Covering up the abuse

The Catholic church is telling newly appointed bishops in a training document that “According to the state of civil laws of each country where reporting is obligatory, it is not necessarily the duty of the bishop to report suspects to authorities, the police or state prosecutors in the moment when they are made aware of crimes or sinful deeds,” that it is “not necessarily” their duty to report accusations of clerical child abuse, and that only victims or their families should make the decision to report abuse to police. The special commission created by Pope Francis, the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, had appeared to play no role in the training programme, even though it is supposed to be developing “best practices” to prevent and deal with clerical abuse. The committee’s position is that reporting abuse to civil authorities was a “moral obligation, whether the civil law requires it or not”.

The training guidelines were written by a controversial French monsignor and psychotherapist, Tony Anatrella, who serves as a consultant to the Pontifical Council for the Family. The French monsignor is best known for championing views on “gender theory”, the controversial belief that increasing acceptance of homosexuality in western countries is creating “serious problems” for children who are being exposed to “radical notions of sexual orientation”. The guidelines reflect Anatrella’s views on homosexuality. They also downplay the seriousness of the Catholic church’s legacy of systemic child abuse.

SNAP, a US-based advocacy group for abuse said the news proved that the church had not substantially changed.  “It’s infuriating, and dangerous, that so many believe the myth that bishops are changing how they deal with abuse and that so little attention is paid when evidence to the contrary – like this disclosure by Allen – emerges,” the group said in a statement.

Papal Hypocrisy

In July, Pope Francis “apologized for the ‘grave sins’ of colonialism against the native people of the Americas.” The pope said, “I humbly ask forgiveness, not only for the offense of the church herself, but also for crimes committed against the native peoples during the so-called conquest of America,” So why then is Pope Francis canonizing Jun穩pero Serra, the embodiment of crimes committed against native peoples in California?

Pope Francis is conferring sainthood on a man whose actions led to the destruction of native peoples in California. Serra founded missions where native peoples were imprisoned and tortured, and where thousands died.

Jun穩pero Serra, a Franciscan friar who is seen as one of the founders of California, set in motion the establishment of a string of missions in the region starting in 1769 with the founding of one in Baja California. As San Francisco magazine’s Gary Kamiya recently pointed out, “Every schoolchild knows that California Indians at Serra’s missions were taught the Gospel, fed and clothed; few know that many were also whipped, imprisoned, and put in stocks.” Serra’s mission, “to convert pagan Indians into Catholic Spaniards resulted not only in the physical punishment of countless Indians, but in the death of tens of thousands of them – and, ultimately, in the eradication of their culture."

The missions were also designed to bring native peoples a new way of life “centered around farming and ranching,” the San Francisco Chronicle’s Carl Nolte recently wrote. Nolte pointed out that “By the end of Spanish and Mexican rule in 1846, [60-+ years after Serra’s death] the native population was half what it had been when Serra first saw California.”

Valentin Lopez, chairman of the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band and whose ancestors were at Mission San Juan Batista, says that “the missions were hellholes,” and “They brought suffering, destruction, death and rape,” to the natives.

“I felt betrayed,” Louise Miranda Ramirez, tribal chairwoman of the Ohlone Costanoan Esselen Nation, whose people occupied much of northern California before Serra’s arrival,explained. “The missions that Serra founded put our ancestors through things that none of us want to remember. I think that the children being locked into the missions, the whippings. … That pain hasn’t gone away.”

Steven Hackel, history professor at the University of California, Riverside, and author of a 2013 biography of Serra, said “There's no question that his goal was to radically alter Native culture, to have Indians not speak their Native languages, to practice Spanish culture, to transform Native belief patterns in ways that would make them much less Native. He really did want to eliminate many aspects of Native culture.”

Serra arrived in Spanish-held Mexico in 1749 and quickly set about working for the Inquisition, citing by name several natives who refused to convert to Christianity; they were guilty, he wrote, of “the most detestable and horrible crimes of sorcery, witchcraft and devil worship.” Serra soon gained control of the missions of Baja California, but he found that the native population had already been nearly extinguished by contact with the Spanish. Looking for fresh converts, he led expeditions up the coast into the present-day state of California, where he settled at Monterey and set up ten new missions to spread the gospel through the new land. The California missions formed a network of forced-labor camps where the once-vibrant native peoples of California were systematically reduced to mere shadows of their former selves: Under the mission system, the overall indigenous population of Southern California declined by nearly 1,000 every single year.

If they were lucky enough not to be killed by European diseases spread largely through sexual violence on the part of the Spanish, many natives at the missions sought to run away. According to Carey McWilliams in his 1945 book ‘Southern California: An Island on the Land’, the missionaries didn’t even much mind runaways, because that gave them a reason to go on fugitive-hunting expeditions to distant villages from which they could round up more natives and bring them back to the missions. “With the best theological intentions in the world,” McWilliams wrote, “the Franciscan padres eliminated Indians with the effectiveness of Nazis operating concentration camps.” Serra wrote to one governor of the territory, “That spiritual fathers should punish their sons, the Indians, with blows appears to be as old as the conquest of these kingdoms,” In the early 1780s, according to McWilliams, another governor actually filed a complaint against Serra for sanctioning the harsh treatment of native converts.

Papal supporters of Serra’s sainthood tell a different story and see him as a man who gave up everything to dedicate his life to saving souls, regardless, it should be added, of whether or not they wanted to be saved. Some defenders point to evidence that Serra was not the most sadistic Spanish colonial overlord in California at the time. Another argument in favor of Serra’s canonization is that we shouldn’t judge the misdeeds of the past according to the standards of the present. Anyone who makes this argument in regard to opposing the renaming of schools and other public sites to rescind tributes to slaveholders and white supremacists is properly labeled a racist and an apologist for the worst that humans have ever done to other humans. Should Pope Francis get a free pass to canonize a man directly responsible for the brutalization and ultimately the near-extinction of an entire people simply because it is, in some warped public-relations sense, a tribute to Hispanic Americans, a growing constituency in the Catholic Church? How absurd it would be to congratulate ourselves on the removal of the Confederate battle flag from state capitols and Walmart shelves and to permit the pope to sanctify a man complicit in, and responsible for, the eradication of entire cultures and civilizations.

 In order for candidates to be considered for sainthood, they are normally required to perform two miracles. The record shows that Serra “healed” a St. Louis nun of lupus, but with no evidence of a second recorded miracle, Pope Francis decided to waive that requirement.

Sources

1) http://www.truth-out.org/buzzflash/commentary/junipero-serra-the-franciscan-friar-who-brought-destruction-death-and-brutality-to-california-s-native-peoples-canonized-by-pope-francis

2) http://www.alternet.org/belief/why-radical-pope-about-canonize-priest-who-helped-enslave-and-murder-native-americans

When religion is murder

Last year, for example, Herbert and Catherine Schaible, members of First Century Gospel Church, were sentenced to prison in Pennsylvania for up to seven years after their son Brandon died of pneumonia without receiving medical attention. But their incarceration for third-degree murder came only because this was the second child the Schaibles had lost: A previous son died of bacterial pneumonia, also without treatment. For that they received only probation. It took two faith-based deaths before the judge finally declared, “You’ve killed two of your children … not God, not your church, not religious devotion—you.” 

A study of 172 deaths of children when medical care was withheld on religious grounds. They found that 140 of the children would have had at least a 90% likelihood of survival with medical care. Deaths of Christian Science children between 1974 and 1994 from the following causes are in CHILD’s files: 5 of meningitis, 3 of pneumonia, 2 of appendicitis, 5 of diabetes, 2 of diphtheria, 1 of measles, 8 of cancer, 1 of septicemia, 1 of a kidney infection, 1 of a bowel obstruction, and 1 of heart disease. Between 1973 and 1990, 65 Faith Assembly children are known to have died of treatable illnesses without medical care. 78 children died between 1955 and 1998 in the Followers of Christ Church in Oregon City, a church opposed to medical care. Twelve children died in an Idaho affiliate of the Followers of Christ.

In 1983 the Centers for Disease Control and the Indiana Board of Health conducted a study of Faith Assembly members, who shun all medical care including obstetrics. Pregnant women in Faith Assembly were 86 times more likely to die than other expectant mothers in Indiana. The mortality rate for Faith Assembly infants up to 28 days old was 270% higher.

The American Academy of Pediatrics has called for the repeal of all laws allowing religious exemptions.

48 states have religious exemptions from immunizations. Mississippi and West Virginia are the only states that require all children to be immunized without exception for religious belief. Sects claiming a religious exemption from immunizations have had outbreaks of polio, measles, whooping cough, and diphtheria. In 1991 there were 492 measles cases in Philadelphia among children associated with Faith Tabernacle and First Century Gospel Church, which refuse immunizations. Six children died. Christian Science schools in the St. Louis area have had four major measles outbreaks between 1985 and 1994. The first included three deaths of young people.

The majority of states have religious exemptions from metabolic testing of newborns. Such tests detect disorders that will cause mental retardation and other handicaps unless they are treated.

Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Idaho, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, and Pennsylvania have religious exemptions from prophylactic eyedrops for newborns. The eyedrops prevent blindness of infants who have been infected with venereal diseases carried by their mothers.

Delaware, Illinois, Kansas, Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Rhode Island have religious exemptions from testing children for lead-levels in their blood.

California allows public school teachers to refuse testing for tuberculosis on religious grounds. Ohio has a religious exemption from testing and treatment for tuberculosis. It lets parents use “a recognized method of religious healing” instead of medical care for a child sick with tuberculosis.

California, Colorado, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio and some other states offer religious exemptions from physical examinations of school children.

Connecticut, New Jersey, Oregon, West Virginia, and some other states have religious exemptions from hearing tests for newborns.

Oregon and Pennsylvania have religious exemptions from bicycle helmets.

Oregon has a religious exemption from Vitamin K that is given to newborns to prevent spontaneous hemorrhage.

California, Colorado, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, and Ohio have statutes excusing students with religious objections from studying about disease in school.

Delaware, Wyoming, and other states have laws with religious exemptions for both children and adults from medical examination, testing, treatment, and vaccination during public health emergencies.

B. Exemptions from providing medical care for sick children

Thirty-eight states and the District of Columbia have religious exemptions in their civil codes on child abuse or neglect, largely because of a federal government policy from 1974 to 1983 requiring states to pass such exemptions in order to get federal funding for child protection work. The states are Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. Additionally, Tennessee exempts caretakers who withhold medical care from being adjudicated as negligent if they rely instead on non-medical “remedial treatment” that is “legally recognized or legally permitted.”

Sixteen states have religious defenses to felony crimes against children: Arkansas, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Minnesota, New Jersey, Ohio, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, and Wisconsin

Fifteen states have religious defenses to misdemeanors: Alabama, Alaska, California, Colorado, Delaware, Georgia, Kansas, Maine, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, New York, South Carolina, and South Dakota.

Florida has a religious exemption only in the civil code, but the Florida Supreme Court nevertheless held that it caused confusion about criminal liability and required overturning a felony conviction of Christian Scientists for letting their daughter die of untreated diabetes. 

States with a religious defense to the most serious crimes against children include:

Idaho, Iowa, and Ohio with religious defenses to manslaughter

West Virginia with religious defenses to murder of a child and child neglect resulting in death

Arkansas with a religious defense to capital murder

The scope of the religious exemption laws varies widely. Some protect only a right to pray or a right to rely exclusively on prayer only when the illness is trivial. For example, Rhode Island’s religious defense to “cruelty to or neglect of a child” allows parents to rely on prayer, but adds that it does not “exempt a parent or guardian from having committed the offense of cruelty or neglect if the child is harmed.” Rhode Island General Laws §11-9-5(b) Delaware’s religious exemption in the civil code is only to termination of parental rights, rather than to abuse or neglect, and does not prevent courts from terminating parental rights of parents relying on faith healing when necessary to protect the child’s welfare. R57Many state laws contain ambiguities that have been interpreted variously by courts. Some church officials have advised members that the exemption laws confer the right to withhold medical care no matter how sick the child is and even that the laws were passed because legislators understood prayer to be as effective as medicine.

From here 

This Is Not Marx Whatsoever!

Socialist Party member Richard Layton continues his “crusade” against misrepresentation of Marxism, that began with his reply “No Marx”. 

This Is Not Marx Whatsoever!

by Richard Layton 

I see my old friends, Edward Martin and Mateo Pimentel, are still flogging their dead horse of a Holy Roman-Leninist Empire in their latest DV article, “The Future of Solidarity.” 

My previous DV article, “No Marx Again,” criticised them for pushing the notion of a ‘Leninist Socialist State’; where workers who supposedly ‘owned the means of production’ could ‘go on strike’ presumably against themselves for better pay and conditions! 

In their latest article, they now admit that their future ‘Marxist’ society would also incorporate both State and Government. This is strange! Doesn’t a ‘Government’ imply the existence of those being ‘governed’? And, according to rumour, didn’t Marx and Engels say something about the State ‘withering away’ and the Government being replaced by an ‘Administration of Things’?

This is because Socialism/Communism would be a true classless society where institutions such as the State would be utterly superfluous as that body exists only to regulate and enforce the rule of an elite class over a lower class.

Politics, if it’s about anything at all, should be about debate but it’s clear that Messrs Martin and Pimentel, can’t or won’t respond to criticism of their ideas.

This is compatible with my indictment of their projected ‘Socialist’ society as being a Leninist sham where criticism and opposition is not tolerated by the ruling party—in this case the U.S.A. Socialist Party—a misnomer if ever there was one!

Martin and Pimentel may like to attempt to add an air of authority to their work from their respective ivory towers by philosophising ad nauseam on their specious theories; but the fact is that their ideas are wholly without merit and are thus of little use to working people.

Take for example their quotation from St. Ambrose, ‘You are not making a gift to the poor man from your possessions but you returning what is his”. O.K., so he knows the source of all wealth–fine and dandy but the Catholic Church has spent 2000 years spinning similar platitudes about the poor to the poor–and to the wealthy but with very little effect.

And as for St. Ambrose himself, one source states that, “He has been accused of fostering persecution of Arians, Jews and Pagans”. In one case, he urged Christians to burn down a Jewish synagogue and then defied the Roman Emperor who ordered that restitution be made. Clearly the Jewish poor were of no concern to him—some Saint!

The British author, Paul Johnson, characterised Ambrose as, “an establishment figure and member of the ruling order: the prototype of the medieval prince-bishop”.

The Encyclopedia Britannica describes him as a “Janus-like figure”. Janus, of course, was the Roman god with two faces looking backwards and forwards but whose name has become synonymous with, literally, being ‘two-faced’.

St Ambrose came from minor aristocratic family of little standing which compelled him to gain the support of the poor as part of his power base. Thus he made the right noises to the poor to gain public support for his political and ecclesiastical career; rather like modern politicians who want to further their own careers and gain votes.

His apologists will tell you that he lived a very parsimonious life—but then again so did Lenin! Most leaders enjoy both power and the luxury that goes with it. Some, however, are so obsessed with power that it alone is the aphrodisiac. The ascetic is often the most obsessive of all and so it seems to have been the case with Ambrose. The only thing that Ambrose and Marx really had in common was that they both came from Trier in Germany.

Returning to the Catholic Church itself, Felicity Arbuthnot in her recent DV article, “Ziad Aziz: ‘Time is not on Our Side’” gives a good account of the two-faced nature of the Church. How it on one hand it preaches for the souls of the poor whilst on the other, firmly remaining part of the Establishment. 

Indeed it could be said that without the poor the Catholic Church could not survive. It’s no coincidence that its greatest appeal lies in those parts of the world suffering greatest poverty. Without the thoughtless acquiescence of the uninformed masses the Church would cease to exist.

Witness the situation in Ireland where its cover-up of child abuse has at long last brought the Irish people to their senses. They’re quitting in masses. The Catholic Church needs the poor like drug dealers need junkies.

The Church is the owner of fantastic wealth—visitors to the Vatican simply can’t ignore the excess of bling inside its walls—bling that American rappers would die for! Clearly all this luxury is intended to overawe the public and to make it appear that the whole shebang has other-worldly substance and authority—a trick used by the powerful over the centuries.

Martin and Pimentel also seem to be completely overawed by their own buzz-word ‘Solidarity’ by which they presumably mean unity; harmony; consensus; agreement; etc.

Yet in their own article there is a passage that concedes that the Catholic Church as an institution, “has been resistant to unionisation of their schools and hospitals”. It has further, whilst preaching tolerance and respect for human rights, “become a tower of intolerance insisting on protecting its own interests at the expense of others”.

And then to crown it all, “Although the (Catholic) Church promotes the rhetoric of solidarity and the principles of democracy… the Church remains authoritarian”. No wonder their Catholic Solidarity and Leninist State-Capitalism make such fine bed-fellows!

So what is it exactly that Messrs Martin and Pimentel are actually advocating? Unfortunately it seems to be the usual cobbled up mish-mash beloved of many Leftists that Capitalism can be made to work in the interests of those who have no capital—i.e. the working class.

It’s clear that they have no valid concept of what Marx and Engels were actually striving for—but then again they are, unfortunately, not alone. The fact that they can’t visualise a future Socialist society without the features of Capitalism, such as the State and Government, Money-Wages, Workers and Employers, Unions and Religion demonstrates the paucity of their thinking.

Take for example the Solidarity ‘egalitarian strategy’ in which we are told, “income and wealth is to be divided so that each person will have a right to an equal share, subject to limitations through abilities…” [emphasis added] My Oxford English Dictionary defines income as money. So what does, “subject to limitations through abilities” mean?

Marx said, “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need” which is a quite different animal to that being proposed by Martin and Pimentel. They seem to be saying that each person’s share will be equal–plus or minus how much their job makes them ‘worth’. In other words, professors and scientists will be ‘more equal’ than ordinary workers. Shades of Animal Farm! The reason why their society requires money-wages is to ration access to wealth—exactly as per Capitalism.

Marx envisaged a society of free access where everybody contributed to their best ability and then took what they needed according to personal circumstances. Thus a single person would take his share and a mother of five children would take her and her children’s share.

At Woolwich, in London, England, there is a free ferry that crosses the River Thames that has been running for well over a century. Pedestrians as well as motor vehicles both large and small use it to travel to both sides of the river. People don’t drive off the ferry and then turn round and drive back on for another ‘free’ ride. People just accept it. They use it “according to their needs”.

Messrs Martin and Pimentel boast that the development of their ideas has been supported by the, “inclusion of Marxist analysis” yet it’s self-evident that when it comes to Marxist economic and political thought that they simply haven’t got a clue.

Not only that but for academics to promote religion as the saviour of the working-class is risible. Science is founded on evidence and there is no evidence whatsoever to suggest that the inhabitants of our world, an insignificant speck amongst billions of galaxies in the cosmos, have the undivided attention of its alleged creator.

We’re told by some believers that this elusive and exclusive deity simply wants us to worship him—but that smacks of human pride and arrogance—as befits an entity whose existence is entirely a product of the human mind. The gap between the average person and the average ant would be an infinitesimal fraction to that between a god and humankind—yet who amongst us has the slightest interest of being worshipped by an ant? Who could be bothered at playing such an asinine game?

Aside from such nonsense, there is, however, plenty of evidence to show how religion and gods are human constructs that arose as a form of explanation for the natural and social phenomena that were not understood. And how with the advent of private property and an elite controlling most of the same, a religious elite found itself nicely placed to walk hand in glove with their political and economic cronies to maintain this convenient state of affairs.

So my advice to all readers of Dissident Voice is that of Marx himself: “Doubt everything”! Don’t believe me or Messrs Martin and Pimentel. Read Marx for yourself and then weed out all the bullshit that appears in his name!

No Marx Again!

by Richard Layton 

I note with some disappointment but no real surprise that Edward Martin and Mateo Pimentel, the authors of “Revisiting Marx and Liberalism” have not responded to my article, “No Marx!” which challenged their contention that for Marx, Socialism was the first stage of Communism.

Given that Mr Pimentel is a long-term member of S.P.U.S.A., the Socialist Party U.S.A., it’s no wonder that confusion reigns when it comes to his and his co-author’s view of Marx in respect of a future post-capitalist society.

Mr Pimentel’s Party favours, “a classless socialist society that places people’s lives under their own control… where working people own and control the means of production and can form unions and strike.”

But if workers in this classless society own and control the means of production/distribution; who can they go on strike against? Themselves?

And what if they refuse themselves better pay and conditions?!

Marx advocated a stateless, wageless, moneyless, and classless society and interchangeably referred to it as Socialism or Communism. In the S.P.U.S.A. ‘classless’ parody of the same, the workers lives are clearly not ‘under their own control.’ There’s an employer class paying money wages and determining working conditions.

It doesn’t take much imagination to figure out that the ‘bosses’ in this so-called ‘classless’ society would be the ‘People’s Commissars’ of the S.P.U.S.A. — who no doubt see themselves as the ’intellectual vanguard’ leading the dumb workers to a Leninist paradise.

What Martin and Pimentel are promoting is not Marxist Socialism/Communism but State-Capitalism masquerading as the same–as characterised by the Leninist/Stalinist regime of post-1917 Russia. In reality, the working class fighting against a privileged Party elite who control the State and who claim to be the representatives of the working class.

Lenin’s pretence that his State-Capitalist society with its secret police, labour camps, purges and Communist Party elite was ‘Marxist’ has blackened the name of genuine Socialism/ Communism forever — a bonus that the apologists for Capitalism will be forever grateful for.

But it doesn’t end there. In their latest article, “Marxist and Catholic Tradition Rejects the Inadequacies of Liberalism,” Messrs Martin and Pimentel appear to be conflating Catholicism with Marxism by claiming that the former is a force for ‘the common good’ and ‘the dignity of the human person.’

Tell that to the many children raped by Catholic Priests and mistreated by nuns. The thousands of people who’ve caught AIDS and/or become pregnant for the umpteenth time after being banned from using contraception; and those who paid Indulgences for their ‘sins.’

Tell that to the victims of the Inquisition, scientists like Galileo persecuted for telling the truth and the Jews who’ve been slandered for 2000 years. Tell that to all the people who’ve been told that Catholicism is ‘God’s love’ and if you don’t believe it, ‘you’ll go to hell’!

The Catholic Church is a monolithic organisation that has been corrupt ever since its inception. Like most religions, its supernatural myths about the world that have proved to be useful tools for social elites to maintain their privileged position and to justify to the poor, acceptance of their station in life in this world on the basis that jam will follow in the next.

Its doctrines stem from the Gentile Christianity of St Paul, who never met Jesus but who hijacked his name and invented his god status. The original Jewish sect of Jesus, who knew him as a mortal man, was an anti-Roman cult that wanted to reinforce ancient Mosaic law– and had no intention of establishing a new religion for Jews — let alone one for non-Jews. 

To further emphasise the point, there’s no evidence at all that the Disciple Peter was ever in Rome or founded the Catholic Church and became its first Pope. In the 20th-Century, bones discovered inside the Vatican were arbitrarily declared by the then Pope to be St Peter’s bones — without the slightest evidence. Similarly, the Turin Shroud was found by radiocarbon dating to be a Medieval fake. On such ‘traditions’ are its religious doctrines based!

For working people to progress to a genuine alternative to present day society, we need to get up off our knees to both gods and leaders and stand on our own two feet. We also need to reject pseudo-Marxism and fantasy-Catholicism and similar political and religious flim-flam.

On A Mission For God And Country

"That the impious presumption of legislators and rulers, civil as well as ecclesiastical, who, being themselves but fallible and uninspired men have assumed dominion over the faith of others, setting up their own opinions and modes of thinking as the only true and infallible, and as such endeavouring to impose them on others, hath established and maintained false religions over the greatest part of the world and through all time."

(2nd paragraph, Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom, composed by Thomas Jefferson in 1777, enacted into Virginia law on January 16, 1786)

Image Copyright 2015, Military Religious Freedom Foundation.
All Rights Reserved

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To read the op-ed by Michael L."Mikey" Weinstein, founder and president of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation go here

 

 

 

 

 

Verily, verily, I say unto you ...

There has always been those who sought to identify the ideals of socialism with that of Christian belief . With membership of the faithful falling (but less a drop in their bank deposits despite the pay-outs in compensation to the victims of child abuse) the present incumbent of Peter’s Throne has sought to distant his church from the spawn of Satan, those darkest most foulest demons of the Corporations and Banking. A remarkable reformist movement has seemingly sprung forth from within the Roman Church with present Pontiff issuing pronouncements condemning poverty and greed. But, still, there stands that papal encyclical, Quadragesima Anno, which contains the warning: “One cannot at the same time be a good Catholic and a true Socialist.” 

To make it very clear:

 “... any legitimate economic and social order should rest on the indisputable foundation of the right to private property. The Church has always acknowledged the natural right to property ... Christian conscience cannot admit as right a social order that denies the principle or renders impossible and useless in practice the natural right to ownership of commodities and means of production.” So sayeth, the one-time Vicar of Christ, Pope Pius XII

 The Roman Catholic Church is a mighty world institution despite Stalin’s simplistic dismissal of its power with the quip “The Pope? How many divisions does he have?” To lay bare the social roots and social function of religion is to expose it for what it really is. Which is precisely what the apologists of capitalism and all its institutions seek in every way to avoid. It is hardly surprising therefore that one of the most significant gaps in definitions of religion is the omission of the fact that religion is an institution; the fact that a religion, if it plays any role in a given society, is an organised religion. One scarcely need point out a religion which remains unorganised would not perpetuate itself. The blood of the Martyrs may be the seed that impregnated Mother Church but if it had not organised, acquired property and funds, acquired endowments for its churches and schools, made collections to carry out its extensive missionary work, how would it have followed in the footsteps of Paul and Peter? The Catholic church has adjusted itself repeatedly over the years to survive. At the same day that the Pope is condemning men for fixing their eyes on earthly goods, he is busily re-arranging his own finances and getting the Papal Vatican bank in order.

The political privileges of the churches, their freedom from taxation, their right to conduct religious schools or teach religion in the public schools, religious propaganda in the armed forces and legislatures, etc, are also not the most significant revelations of the capitalist role of the churches. The fact is that formal separation of church and state, like the formal appearance of impartiality assumed by capitalist ‘democracy’, is the most efficient form under which the churches can function in the interests of capitalism. An established church is suspect even by scarcely class-conscious workers. Under the slogan of freedom from state domination, the church performs its best work for capitalism. In any crucial situation the behaviour of the Catholic Church may be more reliably predicted by reference to its concrete interests as a political organisation than by reference to its timeless dogmas. The timeless dogmas are so flexible that the church can accommodate itself to almost any political system. Religion is the most deeply rooted of the ideologies which still play a role today. Religion has always been the form in which men have expressed the consciousness that their life was dominated by superior and incomprehensible forces. In religion was expressed the idea that there is a deep unity between Man and the world, between Man and nature, and between men and other men. Changes of belief or the setting up of new churches were forms of passionate social struggle.

The rise of early Christianity took place in historical connection with the decline of Rome which broke the traditional hold upon the mind of the masses who for their part believed that the end of the world was at hand. They confidently expected the second coming of Christ. That was their slogan for the building of a new society. But even along with that expectation of Christ’s coming the early Church tried “to heal the sick, to feed the hungry, to succor the diseased, to rescue the fallen, to visit the prisoners, to forgive the erring, to teach the ignorant...” The early Church did make an effort to create the kingdom of heaven upon earth by helping the poor and the afflicted. This mass movement itself attempted to form a new society on earth. It failed as it was bound to fail.

Dare the blog to play a Daniel? First, Francis from the Pampas has been a very vocal critic of inequality and certain aspects of capitalism; he has reformed the secrecy of the Vatican bank, admitted and apologised for sex abuse by his clergy; he tried to change attitudes towards homosexuality,]; he announced that atheists and non-Catholics can go to Heaven; he is credited with being the peace-maker between Cuba and the US and he has denounced power crazy and grasping cardinals. Francis has urged people of all religions and cultures to unite to fight modern slavery and human trafficking, saying in his first mass of 2015 that everyone has a God-given right to be free. “All of us are called [by God] to be free, all are called to be sons and daughters, and each, according to his or her own responsibilities, is called to combat modern forms of enslavement. From every people, culture and religion, let us join our forces.” Who knows perhaps the next target for his condemnation will be wage slavery.

Who would have imagined that the Bishop of Rome, the Holy Father, would have to defend himself against being labelled a Marxist.

“..If I repeated some passages from the homilies of the Church Fathers, in the second or third century, about how we must treat the poor, some would accuse me of giving a Marxist homily. ‘You are not making a gift of what is yours to the poor man, but you are giving him back what is his. You have been appropriating things that are meant to be for the common use of everyone. The earth belongs to everyone, not to the rich.’ These were St. Ambrose’s words, which Pope Paul VI used to state, in Populorum Progressio, that private property does not constitute an absolute and unconditional right for anyone, and that no one is allowed to keep for their exclusive use things superfluous to their needs, when others lack basic necessities.”

The Pope conceded that globalization has helped many people rise out of poverty, but it has also "damned many others to starve to death. It is true that global wealth is growing in absolute terms, but inequalities have also grown and new poverty arisen.”

He clarified that the Gospel does not condemn the wealthy, but the idolatry of wealth, “the idolatry that makes people indifferent to the call of the poor….this system sustains itself through a culture of waste, which I have already discussed various times. There is the politics, the sociology and even the attitude of waste. When money, instead of man, is at the center of the system, when money becomes an idol, men and women are reduced to simple instruments of a social and economic system, which is characterized, better yet dominated, by profound inequalities. So we discard whatever is not useful to this logic; it is this attitude that discards children and older people, and is now affecting the young.”

The SOYMB blog cannot find fault with the Pope’s conclusion “Questa economia uccide" – “This economy kills”

The Pope, of course, was correct with his church history. The Early Church Fathers were declaring in their sermons and writings that God had given the whole Earth to be enjoyed by all humans, which was the mainstream Christian doctrine till at least the 16th century and John Locke had to begin his book justifying private property and riches by refuting such beliefs as the following.

A comedian, Lucian of Samosata in the middle of the second century (circa AD 170?), wrote of the early Christians “ added to which, their first law giver taught them that they were all brothers, as soon as they commit the collective crime of repudiating the Greek gods, worshiping that crucified sophist himself and living by his commandments. They despise all worldly goods…. and consider them common property….”

“The use of all things that are found in this world ought to be common to all men. Only the most manifest iniquity makes one say to the other, ‘This belongs to me, that to you’. Hence the origin of contention among men.” – St. Clement.

“What thing do you call ‘yours’? What thing are you able to say is yours? From whom have you received it? You speak and act like one who upon an occasion going early to the theatre, and possessing himself without obstacle of the seats destined for the remainder of the public, pretends to oppose their entrance in due time, and to prohibit them seating themselves, arrogating to his own sole use property that is really destined to common use. And it is precisely in this manner act the rich”. – St. Basil the Great.

“Therefore if one wishes to make himself the master of every wealth, to possess it and to exclude his brothers even to the third or fourth part (generation), such a wretch is no more a brother but an inhuman tyrant, a cruel barbarian, or rather a ferocious beast of which the mouth is always open to devour for his personal use the food of the other companions.” – St. Gregory. Nic.

“Nature furnishes its wealth to all men in common. God beneficently has created all things that their enjoyment be common to all living beings, and that the earth become the common possession of all. It is Nature itself that has given birth to the right of the community, whilst it is only unjust usurpation that has created the right of private poverty.” – St. Ambrose.

“The earth of which they are born is common to all, and therefore the fruit that the earth brings forth belongs without distinction to all”. – St. Gregory the Great.

“The rich man is a thief”. – St. Chrysostom.

These people beat the Digger and religious reformer Gerrard Winstanley to it by over a thousand years. The Pope, however was less than infallible and was being a little bit disingenous in suggesting that these passages are just about how to treat the poor, rather than that the Earth and its fruits should be commonly owned.                                   

Je Suis Charlie

The newspaper and TV reporters covering the atrocity - carried out apparently to avenge a long dead ‘prophet’ who has become prone to the gags of mickey-takers and critics due to the absurdities of his followers - all emphasise the point that the right to free speech is not negotiable, and is the very essence of democracy.

And they are right of course. Ridiculous people and ridiculous ideas inevitably attract ridicule. And the most absurd idea still being bandied about in the 21st century as an answer to modern day capitalism and its problems is religion. Despite the claims from its various apologists of their moral superiority, and the insistence that they should be accepted, unchallenged and unquestioned, as examples of how we are to live our lives, they are, in fact, the socially useless remnants of a long-gone world, a world of ancient social conditions and ideas, mass ignorance and superstition. And far from providing answers to today’s problems they have nothing say, other than to tell us to put our faith in the imaginary gods and their magical powers, of an ancient era.

The fact that believers in such gods obviously consider their deities to be so weak and helpless, however, as to need their critics to be silenced by Kalashnikovs says as much about the god’s impotence as does any Charlie Hebdo cartoon.

And, while it seems clear that the intention of the attackers was to silence the critics, this has backfired. Already gatherings of outraged people protesting at the barbarity are taking place all over Europe. More moderate Muslims too, this time more than ever before, are expressing their outrage.

‘Everyone should be offended three times a week’ someone once said, ‘and twice on Sundays’. And that seems about right. There’s nothing like a bit straight talking, and a bit of offence to remind us that not everyone shares the same views. And while believers in ancient myths have every right to feel offended that their ideas are sometimes ridiculed, the rest of us reserve the right to be equally offended at religious stupidity and barbarity.

Socialist Party member

Quote of the Day

"...The tragic massacre in Paris will undoubtedly give fuel to the traditional xenophobic far-Right and the immediate danger is an increase in racism, marginalization and exclusion of people of Muslim descent in Europe and further.  We do not want to witness “anti-Muslim witch hunts” nor do we welcome the promotion of “moderate” Islamists by governments as official political partners. What is needed is a straightforward analysis of the political nature of armed Islamists: they are an extreme-Right political force, working under the guise of religion and they aim at political power. They should be combated by political means and mass mobilisation, not by giving extra privileges to any religion. Their persistent demand for the extension of blasphemy laws around the world is a real danger for all..." 

The Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain

http://ex-muslim.org.uk/2015/01/after-the-charlie-hebdo-massacre-support-those-fighting-the-religious-right/

Resurrection

Ashutosh Maharaj, was declared dead on January 29 and has been in a freezer in northern India since. Followers have insisted their spiritual leader is not dead but in a state of deep meditation, and will eventually return to lead them. The case is reminiscent of something similar that happened in eastern West Bengal state in the 1990s, when followers of another spiritual leader, Balak Brahmachari, refused to cremate him after he died, saying he would come back to life.

No more fanciful  than a man crucified to death, placed in a tomb,  and returned to life three days later.

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/asia/2014/12/indian-court-allows-dead-guru-meditate-20141215141545172717.html

How rich is the Vatican?

When Pope Francis was elected he promised to make the Catholic Church a "poor church for the poor"

Much of its assets are near impossible to value because they will never be sold off, such as its gold-laden palatial church property and priceless works of art by the likes of Michelangelo and Raphael. It also owns a global network of churches and religious buildings, many of which contain precious historical treasures, serving the world's 1.2 billion Catholics.

 What we do know is that Vatican Bank, officially titled the Institute for the Works of Religion, manages €5.9bn ($7.3bn, £4.64bn) of assets on behalf of its 17,400 customers. And it manages €700m of equity which it owns. Another titbit to emerge is that it keeps gold reserves worth over $20m with the US Federal Reserve.

Vatican City itself has a rich economy relative to its size. Though data is scarce, and the exact GDP figure is unknown, the CIA estimates Vatican City's 2011 revenue to be $308m. It only has a population of 800 people, meaning its nominal GDP per capita is $365,796 – making it the richest state on the planet by this measure.

A report in Italy's L'Espresso claims the Vatican is worth €9-10 billion (£7-8 billion). Even the figure of €9-10 billion is believed to be an under-estimate – the Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples is said to have holdings of €7 billion. London assets include shops on New Bond Street including the jewellers Bulgari and a property in St James's Square. Other international assets – funded by a huge donation by Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini as a thank you for recognising his regime – include places in Switzerland and a home belonging to former French President Francois Mitterrand.

The American Catholic church alone – which has the fourth largest follower base by country, behind Brazil, Mexico and the Philippines – spent $170bn in 2010 on things like healthcare, schools and parishes. Money flows in from individual donations from Catholics, government grants, the church's own investments and corporate donors. According to Georgetown University, the average weekly donation of an American Catholic to the church is $10. There are 85 million in North America, meaning each week the Catholic Church pulls in $850m through donations from individual Catholics.

Turning nationalism into religious hatred

An article on the Al Jazeera website offers a more insightful view of the brutal and bloody incidents taking place in Israel.

After the knife/axe attack on the Jerusalem synagogue, Netanyahu and many of Israel's leaders, including Finance Minister Yair Lapid, blamed Abbas for the attack on a synagogue in Jerusalem, slamming PA incitement and insinuating he was working with Hamas to incite violence against Israelis. Abbas has condemned Sunday's deadly attack, but his Israeli naysayers claim past comments calling on Palestinians to "defend al-Aqsa" are to blame. The terrorists who carried out the attack on the synagogue in Jerusalem have no previous security records and did not operate within the framework of any organization, Shin Bet security service chief Yoram Cohen told members of a Knesset committee after the incident. "Abbas is not interested in terror and is not inciting to terror. He's not even doing so behind closed doors," Shin Bet head Yoram Cohen told the Knesset's Foreign Affairs andDefense Committee.

According to the Shin Bet head, the central factors behind the current violence, was the murder of Palestinian teen Mohammed Abu Khdeir - who was killed by Jewish vigilante in retribution for the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teens last June - and attempts by Israeli legislators to change the status-quo on the Temple Mount. Visits by right-wing Members of Knesset and attempts to introduce legislation which would change the status quo on the flashpoint holy site were the main factors for rising tensions in East Jerusalem as it incites anger among the Palestinians.

Many in government circles have not just tolerated but actively supported a movement agitating for "Jewish prayer rights" at Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif - a sacred site to both Muslims and Jews. There has been a tendency in some quarters to see the prayer issue as a kind of harmless coexistence campaign focused on equal rights. It is not. This movement goes against a long-established status quo agreement, whereby non-Muslims can visit, but not worship ‘. Israel's housing minister, Uri Ariel, has said that he supports such a project as demolishing the Dome of the Rock mosque and building a “Third Jewish Temple”.

Aided, abetted and funded by the Israeli government, extremist settlers has been colonising swaths of East. It isn't just Jewish neighbourhoods in the occupied east that are continually expanding; settlers have also taken properties in Palestinian neighbourhoods such as Sheikh Jarrah and non-Jewish parts of the Old City - throwing Palestinian families quite literally out onto the streets. And it is the same movement that - fully supported by the government and the mayor of Jerusalem - has commandeered crucial sites.

Daniel Seidemann, an Israeli lawyer specialising in Israeli-Palestinian relations in Jerusalem, explains that the accelerating, rightist-driven changes in the city have meant that Palestinians "feel vulnerable and threatened - and they are not being paranoid. The anger is understandable and derives from serious sources".

Defining the recent conflict as a "religious war", serves a clear political purpose. It means the Israeli government can bind its cause with the "war on terror", claiming that Palestinians are just like ISIL in their motivation - a hyper-violent, hyper-fundamentalist jihadi mission. It deprives Palestinians of cause or motivation, save for just one factor: religious hatred. It implies that there is no way out and no solution; that the violence is inevitable.

Never mind that the Palestinians in Jerusalem have lived under a punitive occupation for decades. Never mind that they are blatantly treated as second-class citizens, subjected to intense surveillance, harassment and arrests (900 in East Jerusalem since July); that they routinely deal with settler violence, house demolitions, chants of "Death to Arabs," and curtailed access to religious sites. Never mind the prevailing and overriding message that their lives count less than others. For if the horrifying spate of attacks in Jerusalem are exclusively about innate hatred for Jews - well, how can anything else even matter?

Save us from Saints

Missionaries of Charity was established by Mother Teresa in 1950 and consists of over 4,500 Catholic nuns in 133 countries. There is mounting evidence against Missionaries of Charity, from a gross mismanagement of funds to a fundamentalist doctrine that justifies the unnecessary suffering of the very individuals the organization claims to be helping.

Stern magazine reported that Missionaries of Charity receives an estimated $100 million in annual revenue. In the same article, former Missionaries of Charity nun Susan Shields stated that her order in the Bronx regularly accepts cheques for upwards of $50,000. Forbes India, Britain’s Channel 4 TV and journalist Christopher Hitchens have all investigated the millions of dollars unaccounted for by Missionaries of Charity. And yet, the resources and care provided at one of its best-known facilities are horrifically and disproportionately negligible.

The dark, concrete dormitories in Prem Dan, the long-term care facility,  had rows of army-style cots lining the walls. The squat-style toilets were in a narrow room slick with water, urine and faeces. Patients wearing foot bandages soon found their dressings soaking and rank, and those unable to walk upright were forced – through a scarcity of wheelchairs and crutches – to crawl through the mess in order to relieve themselves.

The laundry washing process begins when a nun dropped the freshly soiled clothing onto the floor by the drain and brushed the largest chunks of human waste down the hole with a broom. Another nun dunked the garment in disinfectant and passed it off to a volunteer, who scrubbed it in soapy water. From there, the article was passed through two rinsing basins before being wrung out and carried to a clothesline on the roof. This was a direly insufficient method of sanitization that posed a health risk to residents and volunteers alike. Why there was no washing machine is due to the vows of the Missionaries of Charity congregation: chastity, poverty and obedience.

One woman bore over 50 finger-sized holes in her scalp, and we spent more than an hour nipping at the larvae with our tweezers as she screamed in agony. It required five more days of plucking to cease the infestation. As Sister C scrubbed and hacked away at another patient’s infections, I administered topical saline solution and iodine. A handful of male volunteers restrained patients who were sobbing and howling for their gods and their mothers.

‘Aren’t you giving them morphine?’ I asked.
The nun vehemently shook her head. ‘No. Only Diclofenac.’ which is an analgesic painkiller commonly used to treat arthritis and gout. It is not an anaesthetic and does not eliminate sensation. Yet this was Sister C’s treatment of choice for patients undergoing severe pain – despite the fact that directly across the hall was a room brimming with supplies provided by Catholic hospitals around the world. Local anaesthetic is often one of the first items donated. Sister C’s rationale, however, can be summed up by a statement made by Mother Teresa at a Washington press conference shortly before her death in 1997: ‘I think it is very beautiful for the poor to accept their lot, to share it with the passion of Christ. I think the world is being much helped by the suffering of the poor people.’ This clearly indicates that Mother Teresa and, by extension, Missionaries of Charity believe that suffering enhances holiness. It was Mother Teresa’s primary intention to serve her religion – helping others was merely the means of doing so. ‘There is always the danger that we may become only social workers… Our works are only an expression of our love for Christ,’ she told journalist Malcolm Muggeridge.

Pain management was not the only clinical area of grave concern – the hygiene standard was comparable to that in the laundry. There were no paper sheets on the examination table, leading to a risk of cross-contamination. This was especially dangerous since many of the patients suffered from HIV/AIDS, hepatitis C, typhoid and tuberculosis. The only gloves available to me were extra large, so I purchased my own at the local market. Sister C worked bare-handed – and didn’t always wash between patients. The poor maintenance of the surgery was largely due to the fact that Sister C was the only nun trained as a nurse, and was therefore extremely busy. Occasionally she had to enlist the assistance of nuns with few or no medical skills.

Taken from a personal account of working in the Kolkata mission

The Religion Bubble - Where's The Science?

A high-level commission has been convened to consider the place of religion in British public life. But the way this commission has been put together makes it part of the problem rather than promising real solutions.
Its four patrons are drawn from the great and the good, though it is hard not to smile at the earnestness with which all religious bases have been covered. We have philosopher Bhikhu Parekh; Iqbal Sacranie, the former secretary-general of the Muslim Council of Britain; Rowan Williams, until recently Archbishop of Canterbury; and Harry Woolf, formerly Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales.
When they gather, do they tell jokes that start “A priest, a rabbi and an imam walk into a bar …”?

The issue is whether this review can reach a conclusion that reflects the priorities of the general public, rather than just people of faith.
Religion is never out of the news and most of the stories out there do nothing to enhance its reputation in Britain, where an overwhelming majority of respondents to the British Social Attitudes Survey agree that religion is more likely to produce conflict than peace.
Most British people see religion as a private matter and oppose religious influence on public policy. Many have beliefs that could be described as religious, but those beliefs have little influence on their lives. Although a large number of people – particularly from ethnic minority groups – do see religion as important, the majority of the population is profoundly indifferent to the claims of traditional faith.

There is a common view that religion has made the world a more troubled place. And the highly religious are frequently depicted as ridiculous, creepy, moralising, intolerant, potentially dangerous and generally weird.
For their part, religious groups increasingly come together to make common cause against outside disdain. The Commission on Religion and Belief in British Public Life gives every appearance of being one such effort by an inter-faith organisation. It has 20 members: only great-ish and good-ish, but distinguished and serious people. Once again, though, the inter-faith theologians have created the world in their own image.
Nearly half of the members are religious professionals and nearly all of them have strong religious identities, if not beliefs. The chief executive of the British Humanist Association plays his customary part as the token free thinker, but it’s hard to shake the dispiriting sense that we are dealing with an assembly of, by and for the religiously committed.

It is completely appropriate for people whose business is faith to prepare a report on the role of religion and belief in British public life, just as it is appropriate for people who work in the pub trade to write about the role of alcohol in British life. What they cannot expect, though, is for their findings to be treated as anything other than the product of a special interest group. The commission is condemned from its conception to producing a minority report.
One of the questions posed for the commission’s public consultation is “Does Britain show equal respect for religious and non-religious beliefs and identities?” The answer is that Britain might, but the conveners of the commission clearly do not.

The composition of the panel makes it plain that they have minimal respect for indifference to religion – which is precisely what characterises a majority of the population. There is as much chance of the commission proposing to reduce the role of religion in public life as there is of the National Secular Society proposing to increase it.

Apart from its built-in partisanship, the commission also suffers from the hubris of the humanities. Practically everyone on it comes from theology, philosophy, religious studies, history or law. Expertise in the empirical social scientific study of British society is conspicuous by its near-absence.

The causes and consequences of prejudice, discrimination, inequality and injustice are critical issues that are constantly being investigated by secular scholars in sociology, politics and economics. So why is the panel so weak in these fields? The recommendations made are likely to suffer from this absence.
The commission was born in a bubble: the encapsulated community of people involved in religion. Its instigators will grumble if their report is ignored, but when that happens, they are going to have to accept a large share of the blame.

from here

Religion Usurps Pagan Custom

FIRES

  At midnight tonight, big bonfires are lit.

  Crowds gather around them.

  This night will cleanse houses and souls. Old junk and old desires, things and feelings worn out by time, are tossed into the fire to make room for the new to be born.

  From the north this custom spread all over the world. It was always a pagan holiday. Always, until the Roman Catholic Church decided tonight would be Saint John's Eve.


From Eduardo Galeano's 'Children of the Days'

The Sacred “Right to Life.”

We now know that between 1925 and 1961, almost 800 children died in Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home in Tuam, County Galway. They were buried in an unmarked plot. No burial records were kept for individual children, and we would not have known of the mass grave but for local historian Catherine Corless’ painstaking research and her determination that the deaths be acknowledged.  80 percent of babies born at Bon Secours did not make it to their first birthday. Those who managed to survive longer were raised almost as slaves and as Ireland Taoiseach (prime minister) Enda Kenny recently recognized, were treated as “... an inferior sub-species.”

The Bon Secours “mother and baby home” was more accurately a penal workhouse—one of 10 run by religious orders in Ireland. From 1922 to 1996, they incarcerated approximately 35,000 unmarried women. Those who gave birth before entering or while there had their babies forcibly removed from them.

Conditions in these so-called homes were horrific. A report from the United Nations Committee Against Torture in February noted that “girls placed in these institutions were forced to work in slavery-like conditions and were often subject to inhuman, cruel and degrading treatment as well as to physical and sexual abuse.” The U.N. account adds that “girls were deprived of their identity, of education and often of food and essential medicines and were imposed with an obligation of silence and prohibited from having any contact with the outside world.”

Two years ago, 31-year-old dentist Savita Halappanavar died “in agony” at a Galway hospital because staff were barred from conducting the abortion that would have saved her life during a catastrophic miscarriage. Indeed, the attending midwife told Halappanavar that an abortion could not be carried out because Ireland is a “Catholic country.”

Halappanavar’s death led to international outrage, but abortion remains a criminal offense in Ireland, north and south. Under the law, doctors are still prohibited from performing abortions on women whose lives are endangered in labor or are carrying a fetus with a fatal abnormality. The same restriction applies to women who have been the victims of rape or incest. In fact, the 14-year sentence for self-abortion tends to be doubled in cases of rape.

 In 2010, the European Court of Human Rights found Ireland to have violated the rights of a woman seeking a termination in Britain. It’s been estimated that from 1980 to 2012, at least 154,573 women living in Ireland traveled to England and Wales to access safe abortion services. This averages out to about 4,000 women per year. The actual number may be much higher, but stigma and discrimination impose a vow of silence. The vast majority of Irish women seeking an abortion travel alone, their pregnancy shrouded in secrecy. They receive no support or information from the government. Beyond the psychological and physical difficulty of these journeys, termination in Britain can be prohibitively expensive.

According to the Irish Family Planning Association, “women travelling from Ireland tend to have later abortions because of the need to raise significant funds, organize childcare, negotiate time off work and make travel and accommodation plans. Travelling to the UK for a surgical abortion below 14 weeks of gestation costs at least €1000 [$1,350].” This figure does not include indirect costs such as child care and loss of income. This means, of course, that the option to travel to Britain for a termination is limited to those who can afford it. Indigent women are still forced to resort to incredibly dangerous methods of self-abortion.

From an article by R籀is穩n Davis that can be read in full here 

Believe it or Not

According to Gallop, more than four in 10 Americans (42%) continue to believe that God created humans in their present form 10,000 years ago, a view that has changed little over the past three decades. Half of Americans believe humans evolved, with the majority of these saying God guided the evolutionary process. However, the percentage who say God was not involved is rising.
Some irrational religious beliefs are deeply and widely held. This is a  staggering level of ignorance of anthropology, palaeontology, geology, for such an 'educated' country. This is about pseudo-science, about religion masquerading as science, intelligent design aka creationism, and the pernicious influence it has obviously had on the American people because it says so in a book put together by humans about 2,500 years ago. And, as we know, the ignorance extends to many of those whose hands are on the levers of power.

This sort of nonsense panders to the worst form of narrow anthropocentrism, seeing one species on one planet in a vast universe as somehow special. Do we want to deny all the discoveries of cosmology, biology and so on? As if the whole world is there just for us and that all will be well if we obey the dictates of the deity we ourselves have created? Science, at its best, has opened up the world and universe to us, helped as to see ourselves as part of something much bigger than ourselves, something wonderful and mysterious.

It gets worse. More than two-thirds of Americans, according to surveys conducted for the National Science Foundation, are unable to identify DNA as the key to heredity. Nine out of 10 don’t understand radiation and what it can do the human body, while one in five adult Americans believe the sun revolves around the earth. In America, however, one third believe in the literal interpretation of the Bible, while nearly 60 percent believe the Armageddon predictions in the Book of Revelation will come true.A 2008 University of Texas study found that 25 percent of public school biology teachers believe that humans and dinosaurs inhabited the earth simultaneously.

“This level of scientific illiteracy provides fertile soil for political appeals based on sheer ignorance,” writes Susan Jacoby in The Age of American Unreason. A majority of Americans cannot name the first book of the Bible. “How can citizens understand what creationism means, or make an informed decision about whether it belongs in classrooms, if they cannot even locate the source of the creation story,” asks Jacoby.

For generations, the science curriculum in Southern states was “vetted by adults who believed in the innate inferiority of blacks and who also subscribed to fundamentalist creeds at odds with the growing body of secular scientific knowledge.” In other words, the content of education in the most backward states of the country would be determined by the most backward people.

“Suffice to say that in a society based for so long on the supremacy of the planter aristocracy and belief in the innate inferiority of blacks, there was little reason to provide decent public education for poor whites, much less blacks,” writes Jacoby. “Why bother, when just being white—even an illiterate white—made an inhabitant of the South superior to any black?”

However, there is progress albeit at a slow rate of change. The number that believe that humans evolved without the need for a God has increased from 9% to 19% in 32 years.

Heresies, Heretics and a Saint

Two short pieces from Eduardo Galeano's 'Children Of The Days' 

THE HERETICS AND THE SAINT 

This day in the year 1543 marked the end of Nicolaus Copernicus' life.

  He died as the first copies of his book, which demonstrated that the earth moved around the sun, went into circulation.

  The Church condemned the book as 'false and altogether contrary to Holy Scripture', sent the priest Giordarno Bruno to the stake for spreading its ideas, and obliged Galileo Galilei to deny he had read and believed it.

  Three and a half centuries later, the Vatican repented of roasting Giordarno Bruno alive and announced it would erect a statue of Galileo in its gardens.

  God's embassy on earth takes its time to rectify things.

  But even as the Vatican pardoned these heresies, it beatified Cardinal Inquisitor Roberto Bellarmine - Saint Robert who art in heaven - the man who charged and sentenced Bruno and Galileo.


HERESIES

  In the year 325 in the city of Nicaea, Emperor Constantine I convened the first ecumenical council of Christendom. During the three months it sat, the three hundred bishops in attendance approved a creed vital for the struggle against heresy, and decided that the word 'heresy', from the Greek hairesis, which means 'choice', from then on would mean 'error'.

  In other words, whoever freely chooses to disobey the owners of the faith is wrong.

Religious discrimination

Tony Blair, the Middle East war-mongering former prime minister turned Middle East peace envoy, has declared "radical Islam" to be the biggest threat ever, in the world. The British government has launched an inquiry into the Muslim Brotherhood, which, according to Prime Minister David Cameron is to "establish a complete picture" of the organisation. And the UK Charities Commission - headed by William Shawcross, formerly of the neo-con Henry Jackson society - has declared "Islamist extremism" to be the most "deadly threat" facing charities in England and Wales.

A UKIP candidate was suspended a few days ago, after tweeting that Muslims were the "devil's kids". That followed another UKIP candidate leaving the party "by mutual agreement" after he compared Islam to the Third Reich - and also said British comedian Lenny Henry should "emigrate to a Black country". A UKIP candidate for Oldham, greater Manchester suggested on her Facebook page that Britain should "ban Islam and knock down all the mosques". A UKIP member of the Europeans parliament proposed that British Muslims sign a "declaration denouncing parts of the Quran", as if the Old Testament and even the New Testament is not full of despicable content

A steady drip-feeding of politically driven propaganda over Islam has had a contagious effect in the UK. It has  placed the entire Muslim population of Britain - political or not - to be perceived as a "problem" community.

The Muslim Brotherhood power-sharing Ennahda party in Tunisia is of course still fine - but then, so are Muslim Brotherhood rebels in Libya, whom the Brits helped overthrow Gaddafi in 2011, and the Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated rebels in Syria, whom Britain also backs. Is it really too much to ask of our political leaders to at least make sense and be consistent? The  investigation ordered by Cameron is thought to be intended mostly to appease allies - Saudi Arabia and other Gulf autocratic monarchies that hate the idea of democratically-elected theocracy which could threaten their existence.

It must be asked, who, for instance, would attempt politically to associate all British Jewry with the violent fanaticism of Zionist settlers in the occupied West Bank or demand UK's practising Buddhists that they must denounce Buddhist violence in Burma daily, before being viewed  as normal moderate members of society?

Adapted from Al Jazeera

Brunei and the Brits

The absolute monarch, who also serves as the country’s prime minister, the Sultan of Brunei, one of the world’s wealthiest rulers and a close ally of Britain, is introducing to his country a system of Islamic law with punishments that include flogging, the dismemberment of limbs and stoning to death. Offences include insulting the Prophet Mohamed, drinking alcohol, getting pregnant outside of marriage and “sodomy”. The latter will be punishable by stoning.

The decision to introduce sharia and reintroduce the death penalty has been condemned by NGOs and legal rights campaigners, who say the new rules will breach international laws. It has also triggered alarm among some of Brunei’s non-Muslim communities, who will also be subject to some of the rulings. The International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) said it deplored the new rules, adding that, if implemented, they would lead to serious human rights violations.

There are around 30,000 Filipino citizens in Brunei, many of them Catholic, and the Philippine ambassador to Brunei, Nestor Ochoa, recently held a meeting at which he warned his countrymen about the implications of the new laws. Father Robert Leong, a Catholic priest in Brunei, said there were concerns that baptisms of newborn babies could breach the new rules, which prohibit the “propagation of religion other than Islam to a Muslim or a person having no religion”.

 A British regiment, 1,000-strong the Royal Gurkhas Rifles, in the country, – the last surviving UK regiment stationed in East Asia – is paid for entirely by the Sultan, who is said to be worth £24bn and lives in a 1,788-room palace. The British Army also runs a jungle warfare training school.  Royal Dutch Shell, an Anglo-Dutch multinational, also runs a major operation there as a joint venture with the Brunei government.

The UK Department for Business, Innovation and Skills said Brunei invested “a significant proportion of the country’s wealth through the City of London”. It said the British Armed Forces garrison was a linchpin of  UK-Brunei relations. “The Government’s goal is to retain a dominant position in these key areas, and to maximise our share of influence as Brunei diversifies its economy and puts increasing emphasis on regional partners like Asean and China,” it said. “As it does so, Brunei will also provide a UK-friendly window into the key growth area of South-east Asia.”

From here