Category Archives: Religion

Excommunicated

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Toronto atheist Karolina Sygula has had trouble officially leaving the Catholic Church. She finally received the good news (reprinted with permission).

Dear Karolina:

You may have despaired of ever hearing from me again since it has been almost a year since we last corresponded.

However, I have this past week received a notification from your parish of baptism in Krakow that appears to indicate that a notation has been made in the record of baptism indicating your wish to defect formally from the Catholic Church.  I can only presume this is what it states since it is written in Polish on the letter I originally sent.  However the seal of the parish is included with the written notation, which causes me to believe it is a formal acknowledgement of an annotation having been made in the baptismal record.

Consequently, you may understand that your defection from the Catholic Church has been duly noted in the appropriate record and that you are no longer a member of the Catholic communion.

Rev. Paul Baillargeon, E.V., J.V.
Chancellor
Diocese of London

Although removing yourself from an official list is largely symbolic, religions use these records to keep their numbers artificially high. I encourage everyone with a religious background to follow Karolina’s lead and officially remove themselves from their former parishes.

Conservatives offended by Holy Shit

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Only a few weeks into our new Conservative majority government and our Heritage Minister, James Moore, is already offended by Living With Lions, a Vancouver punk band that almost no one heard of until he got offended.

Basically, all Canadian artists receive some funding from the government to help promote our culture (because we’re insecure like that). In this case, Living With Lions used a loan (not a grant, a loan) of $13,248 to produce an album called “Holy Shit.”

The offensive cover (brace your eyes):

Continue reading →

Sexual Abuse Claims Blog

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There has been a lot of activity on John McKiggan’s Sexual Abuse Claims Blog this month.  That’s because he has a lot to report:

Lahey Pleads Guilty to Possession of Child Pornography

Former Antigonish Diocese Bishop Raymond Lahey, who was caught with hundreds of child pornography images and videos on his laptop, pleaded guilty to importing child pornography.  Lahey was charged in September 2009, but he and his lawyer let the case drag on until May 4, 2011.

Vatican to Issue New Abuse Guidelines

As McKiggan and the comments indicate, the Vatican has issued guidelines, not hard and fast rules, and these guidelines are “designed to help bishops conferences around the world prepare their own guidelines for dealing with abuse cases.” There is lots of room for flexibility.  The letter from the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (Ratzinger’s former department) will be released on Monday, May 16.

Amnesty International Names Vatican for Failing to Protect Children

In its Annual Report 2011, Amnesty International makes it very clear: “The Holy See did not sufficiently comply with its international obligations relating to the protection of children.”

The guidelines for dealing with abuse cases appear to allow for interpretation by individual bishops and dioceses.  Will Amnesty International’s report force the Vatican to change the guidelines to rules and to monitor the bishops responsible for implementing them or will next year’s report condemn “the enduring failure of the Catholic Church to address these crimes properly”?

Taking the wrong side

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As the resident American on Canadian Atheist, I’m usually keeping one eye on what’s going on back in the States. Earlier this week Ophelia Benson posted on Facebook the following article: LGBT “Welcome” Ad Rejected by Sojourners, Nation’s Premier Progressive Christian Org. Here’s the rejected video in question:

This video shouldn’t be controversial — but if you’re forced to view the world through the eyes of a Bronze-Age morality, suddenly this welcoming video becomes a threat.

From the article:

you can imagine our dismay when Sojourners refused to run our ads. In a written statement, Sojourners said, “I’m afraid we’ll have to decline. Sojourners position is to avoid taking sides on this issue. In that care [sic], the decision to accept advertising may give the appearance of taking sides.”

Taking sides? What are the sides here? That young children who have same-gender parents are not welcome in our churches? That “welcome, everyone” (the only two words spoken in the ad) is a controversial greeting from our pulpits? That the stares the young boy and his moms get while walking down the aisle are justified? I can’t imagine Sojourners turning down an ad that called for welcome of poor children into our churches. So why is this boy different?

Sojourners is one of the most prominent progressive-Christian organizations in the States — and if they can’t stomach the message of this ad, what does that say about their views toward the LGBT community?  I’m fascinated by the resistance of religious people to giving full rights to ALL members of our society: whether they’re fighting it tooth and nail like the Mormons and California’s Proposition 8, or being more subversive in their rejection, like Sojourners.

It’s just another example of the imprisoning and hurtful power of religious dogma. I’m glad I got out when I did.

It’s the end of the world as we know it

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Driving around Saskatoon this afternoon, I saw THREE of these billboards:

Sooooooo, that gives us, what? a little over 3 weeks to get our worldly affairs in order?

These billboards remind me of one of my favorite Facebook groups: “Atheists for the Rapture: It’s heaven on earth!”

Do you know what’s more frightening than the rapture happening on May 21st? The fact that there are religious wackos out there who have the funds to put up so many of these signs on major thoroughfares.

Crap… on to plan B

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I wasn’t going to say anything, but I had a surefire way to lock up the election and prevent Stephen Harper from securing a majority government. It was, admittedly, a risky gambit, and somewhat… unorthodox. But it has a proven track record of efficacy going back hundreds of years, requires only a minimum of effort, and is nearly foolproof.

Of course, as you’ve probably guessed, I am talking about voodoo. With as much hair as Stephen Harper has glued to the helmet he wears 24 hours a day (to prevent scientific facts from infiltrating his brain*), it was trivially easy for me to secure enough errant strands and to fashion a doll. I wasn’t going to do anything to hurt the doll – Harper is a scumbag, but not even he deserves to be physically harmed. I was just going to use the Evil Eye™ and my close personal relationship with Satan (because y’know, atheists and Satan are tight) to ensure that people would come to their senses and realize that the most corrupt Prime Minister in the history of the country probably doesn’t deserve their vote.

It would have worked too, if it weren’t for those pesky Burnaby evangelicals:

Stephen Harper visited a Chinese evangelical church in Burnaby Sunday, where he offered Easter greetings and heard a pastor ask God to erect a “wall of protection” around the Conservative leader to guard him from “evil.”

Rev. Tim Tze thanked Harper for his remarks and offered a prayer, asking God to give Harper “a wall of protection. Protection from evil actions. Protection from evil people. Protection from evil intentions, as well.”

Well don’t that just beat all! Now my magic voodoo spell can’t possibly work! Tim Tze has cast a level 25 ‘Divine Protection’ spell, and I’m only a level 20 voodoo shaman. Plus, my Staff of Dark Crafting** is minus 5 against white magic spells.

While it’s all well and good to make fun of people who think that they can intercede with an invisible sky monster to create a magic wall that protects its target from evil (my brain vomited 3 times while writing that sentence), each of these nutjobs at this church get a vote. It takes nothing more than a marginally-charismatic charlatan to wave his hands and tell gullible people that YahwAlladdha has spoken to him personally to collect a bunch of votes for the Republican North Party. The much harder job is ours: to get people to switch on the rational parts of their brains and cast a vote for the right reasons.

Of course I don’t believe in voodoo. I believe in this:

*brain – in this case, I am referring to the collection of shredded pages of The Reagan Diaries, fragments of Mussolini’s moustache, drowned polar bear fat, and fragrant pot-pourri currently taking up residence in our esteemed Prime Minister’s noggin.

**Staff of Dark Crafting – although it could be, this is not a nickname for my penis.

Supporting moderates

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Its an old argument, one I’m still at a loss to understand. Sometimes I’ll hear an atheist say that moderates enable the extremists, still others will go even further and say moderates are ‘worse’ since the extremists simply don’t know any better, but… the moderates are hypocrites!!

I have to disagree with both. We all have brains that allow cognitive dissonance, its nominally bad, of course, but it can also allow us to function, instead of crashing like a poorly designed software package. We need to encourage people to adopt as many of the correct ideas as their operating system can handle, while reserving our harshest criticism for those who have their heads firmly… in the sand.

Its easy for an atheist to question faith… much harder when you have more invested in it… and sometimes much more dangerous. Being reasonable means working with what you have, and the people you have things in common with. Finding commonalities is sometimes hard, but often quite rewarding.

Crikey! We’ve spotted a rare one!

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Crikey!

Every now and then you see something truly amazing. Something so rare and wonderful that you can’t help but wonder whether or not there truly is a supernatural force guiding the universe:

Two Conservatives have quit their own riding association in Vaughan north of Toronto, accusing incumbent candidate Julian Fantino and the Conservative government of handing $10 million in public funds to a private non-profit group involved in a major health-care development.

Richard Lorello, the local Conservative candidate in 2008, says he resigned because a federal grant, announced in March just before the election was called, is earmarked for the Vaughan Health Campus of Care (VHCC), which has two of Fantino’s fundraisers as prime backers

Politicians - Convervative politicians, no less – standing on principle and actually following through on their beliefs, even when it is to their detriment. Crikey!

Those of you that know me well, or read my periodic forays into politics, know that I am no fan of conservatism (note the lack of capitalization). By and large, I find it oversimplifies reality and ignores the role that evidence has to play when deciding policy. However, I will be the first to admit that there is a strong need for conservative voices in the political spectrum – not simply for the sake of ‘a variety of opinion’, but because an effective and principled opposition is a vitally necessary component of a democratic state (note: I’ll let you know when we have one of those again in Canada).

That being said, I have absolutely no respect for Conservativism – what happens when ignorance, arrogance, and hypocrisy meet pandering to the lowest common denominator of our populace. It is conservatives that fight for smaller government influence in the private sector; it is Conservatives that funnel tax incentives to large corporations while demonizing social programs. It is conservatives that believe in the primacy of the individual to make her/his own decisions; it is Conservatives that wish to abolish abortion services and ban gay marriage. It is conservatives that believe in the rigidity of the rule of law; it is Conservatives that fund mega-prisons and champion mandatory minimum sentencing as a way of reducing crime.

Conservatives are highly hostile to atheism and secularism, having strapped on a blindfold and a ball-gag and tied themselves to the beds of the theocrat movement; conservatives, on the other hand, don’t really care much about religion. There is no real reason why adherence to one political philosophy (a diminished role for government) lends itself at all to the other (the involvement of religious authority in government), but through careful political maneuvering, “religious conservatives” have become an entity. There are a great many religious people who are liberal (and many who are Liberal as well – yeah there’s a huge distinction there too, particularly in British Columbia), but I think we can all agree that they aren’t really religious, right?

Despite their repeated assertions that they are conservative, our federal government is Conservative. In fact, co-opting the heft of the conservative movement is a hallmark of Conservativism – it’s a distinction that is only discernible in print (and everyone knows that Conservatives don’t read). It appears that the (former) members in Vaughan are conservative. It almost makes me want to vote for them. Almost.

Angel in the House

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This post is an extension of my reply to Zak’s post, It’s official, God is a man:

The terms “feminist scholar” and “theologian” are contradictory. I question how a woman can be a feminist scholar and a member of a Catholic religious order at the same time. . . . The Catholic Church hates and fears women, continues to try to maintain control over women’s bodies so that Catholic women produce more Catholics. This is especially obvious when “a committee of American bishops,” an all male committee, accuse Sister Elizabeth A. Johnson of “violating church doctrine.” No doubt Johnson will be disciplined and silenced.

Joe, in a reply to my comment, says,

The catholic church wants to control everyone. I find it amusing that you seem to have excommunicated this woman from ‘feminism’ tho… She sounds like a very interesting heretic.

Yes Joe, the Catholic Church wants to control everyone, but its most stringent controls are reserved for women.  As Paula Kirby says in an article in the Washington Post,

The truth is that the Abrahamic religions fear women and therefore go to extraordinary and sometimes brutal lengths to control them, constrain them, and repress them in every way.

Kirby’s article, posted as Woman, know thy place on RichardDawkins.net and as a Paula Kirby kicks butt on Pharyngula, is the article I wish I had written.

Sister Elizabeth A. Johnson needs to stop being the angel in the house of the Catholic Church.  The Angel in the House, according to Virginia Woolf, is “immensely charming,” “utterly unselfish” and “[sacrifices] herself daily.”  This description is almost identical to Kirby’s description of Mary, the mother of Jesus:

the eternal virgin: sexless, locked forever in a childlike state; devoid of sexual passion or sensuality; obedient, self-sacrificing, selfless: a woman, in other words, from whom all that would make her fully human,

In the nineteenth century, middle-class men and women “occupied ‘separate spheres’ and each had distinct, but complementary, functions to perform.” In the twenty-first century, the Catholic Church continues this practice of separate spheres: women, like Sister Johnson, who belong to one of the religious orders for women are expected to support the edicts of the ruling pope, the male head of the Catholic Church.

I don’t want to “excommunicate” Sister Johnson from feminism; however, I would like her to recognize that she is expected to be an angel in the Church’s house: feminism and the Catholic Church are mutually incompatible. 

It’s official, God is a man

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At least according to a commitee of American Catholic bishops in response to a group of feminist scholars.

These are questions that theologians like Sister Elizabeth A. Johnson, a Fordham University professor, have been mulling for years. At 69, Sister Johnson is among the pioneers of a generation of feminist scholars who examine how cultural biases among biblical scribes may have led to women’s diminished roles in Western religious traditions, especially the Roman Catholic Church.

Johnson has a good point and any critique of Catholic doctrine is welcomed, especially from within their ranks, but it’s hard to take feminist scholars seriously when they ignore the general misogyny that regularly appears throughout Christian mythology.

Johnson’s book Quest for the Living God: Mapping Frontiers in the Theology of God isn’t high on my reading list but at least I’ll enjoy watching Catholics bicker among themselves.

h/t Holy Post

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