpful, check out N. Kristoff's latest in the Times. Shorter version: don't call the fundamentalists names. To which the only answer can be: OK -- name-calling is not nice; but it's not the biggest sin in the world either. What Kristoff might pause to consider is the problem presented to Liberal society by fundamentalists of all stripes -- how do you manage, politically, a large group of zealous, intolerant, paranoids. Sure this group may have some good qualities -- giving to charity, for instance -- but even the most awful, dangerous people do nice things every once in a while. That doesn't make them, on balance, good to have around. So Nick, I'll agree to not call fundamentalists names; but how do I get them to stop trying to outlaw half of the things that I think make life worth living? Now, THAT would be a helpful article for Nick to write.
I can agree up to a point but to ignore that a lot of this comes from the highest circles in the Vatican seems excessively tolerant. And don't forget the pull that groups like Opus Dei and Knights of Malta have. They've got the gold and they can make some rules.
John F. Kennedy once said something about all the Bishops being Republicans but all the nuns being Democrats and that there were more nuns than bishops. I hope it's true but keep your eyes open.
I've got no problem with the majority of Catholics, including just about all of my family.
One of the commandments is Thou shalt not kill.
How many politicians in this country are for the death penalty?
How many voted to go kill people in IRAQ?
The Catholic Church should be raising issue with this more than planned parenthood or abortion.
I think that Jeanne's point is good, but too generous, in some ways. Its not enough to say that some catholics, or most catholics, don't want to be "used" politically, or don't opt into the ways in which the vatican, the press, or particular bishops are using them. They are being used. Their church is being used. Their god is being used for purely partisan purposes. If they don't stand up and make a fuss, who on earth is going to? And if they don't stand up and make a fuss very publicly, well, they are abdicating their beliefs to those who will. Alas, that seems to be the right wing cranks.
aimai
Also, don't forget the Legions of Christ (Mel's group, I think.) Seriously mean people.
I sometimes go with Sweet Thang to her Catholic church service. Her church tends to emphasize the "that which ye do to the least of these ye do to me" communitarian parts of the New Testament. I hear parts of the Bible there I hear nowhere else. Jesus's remarks about the woman who gave money taken from out of her needs being more blessed than the merchants who gave from their surplus, for instance. Modern fundie readings hardly stress this part of Christianity.
The greater part (likely a vast majority) of all Christians in the USA are being used, as mention of their religion is being used as a codeword for "ultra-conservative". Then the numbers of people with these ultra-conservative positions is greatly exaggerated through the inclusion of people who are being far too quiet and letting a few people get away with using them to try to change their country into an highly intolerant quasi-theocracy.
They need to speak up, loudly and often.
All Catholicism aside, why isn't more attention paid to GWB's membership in the United Methodist Church, which opposes capital punishment and belongs to the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, an interfaith organization that promotes abortion rights?
He could very easily attend another church that doesn't take those positions. Just asking . . .
I'd just like to know when holding an opinion qualified one for virtual excommunication?
how do you manage, politically, a large group of zealous, intolerant, paranoids
Send them to Fallujah to spread the word.
mary, short answer: depends upon the opinion. In some cases, always.
I think one way to take the fight to these conservative Catholics is to ask them whether, in forbidding communion to politicians who favor legal abortion, they will also forbid communion to politicians who favor legal contraception (as you noted), legal divorce, or legal charging interest on money (usury). These, like abortion, are explicitly against Catholic doctrine, and indeed have been made illegal at various times and places. (Contraceptive devices were once illegal in Connecticut, and divorce was illegal in Italy, leading to the movie "Divorce Italian Style.")
Hey, didn't Heinlein's future history place a religious dictatorship in the U.S. right about now?
Wish I remembered how we got past that...
It's worthwhile to note that we think the Vatican's conservative bent is a politically inspired attempt to score more missionary work conversions in conservative Africa, nevermind what impact it has on the liberal democracies.
Herre, the relatively recent sea change for Catholics is the attempt to force Catholic politicians to use the instrumentalities of government to impose doctrine on Catholics and non Catholics alike, in other words, at the point of a government gun which is the government's ultimate sanction. To me that is forced conversion whether Catholics are doing it or 'Protestant Evangelicals' and that is the correct term, not 'Christians' ...I can't even begin to tell you how furious Catholics become when the PEs try to divide Catholics off from Christianity by reserving to themselves the term 'Christians'...since when is the Mother Church not Christian?. Don't know if I saw that usage here today or in another blog, but please don't go there. Even we lapsed Catholics still identify as Catholics. And, as Andrew Greely points out more than half of Catholics are Vatican II Catholics who aren't buying JP2's schtick.
The tax exemption, folks, we need to be going after the Catholic Church's tax exemption. They want to be a partisan political body? Fine, then they can pay to play, same as everybody else.
the catholic church is the world's largest pedophile protection agency
Consider that people who support abortion are denied communion
But priests who molest children are protected by the catholic church
Why does the catholic church protect pedophile priests and then castigate free thinking parishioners ???
It aint about God, its about politics
The catholic church is a pedophile protection agency, nothing more, nothing less
here they say this fellow will be the next Pope.
Ever hear of Interdict? Indulgences?
No, the Catholic Church itself has not taken a real stand on anything in US politics. I think that Jeanne is probably on target.
Of course the pope makes statements about war. That is his job. But the overall Catholic mission has moved more toward conciliation over the centuries. Most US Catholics never heard another word about contraception after John XXIII said that they could be guided by their consciences!
Scorpio
Eccentricity
I don't know if we do get past the religious dictatorship, whatever Heinlen said. I'm optimisic about our chances in November (the 2nd is my birthday and I'm hoping for a Kerry win to ice the cake) but I've been jumpy for so long about things in general that it's still too easy to be paranoid.
Some of my friends are historians and a few of those are classicists, and they note how many similarities we share with the Roman Republic in its pre-Augustan death throes. I know it's an oft-made allusion but the deification of Dear Leader has already begun.
The only superstition that I can counter with is that the last time my birthday was Election day was 11/2/1976, when Carter won and I entered the world. It's taken 28 years for the cycle to go full circle and I hope it works.
Remember back when one of Chimpy's judges was up for confirmation and Hatch (I think) accused Democratic opponents of being anti-Catholic? (Those opponents including, of course, Leahy, Kennedy, Durbin and other Catholic members ...)
Well, what I desperately wanted the Catholic members to ask, as long as the illegal-in-most-cases-issue was raised, was 1) Are you married? and 2) How many children do you have? If (years married * n of offspring) > (3 * years married), obviously you haven't been playing Vatican roulette. Why not?
And, as this is my own fair and balanced news outlet we will only focus on Republican Catholics. Democrats will get a pass, as they should, because God wants Democrats to win no matter what their sins are.
Here's a list of Catholics in Congress.
Shouldn't be too hard to figure out which among them are pro-choice Republicans.
Don't forget the up-and-comers. I posted a link to a related Nick Confessore article in the thread below.
also, capital punishment. i don't hear anyone making a campaign over capital punishment ... also against church teachings ...
this guy ha a different take on this...
quoting:
The Church is using strong-arm tactics to force Catholic members of a legislature to vote the “Catholic” way-despite the well-established fact that Representatives serve people of different races, backgrounds, and religious beliefs.
Dan Maguire, a professor of theology at the Jesuit Marquette University in Milwaukee called the ban on Communion an embarrassment. He calls the ban on Communion a bullying tactic. The Bishop issuing the ban is described as a person "making terrible mistakes that had been addressed in the theology in the past. He’s making a fool of himself. The politicians are absolutely within their Catholic rights to ignore him."
The Bishop's ban on Communion for politicians voting the abortion issue makes a mockery of the Catholic Church. When people elect representatives to Congress, they elect individuals who represent people of all faiths. The essence of the American Political System is violated by this edict from the Catholic Church.
This issue is exactly why separation of Church and State is so important under our Constitution.
Anonymous, you are wrong.
No pro choice politician has ever been denied communion. And I'll bet that if the vatican has their way, noone ever will. Dividing the Catholic Church in America would be awful for the church finances, and lets face it, finance is important to organizations, religious and non-religious.
You are right about one thing, however. This is politics, but not the type you think. The Nigerian Cardinal who made these statements is actively campaigning to become the next pope. He would be the first african, and first non-european pope. Hell, John Paul II was the first non italian in over 500 years.
This Cardinal is posturing for the conservative votes from the other cardinals. Just like America, the Catholic church is very politically divided. There are liberals who think JPII was too conservative, and others who think that America has too much power in the Catholc Church, despite being the most liberal country within the church.
The church wants to stay out of it. Some, in order to score political points, want to force the liberal wing in the American Catholic Church out of the larger Roman Catholic Church. They won't win, they need that guilty liberal catholic dollar. It supports the very parish this guy came from in Nigeria.
Attacking the church as a whole for this is exactly what these political posturers want you to do. They love "Us versus Them" because they believe God is on their side. The argument itself serves their cause.
I'm beginning to think that the more the Repug party aligns itself with the religious right in this country, the more the Repug party is marginalizing itself.
Mr. Tena and I were talking about the fraud and corruption and waste of our funds in Iraq. He tried to maintain that fraud, corruption and waste is SOP for all political parties in power. I disagreed as to the scale of fraud and corruption prevalent in this administration, and then pointed out that the Repug party has been hijacked by fundie Christians who want to drag us backwards. Before I could finish my thought, my previously Repug-leaning husband interrupted and said: "Now that I agree with completely."
Every single Repug voter that I know personally is appalled by this movement by the Repug party. I've come to believe that if the Repug party continues to move in this direction it will become a fringe party.
I'm so glad you are taking this on, Atrios. This is the core of what has bothered me the most since Bush took over this country.
scorpio, in a lot of its dealings with the outside world the Papacy acts in pretty much the same way as a secular mornachy. A lot of its action is indirect with the appearance of extreme discretion, a lot of information about which way the wind is blowing comes from listening to what those close to the pope are saying.
The point made above that some of these bishops and cardinals are just going after Kerry and other Democratic politicians to increase their standing within the church should be taken as a very bad sign. They wouldn't be taking this chance unless they thought they might get somewhere with it.
That many of the bishops are keeping their heads down isn't surprising, they're a timid bunch these days with a head for church politics and about as much knowlege of real life as our Supreme Court showed in the Paula Jones case.
Under JP II, you step out of line and you find yourself assigned to a seat in a predominantly Moslem country with no Catholics to speak of.
Rather, a couple of very ambitious bishops, and a small group of conservative Catholics like Deal Hudson, are trying to force the American Church into sanctioning pro-choice politicians...
So please clarify: did or did not, has or has not, the Vatican issue or issued a proclamation declaring pro-choice Catholics, and politicians in particular, should not receive the holy sacrament?
And it really doesn't make a bit of difference if there's a majority of Catholics (or any other Christianite religion) who disagree with the fundamentalist / Opus Dei position if they sit on their hands with their mouths shut.
Ultimately, the Catholic Church will be in *very serious* trouble if it tries to excommunicate people just because they're pro-choice.
Anyone could then point to the fact that Mussolini wasn't excommunicated and the Nazis weren't - or if they were it was probably during the war, when it was much too late to have any real effect.
Whatever blame the Pope may have put on the Nazis at the time, it was way too weak compared to what he could've done. The Church going rabidly against people in 2004, coupled with the huge hypocrisy about women as priests and priests' marriage, with the added outrage - notably in the US - about raped children would just put the last nail in traditional Catholicism in the Western industralised world.
Jeanne also points to another huge issue with the Catholic Church: the next pope will be at least as bad and reactionary as the current idiot in charge.
Last but not least: As a whole, the Catholic Church, and even its American arm, was against the war. Only a handful of US bishops were for. Apparently, many Catholic Congressmen didn't have any problem voting against their Church.
What John said and Atrios writes - TIME TO STOP PLAYING DEFENSE - is absolutely right -
Fundamentalist Christians are not Cristian, or rather don't behave like followers of Christ's teachings - they adhere to Old Testament teachings which is very different
Four basic tenets of his teachings are:
to love thy neighbor as you love yourself (no quid pro quo's about whether or not your neighbor is gay, or of a different skin color or faith)
turn the other cheek (this is pacisfism, were more into that whole old time eye for an eye and then some crap)
do unto others as you'd have them do unto you ( the golden rule, and it works for agnostics, people of faith, and atheists alike - the way the right villifies opposing views and the people who hold them, is this how they want their arguments treated? they leave us little choice - TIME TO STOP PLAYING DEFENSE)
and my favorite 'cause it's so hard to do, and the right specializes in it, Judge not, lest ye be judged -
I've always been a fan of the new testament (if we ever did find the ossuary of Jesus, he'd be spinning like a mad top at the things done in his name - in the name of peace) - hold them to their words -
read that book too - it's not too long, and then no one can ever tell you what's in that book - so you know, I was raised Catholic (beaten not buggered) and now proudly count myself an agnostic -
Meanwhile, the media has completely forgotten and/or ignored the Vatican's objection to "Operation Iraqi Freedom".
Dave,
There has been NO proclamation. And catholics are speaking up, look at the web, ther are people writing op eds, etc. Plus, if there ever were a proclamation, Catholics would speak up with their pocketbooks. This is just political posturing by some conservative catholics.
Wait a sec, if this order or suggestion is coming down from the Vatican, in Rome, how is NOT a Church issue?
This whole post seems to be damage control for the catholics, but the vatican is where the church gets defined and is the highest level of church heirarchy.
I mean, believe in whatever helps you sleep at night, but dismissing this as one rogue priest is ridiculous. These are the fruits of the catholic church.
The is the same apologism and head in the sand-ism we saw with the pedophiles. "Oh, those are just rogue priests." Later it turns out that people in high positions (Bishops, cardinals, etc) were covering for the pedophiles and moving them to different parishes.
I dont understand why people of conscience dont just leave catholicism, their defense of it is always shoddy. I know two ex-catholics and leaving that church is the best thing they've ever done. They are happy not to be part of the corruption, enabling pedophilia with their donations, and are glad not to be part of a machine that helps keep overpopulated and poor 3rd world countries away from contraceptives.
Theres a lot wrong with the catholic church and its not just limited to abortion. I know of the reformist movement, but they simply are not getting results and probably will never get results.
Quit, don't apologize.
I saw them talking about this on CNN with their "Vatican correspondent", and he was talking about how the conservative Catholics trying to push this pro-choice issue are faced with "the tradition in this country of separation of church and state." Tradition? Yeah, it's a quaint little tradition called Amendment I of The Bill of Rights of The Constitution of The United States of America!
Remember when some people worried that Kennedy would be influenced by the 'Pope in Rome'? Now many of these same people are worried the next president wont?
Go figure.
Jeanne from Body and Soul has an excellent point. Here in greater Boston (ground zero of the sexual-abuse-by-clergy scandal), many moderate Catholics who still attend church now differentiate between their parishes and parish priests - who do all the good work - and the bishops, cardinals and Pope - who do the pontificating (pun intended).
As for bishops who publicly berate Catholic officeholders, arguing about similar treatment for those who practice artificial birth control isn't your strongest argument. I haven't heard of any Catholic priest refusing a sacrament to anyone on that issue in a LONG time. Even plenty of theologians and high-ranking clergy will admit (even if only in private) that Paul VI dropped the ball on that one.
However, capital punishment ranks right up there with abortion as a vilation of the Catholic "seamless garment" approach to the sanctity-of-life doctine. If some cardinal wants to make his bones busting John Kerry for taking communion at the Paulist Center (where plenty of progressive Catholics go), then he'd best be busting politicians who voted for capital punishment. I believe THIS is the argument we should use to inundate our sad media "experts." It's right on target and pure pot-and-kettle.
Happy retired Catholic,
The church is this...
The church is that...
The pope thinks this...
What do we know?
We get our info from the same media that taught America that Saddam caused the 9-11 attacks!
NOT ONE "reporter" has the stones to ask the (p)resident why he doesn't belong to a major congregation, why he doesn't go to his great church every week. ("ooo, oooh, we'd lose our access!")
The POTUS hears voices in his head that tells him to kill people!
And CNN wants to attack the Democrats!?
We need a revolution in this country, alright.
But not against the government.
We need a revolution against the media and news organizations that have propagandized for the craziest president the United States has ever suffered through.
I'm totally in agreement with Atrios and with divideandconquered. Time to go on the offensive against those forces attempting to hijack our government in contravention of our constitution. This creeping fundamentalist fascism has got to be stopped.
Atheists Unite!
I think it is important that we do not accept MediaBorg's interpetation of religion any more than we accept their ideas about John Kerry of any other Democrat.
and it occured to me that this is distraction issue of the day. manufactured controversy of the day. Yesterday there was a lot of phony talk about Kerry's military record, now there is a phony controversy about his Catholocism. Tomorrow there will be another manufactured scandal.
and that is what they want blogosphere talking about.. They want us defending Kerry or attacking the Vatican or anything except talkiing about Iraq, the economy, terrorism or any of the issues people care about.
I am more and more of the view that we need to make an example of someone. And not some common cable harpy or broadcast bozo. Somebody big.
We need to force someone to sell off their media holdings or resign, someone like Geoffy Immelt or Rupert Murdoch. We need to talk to fund managers, and more important, bond managers, that news organizations that steal elections and lie the country into wars cannot be trusted to tell the truth about their financial operations.
It aint about God, its about politics
The catholic church is a pedophile protection agency, nothing more, nothing less
Anonymous
Yeah, and the Catholic Church's policy on contraception has made many Third-World majority catholic countries like the Philippines, a pedophile's paradise.
RE: capital punishment.
Try it, you'll find it won't work. Extremist Xtians and crazy conservatives don't seem to care about what happens after birth into "this world of sin." Or pre-natal care. Or contraceptives. Abortion is the precious battfield they've created for themselves and have done a good job creating divisiveness on a level that is measured in the millions here in the US.
Play the capital punishment card and the media won't even report it. Afterall, according to them if you're poor its your fault. Thats why they want to eliminate any social safety net. This also applies to infants, poor parents, etc.
Sugar Mommy
From the May 3, 2004 issue: Why won't Teresa Heinz Kerry release her tax returns?
by Matthew Continetti
05/03/2004, Volume 009, Issue 32
THE DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATE'S spouse refuses to disclose tax returns. Republicans seize the issue, asking what the spouse is hiding. The New York Times calls for full disclosure. Distracted by the controversy, the candidate is on the defensive. The spouse eventually relents and agrees to release five years' worth of tax returns, but only after the candidate's campaign has been damaged.
Sound familiar? Yes, John Kerry's wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, has refused to make her tax returns public, and her decision has caused some controversy. But she's not the spouse in the example above. That would be John A. Zaccaro, husband of then-New York congresswoman Geraldine Ferraro, the Democratic vice presidential nominee in 1984. And if the Kerry campaign doesn't learn from the historical record, it risks its own John Zaccaro problem.
Twenty years ago Ferraro was bedeviled by her inconsistency. In July '84, she said she would release both her and her husband's tax returns. Yet a month later she backtracked and said she would release only her returns. Then she backtracked again, saying her husband would release "a financial--a tax statement" on August 20. But she must not have consulted her husband, because Zaccaro initially refused. Finally he agreed to make public his tax returns from 1979 to 1984, after Republican attacks detracted from his wife's campaign.
When John Kerry talks about his wife's returns, he isn't inconsistent. He's inaccurate. He said on Meet the Press last week that presidential candidates are required by law to release their income tax returns. In fact, no such law exists. Releasing tax information has been customary since 1976. Also on Meet the Press, after host Tim Russert mentioned the Ferraro example, Kerry suggested his wife's decision not to release her returns wasn't a problem, because American politicians "have far more intrusive ethics forms today" than in 1984. "If you want to see what my wife's holdings are," Kerry said, "you can go to our Senate ethics forms. It shows you exactly what we have. It's very, very, very intrusive."
Kerry is dead wrong, for a couple of reasons. First, House and Senate members have been filling out financial disclosure forms for their respective ethics committees since 1978. In fact, Geraldine Ferraro had trouble with these forms, too. As a congresswoman, she regularly claimed to be exempt from disclosing her husband's finances, which would have been legal, provided she had no knowledge of her spouse's financial activities and had not profited from them. The problem was that Ferraro claimed the exemption even though she was an officer of her husband's real estate firm, P. Zaccaro & Company.
And congressional disclosure forms aren't as intrusive as Kerry says. It's true the forms contain a detail
list of a congressional couple's financial assets. But there's little specificity when it comes to the value of those assets. For example, poring through Kerry's most recent Senate disclosure form, which covers the 2002 calendar year, one finds that the senator and his wife have a stake in the Flying Squirrel charter airplane company in Delaware. But the form tells you only that the stake is "over $1,000,000," and that the investment provided somewhere between $50,001 and $100,000 in income in 2002.
What the congressional disclosure forms omit is also important. A tax return reveals someone's charitable contributions, for example, as well as an individual's mortgage deductions. Also, a tax return includes contributions to nonprofit organizations, including political ones. No such information is contained in the forms legislators submit to the House and Senate ethics committees.
Yet Heinz is adamant. She won't disclose her tax returns, she said through a spokesman, because she isn't a candidate for office. Why should she be subjected to the same scrutiny as her husband? Heinz has a point. She isn't breaking any law. She enjoys the same privacy rights as others. But she's now the first wife of a presidential candidate to refuse disclosure since the practice became customary. What would be in her tax returns that's worth keeping secret?
A lot, actually. One Republican lawyer says Heinz's returns would be a "treasure trove of opposition research." One thing the returns would show, this lawyer says, is the extent to which Kerry is a "kept man." According to his tax return, Kerry's income in 2003 was $395,338--over half of which came from the sale of his quarter interest in a 17th-century Dutch painting co-owned by Teresa and the art dealer Peter Tillou. (The 4' x 8' painting, incidentally, is "The Arrival of Frederick and Elizabeth, Prince and Princess of the Palatinate, at Flushing, April 29, 1613" by Adam Willaerts.) Sure, it was a high-income year for the senator. But in 2003, Kerry also took out a $6.4 million mortgage on his share of the couple's Beacon Hill townhouse in Boston to fund his strapped presidential campaign.
The Beacon Hill townhouse has come in handy before. Heinz bought it in 1995, the year she and Kerry married, for $1.7 million. An extensive renovation upped the market value to about $3 million. Then Heinz gave her husband ownership of half the house. A year later, in 1996, he mortgaged his share of the house in order to lend his Senate reelection campaign $900,000. It took the senator three years to pay off the loan. Boston journalists have long wondered how Kerry was able to get such plum mortgages on his Senate income. The answer is simple. His wife is worth nearly $550 million.
Making Heinz's tax returns public would confirm that she's Kerry's sugar daddy (sugar mommy?). It would also strike a blow against Kerry's populist rhetoric by detailing the lavish lifestyle he and his wife enj
It would also strike a blow against Kerry's populist rhetoric by detailing the lavish lifestyle he and his wife enjoy: the vacation home in Nantucket, the ski chalet in Ketchum, Idaho, the estate outside Pittsburgh, the Georgetown manse. Not to mention the red-and-white Gulfstream jet. And the tax returns could embarrass the Kerry campaign further if it's revealed that Heinz has contributed to independent organizations working to unseat President Bush.
A Bush campaign official says there are no plans to make an issue out of Heinz's tax returns. That's a big difference from 1984, when Republican surrogates took to the airwaves denouncing John Zaccaro. (Vice President George H.W. Bush's spokesman called Zaccaro "a very selfish man.") But the political press has started to question Heinz. Robert Novak devoted a column to the subject last week, for example. And the New York Times editorial page weighed in as well. "We urge that the candidate's wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, release her tax returns," the editors wrote. The Times is being consistent. In 1984, during the Zaccaro controversy, an editorial in its pages said: "Mrs. Ferraro's husband, like Caesar's wife, must be above suspicion." Is Teresa Heinz?
Matthew Continetti is an editorial assistant at The Weekly Standard.
© Copyright 2004, News Corporation, Weekly Standard, All Rights Reserved.
Incognito: I find the Catholic Church's stance on contraception far less worrisome than this administration's--funding "faith-based" organizations that preach only abstinence, retracting funding from org's in 3rd world countries that distribute contraceptives as well as provide medical care for botched clitoredectomies, vesicovaginal fistulas, etc. For me there's a huge difference between a church teaching (which I actively flout) and a governmental mandate--it's a lot harder to deal with the latter.
Rvd. Frances Cardinal George (of Chicago) recently made it very clear how he felt about Democrats in general. I'd call that a Church sanction.
Not that it matters to me; the RCC has no legitimacy anymore in the United States.
You know, releasing to the press a list of Republican Catholic politicians who don't follow the church could be fun. It's not something I would normally advocate, lord knows, but if certain people are going to make this an issue about Kerry, then we might as well turn the tables on them. Especially since these Catholic Republicans aren't exactly rushing to condemn these actions.
So let's make up the list and send it out to the press. If they want to harp on this issue, let's make them harp on ALL Catholic politicians who don't follow the church teachings perfectly.
Let's make this out to be as ridiculous an issue as it really is.
- Joel
----
Nightmares For Sale - another damn blog (that you really should check out)
For me there's a huge difference between a church teaching (which I actively flout) and a governmental mandate--it's a lot harder to deal with the latter.
dingbat
I think they're both bad but the RCC teachings probably reach many more than a small underfunded clinic outside the garbage dumps in Manilla.
Dear Annonymous - fuck off - we were discussing the abuses of religion
Joel - I think your idea is a very good one.
If cameras were rolling, Bush has another ad: "I don't own an SUV. ... The family has it. I don't have it," says Senator Kerry, speaking of the Chevy Suburban his wife keeps in their Ketchum, Idaho home. Must be more mordant post-modern commentary on the absurdity of campaigning! ... What it really is is ... how to put it? ... pathetic. I hew to my earlier suggestion:
By July 26 it could be clear to everyone except about 3,000 delegates to the Democratic convention that Kerry is not cutting it against Bush (even though Bush is very beatable).
But change "could" to "will.". ... 6:29 P.M.
Dear dividedandconquered"
SUCK MAJOR COCK, ASSWIPE.
catholics deserve to be bashed. they have been the bane of humanity since galileo. their entire doctrine, and that of all religions, is based on pure conjecture and sophistry. there is no hope for our species until we come to grips with these fairy tales.
OT but good news:
“POLLS SHOW KERRY AHEAD ON ELECTORAL VOTE (FROM THE WASHINGTON TIMES!)”
Washington, DC, Apr. 23 (UPI) -- An analysis of statewide presidential polls
published Friday by The Hotline shows Sen. John F. Kerry, D-Mass., ahead in the electoral college.
The Hotline's study of reputable statewide polls conducted since January 1, 2004, has Kerry holding an overall lead in 13 states containing 204 electoral votes. President George W. Bush is currently leading in 16 states and has a total of 174 electoral votes out of the 270 necessary for election. In states where either candidate leads by more than the poll's margin of error, Kerry is ahead in seven states with a total of 123 electoral votes while Bush leads in eight states with a total of 86 electoral votes. The Hotline is a daily digest of important political news and polling data published by the National Journal.
Link:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/u...50230-
3304r.htm
Whoa. Some of y'all want to get your facts straight.
The Vatican has never condemned the death penalty as a matter of faith and morals. It is simply not on the same order of magnitude as abortion.
Give the conservative Catholics their due: they are struggling with a decisive question of faith in the world. As Catholics, they believe abortion is murder. Disagree as you choose, but recognize moral seriousness when you see it.
The Church doctrine is that no one who willfully persists in mortal sin is eligible for the sacraments. What Catholics are struggling with is the utter lack of a genuine doctrine for how to handle that sorta thing, publicly. What IS the best way for a religion to deal with what it considers to be participation in mass murder by its own?
There is a precedent for this, ya know: In 1932, German bishops voted -- narrowly -- to deny communion to anyone wearing a swastika. In 1933, the Vatican overruled the German bishops -- Nazis were welcome to the sacraments throughout the Holocaust.
Not the sort of experience a religion wants to repeat.
"The Americanist heresy" really is the out for this, but the Vatican has real theological trouble recognizing that the core American civic creed of religious liberty, freedom of speech and the separation of Church and State have a moral value of their own.
Moreover, there is a bait and switch in abortion politics: Abortion depends on a right to privacy originally found in a contraceptives case. You can't turn one over to the states without the other -- and while some restrictions on abortion might be popular, not so for contraception.
The day the pro-lifers win on principle is the day pro-lifers lose in practice -- not to mention the day the GOP loses the WH, Senate, House and 30 governorships.
56K I agree it's a distraction.
But not only that. The republican media borg program for this weekend: "let's kick back and watch democrats chase away more potential voters."
The dem's business model/political strategy is fucked and obviously does not work. Where are the results? How can the Chimp even be close to John Kerry right now?
You need a new business model. Stop the liberal exclusionism and the cowardly rush to the "center". How is Kerry "more presidential" than Howard Dean if he doesn't get elected?
"...we were discussing the abuses of religion."
Yes, why we don't discuss the abuses of ... Islam.
I understand what you're saying, and I agree. I just consider it more heinous, I guess, for a government or governmental agency to strip people of their right to be healthy than for the Church to say contraception's bad. I mean, in the first instance, a temporal authority is taking away the opportunity for someone to go against Church teachings.
hee-hee! Must be another Christian huh, AnnonymousAl
catholics deserve to be bashed. they have been the bane of humanity since galileo. their entire doctrine, and that of all religions, is based on pure conjecture and sophistry. there is no hope for our species until we come to grips with these fairy tales.
Anonymous
Yup. I hate it when some say that the RCC has been the caretaker of Western Civilization and the keeper of its history. From what I've learned, they've been instrumental is erasing that history.
>Yes, why we don't discuss the abuses of ... Islam.
Where would you like me to start?
Its fairly obvious that we're talking about government mixing with politics and Islam has little to no influence on national elections in a country full of Christians.
I agree with 90% of what you said. MUSLIMS in this country have no cause to whine about being persecuted. I'm sick to death of MUSLIMS calling every disagreement with them "ISLAM bashing." (I lived in the deep South for awhile as a kid. Believe me, I know ISLAM bashing, having been seriously bashed by fundies.) I'm as offended by religious posturing by liberal politicians as you are.
But there's a small but significant error in your post that I think it's important to correct. You say, "It's time for moderate and liberal MUSLIMS to take a stand against their MOSQUE'S assault on Democratic (and only Democratic) politicians who deviate from doctrine." I know this is hard to understand, because the media is so clueless about this, but there really is no "MOSQUE" assault on Democratic politicians. People like Nedra Pickler and Katherine Seeleye are trying to frame it that way, but it really isn't happening. Rather, a couple of very ambitious IMANS, and a small group of conservative MUSLIMS like [INSERT NAME HERE], are trying to force the American MOSQUE into sanctioning pro-choice politicians -- something they have very deliberately avoided doing.
I'M NEITHER MUSLIM NOR CHRISTIAN -- I'M AN ATHEIST... WHO IS SICK OF YOUR SHIT.
If cameras were rolling, Bush has another ad: "I don't own an SUV. ... The family has it. I don't have it," says Senator Kerry, speaking of the Chevy Suburban his wife keeps in their Ketchum, Idaho home. Must be more mordant post-modern commentary on the absurdity of campaigning! ... What it really is is ... how to put it? ... pathetic. I hew to my earlier suggestion:
By July 26 it could be clear to everyone except about 3,000 delegates to the Democratic convention that Kerry is not cutting it against Bush (even though Bush is very beatable).
But change "could" to "will.". ... 6:29 P.M.
I barely remember when I used to be funny.
If cameras were --
ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...
What are you miserable fucks going to be doing for the next 4 years, after Bush wins again? Cut your throats. Now. Now.
Dave: can i buy one of your "funny" T-shirts, you moronic brownshirt fuck?
do the republican politicians get a pass on the question if they molested a child over the weekend.
I barely remember when I used to be funny.
If I were getting my ass kicked from here to Sunday every night on national radio by Janeane, I'd be a whimpering little brownshirt desperately pretending I wasn't scared shitless, too...
Pardon my irreverence, but I thought the reason we have separation of church and state in our society is so we don't end up like, for example Iran.
Those places where the clerics dictate policy, based on what the ghost of Magumbo whispered in the high priest's ear on the full moon. Under penalty of death. How'd you like to see the laws written by calico Johnny Ashcroft?
"The famiy SUV": that's fucking rich.
ha ha I love it when some of you get wound up.
Sure, I wasted those fucking VC!
This NYT piece didn't seem to get much notice, it's a disturbing little piece about our Muslim allies, the Sauds,
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/2.../23SAUD.html?
hp
...can i buy one of your "funny" T-shirts?
Please do. You can use it to clean up the bloodbath in the boilerroom come November...
I get all of my political ideas from Janeane. She's so smart.
Rich Little you ain't... but I guess Unka Karl pays by the post, and quantity beats quality everytime.
You know what's really funny? Watching "Swimfan" on HBO Latin.
You are going to be so disappointed come November, dave. Try not to kill yourself.
Unka Karl = the bogeyman
Thanks, Tena. I hope Atrios will post a follow-up entry on this with encouragement for people to call Catholic politicians and then list out the results. We could then use that to put together a nice list and start contacting the press with it--national and local, television and print and online. I don't know if it would make a difference, but it certainly could.
I think journalists always like it when you do a lot of the work for them. 
- Joel
----
Nightmares For Sale - another damn blog (that you really should check out)
Oh, we are sooooooo much like Iran.
When you see the stolen handles, you know the jerking off has begun in earnest...
Tena: Is your cooter still desiccated?
Tena: You should have taken better care of your mom. She might still be alive.
Buy my T-shirts. They are funny. Really.
Who left the seat up?
Here I am, at the middle passage of my life. Selling these T-shirts.
Tena: Is your cooter still desiccated?
Tena: May I recommend Astro-Glide?
Here are two interesting quizzes from the freedom from religion foundation based out of Madison, Wisconsin.
Separation of church and state
Bible quiz
I would hate to have a mind that thought like that. Of course, if I did, I probably wouldn't realize it or care if I did.
Monday morning we'll have a little fun calling around to the offices of various Republican pro-choice politicians and asking their people a) if they went to Church on Sunday and b) if they took communion.
Atrios --
There's a danger in this strategy.
Namely, it may very well push some of the pro-choice Republicans to abandon their pro-choice positions and adopt an anti-abortion stance.
Especially if it seems like there may be public backlash against them. (They don't know that you're just trying to score rhetorical points.)
Be very careful here. Pro-choice Republicans, on that issue, are in the right. They may be wrong on any number of other issues, but please, please think twice about attacking them for a position that we ourselves endorse.
MORE Republicans should be pro-choice, not FEWER. Let's not scare them into abandoning the cause.
--Kynn
Two words:
Death Penalty.
Which the vatican also opposes.
Should Republican Catholic politicians be denied communion for their support of the Death Penalty?
Why aren't the same people making a big issue out of it?
Christians, Muslims, Jews, they all come from the same root.
Now when you get away from the religions that started in the Middle East... that's when you get something worth looking in to.
But Judeo-Islamic-Christian "spirituality" always misses the point.
It focuses on explanations (better left to science) and a bartering system of ethics (be good, go to heaven) which is a poor way to trick people into being nice to each other.
Christianity might have developed into a better religion if those darn Jews hadn't killed Jesus... but instead, what we have with Christianity is basically a cult. It focuses on worshipping one person, calls him the son of God, and all you have to do to be saved is accept him as your savior.
Basically, all you have to do is sign on to the team... there is no other objective. The team does something good now and then. They may go out and build a Habitat house or something... but the real power comes from simply being a member.
Bush knows this and he plays the part well.
re Jeanne: I would hate to have a mind that thought like that. Of course, if I did, I probably wouldn't realize it or care if I did.
From the "Field Guide toTroll Spotting "
...The Yellow Bellied Handle-Stealing Troll is a particularly nasty variety of these pests. They often reveal themselves during times of personal moral crisis. Once spotted they can be ignored or humiliated with facts and logic, but in anycase dispatched to the duck pit as quickly as possible.
"Now when you get away from the religions that started in the Middle East... that's when you get something worth looking in to."
Yeah, I remember this hippie chick in my 11th-grade homeroom who said, "I'm really looking into Buddhism, now."
Is Katherine Seelye the same one with the weird deep voice I used to hear on NPR? She E N U N C I A T E D very carefully, and you could hear her inhale between sentences.
Do I LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOVE sucking cock.
OT:Kerry just said"No draft" to a question about conscription for the armed services.I believe he just won the election since this cuts across every demographic in the nation.Mothers are very touchy about splattering their kids guts.
I'm confused. JFK was looked at very suspiciously because he was Catholic--you know, might be taking orders from the Pope in Rome. Kerry is NOT taking orders from the Pope in Rome, and now that is bad.
Oh, sorry I get it.
It's not that one's direction is from a "foreign source" is bad, it's that one does or doesn't AGREE with that direction.
OK, back to sleep.
So I checked out a few things on Project Vote Smart and found a few things...
-- As far as I can tell, the only 100% pro-choice Republican senator currently is Susan Collins (R-ME).
--There are two senators who are on the fence - sometimes vote pro-choice and sometimes anti-choice. Those are Pete Domenici (R-NM) and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK). Domenici however has 8 kids so I think he's toeing the Pope's line, but Murkowski stopped at 2 kids. I think we may have another un-observant Catholic there.
--The rest of the senators who are Catholic seem to vote anti-choice en masse, and frighteningly, most of them seem to have progeny coming out the wazoo:
Mike DeWine (R-OH): 8 kids.
George Voinovich (R-OH): 3 kids.
Jim Bunning (R-KY): 9 kids.
Pete Fitzgerald (R-IL): 1 kid. But he's young, so I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt.
Don Nickles (R-OK): 4 kids.
Rick Santorum (R-PA): 7 kids. Scary!
John Sununu (R-NH): 3 kids.
Sam Brownback (R-KS): 5 kids.
And John Eric Ensign (R-NV) lists himself as "Christian", and since I'm pretty sure Catholics are Christian, I'm adding him here: 3 kids.
Now, maybe I'm just old-fashioned, but isn't the world overpopulated enough without people having 9 kids? How are these guys paying for college for the fruit of their teeming loins? Or even feeding them all on a senator's salary?
Now we know why the liberal voice is getting increasingly shoved aside in this country - we're outnumbered (literally) by herds of little Santorums and DeWines and Bunnings.
Imagine no religion.
re Jeanne: I would hate to have a mind that thought like that. Of course, if I did, I probably wouldn't realize it or care if I did.
Incognito
What makes you think I was [talking] about you?
Albert Einstein wrote, and I paraphrase, "If we are only motivated to do good because we expect rewards, and only motivated not to do bad because we fear punishment, then we are a sorry lot."
I think we human beings are a sorry lot....
So as a PS to Kynn - your very understandable concern about pushing pro-choice Republican Catholics into the other camp unfortunately doesn't have many takers, at least in the Senate. But it doesn't look like Susan Collins is going to abandon the pro-choice ship just yet, so hurrah for that!
And it's hilarious that we have most of the genes of a fruit fly.
Oh, look at the lovely neocon trolls. Always raising the tenor of the debate.
Pathetic little boys, can't handle facts or dialogue. Must-insult-anyone-who-disagrees-with-me!
Oh, look at the lovely neocon trolls. Always raising the tenor of the debate.
Pathetic little boys, can't handle facts or dialogue. Must-insult-anyone-who-disagrees-with-me!
ABB---
Yeah, I neo-con who voted for Clinton twice, asshole.
Oh, look at the lovely neocon trolls. Always raising the tenor of the debate.
Pathetic little boys, can't handle facts or dialogue. Must-insult-anyone-who-disagrees-with-me!
ABB---
Yeah, A neo-con who voted for Clinton twice, asshole.
Oh, look at the lovely neocon trolls. Always raising the tenor of the debate.
Pathetic little boys, can't handle facts or dialogue. Must-insult-anyone-who-disagrees-with-me!
ABB---
Yeah, A neo-con who voted for Clinton twice, asshole.
I'm starting to wonder if Kerry can win, with all the phony, intellectually dishonest attacks on him. Here we are coming up on a critical election, with the future of our society in the balance, requiring the most serious, rational attention to a host of issues. And yet religious manipulation dominates on all fronts.
Look at the current situation with science policy being taken over by the political wing of the administration. Rove knows his base wants evolution out and creationism in. Science and rationalism seek answers and knowledge. Policy based on religion already knows the answers. (end rant)
Yeah, I neo-con who voted for Clinton twice, asshole.
Shystee
So, err, what happened? Was there some sort of nuclear meltdown at the power plant in the town where you live?
incognito: how'd you get to be such a huge tool?
Anybody seen the Franken/Stein TV spots for Yahoo?
I just did. Very clever. Good on ya, hoo.
~ahem~You don't need to be concerned with my huge tool, pal.
Albert Einstein wrote, and I paraphrase, "If we are only motivated to do good because we expect rewards, and only motivated not to do bad because we fear punishment, then we are a sorry lot."
I think we human beings are a sorry lot....
Incognito
indeed we are. Machiavelli had it about right as far as fear and love and human nature.
Good grief, this is the sort of nonsense that moved me to leave the Church in the first place (that and an inability to take the Bible seriously anymore).
If the Bishops want to electioneer like this, then the Church should lose its non-profit status an atart paying taxes.
If they have any money left after paying for all the kids they fucked that is ...
K Stone - your comment presupposes that a majority of people in this country agree with the idea of replacing evolution with creationism and also agree with the other anti-science positions that the fundies are pushing. In fact, only between 15% and 18% of the people in this country agree with those positions.
Kerry is not likely to win or lose based on religion, IMO.
Does anyone else remember when the head of Bush's church said the war on Iraq was unjust and wrong, or at least signed a petition to that extent? And a whole bunch of other religious leaders said and/or signed the same thing? As long as people are using religion to point out the hypocrisy of polititians, let's (all together now) "be fair."
nathan - yeah, the fact that the head of the Methodist Church, which is the church that Bush claims membership in, made a statement against the war has been mentioned on these boards. The press certainly hasn't said anything about it in a long time, however.
Inc: I think we human beings are a sorry lot....
Speak for yourself. What's missing in modern politics and in modern society are optimistic goals. Why aren't we viewing government as a machine we put time and tax money into and outputs good living e.g. social safety net, education, healthcare, etc.
Instead, politics is viewed as "the people who own us" and we constantly react to their dictates.
Essentially, we have the mindset of serfs living under a dictatorship. This thinking is a losing proposition. Human history is long and hard and yet we still managed to fight off the shackles of oppression.
The real problem here is that pessimism and the belief in powerlessness is self-fulfilling. The same is true of optimism. I'm not just saying change your attitude to "we can beat bush" but to "humans have an option of success and we should focus on bringing those policies to the forefront."
Unfortunately, that means one has to be serious about nuclear disarmament, the environment, indexes on the quality of life, etc. You know "peacenik" stuff.
There's a larger picture than just winning seats, in fact I'm sure many politicians are happy that we're just talking politics instead of social philosophy. Imagine how much more powerful we would be if a few million people took optimism seriously and put down all the hot button items and demanded a government that works for them and not the other way around.
Another outrage! from the American Taliban state of Florida!
Please, please Atrios, I beg of you to give this your attention. While we are trying to force freedom at the point of a gun in the Middle East we are robbing American's of their freedom right here...
:-(
Eveything after my first post was the YBHST (Yellow Bellied Handle Stealing Troll) who needs to take a shot of thorazine and come back when he's feeling better. Nothing but a pest. Chinga tu madre, Troll!
-the real shystee
I hope somebody calls the White House to ask when was the last time bush took communion.
Steve in CO,After reading that sad,sad tale of our justice system I dont think there is any hope.Except for a full blown revolution,its not gonna get fixed.
If we legalized all drugs, it would deprive terrorists of funding. Via taxes on such drugs, we could fund anti-terrorism efforts. Folks who support the war on drugs are supporting terrorists, and hate america.
The right hates rational discussion like vampires hate sunlight, and they rely on a big bag of tricks and misdirection to sucker and spin us right on down the line.
The right can't allow debate on so many issues to truly happen, it's the antithesis of how ideas flow so freely on this site. Real debate requires more than the current media 30 second attention span, and the habitual abuse thereof by BushCo.
Sorry for the gloom.
This is an issue this struggling Catholic, who also just witnessed one of their own children receive their first communion last Sunday, will be the issue that does it for me.
Someone above stated leave. Well for this person who was born, raised, and was happy practicing and believing the teachings of this Church, it isn't so easy. It's teachings of tolerance,inclusion,forgiveness of sins, love, faith, and hope for all than perfect people such as myself are what make me, well me.
Born, raised, and currently living in the priest pedophile capitol of the country (aka Boston area) it is very difficult for one to stand by and watch the hypocrisy of our new bishop (O'Malley) state that politicians who are pro-choice such as Kerry also be denied communion. For years priests, bishops, and cardinals from the area continued to administer and receive the eucharist all the while abusing children or turning a blind eye to it. Now they want to deny Kerry and other less than perfect Catholics this same sacrament despite their very own horrific sins.
According to the teachings I was raised with, Jesus worshipped and forgave all sinners, and worshipped and loved all social outcasts including lepers, poor, and prostitutes. He also said, "Let he who is without sin, cast the first stone" when it came time to judging and condemning other sinners. I think the less than perfect RCC hierarchy would be wise to heed the words of Jesus and stop casting stones.
As this is already a long rambling post, one last point. It is already a big issue in this area as Kerry is from Massachusetts. It was the lead on all local newscasts last evening. Also at the local parishes, we already had a deluge of church related caution during sermons just recently with a warning about voting for and supporting Catholic politicians in the state who didn't heed the church's stance regarding gay marriage in the state. (No suprise They were fully against it). So to say it is isolated to the Church hierarchy is not totally true at least not in the heavily Catholic state of Massachusetts.
Either way, I personally feel if the Catholic Bishops do end up voting in support of this issue, this will just continue to push people (such as myself) away from the RCC and that is something that I find regrettable.
Emal: I'm a lapsed Catholic (I wish I'd thought of NYT editor Bill Keller's phrase "collapsed Catholic"), so I'm hardly a model for how to approach the Church.
But I think your approach is much more sound than the bishops'. These guys don't know when to pick a fight so that even when they lose, they win.
The American bishops took the Vatican to the mat about 20 years ago over "annulments", which are the Catholic equivalent of, but are NOT "divorces". Basically, the Catholic teaching is that if you really want to break up a marriage, just accept that you were never married in the first place.
The Vatican considered the sheer volume of American annulments proof that they were in fact divorces, and wanted to disallow 'em. AT THE VERY MOMENT THE SAME CARDINALS WERE PROTECTING PEDOPHILES, they fought -- and beat -- the Vatican on annulments, because they knew that if they threw all those folks out of the Church, the institution as it exists in the U.S. would collapse. They won that one -- and now they understand that their moral authority is deeply compromised, which is why they don't talk about it.
I'm not saying they were wrong to fight over annulments, cuz I dunno: but they were surely wrong not to fight over pedophiles. Why fight the Vatican on the one, and not the other? I bet money Cardinal Law prays on this simple fact every night: The parents wer powerful, and the kids were not.
I dunno as the bishops would be wrong to take a moral stand about pro-choice politicians who are also Catholics, but it DOES have the ring of an actual -- and risky -- position that is consistent with something, anyway. Being a bishop shouldn't be so damn comfortable.
The thing is, I think they'd be FAR better off recognizing that political influence ain't their job. Same sex unions ain't their job -- Andy Sullivan is not about to get married in a cathedral. An institution that provided communion to Nazis is on thin ice denying it to Democrats. Who wins in November ain't their job.
You're their job.
As usual, Pickler and Seelye -- the prime drivers of this story -- don't know what the hell they're talking about
what, Nedra doesn't know what she's talking about? stop the presses
Everyone cites St. Louis Archbishop Raymond Burke's statement that he would deny communion to John Kerry because Kerry votes to preserve legalized abortion.
NO-ONE cites Archbishop Burke's statement that HARRY POTTER IS BAD FOR CHILDREN (statement made when Burke was still a mere bishop in Wisconsin).
What's next on the Index?
Clifford?
Shrek?
Nemo?
Many Catholics in St. Louis think he has a screw loose. Or at least an inability to keep his mouth shut before inserting foot.
Meanwhile back at the ranch:
A new discrimination lawsuit. A couple of porky Florida residents are suing an all-you-can-eat restaurant because the manager asked them to leave. It seems they were eating nothing but slices of the prime rib of beef without touching anything else. In fact, they had 18 slices each (or nearly two pounds of beef each). The manager said that was against policy (and probably bad for the profitability as meat is the highest price item on the menu). So the couple is filing a lawsuit charging the restaurant with discrimination against Atkins dieters. That if the couple read the Atkins books, they'd know that two pounds of beef is well beyond the portions recommended. Just some silly excuse to file a frivolous lawsuit.
But come to think about it, no more frivolous than those whiners who claim Christians and Catholics are being discriminated against just because some people criticize some oftheir policies and their campaigns to limit our freedoms.
NO-ONE cites Archbishop Burke's statement that HARRY POTTER IS BAD FOR CHILDREN (statement made when Burke was still a mere bishop in Wisconsin).
NancyP
----------------------------------
A lot of us have heard about that. Burke also thinks "The Wizard of Oz" is anti-Christian for the same reason. Something about Dorothy being a feminist prototype leading girls to be assertive... and other blather.
These people are not Catholics, they are this disturbing Catholic fringe you got a whiff of from good old Mel.
This may not be a good time in their history for the Catholic hierarchy to declare they know what's good for children... They might want to hang back for a while as others fight viciously for "moral high ground."
Would someone get a copy of Cuomo's reply to the Bishops who accused him of being untrue to Catholic doctrine? He reminded them that after years of church teaching that birth control and abortion are sins, a vast majority of American Catholics still believed that they weren't. Stop telling us to convert America, he said, when you can't even convert your own church.
They shut up real good after that, but the Opus Dei-Legatus crowd is stirring up shit again.
These people are not Catholics, they are this disturbing Catholic fringe you got a whiff of from good old Mel.
kei & yuri
-----------------------------------
For more than 20 years, there has been a sect within the Catholic Church that has used abortion as the sole determining factor. They keep arguing in Catholic papers that if you aren't against abortion, you should drop out of the Catholic Church. The religious equivalent of "America: Love It or Leave It." As attendance at Mass nationwide has dropped 44% since 1980, I think they are getting their wish!
Will the last believer blow out the Vigilights before leaving?
Perhaps our friends in the Papal's foreign affairs bureau should consider how a concentrated campaign to raise awareness of certain events in Boston might play in regions where the Catholic Church is looking to expand. I don't think Latin America really likes the idea of clergy...messing with children.
Put a leash on those puppies.
a couple of random musings on the catholic church,religion and politics which i think are germane.it is hard for me to understand how a catholic politican can proclaim that he or she is 'personally opposed" to abortion yet publicly support in all it's manifestations. i believe that in 1960 another jfk averred that if his faith interfered with his oath of office he would resign. that seems like a more intellectually honest position when compared to the awkward straddle which we observe by current office holders...........separately, the catholic church's pro life position is seamless and they stand adamantly opposed to capital punishment. i hope that any public scolding of pro abortionist catholic politicians will be accompanied by a similar lambasting of right wingers who advocate the death penalty. and finally i always find it odd that the church is taken for task when it speaks on the abortion issue and is told that they should remain less involved in the public forum. no one complained when the berrigan brothers led the charge against the vietnam war.no one 's hackles were raised when the REVEREND martin luther king sounded the alarm about the repugnance and immorality of racism . no one objected when a jesuit roman catholic priest ,robert drinan,served in congress and served at the vanguard of the anti war movement in the 1960s and 1970s. it seems to this observer that the left takes the church to task selectively.that doesnt seem fair. jjj
To Mike, way back in the thread:
Heinlein saved the country by a revolution engineered by the Masonic underground.
Uprootbush
The Catholic Church is universally pro-life, and that means anti-abortion as well as anti-death penalty. Are the conservative Bishops going to demand that pro-death penalty Catholic politicians also be denied communion?
What's worse -- a politician supporting the right to an abortion, or a politician overseeing the execution of a criminal? The Church frowns on both, but the second one seems a little more hands-on than the first.
i have personally watched jeb bush take communion and the next day sign a warrant for a person on death row to be executed. go figure
Don't forget to ask about pro death penalty Catholic Republicans. The Pope is anti death penalty.
Don't forget to ask about pro death penalty Catholic Republicans. The Pope is anti death penalty.
I know this thread is mostly about the Catholics and the Catholic Church, but methinks a lotta the Protestants are worse, as far as having among their ranks the intolerant wingnutty freakazoids. Southern Baptists tend to be a quite backward set and scarier still are those nondenominational, commercialized southern-style fundamentalists.
I don't even know what the word "The Church" (as in official body) means in the latter case (nondenominational fundies). It seems like instead of a set of bishops or some such, there is charismatic TV preacher personality or some sort of money-making enterprise.
What about asking if those Republicans if they have had a vasectomy or had their tubes tied. These are also against Catholic law.
Think they'll tell you that that's a personal decision and not answer. Ask them also if they, their wives, their daughters, their mothers, etc. have ever had an abortion. Not a bad question for all Republicans politicians. Go get 'um Atrios.
... no one complained when the berrigan brothers led the charge against the vietnam war.no one 's hackles were raised when the REVEREND martin luther king sounded the alarm about the repugnance and immorality of racism ...
Neither the Berrigans, nor Dr. King, ever suggested that their church should withhold it's sacraments from people that disagreed with them.
The Catholic Church's position on the death penalty:
Today, in fact, as a consequence of the possibilities which the state has for effectively preventing crime, by rendering one who has committed an offense incapable of doing harm -- without definitively taking away from him the possibility of redeeming himself -- the cases in which the execution of the offender is an abolute necessity "are very rare, if not practically non-existent." (John Paul II, Evangelium Vitae, 56)
http://www.cacp.org/pages/587878/index.htm
Could we also start a campaign to send used copies of (Sir/St.) Thomas More's "Utopia" to the Thomas More Law Center in Michigan? Because it seems like they really need to be reminded of what he stood for.
Could we also start a campaign to send used copies of (Sir/St.) Thomas More's "Utopia" to the Thomas More Law Center in Michigan? Because it seems like they really need to be reminded of what he stood for.
synykl........i think you missed my point.......or maybe i made it poorly......to wit......the left does not make alot of noise about positions when they are supportive of left's agenda.when the church vigorously opposes that agenda the left then takes up the cry of render to caesar that which is caesar's.....my point i think is that the lefts opposition to the church's involvement in the political arena is very very selective. jjj
Hey, when you do the calling on Monday, be sure to phone former Presidential candidate and childless Catholic Pat Buchanan. Ask him how it came to pass that he and his wife Shelley have been married 33 years and still haven't produced a single young Catholic...nor have they adopted.
And ol' Rudy G. - did he get an annulment from Donna before he married Judi? Didn't he move Judi into Gracie Mansion before the divorce was final?
Rudy would be an excellent one to ask, actually, since he's on his THIRD wife. It's not in the official bio, of course, but he had his marriage to his first wife, Regina, annulled by the Church by arguing that she was actually his COUSIN.
Some mighty elastic definitions of dogma going on here.
until you figure out a way to get at the machine and discipline that causes polls to show more people believe Saddam actually had the wmd's you make no dent. One thing this rnc, grover, karl group has gambled on and won is this: most people read no further than the headlines - tv doesn't much matter cause it's all headlines.
You could sit down with Wolf Blitzer and Aaron Brown for an hour and explain the ridiculouness of this current catholic issue and at the end of the hour Wolf would be staring at you with those wide eyes saying, -- but it's not news. Aaron would be defensive.
The only solution is for Atrios to reveal himself on Larry King.
I just want to echo the point made here by a few other people. Catholic teaching on the death penalty should be just as important as on abortion -- so if we're going to be calling around making an issue of what Catholic Republican politicians believe and vote for, the death penalty should figure prominently. That way we simultaneously move the debate away from abortion and from Kerry's relationship to Church doctrine.
There's a little truth in almost everything and this article from "Jeanne" (Whoever she is) has a litle. damn little!
It is true that most Catholic Bishops would like to avoid this political involvement. But, since so few Catholics understand (or have been let in on) the "pickle" the American Hierarchy have gotten themselves into, readers of their comments must understand that they probably can't. They're being threatened and blackmailed by the ultra-conservative elements in the Vatican who are running the show.
It is probably true that the St. Louis Archbishop was probably lobbying for a red hat. I wrote an article on the subject at the time that appeared in several Wisconsin newspapers. But what of the Bishops in Chicago and New England she forgot to mention?
The Nigerian Cardianal of who she speaks (correctly as a front-runner for next Pope) gave a commencement address at Georgetown nearly a year ago. Billed as a talk on Ecumenicism, he laid the law down to American Catholics in a away that left no ambiguity. A substantial part of the audience walked out before he got halfway through.
The Bishops are doing "everything in their power to avoid the issues," except anything that would resemble sticking their necks out and simply saying, "no comment."
The Bishops "they're currently working on guidelines," is a statement right out of the begining of the "sex scandals and we all now how prompt and definitive that became.
I like nearly everything I read from Atrios. But I take issue with his statement passing this off as "more of a media issue than a church issue." Voters read (and are swayed by) media. This is why we have Press conferences, campaign ads, appearances, the whole panoply. Catholics without a good background on what is going on may well read all this and believe they are impelled to vote in one direction.
Even the BBC news carried the story about the vatican urging priests and bishops to refuse communion on this past Friday. The statement seems to be rather typically "unofficial." It seems to have been leaked (read dissemanated) from one of the Secretariats in the Curia.
If it were official, it would be a real "shocker. I have read all the VaticanII documnets and I am unaware that the basic rules of the sacraments were changed in my lifetime (74 years).
A priest can refuse communion:
1) If he knows the individual to be not a catholic, confirmed by a Bishop in Apostolic Succession.
2) If he knows the individual to have been married and divorced and not living with his wife (of marriage), re-married or living openly with another woman (man).
3) If the priests knows in fact (or has strong reason to believe) that the individual has not made his "Easter Duty.
4) If the individual has been officially excommunicated following the proper canons of The Church.
Now we all know what would happen if The Church were to excommunicate John Kerry - or any other US politician running for office. The hues and cry wou
Closing
would echo around the world and the guy would probably get elected. The Vatican will not try that route. Instead, some elements will try to sneak that in as inuendo or suggestion by the back door. Under their law, it is the only door open.
Paul Power
Interesting read here.
Has some insights about the specific Church Kerry worships in. Anyway there is one part in it that really struck me as interesting.
The Archdiocese of Boston ''does not hold to the practice of publicly refusing Communion to anyone,'' said archdiocese spokesman Rev. Christopher Coyne. He said it was up to the individual to decide whether to receive Communion.
In the days before Kerry attended Easter Mass at the Paulist Center, staff members received threatening phone calls and e-mails from Catholics who believed the senator should be denied Communion.
Coyne said he also received many letters and angry calls from concerned Catholics about Kerry's ability to take Communion. He said he contacted the Paulist Center ahead of time to ensure there would be no problem when the senator received the Eucharist.
Wonder if this was fairly typical or not or if this could possibly have been the work of or have some fingerprints of Karl Rove's minions at work here?
... no one complained when the berrigan brothers led the charge against the vietnam war.no one 's hackles were raised when the REVEREND martin luther king sounded the alarm about the repugnance and immorality of racism ...
I was thinking about this some more.
People mostly accept Dr. Kings religious arguments now, but hackles were raised back then.
Also, the intervention of "leftist" clerics in the U.S. anti-war movement, and in Central and South American political conflicts was also criticised at the time.
These things happened a long time ago, so it's not surprising we've forgotten some of the details.
he who has no sin can throw the first stone.
... i think you missed my point ... my point i think is that the lefts opposition to the church's involvement in the political arena is very very selective ...
I don't have a problem with your main point, but I believe the "left" is no more selective in its objections than any of the other directions are. 
I do have some problems with your examples though. The Berrigans and Dr. King were clerics involved in political matters, but they did not attempt to use their positions as clerics to punish their political opponents. Also, they were criticised for interfering in political affairs.
Also, they were criticised for interfering in political affairs.
Strike that last bit. They were criticised, but I'm pretty sure the criticism came almost exclusively from the right.
I'm not thinking too clearly tonight, must be using my right brain
(patiently) Folks here keep mis-stating Catholic doctrine. The teaching against the death penalty is NOT on the order of the prohibition against abortion, contraception ... or even fellatio.
Have enough respect for folks you disagree with to know what they believe.
http://news.ft.com/servlet/Conte...=1012571727088'
Baker on religious America.
>RE: capital punishment.
Of course it won't work, that's why it is important.
>patiently) Folks here keep mis-stating Catholic doctrine. The teaching against the death penalty is NOT on the order of the prohibition against abortion, contraception ... or even fellatio.
Patiently, the Catholic church has stated over and over again that the fundamental doctrine is life.
Have enough respect for your own church not to lie about what it teaches.
Stirling, it's not MY church, as noted above. And you're simply wrong.
Humanae Vitae, like earlier iterations of the doctrine (Casti Connubi, etc.) focuses on the imperative for the unitive and procreative functions of sex to BOTH be present for any sexual act to be moral.
The Vatican's opinion -- which is NOT doctrine -- on capital punishment has a distinct theology and a different line of reasoning. It is not simply different in kind, but also in degree. That is why the Vatican has not and will not insist on uniformity on the issue in the same way it condemns all dissent from its teachings on abortion.
What IS similar is same-sex marriage, which is why the Vatican HAS talked about it with the same strictness as abortion, for the same reason: homosexuality separates the unitive and procreative functions of sexuality.
LOL -- I'm trying to be nice to you, Stirling, but you're gonna throw around words like "lie", ya gotta expect to be exposed as a fool and a fraud, not to mention an ignoramus.
Not that anybody asked, but to clarify further: the RCC is not in the "life" business, exactly, but rather for the purpose of saving souls. So it's principal objection to the death penalty isn't to preserve life, precisely, but give the guy the chance to save his own soul, on the not unreasonable theory that an ax murderer might need to spend some time at it. Dragging the guy to the 'lectric chair probably doesn't give him the maximum opportunities to repent that life in a cage would.
BUT -- it doesn't preclude the possibility, either: that's why the Vatican won't insist that the death penalty is ALWAYS wrong, as it does insist that abortion (contraception, homosexuality, etc.) are always wrong.
Like I said before, just cuz you don't agree with somebody, nor accept a faith, doesn't mean you should distort 'em.
FWIW under canon law 1397, one who commits murder is subject to an expiatory penalty, which may not be permanent. Under canon law 1398 one who procures an abortion is subject to a latea sententiae excommunication- which means it occurs automatically and does not require a formal judgement. A more severe penalty.
Although these were promulgated in 1983 I believe the roots are in the acts of Vatican l in 1870, which also declared that infallibility rested in the person of the Pope, not just the Church.Some of the actions of Vatican l were repealed or softened by Vatican ll (notably on the culpability of Jews) but abortion and infallibility remained.
"the Church, which is trying very hard to keep from being used for political purposes"
exsqueeze me? im sorry but she lost me right after this statement. are we talking about the same church?
must not be.....hmm...
The American church and the Vatican are not always on the same page. The Vatican insiders have been courted heavily by the Bushies and would probably love to influence the election. Wouldn't be surprised if the abortion card is an attempt to swing votes in, say, New Mexico by making Kerry hot. That's tough for American bishops and a disaster for the parishes. Catholic growth is outside the US, but the US church has money.Vatican types want American money but think US Catholics are too independent.
The American church and the Vatican are not always on the same page. The Vatican insiders have been courted heavily by the Bushies and would probably love to influence the election. Wouldn't be surprised if the abortion card is an attempt to swing votes in, say, New Mexico by making Kerry hot. That's tough for American bishops and a disaster for the parishes. Catholic growth is outside the US, but the US church has money.Vatican types want American money but think US Catholics are too independent.
This is more than just a media story, it's a political and religious story, which is more and more the same thing in this country. And it isn't a new thing, bishops taking political stances on Catholic politicians. When Senator Mary Landrieu first ran for senate from Louisiana, Archbishop Philip Hannan, who claims a special friendship with the Kennedy family, stated that "good Catholics" could not remain such if they voted for Landrieu because of her abortion stance. This kind of thing, not to mention the church's hypocritical stance on gays and gay marriage, is why I, and very few of my family, are no longer practicing Catholics.
I'm a Catholic who's used natural birth control for more than 20 years, without ever having failed ONCE to me. For me, that is the truth. I know it works.
If such strong positions are taken by the Catholic Church, or any Church for that matter, oftentimes their tax exempt status can be challenged and removed. This may be an appropriate way for an activist top frame the issue.
If such strong positions are taken by the Catholic Church, or any Church for that matter, oftentimes their tax exempt status can be challenged and removed. This may be an appropriate way for an activist top frame the issue.
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