This is a fairly predictable article - all the old bugbears are trotted out in support of the standard neo-Protestant Left-wing anti-Rome bias: Hitler, Conquistadors, genocides, witch-hunts. Gimme a break.

Like human nature had nothing whatsoever to do with any of it...It's all John Paul II's fault. Better yet, maybe it's all an Opus Dei conspiracy. Good Grief. Gary Wills wrote it much better, Rafe...and even he managed to shine a light on some of the good parts.

You also fail to note the recent shift in Vatican doctrine regarding condoms in Africa. Granted, it's been a long time coming. But Catholic organizations have been prolific providers of sex education (inluding your precious condoms) in Africa for a long time now, irrespective of the eccentricity of the Vatican hierarchy on this issue. Be honest, Rafe. In fact, I can't think of any other international organization that has done more humanitarian work in Africa.

Besides, if condoms are such a magical panacea for the AIDS pandemic, then why are HIV-transmission rates exploding for the sixth straight year in a row all along North America's condom-saturated western seaboard, and in Western and Central Europe as well? Condom discipline alone is not the answer. Maybe some Christians over-do the whole "abstinence" messaging, but maybe teaching a little self-restraint, a little "manly continence" (yes, that used to be a virtue!) at the same time that we distribute condoms isn't such a bad thing. Why is the deconstructionist Leftist intelligentsia so resistant to any kind of valuation whatsoever placed on the sex act. It's like they're allergic to the notion.

That isn't to say the R.C. church should be whitewashed, but let's be even-handed here - the Protestants burnt witches too, and murdered Catholics, and have had a smattering of serial child-molesting ministers in their ranks (as have the Boy Scouts, and the public school system...and every other service provider I'm aware of....again, it's that whole "perversity of human nature" thing, Rafe).

As for the Church and homosexuality, I can't defend their position...but I do acknowledge that it has something of the flavour of a family feud to it. The historic gravitation of sexual minorities to religious life is undeniable. We all seek to resolve our "oppression" in ways we each can live with. Who's to say that the celibate cloistered gay man is any more misguided than the drugged-out tweaker have unprotected sex with three dozen strangers while on a long-weekend bender...? I certainly won't.

The real problem the Left has with the Catholic Church is that it is the first and the last manifestation of doctrinally solid and organizationally cohesive Christianity. What's more, it's the fastest growing faith tradition in the developing world, and thus is perceived as a threat by socialist idealogues. The premise of Christianity is individual spiritual salvation, which the Left wants to supplant with its own ideological, temporal knock-off of the salvation "product". They perceive traditional faith systems as a threat to their ideology.

Hear Hear! - That was worth reading, on the other hand not being on the Left, the Catholics scare the Beejeesous' [sic out of me. (so as not to offend)

Hear Hear! - That was worth reading, on the other hand not being on the Left, the Catholics scare the Beejeesous' [sic] out of me (so as not to offend)

Religion, well there is a topic to set emotions alight. Just look at what religion is doing to us today; war, misery and evil is rampamt through out the world.

Of course the Catholic's will mostly condem this piece, but fanatical Catholics are no better than fanatical Muslims as they believe their religion is the only religion!

The Catholic church, as well as all Prodestant churches, suffer under one grand delusion, that Jesus Christ was the son of god. Jesus may have been a very wise man and a very moral man, but he had a bunch of very good spin doctors to alter history, to sell their version of religion.

The teachings of many churches are sound, the ten thal shalt nots are a very good way of living, trouble is, very few people adhere to the rules. With the Catholic church, hypocracy rises to new high levels, especially now, in the 21st century.

The real trouble with religion, is that you wish people in other religions perish. Sad comment on the holy.

well said. i'd pay $10.00 to see what the pope keeps in his basement. i think he'd make king midas look like a piker.

This is actually totally incorrect, btw.

The Catholic position on homosexuality is not based on the fundamentalist literalist interpretation of the notorious Leviticus passages (i.e. the "Temple Code" section), nor on the Sodom and Lot story (another fundamentalist misconstruction, which the Catholic theologians debunked and ceased teaching long ago).

The whole edifice of Catholic teaching on sexual morality is based on Thomas Aquinas' Natural Law Theory. Doctrinally speaking, the injuction against homesexual acts is a by-product of that. Not saying it's right, but Catholic doctrine is actually just as hard on illicit heterosexual behaviours. Divorced and civilly-remarried Catholics fare little better than gays and lesbians.

So let's ease off on the Oppression Narrative and have a little accuracy here, Rafe. You're propagating misinformation to a crowd of readers that is already receptive to your distortions for strictly prejudicial and ideological reasons.

And I've yet to meet a "Catholic Fundamentalist". As far as I've observed, the term is an oxymoron. The closest thing I've ever seen are Charismatic Catholics...and they're mostly elderly French Canadian grandmothers who knit socks and scarves for the poor.

And then, of course, there's the prolific activism of the Catholic Left...including their unprecedentedly vocal opposition to the war in Iraq (and the Pope's well-articulated and very public opposition based on St. Augustine's Just War Theory - the strongest opposition yet voiced by a credible world leader on the global stage).

After giving this article a second reading, I can safely dismiss it as disingenuous bunk. It amounts to a drawn-out lie masquerading as journalism.

Perfect nightbloom, an excellent pen for sure.

Nightbloom, I have to agree with you...somewhat. IMO it's very "protestant" pastime to attribute rules and morality to the "...because it's in the bible" arguement. Nevertheless, catholic views on homosexuality may be based on philosophy but you're average church/mass goer is not very likely to be quoting Aquinas. Anyway, we must remember that "every sperm is sacred"!!!

Hear, hear, nightbloom. Your rebuttal is much more thoughtful than the hate that Mair is trying to pass off as journalism.

First of all, Rafe, either you believe or you don't. If the Catholic Church changed it's rules everytime someone disagreed with it, there would be no Catholic church.

Homosexuality is not considered sinful, it is the act of sex outside of marriage that is considered sinful.

I find it odd that the Church is condemned for it's stand against condom useage ("it stops people from protecting themselves from AIDS") yet when it promotes sex only between married couples (which would minimize the spread of AIDS),it is ignored.

I'd like to pick apart some more of your silly comments but it's time to go to work.

When did Rafe Mair morph into a spokesperson for the left, nightbloom? I think I may have missed that notice from the big boss who tells all us lefties how to think.

Would it be fair to point out that a whole range of political opinion that has nothing to do with the 'Left' has a lot to say about the 'problems' of the Catholic Church. Not to ignore, incidentally, that there is an activist, not to say leftist, but certainly progressive wing in the Church as well - which you in fairness do acknowledge.

Don't you think the obvious 'slide' into this:

was a trifle pre-emptive?

Given the nature of the writer and the general tenor of this article, at least. Is this something you actually think about before you write it, or is it just the way you ‘do’ your Tyee thing?

Excellent article, Mr. Mair.

Argumentum ad verecundium est argumentum ad ignorantiam.

I am inclined to take the word of my father and our church here. Whether you believe in god or not is one thing, but for Rafe Mair to tell about the bible is a joke. The Roman Catholic Church has thousands of cardinals, bishops, priests and professors studying the bible. Whether right or wrong, I'll trust their interpretation over Crazy Rafe's.

This is the same Rafe Mair who refused to vote for the Conservatives, because the candidate was christian and went to church. It sounds like Mr. Mair is playing religious politics.

Seriously, if you go back to his article on why he was voting green - he said it is because there were too many Christians....way to go Rafe!

I've said it before, Rafe went from a well-respected cabinet minister to a well respected journalist. Then he found "weed" and has completely lost his mind since. Rafe sounds as foolish as some of the potheads I used to know at UBC. Full of conspiracies and quirky ideologies.

Rafe has something against organized religion, which is funny given his holier-than-thou socialistic and all-inclusive attitude.

Stan - absolutely correct there. I actually had to scan through parts of his article, because it was so foolish.

Alcibiades, do you have an argument to present on this subject matter, or are you simply monitoring nightbloom again?

BTW - let me clarify that I don't agree with the church on several matters re. sexuality.

However, the Catholic Church is recognized as very tolerant (as opposed to many other protestant, muslim, sikh). They believe in foregiveness and not punishment.

Pope John Paul II lived nothing short of a heroic life, and can be thanked for ending communist and oppresive rule in Eastern Europe.

Yawwwwn. More, my "Catholic Church", right or wrong from the nightbloomer? Which our "sinful" priesthood of "queers", errr homosexuals here tend to be the strongest body of support for. As an interesting aside note. (Though certainly not all homosexuals, I appreciate.)

Though it is true, as with our bunch here, modern Catholics, compared to my youth, do tend to pick and choose more, what Church doctrine and instructions to actually adhere to and acknowledge. For example, it is my observation, here in a what is probably a predominantly Catholic town, that Catholic women generally do not have more than the standard two children or less, typical of the period for most women. Which leads me to suspect that the old Rhythm Method is getting a material assist of some kind.

Though it is still my observation, for as long as I've been around, that most of the devotees who actually attend Mass, like Protestant Sunday Services, are women or children. The men are nursing hangovers or gone fishing it seems.

Clearly the males are a more cynical and sinful bunch, I would presume. (Which seems to be a near universal practice globally, not?)

Yet, while the great mass of attendants are women, the priesthood is exclusively male-, where the power is, eh. Wink, wink.

Into the priesthood, girls. :-) Just leave them choirboys (and young girls?) alone.

"A little purifying flagellation here, please. A little self-mortification there."

Now that is all said in part tongue in cheek, but its the best I can do this early, working on my first cuppa.

But Stan (The Man?) is right, of course. You believe or you do not.

And there not being a jit of factual or material evidence about it, other than the vaguaries of human behaviour and emotions, echoing out of the ancient superstitious and ritualistic past which these folks are incapable of actually leaving behind, is what makes this often tiresome debate such a boring waste of time. You "believe" the hyperbole and ritual, or you insist on real "scientific" earth and universe bound evidence for your view of the real and cosmic issues.

Catholics, smasholics, Protestants, grotesquetants.... I need another cuppa. I'll leave our "celibate priesthood" here to intellectually wank themselves off to this one. Just to relieve the pressure. :-)

Thin pickings in today's Tyee reading list.

Though... actually a good article Rafe. One of your better one's. It may even undermine some of that "My Catholic Church right or wrong." fascism, so obvious here, blooming in the night.

An interesting development reported in the news yesterday. Catholics in China it seems are ignoring the diktats of Rome, even being so bold as to elect their own Cardinals. Which has The Curch in Rome all upset of course, for it challenges their grip on the "universal church".

What's next? A Chinese Pope?

8-D ROFLMAO

nightbloom
I do actually have an opinion on the matter. It has to do with the personal doctrine of 'informed conscience' - a concept I'm sure you know something about and which would, had the reference article actually bothered to mention it, have made for an interesting, but not a political, debate.

However, the discussion has been subsumed by a withering and largely irrelevant attack on the left and/or on the Church. A debate I think, that is largely passé and irrelevant.

So, for me, not today.

LOL - "Fascism Blooming in the Night" - Yup, that's me...

You're a closet poet, Coyote. I know underneath all that bluster you're just a big ol' sweetheart, so I won't take any of your gratuitous commentary amiss...

Capitalism -

That's why the Left can't stop molesting him, even in death. And they've never forgiven him for surviving their assassination attempt in 1981 (which we now know was orchestrated by the Kremlin).

I'll never forget the footage of John Paul II facing off with General Jaruzelski in Poland. General Jaruzelski was literally trembling in his jackboots, reading in a petrified voice the pre-prepared script that he couldn't prevent from shaking in his hands. It was one of those mercilessly revealing moments in history, captured close-up on film.

John Paul's legacy has lot of justified critics within the Church, but he was no hypocrite, as Rafe is dishonestly insinuating. His criticism here is very misinformed. John Paul lived every moment of his belief to the very end.

Sounds pretty Catholic to me. I refer you to Part 3, Section 1, Chapter 1, Articles 3 & 6 of the Catechism of the Roman Catholic Church (the definite statement of orthodox Roman Catholicism).

It articlates the freedom of conscience against which every practicing Catholic has the moral duty to weigh Church teachings (which exist apart from the actual core doctine contained in The Creed).

http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/_INDEX.HTM

I agree with nightbloom's well-written response, except why, oh why, must he always reduce every freaking thing to Left vs Right?

As for the Catholic church causing millions of deaths because of their (previous) anti-condom stance, this just strikes me as faulty logic. We're to assume that these devoted Catholics are listening to the Pope's rules on condom use but are ignoring the ones that talk about abstinence and sex before marriage? So they can screw all they want with multiple partners, yet they're going to consciously avoid using a condom based on religious grounds? Just doesn't make sense. And don't these countries also have criminals and murderers just like every country? I believe the Pope also has a fairly strong stance against murder, but correct me if I'm wrong.

nightbloom
Give us a break:

The idea that the left in the west was in any way supportive of the assassination attempt on the late Pope is the kind of same kind of hoary nonsense that claims Ronald Reagan 'won' the cold war.

The Church 'hierarchy' is what's a problem for many of its critics, and, truth to tell, many of its supporters. That the monolithic nature of the Church's structure and the antiquated way it makes decisions happens to share a lot of features with corporate capitalism and fascism is something no modern critic would ignore. Hypocrisy can manifest itself in a lot of different ways - and not just on the left.

You still refuse to see the left for what it actually is and subsume the whole complicated, conflicted structure under a rubric which would better be applied to largely inconsequential debates in a university common room. Much ado about nothing. You need to fold up that uniform and pack it away in mothballs for the duration.

The sad part of the whole thing is that the blind deionization of the "Other" was as much a result of Liberal and progressive thinking at the start of the Cold War as it was a consequence of the knee-jerk reactions of Right wingers and conservatives.

But that's another story.

My view.

should be 'demonization' obviously in the 2nd last para. Deionization has a certain cachet to it though!

Then why-oh-why is John Paul still a target even after he's been buried for over a year?

I'm calling a spade a spade when I critique the Left's approach to organized religion, and its repeated attempts to assimilate the Salvation Narrative into its ideological rubric. That fact that the Roman Catholic hierarchy has been the number one bulwark standing against this co-optation is no coincidence here. The Left is behaving archetypally when adopts an adversarial posture against traditional faith systems - it's being true to its nature. Liberalism is an ambitious, expansionist ideolology that brooks no rival in the public sphere. The Right has a totally different take on the place of religion in society, and much more predisposed towards coexistence and the separation of the religious and ideological spheres.

Maybe if this article weren't such predictable hogwash, I'd be inclined to be a little more generous. Rafe's argument here is nothing more than specious nonsense.

Nightbloom, are you suggesting that no Catholic is on the left (or Left)? I know plenty of them that are, including myself (although I'm just a lapsed Catholic). So your constant Left/Right reduction of every blessed topic that comes along is nothing short of boring, if not ignorant. Just stick to the topics at hand. You have lots of good points to raise, but you lose people with your incessant CNN-FOX view of the world where everything is black and white.

Well, your onto me-, but just in my curmudgeon configuration. 8-D

Except though, what I actually said was, "... that "My Catholic Church right or wrong." fascism, so obvious here, blooming in the night."

It really is important to put it in correct context bro bloomer.

Other than that, carry on with your Inquisition against the "left" in these "Reformation In Reverse" times. We can take it-, and, in the end, deal with it. :-)

I agree, though, that the article was predictable hogwash. But hey, he's gotta come up with something every week.

Capitalism:

Sure. And Polish trade unions had nothing to do with it, right?

And the protests in the Lutheran Church in Leipzig were inconsequential, eh?

And, finally, much as I hate to mention it, the Soviet loss of the arms race and the impending bankruptcy of the Soviet Union didn't happen, I suppose?

Yep, the left is behind every operation against the Holy Catholic Church. We meet every week to plan our next demonization of Popery. Our allies of course are the Jews and Freemasons.

Our goal? To point out the absurd hypocrisy of a group of men living a life of leisure on the toil of others based on a story of a poor and defenceless god that can't be verified? No no, its because the devil made us do it.

Whenever we leftists gather at a public watering hole the talk immediately turns to how we can discredit the wealthy Vatican and prepare the path for the anti-Christ. Dan Brown? One of us. Monty Python? Us again.

All evidence of there being a supreme being has been hidden from the world by us leftists. We keep the evidence in a box under the porch at Coyote's house.

I admit it, I confess.

Good piece, grub, grabbing the real essence of the collapse of the old USSR. The collapse of the which had more to do with their bleeding treasure and manpower in Afghanistan extending Empire, while locked in an arms race with the entire Western version of the same imperialist ambitions, growing dissatisfaction with the material reality and state of "freedom" at home, and the Solidarity Trade Union movement in the shipyards of Gdansk, Poland.

Essentially, The Church's role was its classic prevaricating one, especially when it can't actually act without threat to itself in alliance with an "Old Wealth" and/or Aristocratic ruling class, which is deliver pulpit missives, Papal decrees and admonitions couched in careful language, and come in at the end and drape yourself in all the glory, as if you had actually done something concrete, the priesthood heirarchy having nary a scratch upon it.

But then, if you "believe", and you can believe whatever you want, so long as its sanctioned by the Church heirarchy-, that is enough.

As a native of Argentina, I can testify to another very dark side of the Catholic Church, often ignored outside Latin America. The Catholic bishops and cardinals collaborated knowingly with the policy of torture and disappearances carried out by the military dictatorships, even when the victims were priests, considered left-wing because of their sympathy with the poor. Military dictators and Catholic bishops have traditionally enjoyed a symbiotic relationship in Latin America, with the knowledge, it should be added, of the Pope.

Saying that the Pope brought down the eastern bloc is like claiming the Pope brought down Hitler.

Only to a true believer.

And not just in Latin America, one only has to find other dictators like Franco to see that the Church loves a good right-wing strongman. In the Spanish Civil War the church happily endorsed the shooting of union leaders and the bombing of the "poor" sections of the same towns those church leaders lived in. Franco considered the Catholic Church one of his closest allies, even a notch closer than Mussolini.

LOL - Coyote, you're incurable.

Okay - QUERY: Why has The Tyee never posted a positive piece about the Catholic Left...?

Or for that matter something on the many Leftward Ecumenical Christian movements...?

Why are all the debates on Christianity here on The Tyee catalyzed by specious articles beating up on talking bunnies, fat men in sleighs or elderly celibate men in skirts...?

Nightbloom isn't beating up on the Left one bit here, GRW (I've always defended the Catholic Left) - Nightbloom is just calling a spade a spade. The secular Left won't give the time of day to liberalized Christians.

So how about it - Let's see a nice cuddly piece on the Jesuits in Haiti (who keep getting murdered, btw) or the Franciscans in South America. Or the Catholic Women's shelters right here in Canada.

And Rafe's piece here is still 100% bunk, just to conclude my post above.

Here's a bit of interesting history. The first Pope to have dual names, John-Paul, before becoming a Pope, was a member of a group of Catholic clerics assembled to ascertain whether the use of artificial birth control was truly a sin, or if it was even justified to be in place. There were over 200 clerics charged with this reponsibility, and after months of research, all but 7 of them voted that there was nothing in the Bible, or the canons of the Church, which specifically banned birth control. But, the Old Guard would have nothing to do with this, they discharged the assembled clerics, but retained the 7 dissenters in Rome, to parade them before Pope Paul ??, giving their reasons for their dissenting votes. With nobody there to present the majority opinion that birth control was alright, said Pope Paul ruled again against birth control. John-Paul was elected Pope, made mention of his intent to make sweeping changes in the Church, which would include the reversal of this policy, and allow the Church's members to practice birth control, with the Church's permission. Sadly, he died before he could implement these changes (under suspicious circumstances) and the next Pope, John-Paul II reaffirmed the ban, which stands to this day. Had John-Paul lived long enough to enact these changes, there would be a lot less dead, and far fewer unwanted pregnacies. Good post, Rafe.

Oh, good grief - so John Paul I was murdered because he was going to open up the Catholic hordes to the exploitation of the Latex Industry.

What an imagination. Everyone knows he was killed for carrying on secret negotiations with the Martians.

"A lot less dead"--? Would you care to justify that remark? I'm all for condoms and copulation...but I don't kid myself about the infallibility of condom discipline and the inbuilt system of escalating risk-&-reward that the current messaging carries embedded within it.

I return to my original point: if current messaging surrounding condom discipline is so foolproof, then why is HIV transmission booming for the sixth straight year in a row among the very population that has been bombarded with "safe sex" condom messaging for the past two decades?

I attended the World AIDS Day conference in Vancouver this past December, and the professionals there had no trouble acknowledging that something has gone profoundly amiss.

Nobody here has stated that condoms are a panacea for HIV/AIDS nightbloom. Don't you think though, that promoting its use is not such a bad idea. I'm starting to agree with Alcibiades that you cannot see past black and white or right and left.

Because sex is not the only way one can contract HIV/AIDS - another thing that I'm sure we all here understand and comprehend - but I'm just going to assume that the above was a rhetorical question given the fact that it's a bit of a non-sequitur.

Then what was Rafe prating about, exactly?

Frank:

The pope was integral in ending communism in the Eastern Block. He was anti-communism as he saw the many evils it brought.

Greed, corruption, abuse, censorship. He waged a war on communism, and was vital in defeating it.

The church certainly wasn't open and honest about the abuse of kids, and cover-ups were rampant. Regardless, the pope was a great man.

Now, there is certainly some hypocricy in the religious right in America. Though, if you pay attention, the catholic church in america has been very silent. It is the methodist/baptist church which represents the religious right. The catholic church is neither outspoken, nor condemning.

I think it is great that we live in a society where Mr. Mair can openly criticize one of the holiest figures in the world - yet he still slams our society, when he would be beheaded in the middle east, pakistan, china for similar comments about other religious figures - whether it be catholic, hindu, muslim or sikh.

I would encourage Rafe (clearly aethiest) to write such a condemning piece about another religious group to prove his balanced journalism.

Did I say he was murdered? I said he died under suspicious circumstances. His stance on birth control was not the only thing he had planned to do, that pissed off the Old Guard, primarily he was going to fire Marcinkus of the Vatican Bank, and retire Villot, Secretary of the Vatican.

Ever hear the old saying, "you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink"? The same adage applies to the use of condoms, even if supplied, for free, there is no guarantee they'll be used, by all who received them. But, let's suppose that 3/4's of those who did receive them actually did use them. The potential of transmitting this disease, or unwanted pregnancies, by those who used them would be reduced, dramatically. As for unwanted pregnancies, they are proven to be alot more effective than Vatican Roulette, the rythym method.

The gist of what I read into Rafe's article was that the Church has pre-conceived ideas of their sense of morality, which they still, in this day and age, wish to levy onto their flock. It's the same old adage as the neo-cons apply to their belief that pot is evil, even if it offers medical relief to those stricken.

And this answer doesn't answer the question regarding the pattern of escalating HIV transmissions in the West for over half a decade:

Sex is exactly the mode of transmission behind the escalating rates. Condomless penetrative sex by people who have been the target of unrelenting "safe sex" messaging for 20 years now. That's the whole point - something's missing in the messaging, and it goes right the core of the deconstructionist devaluated approach to sex that was promulgated as part of the "sexual revolution".

Again, I'm all for condoms, but if Rafe is going to put John Paul II and Roman Catholics on trial for promoting a harmful sexual ethic, then let's be fair and lynch the "Safe Sex" gurus at the same time. The Sexual Revolution has had a few successes (I am one of them, I hasten to add) but let's acknowledge some of its appalling failures.

First of all, Rafe, either you believe or you don't. If the Catholic Church changed it's rules everytime someone disagreed with it, there would be no Catholic church.

My point exactlyAll Christian religions bqse their beliefs on the evidence of humans. You can't have a priesthood without a cataechism thato nly they can explain.I suggest that everyone read Michael Baigent's The Jesus Papers. Because I no longer live in fear based upon imperfect acceptance of catechism, I feel liberated for now I can read and understand what Jesus said.
Re the last election, while I couldn't have voted for a fundamentalist Christoian even though I lknow the man well and like him, my real, and stated reason for voting Green was that way I gave an envronmenal movement $1.65 which was a better deal than I could get from the other fenceposts with hair.
R

Rafe, what education do you have to interpret scripture? I suppose you never needed to use a lawyer, since you can just find the information in a book. Or you don't bother going to the doctor because all that info is also in a book.

Why don't you just proclaim that the countless numbers of people working for 2000 years to interpret the scriptures never had a clue. Then you can start "The Church of Rafe" based on your interpretation of the scripture.

The very notion of getting political with a religious article because Rafe wrote it, is somewhat off? Sorry, man, but its just not a politically motivated peace. Where you really lost me was calling the Roman Catholic Church the "fastest growing faith tradition in the developing world." Any CULT that sports 1.1 billion people ought to be perceived as a threat by anyone with a rational mind.

These populations are growing not in the developed world, but the third worlds with expanding populations. They've been there, controlling and milking the poor since the beginning of the Roman Empires tyrannical rule. The Catholic Church, a cult set up to control the masses through the marrage of church and state, is beyond debate. It is a matter of historical record.

The Catholic Church is the richest church in the world, relying on giving a tenth of your material (greatly confused on purpose of course with what is more correctly interpretated as spiritual) tithings to go to who else? The Roman Catholic Church. In other words, they got rich off the poor, with the poor seeing little come back to the community, other than the suckered comfort of thinking or believing that they somehow contributed towards God.

And if you're dumb enough to limit rational minds to those who are socialist, in terms of how dangerous and destructive the Roman Catholic church has been in the past and even the present, then... perhaps I should risk calling a spade a spade myself.

Dear fellow, don't you know you can't believe everything you read or hear, sometimes and especially so, if it comes from your own mouth? Words to live by.

Considering that the vaste majority of them spoke the bible in latin, not knowing what it means since their conception some 1850 years ago or more even to this day, is highly suggestive that they know next to nothing. And what incentive would God or those who serve the light have, to up and serve darkness, other than to help the odd believing old timer in a small forgotten town? They were well known for the "dark ages" after all, you know, that little piece of history that saw humanity pushed back by a millenium through the squashing of any and all things that made sense.

And since their doctrines were compiled by force and empirical control, with Jesus's number one enemy not being the Pharasee's or Jews but the ROMANS, one should trust what brainchild of married church and state Emperor Constantine, a man known to boiling his own mother of two children alive, and beheading one of his sons, had in mind in giving the Roman Catholic Church political power? Give your head a shake and stick to your self centered, profit driven economic spins.

Greed, corruption, abuse, censorship. He waged a war on communism, and was vital in defeating it.

No he wasn't. I recall the 80's pretty clearly and outside of the Catholics no one really cared what the pope thought. That he was a Pole generated a lot of interest, especially in Poland as one would expect. But most of the Eastern Bloc wasn't Catholic, they didn't care, probably didn't even know his pre-Pope name.

He certainly didn't wage much of a war on greed, corruption, censorship and abuse either inside the Church or outside of it. Did he say all the right things? Sure, popes always do. Just like there's those that defend the Pope back in World War 2 days because of some speeches. In the end the Pope was only important to Poland. And that's fine, I don't expect the pope to be important to anyone except Catholics.

Now the pope may have been a great man. I don't know. But I am one of those who think that if child abuse is going on and people are coming forward and you're not moving heaven and earth to stop the abuse rather than seemingly worrying only about how it looks then I have a problem with the moniker "great". Now if Catholics think he's a great man, then that's fine and I'm not going to go to a Catholic chuch to argue it but many of the rest of us don't.

Rather than for example forcing Mike Campbell to say he loves the NDP to prove his "balance" wouldn't it be better if you or nightbloom or someone else wrote a positive piece on the good work of the Church for the Tyee?

nightbloom
As you guessed, I am pretty familiar with that section of the LAW, and its interpretation by the Church.

Suffice it to say it's a complicated matter. Still, for my own part, I'm pretty well satisfied that, at bottom, matters of conscience are finally matters for the individual to take up in accordance with his/her own understanding of what the Church teaches and the role of God in his or her life.

This may seem a bit too loose for some and undoubtedly, one ends up with a bit of a mish-mash from time to time. Still, given the fact that the Church also teaches that the final judgment in these matters rests with God, I have a hard time disagreeing with what the Catechism actually says:

No one should expect to get there overnight. And no one should be in the business of judging others too harshly - God knows the saga of the Catholic Church contains lots of examples of why that's a mistake.

Communism collapsed because its own corruption, now repeated by capitalism. Not on account of any religious reawakening. Remember, I was actively fighting communism for 45 years and had highly placed contacts behind the Iron Curtain through the years, so I knew exactly what was going on.

Although the collapse with a whimper was a surprise for everybody, it had nothing to do with religion, or that people had "chosen capitalism". The system just ran out of lies, just as capitalism is running out now on a much larger scale.

As far the support for Hitler is concerned, all major European Christian Churches, including the Catholics, Lutherans and Calvinists, supported him, with very few individual exceptions, like the often quoted Pastor Niemoller and some Catholic bishops in the KZ camps, and willingly supplied both the Wehrmacht and Waffen SS with padres, with officer ranks. I knew 2 Catholic priests after the war who have been SS captains, sent by the Church, but there were thousands of others.

It is also estimated that after WW2 50,000 Nazi war criminals escaped with Vatican passports, including Eichmann and family.

By the way, in another life I was born and raised as a Catholic, so I know exactly where the Church stood on religious persecution: "It was God's punishment for the Jews for having crucified Christ!" I heard it in the classroom, from the pulpit and still have it in writing in old books, marked "nihil obstat".

Sometimes it pays to have been there and to know several languages.

Ed Deak, Big Lake.

Ah, really good, the brain. I'm still chuckling at the many simple truths/facts in that piece.

All things being relative and as one understands them at the time, of course. :-)

I mean, even the Unchangeable Holy Roman Catholic Church has changed, in over just my mere lifetime. Certainly, what e'er the protestations of the High Priesthood, The Flock has much changed practically and morally if not institutionally. Nuns, for one, are much freer than they used to be, and actually look like real women.

It's homosexuals are even finally feeling brave enough to come out of the closets here, which is a good thing, though still deviants of the flesh according to Holy Mother Church. (Making necessary more urgent and frequent trips to Confession and Holy Communion, if one with AIDS is to die in a Holy State of Grace, i presume.)

The only absolute law that never changes, wellll, is that everything changes.

I think I'll just go back to twisting this next religious experience of mine up. :-)

Have fun. Sex, religion(in its many guises)and or science(materialist) based philosophy and politics(in its many guises) are not coincidentally The Grand Triumvirate of Thought. Though one must first have sufficient food, shelter and leisure before one can adequately engage in its many Grand Debates.

Which to here at least has worked much to keep The Grand Truimvirate under the control of a domininant temporal ruling class power, for the last few hundred years anyway, though still much in league with a priesthood who much intercede for them with the "Great Unwashed". In which intercessions they much serve to keep them obedient, to the power of Caesar here on earth, and God in Heaven, in the Afterlife.

And who wields ultimate retribution power on the Final Day of Judgement, whatever ye or even the priesthood may this day or that declare moral or immoral.

Ya think? Or is the union between God and The Priests as if they were one head, eye, speaking voice and cock?

It's not a matter of what state may actually exist, but what you "believe". Hell! If that's it, things can always be changed. Just change what you "believe" is right-, which can be done on even the whispiest evidence. I do it all the time.

nightbloom:

Nightbloom is speaking in the third person! What about the secular/atheist Right? Or those that fall somewhere in between?

fiat lux:

I don't know my history well enough, but I've read that Catholics were persecuted in Nazi Germany, too. Anyone got any details on that? Why would they be persecuted if the Vatican was supporting them?

The brain:

Huh??? That's news to me. I've never heard that Catholic parishioners are tithed. Yes, they pass the plate, but it's voluntary.

D. Faulkner:

Agreed. But are you saying that condoms aren't even available anywhere in some countries because of the Catholic church? Or just that the Catholic church speaks out against their use?

I posted this before, but I'll pose it as a question this time since nobody responded to it: Isn't it a leap in logic to suggest that Catholics in some countries would be such good Catholics in only one area? That is, they'll listen to the pope when it comes to condom use, but they'll ignore everything else he has to say when it comes to being promiscuous or committing crimes? Makes no sense to me.

nightbloom:

Nightbloom, you should write something and submit it. You're a good writer and you know your stuff. I'd just ask that you leave out the needless and incendiary Left/Right bullshit.

grw you should write something of your own.

I remember a Gloria Steinhem lecture in which she referred to the Pope as "a disgrace to the skirts that he wore."

And those crazy hats ... !

grw....

Catholics were not persecuted in Germany, apart from a few induvidual cases.

We marched right across Bavaria into Austria in the last months of the war and all the churches were open, staffed with priests doing services. We attended them every Sunday and helped to repair broken organs etc. In Eastern Germany and Sudetenland, with mostly Protestant populations, all the Protestant churches were open, holding services.

Also, please note what I wrote about priests in SS officer uniforms, sent there by their Churches. The vast majority of the Waffen SS were conscripts from ethnic German communities in Eastern Europe, who would never have served without their clergy.

This claim of "persecution" started after the war by all Churches as propaganda for denial of the cooperation with the nazis. Without Church support Hitler would never have been able to gain power.

Ed Deak.

Rafe said: "But my quarrel with the Roman Catholic Church is not historical, it's generational.

Its formal treatment of women is unacceptable. You can look at the Bible from one end to the other and find no evidence that women are second class citizens thus not entitled to lead a flock.

Its attitude towards homosexuals is based upon the flimsiest of Biblical pronouncements .... "

While I generally agree with Rafe's views about the Catholic church and condoms, I have to point out the errors in the above statements.

First, the Bible has lots of indications that only males should be allowed to be priests - see Exodus 28:4 and 28:43 and Exodus 40:15 which says Aaron's sons - no mentions of daughters - are to be "an everlasting priesthood throughout their generations" i.e. forever, men only.

However it is true that the Bible makes no suggestion that women are or should be second-class citizens; in fact it specifies that daughters can inherent equally with sons.

Regarding homosexuality, Rafe is badly wrong to suggest the Bible pronouncements against it are "flimsy" because in fact they are strong and clear and repeated, especially Leviticus 19:22 "Thou shalt not lie with mankind as with womankind: it is abomination." Flimsy?? Hardly.

Even cross-dressing is proscribed in a passage rarely cited: Deuteronomy 22:5 .

And yes the same general stance against homosexual sex (which is not the same as people born "gay") is taken in the New Testament, e.g. Romans 1:27 and 1 Timothy 1:10.

But generally regarding the Roman Catholic Church it has many much greater sins to atone for than its narrow stance against condoms.

Typo fix - that should be "inherit" not inherent ... the citation is from Numbers 36.

Also the duties of the male-only priests are detailed in Numbers 18...

A wee bit off topic, but interesting all the same, one of the major contributors to the collapse of the Eastern Soviet Bloc, was not the Pope, as claimed by some here, rather satelite TV.

Until the mid 1980's television was strictly controlled by the state, with TV's only having official channels (I remeber first living in the UK in 1974 that TV's only had 4 buttons for four channels!), with Western propaganda channels heavily jammed. Most people in Eastern Europe had no access to Western electronic media.

Then with losening of government control, some Eastern Bloc countries, most noticabley Hungary, allowed satelite TV. The die was cast, as Eastern bloc viewers had direct access to Western media. They could see with their collective eyes what was happening in the West and wanted more. Reporters of the era marveled that almost every house in most cities (except for Eastern Germany)had a satelite dish poited up to the sky.

The rest is history. Why do you think the Chinese government is so desperate to censor the internet? Why do you think the Americans want to restrict the internet?

Knowledge is freedom.

grw:
Have you ever seen a Catholic Priest voluntarily not pass the plate? C'mon, get real. Must you too, be told not to believe everything you hear? Lord knows, cause you've only heard it, you haven't seen it. Try hearing something I'm telling from what I've seen with my own eyes.

I've seen Catholic priests pass the plate in the poorest of places, without a smidgeon coming back to these communities, except for the odd facelift to the building itself. Where they spend their money is targeted. They didn't get to be the richest organization in the world by being "generous".

The fathers, dressed in pure white, hovering over the pulpit with the wooden cross... leaves one to ask which kind of mockery is more entertaining. The sermon spoken in latin, the holy language that most priests admittedly don't understand, the literal way of Babylon, or the odd pediphile dressed in white, deflowering the ones before their time to make way for the great Catholic expansion by numbers, as Quebec's taboo swears come from the rich history of Romes pinky and the brain approach, yes, unlike Rafe, why should we risk heresy and challenge such a worthy lot.

"Nice robe, Father. Tell me... how is it with stains? Like the beads and cross. Does it come in different colors? Can I get one in brass? Could you please tell me, just for the record, which empire murdered Jesus again?"

And in answer to your question, since when did morality have anything to do with controlling the will of the masses? Since when, did the Roman Catholic church ever practice "free will" at all, lest it conform with their own? And if you think their dress code has changed to accompany free will, its not from the forces of social fashion but from the leopard changing its spots to blend in and catch its prey. They are a cult, pure and simple, defined in this way for there are two kinds of ugly's in any "church".

Its bad enough that any proposed "church of God" claims loudly and proudly, "our way is better than all the rest!" Cults proclaim "our way is the only way!" "Our way is EXCLUSIVE! Only if you are a Christian, shall you be saved!" And some snake pits have teeth within their inhabitants, being full of vipers and use force (i.e. government military, if need be). The ideology of the Roman Catholic Church hasn't changed since its conception. Its still pinky and the brain, all the way.

Ed Deak says it best. Communism collapsed in Russia because of its own corruption. It wasn't the ideology that was so flawed (even though it is. "The state owns it all" is disfunctional). It was the practice within the system itself. The decline and eventual fall of capitalism is no different. (the individual owns it all, is too, quite disfunctional, ie. the insatiable appetite of pigs fed from greed and pride that says nothing is ever enough, and Ill burn those tires in my backyard in the city if I want to, cause I own the lot) Corruption has and will continue to lead to capitalism's downfall without question, at the great expense to the environments that sustain all life, in an environment that breeds criminals with the collective mind that says "I won't get caught".

One needs only to look at the privatization of "ESSENTIAL SERVICES" to see it coming. Pay as you go simply doesn't work unless you can afford it, that is, and in the end, only the rich will afford such a priviledge (until the next revolution). Essential services should be "exclusive" according to Stephen Harper and the like.

grw, cont.
So whats coming next might shock you. The Roman Catholic Church will also fall. As God "owns" it all, exactly what domain of ownership does this fall? To see what the Church of Rome declares as Gods, and what it declares as its own, is hypocracy enough.

As it is with any disfunctional ideology in theory and/or practice, the beast will fall. Like any empire on the verge of collapse, swimming in the dis-illusioned bubble before it bursts, it will fall and fall fast. This church is already dead, with its head sliced from its body with a gigantic dual edged sword. It just doesn't know it yet. It takes time, don't you know. And its stench and column of smoke billowing for all to see, forever...

Did you really think that an apostle like John wouldn't see this one coming and not find a way to say it? And their leader, the one who sports 3 6's on the back of its head dress 120 degrees from each other, you know, 6, threescore (a number muliplied or divided by itself) and 6, passing on its duty to the next successor until the end...

My own sources tell me it will take a mere 2 milleniums. Not so long to wait, thank God and I'll help keep him to his word for it is written, "Vengance is mine, saith the lord.

And Coyote... you've got me chuckling as well, brother. :-)

Ed:

I usually agree with what you post, but in this case I think you are confusing your experiences and opinions with the facts.

Fact is: Nazis killed an estimated 3000 Catholic clergy in Poland alone during the war. This was around 20% of the clergy in Poland.

Fact is: Himmler's plan for Christianity, which was being implemented before and during the war, was to replace it with a mystical Nazi version. It was a fairly common practice to give just-married couples a copy of Mein Kampf rather than a bible.

Fact is: unless you can give hard evidence about why the Vatican signed a concordant with Nazi Germany, it is only your opinion.

I find it ironic that, on the one hand, you say the Church had a minimal role to play in the downfall of communism, yet you claim that Hitler wouldn't have gained power without the Church's support. Is the Church all powerful or is it not?

If you were to ask anyone who lived in Poland during the 70' and 80's, they would tell you that the Church played and incredibly important role in the downfall of communism. Poland is over 90% Catholic and the support of their Church and of their native son, who was the leader of the Church, made it impossible for the government to crush the people. Why do you think the KGB tried to assasinate John Paul? Certainly not because he was powerless.

Yes, economics had a role to play in the downfall of communism. But the communists gave up when they realized that they would have to kill off most of their population in order to "win."

Hey brain, I think you're losing it, man!

But wasn't there mentioned by the major prophets, a prophecy of a savior to come, a king of kings that would save the world? And did not this man arrive and teach the ideology that the ten commandments lacked, the commandment that superceeds all others, to love others, to love yourself as you would love the father? And did he not have help? Disciples, scribes to spread his teachings?

And what of the mother... what of the other half? What of this Texus Receptus version of truth, hand picked by Rome, heavily edited and masculinized, tweaked by additions and deletions... even those who knew why it was male dominant edited could read between the lines.

This passage serves as an excellent example... lets see now... from an old king James version... a 67 scofield red letter... here we are:

From the self professed least of the apostles, Paul, Corinthians 14 : 33 - 38

33 For God is not the author of confusion but of peace, as in all churches of the saints.

34 Let your women keep silence in the churches; for it is not permitted unto them to speak, but they are commanded to be under obedience, as also saith the law.

(note that anything in italics won't be found in any old scripture copies of the original translation, in other words, it won't show up in anything we currently have, its been added in much later centuries, likely the 14th with the first King James bible. God "the author" in verse 33? Sorry, but God didn't write it and neither did Paul. And a commandment by God, of all things to put a muzzle on women in verse 34. Nice addition.)

35 And if they will learn anything, let them ask their husbands at home; for it is a shame for women to speak in the church.

(the correct interpretation according to Greek Nestle text, is this. "The women in the churches, let be silent; not for it is permitted to them to speak, but let them be subject, as also the law says." Nice contradiction once again, don't you think? So much for Perfect doctrine)

Cont.
36 What? Came the word of God out from you? Or came it unto you only?

Church scribes, Anglican and Catholic, missed editing this one. To put it in its proper perspective, Paul was talking to a group of MEN in his letter to first Corinthians. Its interesting how he builds the ego of men in Chapter 11 with the woman coming from Adams rib talk, another chapter that is completely misunderstood by most, especially if they are dumb enough to believe that fashion or length of hair has anything to do with male/female domains and hiarchies of prayer, and I've seen this too! Women with hair down to their knees, men sporting brush cuts, praying loudly and proudly, with some rather nasty manifestations of pride...

Anyways, the point is, Paul was talking to men and telling them point blank that God's word comes also from women and does this not mean that women can preach? Even the letters later coming from his prison cell must be taken with a grain of salt. And in those days, it was tough to be a christian. Rome slaughtered 52 million Christians, farmers, heretics, agnostics, whatever was considered as Christian and didn't believe what they did, over a 300 year period to come and this too, is a matter of record, although this might not mean much. Stan knows more about what happened in Germany through historians, instead of taking the words of a living survivor of the day. In any case, it would have been a tough time to be preaching equality of the sexes back in Pauls day.

Thing is, if the doctrine is flawed and flogged on us as being PERFECT, or the WORDS OF GOD, then we get what we have today. A bunch of holy rollers who believe their way is better than all the rest, for their belief is perfect and divine, and blah, blah, blah. In the final analysis, there is perfection in what Jesus taught and prayed for. Peace, love, forgiveness, they happen to function on infinite timelines just fine. :-)

And if it doesn't function, isn't inclusive (can't work for anyone), can't work forever, doesn't stress equality no matter what the role since all roles are important from most to least, from algae to animal, if it doesn't teach interconnectivity to all life, oneness with the principles of right and wrong or more appropriately, the will of God, to be righteous in will, the ones most everyone knows but the young child or infant, or mentally challenged, then by all means, go beyond questioning validity. Go towards outright challenge, for this is the criteria set forth to be the words of God, at least, ideologically speaking for those who don't believe in a creator.

Stan:
When you know what I know, blended in with "what I think I know", you'll likely end up being percieved as losing it too! My comfort is that as nutbar as I may sometimes sound, there are untold billions that supercede me on the subject of religion. It's just how it is.

Grumpy:
You've got that right. Knowledge is freedom. The Roman Catholic "organization" knows it well, doing everything they could to supress it and in poorer countries, still are.

Stan:
No. Communism died in Russia with an honest leader in a system that was laid rotten by internal corruption both in theory and practice. It is, after all, top down.

And just so you know that I'm not losing it, at least in terms of politics, democracy can also fail miserably. All it takes is either a lack of participation (which we saw in the last provincial election), propaganda smearing the facts, or last but certainly not least, voters who will only vote for themselves and not whats best for the municipality, province, or nation itself.

And what I see these days, is a lot of the latter. The rich vote for tax cuts, the middle class votes for their own concerns, and the poor often don't vote at all, with the apathetic mantra chant driven by the class they are in, "my vote doesn't count".

Any system of government, however ideologically pure or flawed, is only as good as those who practice within the system itself, from the top down, or from the bottom up, take your pick. Its just as true in Gods system (or the ideological version of God for those who don't believe but observe those who do believe) as it is in our own systems of government.

stan
With respect to Poland, the Nazis clearly were equal opportunity monsters and killed Catholics and Jews with little compunction. As for the Reich itself, I'll have to agree with Ed. I'll post the following in evidence:

Just some quick points, relative to the Church’s historic stance of "political independence" and especially with respect to the German Reich and the Italian Fascists:
1. The Bishop of Terracina, reacting to the news that Italian troops had attacked Ethiopia, October 3, 1935 : “ O Duce!...today Italy is Fascist and the hearts of all Italians beat together with yours. The nation is ready for any sacrifice to ensure the triumph of peace and of Roman and Christian civilizations…God bless you, O Duce.” J Ridley, Mussolini (London, 1997), 263.

2. Pius XI did write, shortly before his death, an encyclical called Mit brennender Sorge (With Deep Anxiety) which condemned Hitler’s treatment of the Church – although it had been silent after the proclamation of the Nuremberg Laws which took away the last civil rights of the Jews. In the summer of 1938, Pius XI did commission an encyclical: Humani generis unitas (The Unity of the Human Race) on anti-Semitism and Nazi racism. Nevertheless, it never passed the draft stage. In fairness, by the time of his death in February of 1939 Pius XI and Mussolini were at loggerheads. Duce commented, when told of the Pope’s passing, “At last the obstinate old man is dead.”

3. Eugenio Pacelli, who became Pope Pius XII in 1939, was more of an appeaser, when he ascended to the throne of St Peter, four days after his election, he wrote the following in a letter to the Fuhrer:

No, I'm not saying they are unavailable, it is the tenants of the Church to disallow ANY artificial means for birth control. For those who are not of that faith, indeed of any faith, if supplied to them, with an explanation as to how they would assist in preventing the spread of AIDS, there is a greater chance that the numbers of new diseased patients would lessen. Society does not need the Church to disallow the useage of condoms, in a third world country, where AIDS are rampant.

Remember this, the Catholic Church has basically been in control of "THE BIBLE" for 2 millenium, and if there were any passages that were in the original text, that was contrary to their beliefs, don't you think they would have "edited out" those passages, to alleviate any future conflict?

the "brain" wrote:

I've never seen a Catholic priest pass any plate; it's always church helpers. And I have not only never been told what to put in the plate, I never put anything in the plate! Not a once. And nobody said anything or treated me any differently.

The rest of the brain's ramblings should be read carefully by nightbloom. This is an example of the Christian Right's views on the Catholic church. I think the Catholics are probably put down more by the born-again set (they don't even believe that Catholics are Christians) than they are by the seculists.

D. Faulkner wrote:

Maybe I'm not being clear. I've written it twice before in this thread, but I'll try again:

It may be the tenet (or "tenant" if you prefer!) of the Church to disallow ANY artificial means for birth control, but how seriously do you think parishioners take that? Those that take that tenet seriously are probably in a much lower risk group, i.e. they wouldn't be having lots of sex with lots of different people. Why? Because that's also against the tenets of the Church. See what I mean? Does anyone follow this line of thought? Am I making sense? I find it inconceivable that a Catholic would be so devout that he or she would refuse to use a condom and then go out and have irresponsible sex before marriage. If they're that devout that they're going to listen to the pope on the condom issue, chances are they'll listen to him on the morality issues, too.

g west...

Certainly your quotes are valid, but for a larger picture:

http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/history/world/wh0033.html

The older I get, the more I see religion as a big hoax, a vehicle manipulated by mankind for power and control.
I believe in "freedom of religion" but would like to promote " freedom from religion".
As well, I think there should be a clause in the Charter of Rights for Children to do with their right not to be indoctrinated with religious beliefs.

Stan
It's a long sad story. Pacelli negotiated the Concordat and he had been papal nuncio in Munich and Berlin as early as the 20s. I think there's some evidence too that he had a certain level of animosity toward the Jews in those early days although I do think he did all he could to try and protect some Jews in Italy during the War.

If he'd backed Pius XI's Humani generis unitas and not buried it after he ascended to the throne of St Peter I'd feel a lot differently about the issue though. I think one can also make a case that Pacelli did not speak up, or support the German bishops and religious who sought to use the power of the Church to oppose Hitler during the early years of the Nazi rise to power when any opposition - particularly from Catholics who had the successful experience of opposing Bismarck and the Kulturkampf in their background - would have meant something.

We also know that Hitler boasted in 1933 that Pacelli's policy of non-intervention gave him the freedom he needed to deal with the Jews as he wished.

Friedlander, in Nazi Germany and the Jews, Volume I: The Years of Persecution, 1933 - 39 (London, 1997) says:
"[Hitler] expressed the opinion that one should only consider it as a great achievement. The concordat gave Germany an opportunity and created an area of trust that was particularly significant in the developing struggle against international Jewry."

I don't think the Church's role in giving the Nazis a green light can be swept under the table. Had Pius XI not died when he did, or had some other cardinal become Pontiff in 1939, who knows? History is as it is.

I don't know much, as you know, but I heard that there was a break through within Catholicism, as far as the African component is concerned.
In order to prevent disease ( not pregnancy )
the use of condoms can now be attributed to a method of saving lives.
This could be huge in Africa. A subtle way of turning a paradigm upside down, without challenging birth control.

g west:

I think that it's hard to say if the outcome could have been different. Hitler was very crafty with his deal making, usually ignoring agreements when the timing was right for him.

stan
Agreed. On the other hand, had Pacelli - both as papal nuncio and later as Pope - behaved more like Karol Wojtyła and less like the lawyer he was, we wouldn't be having this discussion today and the Church and her defenders wouldn't find themselves trying to justify the unjustifiable.

I wonder what the Roman Catholic church's position on fish farms?

Well said, The brain... interconnectivity is at the heart of all things.

To recognize and honour the sacred interconnectiveness between all things is for me at least what defines the truly spiritual in life. Generosity of spirit in the truest sense.

g west,

Also true. We should remember though, that hindsight is always 20/20.

As Stalin once said: "The Pope? How many divisions has he got?" A Pope's influence is only moral and spiritual. Catholics are not mindless zombies who do whatever the Pope orders, despite what some of the previous posters claim. ("A cult!" Ha ha!) If Pius XII had as much support from the Catholics in Nazi Germany as John Paul had in Poland, it would have been more possible for him to influence the Nazis. Pius probably thought that, at the time, he did the best that he could. However, sometimes the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Nightbloom wrote:

1792 Ignorance of Christ and his Gospel, bad example given by others, enslavement to one's passions, assertion of a mistaken notion of autonomy of conscience, rejection of the Church's authority and her teaching, lack of conversion and of charity: these can be at the source of errors of judgment in moral conduct.

From Bishop Salvatore R. Matano:

Conscience, then, is not a license to do anything that one wants, nor is it a device for making exceptions to objective requirements of morality. Quite to the contrary, "through the mediation of conscience a person perceives and acknowledges the imperatives of the divine law." (Dignitatis humanae, 3; cf. GS 16) This "divine law" is "eternal, objective and universal," and is the "highest norm of human life." (DH, 3) In our search for the truth, in our desire to form a truly proper conscience, we are surely guided by "objective norms of morality." (GS 16)

The formation of conscience has always held a place of prime importance in Catholic theology. The Second Vatican Council clearly emphasized and appreciated the need for each person to follow his or her conscience in making those decisions which affect so many aspects of human existence. This same council carefully noted how the formation of conscience and Church doctrine are intimately joined when it stated: "in the formation of their consciences, the Christian faithful ought carefully to attend to the sacred and certain doctrine of the Church. The Catholic Church is, by the will of Christ, the teacher of the truth. It is her duty to give utterance to, and authoritatively to teach, that Truth which is Christ Himself, and also to declare and confirm by her authority those principles of the moral order which have their origin in human nature itself." (DH, 14)

Capitalism wrote:

Just as he encouraged Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador. Oops ... er ... see this article instead:

http://dir.salon.com/story/opinion/feature/2005/04/08/pope/index.html

Bluenose:
I think I'll use the following definition of conscience - from the latest revision of the Church's Catechism:
Article VI MORAL CONSCIENCE,
II. The Formation of Conscience

Your point about JPII's reluctance to entertain any opinions which did not concur with his interpretation is certainly nothing that should be ignored.

Bluenose:

Another fair and unbiased article, just like Rafe's (with a flattering picture to boot).

Like the great sage Homer (Simpson) once said: "Facts are meaningless. You could use facts to prove anything that's even remotely true!"

Or you could use abstruse theological constructs to prove anything that isn't true or can't be proven outside the conceptual framework of Catholic theology. Things like the self-evidentiary nature of God or ex cathedra infallibility for example.

Ciao.

GRW, thanks. I take any & all compliments, even the backhanded ones ;-)

I don't think my critique is any more incendiary than others on the threads who denounce the "neo-conmen", etc. The material on this website is consistently anti-conservative and anti-Christian (otherwise you'd have seen at least one piece on the Catholic Left among all this tripe...and the liberal-Left bloggers here only trot that one out when you really corner them). So really I'm only giving them a run for their money. What I've said about the Left here isn't nearly as excoriating as what some are saying about Catholicism....I mean really: just substitute "Jew" for Catholic or "Rabbi" for Priest here. At least I back up my critique with a few solid and original ideas that stand up to scrutiny.

And fundamentally the Left and the Right are not really analogous to each other, even though they're presented on the same horizontal spectrum. Both liberals and the hard-core Left take a much different approach to other centres of power in society (like religion). That's why even moderate Christians have been driven out of the public realm over the past thirty or forty years, and are unacknowledged except when the Left goes begging for the ethnic vote (as in the African-American Baptist Churches, or in Latino-dominated Parishes).

It goes back to my argument about the hard-core fundamentalist backlash - it's a secular liberal creation, and has even co-opted the more successful tactics.

I noticed a few more posts on the contraception issue. Non-Catholics have difficulty understanding the difference between doctrine and its pastoral application. Humanae Vitae articulated the Catholic ideal (i.e. the valuation of the procreative sex act as the means by which man participates in the process of divine creation). Its up to parishioners and priests to work out how they can apply and approximate that ideal at the pastoral, real-life level.

It's annoying to continually here non-Catholics twist Catholic positions. You don't have to believe in it, but don't misrepresent it either, or selectively choose the most hyperbolic examples (like Opus Day numeraries or something).

Pope Benedict was presented with a scenario in an interview (when he was Cardinal) regarding a hypothetical married Catholic woman with a full household who couldn't afford (or didn't want) more children. The interviewer (Peter Seewald) asked about contraception in those instances, and the Cardinal readily stated that those issues are to be worked out at the pastoral level, and that the realities and challenges of family life had to be acknowledged on a practical level.

To my mind, this doesn't invalidate the ideal as an ideal. Not saying it's my ideal, of course, but I defend the right to adhere to absolute values and try to apply them to the fullest practical extent possible in everyday life.

Jeez, I missed this; my 50 dollar computer crashed, but I would have remarked that I think Rafe's finest hour, er, couple minutes was when I saw him on tv saying that he thought the entire christian claim of the resurection and divinity of christ was basically a bunch of crap, which it, of course is. My respect for Rafe went from very little to huge.

The world is full of stupid people who need a stupid religion, I guess.

Nightbloom, you should be ashamed of yourself.
The catholic church is just a big disgusting money bucket, like all the other big religions.

Time to grow up.

I think Rafe is sadly mistaken and Yes, it is going too far to say that the Catholic church's stance against contraception led to the deaths of millions.

The Catholic church and it's followers have been and continue to be morally opposed to contraception, and therefore are idealogically prevented from supplying condoms.

Therefore, those like Rafe, who are not idealogically prevented from supplying condoms, are entirely responsible. You knew the solution, had no obstacles to enacting it, but didn't, and are therefore a murdering sack of shite.

Your guilt therein has be transformed into a hatred of the closest scapegoat.

Sir, your excuse for not solving the problem carries less weight than those who are religously opposed to your supposed solution. At least the Catholics were on the ground encouraging a solution within their belief system, you were simply a bystander in the death of fellow human beings.

Maybe Catholic are less than perfect, but you certainly seem less than Catholics.

Got any cartoons of Mohammed ? Post them here, you seem like just the type of person to do so.

Truman,

Typical socialist crap there. You guys never cease to amaze me. You're holier than thou attitude, yet you have no concept of respect for people's right to believe. You preach about tolerance, then I see this.

Not everybody has had the same poor influences as yourself, and you should never insult something that means a lot to many people.

I will qualify the statement by saying that though I am catholic, and go to mass every now and then, I am certainly no evangelical christian.

The hypocricy of you left-wing liberals.

You don't say??

Of course - however, it is typical socialist garbage to blame the big institution. The problems in Africa are deep-rooted and consistent among tribal, catholic and muslim areas.

There is a lack of education, there are few resources and many still don't even comprehend that HIV is spread through intercourse.

The continent is war-stricken and full of poverty. Nomads go from village to village in search of work, and spread the disease as they go.

Rafe is an idiot.

Thanks for being honest, Truman. You've affirmed a point I've always made on these threads. The doctrinaire Left really is about uprooting the institutional anchors of society and replacing it with its own nihilist ideology-based knock-offs.

A website like The Tyee disguises it with easy targets and hipsterisms, but that's basically been the underlying theme whenever it has broached these issues. It has never managed to treat the issue fairly, or present its more sympathetic elements.

As I said earlier, the only time the Leftist here even acknowledge the value of moderate Christianity or the good works of the Christian Left (there's even a huge Evangelical Left, btw) is after I hammer away at them for a few days. And each time the issue comes up again, the process has to start all over again from scratch.

nightbloom

Sounding a bit doctrinaire yourself too, don't you think?

It's hardly surprising that a string of posts yesterday that began with this:

would raise the ire of 'your' target.

Which is, as always, the 'left'.

As I and others pointed out, there are plenty of critics of the church from the right wing, among them, I'd suggest, Rafe Mair, that you choose to ignore.

It is no surprise that your constant disingenuous goading of your favourite target would encourage some reaction, don't you think? As to uprooting (or refusing to support and sustain) the anchors of society; I’d say the doctrinaire Right – including some ‘elements’ of the Church, could be tarred with that brush too.

One of my oldest, dearest friends is devoutly Roman Catholic and this discussion has helped me understand why, at regular intervals, we plunge into verbal fisticuffs.

When I deplored Stockwell Day ascending to power shouting "And Jesus is my saviour!", my friend welcomed this lapse of judgment as a demonstration of "absolute faith." When I fretted about the loss of public ownership of B.C. Ferries or B.C. rivers, he said "Private enterprise is best," with a jab at my "socialist attitude." When I mentioned the SSM legislation in Parliament, this gentle, generous man made a passionate denunciation. Every issue of public interest became a Left-Right issue.

It was no joy to me, to learn eventually (it took a long time) that even a well-educated man can be locked into a pre-digested, unassailable program he cannot control without risk to his whole inner construct.

And I see it again, on this thread, where I appreciate being able to poke and prod the construct, to try and see what's to be done about it. Mostly I still wonder how it happens. Or how intelligent people allow it to happen to themselves.

Because it's sad, when it's impossible to talk even to a dear friend about basic issues like public ownership, without it suddenly going off into cut-and-dried, life-and-death stereotypes (including eternal hellfire) which can't be deconstructed without causing pain.

How do the devotees explain that to themselves?

Stan,

Going back to the 3,000 priests killed by the nazis in Poland.

I have lived in Europe during the war, and later spent many years studying the causes of the war and the collapse of empires since the beginning of history, and found no evidence of any systematic campaign against any so called Christian religions by the nazis. Lots of hot air propaganda, but no action and they had the support, or tacit support of the majority of religious leaders.

Also, the 3,000 Polish priests killed represent nowhere 20% of the total. Poland had an almost solid Catholic population of 35,000 million in 1939. If 3,000 had been 20% it would have meant a total number of 15,000 priests, which is an unrealistic figure in a 70 + % rural population, living in small villages. I have no numbers, or the time to look for any, but I would estimate up to 100,000 priests to serve that number, which means 3 to 5% who may have been killed.

Also, those priests have not been killed because they were Catholics, or priests, but because they must have done something to upset the nazi occupiers.

The religion of Himmler you refer to was Alfred Rosenberg's "Gottglaubig", or "God believer" religion ardent nazis joined. There are many books and references to find what it was about.

Poland was to be totally colonized and enslaved, under the "Lebensraum" theory, with large areas given to German nazis and war heroes. With the civil administration gone, the village priests have been the only rallying authorities left and if they've shown any opposition against the land grab by the nazis, they were killed, or sent to death camps. In other words, not because of their religion, but because of their leadership position.

Antisemitism was an established, accepted fact all across Europe and especially in highly religious Eastern countries, where it was preached as the punishment by God against the Jews. Hitler's anti semitism was accepted as a rule. But not the death camps, nobody outside the immediate areas knew about.

I certainly have never heard of them until after the war and have lost one of my best friends in Auschwitz, which was one of the major motivating factors for my later studies and actions against all forms of dictatorship.

There have been many documented cases in Poland, where village priests have informed the nazis of hidden Jews, or forced the return Jewish children taken in by Catholic families to save their lives.

Religion has definitely played some, but not a decisive part in the collapse of communism. Religion has been used by many as an anti communist rallying point in communists countries, often subconsciously.

But, even at that, the Soviets, especially the occupying forces, were hated with a passion across Eastern Europe, even by communist party members. E.g. The Hungarian revolution of 1956, led by communists and not priests, although some may have been involved.

Religion has been outlawed in the USSR for 70 years and had no part in the collapse of the corrupt system, which shows that it wasn't a decisive factor .

Basically it was the same situation, as we have now here, with businesses, especially large corporations claiming to be the economy, which is rubbish. They're part of, but nowhere near THE economy.

Occupied countries become very complicated snake pits with emotions and hysteria ruling the loyalties and actions of peoples, as we can now see in Iraq.

The best example I've ever seen was a Pole I met in England. He was in the Polish army, captured by the Germans. Later he joined the German led Polish forces and fought in Russia and later in Italy, where he was captured by the British at Monte Cassino. So, then he joined the Polish Army under Brit command and ended up on the winning side after all.

Ed Deak.

Thanks for your opinion Gwest. You may dislike mine, but the undeniable fact is that my viewpoint has been consistently and repeatedly borne out by most of the material on this thread and every other Tyee thread that has come within 50 ft of Christianity.

The Left has (and has always had) a very, very hard time accepting religion as active element in human society and culture. The root cause of this animosity is just as I said: on a fundamental level the Left sees organized religion as a rival mote of power, in a way that the Right almost never does.

Ultimately, the Left seeks to assimilate and contain everything within its ideological rubric, and religion has proven to be the most instractably resistant entity out there to this process (as the Polish experience undeniably demonstrates...hence the almost visceral animosity to John Paul II here).

There are many classic examples spanning the time since the French Revolution to the present day (starting with Robespierre's attempt to abolish Christianity and replace it with the Jacobin ideology-based state-sponsored Cult of the Supreme Being). Just in the past thirty years we're seen highly successful assaults by the deconstructionist nihilist Left on all the basic building blocks of society, from traditional faith systems to human language itself, from gender "construction" to the family...The excesses and abstractions are all there to be seen. The Left is (correctly) very aware of the latent power invested within these "constructions" and therefore has made it a target of assimilation.

The conservative toleration of evolved social structures and practices (like religion) is fundamental to conservatism's whole approach to politics and society. That is why the Right's whole approach to the religious "constituency" has been so much more successful

As I've said so many times, the Left needs to re-think its approach (as the Democrats have been doing for the last six years). They've been alienating a lot of potential friends.

I agree, nightbloom and you rule - how about a line or two with respect to the influence of the far Right "Dutch Reformed Church" that played a large part in the politics of British Columbia?

In Chilliwack a popular phrase goes "If you're not Dutch - You're not Much"

So you guys don't appreciate my description of the Catholic church and religion in general, eh.

So I thought I'd better tell you the secret answer to all the big mysterious questions concerning god, then.

1. Nobody knows anything about god, not even me in spite of my overblown opinion of my superior intelligence.
2. The best and most intellectually honest opinion of god is that he, she, it, is some kind of perverse, voyeuristic experimenter.
3. A decent god would never allow the weak to be murdered and mutilitated endlessly.
4. The Catholic church is only committed to its own longevity.
5. I affirm the right of anyone to believe in god if they want to, but that won't stop me from affirming that I think they are all a pack on intellectual cowards and fools.
6. The Pope is just some creepy old guy ELECTED, that's right people, ELECTED by a pack of creepy old guys in robes pretending to represent god to man on earth, or something equally as stupid.

Nightbloom, I thought I'd single you out because you have shown that you actually have a functioning brain on many threads. Your pretense at knowing anything about god or that the Catholic church is a respectable organization is WAY below your intellectual capabilities. You should be ashamed of yourself.

I invite all of you stupid believers in a perverse and obscene church with your even more perverse gods to grow up and get a life.

John Lennon was right on: "Imagine no religion."

I find it very ironic Nightbloom that you discuss the conservative right as tolerant of "evolved social structures and practices" and then equating said "evolved social structures and practices" with religion. Rather than question why the left itself questions the "basic building blocks of society", as you call them (my definition of such I think, differs from yours), you simply write it off as a nihilistic attack on some kind of conventional wisdom. It seems that the right/conservative movement cannot fathom anyone questioning the contructs that have "evolved"; like the simplistic Capitalist/Maybelle, are we to just accept things for the way they are? Second, I also find it ironic that you speak of the left and assimilation in the same breath. The whole ethos of religious institutions is to assimilate; the most extreme examples lying in the colonial expansions of the (recent) past. That said Nightbloom, it's nice to have someone on the right like yourself with whom we can have a civil disourse with. Cheers for that!

: Truman Greenposted: 2 Hours Ago Jeez, I missed this; my 50 dollar computer crashed, but I would have remarked

And to that I can only add thank God!

How long ago was the world created?

Ed Deak.

Capitalism:

...I think it is great that we live in a society where Mr. Mair can openly criticize one of the holiest figures in the world - yet he still slams our society, when he would be beheaded in the middle east, pakistan, china for similar comments about other religious figures

Capitalism, you're starting to rant; take a chill-pill and then sit down with a good history book.

Then please answer my previous question about the roles of Polish trade unions and the collapsing Soviet economy in the death of East Bloc communism.

I do try - Thanks guyz =) ...including you Truman!

stan:

Who would they have to kill? Other than Poland, where in the East Bloc did the church have a lock on peoples' minds?

To most Russians the church was irrelevant. Ditto the Czechs. Etc Etc.... If you doubt how little most East Bloc people cared about the Roman Church, check out the abortion statistics in those countries through the 60's, 70's and 80's. The edicts of the pope were either unknown or ignored.

Yeah Capitalism!

What about those trade unions and the Soviet economy, and what about the roles of the Franks and the beginnings of the "Holy Roman Empire" that kicked off the Crusades, and what about the role of the teachings of the Dali Lama....?

"His Holiness the Dahli Lama, who visited Vancouver recently, teaches us that he who has hope has everything. It is a duty of this government to bring back hope to each and every one of our resource communities. Fortunately, the proverbial, if not provincial, opportunity is knocking at our door. The opportunity lies in the enormous offshore reserves of crude oil and natural gas that lie beneath our ocean floor — more than ten billion barrels of oil and 42 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Access to this resource represents an unprecedented bonanza like nothing else in B.C.'s history." L. Mayencourt

sometimes I love myself.

From Wikipedia: Bob Jones, Sr. held that a biblically informed understanding of the Roman Catholic Church leads one to the conclusion that it is an anti-Christian cult and the Pope is the Antichrist or False Prophet.

That's a good example of what many on the religious right think of Catholicism.

nightbloom

And quite rightly. Historically, religion was a meme used to enhance the power of the "ruling" classes and to keep the poor and downtrodden, docile.

The church preached "the weak shall inherit...." whenever workers sought to organize the factory whose owner was a key contributor to church coffers. Fundamentally, the church is no friend of a working populace that seeks basic societal changes in order to improve their lot. The Right does not see the Church as a rival, because the Church suckles at the Corporate teat.

When we see, overwhelmingly, the Church standing with workers on the picket line, perhaps then we'll see support of the Church by the Left.

More from Wikipedia:
Fred Phelps, leader of the Westboro Baptist Church, equates Catholic priests to pederasty and sodomy in often graphic ways.

A series of tracts by noted anti-Catholic and comic book evangelist Jack Chick accuses the papacy of supporting Communism

Check out this religious right website: http://www.jesus-is-lord.com/#rc

Or this one: http://www.biblebelievers.net/Romanism/kjcroman.htm

Or this reaching out to Catholics in order to save their souls from a Protestant group: http://home.znet.com/bart/

Or this Protestant one on the errors of Rome: http://www.ianpaisley.org/toc.asp?loc=rome

Now tell me again, Nightbloom, about how it's just the secular Left that rails against Catholicism.

grw - Would you by any chance have a link to the Bible, preferably the Old World Testament?

gasworks

ROTFLMFAO

nightbloom
Dislike is disingenuous with respect to what I've written (among others), both on this thread and previous ones here at the Tyee. As a matter of fact, I kind of enjoy reading your posts and I’d never ever say I disliked your opinions, I just disagree with them.

I'd suggest you're still painting the left with far too broad a brush. Once in a while you might actually try to start a discussion with something other than your usual blanket broadside just to see how things might develop. I know you're not a rabid right winger in most of your views but to pretend that your own point of view isn't as one-sided as the viewpoints you're attacking is nonsense.

Rafe Mair is hardly a spokesperson for the left and you know perfectly well that there are all kinds of strong, and I'd say viable, currents of reform - a lot of it left wing reform - within the Catholic Church. Seems to me you're ignoring those too. The fact that spokespersons from that avenue don't post here is neither my fault, nor yours.

You must know, in fairness, that the range of opinions posted to this site is far far greater than you'd ever find on a right wing Christian site. I think you need to step back and reconsider.

The fact that the Church is doing, and has done, a lot of good throughout history is no reason to ignore its shortcomings.

My view, most discussions get further if they can avoid getting too personal. I think it's a tactic you might want to consider.

Rafe: Religion is a voluntary activity and church membership is as well. If you don't believe in their doctrine or teachings, then don't be a member of the church. Leave others alone who want to be. Simple. Now move on to topics that matter.

I am not too familiar with the Dali Lama or his teachings, so I will not opine.

The trade unions, the collapse of the soviet economy, the pope, effects of the cold war and free enterprisers all played a role in the collapse of communism.

I didn't say the Pope single handedly brought it down, however he was (in my opinion) the most integral part of the collapse. It is his legacy.

The Church. What's the emoticon for spitting on it? Not just Christianity, but all the monotheistic nonsense mongers.

Love the Bible. Some good advice. Also, I think Jesus made some invaluable points about how to live. But all this talk of miracles and such is just giving false hope to the gullible. I'll take Buddhism anyday, at least the doctrine surpasses the variants on Flying Spaghetti Monsterism we're plagued with.

I'll never forget one of the elders at the church I attended as a child having a good chuckle as his son who had just finished a stint in a Manitoba RCMP detachment derided the local First Nations's people. Racist Christians. Sealed the deal for me. Practice what you preach indeed.

I'd also like nightbloom to consider the fact that drunk-driving hasn't gone away yet, despite years and years of public awareness. So, these things take time, some people are just plain stupid, no matter what their sexual preference, and HIV seems like a tough virus to beat, esp. considering all the other viruses we've yet to find a cure for. Common cold anyone?

"sometimes I love myself."

I'm pretty sure that's a sin Onan the Barbarian!

Nightbloom:

It's pretty easy to understand why those wacky deconstructing post-modernists would take issue with "The Word". Facts are facts, but the truth can be mutable. Anyone who claims to have a lock on the truth is going to come under fire by people who know better.

I know this is meant to be a shot, but for the life of me I can't figure it out. Just to be clear: I posted those links to show people like nightbloom that it's not just the Left that attacks the Catholic church; it's also nutjobs in the Right -- and religious Christian Right at that! So for him to constantly suggest it's the Left's fault every time an attack comes to one of his cherished institutions is nothing short of disingenuous.

Also, not being a computer nerd, I have no idea what ROTFLMFAO stands for. I'm guessing the last five initials stand for "Laughed my fucking ass off".

For the record, I'll let Mikhail Gorbachev provide the response to Mr. Mair. Here is a transcript of some of the comments the former General Secretary made on air in a Radio Free Europe interview dated February 8, 2005:

Gorbachev: "Now we will say that the pope was simply an extraordinary man. And one of the most extraordinary qualities of the pope was that he was a devoted servant of the Church of Christ. And, finally, as the head of state of the Vatican, he did a lot, using his opportunities along these lines, he did a lot to prepare for the end of the Cold War, for the coming together of peoples. He did a lot to remove people from the danger of a nuclear conflict. He was a man who used his high position -- I'll speak bluntly -- in the best possible way. He was [a man] who did not put political calculation at the center, but who made his judgments about the world, about situations, about nature, about the environment, based on the right to life, to a worthy life for people and on the responsibility of those people for what is gong on in the world. I think that there has never been such an outstanding defender of the poor, the oppressed, the downtrodden in various cases and in various situations, either historically speaking or in terms of ongoing conflicts. He was a humanist. Really. A Humanist with a capital H, maybe the first humanist in world history."

Gwest -

I'll take that as a concession. Why don't you reserve equal censure for your own for discrediting your ideology? I've lambasted capitalist excesses and Christian fundamentalist literalists many, many times on these threads.

That has always been one of my core arguments. Why are these elements marginalized by the nihilist secular fundamentalists who have taken it upon themselves to acid-wash the public realm of any traces of the Western faith tradition, and who never miss an opportunity to publicly ridicule it...?

Nope, I used to debate the homosexuality issue with hard-core fundamentalists on-line (way back). You'd get the full gamut of feedback from full-on vitriol to some real heart-warmers. The caricature of evangelical fundamentalists we get from television (based on the television evalngelists and their supporters) is actually only representative of a very tiny sliver of that demographic. There's even a gay evangelical movement - an Angligan friend of mine attended one of their pow-wows in the U.S. last summer and loved every minute of it.

GRW - Yes, Catholic-bashing is a favourite past-time, especially for some Baptists. I've seen it all. It boils down to low-brow jealousy (although some of them even accuse Catholics of polytheism for "worshipping" the Virgin Mary!). But Fred Phelps and the other nuts are a totally anomally - you'll have to do better than that. Phelps is the guy who's picketting all the soldiers' funerals saying they deserve to go to hell for defending a country that allows "sodomy".

Grub - As I've said so many times, the Roman Catholic hierarchy has historically been fairly representative of the societies from which it's derived. They have a majority working class or peasant base - most of the religious orders, the secular priests and the sisters in the R.C. Church. They have a smaller middle-class elements (which has traditionally taught in the universities) and a much smaller ruling caste which was historically drawn from the aristocracy. Of course, there were many, many exceptions to this rule. And now class distinctions in the R.C. hierarchy are pretty much extinct (i.e. you don't find royalty, landowners or industrialists in the episcopate anymore).

So all this says it's that structurally it's been like every other mass human organization in history. Sure, you'll find "palace intrigues" among the Bishops in Church history. But you'll also find the vast numerical majority throughout the history of the Church (no one knows how many - in the 100's of millions) were involved in sincere life-long work with the poor, the sick and the destitute.

Just try to imagine how many man-hours that works out to over the past 2000 years. Then come back and spin stories about greedy popes and scheming bishops. It's simply a human institution, and it therefore manifests all the hopes and flaws which were are capable of.

It's been interesting reading the doctrinairial Catholic ravings of nut, err nightbloom-, as an amusement, because I just cannot take this guy seriously enough anymore to even bother engaging him much.

Clearly, he is more naturally at home on the elitist extreme right in any case, unwilling to concede to the majority of the left, though including very many Christians as well on the left, I acknowledge, that they have a case in their analyses of the exploitive and class institutional arrangement of society, that the ruling class interest has been more the natural home for the ruling heirarchy of the Church as well. It is one of the institutions, by and large, though not all, allied with, and effectively a part of established ruling class society and power. (For all their empty talk about serving the poor-, their basic admonition to them still, is to render unto Caesar (The State and Established Temporal Class Order) that which is Caesar's, and unto God that which is God's. (Which be fundamentally their obedience to His will as manifest in Church doctrine.)

And this is a divide that is unlikely, though not impossible, to at least soon be bridged with such a doctrinaire, prostrate before the heirarchical order of The Church type as Nightbloomer. He is committed through blind "faith" to its spiritual and intellectual rule, as much he also evidences to the prevailing socio-economic class order of the extreme political right. He, as is his Church, is one and the same with them.

Truman Green, however, is a different kettle of fish. He eschews that slavishness to religious doctrine that so much characterizes Nightbloom, and retains his intellectual and moral independance. Insists upon it. Which is really what most marks the demarcation line between at least most of us on the left, and those of the extreme religious right as represented by the bloomer here.

Good writing Truman. I much enjoyed reading your stuff on this topic.

Agree with your writing, Rafe....
However, 'the church' has lagged behind realism as long as I can remember and will be firmly entrenched in the 15th century for a long while yet. And, astonishingly, no one really gives a damn - but many of us still attend church on Sunday. It's as if we'll find our own form of Catholicism whether the church goes along with it or not.
Pope John XXIII slipped in unexpectedly and tried to change a few things however at the time of his election, he was supposedly as hardline as the others. In fact, being hardline is a prime requisite for the papacy.

nightbloom
I'd say the gay thing is certainly equal opportunity - but probably more hate-filled from the right - my outsider's impression.

As I told you before, on the same thread where you dumped all over me because I said something positive about Liberation theology, it's not my thing.

I support gay marriage for human rights and basic fairness and equity reasons and I certainly want nothing to do with slamming homosexuals now or ever. I'd say that's pretty typical of the left and I'd suggest gay-liberation movements are far more typical of a left-wing point of view too.

Anyway, I still think you attract an extreme reaction to religion because you come at the issues with a chip on your shoulder. By the way, just so you don't get the wrong impression, I've been banned from every right-wing site I ever posted to and my manner and diction there is never any different from the way I post here.

As for Percy's post above about JPII I certainly agree with Mikhail Gorbachev's positive assessment of the late Pope as a great humanist.

nightbloom:

I, for one, cherish the Western faith tradition, as an ever-evolving system of beliefs. But I put the emphasis on evolving. Further, I would be foolish to deny the extent to which my own view of the world has been shaped by that tradition.

Nonetheless, for me, the Western faith tradition requires me to move forward and, if necessary, publicly ridicule those parts that have proven to be silly, foolish or not particularly helpful.

I was a keen observer of homosexual agenda of many teachers in Surrey, trying to promote homosexuality in 3 books and recently Mr. Chamberlean (born as Mr. Cox) forcing all school children to see "Bendover Mountain" movie with "simulated sex act." All the church groups at the hearing on 3 books, were strongly against them with a notable exception, that of the Jews. When I asked some Jews what is their opinion, I was getting runaround. So I sent a letter to the Chief Rabbi of New York and received prompt answer: "those two things, you were inquiring about sir, are strictly forbidden" Honourable Rabbi did not even want to name those "two things" which were male with male and female with female sex acts, but his answer was very clear. To me it meant that Jews consider homosexuality to be all right for all the others — goyems, but not to themselves. My suggestion to people criticizing various churches is to join them and start improving them from inside. Slow process, isn't it?

Latarnik:

Would you care to re-phrase or are you sure it was (1) many teachers and that they were actually (2) promoting homosexuality?

Just curious...

Latarnik wrote ..."and recently Mr. Chamberlean (born as Mr. Cox) forcing all school children to see "Bendover Mountain" movie with "simulated sex act."...

My friend the Butcher's wife made him go see it on a recent trip to Alberta, all he said was "it was pretty crude" I hope what you wrote about "forcing" them is not "Gospel"

Well Spoken!
I am amazed at how intelligent people can get so excited about this old crap!
Every religion has the same answer: "You must believe" as if that explains anything!

During that war, in Denmark, my family pretended to be religious, just so as not to wind up on some hitlist from the Gestapo!
Some of my Jewish relatives managed to flee to Sweden, some got killed trying!

German troops said GOD is with us, wonder how he/she (god) decided who was the choosen children.

This religious stuff is a bunch of fairy tales any 8 year old child will see through.....but you must believe!

hey, be my guest go ahead and believe, but keep it to yourself!

"My suggestion to people criticizing various churches is to join them and start improving them from inside. Slow process, isn't it?"

Two thousand years and counting... and that's just the Xtians. It's almost as though the system itself has a flaw... perhaps it's the part where you believe in a God?

Gwest, I do generally like your posts, and yes I was inappropriately hard on you in the thread you're referring to. Sorry 'bout that. Your comments were actually much more moderate in content & tone than I'd interpreted on first read-through.

I find that sometimes after getting a few hairy posts (like Coyote's above) in a row from several directions it all sorta blends together into an indiscrimate morass. That's when I need to remind myself that the purpose of the exercise is dialogue, not to simply to browbeat those who are in disagreement, which would ultimately be self-defeating. So that's when I need to discipline myself to separate the wheat from the chaff and focus my responses in worthwhile directions.

I've found these threads personally educational for a number of reasons. For one, I've realized that I don't express myself in writing nearly as clearly or as well as I thought I did. I also learned that preconception, context and emotion can radically alter how we read & interpret content at a given moment.

Above all, these threads are a great way to bounce ideas around and develop trains of thought that may have been much more vague & amorphous before. Bouncing ideas off people who do not agree is worthwhile, but it requires an arms' length relationship with our own notions that doesn't come naturally (especially on some of these particular topics).

My critique of the Left stems as much from the belief that it needs to be better than it is, as it does with any emotional animus on my part against its more revanchiste approaches to culture and society. Ultimately, the reason why people like myself initially gravitated to radical politics is because the established institutions (church, family, school, work) failed so miserably to anticipate and address the new ground that was opening up. The Left alone took the initiative. The Left fueled the spontaneous dynamism of the anti-war and disarmament movements, the women's movement, the sexual revolution and the gay movement....

But that dynamism died when it entered the professoriat in the Seventies and began smothering the Humanities throughout the Eighties and Nineties. They laid waste to everything they touched. Students fled (men in particular) and Liberal Arts departments became irrelevant satrappies with ever-shriking budgets that couldn't rationalize their own existence (and still can't - look at SSHRC's stumbling attempts to reinvent and justify itself). Now we've got a Left with a Byzantine doctrinal edifice to rival Catholicism at its most pedantic, but no flock. The Left is losing its traditional constituencies, and it's stuck on rehashing the same divisive oppression narratives that no one buys into anymore in an effort to shore up those crumbling constituencies. They don't even speak the same language anymore. The only Leftists who seem to believe they're heading up a genuine global movement are those in an academic bubble or the limousine-liberals making $$ on the lecture circuit. Yet now is the time when we need a dynamic Left again - the new global order is being formed here and now, and it has neither a conservative nor a liberal nature - it's pure amoral corporatism at its inhuman worst.

(cont'd)...

...(cont'd)

I think there's a new vanguard that sees the abyss, and has altered course to adapt. I'm starting to hear more and more of it. Let's take one example, which I've cited before: Hillary Clinton. Now, I'm no fan of hers (her frozen rictus grin and unblinking serpentine medusa-stare freaks me out already) - but here's a radical who has learned the hard way what she has to do in order to position herself to make a difference and implement her agenda. She's courting a cornucopia of alienated constituencies - liberal Evangelicals, conservative Blacks, poor Whites, secular Jews, upper class gays.....Its a new, strange and paradoxical cross-section of unrepresented constituencies that just might work for her. Time will tell - but I think she's pioneering a potent new paradigm in constituency-forming for the new millenium that's going to become a model for both Right and Left because it aims at the creation of a new, totally unprecendented and dynamic Centre.

A new Centre is what we really need right now to generate the critical mass for what lies ahead.

nightbloom: Was that a lesson in "humility", or was it all just about "you"? - No browbeating intended.

nightbloom
You really need to read that book I recommended: Straight Man, by Richard Russo.

I'll hold my feelings about Hillary for another time; haven't really decided what I think about the situation down there...except that it is a mess.

Cheers.

Wow, apparently average, normal people of a variety of colours and beliefs all want basically the same thing and they're not getting it from our corporatized world. That's quite the breakthrough good buddy.

Well bless my grits, look who has returned from the cyber space abyss, the Holy Stump is back, now we’ll get a good dose of Fire and Brimstone.

Gasworks - Don't ruin the moment. I actually started off saying this precise schtick about recreating a viable Centre when I first started posting on here way back (last Summer or Fall). I mounted more or less the same critique about the alienation by the Left of largely sympathetic constituencies (like the Catholics, whom someone here correctly pointed out are about the most liberal Christians you'll even meet, paradoxically enough...They've learned the fine art of "tuning out" nonsense while reconciling themselves to the necessity of tolerating its more harmless manifestations). Moreover, these are elements that are sophisticated enough that they can be appealed to obliquely (i.e. not necessarily "as Catholics"). But crap like this article (which is pervasive and widely reproduced in various forms, I should add) don't help things and contribute absolutely nothing to mutual understanding. And its whole critique is incorrect and unfounded, to boot.

The funny thing is that when I presented my arguments mildly, with hat in hand, I was immediately tagged as a Straussian neo-con man (largely for my defence of Allan Bloom, who was and remains a demigod, and an example of what gay men can be when they put down the drugs, get out of the gyms and apply their innate exceptionalism to something worthwhile). But now that I give as good as I get, no one calls me a neo-con anymore. Why is that?

And for the record neo-conservatives are not true conservatives - they're liberal capitalists with a political heritage that goes back to the the mid-nineteenth century.

I don't think my basic message has really changed all that much over time. I still think the Left is far more flawed than its apologists admit, and it can be just as exploitative towards minorities as the neo-conservatives (example: gays raise all sorts of money for Left political candidates, mostly through the bars and the parties, yet not a single one has stepped forward to comment publicly on the ongoing drug and hiv explosion in our community. Not a single one. That would jeopardize both their funding and their support base. The "Queer Theorists" in the Social Sciences and Humanities departments have been equally missing in action. Where has all that "deconstruction" gone? Where is the leadership, the tellers-of-hard-truths, the elders and the intellectuals? There's none, because it was a phoney propped-up construct all along. Where else did this silence, this paralyzed disengagement come from?

Yup, bring on Bill Cosby and Pope Benedict - at least they're men with something to say, and they'll stand up and say it.

nightbloom
If I might be permitted a very small comment here, I'd suggest you're not a neo con at all and never have been. Any more than you sympathize with the academic left. I don't think the search for leaders was ever a very good idea, nor very satisfying - and that's why I wouldn't support Ignatieff any more than I supported Trudeau, even though I can still give them credit for what they're trying (tried in Trudeau's case) to do.

This revolution, if revolution it's going to manage to be, is going to have to come from ordinary folks. They're the ones being left out and marginalized and, through hard work and education, they're going to have to take back the commons. Some of them'll do it because they believe in God, some of them'll do it because they believe in men and women; in the end the why behind those actions just isn't important. What's important is building bridges between people with enough common interests to act as part of a community again. My view, my objective. But the good and the perfect have to stop sniping at each other. Now.

........ Amen

Ohh, I think you make yourself clear enough to us Bloomer. You just assume that because it hasn't immediately led to a mass coversion that you must have failed to say "the magic and mystical words."

Most of us, I think, get very well what you are about. (And we know also that you do not speak for all Christiandom. Even all Roman Catholics.)

And we do... At least I do. I actually rather feel sorry for you. For you are really more pathetic than you realize mostly-, in my view, of course.

Such a stiff assed, anus sucked up inside yourself, gotta believe, gotta believe way to live. Nope. You explained yourself well enough. The mass conversion of the left over to Holy Mother Church simply failed, for want of good reasons connected to the real, temporal world.

Case in point, above. (i.e. Coyote)

Someone else deal with this jackass for once...

nightbloom:

I don't doubt the veracity of your facts. However, the working-class offspring who went into the priesthood, as you pointed out, were not the decision-makers in the Church. As such, they were irrelevant to the lives of the working-classes from whence they came.

So the difference lies in the fact that in the trade union movement (the Left), the decision-makers actually rose from the ranks of working people. The aristocrats of the Church were/are no friends of working people and thus the Left is wise to disregard the teachings of the Church.

Look Stump, I will forgive you for all the nasty remarks you made to me if, you do penance, you wood have to say,

16 our firs,

than you can go flog your self.

nightbloom,

The Left doesn't hate Christians. Many of the Left's leaders are of the Tommy Douglas variety with a heavy Christian background.

Nor would I agree that we see the Church as a rival. Instead, I think its that the Church has made itself irrelevant to us. For the same reason those on the right see the UN as irrelevant to the USA.

When the rubber has hit the road the Church hierarchy has always sided with the bad guys. You don't have to go back to the dark ages or the renaissance or whatever, even the 20th century is full of pictures of smiling archbishops shaking hands with the Franco's and Pinochet's of the world.

Now I'm not arguing at the pastoral level there aren't a lot of great priests and ministers who have done a lot of good work consoling the victims of right-wing death squads (that have acted with the upper hierarchy's blessing). And when I was younger I was impressed with liberation theology. But over and over at the upper levels the Church has continually sided with the enemies of the Left and therefore we generally see the Church as just another enemy.

There's a lot of atheists on the left to be sure but we don't hold a monopoly on it, There are plenty on the right as well. You may see the right being more tolerant of mainstream religion, I would agree but only because the right sees the Church as an ally in the fight against social change. I doubt there would be much toleration for religion by right-wing atheists if all christians suddenly started voting for the Left.

As for religion in general I think religion can be very helpful to a person as they deal with the inevitible crises that come up in life. Anyone who has buried a loved one knows why religion endures, it keeps many of us from killing ourselves out of grief. I don't believe in any god myself but I'm quite happy to tolerate the beliefs of those who do as long as it doesn't enter into the real world. When it does I'm all for the state ignoring religious tolerance and arresting every guy in Bountiful with child wives.

Ed:

My comments are not meant to belittle your memories or experiences of the war. However, living through such an event does not necessarily mean that you know everything there is to know about it. Like you mentioned, many people knew nothing of the death camps until after the war. Others, like Doug Collins, were in Germany during and after the war, saw the death camps, yet they still denied or minimized events like the Holocaust. My information comes from a variety of sources, including people like my parents who also lived through the war, so I don’t think I’m being biased one way or the other.

The 3000 priests killed by the Nazis was quoted here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_atrocities_in_Poland

I don’t remember where I read the 20% figure, and I couldn’t find out how many priests were in Poland before WWII, but in the 1990's (Poland had roughly same size population in 1939 as now, although there were fewer Catholics because the population was not homogeneous) there were around 27,000 priests in Poland:
http://www.unavoce.org/unavocepoland.html

Using the current numbers, that works out to about 11%. 20% is not improbable if there were fewer priests.

The Churches in Eastern Europe did not have an easy go of it during the war, as any biography of Karol Wojtyla would attest. Some other documentary evidence: http://www.nazis.testimony.co.uk/43.htm

I don’t dispute the fact that some priests committed criminal acts by aiding the Nazis. They are only human and have the same failings as the rest of us. However, I would dispute your claim that “many”aided the Nazis. By saying “many,” you are implying a majority. I doubt it.

The Nazi campaign against the Christian churches was not for religious reasons, but in order to remove a potential opponent to the Nazi regime. Perhaps it’s just your personal opinion that there is “no evidence of any systematic campaign against any so called Christian religions by the nazis. Lots of hot air propaganda, but no action and they had the support, or tacit support of the majority of religious leaders.” I think that there is plenty of documentation to argue otherwise. One example: http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/history/world/wh0033.html

When I stated that the Church played a large role in the downfall of Communism, I meant specifically in Poland. The communist governments in the other eastern bloc countries fell, in part, because the collapse in Poland started a chain reaction.

In any case, I do agree with your statement that “occupied countries become very complicated snake pits with emotions and hysteria ruling the loyalties and actions of peoples.” Such is human nature.

It’s not very surprising that Rafe’s rant against Catholics has brought out all the atheists/humanists to join in the attack, mocking people’s faith in God. I think that a person probably needs more “faith” to NOT to believe in God than to believe.

The believer, say in this case a Christian, believes that God created them with a soul, and that after physical death there is a chance for salvation of the soul and eternal life in paradise. The atheist/humanist believes that the human body is just a sack of meat and that after death, there is nothing. Neither of these beliefs can be proven true, thus they are both based on faith.

If the Christian dies and there is nothing after death...well, then there is nothing. That’s just the way it goes.

If the atheist/humanist dies and it turns out that there is a God, then perhaps all that stuff in Scripture was right after all. Hmm...the afterlife might not be too pleasant.

“Nothing to lose” or “nothing to gain.” Interesting choices for everyone.

Frank - Thanks for your comments. Yes, there have been some odious deals worked out between members of the ruling elite in the episcopate and their counterparts in the secular world. No doubt about it. It's the weakness and fallibility of human nature.

To be fair, there have been some pretty stinky deals between power-bokers within the trade unions and the industrial elite. And Leftist governments have seen their share of sell-outs (as governments of all stripes have). Moreover, the full extent of the relationship between the leadership of the larger trade unions in both the U.S. and Canada and Organized Crime has yet to be fully explored (and probably never will be).

These flaws are universal to any large hierarchal human organization. It happens to the best of them. I would argue that it doesn't entirely negate their inherent value, provided they can keep those flaws from dominating the organization, and that they remain true to their fundamental purpose.

And a goddamn decent point you do make here, I'll grant you that. (Crime, however, of which in many years of trade union activism, I have never knowingly seen or been aware, I'm sure exists probably some less than in Holy Mother Church. As you say, ALL heirarchies tend to be subject to tendencies to betray "the people", and though unions are certainly far less heirarchical than The Church, are certainly low level ones, much driven to be so in the constant class struggle for their survival that goes on within capitalism."

But a good point you get nonetheless.

Are we agreed then though, that the absence of seriously effective democratic models of society, economic life, political and all other institutions, which allow for these heirarchies to exist and flourish, and marginalize the citizenry, are a large part of the problem-, in secular and "religious" life?

And are we joined then to challenge them all, along with all rights of hereditary and stolen privilege, by any form of social sleight of hand, including The Church along with the other "infected" institutions of society?

If so, then we have more in common than divides us. Otherwise, we are on opposite sides of the societal divides, the major one of which is class.

I'll not apologise for the labour and left heiarchical systems where they exist, and exist the do and have, if you are prepared to take on the Papal heirarchical system and its priesthood system of privilege.

I'd say that was fair.

stan
Without disagreeing much about the generality of your remarks, I think there's another category of individuals, most of them trying as best they can to live a life according to moral principles not very different from Christian doctrine. I'd say they fall into a group that would call themselves agnostics.

Many of these folks come to what they 'believe' by way of a traditional religious background and upbringing; through the assimilation of a lot of knowledge and a considerable amount of experience. I don't think the fact that they are skeptical about the final repose of the 'soul' means they accept your dichotomy and I think they can and do try to live lives that are every bit as concerned about the consequences of their own behavior in the world at large and with respect to their own families, communities, professional and business (not to ignore political) associations in particular.

Coming as they do, in my experience, from a wide variety of 'faith' traditions, they tend to be pretty dismissive (at least for themselves) of what they see as the metaphysical claims of religious belief without dismissing the moral, ethical and behavioral lessons they cherish from their several background(s). They try to find other communities through which they can work to make effective progress through what they see as their own journey through their time in the world.

Just as an aside, I'd say that the existence of heirarchies in social/religious life are a manifestation of the still relatively "primitive" level of development of all human societies and social institutions known to me. They reflect more the bullying environment that goes on in every schoolyard of the world than anything we might seriously call "an advanced civilization".

Afterall, the resources all the major "civilizations" yet put to the development of more effective killing methods far exceeds what is put to resolving the problems of poverty.

If we are a "Civilization(s)", it is yet a pretty bloody and brutal one, in which there is still much petty competition, greed and blood letting going on. In which The Church has and is but one of the participants of many. (Gott Mit Uns! was emblazoned on every Nazi soldiers belt buckle. And they had their comforting religious padres as did we.)

Unless, of course, all that "Civilization" means is that we have achieved a certain level of structural and technical organization and expertise. For which then the standards or criteria to declare oneself a "civilization" are pretty elementary still.

My next problem then is, having bought into your mini justification for "believing" above, which of the competing God and Scriptural claims do I buy into? Both read about equally fantasmagorical, and many more ancient and equally as "credible", or lacking thereof, as Christianity.

On the other hand, it just occurs to me, the direction of my religious conversion!

I'm moving to Bountiful in the morning.

The Lord be praised! I believe! I believe!

(Should I take condoms? Viagra?)

There is such a Supermarket of Religion out there, that the Capitalist Marketplace provides for. God Bless Capitalism for the freedom to pick and choose!

nightbloom:

Oh man, you are scraping the bottom of the barrel!

I'm OK with the Church being neutral on economic issues. However, the Church has been cosied up to society's elites for far too long. The Church has suckled at the Corporate teat and, in return, the Church has blessed the Corporations' activities. How often have we seen the Archbishops supping at the exclusive clubs as guests of society's so-called elites?

Rarely, VERY rarely, has the Church backed the objectives of working people. How often have we seen Archbishops walking the line with striking workers?

Right now, in my community, the workers at Super Valu are on strike for the 16th (17th? 18th?) week. I'll have one heck of a lot more respect for the Church when I hear that local clergy denounce those in the congregation who consistently cross the picket line to shop. I'd have immense respect if they actually joined the picketers to further admonish their congregation.

Coyote says,
(Should I take condoms? Viagra?)
Take extra strength anti-inflammatory pills with you ,for your old back.
Condoms, coyote, you don't shower with your socks on do you?

Ooooo. Hadn't thought of that. You're right of course.

Maybe some tongue depressers to splint the old one-eyed boy with too, for a little extra staying power and rigidity. Just in case his willing heart and dirty mind needs an assist.

I could maybe stick it in the freezer with enough advance warning.

No, I won't do that. Faith in the Lord and His tender mercies will be enough.

Ya think? 8-D LOL

Hallelujah! I believe!

Grub - Most would agree that it would be totally inappropriate for clergy to make pronouncement from the pulpit on labour disputes, let along endorse or condemn job action of one sort or another. It goes back to the separation of spheres. They're not there to enforce labour regulations any more than they are there to advertise condoms for the latex industry. It's no more incumbent on them to endorse your strike as it is on you to endorse their sacraments. It's not their mandate nor theirs.

Having said that, lots of clergy do lend support to the labour movements in ways other than what you suggest.

And the whole interaction of the episcopate with political and industrial leadership has already been addressed. You should realize that most priests don't get invited to dinners with the high-and-mighty. The hierarchy is fairly representative of what's already out there in society, in my view, in terms of vertical stratification.

And I don't know how anyone can deny the relationship between Labour and Organized Crime in North America. Not saying the whole thing is tainted, but it's definitely there, even here in BC. Just look at the former head of the civilian police employees union, smiling for the camera with all those (now mostly murdered) Hells Angels.

C'mon, get real grub.

This morning I had the privilege of attending my first teepee raising. I was invited to take part in the prayers, smudging and pipe ceremony. The Elder gave blessings, sang traditional songs and praised Mother Earth.

I didn't understand the prayers, said in Cree, but during the ceremony my eyes welled up when I thought of a Jane Jacobs comment about how we "kill cultures". Generations of Aboriginal peoples have suffered because of the actions of organized religion, and government. I'm amazed that their traditions and culture have survived the years of forced institutionalization.

I don't begrudge anyone their choice of worship /spirituality. I do take offence at government leaders claiming to be acting on behalf of some supreme Being, and I especially dislike the -
"My God's better than your God" mentality.

Keep your religion to yourself and I promise not to insist on letting me read your Tarot cards!!

Peace

Now, you are going to need to produce more than that highly circumstantial evidence regarding one policeman's union even, to convict labour of links to organized crime. Far better the chance of Holy Mother the Church to be up to her armpits in prostitution, little boys of course, and bootlegging.

Otherwise, as we claim, innocent until proven otherwise is the standard I believe, even for priests butt fucking choir boys, and nuns and priest physically and sexually abusing Native students of the residential school system.

Remember that high banker, I believe it was, for the Vatican, assassinated in Rome some years back I believe. Can't remember the exact details. There was also some considerably scandal years back involving Remni de Roo, was there not, one of the Bishops in Victoria, involving dealings in property in the US? (Again, the details escape me.)

Indeed, there is far greater evidence, if we are going to wildly throw charges around, in the area of criminality that points in the direction of Rome and its priesthood than Labour Unions. At the very least, as much.

And you ain't really showed us any beef yet either.

Get real, eh Bloomer.

An interesting bit of analysis from The American Athiest, at least for those not bitten by Colin's particular bias.

http://www.atheists.org/flash.line/vat13.htm

Or try the Hong Kong business newspaper, The Standard, on the same subject.

http://www.thestandard.com.hk/news_detail.asp?we_cat=9&art_id=6269&sid=5615711&con_type=1&d_str=20051124

Actually there is a host of information out there, on just this topic.

And that isn't just to claim that organized "Labour" is a Saint. It ain't. It's just another fallible creation of human beings.

But then, so is the Papacy and the Holy Roman Catholic Church.

The photos were repeatedly published in the Vancouver Sun and The Province, and discussed in every major newspaper in the country. It was a fishing trip comprised of a who's who of Hells Angels and the president of the civilian employees police union. They were all pretty chummy in the photographs (from two separate trips, if I recall correctly). That's hardly "circumstancial". I'm sure the Left also has words like "public trust" and "credibility" when it comes to the corporate leadership of their unions too...don't they?

And then of course there's the Teamsters...I'm sure they've cleaned up their act since the bad ol' days:

FBI Searches Mich. Land for Hoffa Clues

MILFORD TOWNSHIP, Mich. - The FBI on Wednesday searched property northwest of Detroit for clues to the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa, officials said.

The Teamsters leader was last seen in July 1975 at a restaurant in Oakland County's Bloomfield Township.

Agent Dawn Clenney, a spokeswoman for the FBI in Detroit, said the bureau was executing a search warrant in Milford Township, about 35 miles west of Detroit.

Investigators are looking for "evidence of criminal activity that may have occurred under previous ownership" on the property, Clenney said.

Asked if they were looking for Hoffa's remains, she said, "Could be," but declined to comment further.

Clenney said the bureau receives numerous leads about Hoffa.

"This is one we felt we needed to follow up on," she added.

In May 2004, authorities ripped up the floorboards of a Detroit home where Frank Sheeran, a one-time Hoffa ally, had claimed he shot Hoffa to death. But no evidence of Hoffa was found.

The claim related to the infamous, unsolved killing was included in a book published months after Sheeran died in 2003 at age 83.

A New Jersey mob hit man who died in March reportedly made a similar deathbed claim.

Richard "The Iceman" Kuklinski gave author Philip Carlo what he claimed were graphic details of Hoffa's killing, The Record of Bergen County, N.J., reported.

"The Ice Man: Confessions of a Mafia Contract Killer" is scheduled for release in July.

Oakland County Prosecutor David Gorcyca said Bloomfield Township police were offering assistance but that he knew little about the latest search.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nf/20060517/tc_nf/43378

And a little closer to home, did they ever find out how Ken Georgetti's (Labour Congress President) son-in-law ended up floating face down in False Creek?

http://www.ubyssey.bc.ca/20050930/article.shtml?%3C!--2--%3ENews/1exner.html

The media reported the death as suspicious, and then went silent on the matter. Apparently searchers actually found a second body from an unrelated murder while they were looking for the poor kid. Nothing surprises me in Vancouver anymore.

Nightbloom,

Yup and yup.

But the answer is not to give unswerving loyalty and support. The answer is to prosecute those who broke the law, prosecute those who tried to help them, punish at the ballot box "Labour" parties that climbed into bed with the corporate sector and generally push for full transparency and increased democracy at every level to ensure that sort of thing doesn't repeat. I think the union sector has improved greatly in the last half-century at giving voice to its members and remaking itself to better reflect the wishes of its members. I don't see the same from the Church but again, that's not my business unless it spills over into the real world.

As for the Georgetti thing, what are you implying? That he was murdered by the teachers?

Frank - I agree.

Re. Hoffa, I was simply pointing out that the full extent of the nastiness is still coming to light, and we'll likely never the know the whole truth nor the full extent of Big Labour's involvement with Organized Crime.

Re. the Hells Angels and the police union - it just demonstrates that it's still going on. The only reason we found out about it is because an anonymous source - presumeably connected with the Hells Angels - leaked them. Otherwise we'd still be none the wiser.

Re. the Exner kid (also a nephew of former Archbishop William Exner of Vancouver, btw) I was simply asking. The death was reported as "suspicious" in all the media, and then everything went silent.

Unions are in control of large amounts of money (pensions funds, etc.) the movement of which is very difficult to monitor. They're almost as bad as political parties that way. You can't tell me those with access are never approached for illicit movement of funds, and that there are no consequences for trying to pull out once you've become part of that system. So let's not be naive and pretend that creative accounting doesn't take place on a semi-regular, if not regular, basis. Corporations hardly have an exclusive patent on that kind of corruption.

I'll give you the last word this thread nutbloomer. I think folks from here on can weigh the balance of things themselves, and who is saying what.

All current society, including its notions of democracy, political, labour, science philosophical and religious institutions, not excluding Holy Mother Church or the "formal" institutions of Labour, of course, is in need of a profound and thorough revolution.

I accept that conclusion. I will see you alongside me at the barricades, not nightbloomer?

Up with real Freedom! For An End to All Heirarchies and Privilege. Down with the Labour Bureaucracy and The Papacy!

Nightbloom and I have become Comrades In Arms.

Who would have thought! :-)

Damn! Fait Lux will never forgive me! :-)

I failed to include "the economy" and "economic science" as two of those human institutions in need of a profound, deep running revolution, starting from the way in which we understand them and proceeding to all the ways in which they manifest themselves-, along with Labour and The Church-, and all our capitalist society.

Religion is a crutch for those who do not have the spine to face life as it is!

Yes, life can be cruel, and it sounds great that this is only a temporary existence, and paradise will follow.

Realistic people know that this is it, and no amount of candles or prayers will change anything!

I have no obejction to folks who need that crutch, but do not feel so damned superior, because you are in fact the weak ones!

Much as I hate to spoil the moment, this is where the thread gets ironic. You see, Coyote, it is actually you who are the “True Believer” here, not I.

We seem to agree that all human systems are corruptible and susceptible to being suborned by man’s lesser nature. We seem to agree that this is system-wide, whether we’re talking about priestly hierarchies, corporations, governments, trade unions, or what have you.

Where we part company, and where you’ve indulged in pure faith, is that the perfect system – the System of systems - is ahead of us, waiting to be discovered. It's your Salvation Narrative, bless you.

I don’t believe, because I know that the corruption we’ve been talking about is not system-based, it’s within our nature. We will corrupt things, just as we will elevate and cherish things, because it is within our fundamental nature to do so. I am sanguine about the inevitability of human evil, even while I abhor and resist it. I'm similar to Frank, above, when he says violators should be prosecuted, sell-outs punished at the ballot box, etc. - we have developed the tools we need to combat it, all we need to do is use them. Not throw them out.

The history of revolutions shows that whenever you wipe the board clean, catastrophe follows. Revolutions (and revolutionaries) assume the very worst excesses of those they purportedly oppose. The archetypal example of this is the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror it unleashed, followed co-optation and regroupement under proto-fascist Heroic Leadership in the form of the dictator Napoleon. There are other less spectacular examples, but this one’s my favourite.

The principal difference between us, Coyote, is not ideology. It is our outlook on human nature and how it has impacted human history and institutions. I accept that no perfect system exists that can perfect human nature from the outside. We can only use evolved contingencies to help us uphold an approximation of the values we hold – fairness, democracy, due process, equality before the law - while helping us contain the inexplicable and potentially dangerous forces within us (like religion).

Democratic government is one such evolved contingency. Incremental steps towards universal sufferage was a further evolved contingency. Legal forms, due process and collective bargaining are another. Religious structures that have gradually internalized the restraints prescribed by the Enlightenment and Modernity are another. It's a construct that we must continue to build upon, not tear down only to re-learn the lessons of the past or re-fight yesterday's wars.

Seems to me we forget the role of education at our peril. In the end, whatever improvement comes from experience is lost when the efforts to educate the young become feckless and insipid.

The long-standing role of the church in the education process likely accounts more than anything for the fact that its influence has hung on for so long. Further, it is by means of education that fundamentalists of all stripes hope to extend their hegemony over further legions of mankind. The most depressing part of neo conservative thinking is the idea that the individual and competition has become so important that the 'ideal' of a good education, a liberal education which gives free men the ability to think for themselves, is no longer a high priority.

In fact, we have the pathetic sight of folks like David Horowitz and Daniel Pipes barnstorming around campuses in the United States - and trying to do the some thing in Canada - calling on students to 'testify' against their teachers and professors if these worthies fail to 'teach' the proper form of orthodoxy in institutions of higher learning. It is not just the left that can be, and has been, as doctrinally rigid and exclusive as the Church ever knew how to be.

Democracy means, I should think, less and less without decent schools and independent thinking.

Just when the thread had transcended the Left-Right dichotomy to discuss the actual nuts and bolts behind it, you had to bring back down to it, Alcibiades. You're exasperating. And only partially correct. Who invented the University, proliferated the model throughout the known world, and then funded them all for their first thousand years of existence, I wonder...? Like I was saying about evolution and building on the past..... Give credits where credit's due.

David Horowitz is too much, I agree. He used to be a Leftist activist, as were his parents - not sure if you knew that. He brings such a personal virulence to his anti-Left activism that I've long suspected deep-seated and unsettled psychological drama between his ears. His saving grace is that his bombast tends to at least be much better informed than, say, Anne Coulter (who is a liability to her own cause).

Of course I did. My library contains his little magnum Opus "From Yalta to Vietnam: American Policy in the Cold War". Have you read it?

You didn't really want this thread to turn into a love in did you?

I disagree that anything about Horowitz's effort to stifle actual debate on the campus is well informed. Can you imagine the children Horowitz and Coulter would have though?

I'll post some of his hateful stuff if you like - although I'd really rather not.

You must know I actually support the church as long as its ideals are education and its methods are open and inquiring and it doesn't interfere with the way people who don't go to communion actually lead their lives. In fact, I'd feel a lot more secure about the future of independent thought if there were more old style catholic education going on.
I must say I have some problems though with the way the last Pope muzzled several theologians (some of them with strong ties to St Michaels in Toronto).

He's already here on the Tyee and waging war on 12 year old girls

LOL - I'd been wondering about the pedigree - they've had more than one child then?

It sounds like Horowitz has gotten even worse with time. I haven't paid attention to him in a while. I used to read him occasionally in the Nineties on Salon.com, but first noticed his nasty vein when his attacks on Clinton.

Re. the campus stuff, it's not a good way to get his point across, by adopting the tactics of the Left. I think what he's trying to say is that Left ideologues on campus have been doing pretty much the same thing for about 25 years now - to the point that it's become institutionalized.

You've actually gotta see it to believe it. It's hard to deny that conservative academics are discriminated against on a systematic basis throughout academia, and especially in the highly-politicized humanities. In this sense, Horowitz merely represents a tacky backlash to Left excesses on campus.

btw, Alcibiades, you might be interested in reading the Vatican's justification for its crackdown on the more experimental and neo-Marxist manifestions of Liberation Theology:

http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_19840806_theology-liberation_en.html

And while we're in 'digression mode' - the Da Vinci Code certainly seems to be getting panned by viewers, doesn't it. I'll probably still check it out, marketing-victim that I am. One wag made the comment that the movie takes long to get thru than the book...

nightbloom
In actual fact, as a thriller, Angels and Demons is a better yarn, imo - though still not really very good and full of errors - especially in its treatment of the Bernini art in Rome.
At least it doesn't have a raving Opus Dei albino as the central active villain of the piece. I'll be giving it a pass. Sorry to hear you've succumbed to the hype.

Gloomy:

I find this comical.

Gloomy:

I find this comical. I is you are your left-wing rif-raf that can't accept responsibility and rely on the crutch of government.

It is you who expect and demand things be provided for you. Where is your spine to market yourself and make things happen.

I have no problems with anybody's beliefs. However, the hypocricy of you negative, insulting socialists is funny.

I'll honour that committment made above, to give you the last word over mine, here in this thread nightbloomer.

I think the true breadth and depth of the differences between us is certainly clear enough, to the average reader here.

(Though I should tell you, as an amusement for us both, that during my time of being under the care of Welfare as a boy, I converted to Catholicism, attended confession and ate of "the body". It was done mostly, though I did "believe", to please a family in whose care I was at the time-, a particularly fine German Catholic family. The years however better clarified the real issues for me.:-)

Capitalism/ maybelle
I see you're still pretending the tax system in this country is fair.

The minute we change that system so that corporations, shareholders and capitalists, not to mention wealthy people who pay no inheritance tax when they pass on their ill-gotten gains to the next generation start facing life as it really is and give up the governmental crutch and accept some responsibility I'll join whatever church has convinced you to actually confess ‘your’ sins.

Capitalism itself is one big crutch for the lazy. Let's see, how to design a system where you don't have to work but can simply live off the labour of others. Which is after all pretty much the central theme of the system. And even worse, get those same workers to pay for all your toys and games through their taxes.

.

Capitalism:
Since when is religion a left/right issue?

My point is that the church provides comfort to those who need it; BUT people with some spine do not need that pablum!

Capitalism:
Usually i do not get riled by blowhards like you, but your comment are so out of line, as to be ridiculous!

As a young man I deliberately choose to leave a great job, in a "cradle-to-grave" society, with the belief that I could make an even better life under a "free enterprise" system.

Before i retired, I had several business ventures and considered myself succesful, but with a social conscience.

I read what Fiat Lux writes and find myself in much the same category: that is trying to do business in an honest fashion!

To have you tell me that I need the crutch and should have made more of myself, is insulting.

My guess is that you may well belong to the group of Capitalists who devote half their time to bragging and the other half on how to cheat on taxes!

What all this has to do with religion baffles me?

I will let you contribute your 10% to the church, and I will give my 10% to the foodbank!

It isn't, but it's become that way because of the incidental alignment of organized interests, and the withdrawal of the Christian Left from politics to devote itself strictly to good works with the poor & marginalized.

The Tyee could help end the left/right dichotomy on religious discourse by printing a postive, upbeat, non-cynical piece on the Christian Left....perhaps even focus on the Catholic Anti-War Movement (from Vietnam to the present)...Instead of pumping out cynical malcontented pieces like this one, or the ones dealing with Christmas and Easter. It doesn't have to abandon its critique...it can just jettison the ideologically-loaded subtext it always includes with it.

nightbloom

Fine suggestion, just so long as it doesn't ignore the priests and bishops who've sat in and with the councils of the powerful for generations - and accept the deionization of the hierarchy in Rome whenever priests, nuns and religious also used politics as a way to advance the cause of the whole People of God and not just the ones with big bank accounts and connections to the power elite.

I saw a little film the other day about the thwarted takeover of Hugo Chavez's democratically elected government in Venezuela. Guess who was prominent in the group of wealthy individuals who gathered in the Presidential palace to cheer Chavez's temporary ouster? I'm not sure what his name was, but the roman collar gave me a pretty clear impression about where his sympathies lay.

should be 'demonization' above, obviously.

So you're already imposing you ideological preconditions on any such piece on the Catholic Left. You're totally ignoring the historic clashes between Bishop and State that have occurred - "in and with the councils of the powerful for generations" indeed! To treat that subject in a genuinely balanced manner would require a whole other piece, not one on the Christian Left.

You don't seem to perceive how inherently biased your preconditions are. We've already flogged the issues you mentioned, without even touching on the humanitarian and activist role of the Catholic Left - for example the Berrigan Brothers' activism during Vietnam. Why not reverse you condition and say that any catalogue of Christian sins (real and imagined) by the Left should also cover the humanitarian work, the contribution to society, culture and knowledge, the support for the sciences (yes, that too)...I could go on.

You seem to want any and all material coming within 50 ft of the subject matter to simultaneously sell your ideology. That basically the problem with The Tyee's coverage of these issues as well.

nightbloom
Totally disagree with your assessment. The Berrigans are heroes of mine. So is Aristide, so was Romero. I just think any balanced approach has to show both sides of the situation. For years the Church in Quebec played nice with Duplessis and the National Union prior to the Asbestos strike in 1949. It was only that strike, more than anything else, and the actions and leadership of a few members of radical Catholic groups and individuals like Pierre Trudeau and Gerard Pelletier that finally got Bishop Charbonneau involved and pressing for real change.

Instead of hanging around with the oligarchs and toadying to big money, the Church has to start caring for all aspects of the physical and spiritual and economic health of all the people of God again. In so far as they're doing it, great. In so far as they're fat and comfortable and complacent, they need a good kick in the ass, imo. Both sides of the story need telling - that's all I said. I too could go on! I think I told you before that I was also a big fan of Laborem exercens too.

Stan said something like: "It takes more faith
NOT to believe in god than to believe."

Definitely true, Stan. It takes absolutely no
faith to believe in these decrepid old ideas of a benevolent god, just waiting to answer rich peoples' prayers (while the weak are slaughtered, enslaved, burned alive, bludgeoned, poisoned, imprisoned, turfed off of their land and allowed to suffer the indignities of bacterial and viral infections) and enter into some kind of "personal relationship" with those who believe in it--or some other similarly insipid fantasy.

A god who cherishes "special people" and who's just waiting to offer salvation to "all those who believeth in it"--or something.

All of these ideas are immoral, Stan, especially the one about god (jesus) offering salvation ONLY to those who believe that some guy running a cult in "the holy land" a couple of thousand years ago was one of the faces of the trinity.

It takes no faith at all to believe in any of these disgusting concepts--only a lack of functioning neural network and a slavish denial of the evidence supplied by a any kind of courageous perception of reality.

So, Stan, I feel it is my duty to inform you that it's all a bunch of crap, eh!

Have faith, though, it's still a beautiful world without believing in obscene pretenses--sometimes.

You're quoting me out of context, Truman. However, as long as you're happy being a sack of meat with a few electro-chemical reactions going on, who am I to say you're wrong.

I agree, Alcibiades. But only one side is being told in today's secular liberal media...and certainly only one side here on The Tyee. You seem to want to ignore that fact.

Rafe has already done the hatchet-job (and not very well or credibly, I might add). Now I think The Tyee should show us some of the positives, and there are many.

But The Tyee isn't going to because acknowledging the Catholic Left - or for that matter any humanitarian Christian works generally - is not part of the ideological agenda here.

This goes to the root of my original argument about the marginalization of moderate religion by secular nihilist fundamentalists, to the detriment of the political culture (and to the benefit of the Christian fundamentalist Right).

Alcibiades - it just occurred to me that you've brought this thread back around full-circle. Are you sure you're not a foil planted to ensure that consensus between Left and Right can never be achieved...? ;-)

Hardly nightbloom:
I'm just amazed how you've gone from decrying any involvement by the Church in political activism - a la Liberation theology for example - to saying we ought to recognize and celebrate where and when the Church and the left have and can make common cause.

I was trying to point out the disconnect within your own posts, that's all. Actually, as I think someone said here recently, it's quite obvious that you are a closet revolutionary too.

I'm all for recognizing those nuns and priests in Africa who are distributing condoms - it's just the political types in the Vatican that can't see why that's necessary who trouble me. They seem more interested in attacking Dan Brown and Sony - go figure.

Excuse me for living, nightbloom, but why does this particular website have to cover every issue on both sides? Show me a website that does? Certainly not those of the right!

Rafe gave his opinion. Since he seems to be employed here, that is his right. I haven't seen any indication that L'Observatore Romano feels the need, or the inclination, to cover both sides of, for example, the issue of contraception. That being the case, since when does theTyee have to be "holier than them"?

Secondly, your posts imply that there is only two sides. I submit that there are dozens.. perhaps thousands... or even millions of 'sides'. All of them the product of human (I hesitate to put in rational) minds...

this, for example:

http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/thomas_paine/age_of_reason/

A good deist view of the "holy" writ. (the author doesn't like it) Apart from the fact that you obviously haven't read the same, why shouldn't Rafe then have to devote a column to Thomas Paine? Not to say that it wouldn't be interesting...

If a viewpoint is valid for the person who holds them and is presented in a reasonable fashion, that should be enough.

R. Smiley

Capitalsim, we have already covered the issue of "self marketing" on other strings: No capitalist is going to invest in hospitals and medical personel and anti virals because of a "potential" for say a bird flu epidemic. And they can't respond quickly enough if and when it does come. Since all that is being done is being done because of "socialist" funding, you will of course stand aside and leave what there is for others, won't you? Or start frantically heating beakers of reagents in the hope of some "cure"? Come on, Irwin, put your money where your mouth is! I want to see your program for "self-marketing" to get you through a plague.

The same goes for national defense, education, transportation, ambulance services, and a host of other issues. However, feel free to set up your own militia, armed to the teeth, to hold off the commie hordes.

I think Colbert said all that needed to be said about lifting oneself by one's own bootstraps.

Your lot is only good at picking up money that someone has dropped in the street. The amazing thing is that you then claim that this is a virtue. Nightbloom should be able to contribute something on the protestant ethic regarding this... Look to the Reverend Bo Harrington (well, we don't really have to go farther than Phil Gaglardi, do we?) for the logical conclusion of the same.

A Role of the State... and you can huckster and rave all you like about socialism... is, among other things, to prepare for the worst. I know that Abbott isn't going to, but then, you are really front and center with the current BC government on this, aren't you?

R. Smiley

There's no disconnect, Alcibiades, except where you seem to want there to be.

As someone observed, the dichotomy of Left-Right doesn't fit the discussion. It's only the way it's been portrayed by politically interested parties. My fundamental point is that it's unfair to focus on the bad (for example, corruption in the episcopate) while ignoring the wealth of good (i.e. the humanitarian work). You seem to be okay with pieces that only discuss the bad, while conversely insisting that any counter-balancing piece necessarily re-interate the bad along with its attempt to finally explore the good.

I hope that's clear.

And you're also fudging doctrine with pastoral application and community activity.

When the Marxists tried to co-opt, assimilate and colonize the faith tradition into their own temporal Salvation Narrative, they were messing with doctrine. That is certainly the concern articulated (somewhat mildly) in the Vatican statement I linked.

There are actually a lot of other examples (just one example is the specious, annoying and ideologically-loaded attempt at re-branding the Holy Trinity - Father, Son, Holy Spirit - as "Creator, Liberator, and Sustainer"...it's fine if radical Marxist reformers want to use those words - but they sure ain't Catholic and Roman Catholic congregations are under no obligation to indulge such silly experimentations).

When the Berrigan brothers emerged as leaders in the Anti-War movement, or when clergy and laypeople work in their community with the poor, the needy, etc. that's something else entirely. That's community good works (although people of conscience can and do differ on the appropriateness of Daniel Berrigan's defence of civil disobedience articulated in No Bars to Manhood).

What I've highlighted is the hypocrisy of reducing the historic activities of the Church to the cabinet conspiracies of what was and is a minority of Bishops in any given era. Or of reducing a complex phenomenon like Western anti-Semitism to a few nasty Popes. Or attributing the co-optation of the Inquisition in Spain by the secular aristocracy to eliminate their political enemies to the worldwide church. Its those kinds of hyperbolic and grossly inaccurate condemnations that may appeal to the likes of Rafe Mair but which really contribute nothing our understanding.

ripponfalls - You don't seem to be following the thread. Opinion pieces are fine, even when they're misinformation (which this is).

Alcibiades and I were discussing the notion of an additional theoretical which would have a non-cynical, symphathetic take on activities which would be unobjectionable to the Left (such as anti-war activism, or work with the severely disabled).

Alcibiades said that any such piece must as a matter of course include a re-hash of the historical "bad side". I was disagreeing with that, because the same criteria is never applied in reverse.

This was part of my broader point that media sources like The Tyee will not publish sympathetic pieces on religion, and Christianity in particular, because doing so is incompatible with their ideological programme. Whether it's Jesus, the Pope, Santa Claus, or the Easter Bunny, coverage of anything even vaguely related to Christianity will always be negative, critical, lopsided and ideologically loaded.

Stan, I didn't say I don't think human existence isn't mysterious and awesome, I just said that the Christian religion, as well as the others are just a pile of crap. And I'm revelling in my freedom to say what I think because for most of the history of that obscene religion its bosses (read popes) would have gladly burned me at the stake for writing such an opinion. So I'm kinda just getting my freedom while it lasts, eh.

Er, nightbloom, I didn't say there aren't many wonderful and instructive ideas in the bible, (there are), I just said that its main message of salvation by belief is an unbelievably immoral idea.

Not sure which of my comments you're addressing, Truman. Do you have the right poster? I think I understand you viewpoint to be exactly as you expressed immediately above.

Go ahead and write it, Nightbloom... I seem to recall that already being suggested here. I'm sure if your submission is suitable, it'll be published... but it is the height of hypocrisy to come from the religious side, which is constantly churning out apologias concerning their conduct, and that only much later and after the fact, and constantly trying to smudge the historical record with qualifications and 'wherefores' and 'on the other hands' and self justifications and rationalizations... and demand from others who do not share that viewpoint that they too have to write the same line of hogwash, and present the historical record, as it were, in the perspective which you yourself judge to be appropriate, when you are unwilling to accept, for example, a countervailing viewpoint of the left of itself! Do all your posts and expostulations include the qualifications to your comments? Hardly.

Your overarching egotistical assumption is that because you see something from a given perspective, everyone else has to see the same thing, or more exactly, accept the grounds for debate as you wish to fashion them at this particular moment.

There are, for example, some of us who accept the ultimate responsibility of each of us for their own actions as good or evil. When we see someone who incidently happens to be a priest acting for what we consider the good of others, we need not chalk that up to a success of the church, especially when it is obviously a small minority of that church. Your misunderstanding is rooted in the fact that YOU have an ideological program: to present Christianity in general, and your own particular schism of it in particular, in a positive, uncritical, lopsided, and ideologically loaded coverage, and so assume that everyone else is similarily inclined, and that their counter opinion must of necessity be based on ideology.

Most of us relate about as much to your faith as we do to the Wahabists... as in "Do these guys come from the same planet as we do?"

Now there is a fine book going around by the name of The Sword of Constantine... I am sure that to an educated Catholic it could be a most entertaining and instructional read... but to the rest of us, all that Jesuit-induced verbiage (for lack of a better word) means that the public library copies have been read to about page 150... after which we realize that we've already forgotton what was in the first hundred pages, and so the last two thirds of the book has never been cracked... It is, however, an attempt at a mea culpa, an explanation of one man's upbringing in the antisemitism of the Catholic church, and his gradual weaning from that... or at least the first 150 pages are... I honestly don't know where it went from then on, although the reviews implied that it did express contrition.

It's a different world, Nightbloom, you don't inhabit ours, and we don't inhabit yours. Therefore, before you can demand that our world live up to your expectations, you must reform your own and live up to ours... something I see no chance of happening in the future, near or otherwise. The problem is not misinformation, because Rafe's piece is no more and no less misinformation than your side. It is another viewpoint. His viewpoint.

R. Smiley

Ripponfalls, are you being deliberately ironic...?

and then...

Did you even stop to think before you wrote that?

And by "OUR" world are you speaking for The Tyee? For Rafe Mair? For all the posters here? For the entire planet-wide Left? I thought we were all about One World, One Love...

This whole thread has been an exchange of opinion among very opinionated people, my friend. I've enjoyed it, actually - and I'm sorry to hear that you haven't, particularly after such a short, late and really quite effortless (on your part) introduction to it.

I hope you don't think I've attacked your ideological faith unfairly. Whenever I critique the Left's Salvation and Oppression Narratives I always try to provide concrete historical and present day examples. I think I've done a very good job of it, actually, even though I'm sure lots disagree with my basic argument, which is their right....No one has yet undertaken to counter it, however.

So if you'd like to counter-argue my critique of the ideological doctrinaire Left, its approach to religion and Christianity in particular, its marginalization of religious-minded progressives and socialists in the public realm, its selective and opportunistic bastardization of Western history, culture, language and learning in its efforts to expand and consolidate new constituencies for itself....then by all means, I'm all ears.....

And of course I don't deny that the Right isn't equally nasty & opportunistic in its own special ways. But the Right isn't trying to sell a temporal knock-off of Salvation, nor seeking to replace faith and culture with its own ideological sub-codes, nor seeking to uproot the evolved bulwarks of our society in its quest for some kind of perfect egalitarian System-of-systems, a state-mandated heaven-on-earth.

An excellent, lucid and to the heart of the matter piece of writing, ripponfalls. We, non-believers in Christianity or any other supernatural/deist tradition, are the East to their West, the twain which can never meet.

That much we have to accept about each other.

If we do that, I think, in the context of the real world, the here and now physical world, there are nonetheless "possible" limited projects we can work upon together. Certainly I can find much common ground with those Catholics and other Christians who proceed from a Liberation Theology rationale, for example. :-) And I know for a certainty that there are significant numbers of those Roman Catholics who do. Indeed, I consider them amongst my closest comrades. :-)

You're right, Nightbloom, I wasn't responding to a specific post, just to the idea that these big religions don't make the world a more rational place, but, in spite of there being some good things about them, the major effect is vicious and devilish, and I believe that you are wasting your talents continually apologizing for them--yes all of them--because I know you would never say that Christianity is superior to Islam, of course.

These are obscene and unhelpful ideas--salvation by death on a cross (belief of same), salvation by birth (Judaism), salvation by submission. (Islam)

Get real! And, yes, I could be murdered for saying it.

Coyote - the Us versus Them, OUR world versus theirs, approach which you and Ripponfalls have expounded only proves my point about the Left.

Then you claim solidarity with progressive Christians and the Catholic Left....yet they won't ever be acknowledged as anything other than anomalies by the Left, and their good works will never be hailed by The Tyee.

That's been my whole point all along: progressive Christians have been mocked & disowned by the ideological Left, which has left the field open for exploitation by the fundamentalist literalist Christian Right. I've said this many, many time before.

So how about it - how about a nice, warm cuddly piece of journalism about the integrity, dedication and contribution of progressive Christian elements to society and culture....to the poor, the marginalized, the persecuted, to the anti-war movement, to education, art, social justice, outreach in the prisons, care of terminal AIDS patients.....?

Why is the very notion so controversial and upsetting to the doctrinaire Left? Why must caveats about corrupt 15th century bishops and 12th century crusades and 18th century Ultra-montane conservatives be a mandated and compulsory component of such a simple account, when the reverse is clearly not so...?

Because the very notion of such a piece is blasphemous from a secular nihilist Left perspective. It undermines the Left's marketshare.

The twain which can never meet, indeed....

Truman - It's actually no more absurd a leap of faith that the one which Coyote articulated a while back - that human perfection can be achieved through a system-wide death and rebirth of society, and the coming of the Great System. That sounds trite, but that's basically what it boils down to. It goes right back to that fundamental liberal concept: "Man is born free, yet everywhere is in chains". The ideological send-up of the Expulsion from Eden narrative. The assumption here is that we can overcome human nature and re-establish temporal paradise by perfecting our worldly systems. This is simply untrue and deeply misguided.

Personally, I'm relieved most Christians are content to internalize the death-rebirth-salvation thing. The Left doesn't pay us that courtesy - it wants to save us all whether we like it or not.

(Coyote - not dissing your belief-system - it has a long and honourable heritage - but a very destructive one too, let's face it)

nightbloom
Nevertheless, why should doctrine be untouchable? We both know where it came from - that it is no more divinely inspired than the rest of theology - so why can't it come into the mix and be subjected to criticism too.

You must know enough Church history to recognize that many of these issues were simply a matter of votes and sometimes a question of who got into the conclaves and locked the doors behind them. I think if you're going to discuss the good - you can't ignore the bad.

Given that, I’d be happy to see another article by someone (not Rafe obviously), who actually knows something about the church and its history. Any suggestions?

Nightbloom, in that one regard I was writing ironically... but if you look at my earlier post, I spoke of a million possible viewpoints. Now take Coyote: I agree wholeheartedly with him concerning liberation theology, but I am sure that, were we to explore the depths and breadths of our assumptions and beliefs on all matter of subjects, we would find differences and in some cases possibly even chasms of subjectivity which we would look on as objectivity.

I am rather for pluralism, and like all pluralists, I cannot accept dogma. Any dogma. I realize that my position on a given subject will be influenced by a host of factors, including the beliefs of my parents and their ethnic background, where I grew up, who my neighbours and teachers were, what I read, and undoubtedly genetic factors over which I obviously have no control whatsoever. I also realize that there are things which, in spite of the proclamations of the church, I can never hope to understand, having no small doubt as to their claims of expertise. Therefore, I do not advocate any "monolithic" viewpoint, no left, no theTyee, no Rafe Meir. I am, however, adamant in my belief that he at least has the right to express his viewpoint without having to conform to everyone else's version of politically correct, which in any event would be impossible, since your belief system is obviously not that of Ed Deak... or anyone else who posts here..

If by inclination I find myself agreeing with my Zen neighbour (that we cannot understand anything or the Masai (that we return to the earth after death - no soul going to heaven) I don't demand that Coyote feel likewise. He grew up somewhere else.

So, Nightbloom, while I also support your right to think what you wish, to have your own separate reality, I must reiterate, that if you come to others demanding "justice" you must come with clean hands: Physician, heal thyself. If you come as an advocate of the Church, then you must first heal the church: Show me where in L'Observatore Romano they deal with the whole context of those who disagree with them, and show me that it is consistently practiced.

You are free to think well of your arguments, but it does not add to their worth.

And of course, the last paragraph is bunk: The Right is most assuredly trying to sell a temporal knock off of salvation. Free enterprise. Market economies. Supply side and trickle down economics. You are rich because God loves you. But if you don't shut up, you uppity little commie, we have other ways of taking care of you... And is Rafe now a charter member of the "ideological, doctrinaire Left"??? Just who IS the "ideological, doctrinaire left"? What is it? Or do you just ask that we suspend belief while you slip the wafer into our mouths...

Lastly, Truman's point is well taken. In another context, not so long ago or far away, we would have been the subject of an Act of Faith: in the medieval Spanish, auto de fe.

R. Smiley

Of course, we don't have to look back that far. There were priests in Rwanda, as there were allied to the various juntas of South America, including Chile and Argentina... and I don't recall many bishops or archbishops being defrocked....

Right, Left, Right, Left. Where have I heard that before? Why is there always graves to be dug when it's done?

Such convenient labels that sort us out into us and them. I guess it makes the killing go easier.

You really do need to make an attempt to honestly represent my view, if you are going to speak for me, nightbloom.

I have never said, nor will I ever, "that human perfection can be achieved" by any means known to me. Unlike in your other worldly view where physical death and the hypothetical resurrection of the soul, what e'er that be, for good Catholics, brings perfection, I fear we mere mortals and in our never ending quest to continually improve and advance society and the quality and content of our earthly existence, are likely doomed to imperfection-, for so long as life exists on the planet.

I definitely do think, however, that with struggle and effort we can improve on ourselves and in our "social relationships", in a work that is likely never to be entirely finished. At least I assume, over your hypothetical hereafter "faith" assumptions.

But nightbloom, creating straw men for yourself to knock down is not honest, and does a discredit to yourself. Even I respect you more than that. For misrepresenting my actual view, go to confession, light a candle, say three Hail Mary's, and put two weeks in at your local Food Bank, helping the mortal poor and read some "pontificate banned" major work by a Liberation Theologian. :-)

Mortal sin?

Go to confession and be forgiven-, good for any dastardly crime.

Exactly. Right on, ripponfalls.... it's all about the marketing of paradise...isn't it? The buying and selling of a state of bliss...from heavenly margarine to Chevys that love you like a rock.

Coyote, sometimes confession can be a little difficult, I read not to long ago of a guy who went to confesion,the fella told the Priest that he and woman had been naked in bed together, the Priest asked the fella if he had put “it” in, no replied the guy I only rubbed up against “it” well that’s the same as putting “ it” in said the Priest, for penance say 2 our fathers and put $50 in the poor box, as the fella was leaving he walked past the poor box , as he passed it, he rubbed the $50 against it, the Priest witnessed this, and called out to the guy and asked, why had he not put the $50 in the poor box, the fella replied that he had Rubbed the $50 against it and apparently that was the same as putting “it” in.

Woody,

Okay, I was prepared to take umbrage-, but that was funny. :-)

Coyote do know how to make Holy Water?

Simple,You boil the Hell out of it.

Sh!t I better call it shift, Ill have all the dogans on my ass.

Sh!t I better call it shift, Ill have all the dogans on my ass. Woody.

8-D LOL. Not as in " a woody", I presume.

A splash of water into a glass, chasing after an eyeball once or about :-) of "water of life", and I'll bring my shift to an end here to.

The Mrs is right here at the door to my "study" right now, giving me that look that say, "Get your ass into bed with me here, boy. You have committments to keep."

She's a tiny thing really, but what folks don't know but me is, she has serious standards she expects me to live by. She is, "She Who Must Be Obeyed."

But she's warm, soft 'n cuddly too. :-)

Alcibiades - I was responding to your assertion that I was being somehow hypocritical in calling on the Left media to make room for progessive Christianity (or pressive religious of any kind) while simultaneously criticising attempts to insert Marxist dogma into Catholic doctrine. Be honest. I was simply pointing out the difference to you, which should be self-evident enough. There's a difference between the harder-edge Liberation Theologians and people like the Berrigan Brothers. I think you know better.

Coyote - Do you not believe that we should take to the barricades, tear the whole corrupt thing down, and rebuild the edifice in the Left's image? Is that not to essence of what you said? Is that not your recommended path to temporal salvation for mankind? Or are you going to recant on your radicalism...? I must confess, part of me would be disappointed if you do.

Ripponfalls - Not sure what to make of your post(s). The first part about pluralism & dogma strikes me as disingenuous. Dogma is the Left's stock and trade, every bit as much as it is for the most incense-saturated, rosary-twirlling Catholic. What you're really saying is that only your dogma is the right one, just as only "your" world is the one all of us must adapt to. Really, you seem to be making it up as you go along, rather than articulating something cohesive. Or perhaps I'm just not "getting you" on this thread. I guess I'll have to be patient and read more of your writing before I can see where you're coming from on some of these issues.

Anyway, my opinions are out there, and this is going in circles.....So lemme reiterate my challenge: how about a non-cynical piece about some of the good works Catholics are doing at the community level, or in the prisons.

You know, the prisons are an area of outreach which receives absolutely no attention by the Left (especially in Canada) because it is not electorally useful, nor is it useful in terms of fund-raising or constituency-building....But I know a of a network of Benedictine Sisters who have devoted much of their activities towards outreach in the prison system. They've been particularly outspoken on the issue of male rape as a system of control in the prisons system, and how young male offenders who are given adult sentences are actually in reality sentenced simultaneously to serving three punishments: (1) the prison term; (2) sexual slavery; and (3) HIV+ status.

Not a very safe, profitable, useful or trendy topic for the latté-toting Leftists at The Tyee, is it - but it's a worthwhile endeavour for these committed women. Why not do a write-up about their efforts, their challenges, their frustrations dealing with the system, what they see in the men & youth they work with that gives them hope...

Geez - just give me some balanced journalism on these issues. Enough with bashing Popes, slaying Santas, and skinning Easter Bunnies, already.

nightbloom
I'm all for good journalism. As to whether balanced journalism = good journalism, well, of that I'm not so sure. I don't think the Berrigans or Daniel Ellsberg would agree either.
I think the best writing usually has an axe to grind – that’s what gives it verisimilitude.

Straight reporting is a different matter of course but I don't think you want just a report on your Nuns in Prisons any more than I'd want to read a straight report about Sr. Helen Prejean.

I understand what you mean about Rafe's piece and I don't really disagree. I'm not actually sure what Mair's up to. Did you happen to hear him baiting Cindy Sheehan on the Current (CBC Radio) a couple of Fridays ago?

I think he's still just a radio mouth at heart and half of what he says is just to stir the pot. Anyway, I'm much more interested in reading about the individual stories of courageous people than I care to hear any more about how hopelessly political is the Vatican.

I still think the Church is at its best when it is fighting for the disenfranchised, the poor, the sick, the halt and the lame and I think it's at its worst when it's sitting at some head table in a fancy hotel dining room toasting Jimmy Pattison or saying the blessing for the Chamber of Commerce. The Church needs to recognize why it is growing in places like Africa where it actually works with and for the people and shrinking in places like Canada where it is mostly hopelessly compromised and hanging onto a vision from the past.

When the left sees more of the former behavior and less of the latter the problems of the left with the church will tend to disappear. In my opinion, whatever hypocrisy exists in both camps is the result of a mutual denial about what both parties know they should be doing.

Agreed on all points, save in the assuption that no one is obliged to do anything until the top hierarchy mends its ways. In the nature of hierarchies, that won't happen until the base starts to shift.

I would argue that it's up to everyone to make the effort to challenge their perceptions on this issue, and make room for progressives of all kinds, irrespective of their motivations or their allegiances to this team or that creed.

It's all about creating that new political Centre I've been prating about for nearly a year now on these threads.

nightbloom
Don't believe I ever said this: that no one is obliged to do anything until the top hierarchy mends its ways, but I'd disagree. I think we all have an obligation to do what we can to advance the important social issues regardless of what the folks upstairs are doing. Perhaps what you wrote isn't exactly what you meant because paragraph 2 almost says the same thing.

As to number three. I doubt it. I'm not aware of much radical change ever coming from the mushy centre. I've been waiting for 'liberal' politics to do more than feather its nest for too long now to retain much hope from that quarter.

The problem with centrist politics is, as you're finding out, that it spends too much time and energy reaching a consensus. When that finally happens, events have already moved on and the achievement is irrelevant, in my view.

I’d say a good example is setting up a system of effective childcare. The Federal Liberals knew there was a serious problem in this area more than 10 years ago, but instead of moving ahead and getting a program in place (which might have done something to ameliorate the problems of parents, families and work) it consulted and tried to build a consensus – finally achieving that goal under Ken Dryden last year. By then it was too late and now the dynamic has moved on while parents are still struggling and failing.

Instead, a radical government in Quebec took the opposite course. They bit the bullet and created a successful program which is actually beginning to meet the real problems of its citizens. A program that is now so fundamental and successful that neither Harper nor Charest would dare touch it.

That’s the problem with centrist politics – it takes too damn long to get anywhere. Radical politics may make mistakes, but it doesn’t fail for lack of trying.
If you want real change, you have to be radical. That’s why Harper scares the bejessus out of me, because he’s a fundamentalist radical, backed by self-serving, narrow minded and extremely greedy people who are not actually very different from the fascists of Spain and Portugal, in my opinion.

We need to abandon the centre, in my opinion.

Alcibiades - harmful conclusion based on a bad premise, in my opinion.

You seem to have no faith in the common citizen.

You see, I believe and have tried to explain here and elsewhere that there's a critical mass of untapped people that cuts right across the traditional constituency divisions who happen to share the same basic set of frustrations and challenges in modern society (irrespective of the niggling things that the media and ideological blow-hards continually use to divide them....like whether belief in Jesus is a good thing or a bad thing, or whether hospitals should be named after Saints or Socialist Premiers).

Radical politics with no hope of obtaining a critical mass of support accomplishes nothing, and alienates a lot of people who would otherwise be sympathetic to the basic value-system but not to the dogmatic experimentations. All radical politics does is create more soapboxes for malinformed loudmouths, and generate more hot-house satrappies.

Fundamentally, radical ideologues are just like Christian Fundamentalists in their approach to the public sphere and how it relates to their own rigid and literalist dogma.

So in essence you too, Alcibiades, are investing faith in a kind of salvation through the arrival of some great post-modern System that will resolve all human need and eliminate human evil. No such system exists. The best we can do is use evolved tools to moderate the worst of our human excesses.

The Canadian Chapter of Project Ploughshares:

http://www.ploughshares.ca/

Why doesn't The Tyee apply itself and write something enlightening about this inter-faith humanitarian endeavour that is changing lives around the world.

Left right, left right, left right, Platoooon....

With the exception of the proclaimed Coyote, can any of youse' {sic}deities walk on water?

nightbloom
I've got lots of faith in the common citizen. I have no faith in the manipulative nature the greedy commercial interests and lack of character in the media.

What are the great achievements of mass culture and the amorphous centre that you'd cite as examples of real progress?

I'd say the left has been pretty successful throughout Europe and it's not doing too badly in some notable places in Latin America too.

I think your reluctance to actually engage is dangerous.
Where did I ever say that I was investing (my)

I guess I’d say you’re riding a particular soapbox pretty hard too….why should I accept your solution when it’s been such a notable failure of late at anything other than balancing the books….and keeping the positive accumulations of wealth in the same hands they were in when the old story started?

Anyway, I'm out of here. Real life beckons.

It's no problem. The water just has to be below 0 degrees Celsius first.

Ah, Good morning nightbloom... don't you ever give it a rest? How you can say that I must be in favour of only my dogma, after I most clearly stated that my belief system is my own, and not appropriate to anyone else? In other words, it is all illusion anyway. Why should I try to force my own illusions down others throats, in an attempt to replace their own illusions which just happen to be different?

I don't begrudge you finding solace from the black gulf of oblivion in dreams of a hereafter... nor do I demand you give it up. However, the current discussion is on a matter of freedom of speech and expression.

For the third time, if you wish your belief system to be treated with kid gloves, you had better show that L'Observatore Romano has been doing the same for secular humanism first and foremost, and immediately following all the other isms and philosophies that don't "accept Jesus as their personal savior" and happen to pray to one or more of the other 934 odd deities or no deity at all. The fact remains that they haven't, even though said secular humanism is a lot closer to what is claimed to be the teachings of Jesus Christ in the New Testament than the position of the Catholic Church throughout the centuries.

In other words, start posting the "warm and fuzzy feel good" articles about secular humanism that were printed in the Vatican newspaper for the last... oh, lets start with fifty years.

Now, since you continually impugn the motives of others, and yes, create straw men so that you can then destroy them, let's have at you.

You are trying to insert a stealth religion into what is nominally a secular website dealing with secular issues and secular problems, most if not all of which the Catholic church has fought long and hard to create or perpetuate; knowing that "warm and fuzzy" will be much more attractive to infidels than the doxology. (Note to secular readers: not the study of doxies as we know them). Meir's opinion was his own, but is not without merit.

You appear to believe, or wish to suggest that religious excesses can in some way be separated out from religion per se because they are the fault of human beings and not of the religion. (Yes, I've already heard just those words from another of your ilk.) That is your dogma. I do not accept it. The two are one and the same, because religion cannot exist without people, and will not exist after our species has passed away.

You might wish to read the last page of S. J. Gould's "Wonderful Life":

"Wind the tape of life back to Burgess times, and let it play again. If Pikaia does not survive in the replay, we are wiped out of future history--all of us, from shark to robin to orangutan. And I don't think that any handicapper, given Burgess evidence as known today, would have granted very favorable odds for the persistence of Pikaia.
And so, if you wish to ask the question of the ages -- why do humans exit? --a major part of the answer, touching those aspects of the issue that science can treat at all, must be: because Pikaia survived the Burgess decimation. This response does not cite a single law of nature; it embodies no statement about predictable evolutionary pathways, no calculation of probabilities based on general rules of anatomy or ecology. The survival of Pikaia was a contingency of "just history." I do not think that any "higher" answer can be given, and I cannot imagine that any resolution could be more fascinating. We are the offspring of history, and must establish our own paths in this most diverse and interesting of conceivable universes -- one indifferent to our suffering, and therefore offeing us maximal freedom to thrive, or to fail, in our own chosen way."

What on earth are you talking about, Ripponfalls?

I think this is one of the liabilities of joining a thread late in the game, not reading through the arguments, and then jumping to conclusions about the participants.

I just can't fit your posts into the continuum of this thread, Ripponfalls. Sorry.

Alcibiades - I read lack of faith in the ordinary citizenry in this:

You're basically saying that a critical mass of citizens can't be mobilized to achieve anything meaningful. It's a fundamentally undemocratic viewpoint that is found on the radical margins of both the Left and the Right. Both sides would like to impose their programme without the inconvenience of compromise or interest moderation.

I think both the Left and the Right are guilty of it, due both to ideological rigidity and the need to accomodate the entrenched interests they each represent.

If you give my thoughts on alienated constituencies another try, you might see what I'm getting at. I've repeated them enough. There's no excuse for progressives of all stripes not to come together and work out a means to tap all of their constituencies without mutual alienation. Unfortunately, I lack the skill to articulate my ideas any clearer than I've already done (given the limitations of the medium).

nightbloom
I don't disagree with the generality of what you're saying. However, given the compromised nature of the media and the disintegration of community and family connections, I just don't see how it's possible to create any kind of thoroughgoing change on more that a few, generally local, issues at a time.

I've been at this (centrist/left politics) for a good many years man and boy and I have given up on the kind of make-nice program you seem to still think has traction.

I used to believe exactly what you say you do. My experience tells me it may get a freeway stopped or move a convicted pedophile out of a family locality but for more than that traditional centrist politics is a waste of time. I have kids who are hopeless about their own future – well educated responsible kids in their 20s – who can’t see any prospect of things ever changing for the better. They just put down their heads and soldier on, hoping that someday they may actually have a chance for a little happiness. Most of their friends are so disillusioned that they might as well be collecting spit for a living. That’s pathetic. Our young people should be involved and busy caring about things. They see the election of a clone like Stephen Harper as the straw that’s broken the camel’s back for them and their future. We need to engage them again.

Look for example at the kinds of baseless allegations both left and right are heaping on the only candidate for the Liberal leadership who appears to have the intellectual jam to actually involve the centre in a truly critical approach to centrist politics. People are afraid, literally afraid of thinking.

I've been where you are. I'm moving on, I'd suggest you join the rest of us who are trying to turn this into a movement for real change. We've shuffled the chairs on the Titanic too many times already, in my view.

Wow - That's even more jaded than me, Alcibiades, and I thought I was pretty far gone. So you've really given up on the democratic process haven't you. What alternative means exactly are you proposing for isolated and unrepresentative radicals to implement their agenda - guerrilla warfare against the complacent bourgeois state--? (teasing)

But tell me: how does what you say in any way justify the marginalization of all the moderates of various creeds, who might not subscribe to radical politics but who are nevertheless engaged in radical action against poverty and neediness here and internationally? How does it rationalize the exclusive militancy of the fundamentalist secular nihilist Left, at the expense of potential fellow-travellers who just might have a Koran on their shelf or a Crucifix in their bedroom?

We've already established that the hierarchal leadership all 'round has some stinkers in the bunch, so let's not re-hash that. Why is the pattern of exclusion and marginalization so consistent, recurring and adamant within progressive politics. What the rigid adhesion to ideological dogma which demands, as Ripponfalls did, that all progressives must adapt to his dogmatic view of the world before we can make common cause on the practical necessities?

Sound familiar...? This just in:

Iran: New Law Requires Badges for Jews, Christians

http://www.canada.com/components/print.aspx?id=11fbf4a8-282a-4d18-954f-546709b1240f&k=32073

Human rights groups are raising alarms over a new law passed by the Iranian parliament that would require the country's Jews and Christians to wear coloured badges to identify them and other religious minorities as non-Muslims.

nightbloom
Naw, haven't given up at all. I just think I understand that real change can't be undertaken on anything other than local issues right now. People, ordinary folks, the ones I suspect both you and I do care about will respond if we can find a way to reach them and give them an opportunity to connect again in a more significant and powerful way. I'm trying to get people to come out of the shadows and give voice to their frustrations and dreams again. In a small way places like the Tyee seem to be a little step toward that - at least that's the way I see it. I think, in today's disconnected world, that's about as radical as it gets.

If you read my stuff, you'll even see I try to get people to find ways to voice their objections with guys like Ignatieff in something more concrete than blind rage. I want people to wake up to what they've let the system do to them; what they've done to themselves so that the system continues to thrive and their own public and private lives go down the tubes.

But I can see, after hanging around here since the last week in January, that this isn't going to cut it. We have to identify more people who give a shit and get them involved. That's going to be the only way to create real broad-based communities again, in my opinion.

That's why I'm here. It's also why I'll be moving on soon to something more broadly based.

I don't want to marginalize anyone. I do want to find ways to provide groups and individuals with a way to start to get engaged again. A way that isn’t just be sitting on the sidelines complaining.

I agree. Set acheivable goals and build from there. Don't try to fix the world in one fell swoop. Any self-help book will say you can't expect overnight success. I think the same philosophy applies to fixing the mess we're in.

Yes, established models are failing to adapt to the unprecedently rapidly changing circumstances of the present day, and are therefore proving unable to address emerging necessities and public needs.

Absolutely no disagreement there. Change has not been incremental, it has been exponential, and is now measured in mere days rather than decades and centuries. Institutions that developed prior to technology, industry, and global communications and which somehow survived and adapted to all the changes to the present day are now having an unprecedentedly difficult time.

I would apply this institutional failure to everything from electoral democracy (and the fundamentally anti-democratic party system which has grown up around it), our crumbling financial-reward system, the decline of public services & civil society, the appalling inaccessibility of our justice system, the religious structures...the whole thing.

But it's really all we have. I can see that even the traditional elites, the "Upper Crust" of society, are also under threat by these changes. We really have no idea what the world would look like if we fast-forwarded a hundred years, let alone five hundred.

I can only hope that those predicting a "New Dark Ages" are wrong, and that human sensibility and restraint will prevail. That's why I think the challenge is to adapt what we've already built-up and cultivated in the time since the roots of our culture were first established in the Neolithic Age. It would be a shame to have to relive all the nasty lessons which are part of our heritage.

good, nightbloom, but do you ever just stop bullshitting and admit what an obscene and filthy thing these decrepid religions with their fake popes and blood-smattered saviours are, or are you just too stupid to understand?

Just curious.

I don't see them as any more perverse than what would inevitably replace them if we allow the ideolgues free reign to uproot such bulwarks. In fact, given the evolved restraints I've spoken of, what we have now is infinitely better for containing and directing into productive works a universal and highly unpredictable human impulse. I see the religious impulse slipping outside of traditional frameworks in very unhealthy ways - from culture-warping celebrity-worship, to often bizarre and profoundly visceral trends in food-discipline, to the search for identity in facial piercings and tattoos, to the expansion of a commercialized and mostly useless self-help industry. We're a perverse species, and don't fully understand the forces we respond to on a daily basis at an almost unconscious level.

The evolved religious structures of Western society have their uses. Everything I've said boils down to that.

Human history is bloody, and human passion runs bright red - I find something vaguely Protestant & Puritan about your objection to the more colourful imagery that Catholicism and High Anglicanism and Eastern Orthodox make use of. It's pretty tame given what's out there now, and at least those indulgences are tied to a value system most reasonable people can understand.

And the flaws of the hierarchy are no worse that those of their counterparts in other human hierarchal organizations (we've already discussed Big Labour's links to Organized Crime, for example). It's human nature, and these are human organizations.

But let's go back to the unwillingness of the docrtinaire Left to acknowledge a huge progressive constituency who have chosen to adhere to a traditional belief system.....It puts the lie to a lot of the arguments that have been articulated here.

Just had to slip that in, didn't you nightbloom
- and I thought we were actually getting somewhere!
lol - if I weren't so busy I'd say bohica to you two (truman and nightbloom) - have a good weekend dudes.

And you said I was a trouble maker!!!!
8-D

"Slip that in"--? I've been saying that consistently on these threads whenever the subject has come up. On this thread alone I've reiterated it at about four or five times.

Yup - You have a good weekend too. You don't have to like the Pope, but just remember to toast the Queen on Monday =) You can bet that I'm going to.

nightbloom
I don't dislike the Pope any more than I do most of the heads of big impersonal corporate entities. As for the Queen, she can look after her own toast, I usually burn mine. I met her once, sort of, when I was a boy - and I was not overly impressed. You must know, although I wonder from your response above, that I was joking.

You too Truman

Incidentally Rafe, HIV is a harmless retrovirus. Retroviruses don't destroy the immune system in humans. In fact only two retroviruses out of hundreds commonly found in humans have ever been claimed to cause illness--HIV and HTLV--both of them "discovered" by the same guy, Robert Gallo, the dean of Aidists.

HIV/AIDS is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated upon human beings. (With the possible exception of the claim that the pope is somehow god's representative here on earth)

Try this:

http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig7/culshaw1.html

The antibody tests are non-specific, the CD4+lymphocyte counts are arbitrary and the polymerase chain reaction virtual virus amplifications are as Kary Mullis, nobel prize winner and inventor of PCR said, "an abuse of the discovery."

Oh, I almost forgot, those 40 million with "AIDS" you referred to, Rafe--they only exist in the minds of Aidists and their believers. That might represent the number of people who have a positive hiv test--A test which means exactly nothing, except that the patient has come into contact with some kind of non-specific antigen and the body has responded by producing specific and non-specific immunoglobulins. Big Deal!

The CDC is quietly trying to squirm its way out of the ridiculous HIV/AIDS hypothesis:

They now say that only SOME of the people "infected" (wrong word, by the way) with the Hi virus will get AIDS. I guess it's too late for the people who committed suicide when they got a HIV positive test.

Go here: http://phil.cdc.gov/Phil/quicksearch.asp

Enter "HIV" in the seach box, click on search and click on "photo" number 8431

They, of course, couldn't find any actual HI viruses, so they had to settle for what they call "hiv particles" or "virions". There's no micrographs of hiv viruses, of course. This stuff could easily just be endogenous debris.

Read: "People with HIV have what is called HIV infection. Some of these people will develope Aids as a result of their infection."

Now it's only SOME! No mention of what percentage. This is the CDC!

Mass distribution of condoms, and saturation-messaging on condom discipline won't do the trick anyways. It certainly hasn't within our own at-risk communities. Just look at the curve - current strategies are clearly failing and have been for a while. Why then are organizations and political interests so invested in those strategies that they now want to export them to other continents and societies...? I would argue the issue is being exploited to speerhead an ideological agenda.

We can debate the sexual ethics of the R.C.C. 'til the cows come home. The fact remains that the only demographic where "condom culture" has had proven success is among sex trade workers, and even those successes are jeopardized by injection drug use (in which case all the condoms in the world aren't going to help you).

Condoms are good. The safe sex messaging as it's hitherto been conceived has been a trojan horse for self-destructive and addictive risk-taking behaviour.

So I think the title of this article is unfounded, the inclusion of a picture alongside it of the late Pope is misleading and in bad taste, and the arguments in the article itself are totally unfounded and unsupported.

But a critical mass of posters on this thread seem to agree with this assessment to various degrees, which is reassuring. Good thread, even if the article was trash.

nightbloom, I assume you're talking about condom use regarding hiv. I hope you'll take a look at the Aids statistics from the Public Health Agency of Canada, known as the "Surveillance Report, HIV and AIDS in Canada." The address is a mile long so just get there by googling "Surveillance report...."

Among the least known information on the site is that the "epideminc" doesn't exist in Canada.

Here are some stats:

Number of cases of Aids in Canada goes from 1788 reported cases in l994 to 299 reported cases in 2004 and 94 reported cases in the first half of 2005 (Pg. 38)

Number of deaths goes from 1,501 reported cases in l995 to 74 in 2004 and 27 in the first half of 2005. (pg 59)

These figures are for all of Canada, so as you say, there's just a fantastic amount of hype going on about Aids in Canada.

The possibility of a Canadian dying from Aids is far less than from all other major illnesses and diseases.

Some epidemic!

And of course Aids in Africa is just a Stephen Lewish-Pharmacorp fantasy. Africans are dying from starvation and poverty and war, as they have for about 60 years.

The epidemic certainly existed, Truman, and deaths were pretty high (relatively speaking, within the at-risk communities) throughout the eighties and early nineties until the discovery and mass diffusion of the retroviral chemotherapies. The success of the chemotherapy accounts for the drop in deaths since 1995.

I say relatively speaking because overall deaths didn't approach the numbers for, say, cancer deaths in the overall population during the same period. But for those within the minority at-risk "bubble" it seemed like every second person was getting sick & dying, hence the subjective perception of "an epidemic".

But if you graph the sero-conversion rates (number of new patients testing 'positive' for the HIV antigen) over the period since the introduction of the anti-viral chemotherapis, the curve spikes up in inverted proportion to declining deaths. In the last five years, since 2001, new HIV cases in the Lower Mainland alone are up 60%. It's been a steady increase to that high, and it's only just starting to receive the attention of policy-makers.

It's going up principally among gay men who have unprotected sex with a partner whose sero-status us unknown. A common co-factor in this behaviour are part-drugs of various kinds (meth, E, G, K, etc.).

"Condom Culture" has been a failure. The numbers tell the story. The best way to avoid the temptations of unprotected serial stranger-sex is in the context of a healthy, emotionally-fulfilling, loving, trusting, monogamous ("faithful") relationship. That was something that was totally missing from the condom-messaging of the last 20 years. It was all about selling the "safe" promiscuity and deconstructionist devaluated view of sex that arose from the "sexual liberation" movements.

We have to learn from this experience, salvage what was good & life-sustaining from the liberation movements, and synthesize a new and effective strategy before we can presume to export it to other continents.

...that should have read "party drugs of all kinds..."

nightbloom, you write: "The sucess of the chemotherapy accounts for the drop in deaths fom 1995."

I hope you've been to the Surveillance site by now. See the pdf version if you have adobe acrobat.

Here's the stats of Aids in B.C.

They go from a high of 168 in 1998 to 94 in 2004 and 37 up to June of 2005.

Dr. Perry Kendall (BC's Medical Health Officer) says that across B.C. only one in three hiv-positive people is being treated with anti-retrovirals. (See the Tom Sandborn article, "Fraction of HIV Residents getting treatment in Downtown Eastside" on Tyee.

Sandborn wites in brackets that the treatment rate for HIV in the Downtown Eastside is probably closer to one in five or one in six.

I'd encourage you to revisit your statement that, "the success of the chemotherapy accounts for the drop in deaths since l995, in view of the fact that probably an average of 75% of hiv positives have NEVER used them in BC. (Kendall: one in three in BC; Sandborn one in five or six in the downtown eastside).

Nightbloom, the biggest constant, concurrence between Aids diagnoses and deaths in BC and around North America is drug usage, injection and non-injection, and anti-retroviral usage.

Aids cases rise and fall concurrently with these factors, which are the real surrogate markers, not a randomly-chosen kind of T-lymphocyte.

I recall that in another thread you estimated that the percentage of young homosexuals who use illegal drugs is about 42%. My exhaustive studies have yielded a conclusion that the actual percentage is between 98 and 100 percent, and I have research studies to support this.

Anti-retrovirals appear to be of inverse ratio relevance in the huge drop in Aids cases in B.C.

Peter Duesberg, number one Aids dissident (and a world famous retroviralist), believes that in fact, the anti-retroviral chemotherapies are responsible for 75% of all aids deaths in the U.S. since doctors first noticed that homosexuals in LA, New York and San Francisco were seeing strange cases of immunosuppresion in homosexuals in 1981.

The epidemic is over!

I personally have come to believe that the anti-retrovirals are the major concurrence factor from progression from mere hiv positivity to serious immunosuppression, and there are many studies which support this. If you like I'll supply many references for this.

In fact, even in B.C. Aids cases have fallen along with a diminishing of anti-retroviral usage.

Remember, HIV so-called "infection" is a myth. Infection occurs only when pathogens actually kill the cell it uses for replication.

Except for mycoplamas, which is another story!

Many serious scientists are now quietly backing away from the main pillar of the HIV/AIDS hypothesis--that retroviruses kill the cluster-differentiation number 4 lymphocyte positive cell that they depend upon to replicate.

The end is near for the ridiculous HIV/AIDS hypothesis. My only regret is that there won't be prison sentences for everyone who has supported this disgusting corruption of medical science--commensurate with the numbers of people who have been poisoned with HAART (highly-activated anti-retroviral therapy, such as AZT and nulceoside and non-nucleoside reverse transcription inhibitors, and protease inhibitors--all poisons), and the numbers who have otherwise been harmed by a absurd diagnosis.

that's mycoplasma, (not mycoplamas) a serious contender for Aids co-factor status and perhaps the real sole cause of the original homosexual-community immunosuppression. (See mycoplasma fermentans (incognitus).

In fact, Luc Montaigner the Pasteur Clinic scientist who first discovered HIV now says that HIV could never cause Aids without the concurrence of some kind of mycoplasm.

One might suspect a certain vested interest in such a claim in view of the fact that he benefited from the HIV hypothesis and could hardly be expected to denigrate it without a massive amount of persuasion.

Truman – Unfortunately, I can’t engage you on much of your argumentation. I can only report what I’ve seen with my own eyes. The visible manifestations of sickness and imminent death abounded in the eighties and early nineties, and virtually disappeared overnight with the new chemotherapies in the mid-nineties. It was very visible and apparent.

We also have to be clear about numbers relating to new sero-conversions (those testing HIV+) and new AIDS diagnoses (those already HIV+ who are now manifesting a collapse of their immune systems, known colloquially as “full blown AIDS”). The former number – new HIV+ cases – is the number that’s been going up steadily since 2001.

True, I’ve known HIV+ friends who never touched the chemotherapies and got along fine, and others who held out as long as they could & then commenced the treatment once their cell counts approached the red zone. In all cases I’ve come in contact with, retroviral therapy halted the decline in cell counts, and usually marked the beginning of a gradual increase in the numbers. That was also a highly visible and apparent phenomenon in the community. You literally had people rising from their death-beds once the new chemotherapies hit the market.

Also, I’m suspicious of any study which garners results in the 90-percentile range, particularly on an issue as difficult to categorize and track as drug use, and on a study group as difficult to categorize and track as gay-bisexual men & youth. 90-percentile results are very, very rare in any credible study. You could study a no-brainer issue, like how many 17 year old males masturbate more than once a week, and STILL not get 90-percentile results (incredible, eh?). Statistics are okay for benchmarking, but they’re a false god in the modern policy landscape.

I will grant you this though: the occurrence of regular hard drug use, as well as regular unprotected penetrative stranger-sex, in urban gay male communities is far, far, higher that the AIDS groups and their satellite organizations are admitting. The numbers they employ are skewed in order to compliment their grant-seeking strategies vis a vis government. They invariably put forward the best case for their organizational interests. It's the nature of these kinds of organizations to do so.

The gay community is simply not keeping up its end of the AIDS bargain, and hasn't been for a long time.

I think that fact is fairly apparent at this stage. Unfortunately, the various interests have become so entrenched that we’re not going to see corrective action, and urban gay communities like Vancouver’s will continue to deteriorate into little more than glorified factories producing HIV+ drug addicts who provide a reliable client base for local organized crime while simultaneously providing the liberal-Left with a reliable & chronically-alienated voting constituency.

Hiv rates going up. (You're right, I checked it out on the Surveillance Report from Public Health Agency of Canada.) Good on you, nb.

Think about this, though. Remember, according to the official CDC paradigm HIV/AIDS is an eventually fatal illness.

*If all of these new hiv positives don't eventually get AIDS and die, then there's something wrong with the HIV/AIDS hypothesis.

I figured it out for you. HIV doesn't cause AIDS. It may be a concurrent factor, but obviously an acausal one. Hepatitis B, for instance is just as concurrent with Aids as HIV.

Also what "cells" are you referring to--immunoglobulins, cluster of differentiation number 4s (cykotine -bearing Thymus cells) or viral load infectious unit counts-pcrs? It's very hard to figure out what you're talking about without these specifics. Some of the numbers are just surrogate markers and others represent Elisa or Western blot antibody reactions.

*Nightbloom, if the hiv+ rates continue to go up and the deaths continue to fall (as well as the new rates of AIDS), will you admit to feeling even a bit weirded out by the hiv-aids hypothesis?

In all other infectious diseases infection correlates positively with mortality and chronic and fatal illness. (a tautology, I know, but Aids is a weird "disease.") Remember, noone except you claims that the retrovirals will save anyone's life in the long term.

Nothing saves any of our lives in the long term, Truman ;-)

There are some huge grey areas when it comes to predicting the behaviour of the virus - i.e. why some get sick immediately, and others can go for years without medication. And there's always been a sub-group within the HIV+ community that has held that their continued survival lies in nothing other than healthy lifestyle & healthy diet, without the medication. I don't know how long they can hold it at bay, but I'm happy for them that they can. They always have the option of falling back on the chemotherapies when things take a turn for the worse.

Some have remained healthy this way, but the most go on the retroviral chemotherapies immediately following diagnosis and subsequently experience improvement. I couldn't begin to explain why some seem to be okay without the chemotherapy, and from what I've heard the scientists don't have a definitive explaination why either.

And yes, there are often other illness in the mix (Hepatitis, Syphilis, etc.). But a lot of totally healthy people have sero-converted and subsequently died, without any other attributable co-factors. It's a killer.

I'm not sure quite how to put this , but I'd only ever heard rumours about the lack of hard data linking HIV to AIDS. I tested positive back in the 80's along with my peer group & most friends . Thru the years, I have buried fifty-six good friends (yes , I am serious), but didn't take sick myself until just a few years ago. I've read what the contributors have posted & I am very impressed with your knowledge. I don't understand all the science that came up , but I have a better grasp than most ....as in are my "valued" T4 cells naive or memory , & within certain parameters, by increasin the # of CD4 cells are we boosting the immune system or simply creating more little factories in which HIV can replicate? BUT , now ......to say you've given me food for thought , does not begin to cover it. Additionally , from one who has been around the syndrome from the very beginning as a resident of San Diego, I have always harbored a profound resentment towards the religious right, as they fought vociferously in opposition to any funding for research , during the early Reagan years of the epidemic .
Thanks for the opportunity to 'listen in' & glean 'stuff' that puts a whole new perspective on things .

Bart here again ....I'dike to add in response to the refernce to young gays not keeping up their responsibility to curb the spread of AIDS, in the beginning , the gay community across the continent was the only entity that put any effort into stopping the spread of the disease. Yes , there were levels of promiscuity that were incredible , but gay men are....men . We admitted to the error of our ways and paid for it mightily , with thousands of lives. Approximately 2500 , I believe , in BC alone .

Cheers to you barth, and thanks for your insights. I hope you bounce back & that everything works out in your favour.

I stand by my critique of the current generation of young gay men (of which I am one). They're a totally different breed from the gay men you refer to, many of whom came of age in the 70's and pioneered AIDS activism in the 80's. Moreover, I'm hearing pretty much the same exasperation from friends and colleagues who are in the policy & research side of this issue. Something has gone very wrong.

True, we're men, and have to deal with all the biological imperatives that brings with it. But there's no justification for what I've been seeing over the last half-decade after the gains we made in the 1990s. We've now got a sizeable and active contingent of gay men that is not only not using condoms during their frequent high-risk activities with high numbers of partners, but they also [I]don't even get tested[/I. They're not even making an effort at preserving & building on past gains. So we're actually only seeing the tip of the iceberg when we talk about the current "spike" in transmission rates.

If the goal is to keep transmission rates to a minimum and (ideally) render new transmissions of the virus a thing of the past in our community, then the current policy and practice has been failing spectacularly for a long time...and we're only just starting to talk about it as a community. We've still got a long way to go, and really need to clean up our act as a community.

That Rafe just won't listen to me...
I've been trying to get him to jump into his fibreglass sloop and sail away gracefully into the sunset for months now.
PLEASE Rafe ! Do it soon !

Barth, you can look at all the new Aids-rethinking sites by starting with Virusmyth.com, virusmyth.net and linking on to hundreds of sites from there. Alberta rethinkingaids society is excellent. Google Celia Farber-"he Corruption of Medical Science" and the Rebuttal by Robert Gallo, who first invented, the hiv virus,(after the got a sample from Luc Montaigner)

Stats are at "Surveillance Report for Aids in Canada." Best to study the pdf version.

Needless to say I think the HIV/AIDS hypothesis is a very cruel joke.

And remember, notwithstanding Nightbloom' comments, the HIV rate is going slightly up in Canada, but the actual Aids cases and deaths are going way down. In fact in the first half of 2005 there were exactly 27 deaths in all of Canada from AIDS.

I have no credentials of any kind but I'd suggest to you that it's the anti-retrovirals that have been killing so many people.

It has to be. This is what they do. They kill cells or stop them from replicating!

They now have a medical term for people who got the virus twenty years ago, or so, and have never been sick--"long-term non-progressors."

I just read a CBC article that applauds some guy who's got a whopping big grant to study the genetics of these people who have had the virus for a long time and who have neve been sick. He claims they must have a protective gene.

The truth is--they just never took AZT (google it's a chemotherapy poison, protease inhibitors and chain terminators, which in the short run seem to raise the dead back to life, but in the long run kill not only hiv replication but all the other cells in the body too.

Retrovirus do not kill the cells they need to survive.

Also, in all the academic HIV/AIDS immersion I've done, I've only found two totally reliable aspects which universally correlate with full blown aids--receptive anal sex (even unprotected, dificult to believe, eh) and illicit drug usage, including poppers, cocaine and meth.

It would probably be helpful for you to study the statistics of Aids in Canada--forget Africa--it's impossible to make any conclusions about that--it's an obvious hoax, and most dependent up "clinical cases diagnoses."

The godfathers of HIV/AIDS dissent are Peter Duesberg and David Rasnick, who is currently working with the President of South Africa against the Aidist lobby.

All the best to you!

This link will link you to tons of rethinkingaids stuff:

http://www.robertogiraldo.com/eng/Websites.html

Also interesting about Duesberg and Rasnick is that their refinement of the aneuploidy hypothesis of cancer etiology is quietly being accepted by the scientific community.

Not only have these guys successfully challenged the most ridiculous hypothesis ever devised by the human mind in modern times (hiv, a harmless retrovirus causes immune depression), but it looks like they've also found the cause of cancer. The unavoidable fact that solid tumours have decidedly non-diploid chromosomal counts should soon replace the gene mutation theory of cancer. (normal cells, human for instance have 23 pairs of chromosomes--46 in total, while solid tumours have 60-90--aneuploidic. They should each get diploid nobels for this work, although the hiv debacle is actually a bit of a no-brainer.

Hopefully, the "human papilloma causes cervical cancer" fraud will be the next Pharmacorp trick to be exposed.

Since this started out as a 'discussion' about hypocrisy in the church, perhaps it's about time something here actually looked at a recent example of this and also, how it was eventually responded to:

http://www.catholic.org/international/international_story.php?id=19918

Okay, I'll bite, Alcibiades.

Yes, I've been watching the development of this case on & off for a while. I think Pope Benedict did the right thing. No hypocrisy there.

It didn't help the issue that some accusers recanted during the first round of the process way back when, and that others had demonstrable ancillary reasons for malcontentment with the Legionnairies. But by and large it appears that the net sum of all allegations was deemed credible enough to warrant Maciel's removal. There seems to be some margin to question whether Maciel himself feels he did anything wrong, which only raises more questions. However, I certainly don't doubt that there was wrong-doing of an inappropriate nature here.

There's also the not-insignificant nuance that the accusers were not children in this case, but rather sexually mature "adults" by the legal standards of most Western jurisdictions - certainly by Canadian standards if activists have their way with the Consent laws (the gay press is currently in a "Teen Sex Rights" frenzy, and has event enlisted the support of thenormally prudent EGALE leadership). On the face of it, nothing happened in this case that doesn't occasionally happen in any given High School in Canada. It certainly happened in mine (i.e. teacher-student liaisons of a heterosexual nature, that is). Anyone who's been a teacher for any length of time has seen it, heard of it, or suspected it. It happens. (and to be clear: I disapprove vehemently of any adult in a position of authority who crosses that line with young people of either gender who are in their charge).

But let's be real. Teenage boy-men who submit to repeated advances by older men over a protracted period of time are walking a fine line when they go along for the ride and then call their experience "abuse" twenty years later. Sorry, but Nightbloom wasn't born yesterday. There's a lot of politics around this issue, and liberal Catholics have been fed up with the Legionnairies & Regnum Christi (their laypersons wing) for a very long time now (and not without reason - they've caused not a few unwarranted problems here & there). So the knives have been out for a while. Moving this case forward took a lot of very deliberate work.

And make no mistake, the Church is undertaking a heavy price in doing the 'right thing' with Marciel Maciel. The Legionnairies of Christ - along with Opus Dei - are two of the most successful 20th century Orders (who also, not coincidentally, are also quite ultra-conservative....perhaps the most conservative Catholic Orders to walk the earth, with the exception of those founded in France during the Restoration period early-mid 19th century, like the Oblates of Mary Immaculate, for example, who have occasionally dominated the Canadian episcopacy).

Okay, so getting back to Rafe. He wrote this:

"You can look at the Bible from one end to the other and find no evidence that women are second class citizens thus not entitled to lead a flock."

Uh, Rafe, how about this bit of crap:

1(first) Timothy, Chapter 2(two) Verses 11 and 12

11. Let the women learn in silence with all subjection.
12. But I suffer not a woman to teach. (Get it, Rafe--TEACH, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.

Normally, a person would be convinced by THAT little bit of nonsense, but Rafe'll probably need a bit more.

How about this:

1st Corinthians Chapter 14, Verses 34 and 35.

34. Let your women keep silence (SILENCE RAFE,) in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience, as also saith the law.
35. And if they will learn anything, let them ask their husbands at home: for it is a shame for women to speak in the church.

Now, Rafe, you claim that there is nothing in the Bible that says "women are second class citizens thus not entitled to lead a flock."

So I ask you, then, in all seriousness: If this passage does not at least SUGGEST that women are "second class citizens, thus not entitled to lead a flock," what then would the Bible have to say to convince you that it had said that women are second class citizens?

And if words like "be in all subjection," "commanded to be under obedience," "it is a shame, (some bibles say 'abomination')...just what, then, would it take to convince you that "ST." Paul is counselling the Corinthians, et al, that women are indeed, "second class citizens, not entitled to lead a flock."

Rafe, come on now, you haven't actually READ the bible, have you?

As for the "flimsiest of evidence" that homosexuality is a sin: Well, THAT's in there too, and it ain't so flimsy:

Leviticus 18, verses 20 to 22:

20. Moreover thou shalt not lie carnally with thy neighbour's wife, to defile thyself with her.
21. And thou shalt not let any of thy seed pass through the fire to Molech, neither shalt thu profane the name of God: I am the Lord.
22. Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination. Abomination! I say, Rafe, just like a woman speaking in church.

The Bible's a pile of crap, obviously, and it does say all of this stuff.

nightbloom
It's all good that the church hierarchy is actually coming to grip with the hypocrisy of the pretense that members of the clergy have not been misbehaving for generations. Holding out for so long against the obvious has tended to cloud much of the good work the church is sometimes still (and in fairness has always to some extent been) about.

But that same hierarchy fails to acknowledge that it demeans women and the status of priests as grown men by the way it infantilizes the role of both sexes within the church. How can you expect people to grow into their rightful role as fully-fledged people of God if you don’t treat them like adults?

It did the same thing for years to the laity.

Nowadays, good Catholics are insisting upon the freedom to apply their own conscience to moral and ethical decisions that the church has shown both an unwillingness to disentangle from both tradition and dead dogma and to recognize in relation to the role of the family in the modern pluralistic world. For heaven’s sake, I had to sign an undertaking to raise any kids I might have as Catholics when I married someone who wasn’t an RC. What the Hell was that about? My kids will make their own decisions, as adults, and for themselves – they are not my chattels and they certainly aren’t the Church’s.

You only need to look at the effects of this revolution upon the 'faithful' in Ireland to appreciate how profound these changes have been.

It is quite possible that the traditional and conservative church of which you speak will remain relevant in Africa for another generation but if it doesn't find a way to adapt to the realities of life in the modern world it's going to find itself buried under the kind of self-inflicted contradictory stuff that Truman is piling on above here. The Church needs to come in from the cold and stop pretending. Benedict’s decision to correct his predecessor’s errors with respect to Maciel may be an indication that it is starting to do so.

The hypocrisy was waiting so damn long to do it and pretending that nothing was wrong in the interim, imo.

Clarifications
Not the many will care now or even visit, but to the writer above who warned/asked or suggested why/that the Catholic church had edited the Old Testament to its liking, actually No they didn't do a lot of that because the Old Testament was written in Hebrew and the Jews had copies too and so "preserved the Oracles of God". But yes the New Testament was diddled by various interests, not the least by the KJV translators, such as twisting texts to preserve a supposed divinity of Kings.... But actually archeological finds such as the Dead Sea Scrolls and modern finds like the Bible Code all suggest that the Old Testament text was/is more or less intact as intended, and the New Testament is still fairly easy to understand too for those who read with an open heart.

And Re the supposed order for women to be silent in the church, that was a reference to Jewish synagogues in which women and men sat separately on different sides and so during services the women would call out questions or comments to their husbands across the aisle, so Paul's instruction was simply for them to wait until they got home to ask their questions and to not disrupt the services by talking during them. The supposed misogyny of the Christian churches is another red herring; yes the Roman Catholics and later other churches were and still are misogynist, but the Bible and Jesus/Yeshua and the Apostles were really in their day feminists; Jesus and Paul and other prophets all spoke well of the actions of various women, such as "Lydia Purple"... would you feminists prefer the Talibanm??

Re religiosity in general, it's a shame that so much disinformation has built up to defame the name of Yahweh, but it will all come clear soon enough. Where would the social justice movements be without the values of truth and justice and equity espoused in the Bible? They'd be in some Nirvana like Indonesia...

nightbloom
A little more hypocrisy, perhaps? Something a bit fresher and more up to date.
Perhaps a few lines from Benedict's speech at Auschwitz?

Somehow the 'German' people are now putative "victims" of the Nazis too? Did he forget that every time the Nazis submitted a part of their evil program to the 'noble German people' they turned out in droves to approve and vote in favour?

To say nothing of the continuing fact that the Church ignores Pacelli and his history - both as papal nuncio and as Pope.

What a self-serving mockery.

There's a helping of modern up-to-date hypocrisy for you.

See what I mean, 10:26 am Thursday, June 1

No, his statements are fairly general, fit within the norms of divergent opinions on this issue, and clearly don't cater to the latent Germanophobia of the Anglosphere.

What were you expecting him to do - reinterate Daniel Goldhagen's inaccurate and misleading tripe? European anti-Semitism is not a specifically German disease. Everyone from the Vichy French, the Poles and Romanians went along with the Final Solution.

Benedict has written at length on anti-Semitism in history, culture and theology. He's also done more to mend the Judeo-Christian fence than any other Christian leader in Western history (he was the architect of JP2's reciprocity in that regard, and his writings have always been decidedly "friendly" to Judaism). He has even stated that the Covenant of Abraham is sufficient in itself for salvation...which coming from a Pope (he was cardinal when he first articulated these ideas) is pretty radical stuff.

Open your eyes: Benedict is a target on this issue because he (and the Vatican) has always supported the formation of an independent and viable Palestinian State, and have lent considerable diplomatic support to the cause.

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/Ratzinger.html#jews

In that Christmas “meditation,” which appeared on the front page of the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano, Ratzinger said:

Even if the most recent, loathsome experience of the Shoah (Holocaust) was perpetrated in the name of an anti-Christian ideology, which tried to strike the Christian faith at its Abrahamic roots in the people of Israel, it cannot be denied that a certain insufficient resistance to this atrocity on the part of Christians can be explained by an inherited anti-Judaism present in the hearts of not a few Christians.

Whoa, nightbloom, just a minute. I'm not even bringing up the Holocaust. I have no problem with how JPII and now Benedict are dealing with the Church's rapidly changing position with respect to the Jews. It is definitely to be applauded.

I'm simply saying that you can't ignore the fact that the German people are historically complicit in Hitler's crimes. The man was not sui generis - he came from a particular time and context and while there is lots of blame to go around (outside Germany) for the West's pathetic failure to address the plight of the Jews prior to the war there can be no avoiding the main culprits were the Germans and the German people themselves.

I think it may be justified to suggest that many ordinary Germans were not aware of the Nazi policy toward the Jews prior to kristalnacht but after that, as the Jews property was seized and their shops were shut and trashed there can be no honest excusing the German peoples' complicity. They voted for the man in percentages approaching 90% - time and time again.

Benedict is being a hypocrite to call the German people of the time either victims or unwitting agents of evil. It just won't wash and I'm surprised you'd try to make the case.

Sullivan's later point about Maximilian Kolb (Sp?) is far from persuasive to me. However, I know much less about that so I'll stay off that topic out of ignorance.

As for the rest, I think you are way off base,
sorry.

And, more to the point, if you're still around, you might want to check out what G West is trying to do for your particular pet project - morals and values - on the Bountiful/Lost Boys thread. I don't know why he gets himself into these things.

That's actually not the case I'm trying to make, but I'll blame the limitations of the medium on my lack of clarity - We can devote a whole other thread to the flaws and stresses in German society which fed and amply demonstrate the culpability of the German people in voting for the Nazis and then going along with the escalating abuses.

I would encourage to read some of Benedict's longer writing on the subject. He's got some very informated & lucid thoughts on the nature of the Holocaust. He was necessarily speaking in shorthand in the quote provided by the media, and the media is focusing on the spinning one particular comment in its most negative possible interpretation. Some of the things which some are saying were "ommitted" would actually have been very inappropriate for him to broach (for example, it wouldn't have been the time to delve into the Pacelli controversy, which is frought with ambivalence). He was there as a religious leader, on a religious pilgrimage in Poland (itself a deeply anti-Semitic culture, historically), and his remarks were tailored to fit that universal context withouth undertaking any political or academic arguments or endorsements of one lobby over another.

Let's face it - he'd be criticized no matter which way he played it, so he stuck to the central themes and articulated a clear concept for Christians of what the Holocaust should mean to them on a religious level in a non-academic way that would be understood by them.

As an afterthought, John Allen's coverage of the Auschwitz visit provides a bit more nuance the what the mainstream press fed us:

http://www.nationalcatholicreporter.org/word/pt052806a.htm

NCR tends to be liberal & ecumenical, and was fairly critical of JP2 and Candinal Ratzinger during the last pontificate, and is also highly critical of conservative influences in the Church (for example, the Legionnairies and Opus Dei). They've also been particularly tenacious and vocal throughout the abuse scandals. John Allan wrote a highly critical biography of Ratzinger prior to his ascendance to the Papacy, so he's no yes-man.

nightbloom
The copy of the speech I read, and quoted, was adapted from Libreria Editrice Vaticana, their copyright. I know you're a Germanophile and I respect that. Benedict is a vast contradiction. What he said in exculpation of the German people with respect to the Nazi nightmare was still nonsense and offensive, in my view.
Especially at Auschwitz.

Beachcomber wrote this: (believe it or not)

"And re. the supposed order for women to be silent in the church, that was a reference to Jewish synagogues in which women and men sat separately in different sides and so during the services the women would call out questions or comments to their husbands across the aisle, so Paul's instruction was simply for them to wait until they got home to ask their questions and to not disrupt the services by talking during them."

See what I mean, you guys. This is what religion does to you--it turns you into a rationalizing fool.

Paul (according to beachcomber, a FEMINIST) instructs in his epistle to TIMOTHY:
First Timothy Chapter 2 verses 11 and 12:

11.Let the woman learn in silence WITH ALL SUBJECTION.

12.But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.

(I suppose, Beachcomber, this too, is merely to keep good order during the proceedings).

If you like, Beachcomber, I'll show you where your big Yahweh commands that the Jews commit genocide on their way to their promised land; to slay every man, woman and child by the "edge of the sword."

But then I'm sure you'd just have another goofy rationalization for that, too. Lets see...Oh yeah, their victims were all just BAD PEOPLE...right?

Then we can get into the Talmud, if you like, which is REALLY bizarre. Makes the old and the new testament seem...well...reasonable. I wasted three months of my life in Talmudic immersion.

What a waste. Religion is insanity, and you guys know it, so stop pretending.

And why shouldn't old Ratzinger be ambiguous about the evil the Nazis perpetrated upon the world? He, after all, was a member of the HITLER YOUTH, eh.

And all the while old pope paul from Poland hid in a seminary while his courageous school buddies got killed fighting the hitlerites. (Guess he was saving himself for popehood and such).

Good pair! Now one of them can make the other a saint.

It's a comedy act, you guys. Cut it out!

Unless you think Ratzinger actually is Peter's heir--the solid rock upon which the church of god is built blah blah blah.

Truman
Even so, I think the interview with Karen Armstrong in Salon earlier this week was interesting and worth the time it took to read it. You should check it out:
Going beyond God By Steve Paulson
Salon, May. 30, 2006.

You have to watch a brief ad to get to it - but you probably know that.

Al, I tried to get to the Salon site. They said I could read it for free, but wanted my credit card number in order for me to register. I don't have a credit card.

I've never read a word of Armstrong's, but I used to watch her quite regularly on Vision TV. I noticed that in the preamble to the interview someone, probably Steve Paulson, says that Armstrong thinks that the afterlife is a red herring; that literal translations of the bible are ridiculous, but that hating religion is pathological. That is to say, sick.

So I guess I know what she would think of my hatred of religion, eh: I'm a sick puppy.

Well, I'm going out on limb here, but I bet I know at least as much about God as Armstrong, and good on her if she imagines she's gone "Beyond Religion."

She's made a living talking about god and what people should think about it--almost as perverse as that Todd guy Canwest used to support to write the most insipid stuff in the Vancouver Sun.

Here's what Armstrong knows about god: NOTHING, same as me.

Our consciousness, at least so far, is contingent upon NOT having the ultimate understanding of "first causes" whether as a Unified Theory of Everything--which would explain how gravity acts without any power source--or the meaning of our individual or collective lives.

I wonder now that Armstrong has gone "beyondreligion," would the word "mystery" mean anything to her?

Just checked the title again. It's "Going Beyond God" I see. (not religion) I would be interested in seeing where she imagines she's been, though. Maybe the interview will show up credit-card-less somewhere.

Truman,
Can't figure out why they'd want a credit card number - that's wierd. I'll post it in here for you.

here's the next section:

and the next:

The experience is the same. The trouble is that we define our God too closely. In my book "A History of God," I pointed out that the most eminent Jewish, Christian and Muslim theologians all said you couldn't think about God as a simple personality, an external being. It was better to say that God did not exist because our notion of existence was far too limited to apply to God.

Didn't a lot of people say God is beyond language? We could only experience the glimmer of God.

That's what the Buddha said. You can't define nirvana, you can't say what it is. The Buddha also said you could craft a new kind of human being in touch with transcendence. He was once asked by a Brahman priest who passed him in contemplation and was absolutely mesmerized by this man sitting in utter serenity. He said, "Are you a god, sir? Are you an angel or a spirit?" And the Buddha said, "No, I'm awake." His disciplined lifestyle had activated parts of his humanity that ordinarily lie dormant. But anybody could do it if they trained hard enough. The Buddhists and the Confucians and the greatest monotheistic mystics did with their minds and hearts what gymnasts and dancers do with their bodies.

You're saying these ancient sages really didn't care about big metaphysical systems. They didn't care about theology.

No, none of them did. And neither did Jesus. Jesus did not spend a great deal of time discoursing about the trinity or original sin or the incarnation, which have preoccupied later Christians. He went around doing good and being compassionate. In the Quran, metaphysical speculation is regarded as self-indulgent guesswork. And it makes people, the Quran says, quarrelsome and stupidly sectarian. You can't prove these things one way or the other, so why quarrel about it? The Taoists said this kind of speculation where people pompously hold forth about their opinions was egotism. And when you're faced with the ineffable and the indescribable, they would say it's belittling to cut it down to size. Sometimes, I think the way monotheists talk about God is unreligious.

Unreligious? Like talk about a personal God?

Yes, people very often talk about him as a kind of acquaintance, whom they can second-guess. People will say God loves that, God wills that, and God despises the other. And very often, the opinions of the deity are made to coincide exactly with those of the speaker.

Yet we certainly see a personal God in various sacred texts. People aren't just making that up.

No, but the great theologians in Judaism, Christianity and Islam say you begin with the idea of a god who is personal. But God transcends personality as God transcends every other human characteristic, such as gender. If we get stuck there, this is very immature. Very often people hear about God at about the same time as they're learning about Santa Claus. And their ideas about Santa Claus mature and change in time, but their idea of God remains infantile.

and still more:

Jeez this is long:

And here's some more:

I should be able to get most of in here:

And here's the last bit:

I don't know. I prefer to be agnostic on that matter, as do most of the world's religions. It's really only Christianity and Islam that are obsessed with afterlife in this way. It was not a concern in the Axial Age, not for any of them. I think the old scenarios of heaven and hell can be unreligious. People can perform their good deeds in the spirit of putting their installments in their retirement annuities. And there's nothing religious about that. Religion is supposed to be about the loss of the ego, not about its eternal survival.

But certainly there are a lot of people -- both scientists and religious people -- who speculate about whether there's some cosmic order. For the evolutionary biologists, the question is whether there's some natural progression to evolution.

Who knows?

And is there an endpoint? From the cosmological perspective, was the universe designed specifically for life? Are those important questions?

Yeah, I think they can be wonderful questions. But they don't occupy me very much. I believe that what we have is now. The religions say you can experience eternity in this life, here and now, by getting those moments of ecstasy where time ceases to be a constraint. And you do it by the exercise of the Golden Rule and by compassion. And just endless speculation about the next world is depriving you of a great experience in this one.

Alcibiades, thank you for posting the interview. I read every word and tried to experience Armstrong's essential take on religion, god, science, escaping the ego, the Axial Age, Richard Dawkins, the pathology of hating religion, science, the value of speculating about first causes, and the exceptionalism of the several "traditions" about which she spoke. I did think, however, that the traditions of Africans and early North and South American peoples might have, played a bigger role in her review. (This is irony; these people apparently contributed nothing)

It would indeed be rude of me to gratuitiously
dismiss Armstrong out of hand in view of your effort to present her ideas to tyee bloggers.

But in all honesty, I don't recognize a sincere, philosophy of religion from this interview--or even a definition of "religion," which she seemed often to have confused with "spirituality."

But this conclusion is fairly inevitable as I consider my own philosophy to be "informed," as people like to say, by spirituality, but not by religion.

Armstrong basically agrees with everything I said about the ugliness of god and mohammed's -counseling the genocide of infidels, for instance, and the propensity of believers to remake god in their own image.

Many of her ideas seem to be merely an expression of philosophy by proclamation, in the absence of any empirically convincing argumentation. (I mean that in a good way, of course.)

Near the beginning she describes an "Axial" age in which "traditions which have continued to nourish humanity" appeared. Well, this "nourishment," is, I think, a matter of opinion, and Armstrong does little to edify the reader, uh, listener.

She claims that the "golden rule" is the essence of Judaism, but I could supply you with passages in the Torah and Talmud which allows Jews, indeed commands them, to reserve their most beneficent intentions for members of their own tribe.

She said, referring to an earlier book: "I pointed out that the most emminent Jewish, Christian and Muslim theologians all said you shouldn't think about God as a simple personality, an external being."

This is quite astounding. One might accuse legions of old testament characters of speaking about god exactly as if "he" were some marauding, revengeful, bad tempered despot. You may be familiar with a passage or two in which god actually owns up to being a "jealous" god," and it is certainly, then not unreasonable to suppose that "god" himself
apparently could have used some work on his ego--not unlike the kind Armstrong recommends for non-believers, religion haters and various other untranscendents.

Alcibiades, Armstrong is a writer, writing, but she doesn't really have much to add to the discourse. It's kinda like that spam that gets through, promising fantastic, products at a cheap price, but not really delivering.

I can honestly say, Al, that I don't know anything about religion or god or science or people that I didn't know before I read her interview. And I thought her dismissal of those of us who seek the big answers to the big questions about the end of time, for instance, was somewhat un-called for, at least.

I will say, however, that Paulson did ask some excellent questions and tried, at least, to keep her grounded in empiricism, which she rejected at every possible opportunity--her greatest rhetorical accomplishment, at least in this interview.

But that's what I used to feel when I listened to her on television--she talks a lot but doesn't say anything--sorta like eating a box full of crackers for supper.

But sincerely, thanks Al. Your intention was obviously to share something valuable--which is very nice.

My only point, Truman, is that I think there is a way something at least nominally associated with the idea of 'religion' can form a part of an inclusive and hopeful approach to life in a society where there are all manner of believers and non-believers honestly working to find ways of making common cause.

Given what many traditional religions have espoused and done throughout history, I can't see Armstrong and others, like Episcopal Bishop Paul Spong, as not contributing something positive.

I don't see anything contradictory in Benedict's statements on the Holocaust. It's important to remember that just because someone's views don't match out own, that doesn't make them automatically invalid, contradictory, or offensive on an objective level. Given the consistent pattern of your critique, may I say that you seem ready and willing to take offence simply because of who and what Benedict (and people like him) have chosen to do and be with their lives.

His views may not necessarily be the view espoused by Daniel Goldhagen or the NYT, but Benedict's views still fall within the 'acceptable mainstream' of Holocaust scholarship. By making Germans an icon of evil, we avoid our own culpability in the Holocaust (remember the Ship of Fools, turned away from Canadian ports, only to return to Germany...Remember Mackenzie King fawning over Hitler, writing Nazi apologia in his diaries...remember the rabid anti-Semitism in French Canada, particularly among early nationalists...). The extent of the collective culpability of the German people as a society will be debated ad nauseum long after you and I are gone.

I personally tend to put more emphasis on the "collective guilt" thesis (i.e. they knowingly let it happen). But I extend this well beyond German borders. They (we) all let it happen. And incidentally Catholicism proved to be far more of a bulwark against the Final Solution than the Protestant establishment (which had long tried to excise the Jewish taproot altogether by jettisoning the Old Testament), a fact which is seldom acknowledged, notwithstanding media hatchet-jobs on a mediochre and largely powerless Pope (Pius XII)..."Hitler's Pope" indeed - may as well write a book titled "Hitler's Mackenzie King" or "Hitler's Kennedies" or "Hitler's Roosevelt"...I think the only v.i.p. of the era who actually emerged from that mess smelling good was Churchill himself. But that's not what we're debating here. I accept that there's a continuum of views on this topic, and am not inclined to condemn as "offensive" those views which depart from my own.

In actuality, Daniel Goldhagen's views (and the language he uses to articulate them) are far more offensive to responsible historians than anything that has issued from Pope Benedict, because he mixes gross factual error with cultural/ethnic loathing for anything German. He's been roundly and publicly criticized from within the American Jewish intelligentsia for this precise flaw, btw, so I'm not saying anything controversial or new here.

Again, I think there are people who simply loath anything remotely Catholic on sight, and will find fault in virtually anything Benedict says before he's even finished saying it.

nightbloom
In fairness, I don't think I ever did that. No do I think your allegation that I have ever said anything which could be construed as saying I loathe anything remotely Catholic is accurate either.

Personally, I think the fact you'd even bring up Goldhagen - I certainly didn't mention him - is kind of strange in itself.

In fact, I agree completely that culpability for the Holocaust ought to be shared more or less equitably among the whole Western Christian tradition and with corporate and governmental culpability too for that matter. But, Goldhagen's thesis notwithstanding, one doesn't have to go over to the other extreme and postulate that Hitler was sui generis either: That he is somehow uniquely evil and outside history itself and therefore he and his henchmen are the main parties to be blamed for what happened in Germany from, lets say 1930 - 1945. In other words, I don’t think you can give the German people the kind of pass Benedict’s words indicate. Both for factual reasons, and, in the case of German Catholicism, for a lot of other factors which go back to Bismarck and certainly can’t overlook the role of a certain Italian lawyer who was papal nuncio during the years that German Catholic political power could have been mounted to oppose Hitler’s rise. These things just can’t be ignored.

I specifically keyed on that part of Benedict's statement that I found objectionable and I still see it that way. Most young Germans (born since the War) that I've met are fully willing to accept the responsibility of the German people (as a collective) for what happened during Hitler's time although, in fairness, there has been a small revisionist movement making itself heard in academic circles in recent years.

Would that the rest of the so-called 'free' world was as responsible in this area.

Being a Catholic means I am frequently embarrassed by the difference between the Church's official line and the reality of the Vatican's behavior. This is just one more example. Even if everything else Benedict said at Auschwitz was unexceptionable (and I'm not saying it was) the statement I quoted above and posted to your attention cannot, in my opinion, be rationalized away so easily by suggesting that I support Daniel Goldhagen's equally offensive and biased (in my view)writings.

Goldhagen has become the archetypal public spokesman for that interpretation of the holocaust. Even committed germanophobes have criticised him for his broad brush - think of him as the Anne Coulter of Holocaust Studies.

My bottom line is that you are misrepresenting Benedict's view on the subject. At no point in his career has Benedict placed Hitler and Nazi atrocities outside of the scope of human evil. Again, I think you're sniffing out grounds for disparagement where there are none. His relatively short remarks were meant to deliver a basic, simple and universal message.

There seems to be an element of vidictive Schadenfreude within the Anglosphere in that there is clearly a desire to see "the german pope" disparage contemporary Germans at a moment when German kids are still excited about one of their countrymen becoming Pope.

As I've said, Benedict's writings and public statements on this subject have been consistent throughout his career, and fall within the acceptable spectrum of normative academic discourse on the Holocaust. You and I can have our opinions, but that doesn't mean Benedict has to become a spokesman for them.

nightbloom
I wonder why are you obsessed with Goldhagen? Because he is so thoroughly obsessed with blaming the average German for Hitler’s crimes? Don’t put me in that category, but, don’t pretend that the Pope didn’t say the following either:

And that's what I object to. And that for me is what is at the core of the issue. But, as I’ll point out below, I’m not trying to make the Germans into history’s bogeyman - as Goldhagen would.

I don't need to conjure up Daniel Goldhagen for evidence of the German people (of whom Benedict says he is a son and putative representative) being complicit with Hitler and the Nazis. All kinds of historians have done that more than adequately from William Shirer to A. J .P. Taylor (who sees Hitler as an almost conventional politician and pragmatist) and J.P.Stern. Others like Emil Fackenheim prefer to see Hitler and the Nazis as representative of some new category of special or radical evil and they go on, in effect, to blame ‘God’ for the Holocaust

I just don't buy the excuses, whomever they come from, and I think Benedict is wrong to play it the way he has.

As I said before, I don't go along with Goldhagen because I believe that there are many other cases in history where whole groups, populations even, have succumbed to collective insanity and inhumanity: The Stalinist period in Russia; Mao's hegemony in China and, for that matter, the Terror of the French Revolution or the genocide of Native people in North and South America. Official Israeli attitudes toward the average Palestinian citizen – and vice versa.

There are plenty of other examples – this list is not meant to be exhaustive.

All nationalities and all nations need to confront their darker natures, not pretend they are the unfortunate victims of others' evil and particular circumstances, in my view. To do otherwise is hypocrisy - the title of the article at the head of this piece.

You'll note I haven't taken any part in most of the stuff posted here, but I do feel strongly about this.

Surely being honest and truthful to his German countrymen would have been a far more responsible thing for the Pope to do. I don't agree with the nominally hateful attitude of many, including Rafe Mair, who busily slag the Church at every opportunity, but that doesn't mean I will ignore what I do think is wrong about the church today, or yesterday, as it were.

It's certainly your right to critique that aspect of his statements. As I said, I personally tend to put somewhat more stock in the "collective guilt" thesis than Benedict's comments suggest. It's also important to remember Benedict's own anti-Nazi background. If I remember correctly, his family suffered social ostracization and loss of employment for his father's anti-Nazi views. And Benedict's own teenaged aversion to the Nazi regime is well documented. So I'm sure Benedict has very strong personal feelings on the subject. Being lambasted as the "Nazi Pope" last year by some elements in America's Northeastern and Europe's Left-leaning press (as well as the North American gay press...not like he'd notice) probably didn't go down too well.

Yes, I wasn't suggesting you were endorsing Goldhagen - only holding him up as the example of an extreme in Anglo-American scholarship on the topic. There are those so deeply effected by their own or their family's experiences that the very thought of any German lifting his head above ground level is repugnant to them. That, too, is understandable when placed in the context of deeply held feelings and beliefs.

nightbloom,

To answer your question about Will Exner, the cause of death was misadventure. There is no hidden conspiracy involving extortion or anything sinister. Naturally, a young man found dead in False Creek is bound to be suspicious, however, the cause of death is known with certainty.

As for the person they found in Stanley Park, I haven't heard any details surrounding who he was or the cause of death.

I don't want to flog this issue, but 'misadventure' is a euphemism, not a cause of death. Since the public's help was initially solicited for information, I find it strange that there was no follow-up reporting after he was found.

I just find it hard to imagine a spontaneous death of this nature, the only obvious possibilities being suicide (which was discounted by the family and everyone who knew him) and the alternative explanation being that he was high on something (or extremely drunk) and tried to climb outside the superstructure of Granville Street bridge for whatever reason. However, no one who saw him prior to the misadventure mentioned substances of this sort (to my knowledge) In any case, it just doesn't make much sense.

Actually, misadventure is not a euphamism at all. It is a cause of death logged by the coroner and defined as:

"Death resulting from an accident caused by the deceased's own faultor by events beyond human control"

Suicide was not only discounted by those who knew Will, but by coroner and investigators. There is definitive evidence that collaborates this claim.

We cannot take credit for what the media chooses to tell the public in cases such as these. If anything sinister had occured, you can believe the public would have been informed.