Because Satan can only be so many places at once, you see.
“The devil tempts everyone — people in politics, in economics, in sport. And naturally, he tempts, above all, the religious leaders, so you shouldn’t be surprised if the devil tempts those in the Vatican. That’s his job.”
Father Gabriele Amorth isn’t speaking metaphorically when he says that. The 85-year-old priest means people can be tempted and literally possessed by Satan.
(…)
And as the chief exorcist of the Roman Catholic Church, it’s his job to expel the devil when someone is possessed. Amorth, the founder of the International Association of Exorcists, has performed more than 70,000 exorcisms in his career, he estimates.
But there is a difference between possession — where the devil takes hold of someone’s body and actions — and temptation, where Satan lures a person into doing evil, he said.
As a child abuse scandal sweeps across Europe, with accusations being made against priests in Ireland, Germany, Austria and the Netherlands, Amorth said the pedophiles are tempted, not possessed.
He has never done an exorcism on a child molester, he said.
“I have carried out exorcisms on some priests who had been molested by the devil,” he said, without going into details.
“But cases of pedophilia exorcised, no. … Pedophiles are not possessed by the devil, they are tempted by the devil,” he said.
Setting aside the utterly insane idea that people’s bodies are possessed or inhabited by invisible evil spirits for just a moment…
So, this exorcist (oh, to be paid throughout life for doing nothing) has done his monkey business on priests who have been “molested by the devil”?
I wasn’t aware the devil was into guys.
Any-hoo, I think it’s great that the Roman Catholic Church continues to talk about these things, because they just keep saying crazier and crazier things! And none of it is moving an inch toward exculpating the thugs! As far as I can see, it’s having the opposite effect, and each day and each new grotesque revelation are doing their part to continue chipping away at the moral authority of the Catholic Church, and the faster that happens, the better off the world will be.
It apparently extends all the way up to Pope Hitlerpants himself.
As Joe Sudbay said when he posted this, I’m sure Bill Donohue will be wetting his garanimals in Jon Stewart’s general direction before the evening, if he isn’t already.
More on the disgusting state of the Catholic Church directly below.
On a personal note, sorry blogging is light right now! Things are a bit crazy, but I promise I’ll catch up soon!
The Boston Globe reports today that state officials stopped a United Church of Christ volunteer program from distributing soup to homeless people on the streets after diners got sick eating food that had been prepared in volunteers’ home kitchens.
The church swiftly acknowledged its responsibility to the public, and its obligation under the law, to ensure that food is prepared in safe, licensed kitchens.
Now let’s contrast the UCC’s law-abiding response to the reactions of antigay activist Maggie Gallagher, the Roman Catholic Church, and the ex-gay movement, when their churches are urged to protect the public health and obey the law like everyone else.
1. When the same state, Massachusetts, last week considered legislation to regulate the medical practice of circumcision, Gallagher lost her nerve and proclaimed that Jews were being threatened with religious persecution — a facetious claim, largely unsupported by the state’s Jews, that merely served as a token effort by Gallagher to drag Jews into her holier-than-thou war against the religious freedom of sexual minorities.
2. After social-justice advocated urged the Pope to condemn antigay genocide in Uganda — out of respect for international law, public health, and common human decency — the Pope did the opposite last week:
…In his address to the bishops of Uganda last Friday, Benedict XVI made no reference to the anti-gay bill or the international outcry surrounding it.
Instead he called on the bishops to “encourage the Catholics of Uganda to appreciate fully the sacrament of marriage in its unity and indissolubility, and the sacred right to life” — the latter a reference to abortion. He also urged them “to resist the seduction of a materialistic culture of individualism which has taken root in so many countries” — a reference to concerns about an encroaching cultural influence from Europe and North America.
Far worse than the UCC’s well-intentioned serving of spoiled food, the Roman Catholic Church in Uganda has greased the wheels of a church-state death machine: A barbaric apparatus to sweep up thousands of LGBT people and their relatives for indiscriminate mass execution at the gallows. The Pope’s naked repudiation of life (when it isn’t heterosexual and preferably Catholic) is an act of negligent homicide against Ugandan minorities. The Pope’s silent affirmation of genocide also plainly repudiates international law regarding nation-states’ obligations to stop genocide, and finally the Pope’s ongoing promotion of abstinence-only public policy promises to accelerate the growing loss of human life that has occurred since conservatives began to silence Uganda’s comprehensive education, prevention, and treatment programs for HIV/AIDS in 2003.
3. Finally, when Tennessee intervened to stop youth sexual abuse and negligent treatment at Exodus’ flagship Love In Action residential facility back in 2007, Exodus responded by declaring that so-called “ministries” enjoy a blanket religious freedom to (mis)treat children — under the guise of phony pseudo-medical marketing — as their religion dictates. In the end, to the chagrin of concerned regulators, Tennessee’s conservative Baptist politicians agreed: Where the potential for medical malpractice and sexual abuse is concerned, churches are largely above the law.
What is it about the Christian Right family of political organizations that prompts them to defy law and health in order to preserve the same — and to deny religious freedom to all but themselves?
There is a stark difference between churches that obey humanitarian law, serve the public good, and respect public health — versus those that accumulate power by repudiating law, undermining human rights, sickening the public, and deliberately harming their chosen enemies.
One side believes that it should act on the assumption that God is love, while the other acts on the assumption that God is fear, sadism, and avarice.
In a harsh rebuke of the increasingly extreme United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, a major Catholic health group backed the Senate’s health-care compromise on abortion. The Catholic Health Association said that the most important thing that Congress could do was pass a bill that would cover the nation’s uninsured.
Needless to say, the uncompromising, obstinate Bishops proclaimed the compromise “morally unacceptable.
I suppose the Bishops believe that leaving people uninsured to die in the cold in order to use health reform as a platform for abortion politics is the moral and ethical route.
The current crop of conservative Bishops appear hardhearted and clueless to the concerns of real people who desperately need help. They seem to believe that priestly polemics will solve the health care problem in this country.
“The Catholic Health Association does not represent the teaching of the Catholic Church on the non-negotiable defense of innocent life,” the conservative Catholic activist Deal Hudson said in a statement, calling the association’s move “utterly offensive.”
The difference between The Catholic Health Association and ideologues like Hudson, is that the hospitals actually deal with uninsured sick people. Well, Hudson and his ilk also deal with sick people – but in their case, a good shrink and medication is all that is needed.
Good for the Catholic Health Association for standing up to the extremists in the Catholic Church and the Republican Party.
In other Catholic News:
The Associated Press reports that two more Roman Catholic bishops in Ireland have resigned in the wake of a damning investigation into decades of church cover-up of child abuse in the Dublin Archdiocese.
The bishops, Eamonn Walsh and Ray Field, offered an apology to child-abuse victims as they announced their resignations during Christmas Mass on Friday. Priests read the statement to worshipers throughout the archdiocese, home to a quarter of Ireland’s 4 million Catholics.
In his Christmas sermon, Archbishop Martin said the church for too long had placed its self-interest above the rights of its parishioners, particularly innocent children. “It has been a painful year,” he told worshipers. “But the church today may well be a better and safer place than was the church of 25 years ago — when all looked well, but where deep shadows were kept buried.”
Of course, we know this is nonsense. Until the Catholic Church does the following, there will be abuse:
1) Allow openly gay, sexually active priests. Doing so will attract psycho-sexually healthy gay men who will not use the priesthood to hide their sexuality – and in many cases use their power to take advantage of the young and vulnerable. Out gay priests will look for age-appropriate partners.
2) Allow women into the priesthood. This would immediately break up the good old closet boys network.
3) Allow married heterosexual priests. Just as it is imperative to attract sexually mature gay people, it is just as key to attract sexually healthy heterosexuals. Having a team of immature, pent-up priests is a recipe for disaster.
Until these rule changes are made, the Vatican is just spinning us.
A feature article in this week’s New York Times Magazine refers to Princeton professor Robert P. George as the “intellectual architect” of the extreme right. This is hardly an honor, considering the main competition for “Values Valedictorian” is Sarah Palin, Ann Coulter and Mike Huckabee. One also has to consider admiration comes from the likes of George W. Bush and FOX instigator Glenn Beck, who calls George “one of the biggest brains in America.”
George’s primary accomplishment has been denying gay couples the right to marry, by forming an unholy political union between conservative Catholics, like himself, and Evangelical Christians. He is the chairman of The National Organization for Marriage, the group that most recently worked to strip marriage rights from LGBT couples in Maine.
Quite frankly, I’m hardly impressed with George’s cognitive abilities. If one looks at the numbers in Maine, his allegedly intellectual arguments against same-sex marriage failed miserably in cosmopolitan Portland and in Orono, home of The University of Maine. His primary talent, it seems, is to trick the unschooled and easily fooled. Given this reality, George is more back woods propagandist than deep professorial thinker.
Indeed, one of the simplest ways to succeed in America is to rabble rouse and scapegoat. It takes no brains to peddle belligerence and play the gay card by pandering to people not playing with a full deck. George exploited an undereducated constituency and fed them red meat, which is no more than a cheap shortcut for those incapable of the more difficult task of bringing Americans together. In a diverse nation paradoxically frightened by diversity, demagogues such as George are a dime a dozen and unworthy of praise.
What George offers is sophistry disguised as scholarship. For example, his opposition to gay people having sex or marrying rests on his version of “natural law”, allegedly based on “practical reason.” In the Times Magazine article, Philadelphia Cardinal Justin Rigali parrots George’s idea of “natural law” at a press conference, with George at his side, cheering on his protégé.
“Sexual relations outside the marital bond are contrary not only to the will of God but to the good of man,” said Rigali. “Indeed they are contrary to the will of God precisely because they are against the good of man.”
The “good” of which men (and women) might Rigali and George be referring to?
Is it the teenage boys who were molested in the Catholic Church because such conservative ideologues insisted on turning gay men into sexually repressed and emotionally stunted shells and then placing them in the priesthood?
Is it “good” for the gay youths who commit suicide in disproportionate numbers because men like George and Rigali tell them their love is inferior?
Perhaps, they can illuminate how such “practical reason” was “good” for Welsh rugby legend Gareth Thomas who came out of the closet this weekend after hiding his sexual orientation for two decades.
“Sometimes I felt so alone and depressed,” said Thomas. “I’ve stood on so many cliff edges. I used to go to the cliffs overlooking the beach near our cottage in St Brides Major and just think about jumping off and ending it all…I was like a ticking bomb. I thought I could suppress it, keep it locked away in some dark corner of myself, but I couldn’t. It was who I was, and I just couldn’t ignore it any more.”
Maybe George can explain how his philosophy was somehow “good” for Gareth’s wife Jenna, who is about to be divorced?
If “practical reason” has proven one thing, it has shown the closet, particularly for the Catholic Church, to be destructive on so many levels. George has demonstrably failed to articulate how openly gay people harm heterosexuals or how living a lie helps homosexuals be more productive members of society. His entire presentation is a ruse meant to rally the rubes.
Interestingly, George believes in restricting marriage because, in his view, only a husband and wife can experience, “comprehensive unity” and become a “one-flesh union.” He blatantly ignores that millions of people can achieve this state only through homosexual relations. By forcing GLBT people to conform to his views and presumably marry the opposite sex, he is creating the conditions to achieve the polar opposite of what he claims is necessary for a healthy marriage.
George is equally disingenuous in claiming that marriage is based on procreation. These days, the vast majority of people marry for love. Many couples choose not to have children, while others are unable to. To suggest otherwise is to proffer an incoherent and intellectually dishonest view of modern marriage.
George is an intellectual lightweight without an original idea in his head. His claim to fame is organizing like-minded conservatives and providing a veneer of education to mask his goal of discrimination. This is not the pride of Princeton, but a paean to prejudice.
The Roman Catholic Diocese of Bridgeport has acknowledged in court papers that it documented 32 accusations of sexual abuse of children by priests associated with a parish here over 40 years.
The diocese made the admission last week in contesting a lawsuit filed by the estate of Michael Powel, who died last year. Mr. Powel had claimed that he was sexually abused at St. Theresa’s Parish in Trumbull between 1968, when he was 9, and 1972, when he was 13.
However, while the diocese admits the abuse, it refuses to accept responsibility — and it is seeking to suppress proof of the abuse:
The diocese is contesting a request from Mr. Powel’s lawyers to turn over all documents regarding sexual abuse by priests at the parish. In its filing in Superior Court in Waterbury, the diocese said it had compiled 126 boxes of documents and files detailing 32 accusations of abuse by eight priests at St. Theresa’s. …
Mr. Powel’s lawyers said that the motion by the diocese was a “bait-and-switch” to avoid producing documents by Wednesday, a date previously agreed upon to provide discovery materials.
The Diocese of Bridgeport is one of 50 dioceses and bishops that donated a total of $550,000 to undermine marriage for same-sex couples in Maine, even as parishes and church charity programs back home are closing for lack of funding.
Keep repeating this until the hypocrite walks away, head bowed in shame.
As far as I know, there has never been a huge, multi-decade scandal of gay activists molesting children. No GLBT community centers raided and shuttered. No billion dollar lawsuits against gay bars for abusing children.
Sure, one can always find a rotten apple, but the GLBT barrel – for the most-part – is stocked with the organic, red, shiny, healthy variety.
The same cannot be said of the Roman Catholic Church.
According to a new report released today that was ordered by Ireland’s government, Catholic leaders in Dublin, in collusion with the police, spent decades protecting and covering up the illegal, sinful behavior of pedophile priests.
What went on – for decades – was so incredibly sick and downright evil, that it borders on satanic. Dublin’s current Archbishop, Diarmuid Martin, said he felt deep shame and sorrow for how previous archbishops handled the child abuse.
Today’s 720-page report focused on why church leaders in the Dublin Archdiocese did not tell police about a single abuse complaint against a priest until 1995. Yet, there had been at been at least 100 parish priests who had sexually molested children since 1940. Those files had remained locked in the Dublin archbishop’s private vault.
The investigators also uncovered a paper trail documenting the church’s clandestine insurance policy, taken out in 1987, to cover potential lawsuits. Dublin church leaders publicly denied the existence of the problem for a decade afterward but since the mid-1990s have paid out more than $15 million in settlements.
The report cited documents showing how church officials learned about some cases only when Catholic police received complaints from children or their parents, but handed the investigation back to church leaders so they could engage in cover-ups.
It is hard to believe, but this high level of pious pathology, ethical corruption and sin occurred under the “leadership” of THREE Dublin archbishops: John Charles McQuaid (1940-72), Dermot Ryan (1972-84) and Kevin McNamara (1985-87).
The commission found that these moral luminaries eschewed public scandals by shuffling the abusers from parish to parish and overseas to U.S. churches – where no doubt a few of these heinous hypocrites are still loudly opposing the freedom to marry for gay couples.
Seriously, I refuse to hear lectures on wholesome values and the meaning of family from anyone affiliated with a church that engaged in such shocking and outrageous behavior. The Catholic Church has, indeed, lost its right to discuss such issues and expect thinking people to keep a straight face.
Just to reiterate, the Bishop’s and Archbishop’s have zero credibility to even discuss my healthy relationship. At least my boyfriend isn’t an altar boy.
My advice to these priests is to take their condemnation of my relationship and lock it in a private vault in the Archdiocese, along with the secret records of rampant child abuse.
Finally, I want to make it abundantly clear that this is not an attack on the millions of Catholics who are good people and oppose the handling of these child abuse cases. There are also many Catholics who support equality for all people, including a gay couples’ right to marry. This is not meant for the wonderful, charitable people who have clothed the naked, cared for the sick and fed the hungry.
However, the church hierarchy has surrendered its high ground on moral issues and must work to regain the respectability and trust it has clearly lost. Considering the behavior it has practiced, it certainly has no right to preach to those of us who have obeyed the law.
Religious Activists Claim to be Above the Law and Express Desire to Force All Americans To Obey Sectarian Church Rules, Says TWO
NEW YORK – Truth Wins Out (TWO) condemned a theocratic anti-gay manifesto that seeks to foist compulsory Christianity on the nation, at the expense of basic liberty, pluralism and freedom. The so-called “Manhattan Declaration” was signed by 145 fundamentalist, evangelical, Catholic and Orthodox Christian activists, who claimed they were above the law and would refuse to obey state rules unless they were in alignment with their sectarian church beliefs.
“This is a disturbing call for anarchy from a group of radical clerics and activists who believe they don’t have play by the same rules as other taxpaying Americans,” said Truth Wins Out’s Executive Director Wayne Besen. “We call on all Americans who value a free society to stand up and reject this theocratic and intolerant manifesto.”
“It is heartbreaking that these so-called Christians have elevated bigotry to be the defining aspect of the religious experience,” said Rev. JR Finney, pastor of Covenant Community Church in Birmingham, Ala. “These churches are uniting by dividing this country and making a mockery of the rule of law.”
The manifesto was unveiled today at the National Press Club in Washington, DC. Spearheading the effort is convicted Watergate felon Chuck Colson (pictured above), who runs Prison Fellowship ministries. The activists at the press conference signed a declaration proclaiming they will not obey or comply with laws that they falsely claim could be used to force their institutions to partake in abortions, or to bless or in any way recognize same-sex couples.
“We pledge to each other, and to our fellow believers, that no power on earth, be it cultural or political, will intimidate us into silence or acquiescence,” reads the manifesto.
“In naming this manifesto, the far right makes great use of symbolism,” said TWO’s Besen. “We believe they have chosen to co-opt the ‘Manhattan Project’ and the ‘Declaration of Independence’. We must pay attention when a powerful group of clerics plans to go nuclear on American values, spending significant political and financial capital to impose their narrow religious beliefs on society.”
Truth Wins Out is a non-profit organization that counters anti-gay misinformation, fights religious extremism exposes the “ex-gay” myth and educates America about the lives of GLBT people.
Here in Rhode Island, even the state’s most liberal critics of the Republican Party were a bit surprised yesterday when the state’s Republican governor, Donald Carcieri, vetoed legislation allowing LGBT couples to make funeral arrangements for loved ones.
Despite being the leader of a fairly liberal state, Carcieri pandered to the most extreme of conservative Catholic donors and went out of his way to accuse gay couples of destroying traditional marriage.
“This bill represents a disturbing trend over the past few years of the incremental erosion of the principles surrounding traditional marriage, which is not the preferred way to approach this issue.
“If the General Assembly believes it would like to address the issue of domestic partnerships, it should place the issue on the ballot and let the people of the State of Rhode Island decide,” he wrote in a letter to lawmakers that was quoted by The Providence Journal.
Carcieri’s attitude has long been echoed by Christian Right organizations such as Exodus International, which strives to undermine the constitutional rights of LGBT couples by any means necessary: Opposition to marriage equality, opposition to civil unions, opposition to equal protection under existing hate-crime and discrimination laws, and opposition to equal protection under anti-bullying programs. Like Carcieri, Exodus boasts of having gay family members and friends, as if that (illogically) excuses the indecency and brutality of their antigay policies.
Carcieri was already unpopular even among some Republicans due to his pandering to Rhode Island’s non-existent antigay evangelicals and his inept destruction of the state’s finances. Carcieri fled this predominantly Catholic state briefly last month to seek support from a Massachusetts affiliate of Focus on the Family. Yesterday, Carcieri reinforced widespread disenchantment with his gubernatorial incompetence when he also vetoed a bill that would have prevented the governor from selling U.S. senate seats to the highest bidder, another bill that would promote green jobs in a state facing 14 percent unemployment, and yet another bill that would (gasp!) require lenders to give borrowers advance notice that they’ve been foreclosed.
Carcieri sees his future happening outside Rhode Island, somewhere in the vicinity of the Know-Nothing Sarah Palin-Rush Limbaugh-Tony Perkins celebrity circuit. But if he thinks that crowd has room for yet another sixtyish white male budget-busting talking head, he may wish to rethink.
Exodus International already is struggling with the same problem: How to become ever-more famous by becoming increasingly extreme in a crowd of fame-seekers.
Exodus has been playing that political game with the Christian Right a bit longer than Gov. Carcieri.
In 2003, Exodus spokesman Randy Thomas cozied up with his backers among the Christian Right when he condemned the U.S. Supreme Court’s legalization of sodomy, telling Christianity Today:
“This ruling gives validity to the gay community,” Thomas said. In addition to potentially redefining the family, it further solidifies their position as a political and social force.”
In 2005, Exodus involuntarily detained two gay youths — Zach Stark and Lance Carroll — in its Tennessee ex-gay boot camp. That made great headlines, telegraphing to the Christian Right that Exodus could be as brutal and righteous as anyone. Randy Thomas later borrowed a tactic from the same Christian Right by telling a Big Lie while counting upon public amnesia: “I and everyone I know, have no desire to force others into our line of thinking.” Exodus continues to detain youths and young adults like Bryce Thompson to this day, incommunicado and without legal aid or a patient’s bill of rights.
In 2006, Randy Thomas and Exodus friend Dawn Vedeto condemned a New Hampshire measure to afford that state’s LGBT couples some basic medical and financial options, saying that they were “saddened” because “as same sex marriage or any other sin becomes more widely accepted, those that are truly looking for healing and wholeness can become more discouraged than ever. Healing is possible, I am a living example of that, but I am sure most of those who live in New England and struggle with same sex attraction don’t know that.”
In other words, it seems, LGBT couples who wish to make medical or financial arrangements should be treated by courts and government offices like sinners, not citizens of the United States — and furthermore, apparently, New England should be treated like a foreign country to be ethnically cleansed by righteous conquistadors from the south.
Also in 2006, Exodus affirmed a court ruling that it is not the role of courts to uphold constitutional rights, but merely to interpret laws — no matter how unconstitutional those laws are. Randy Thomas — who spent much of that election year cheerleading for the GOP — described the constitutional rights of LGBT persons as “obvious degradation of our society.”
Since 2007, Exodus has gradually assumed control of the Christian Right’s “Day of Truth,” a campaign Exodus and preacher Ken Hutcherson to shout down and silence opponents of antigay bullying in public schools.
This year, Exodus board member Don Schmierer co-keynoted the launch conference for a campaign of antigay vigilantism and execution in Uganda. He told Ugandan parents that they were to blame for their adult children’s homosexuality. He also stood alongside one U.S. ex-gay activist who accused the world’s homosexuals of being responsible for the Jewish Holocaust and the Rwandan genocide, another U.S. ex-gay activist who uses magic to cure homosexuality, and a Ugandan ex-gay activist who declared that his country’s LGBT citizens were all pedophiles for whom life imprisonment was much too lenient.
In the race toward hatred, what lies next for people like Carcieri and his friends at Exodus and across the Christian Right?
Pope’s Effort To Unite Conservatives By Promoting Discrimination Is Divisive, Says TWO
Truth Wins Out today condemned the Vatican’s effort to steal conservative members of the Anglican Church by promising that Rome will remain hostile against women and gay people. In his naked appeal to prejudice, the Pope solidified his reputation as a divisive figure that is out of touch with modern society, said TWO.
“The Vatican’s efforts to unite conservatives through ‘The Dogma of Discrimination’ is disgraceful,” “said Wayne Besen, Truth Wins Out’s Executive Director. “Bonding through bigotry against women and gay people seems to be the Vatican’s strategy to lure disaffected Anglicans. The Catholic Church is defining itself by who it stands against, rather than the principles it stands for.”
In a divisive move that will likely set back relations between Anglicans and Roman Catholics, Pope Benedict XVI ordered the Vatican to create a new plan to incorporate Anglicans and enable the faith’s married priests to transition into Catholic clerics.
Rome’s opportunistic recruitment plan is in response to fissures in the Anglican Church over allowing gay bishops and ordaining women. In the 1990’s social conservatives were angered when the Anglican Church allowed women to become clergy. They went ballistic in 2003 when openly gay V. Gene Robinson was selected as Bishop of New Hampshire. Since then, conservative Episcopal factions in America – egged on by anti-gay peers in developing countries – have threatened to bolt and take every bit of property that isn’t bolted down to the church floor. During this crucial time period, Rowan Williams, (Pictured Right) Archbishop of Canterbury, refused to take a firm stand against discrimination, while also failing to placate conservatives.
“The feckless and ineffectual leadership of Rowan Williams opened to door for the Vatican’s unseemly power grab,” said TWO’s Besen. “When one stands for nothing, the void is always filled by those with a more lucid vision. At an historic time when the Anglican Church needed a leader, it got a lemming, and so it is not surprising that the Pope moved to fill the leadership vacuum.”
Despite being the leader of a fairly liberal state, Carcieri pandered to the most extreme of conservative Catholic donors and went out of his way to accuse gay couples of destroying traditional marriage.
