For all their faults both in structure and execution, mainstream religions like Christianity, Islam, and Judaism are pretty open with followers and the outside world when it comes to what the religion is all about. In Christianity, for instance, its all there in the good book – how the earth was formed, how Jesus came to be born, what his role is, and what will happen when the world ends and what you should be doing on earth in order to get a good seat in heaven. It’s all there for you to believe or disbelieve.

But in a kooky cult like scientology, the origins are all hidden or denied. The idea that the religion is descended from space aliens hidden in a volcano is not something scientologists like to talk about an apparently when church reps are asked they quit interviews.

I’m not really into making judgements about whose religion is the bestest, but I think its a good rule of thumb that if your entire framework of life, the universe, and everything can’t stand up to the questioning of a tv reporter whose biggest claim to fame was a wacky documentary with Michael Jackson it’s probably a giant pile of crap.

The Vatican said Tuesday it has worked out a way for groups of Anglicans who are dissatisfied with their faith to join the Catholic Church.
The Vatican says more Anglicans have expressed an interest in joining the Catholic Church.

The Vatican says more Anglicans have expressed an interest in joining the Catholic Church.

The process will allow groups of Anglicans, including bishops and married priests, to join the Catholic Church some 450 years after King Henry VIII broke from Rome and created the Church of England, forerunner of the Anglican Communion.

This probably wouldn’t happen in most churches in America or Jamaica, in my experience.

If it is real, it’s a pretty good example of what orthodox religion screws up in people.

Huntsman is no more bound by his church’s beliefs than anyone else in the world. It wouldn’t make sense if you changed the players and said I was bound to do something because I’m black, or if I said John would do something simply because he’s gay. That’s silly talk of the worst kind. Gimme a break.

I must admit its weird reading that kind of thing coming from someone who is part of a community that has fought for years to not be dismissed and lumped in with part of a community.

(via)

CNSNews.com, a conservative web site affiliated with the Media Research Center, reported that the gold “IHS” monogram inscribed in Georgetown’s Gaston Hall was covered by a piece of black-painted plywood.

The White House denied that there was any effort to specifically cover up religious imagery or symbols and noted that on the wall directly behind the president there are two religious paintings and there is other imagery throughout the hall.

“Decisions made about the backdrop for the speech were made to have a consistent background of American flags, which is standard for many presidential events. Any suggestions to the contrary are simply false,” White House spokesman Shin Inouye told ABC News.

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God.”
Matthew 5:9

As early as the mid-1950s, decades before the clergy sexual-abuse crisis broke publicly across the U.S. Catholic landscape, the founder of a religious order that dealt regularly with priest sex abusers was so convinced of their inability to change that he searched for an island to purchase with the intent of using it as a place to isolate such offenders, according to documents recently obtained by NCR.

Fr. Gerald Fitzgerald, founder of the Servants of the Paracletes, an order established in 1947 to deal with problem priests, wrote regularly to bishops in the United States and to Vatican officials, including the pope, of his opinion that many sexual abusers in the priesthood should be laicized immediately.

(via)

Since stepping off the papal plane Tuesday, attention to Benedict’s pilgrimage has been largely focused on the Vatican’s refusal to advocate condoms as a way to help stop the spread of AIDS, which is ravaging Africa in a pandemic that affects millions.

Benedict’s declaration on the plane that distributing condoms “increases” the AIDS problem has drawn international criticism from governments and organizations that fight the disease.

Sadly, this is more the exception to the norm when it comes to church business.

A senior Vatican cleric has defended the excommunication of the mother and doctors of a nine-year-old girl who had an abortion in Brazil after being raped.

Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, head of the Catholic church’s Congregation for Bishops, told the daily La Stampa on Saturday that the twins the girl had been carrying had a right to live.

‘It is a sad case but the real problem is that the twins conceived were two innocent persons, who had the right to live and could not be eliminated,’ he said.

…

The regional archbishop, Jose Cardoso Sobrinho, pronounced excommunication for the mother for authorising the operation and doctors who carried it out for fear that the slim girl would not survive carrying the foetuses to term.

“God’s law is above any human law. So when a human law … is contrary to God’s law, this human law has no value,” Cardoso had said.

He also said the accused stepfather would not be expelled from the church. Although the man allegedly committed “a heinous crime … the abortion – the elimination of an innocent life – was more serious”.

Yeah. Good luck with that.

* Headline corrected to indicate who was actually excommunicated

I thought for a second about taking this thing seriously, but I can’t really muster that up. I think all religion is weird, to varying degrees and in concert with my posts slamming the Catholic Church for its pro-pedophile activities, I’ve also hit Muslims for engaging in reactionary censorship (the Dutch cartoons) and atheists for being asses. I honestly don’t think I’ve written anything negative about Judaism, but I do own two yarmulkes by way of barmitvahs (I was called anti-semetic one time for attacking Joe Lieberman, but Joe Lieberman is a douchebag no matter what God he prays to). On the topic of religion its all weird, though not as weird as the bias fetishists on Newsbusters.

And yes, walking around with coal ash on your forehead is as weird when Bill Donohue does it as it is when Joe Biden and John Kerry and Nancy Pelosi do it. But this is America, a nation built on the idea of being free to be as weird as you want to, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

* Using the logic of Newsbusters.

Previous Newsbusters brilliance:
Newsbusters doesn’t understand how journalism works

More unintentional comedy from Newsbusters

Newsbusters accuses Media Matters of “defamation”; doesn’t seem to know what the word means

Also that unfunny comic strip they ran for a year and a half without a single laugh, and that internet TV show they have that isn’t funny to anyone with a brain.

As I write this, millions of people around the world have a charcoal cross scratched across their foreheads, and everybody who doesn’t have one on will walk past these people and act as if everything is normal.

Religion, you are weird.

The Vatican demanded Wednesday that a bishop who denied the Holocaust recant his positions before being fully admitted into the Roman Catholic Church.

The Vatican also said in a statement that Pope Benedict XVI didn’t know about Bishop Richard Williamson’s views when he agreed to lift his excommunication and that of three other ultraconservative bishops Jan. 21.

The statement was issued by the Vatican’s Secretariat of State a day after German Chacellor Angela Merkel urged the pope to make a clearer rejection of Holocaust denials, saying there hadn’t been adequate clarification from the Vatican.

Williamson was shown on Swedish state television days before his rehabilitation was made public saying historical evidence “is hugely against 6 million Jews having been deliberately gassed” during World War II.

I don’t believe the pope didn’t know about these statements. They just didn’t think anybody would check.

UPDATE: German Chancellor Angela Merkel chimes in.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel called on Pope Benedict XVI to make a “very clear” rejection of Holocaust denials after the Vatican’s rehabilitation of a former bishop who questioned whether 6 million Jews were gassed by the Nazis.

Merkel’s rare and public demand came amid increasing outrage among Germany’s Roman Catholic leaders over the German-born pope’s decision.

Merkel said she “does not believe” there has been adequate clarification of the Vatican’s position on the Holocaust amid the controversy over the lifting of the excommunication of British-born Richard Williamson.

On January 29, nearly 50 Catholic Democratic congressmen sent a letter to Pope Benedict XVI stating their concerns over Bishop Richard Williamson’s comments questioning the historical record on the Holocaust. The bishop belongs to the St. Pius X Society, a group which recently had its excommunication lifted by the pope. The congressmen implored the pope to denounce the bishop’s views.

Catholic League president Bill Donohue spoke to this issue today:

“The congressmen’s letter to the pope smacks of posturing and hypocrisy, and is factually wrong. They begin by saying ‘we are writing to express our deep concerns with your decision to reinstate Bishop Richard Williamson to communion with the Catholic Church….’ The fact is that the pope did not reinstate the bishop to communion with the Church—he merely lifted the excommunication of the group to which he belongs. In order for the group to be fully reinstated, it would have to express its fidelity to the teachings of the Church, as well as the norms of Vatican II. In other words, the letter is based on a false predicate.

In the past, Donohue has attacked the press for reporting on the systematic protection of pedophiles by the Catholic Church, so I guess support of a holocaust denier is okay as well as long as it comes from Vatican City.

Kind of sick, though.

So, is this what the church does when it isn’t covering up for pedophiles? Seriously, come on.

Pope Benedict XVI has lifted the excommunications of four traditionalist bishops, including that of a Holocaust denier whose rehabilitation sparked outrage among Jewish groups.

The four bishops were excommunicated 20 years ago after they were consecrated by the late ultraconservative Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre without papal consent _ a move the Vatican said at the time was an act of schism.

The Vatican said Saturday that Benedict rehabilitated the four as part of his efforts to bring Lefebvre’s Society of St. Pius X back into the Vatican’s fold.

But the move came just days after one of the four, British Bishop Richard Williamson, was shown in a Swedish state TV interview saying that historical evidence “is hugely against 6 million Jews having been deliberately gassed.”