Tag Archives: Catholic

Buzz

This new documentary has it. Here’s the trailer.

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Why I Predict Rick Santorum Will Be the Republican Nominee

Demographics. They’re working against white conservatives, and it’s making them ornery. Thanks to demographics, Jonathan Chait at New York magazine explains the fight or stand-down existential dilemma facing Republicans going forward: [T]he psychology of decline does not always operate in … Continue reading

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Rick Santorum: Pro-Torture Catholic

There’s something grimly ironic in a contemporary politician claiming to be a serious Catholic while supporting the torture of prisoners. But this is what Rick Santorum does: he supports the return of Bush-era torture practices. And this, of course, is … Continue reading

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Rick Santorum: Cafeteria Catholic Without a Condom

Presidential hopeful Rick Santorum makes quite a show of his submission to Catholic teaching and his absolute adherence to what I would call Pope Benedict’s Semen Principle. The Semen Principle is the following: Semen must go nowhere but in a … Continue reading

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Contemporary Iconoclasm: Jesus Statue Beheaded in Boston

Jesus beheaded! What would Freud say? Here’s the Boston Globe this morning: [P]olice are looking for the vandals who knocked the head off a statue of Jesus outside a Roman Catholic church named for Mother Teresa. The Rev. Jack Ahern of Blessed Mother Teresa … Continue reading

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Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell: Child Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church under John Paul II

Talk about a den of thieves molesters! This stunning bit of news was reported today in the New York Times: A newly disclosed document reveals that Vatican officials told the bishops of Ireland in 1997 that they had serious reservations about the … Continue reading

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Johann Hari Makes the Case for the Pope’s Arrest

Eloquent. Shocking. Pro-Catholic. Johann Hari on Pope Joseph Ratzinger’s flagrant criminality, and why he should not be above the law (and notice Richard Dawkins standing behind Hari): Andrew Sullivan, a Catholic, has also been wise to Ratzinger. Here’s some of what Sullivan said, … Continue reading

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Sherry Marquez Bait: a Man from Catholic Brazil Decapitates His Mother

This today from a Latin American news service: Police in the northeastern state of Bahia are looking for a 22-year-old man accused of decapitating his mother and fleeing with her head, the news Web site G1 said Tuesday. I await … Continue reading

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“The stench of evil”: Christopher Hitchens on Pope Benedict’s cover-up of priest pedophilia

Christopher Hitchens at Slate this week: The Roman Catholic Church is headed by a mediocre Bavarian bureaucrat once tasked with the concealment of the foulest iniquity, whose ineptitude in that job now shows him to us as a man personally … Continue reading

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Official Vatican exorcist, Don Gabriele Amorth, blames priest pedophilia on Satan, atheists, and working women

No joke. According to Salon today, official Vatican exorcist Don Gabriele Amorth: . . . told the UK Times, “All evil is due to the intervention of the Devil, including pedophilia.” He also added that contemporary culture has “given in … Continue reading

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Senior Vatican Priest, Reginald Foster, Talks to Bill Maher

What a wonderful, beautiful person Father Foster is! My favorite scene from Religulous: Oops. It doesn’t embed. See it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LJKigLT_D8

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PZ Myers Finally Rises into Bryan Appleyard’s Radar

And Appleyard skewers him, returning rhetorical fire with rhetorical fire: I note also the appearance of this character P.Z.Myers. I’ve never read him before but I now discover he once did me over – ‘How stupid are the editors and … Continue reading

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These Three are One? The Theological, Philosophical, and Scientific Mind

I don’t know who made the above video, but I find it moving, and I like the take-away message from it. The philosophical questions of religion, because they dwell upon issues of infinity and moral reasoning, can assist in the … Continue reading

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Drudge Report Uses An Antisemitic Visual Trope in Depicting the Pope’s Visit to Israel

At around 11:30 this morning, I was blown away by what I saw at Matt Drudge’s website. Drudge made use of a classic antisemitic visual template—the sinister, overlarge, and shadowy Jew—as a way of supporting his “reporting” on the besieged Pope Benedict. … Continue reading

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Bearing Witness to the Holocaust: Hitler Shakes Hands with a Catholic Bishop

In the 1930s, Adolf Hitler sought, and received, support from many German Protestants and Catholics. At a Berlin rally, Hitler warmly greets a Roman Catholic Bishop, and is warmly greeted in return. Source: U.S. Holocaust Museum photo archive

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Bearing Witness to the Holocaust: Catholic Priests in Nazi Salute

Centuries of Christian antisemitism helped lay the groundwork for the emergence of 20th century racial antisemitism, and many German Christians perceived no conflict between Christianity and their association with the Nazi Party. Below are two Catholic priests in Nazi salute alongside Wilhelm Frick and … Continue reading

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Lest We Forget: In 2004 a Birmingham Theater Closed a Play Written by a WOMAN Because It Offended a Religious Community (the Sikhs)

See the original BBC report on playwright Gurpreet Bhatti’s censorship here, as well as the craven response of a Catholic archbishop (who supported the Sikh clergy in shutting her play down): Mohan Singh, a local Sikh community leader, said: “When … Continue reading

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Atheism, Agnosticism, and Theism: Passing Through Auschwitz, the Rings of Saturn—and the Multiverse Hypothesis?

One reason that I’m an agnostic (and not a theist or an atheist) is that both theism and atheism have very large hurdles between them and certainty. Theism (for instance) has never adequately dealt with the problem of extreme suffering. … Continue reading

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Pope Benedict: “Neo-Medieval Conservative?”

Pope Benedict seems to be the George Bush of Catholicism—disdaining moderation, ignoring criticism, and lurching his church to the VERY CREEPY RIGHT at every opportunity. Perhaps we should call it “Neo-Medieval Conservatism.” The Guardian of London today reports on the pope’s … Continue reading

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The Vatican’s Abu Ghraib?

I thought that conservative essayist Christopher Buckley (at the DailyBeast.com) had the clearest and tartest response to Pope Benedict’s lifting of excommunication on Holocaust denier, Bishop Richard Williamson: What—the fuck—were you thinking of, Your Holiness? This repugnant episode is surely … Continue reading

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