As part of its standing Crisis-of-Faith Response Plan, the Church has moved quickly and aggressively to assign blame to the root cause of priestly perversion—Satan. Teams of Guilt Deflection Specialists have fanned out across the airwaves to echo Vatican Chief Exorcist Father Gabriele Amorth’s dramatic revelation that “the Devil is at work inside the Vatican.”
Meanwhile, Pope Benedict himself has assumed a lead role in marshaling the full force of Ecclesiastical Bureaucratic Dithering as part of an orchestrated effort to make this existential threat to the Church’s Moral Authority “go away”:
He has promised to write a letter soon to faithful in Ireland about decades of systematic abuse in church-run schools, orphanages and other institutions in that predominantly Roman Catholic nation.
The Archdiocese of Munich and Freising, where Benedict served as archbishop from 1977 to 1982, says that a working group, established last month after allegations of abuse in a church-run school, would be expanded to include an external, independent legal office.
No offense to Catholics or Catholicism, but until the Vatican drops the “few bad apples” defense and owns up to the fact that it has a serious systemic problem, videos like this one are going to continue to be funny…if only in a sad and deeply troubling way. Not even the Bishop of Rome owns a rug big enough to sweep this under.
Good morning, and I do hope you remembered to set your clocks back 1 hour.*
As is often the case in times of rapid momentous change, Twitter has stepped up to the mark in the face of these developments you may already have heard about:
It’s been a brawl for years, this education culture war that seems to take on a particularly vicious turn in the heart of Texas. The latest and most important round, a drastic revision of the social studies curriculum standards to put a conservative spin on history and economics textbooks, was given preliminary approval after a series of heated meetings of the Texas Board of Education that didn’t do much to improve the image of the nation’s second largest state as a sometimes small-minded political and educational backwater.
In a matter of days last week in Austin, the majority of the 15-member board, insisting they were only trying to offset liberal bias in textbooks, questioned Darwin’s theory of evolution and the constitutional principle of separation of church and state; debated hip-hop and genocide in Darfur; deleted Albert Einstein and Thomas Alva Edison from textbooks; emphasized Christian teachings and fundamentalist values; adopted conservative articles of faith like American exceptionalism; promoted right-wing leaders and organizations like Phyllis Schlafly and the National Rifle Association; and refused to give adequate attention to Hispanic and African American contributions to U.S. and Texas history.
Some of you may remember when we wrote about the Florida case of a juiced-up musclehead with anger management issues beating down a Greek Orthodox priest with a tire iron because he claimed he was a genital-grabbing terrorist. Let’s just say it didn’t end the way we were hoping that it would. What a travesty.
A lot of folks enjoyed our last Fernwood 2 Night post, so here’s one of the show’s more controversial (and very funny) bits, freshly uploaded to YouTube, from this hard-to-find, grossly underrated 70’s sitcom starring Martin Mull and Fred Willard.
The issue is that you suggested Tiger should abandon his identified Buddhist religious beliefs in favor of Christianity because Christianity is apparently superior in your viewpoint.
Hume, a Fox News analyst, told CNSNews.com: “There is a double standard. If I had said, for example, that what Tiger Woods needed to do was become more deeply engaged in his Buddhist faith or to adopt the ideas of Hinduism, which I think would be of great spiritual value to him, I doubt anybody would have said anything.”
People probably wouldn’t have said much if you had suggested that Tiger become more deeply engaged in his Buddhist faith. But THAT’S NOT WHAT YOU SAID. You said he SHOULDN’T BE A BUDDHIST AT ALL. Instead he should be a CHRISTIAN! Because Christians are just, you know, better. More forgiving and stuff. Which is, like, insulting to people of the Buddhist faith and indeed insulting to anyone who believes that people should be allowed to decide for themselves what faith to embrace IF ANY!!
A “mentally unstable” woman jumped the ropes at St. Peter’s Basilica and dragged the 82-year-old Pope Benedict to the floor at tonight’s Christmas Mass. He was reported to be unhurt, and proceeded with the ceremony.
Cell-phone footage of the attack is here, and it’s pretty shocking.
According to the Prophecies of St. Malachy, there’s only one more Pope after Benedict. Obviously, some people are way too anxious to find out if Malachy was right…and the CBS report raises so many doubts about Benedict’s health you’d think they’ve already started an office pool.
I’m no fan of this Pope or Popes in general, but I really wish that Teh Crazy would stay home and chill at least one night a year. The whole world needs to grab a juice box and a Fruit Roll-Up, and take a time-out on the nap mat. This handbasket is going to Hell plenty fast already.
I didn’t realize that FreethinkersBrightsSmarter Than Everybody Elses nonbelievers had their own holiday.
HumanLight presents an alternative reason to celebrate: a Humanist’s vision of a good future. It is a future in which all people can identify with each other, behave with the highest moral standards, and work together toward a happy, just and peaceful world.
PARTAY!!!
It’s worth clicking over just for the slideshow. Unless you suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder, in which case it’ll send you running to the tub with a toaster under your arm.
I doubt I’ll ever waver in my belief that religion’s been a net negative for society, but I will say this: atheism has yet to provide mankind with a yearly opportunity to fuck drunken coworkers. Advantage: space ghost.
Excuse the pun, but holy shit! Michele Bachmann is just praying the shit out of everything! This is the scariest video you will ever see with her in it. Get ready to be horrified.
MORE: The raspy basketcase who introduces Bachmann at the Family Research Council “PrayerCast” is rabid anti-abortion evangelist Lou Engle. I wrote a lot about that lunatic on my old blog Catch, but those posts are long gone. Digby has some stuff about him in her archives here.
UPDATE: Through the miracle of archive.org, my post that Digby linked to in ‘05 has been preserved. It’s a little scrambled and I’m sure it’s full of dead links, but here you go.
RELATED: Speaking of Digby, she’s holding a fundraiser right now. Throw a few coins in her tip jar if you can afford it. She’s a treasure and was my mentor way back when I decided to jump into blogging, so if you like what I do here you can thank her over there.
It’s tough to buy for the wingnut who has everything. If you’re wondering what to get for the wingnuts on your holiday [heh!] gift list, we can help.
Thanks to Rumproast commenter Markles, I discovered this wonderful site that made my wingnut holiday shopping a snap. Here are just a few of its fine products:
“Jesus Hates It When You Smoke” Ashtray
Your body is a temple, and Jesus doesn’t appreciate your filling His inner sanctum with acrid smoke and stinky nicotine one little bit. Let the wingnut in your life remind smokers of this every time they tap their ashes.
I’ve had so much work lately (mostly paid blogging for Axelrod, like everyone else here, plus my steady commercial clients), that I’ve only just flashed on the fact that we are about to celebrate America’s very first Christmas as a hopeful, changing nation under the leadership of President Barack Obama.
Consider this an open thread to talk about all the reasons we as a nation the “Stormfront of Male-Supremacist Blogs” have to be joyful during this Very Obama Holiday Season, and why you have no intention to apologize to anyone for the choice you made last November, evah.
