Pope compares Atheism to Nazism

Even in our own lifetime, we can recall how Britain and her leaders stood against a Nazi tyranny that wished to eradicate God from society and denied our common humanity to many, especially the Jews, who were thought unfit to live. I also recall the regime’s attitude to Christian pastors and religious who spoke the truth in love, opposed the Nazis and paid for that opposition with their lives. As we reflect on the sobering lessons of the atheist extremism of the twentieth century, let us never forget how the exclusion of God, religion and virtue from public life leads ultimately to a truncated vision of man and of society and thus to a “reductive vision of the person and his destiny” (Caritas in Veritate, 29).

Read the Article

Leaked Tapes with Catholic Sex Abuse Victim

Make for Sad Reading

Richard Dawkins: Faith School Menace?

Aired August 18, 2010 on Channel 4

The number of faith schools in Britain is rising. Around 7,000 publicly funded schools - one in three - now has a religious affiliation.

As the coalition government paves the way for more faith-based education by promoting 'free schools', the renowned atheist and evolutionary biologist Professor Richard Dawkins says enough is enough.

In this passionately argued film, Dawkins calls on us to reconsider the consequences of faith education, which, he argues, bamboozles parents and indoctrinates and divides children.

The film features robust exchanges with former Secretary of State for Education Charles Clarke, Head of the Church of England Education Service Reverend Janina Ainsworth, and the Chair of the Association of Muslim Schools, Dr Mohammed Mukadam.

It also features insights from child psychologists and key players in faith education as well as insights from both parents and pupils.

Dawkins also draws on his own personal history as a father, arguing that the government must stop funding new faith schools, and urges society to respect a child's right to freedom of belief.

Watch them all at the links below:
- Part 2
- Part 3
- Part 4

Pope Benedict rejects Irish bishop's resignation

Big. Fucking. Surprise.

In a move that has stunned critics Pope Benedict XVI has rejected the resignations of two Dublin auxiliary bishops.

Bishop Raymond Field and Bishop Eamonn Walsh had both tendered their resignations in 2009 in the wake of the Murphy report into clerical child abuse.

Both men had come under intense pressure because they had served as bishops during the period investigated by the Murphy Commission into clerical child sex abuse in the Archdiocese of Dublin.

The Murphy Commission in Ireland found that sexual abuse was 'endemic' in boys' institutions but that the church hierarchy protected the perpetrators and allowed them to take up new positions teaching other children after their original victims had been sworn to secrecy.

'Following the presentation of their resignations to Pope Benedict, it has been decided that Bishop Eamonn Walsh and Bishop Raymond Field will remain as auxiliary bishops,' Archbishop Diarmuid Martin said in a letter to priests of the Archdiocese reported in The Irish Catholic.

Read the Article

Vatican does compare child abuse with ordaining women

Apologists for the Vatican have recently claimed that the Catholic Church does not compare sexually abusing a child with attempting to ordain a woman, but that it merely included both crimes in the same document as a procedural matter.

However, this is not true. A Vatican official has explicitly described the crimes contained in this document as being “on the same level” of seriousness. They are the “Delicta Graviora”, the crimes which the Catholic Church considers the most serious of all, and which are reserved to the Holy See for judgment.

In 2007, the Vatican published a pamphlet on Paedophilia and the Priesthood, written by Monsignor Raffaello Martinelli, an official of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and member of the editorial commission of the Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. This pamphlet explicitly states:

“The seriousness with which the Church evaluates and judges acts of pedophilia is shown by the fact that with a new law passed in 2001, the Holy See (and not the local bishops) decided to reserve the right to judge those crimes…

The fact that the Pope wanted to reserve to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith — a dicastery of the Holy See — judgment of the acts of pedophilia committed by priests, shows that the Church considers those acts to be very serious, serious crimes on the same level of the other two serious crimes — reserved to the Holy See — that can be committed against two sacraments: the Eucharist and the holiness of confession.”

In 2010, with the updated document Normae de Gravioribus Delictis, the Vatican has now added the attempted ordination of women to this strange list of the most serious crimes of all.

And the direction of the comparison is not that they consider these theological crimes to be as serious as sexually abusing a child, but that they consider sexually abusing a child to be as serious as these theological crimes, to be judged by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which used to be the Congregation of the Inquisition.

For example, sexually abusing a child is listed not as a crime against the child, but as a crime against the Biblical commandment forbidding adultery. And attempting to ordain a woman attracts a more serious punishment than sexually abusing a child. This is the type of morality that results when people put theology ahead of reality.

Ethical issues should be evaluated on the basis of human rights, compassion, well-being and suffering, not on the basis of theological dictates from people who believe they are getting messages from the creator of the universe.

Read the Article

Oregon faith-healing parents face criminal charges

OREGON CITY -- A Beavercreek couple who left their infant daughter's fate to God rather than seek medical treatment for a mass that grew over her left eye will face charges of first-degree criminal mistreatment.

Prosecutors revealed Thursday during a custody hearing that a grand jury has indicted Timothy and Rebecca Wyland, members of Oregon City's Followers of Christ church.

The Wylands' 7-month-old daughter, Alayna, was placed in state custody earlier this month after child-welfare workers received a tip about the untreated and ballooning growth. Doctors said that the condition could cause permanent damage or loss of vision.

The Wylands were indicted within the past few days and probably will be arraigned next week, said Colleen Gilmartin, the deputy district attorney handling the custody case in juvenile court.

Under Oregon law, it is a crime for parents to intentionally and knowingly withhold necessary and adequate medical attention from their children. First-degree criminal mistreatment is a Class C felony punishable by up to five years in prison.

Read the Article

British girls undergo horror of genital mutilation despite tough laws

Female circumcision will be inflicted on up to 2,000 British schoolgirls during the summer holidays – leaving brutal physical and emotional scars. Yet there have been no prosecutions against the practice.

Like any 12-year-old, Jamelia was excited at the prospect of a plane journey and a long summer holiday in the sun. An avid reader, she had filled her suitcases with books and was reading Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban when her mother came for her. "She said, 'You know it's going to be today?' I didn't know exactly what it would entail but I knew something was going to be cut. I was made to believe it was genuinely part of our religion."

Read the Article

BHA condemns “appalling decision” to give education award to creationist zoo

The BHA has strongly condemned the decision of the Council for Learning Outside the Classroom to award the creationist Noah’s Ark Zoo in Wraxall, near Bristol, a 'Quality Badge' in recognition of its educational programme.

The Council for Learning Outside the Classroom was established by the previous government to promote educational visits for schoolchildren. Its Quality Badge is intended to assist schools in identifying external organisations, such as museums, who are 'committed to providing high quality teaching and learning experiences'. The Quality Badge was awarded to Noah’s Ark Zoo following a visit by assessors in June.

The BHA is writing to the Council for Learning Outside the Classroom urging them to retract the award.

BHA education campaigns officer James Gray said:

‘This is an appalling decision. It is entirely inappropriate that the Council should support an establishment that advances creationism and seeks to discredit a wide variety of established scientific facts that challenge their religious views, such as radio carbon dating, the fossil record and the speed of light.’

‘Teachers and parents look to the Council for assurance that children will experience high quality educational visits that meet the relevant government guidelines. Awarding this particular zoo a Quality Badge risks exposing hundreds of children to anti-scientific dogma.'

‘This is not a freedom of speech or freedom of religion issue. The question is whether the information displayed by this zoo meets the tests of accuracy and truth that parents, teachers and other educational professionals expect.'

Read the Article

Inside Scientology: No kids allowed

Laura Dieckman was just 12 when her parents let her leave home to work full time for Scientology's religious order, the Sea Organization. At 16, she married a co-worker. At 17, she was pregnant.

She was excited to start a family, but she said Sea Org supervisors pressured her to have an abortion. She was back at work the following day.

Claire Headley joined at 16, married at 17 and was pregnant at 19. She said Sea Org supervisors threatened strenuous physical work and repeated interrogations if she didn't end her pregnancy. She, too, was back at work the next day.

Two years later she had a second abortion, this time while working for the church in Clearwater.

A St. Petersburg Times investigation found their experiences were not unique. More than a dozen women said the culture in the Sea Org pushed them or women they knew to have abortions, in many cases, abortions they did not want.

Saving Africa’s Witch Children

I hope that focusing the whole world on Africa during this years FIFA World Cup it will be to show the world some of the horrors that still take place in this very underprivileged continent.

Infuriating, sad, and heartbreaking. Absolutely heartbreaking. These kids in villages across Nigeria are beaten, tortured, burned, starved, and murdered because some idiot religious figure deemed them witches. If they’re lucky they’re merely abandoned. National religious figures in Nigeria are getting rich selling the child witch panic by producing gruesome videos and anointing local bishops with witch-detecting power (for a fee, of course). I’ve never been moved by a documentary to immediately write a check. I wrote one last night to an organization called the Children’s Right and Rehabilitation Network, which has established a sanctuary to care for the outcast kids.

Read the article and watch a preview here

Tina Anderson, 15, Punished by Baptists for Being Raped

Another sad story about Religious officials abusing their power for their desires to take advantage of an innocent child and their attempts to cover it up.

Tina Anderson was raped and impregnated at the age of 15 by a member of her church. After reporting the crime to her pastor, however, it was Anderson who was punished.

Here are some of the culprits of this story:

The Catholic Church's HR
Until the Church gets with it and starts proper screening for PEDOPHILES, rather than gay men, we're simply gonna have to hold it's hiring practices responsible for creating such ginormous loop holes.

Richard Rushton
That's when authorities raided Rushton's home and discovered that, as Lance had suspected, Rushton wasn't filming sermons, but was videotaping up the skirts of girls and women in attendance.

Jeff and Jeremiah Owens
Owens recently made headlines when a YouTube video of one his sermons surfaced in which he says, "we need to stop burning flags and start burning fags. We need a hunt-a-homo week. We need to take 'em all out and shoot 'em with a scatter shotgun."

Harley Michael Keough
Last week, six different women took the stand and testified that upon arriving at the church's food bank, they were greeted by an overly friendly Keough who would lead them into the food bank's storage room, and then promptly molest them.

Trinity Baptist Church
Speaking of religious leaders who turn a blind eye to rape -- we now bring you to the tale of the Trinity Baptist Church in Concord, New Hampshire.


What a very very sorry state of affairs. For anyone wishing to gain a greater understanding of our place in the universe and to feel a part of something special. Please don't go to church. Go to a community center or join a local sports team.

Read the Article

Bishop: 100 cases in 10 yrs for Italy priest abuse

ROME — Italy's bishops' conference provided the first ever statistics of clerical sex abuse in the country on Tuesday, saying there had been about 100 cases over the past 10 years that warranted church trials or other canonical procedures.

Read the Article

Evangelicals rewrite Texan curriculum

An interesting article in the Sydney Morning Herald by Chris McGreal on the events in America in 2010 and their views on how to improve our Children's education.

HOUSTON: In a coup likely to shift what millions of American children learn at school, a clutch of Christian evangelicals and social conservatives who have grasped control of the Texas Board of Education are expected to force through a new state curriculum this week.

The board is to vote on a purge of alleged liberal bias in Texas school books in favour of what board member Cynthia Dunbar says really matters: a belief in America as a nation chosen by God as a beacon to the world.

''We are fighting for our children's education and our nation's future,'' Ms Dunbar said. ''In Texas we have certain statutory obligations to promote patriotism and to promote the free enterprise system.

These are our children. The next generation. If we stop providing our children with the answers to the questions we have already solved, how are they going to surpass us and go on to better things.

It's like teaching our children that the world is flat, then hoping they don't figure out the truth later in life, by which time its going to be harder for them to understand other questions on Cosmology, Geology, etc.

Read the Article

The Spectacle of Faith

As you may have come to realize I am not particularly fond of religion. In fact I'm not that fond of anyone telling me what I can or can't do. Although I know I'm not perfect and if I'm proven wrong then I'm happy to be corrected.

However, when an organisation tries to dictate how I, my friends or my fellow man should live their lives based on something so questionably bogus as the Bible and/or the rules they've made whilst listening to the voices in their head, well its hard not to question why anyone takes them seriously.

See I quite like politics for exactly the reason I don't like religion. Even when I don't agree with someones political point of view I know that through debate and discussion we the people can vote and fight to change laws and bills to suit the needs of the majority. I believe something similar is what Sam Harris means when he talks of a "Science of Morality".

When the organization tries to enforce their bronze-age doctrine on society behind the veil that they are the voice of an omnipotent creator of heaven and earth and their views on what is right and wrong cannot be questioned, well this starts to look an awful lot like a dictatorship. A dictatorship that spans ordinary political boundaries.

Then we hear that at the same time that this organization spins its "infallible" lies, it has been trying to cover up the rape and torture of innocent young children to protect the guilty, and not the innocent, so that the organization can continue to prosper, you have to ask why isn't society trying harder to bring these sick individuals to justice.

When it comes to anything else other than religion we the people stand up together as one and say that is not right, we do not want this in our society, and we put these people before the judicial system.

Josef Fritzel, Gary Glitter, Fred West, Baby P, Shannon Matthews, Jaycee Dugard are all names that we recognize because of their relation to child abuse scandals in recent history.

What is the difference between these stories and the Catholic Church?

Nothing is happening to the Catholic Church.

Below are some links for those who want to read up on just who truly horrible the Catholic Church really is:

For Years, Deaf Boys Tried to Tell of Priest’s Abuse

Pope May Be at Crossroads on Abuse, Forced to Reconcile Policy and Words

Vatican Declined to Defrock U.S. Priest Who Abused Boys

In Abuse Crisis, a Church Is Pitted Against Society and Itself

Abuse Case Offers a View of the Vatican’s Politics

Bring the Pope to Justice

A Woman’s Place Is In The Church

The Great Catholic Cover-Up

We Can't Let the Pope Decide Who's a Criminal

The Pope Is Not Above the Law

Tear Down That Wall

The pope should stand trial

Ratzinger is the perfect pope

GOD! I need a beer.