The Vatican Outdoes Its Troglodyte Self

Whoa! This morning, when I read the New York Times report on the Vatican’s latest PR gaffe, not to mention its latest Biblical malfunction, I almost could not believe it. But hold on!

It was the Vatican making the incredible pronouncement…so what’s not to believe?

What the Vatican said was (and I quote the NYT): “The Vatican issued revisions to its internal laws on Thursday making it easier to discipline sex-abuser priests, but caused confusion by also stating that ordaining women as priests was as grave an offense as pedophilia.”

Yep…there you have it.

Nevermind that the early followers of Jesus included women, who, Biblical historians tell us, not only sponsored the early church with money from their own (not their husbands, but their own) coffers, but also acted as servers of the Eucharist. But now the Vatican says that since the men-only club has been in existence since Christ, women cannot be considered as priests, and the idea of a woman as priest is an offense as grave as pedophilia.

 

The NYT reported that Archbishop Donald W. Wuerl of Washington, a top official in the group, called the document a “welcome statement,” even as he took pains to praise the role of women in the church. “The church’s gratitude to women cannot be stated strongly enough” ne said. “Women offer unique insight, creative abilities and unstinting generosity at the very heart of the Catholic Church…but the Catholic Church through its long and constant teaching holds that ordination has been, from the beginning, reserved to men, a fact which cannot be changed despite changing times.”

And well might a Vatican spoksman praise the women in the Roman Catholic Church who have been a free workforce for priests for eons. But it is also true that the constant teaching of the RCC that ordination must be reserved to  men is a choice of the RCC, not a mandate from God.

The early Christian church’s founders (which of course, includes Jesus Christ) believed women were on a par with men. And this idea that the ordination of women is as evil as pedophilia must have them rolling in the graves.

BTW, one can look at this ruling from the RCC in two ways:

1.      The Vatican feels that the ordination of women is equal in evil to pedophilia, or,

2.      The Vatican feels that Pedophilia isn’t all that bad since a lot of the guys in the Vatican are participating in pedophilia and they don’t think it’s any worse than ordaining women.

Well,  I know which ruling I think sounds like Vatican thinking.

Well, I Never…!

Gail Collins’ Op/Ed piece in the New York Times this morning (“Bad News Bears”) is hilarious. And juicy. It’s about Sarah Palin’s daughter Bristol and her sometimes-sometimes-not-bf Levi Johnston now deciding to get married.

Collins starts out saying, “Today’s additions to the category of No Good Can Ever Come of This: Mel Gibson is on the phone; The Bachelorette is close to selecting the man of her dreams; Bristol and Levi are back together.”

Since the Palin family isn’t big on speaking to each other one-on-one, the world found out about the Bristol/Levi plans, as did Family Palin, via an eight-page spread in “Us” magazine. And the world found out that Sarah Palin is not happy about this newest wrinkle in the Bristol/Levi saga, as did Bristol and Levi, via a press conference.

Following up the “Us” tell-all with a “People” tell-all, Bristol said her mother would come around when Levi got an education and a job and proved that he could support their son Tripp “the right way”. As Collins said, the wrong way, presumably, is earning a living as he previously tried to do by posing for “Playgirl”.

The jury is still out on whether Bristol’s attempts to make money by becoming a celebrity unwed mother, being the spokesperson against teen pregnancy and hyping sexy clothes is the right way.

Apparently, the nearly non-verbal Levi and his sister Mercede have found words to say to each other, because before they broke off relations when she got mad and said it was time for her to tell her side of the story, she said, “No I will NOT sit down and shut up!” To prove she would not shut up she claimed Bristol got pregnant on purpose.

Collins bets (hopes?) we’re going to be treated to “an all-Palin-Johnston edition of ‘Dancing With the Stars.’”

Or, alternatively, Michael Steele and Sarah Palin could marry for the good of the Tea Party and put to rest all those rumors about racism and Steele being in the closet, in one swell foop.

More Medical Bullshit

One of the things that keeps us drug-dependent and constantly in a doctor’s office is the ruling from the AMA that a norm for blood pressure for all adults including senior citizens is 120/70, else one is suffering from high blood pressure. That, of course, is baloney.

But now the journal “Pediatrics” has just come out with a real lulu of a finding.

This morning, the authors of an article in “Pediatrics” reported that all children should be screened for cholesterol: The authors said, “Screening all children for cholesterol, rather than just those with a family history, will uncover many more cases of the condition that can be treated early to prevent heart disease later in life. In addition, they said, “Statin therapy has been shown to be safe and effective in lowering LDL cholesterol (the bad kind of cholesterol) and the added and undeniable benefit of identifying and screening parents and other first-degree relatives as a result to finding elevated LDL levels in their children could lead to the prevention of premature cardiac events in adults that may have otherwise gone undiagnosed."

Bullshit Detector just went off!

Who said statin therapy is "safe and effective"? Who said there is an "added and undeniable benefit"? That is total nonsense!

The jury is still out about cholesterol medications for adults. Many are not safe…many have side effects that no one is his right mind would stand for. And many times, when they are prescribed for adults, they are unnecessary.

AND, whether in fact, lowering LDL cholesterol is preventing heart disease is totally unclear. PLUS, whether high cholesterol in children leads to heart trouble as an adult is likewise totally unclear.

Which of course, leads to the big question…should ALL children be screened for high cholesterol, which  screening will put more money in pediatricians and screening labs coffers and into the bargain drain health care insurance plans…if one and one’s children have health insurance  plans in the first place..

And the answer is a resounding NO! It’s an insane idea that all children should undergo high cholesterol screening when even calling high cholesterol a disease that MUST BE treated with drugs in adults is a questionable practice.

Pediatricians have found that a huge number of our children have Attention Deficit Disorder and are Autistic…debatable findings, both. And these findings are more likely to be due to the testing parameters rather than the facts.

Medical doctors and now pediatricians cannot be trusted because they are in the employ of the pharmaceutical industry.

What to do? Use common sense and say NO to tests that are wildly speculative and will not lead to increased well-being in any case.

Oh yeah! You CAN say no to lawyers and doctors. Amazing thought though that may be.

Pope Ratz Is Going to Hate This!

On Friday, July 2, The New York Times laid out the full extent of Pope Ratz’s irresponsibility over the last twenty years regarding pedophilia in the Roman Catholic Church.

The article, “Church Office Failed to Act on Abuse Scandal” begins by saying, “In its long struggle to grapple with sexual abuse, the Vatican often cites as a major turning point the decision  in 2001 to give the office led by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger the authority to cut through a morass of bureaucracy and handle abuse cases directly…but church documents and interviews with canon lawyers and bishops cast that 2001 decision and the future pope’s track record in a new and less flattering light.”

The Vatican’s penchant for declaring that media bias, particularly NYT bias, is at the root of the recent firestorm about pedophilia in the Roman Catholic Church, will surely be the Vatican’s fallback position re this new article.

We find out that although the Vatican has maintained that Cardinal Ratz immediately got behind a faction in the church hierarchy demanding immediate investigation of molestation charges, Ratz actually was the leader of the foot-dragging and protection of pedophiles that has characterized the Vatican’s response to reports of molestation of children in the RCC for the last twenty-plus years: “The office led by Cardinal Ratzinger, the Congregeation for the Doctrine of the Faith, had actually been given authority over sexual abuse cases nearly 80 years earlier, in 1922, documents show and canon lawyers confirm,” the article reports, “ but for the two decades he was in charge of that office, the future pope never asserted that authority, failing to act even as the cases undermined the church’s credibility in the United States, Australia, Ireland and elsewhere.”

The most damning revelation is that in 2000 a group of Bishops were so outraged that Ratz was being unresponsive to the growing pedophile problem, that the Vatican sponsored a secret meeting to hear their complaints: “The Vatican took action only after bishops from English-speaking nations became so concerned about resistance from top church officials that the Vatican convened a secret meeting to hear their complaints — an extraordinary example of prelates from across the globe collectively pressing their superiors for reform, and one that had not previously been revealed.

“And the policy that resulted from that meeting, in contrast to the way it has been described by the Vatican, was not a sharp break with past practices. It was mainly a belated reaffirmation of longstanding church procedures that at least one bishop attending the meeting argued had been ignored.

“Bishop Geoffrey Robinson, an outspoken auxiliary bishop emeritus from Sydney, Australia, who attended the secret meeting in 2000, said that despite numerous warnings, top Vatican officials, including Benedict, took far longer to wake up to the abuse problems than many local bishops did.

“But the future pope, it is now clear, was also part of a culture of nonresponsibility, denial, legalistic foot-dragging and outright obstruction,” the NYT reports. “More than any top Vatican official other than John Paul, it was Cardinal Ratzinger who might have taken decisive action in the 1990s to prevent the scandal from metastasizing in country after country, growing to such proportions that it now threatens to consume his own papacy.”

It's maddening to read that, “During this period, the three dozen staff members working for Cardinal Ratzinger at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith were busy pursuing other problems. These included examining supernatural phenomena, like apparitions of the Virgin Mary, so that hoaxes did not ‘corrupt the faith,’” while other sections of the Ratz’s Doctrine of the Faith “weighed requests by divorced Catholics to remarry and vetted the applications of former priests who wanted to be reinstated.

It is clear that Ratz has always had priorities other than protecting the children in the Roman Catholic Church. Priorities such as: protecting the image of the RCC, ridding the RCC. not to say the entire globe and perhaps the universe of homosexuals, plus making sure that the world accepts the myth that the Pope and the Vatican are equal in omniscience and power to God, if not a bit higher and more powerful than the Great I Am!

I can only say, read the article. It’s illuminating.

The Reminder Reminding

It is time once again for a global reminder that whatever your beef may be…you hate the Democrats, you hate Obama, you love Sarah Palin… Whatever… Do not forget that George W. Bush and the tyrannical rule of the Republicans for eight years brought the world to the sorry state that it was in when Barack Obama took office. Whatever the sorry Tea Party may be up to, whatever the sorry racists may be plotting, whatever the white supremacist despots in the GOP may have up their collective sleeves, do not forget: We would not be in deficit spending land if the Republicans had not invented a war in Iraq to mask their greed for oil and power. We would not have had a financial meltdown if the Repubs had not ignored all the signs pointing to a financial meltdown. We would not be trying to repair the damage to America’s worldwide reputation if the Republicans had not put the mentally impaired, narcissistic religious fanatic George W. Bush in charge. Just doing my duty here, lest we ever forget.

The New York Times Explains LOST To You

Well, I too cried all through the finale’s two hours. But I wouldn’t have (I don’t think I would have...but who knows?) if I had known they were all dead the whole last six years. Now that’s where the NYT and I differ in our opinions. This morning, the NYT’s Mike Hale said everything that happened on LOST’s island was real. I guess Hale and I saw a different finale. Hale says he too thought they were all dead from the beginning and then he watched the finale a second time. I’ve only seen the LOST finale once, and I haven’t read Doc Jensen’s finale final in EW yet. But, by me, from the moment Jack opened his eye in Segment One, Season One, they were all dead and going through a sort of Judgment Day reconciliation for the next six years, which could have happened in an eye-blink in eternity time. And actually did, by me, when Jack closed his eye last Sunday night and Judgment Day was over. And I really hate that idea, but that is how it played out for me in the finale. Ugh! And even through my tears (before realizing the last scene would be a communal funeral carrying everyone into the white light), I was disappointed in the hokey end. OHMYGOD! So much hokum. So many laughably contrived scenes. So much giggle-inducing crappola...like all that rope stuff and the guys not looking like they were really pulling on anything but ropes tied to n0thing. Oh well...I do like the idea (my belief, not Mike Hale’s) that Hurley was the honcho all along through all the six-year-long Judgment Day proceedings and Ben was his assistant. Love that! And BTW, is there a better actor in this world (and maybe the next) than Michael Emerson? Here’s to you Ben Linus/Michael Emerson...long may you live in all possible worlds!!!

What’s The Tea Party About?

If the words “deep” and “Tea Party” are not mutually exclusive, deep in the founding of the Tea Party has been a plan for betrayal. The people who encourage other people to put up money and start an association always have their own agenda. The Republicans at the heart of the Tea Party recognized there was a dissatisfied faction in America that felt disconnected from the mainstream. These were the people who hated the idea of a black president, the people who wanted big government to bug out of their lives, the people who hated the idea of homosexuality. the people who hated abortion and birth control and the people who felt a gun pointed at anyone’s head would solve any problem. The Republicans who organized this disaffected fringe decided that if this bloc could be corralled and brought into a cohesive group, they could be a major voice in all elections. However, no group with political power can be effective unless it works within the established system. Hence, betrayal was built into the very foundation of the Tea Party. All the aims of the little people in the Tea Party, all the complaints, all the bigotry, all the prejudices, all the little angers and piss-offs were going to be sacrificed, and the big guns who started the Tea Party knew it from the git-go. Hence, the Tea Party was based on betrayal. Right about now when Rand Paul’s unfortunate racist comments are making Tea Party bigwigs uncomfortable, the little people are beginning to realize that not only do Tea Party moguls want them to shut up about the US needing to go back to its segregated heyday, but racism, white supremacy and gun-totin’ militias were planned from the beginning to be sacrificed by the founders of the Tea Party. But the biggest betrayal in the Tea Party is going to be directed not only at, but will come from Sarah Palin. The organizers knew she would be a terrific draw to get the little people on board, and so far, she has done her job to a fare-thee-well. But it won’t be long before the powers in the Tea Party tell Sarah Palin exactly what she is going to have to say and do in order to be effective. They got Palin to sign on because they knew she wanted to be a celebrity and make lots of money. But the Tea Party big guys are just about to present to the public a manifesto detailing what the Tea Party is FOR and Palin’s playbook is only about what she is AGIN. She doesn’t even know what she’s for. But when she gets the Tea Party’s guidelines enlightening her about what she is for, very soon they will hear from Palin’s own lips, “I didn’t take this job to be told what to do and how to do it!” Oh yes, Sarah, you did. And if Palin thinks these good ol’ boys are mesmerized by her charms, she should rethink her whole grandiose image 0f herself. Not only are these guys totally prepared to tell her to “take a hike” if she doesn’t agree to go-along with their plans to make the Tea Party a viable group. They are totally prepared to ruin her financially, and personally if she balks. It would be well for the Palin family to start counting their money and socking some of their ill-gotten gains into a rainy day account. Because a morning line is assuredly in the offing about what is going to happen first-- Sarah walks out on the Tea Party in a huff or the Tea Party kicks her out.

Specter Out, Thank God!

This morning, a headline in the New York Times says: “Specter Defeat Signals a Wave Against Incumbents”. It may be true that there is a wave against incumbents, but the Specter defeat is not about a general dissatisfaction with guys who are in office. The Specter defeat means that Pennsylvanians have had it with Arlen Specter and we decided to oust him. The Specter defeat means that Pennsylvanians think Arlen Specter is too old and too unwell to cut the mustard. The Specter defeat means that Pennsylvanians don’t want a Senator who has flipped from Democrat to Republican and back to Democrat in order to get elected during his thirty (THIRTY YEARS!) as a career Senator. The Specter defeat means Pennsylvanias don't want Specter to ever run for office again. However, I do hope the Specter defeat is a signal that Congressmen must have term limits.

We’re Waiting, Pope Ratz

When can we expect your Wow Finish? For decades now, you’ve been protecting pedophile priests and throwing little kids under the bus. Then when the truth finally came out about the Vatican’s uncharitable, immoral and callous behavior and your own culpability in the international priest abuse scandal, you immediately pointed the finger at others and publicly prayed for their repentance and for their souls. So how about it, Ratz? When can we expect you to climb up on your holy pedestal and say, “Mea culpa! I am one of the worst offenders! I protected pedophiles for decades and I am truly sorry!” We’re waiting, Ratz! When are you going to act like a man, stop pointing at others and admit your own woeful, fallible and unchristian behavior?

Oh, And Sixthly...Good Lord Deliver Us

The New York Times reminded me this morning that Senator Arlen Fucking Specter has always supported Republican nominees to the Supreme Court and was outrageous in his “contentious questioning of Anita Hill, the law professor who testified against Clarence Thomas in 1991.” That, in and of itself, is enough to pray God that Specter doesn’t get a sixth term.

From Senator Specter, Good Lord Deliver Us

First, there is his certifying the magic bullet theory regarding the assassination of John F. Kennedy. The magic bullet theory is ridiculous and Senator Specter should be ashamed of himself for having supported it as assistant counsel for the Warren Commission investigation in 1963. And he should really be ashamed of himself for defending the theory 47 years later. But secondly, and more importantly, Senator Specter has made a career of being a US Senator. He has been in the Senate for 30 years. NO ONE should be a Senator for 30 years. The job was never intended to be a career. Six or 12 years is more than enough. And thirty years should never be sought after. Even if there is no term limit, which there should be, any man or woman with integrity and with a view toward wanting the best for the US Senate should NEVER want to be a Senator for 30 years. Thirdly, there is Specter’s age and health. The man was 80 this past February and in 2008 he informed the public that he had a recurrence of lymph gland cancer. Both facts make him a horrible political prospect. IMHO, he has always been a horrible political prospect, but now his age and health put him completely out of the running. Fourthly, he has switched from Democrat to Republican and now he’s back to Democrat, all in aid of remaining a US Senator for 30 years. Ugh! Not a good thing. And fifthly, who can stand to look at the man and listen to him for whatever time he has left on this earth? He is a walking cadaver and much of the time he makes no sense. Ugh! Really not good! Good lord deliver us!

WHY? The Big Question for the Vatican

The Vatican has to be able to answer the big question before it can come to terms with the current scandal: Why have there always been pedophile priests in the Roman Catholic Church? The current scandal is the result of modern technology, which makes it impossible for the Vatican to continue to hide its pedophile priests. But this perversion among Roman Catholic priests has been going on for centuries. WHY? The simple answer is that in the Vatican pedophilia is not seen as a perversion or a mortal sin. It’s a quirk. And again, WHY? Protecting the virginity of women has nothing to do with women. It has to do with men wanting to ensure that their heirs are legitimate. In that regard, in many Latin American and Mediterranean countries, it is acceptable for men to have anal sex with women before marriage because the entrance to the womb has been kept sacrosanct. In the same way, since both women and children are viewed as chattel, it’s acceptable to have sex with little boys because this is not sex as such, since REAL SEX is SEX only when a male penetrates a female's vagina. This is doublethink nonsense that has been accepted as right and proper in the Vatican for centuries. It’s the same skewed logic as was used by Michael Jackson when he called his little boy friends "Rubba". The name explained what he was doing with the little boys in bed. He wasn’t having sex with them, he was being gentle and kind and affectionate. He was rubbing himself against little boys to be loving. To the priests in the Vatican who have been engaging in pedophilia for centuries, they were not doing anything wrong since little children have no importance and the priests were just being kind and affectionate. To the men in the Vatican who protected the pedophiles, they weren’t protecting criminals; they were simply giving God and their religion priority before children who weren’t very important. And besides, what the priests were doing was just an idiosyncrasy that wasn’t hurting anyone. The outrageous medieval attitude about women and children in the Roman Catholic Church has to stop before progress can be made regarding the abuse of children by priests. It may be that Pope Ratz is a brilliant theologian...I’ll give him that, grudgingly. But that said, he is also a hopelessly backward, ignorant, underinformed, unreconstructed cretin about human sexuality and relationships.

Vatican Says, “Better Eight Innocents Suffer...”

Turning Blackstone’s formulation on its ear, the Vatican says “it’s better that eight innocent men suffer than that millions lose their faith”. So, forget that a foundation of criminal law dates back to Genesis 18-23-32 when Abraham importuned God not to destroy the innocent along with the wicked. And never mind that the Biblical passage in Genesis was used by jurist William Blackstone in the 1760’s when he wrote “Blackstone’s ratio“, which is—“better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer”. And never mind that this understanding of criminal law has been used as a basis for the presumption of innocence since the 1880’s. Now the Vatican says, Screw that! Better that eight innocent men suffer than that the Roman Catholic Church be shown to be a hollow mockery. It takes a lot for the Vatican to shock me these days. But I am SHOCKED!!!! Here’s the backstory. In 1998, a Vatican canon lawyer, Martha Wegan, told two of Father Marcial Maciel’s victims at the Legionaries of Christ in Mexico that she had “bad news” for them. The two men--Jose Barba Martin and Arturo Jurado--along with six other men who had been raped by Father Marciel had brought a formal complaint to the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, led by Cardinal Ratzinger. Martha Wegan told the men that the Vatican had decided not to investigate the matter further because, Ms. Wegan said, “It is better for eight innocent men to suffer than for millions to lose their faith. Now, later, it's true, Cardinal Ratz changed his mind for political reasons. But let’s be very clear. The idea that it is better for eight innocent men (read, innocent children) suffer the horrors of the damned at the hands of perverted pedophiles than that the Roman Catholic Church should get bad press, has been the ruling idea and pervasive modus operandi at the Vatican, in the Curia and with all the popes for the last 1500 years. AND THIS MODUS OPERANDI STINKS.

Here’s My Point...

...and I do have one. The Vatican and the hopeless Curia and Pope Ratz may bloviate and steam and rant that reporters are being unfair to them by releasing documents about all the pedophile priests who have been attracted to the Roman Catholic Church and who have been protected by the Roman Catholic Church. But the fact is, the Vatican has been more concerned with protecting the reputation of the church than with protecting the children who attend the church. THAT’S MY DAMN POINT!!!! Even this morning the PR division of the Vatican is grinding out stories about how the RCC is going to be transparent and throw all abuse cases to the civil authorities now. But the Vatican is still defending the fact that in the past, for 1500 years or more, the RCC has protected its pedophile priests rather than protect the little children who go to church. And the Vatican announced this morning through it’s mouthpiece Father Lombardi that the facts the Vatican uncovers in its investigation of Father Maciel, the head of The Legion of Christ who molested little boys and fathered a number of children, will not be made public. And I don't understand how protecting Father Maciel and other pedophiles can be a good thing. Even if you are Pope Ratz and stand on your head and scream and yell that you are a good person, I don't see how protecting pedophiles and letting them continue to molest children for years and years and years can ever be a good thing. The RCC forced children to sign oaths that they would not tattle on pedophile priests. How is that a good thing? How can that ever be a good thing? How can calling children liars and swearing that a lie is the truth ever be a good thing? How can it even be defensible? That’s what I don’t understand. AND THAT’S MY POINT!!!!!

What If The Vatican Actually Man-Upped

It’s a 20-1 longshot, but what if Pope Ratz and the weasel-y College of Cardinals together with the clueless sycophantic curia actually wanted to cleanse themselves of their self-protective, corrupt and perverted ways? What would they have to do? Well, now that Bishops are resigning all over the world and admitting they molested little boys during their entire career as priests (not to mention, some of them are admitting they beat the crap out of young children—Pope Ratz’s brother, Monsignor Ratzinger was one of those sterling gentlemen who slapped kids around in his choir); and now that adult males are finally able to be believed when they say priests molested them when they were little boys, it’s small comfort for the molested and no solution whatsoever for the Vatican to say it belatedly plans to investigate all molestation charges with speed and transparency. And the reason that the Vatican’s assurances are no solution is because the question that still hangs in the air like the stink from a rotting corpse is this: Why have thousands of pedophiles found a welcoming home in the Roman Catholic priesthood for centuries? And the answer is that pedophiles have been attracted to the Roman Catholic priesthood because it’s a men-only club where they have been able to find a never-ending supply of little boys and where they have been protected and their perversion has been kept secret by their fellow priests. The fact that the RCC says it will vigorously investigate claims of pedophilia does not solve the problem because little-boy molesters are going to continue to gravitate to the Roman Catholic Church. And we cannot trust the Vatican to do what it says it’s going to do because the Vatican has been putting a fox in the chicken coop to rid the chicken coop of foxes for 1500 years. So what does the Vatican have to do? Stop being an all-men club a) Let priests marry b) Allow women to serve at the altar And what will happen to the Roman Catholic Church if it doesn’t make changes and reform itself? Outwardly, the RCC will seem to be exactly the same as it is now. Except that no mother in any diocese in any place in the world will be able to trust her little children with any priest. And that is such a big deal, the Vatican and the Catholic Church may crumble under the weight of it.

History Replaying Itself

No one wants the Roman Catholic Church to go out of business. Least of all me. And people who are thinking of leaving the Catholic Church because of the ugliness and abuses that are coming to light should seriously rethink the thought. In any case, 90% of the people who are walking out will walk back in within a short period of time. If you have been born and raised in a strong religion, associate it with beauty, peace and love, and it’s your connection to God, anything else will seem bogus and weak. It’s interesting that what the RCC most needs right now is what Judaism most needed 2000 years ago: Change and reform. Jesus Christ never wanted to start a new religion. But he was very upset about what was going on in his religion. He wanted Judaism to reform itself so that it might once again be a connection to the one God and be the source of all things holy and moral. It was the intransigence of the Jewish leaders, their fear of change and their defense of corrupted values at the time of Christ that made a break with Judaism seem attractive to the people who had heard Jesus speak. It’s hard to say what would have occurred had the Jewish leaders either ignored Jesus and the early Christians, or at least admitted that Judaism needed an overhaul. It’s inconceivable that Pope Ratz and the College of Cardinals would come out with one voice and say, “Yes, it’s true. We’ve gotten on the wrong track and we’re going to change things.” But that is what should happen. But then, the Pope and the Vatican would need to actually make good on their confession and move toward instituting monumental changes in the Roman Catholic Church. And neither the leaders of the RCC in the Vatican nor Pope Benedict XVI have the moral fiber, the honesty, the understanding of Christian values or the reverence for God to want to remold the Roman Catholic Church in the image of Jesus Christ.

Open Letter to Al Pacino

Yo, Al. Back in 1996, I interviewed you for “The Ritz Guide”. We talked about your just-released “Looking For Richard”—a documentary about putting Shakespeare’s “Richard III” on film. I asked about your future plans. You said, "Well, you just sort of bring the body and the mind will follow...whatever...you go to the next assignment. It' s funny. There are two worlds. There' s the world where you have an idea and then there's the workaday world where you're into the next job. And you need both. The job helps you learn a craft. And the idea only comes rarely, but when it does come you have the craft to act on it." The article’s tag line was: “But specifically. Since he's 56, how about King Lear?" You answered: "Hmmmm. Well, yeah. I hope...one day. Now that you mention it. Why not?" So Al, what better time than now? Your HBO movie, “You Don’t Know Jack”--the Dr. Kevorkian story--premieres on April 24th. You are now 70...how about doing “King Lear”?

Giving the Pope Power He Doesn’t Have

Although I’m not a Roman Catholic, I too invest Pope Ratz with power that isn’t his to have. The RCC followers have let the Vatican bully them into believing the Pope speaks for God, which he doesn’t, and that he knows the mind of God, which he can’t. Still, I too have let the Pope and the Vatican influence my beliefs about what I think they are capable of. On Monday, Pope Ratz met with 46 cardinals to mark the fifth anniversary of his election to popedom. According to the front page of the Vatican newspaper, “L’Osservatore Romano” the pope said he “very strongly feels that he is not alone; that he has on his side the entire College of Cardinals, sharing with him tribulations and consolations.” I really had to laugh. Because by me, that's as close to a Godfather threat as I’ve heard save from a movie about wiseguys. Vatican-watcher Marco Politi said that the curia (administrative arm of the Vatican) had not been very helpful to Pope Ratz during his recent tribulations. Well, that is surely true. Every step those clowns take to alleviate Ratz’s problems have only added to his problems. They are totally inept soldiers in the mob...er...group. And Ratz may or may not deal with them in appropriate Ratzian manner. But the College of Cardinals, that’s something else again. The New York Times reported this morning that the dean of the College of Cardinals, Cardinal Angelo Soldano, speaking after the Monday lunch thanked the pope for leading the church “with great generosity.” Heh-heh! Yeah...so far...but look out guys...his Popeness has just said, “If I go down, you go down.” But then, maybe I’ve given Ratz too much power.

Pope Goes to Malta and Tells a Huge Lie

So, there’s this tiny island between Sicily and North Africa called Malta where, it is said, St. Paul was shipwrecked. And Pope Ratz went to Malta this past Saturday to celebrate the 1,950th anniversary of St. Paul’s shipwreck. And while there, Pope Ratz decided to have a meet-and-greet with pedophile abuse victims. Get this, on this tiny...I mean TINY island there were 10 men who in 2003 had filed a suit against four pedophile priests--ten from this little island alone. The Vatican is at pains to say that this is not precedent setting. Like, don’t expect Ratz to meet with pedophile victims in every country he visits. And also, the Vatican said the meeting is more “symbolic” than “legal”. So, getting that straight right off the bat, the Pope made it clear that he is in no way legally liable for anything. And then he gave the ten abused men 20 minutes of his valuable time, during which Pope Ratz “prayed with them and assured them that the church is doing, and will continue to do, all in its power to investigate allegations, to bring to justice those responsible for abuse and to implement effective measures designed to safeguard young people in the future.” What nonsense! And what an enormous lie! The church is doing all it can now to deny all the allegations and, it did all it could in the past to shield those who are responsible and to put young people in jeopardy. As the spokesman for SNAP (Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests) Peter Isely noted, it’s “astonishing” Benedict said the Vatican was doing “all in its power to investigate allegations...it hurts and endangers kids when adults confuse inaction with action and recklessness with effectiveness...it’s wrong, when thousands are being molested, to just make vague promises.” It’s also wrong for the Pope to blatantly lie. But popes and the Vatican have been doing it for so long that no one notices anymore.

Pope Doesn’t Get it, and Never Will

He can’t. Pope Ratz thinks he’s God. When many victims of priest pedophiles finally talk as adults about their molestation, they say they thought the priest was God and that if they didn’t do what God said, they’d go to Hell. The Roman Catholic Church, the Anglican Church and the Episcopal Church are at pains to explain that priests are never to give this impression. That, of course, a priest is simply a conduit. At the same time, these churches will say that no matter how depraved and morally bereft a priest may be, his or her behavior does not taint the sacrament he or she is conferring on a recipient. Now that the RCC is under scrutiny because it is finally coming out that priests have been molesting children for the last 1500 years, it cannot be ignored that one of the Vatican’s problems is the very fact that many men in the RCC God business have taken on the role of not representing God, but of implying they are God. Else, how can it be explained that Pope Benedict, even now, is making speeches about how everyone (except himself) in the Roman Catholic Church should repent of their woeful sins. Repent and do penance he said yesterday. But how about the sins that Archbishop Ratzinger, Cardinal Ratzinger and now Pope Ratz have committed by willfully and cynically allowing priests to continue molesting children while Ratz let it happen? Not only are the Pope’s men saying Ratzinger never did anything wrong. They are implying that of course he couldn’t do wrong because a Pope is God’s clone. And, as of yesterday, the Pope’s men said that if wrong was committed, it was because homosexuals in the church had slipped into being pedophiles. And we know that a cause celebre of Pope Ratz has been to oust all gay persons from his men’s club. Also yesterday, Vatican reporter Sandro Magiste said of Pope Ratz: “He is trying to explain to the church and to the bishops and the clergy, many of whom are unfortunately of low quality, even morally, that they should transform themselves...he (Pope Ratz) knows the church needs to be reborn.” Right. Everyone needs to repent, do penance, be reborn, except God Ratz. Ratz said in his homily yesterday that there is a need for “obedience to God”. That is, obedience to God Ratz who says the God whom he has become wants all women who are sexually active to have a baby every year of their reproductive lives, wants children to keep mum about priests who rape them, wants homosexuals to get out of the church or at least keep mum about being gay, and calls conformism a sin except when conforming to Vatican Rules In other words, if God were a corporeal being, he would not be Jesus Christ, he would be the Pope. What we have here, God Ratz says of the pedophile scandal, is not a failure of the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church to communicate. And it’s not a moral breakdown of the Pope, the Curia and the College of Cardinals. Nor is it a body of delusional men carrying on like grandiose pscyhopaths. What we have here, God Ratz says, “is a crisis of faith”.

Vatican Rule: Women and Children Last

The good part about the pedophile scandal rocketing through the Roman Catholic Church is that it has forced the world to take a look at the way the oldest men’s club has been operating for the last 1500 years. And what we see is that the most salient characteristic of the men who inhabit the Vatican—the College of Cardinals, the Curia and the Popes—is that nothing is or ever has been more important to this collection of self-serving, egomaniacal Chief Executive Officers parading as religious men than to keep their men-only club operating. When you consider that the reason for organizing a religion called Christianity was to venerate the second person of the Holy Trinity, Jesus Christ the Son. And when you consider that since the time of Constantine, Christ’s mother Mary has been as important a person in the Christian Church as the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. And when you consider that the first people who had the fortitude and courage to seek out Jesus in his tomb after his crucifixion were the women who were Jesus’ disciples, it passes strange that the Roman Catholic Church not only demeans women, but it looks on sons and all children as being of lesser importance than perverts, and of no importance whatsoever where maintaining the existence of the Roman Catholic men’s club is concerned. It is appalling to think that this pope, in only one of many instances, waited more than three years to respond to a request to defrock a priest who had molested children in California, saying that “the good of the Universal Church” needed to be considered. What Pope Ratz has been preaching for decades is that the existence of his job and his men’s club is more important than the women and children who worship God in the Roman Catholic Church. And Pope Ratz and his cronies fully intend to continue making rules on subjects they know nothing about, such as human sexuality and raising children, for everyone in the world, because their arbitrary and unmerciful rules keeps their men’s club flourishing, and because they can. Here is the solution: Let these depraved men of the Vatican have their men’s club and their insular society. Let them have their palace and their little J. Arthur Rank farce nation, ruling cabinet, frocks, Prada shoes, gold chalices, encrusted rings and holy bling. Let them speak in tongues or Latin or however they want to chant their fraternity songs. And walk away. Leave these Vatican assholes rustling their papers like Joseph McCarthy when no one was listening to his HUAC nonsense anymore. Just walk away. Find other churches in which to worship God and Jesus and go about your lives.

Three Big Questions For the Vatican

A New York Times article reported today (“German Church Abuse Hotline Gets Flood of Calls”): “The Roman Catholic Church’s phone line for victims of sexual abuse in Germany was overwhelmed with calls last week.” Last week was the first week of the hotline’s operation and according to Andreas Zimmer, the director of the counseling center at the Diocese of Trier, which is handling the nationwide free line, 13,293 attempts were made to get through to the psychologists and social workers on the hotline. Question One Why are so many Roman Catholic Priests pedophiles? It seems obvious that the Vatican’s pro forma response that the same percentage of priests are pedophiles as obtains in the general population (1%-5% of the adult population) is untrue and that the percentage of pedophile priests in the priest population is way higher than 5%. Question Two Why are priests required to be celibate in the RCC? The pro forma response to this question has been that priests have to remain unmarried because Christ was unmarried and also, to devote themselves to serving God rather than being concerned with family matters. This answer is a conspicuous lie on two levels. First, having a family has not been a deterrent to serving God in other religions. And second, the RCC originated as a religion in which the priests were married. But it was found that having to deal with heirs to the church’s vast holdings and properties was a terrible problem for the hierarchy in the church. Church historical documents abound with rules and regulations about sexual relations between priests and their wives. As in, from 306 AD, a priest who has sex with his wife the night before mass will lose his job. In 580 AD, Pope Pelagius II said married priests were not to be “bothered”, as long as they did not hand over church property to wives or children. And never forget, there were eleven popes who were sons of popes. Granted, illegitimacy was the rule rather than the exception. Question Three Does the requirement for priests to be celibate cause deviants to be attracted to the Roman Catholic Church? Apparently 9th century bishop St. Ulrich thought so. A document shows that he argued that the only way to purify the church from the worst excesses of celibacy was to permit priests to marry. (Incidentally, a 9th century document speaks to the problem of abortions and infanticides in convents and monasteries to cover-up activities of un-celibate clerics). All of this nonsense about church dogma being immutable is thrown in a cocked hat when you read church history. In 352 the Council of Laodicea ordered that women were not to be ordained. In 1095 Pope Urban II had priests’ wives sold into slavery and their children were abandoned. In the 14th century Bishop Pelagio complained that women were still being ordained and hearing confessions. Yes, the Vatican can change its mind, and it has consistently done so since the first pope reigned over the Vatican palace. The Vatican is still operating in the belief that church officials must keep esoteric knowledge from the populace because ordinary people don’t have the education or wisdom to understand it. Yes, I know, it is to laugh when you consider the level of stupidity governing the Vatican.

Dowd Hits Nail on Head Today

Once in awhile, New York Times Op/Ed columnist Maureen Dowd stops trying to be cute, funny and controversial and gets to the heart of the matter. This morning was one of those times. “I’m a Catholic woman who makes a living being adversarial,” she said. “We have a pope who has instructed Catholic women not to be adversarial...I’ve been wondering, given the vitriolic reaction of the New York archbishop to my column defending nuns and the dismissive reaction of the Vatican to my column denouncing the church’s response to the pedophilia scandal, if they are able to take a woman’s voice seriously. Some, like Bill Donohue of the Catholic League, seem to think women are trying to undermine the church because of abortion and women’s ordination...I thought they might respond better to a male Dowd. “My brother Kevin is conservative and devout — his hobby is collecting crèches — and has raised three good Catholic sons. When I asked him to share his thoughts on the scandal, I learned, shockingly, that we agreed on some things. He wrote the following: ‘In pedophilia, the church has unleashed upon itself a plague that threatens its very future, and yet it remains in a curious state of denial. The church I grew up in was black and white, no grays. That’s why my father, an Irish immigrant, liked it so much. The chaplain of the Police and Fire departments told me once “Your father was a fierce Catholic, very fierce”.’” Ms Dowd goes on to describe her feelings about Vatican II, (and, incidentally, her feelings about being molested by a priest). Vatican II made her wince, she says. “(It) liberalized rules but left the most outdated one: celibacy. That vow was put in place originally because the church did not want heirs making claims on money and land. But it ended up shrinking the priest pool and producing the wrong kind of candidates — drawing men confused about their sexuality who put our children in harm’s way. “The church is dying from a thousand cuts. Its cover-up has cost a fortune and been a betrayal worthy of Judas. The money spent came from social programs, Catholic schools and the poor. This should be a sin that cries to heaven for vengeance. I asked a friend of mine recently what he would do if his child was molested after the church knew. ‘I would probably kill someone,’ he replied. “We must reassess. Married priests and laypeople giving the sacraments are not going to destroy the church. Based on what we have seen the last 10 years, they would be a bargain. It is time to go back to the disciplines that the church was founded on and remind our seminaries and universities what they are. (Georgetown University agreeing to cover religious symbols on stage to get President Obama to speak was not exactly fierce.) “The storm within the church strikes at what every Catholic fears most. We take our religion on faith. How can we maintain that faith when our leaders are unworthy of it?” And therein lies a very big problem in the Vatican. How do you insist that people acknowledge their sins for the good of their souls; how do you insist that rigor in ones’ daily life and adhering to rules is the only way to live; how do you point to yourselves as the ultimate authority on Christian morality when you--the College of Cardinals and the Pope—refuse to acknowledge your culpability, shield yourselves from blame, point your fingers at victims as the cause of your predicament, tell lies every day, cower behind spurious reasoning, cast yourselves as sufferers, and cynically aid and abet criminals in the hollow claim that you are being forgiving? Not only is it not possible to keep the faith when leaders are false, but also, the leaders cannot remain in power. They can remain situated, but not in power.

Dowd to Vatican: “Ne Eas Ibi”—Don’t Go There

Specifically, in her Easter Sunday morning op/ed piece in the New York Times today, Maureen Dowd was referring to the Roman Catholic Church’s long-time history of anti-Semitism and the fact that The Rev. Raniero Cantalamessa, a preacher in the Pope’s household, told people in St. Peter’s Basilica yesterday that the current accusations against Pope Ratz of papal misdeeds were akin to the suffering of the Jews that lead to the Holocaust. The New Republic literary editor and Jewish scholar Leon Wieseltier couldn’t understand why the church would want to bring up anything about anti-Semitism. Dowd quoted Wieseltier: “Why would the Catholic Church wish to defend itself by referring to other enormities in which it was also implicated? Anyway, the Jews endured more than a bad press.” Dowd said, “this solidarity with Jews is also notable given that Italy’s La Repubblica reported that ‘certain Catholic circles’ suspected that ‘a New York Jewish lobby’ was responsible for the outcry against the pope.” Nevertheless, not to be outdone by Father Cantalamessa’s ill-chosen, ill-timed, clueless, inappropriate and inapt simile, this morning the dean of the College of Cardinals in the Vatican, Cardinal Angelo Sodano said during the Pope’s Easter message: ''Holy Father, on your side are the people of God, who do not allow themselves to be influenced by the petty gossip of the moment, by the trials which sometimes buffet the community of believers.'' In reporting on Easter Sunday in Vatican City, the New York Times said, “Sunday's edition of the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano denounced the accusations against the pope as a ‘vile defamation operation’.” One can only repeat the words that Special Counsel Joseph N. Welch said to Senator Joseph McCarthy’s chief counsel Roy Cohn at the McCarthy Communist witch-hunt hearings, and direct it at The Vatican, the College of Cardinals and Pope Benedict XVI: “At long last, have you left no sense of decency?”

Vatican: Criticism of Pope is Like Anti-Semitism

In the area of WRONG, one wonders how much more wrong the Vatican can get. First, the now-Pope from his position as Enforcer for Pope John Paul II and as the go-to guy in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which investigated abuse cases, was the one who ordered that abuse cases be kept secret. In addition to that, he was the one who moved pedophile priest Father Hullermann around from diocese to diocese in Germany and Bavaria, which allowed Hullermann to continue molesting little boys Then, when documents about Pope Ratz’s involvement in protecting pedophile priests were made public by the New York Times, the Vatican announced that the NYT was engaging in a vendetta against Pope Ratz. And now, on Good Friday if you please, Rev. Raniero Cantalamessa (a senior priest in the Vatican) speaking in St. Peter’s Basilica, said that all the criticism Pope Benedict XVI is receiving regarding his handling of pedophile priests in the Roman Catholic Church is like the anti-Semitism suffered by Jews. On top of all the deceit the Vatican is engaging in now to erase all the deceit the Vatican has perpetrated in the past, now the Vatican is saying that speaking out against its lying, deceit and calumny is like being anti-Semitic. UNBELIEVABLE! But, since Father Cantalamessa has committed this monumental error in judgment by bringing up anti-Semitism and the Roman Catholic Church, let us not forget folks, that Pope Pius XII not only did not rebuke the Nazi’s during the WWII, but he was known as a Nazi-sympathizer. And also, let us not forget folks, it wasn’t until the 1960’s that the Vatican finally said officially that Jews were not responsible for Christ’s crucifixion and got rid of the prayer in the liturgy calling for the conversion of Jews. It is hard to imagine how wrong the Vatican has always been. But since its track record is so abysmal, perhaps we can construct a rule-of-thumb. If the Vatican says it, it’s a lie.

If the Vatican Told the Truth, Which It Doesn’t

But if the Vatican did deal in veracity about its own megalomania, it would say it is outraged that anyone would have the nerve to cast aspersions on the Pope. The Vatican has endowed the Pope with super powers because he is the successor to the first Pope, St. Peter. Which means all Popes, including the ones that murdered people, the ones that had wild gorilla sex in the Vatican and now this miserable excuse for a human being, Pope Benedict XVI, are above reproach. And that, in a nutshell, is the problem I have with the Vatican. Which, may I say, is the problem I have with many writers of the Bible who amended, redacted, changed and outright lied about their subject—they are dealing in fiction. Peter the Apostle, you know the one, the guy who denied Jesus three times in the Garden of Gethsemane, surely never knew he was the Bishop of Rome, much less a Pope. According to historians, Peter probably wasn’t even in Rome when the fiction writers declared he was the Bishop of Rome. And all this nonsense about Peter being the first Pope is based on the verse in Matthew (Chapter 16, Verse 18) where Jesus says to Peter, “On this rock will I build my church”. There are many conversations quoted in the Bible, which it’s doubtful Jesus ever had. And this is one of them. Jesus never had eyes to start a new religion. It was the people who came after him who wanted a new religion. And it’s the people who came long after Jesus who put words in his mouth that he probably never said. And the Vatican took it to insane heights claiming that since Jesus said he was going to build his church on his friend The Rock, (Petra/Peter means rock/stone), that meant Peter was the First Bishop of Rome, which made him the first Pope. Such nonsense! The first Bishop of Rome, whoever he was, was not a Pope. Early Christians didn’t call any one Big Papa until the second century AD. The Vatican will give you a list of “Popes” going back to Peter, which is totally impossible to verify. There may have been guys like Linus, Cletus and Clement who were big mahoffs in the early church, but they were not called Popes, they were not even called Bishops. Ugh! So, the Vatican is outraged that all the hundreds (probably THOUSANDS) of molested little children, and their families would DARE say anything against The Vatican and its residents because they are self-declared holy persons who are incapable of wrong-doing. And who is buying this latest fiction being sold by the Vatican? The guys in the Vatican are buying it. But the people who sit in the pews--the actual Body of Christ--are going to church, worshiping God and Jesus, and calling for Pope Ratz and his minions to stop the bullshit and fess up, or at least SHUT UP!

Pope Won’t Be “Intimidated” by “Gossip”

As the New York Times reported this morning, the Pope did not directly address the pedophile scandal in his Palm Sunday message yesterday. Pope Ratz said, “Jesus leads us toward the courage not to be intimidated by the gossip of dominant opinion.” I can’t imagine how Pope Ratz arrived at that interpretation of Jesus’s message as it relates to the mess Ratz has made for himself. But surely, even a spineless, pedophile-enabler such as Pope Ratz would not equate his recent richly-deserved humiliation over facts that have been uncovered, with the intimidation and crucifixion of Jesus. And surely, Pope Ratz could not have been referring to the teaching of Jesus in “The Sermon on the Mount” about “turning the other cheek” as related in the Bible in Matthew and Luke. Because the passage in Luke ends with “Do to others as you would have them do to you”, and that is a teaching Pope Ratz rarely has adhered to. The very idea that Pope Ratz would relegate all the facts that are being released about his culpability in the pedophile priests scandal to the category of “gossip” which he is not going to be “intimidated” by, shows how little the Vatican and the Pope care about the children who have been harmed by their inaction, obfuscation, lying and yes, about their intimidation of others. The Vatican’s position, as well as the Pope’s position on pedophile priests is indefensible. The Vatican told Father Brady in Ireland to force a 10-year old and a 14-year-old to sign secrecy oaths about being molested. The Vatican was wrong. Psychiatrist Dr. Werner Huth told the Vatican in 1980 that Father Hullermann could not ever be trusted around children. The Vatican let Hullermann minister to children for decades. The Vatican was wrong. No matter how it backs and fills and reinvents history and defends itself, the Vatican was wrong. And the world needs to hear the Vatican admit it was wrong. If the Pope as Archbishop and as Cardinal did not know what was going on in his diocese, it’s no excuse...he should have known. If he gave a damn about children as much as he cared about doctrine and dogma, he would have known. Archbishop Joseph Ratzinger was wrong. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was wrong. Pope Benedict XVI is wrong. The Vatican has been wrong and is wrong and there is no getting around it. Today, NYT columnist Ross Douthat says that Pope Ratz may have been wrong about the first charge against him (that he allowed a pedophile priest to return to ministry while archbishop of Munich in 1980); but the second charge is unfair. The second charge was about Father Rembert Weakland in Milwaukee and it was about a case 20 years after the last allegation of abuse. That’s bogus. The Vatican, the Roman Catholic Church, the Pope, the pedophile priests have all been unfair to the children in the Roman Catholic faith. Get a grip, you RCC apologists! We’re talking children here. We’re talking about priests forcing children to engage in sex acts. We’re talking about the Vatican hiding all this stuff for decades! You want unfair? While the Pope dissembles and talks about not being intimidated, he should think about the two boys in Ireland who were forced by the Vatican to sign an agreement that they would not rat out the Roman Catholic Church. How’s that for unfair and intimidating? What do you suppose Jesus would think about that, Pope Ratz?

Make No Mistake...GOP Rage is About RACE

This morning’s Op/Ed column by Frank Rich is headlined: “The Rage Is Not About Health Care”. And after chronicling and chapter-and-versing the obstructionist ways the conservative GOP assholes have reacted to every move the United States has made to stamp out racism, Frank Rich wrote: “After the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed, some responsible leaders in both parties spoke out to try to put a lid on the resistance and violence. The arch-segregationist Russell of Georgia, concerned about what might happen in his own backyard, declared flatly that the law is ‘now on the books.’ Yet no Republican or conservative leader of stature has taken on Palin, Perry, Boehner or any of the others who have been stoking these fires for a good 17 months now. Last week McCain even endorsed Palin’s ‘reload’ rhetoric.” We have a black President and we have a Hispanic Latina in the Supreme Court. And the ultra-conservative branch of the Republican Party—THE TEA PARTY—is foaming from its mean, ignorant, KKK-based, death-breath mouth. The current stupidity coming out of Palin, Perry and Boehner is hate-based racism, pure and simple. This group is fomenting racist hatred and inciting violence from morons who throw bricks. As I see it, the recourse is for normal, sane, balanced, thinking Americans to call out these idiots in every media venue available. Only 20% of the people in the United States want to be linked with racists. We need to let the media know that. And the media needs to call a halt on its lily-livered cowardly non-response response to the racist Tea Party. The media needs to let the Tea Party know the United States of America wants no part of Tea Party bigotry.

Vatican Attacking Truthtellers Not a Good Plan

The New York Times had two articles today on the pedophile scandal in the Roman Catholic Church. Rachel Donadio reported in her article (“Pope May Be at Crossroads on Abuse, Forced to Reconcile Policy and Words”) that yesterday an unsigned editorial in the Vatican newspaper (“L’Osservatore Romano”) “criticized The Times for an article published Thursday on the abuse issue. The Italian editorial said that Benedict had always handled such cases with ‘transparency, purpose and severity,’ and accused the news media of acting ‘with the clear and ignoble intent of trying to strike Benedict and his closest collaborators at any cost.’” In view of the fact that Archbishop/Cardinal/Pope Ratzinger has NEVER handled abuse cases with transparency, and in view of the fact that the news media is simply telling the truth (which truth, is now available via documents that lawyers have released), it’s beyond stupid for the Vatican to claim people are trying to discredit Pope Benedict XVI. And by beyond stupid, I mean: Desperate and idiotic. I am currently reading a book by James Lee Burke, an author I love in the mystery genre. The book is “The Tin Roof Blowdown”. Burke’s protagonist, Dave Robicheaux, lives is New Iberia, LA. This book is not only about murder and mayhem in Robicheaux’s parish, but it’s about Katrina and the woeful response by our government, then ruled by so-called president, George W. Bush. In the book, there is a black priest named Jude LeBlanc, who is dying of cancer. Father LeBlanc is a junkie because of his pain. He lives with and sleeps with his girlfriend who is a prostitute and a junkie. Still, the priest gives communion and absolution to sinners who ask for it, and he gives aid and comfort to whomever he can--once a priest, always a priest. I mention this only to say that I believe that if a priest such as Jude LeBlanc exists, he is more morally correct and in tune with God and the precepts of Jesus Christ than Pope Benedict XVI.

Yeah, I Know...Old News...Pope Ratz Is Fallible

This morning, the New York Times treated us with two stories about the pedophile priest scandal plus an editorial for good measure. 1) “Vatican Declined to Defrock U.S. Priest Who Abused Boys” by Laurie Goodstein; 2) "Abuse Scandal’s Ripples Spread Across Europe” by Katrin Bennhold, Nicholas Kulish and Rachel Donadio; 3) Editorial: “The Pope and Pedophilia Scandal”. So now that everyone knows that the Roman Catholic Church has been actively trying to keep all this pedophilia a secret, now that we know the RCC has been more interested in protecting its own corrupt ass than keeping children from harm, and now that we know all the high mahoffs in the Vatican, right up to the present pope, have been protecting pedophile priests and throwing the abused kids under a bus, we are left with two interesting issues: 1) Why are so many RCC priests pedophiles? 2) What is the Doctrine of Infallibility? Numero Uno: As you may imagine, I have my own theory. Many men who are attracted to the priesthood in the RCC are stunted in their emotional growth. Pedophiles are at least 85% heterosexual and researchers say the emotional development of many pedophiles is arrested. Ergo, with all that arrested development running around in the Roman Catholic Church, you are going to find a lot of pedophiles in the RCC. And, let me say, it’s not the requirement that RCC priests be celibate that is the problem. It’s the guys who are attracted to that kind of life that is the problem. Numero Duo: The Doctrine of Infallibility Okay. The RCC says that the Holy Spirit part of the Trinity would not allow the church to be wrong in its beliefs or teaching. Therefore, the teaching of the RCC is infallible. And not only that, when the Pope teaches with the authority of being the Pope (ex-cathedra), he also cannot be wrong. And when a pope is found to be wrong, then he simply was not speaking or teaching ex-cathedra. Now here is why all of that is bullshit. Everything in the Bible, everything taught in every church anywhere has been written and/or taught by a human being. All teachings taught are taught by human beings who err all the time. And just because a human being says, “God told me”, does not make it necessarily true that it came from God. And just because a human being says, “this is a perfect teaching that God himself handed down to me” does not necessarily make it true. The human being could be crazy as a loon. We all can take whatever we want on faith that it is a true teaching of God. But since all religious teachings have been handed down by a human being, we really don’t know if it is a true teaching of God or not. And that is why no human being can say for sure that a teaching is from God and therefore is infallible. It may be a teaching from God, or it may be a lie some guy is telling, or it may be a nutty vision. But since we are human beings, not one of us knows for sure. Not you, not me, not the guys at the Vatican Council in 1870 who defined the infallibility of the Pope, and certainly not the Pope. So believe what you like. But for sure, no one in the God-business has a pipeline to God. God-business guys are flawed human beings like the rest of us. And no religious teaching is infallible because all of it has been reported by a human being, and you know how reporters are.

Now It’s Nuns

This must be historic. To my knowledge, this is the first time that nuns have been officially accused of sexual abuse. While Pope Ratz is dividing his time between accusing others of his crimes and apologizing for all the crimes those others have committed, pedophile priest abuse scandals are popping up all over. Not the least of which are the claims of sexual abuse in the Regensburg Diocese in Bavaria. This morning, the New York Times reported: “The claims of sexual abuse in Regensburg have attracted particular attention because the brother of Pope Benedict XVI, Msgr. Georg Ratzinger, directed a choir there from 1964 to 1994, raising questions about whether he would have known about sexual abuse at a school linked to the choir. Monsignor Ratzinger has said that he knew nothing about the sexual abuse, and he apologized for slapping students during his tenure.” Later on in the NYT news story, the Regensburg Diocese spokesman, Clemens Neck, was quoted. Neck said that in addition to the accusations against four priests and two nuns, other victims had come forward with accusations against men who had since died. Mr. Neck said both of the accused nuns have dementia. Lucky for them. So we’ve got Pope Ratz’s brother slapping kids around in his choir, four priests and two nuns molesting kids in his diocese, and neither Brother Ratz nor Pope Ratz knew anything about it. You believe that, I’ve got a worthless newspaper in Philadelphia run by a worthless public relations blowhard I’d like to sell you.

“Pope Does Little to Assuage Irish Anger”-NYT

No kidding! What a surprise! The New York Times headline this morning says it all. The Pope’s letter to Catholics in Ireland who have been abused by pedophile priests was a bust. Why? Because Pope Ratz didn’t call anyone to account. He simply pointed his finger of blame at everyone except himself and said everyone, from bishops to priests, was “sinful and criminal” and then he asked Jesus to forgive them. Ireland isn’t buying it. So when is Pope Ratz going to go before the world and finally admit, “It is I, Lord. I am to blame for the pain and suffering in the world caused by pedophile priests in the Roman Catholic Church”? Probably when hell freezes over. However, if what the Bible has been saying about sinners and particularly those who do harm to little children is true, then Pope Ratz will be in hell when it freezes over, and he will be there with all the other lying, immoral, unethical, greedy, gluttonous blaspheming Popes since 500 AD.

How Do You Solve a Problem Like the Pope?

Pope Benedict XVI has pointed the finger of blame at everyone but himself in this priest abuse scandal. And it becomes clearer every moment that it’s Archbishop/Cardinal/Pope Ratzinger who is to blame for every child who has been molested by pedophile priests in the Roman Catholic Church for the past 30 years. For thirty years, the decisions, rules and requirements for secrecy ordered by Ratzinger to be followed by all priests regarding pedophile priests in the RCC have allowed pedophile priests to continue in their criminal perversions. Yesterday, Pope Ratz sent an eight-page pastoral letter to Catholics in Ireland. He apologized to the people who have been harmed by pedophile priests. But he did not accept any blame for his own actions. And he didn’t address the problem of pedophile priests that is burgeoning in Germany, Austria and the Netherlands. Pope Ratz confined his apologies to people who had been harmed by pedophile priests in Ireland. In that eight-page letter, Ratz criticized bishops for “grave errors of judgment and failure of leadership”; Ratz blamed local Catholic leaders for betraying parishioners; he spoke of “a well-intentioned but misguided tendency to avoid penal approaches to canonically irregular situations”; he even had the balls to attribute Ireland’s priest-abuse problem to “a misplaced concern for the reputation of the church and the avoidance of scandal, resulting in failure to apply existing canonical penalties.” But he never once admitted that it was he himself that had committed each of these errors. He blamed underlings. Pope Ratz's culpability is a fact that can be researched and verified by anyone who wants the information. Now that everyone in the world can search out this information for himself and confirm that Pope Benedict XVI is the perpetrator of all the errors of judgment and failures in the Roman Catholic Church for the past 30 years that have lead to this horrendous betrayal by the church of the children and their parents in the RCC, it is a monumental problem for the Vatican (the city-state in Rome that runs the Roman Catholic Church) and all of the Pope’s henchmen in the Curia (the administrative apparatus of the Vatican). How is the Vatican and Curia going to handle this Pope Benedict problem? Don’t for one moment assume the Vatican will ask, “what would Jesus do?” Because Jesus--as a model for righteous behavior--has not been a consideration in the Vatican since well before Popes took up their regal residence in the Vatican palace around 500 AD. The Vatican has only ever been concerned with power and image. It’s the Vatican, after all, that in all its arrogance and grandiosity decided unilaterally in 1870 that popes are infallible. A more perfect example of nonsense and balderdash never existed. The better question would be--how would the Cosa Nostra handle such a serious problem with its Capo di Tutti Capi? Just asking...

Pope Ratz Doesn’t Give a Damn About Children

Given the facts that are now emerging about priest abuse in Germany in 1980, one can only conclude that then-Archbishop Ratzinger (who became Pope Benedict XVI in 2005) knew about the abuse of children being committed by Father Peter Hullermann and didn’t care. Or, after he sent pedophile priest Peter Hulllermann into therapy he didn’t keep apprised about the Hullermann case because he didn’t care. It’s one way or the other. But Pope Ratz didn’t care about children being abused. He cared only about the image of the Roman Catholic Church. The New York Times reported today (“Church Was Warned About Priest, Doctor Says”): “The German archdiocese led by the future Pope Benedict XVI ignored repeated warnings in the early 1980s by a psychiatrist treating a priest accused of sexually abusing boys that he should not be allowed to work with children, the psychiatrist said Thursday. ‘I said, ‘For God’s sake, he desperately has to be kept away from working with children,’ the psychiatrist, Dr. Werner Huth, said in a telephone interview from Munich. ‘I was very unhappy about the entire story.’ “Dr. Huth said he was concerned enough that he set three conditions for treating the priest, the Rev. Peter Hullermann: that he stay away from young people and alcohol and be supervised by another priest at all times. “Dr. Huth said he issued the explicit warnings — both written and oral — before the future pope, then Joseph Ratzinger, archbishop of Munich and Freising, left Germany for a position in the Vatican in 1982. “In 1980, after abuse complaints from parents in Essen that the priest did not deny, Archbishop Ratzinger approved a decision to move the priest to Munich for therapy. “Despite the psychiatrist’s warnings, Father Hullermann was allowed to return to parish work almost immediately after his therapy began, interacting with children as well as adults. Less than five years later, he was accused of molesting other boys, and in 1986 he was convicted of sexual abuse in Bavaria.” Hullermann returned to his priestly duties, which included working with children, while he was in therapy, the NYT said. He refused one-on-one therapy and consented only to be involved in group-sessions. It was reported that Hullermann was not highly motivated to change his ways and only sat in therapy sessions to ensure that he would not be sent packing from the RCC. The Vatican is now claiming that Archbishop Ratzinger was not kept in the loop, so he didn’t know Hullermann kept abusing children after Hullermann’s so-called therapy. That doesn’t fly. In 1982, as Cardinal Ratz, Ratzinger made himself head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and Ratzinger himself turned over all authority for handling abuse cases to the congregation. It was this organization that kept all matters concerning pedophile priests secret--at the direction of Cardinal Ratzinger. Pope Ratz cannot have it both ways. Either he knew about the abuse and didn’t care about the children, or he didn’t know about the abuse because he didn’t care about the children. Since it has been highly documented that as Pope John Paul II’s Enforcer, Cardinal Ratzinger was a hands-on control freak, there is no doubt that he knew all about Hullermann’s criminal activities with children. And he knew all about Dr. Huth’s recommendations. His response was to ignore the warnings and to keep reports about pedophile priests secret. The NYT also reported: “The former vicar general of the Munich archdiocese did not respond to repeated attempts to contact him for comment at home. Phone calls to the archdiocese for reaction on Thursday night were not answered. On Wednesday, speaking generally about the question of Father Hullermann’s therapy, a spokesman at the archdiocese, Bernd Oostenryck, said, ‘Thirty years ago, the subject was treated very differently in society.’” It may be true that in podunk communities around the world the subject of pedophilia was treated differently thirty years ago. But obviously, from what Dr. Huth told the New York Times, the Vatican was told by a psychiatrist thirty years ago exactly what the Vatican would be told today: you cannot let a pedophile near children under any circumstances EVER. But the Vatican, at the direction of Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, ignored it.

And That’s the Problem, Cardinal Brady

Yesterday, Cardinal Sean Brady of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland unintentionally addressed the crux of the problem of child molesters in the RCC. Brady issued an apology in Dublin for the way he handled accusations of child abuse decades ago. He said he was “ashamed” that he took part in forcing boys to sign secrecy oaths about a priest who had abused them. However, Brady said, “We had no guidance. We were in uncharted territory, and now we have higher standards, thankfully.” There you have it: THE PROBLEM! That a priest or an archbishop or a cardinal or a pope or ANYONE would feel he needs written guidance as to what his response should be when a ten-year-old is molested by a priest, is a horrendous indictment of the Roman Catholic Church. That a priest would actually force a ten-year-old to sign an oath of secrecy about being molested by another priest is unbelievable. That the Roman Catholic Church would approve of such behavior at any point in time, whether now or twenty or a thousand years ago, is a horrible condemnation of the Roman Catholic Church. Cardinal Brady said he was “not a manager and not a bishop” at the time he participated in forcing the ten-year-old to the oath of secrecy. Like that absolves him from responsibility? That is disgusting. And the Roman Catholic Church is defending its policy of keeping mum about pedophile priests by claiming that it helps to protect the victims. NO! IT DOES NOT! AND IT NEVER DID! The policy of the RCC regarding keeping pedophile priest abuses a secret has always and ONLY protected the priests and the church. Oh! And another thing. The New York Times reports today: “Some Irish church officials have said the problem has been deepened by confusion over the interpretation of a 2001 directive by (Pope) Benedict, then a cardinal, reiterating a strict requirement for secrecy in handling abuse cases. The directive also gave the authority in handling such cases to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith; Benedict was prefect of the congregation from 1982 until becoming pope in 2005.” So, when Pope Ratz was Archbishop Ratz, he not only moved pedophile priest Peter Hullermann around in Germany from Diocese to Diocese to keep Hullermann’s molesting crimes secret, but when Cardinal Ratz became "The Enforcer" for Pope John Paul II, Ratz turned over the authority for handling abuse cases to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith which he himself ruled with an iron hand. Is there any doubt about Pope Ratz’s profound, deep and long-standing involvement in protecting and shielding pedophile priests in the Roman Catholic Church? Not by me!

Pope Mouthpiece Parses Word “Responsibility”

It’s fitting that today-- St. Patrick’s Day--Pope Benedict XVI focused his weekly audience on Ireland’s priest-abuse scandal. The Pope’s comments to Ireland came a day after the Vatican acknowledged Germany’s priest-abuse scandal. The Pope said he “hoped” a forthcoming letter--which in part deals with Ireland’s priest abuse problem--would help “repentance, healing and renewal”. Good luck with that Pope Ratz, since you are the one who moved around a buggering priest in Germany and allowed him to force hundreds of young boys to service him sexually for 30 years. The facts that are coming to light about priest abuse in Germany and the then-Archbishop Ratzinger’s culpability are bad enough. But now, Msgr. Charles Scicluna, the Vatican’s internal prosecutor, is dissembling about what the word “responsibility” means as far as Ratz is concerned. And even though Archbishop Ratzinger was THE GUY who approved of moving pedophile priest Peter Hullerman from Essen to Munich and knew Hullermann was active in the Roman Catholic Church in Germany for 30 years, yesterday the Vatican forced an auxiliary bishop to take the fall for now-Pope Benedict. That is so ugly. The New York Times reported this morning that Monsignor Scicluna said, “It depends what you mean by responsible. If he was involved in the decision, he would be. If he was not involved, it’s a responsibility that comes from his office, a ‘the buck stops here’ sort of thing.’ But I think that the person concerned has already taken responsibility for what he did; the answer to that question has already been given.” Oh for God’s sake! The Pope and his lawyers are total unrepentant weasels! I gagged when Andrew Young took the fall for John Edwards and said he was the father of Rielle Hunter’s baby. (At least Young finally told the truth.) But for the Pope to have his mouthpiece parse the word responsible and then for the Vatican to make an underling falsely confess...PULLEEZE!!!! I will now discharge my bounden duty to be The Reminder. Remember that all the problems the US and the world are facing today is because of crimes and misdemeanors of the Bush administration. And remember that the office of Pope has a woeful track recorder. In the past, Popes have committed murder, Popes have had all manner of sex in the Vatican, Popes have been engaged in money laundering for the Mafia, and a Pope was a Nazi-sympathizer. Look it up for yourselves. There is no more reason to expect ethical behavior from a Pope than to expect ethical behavior from Karl Rove.

Pope Ratz Personally Hid Molester’s Abuses

Oh this is a fine howdoyoudo! It turns out that Archbishop/Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, was the one who allowed Father Hullermann of the Archdiocese of Essen to be transferred to the Archdiocese of Munich. So, not only did Pope Ratz know about the abuse, the New York Times reported today that it was Archbishop Joseph Ratzinger who reviewed the case of accused molester Father Hullermann and Ratzinger personally allowed Hullermann to transfer from the Diocese of Essen to the Diocese of Munich and continue molesting boys. One of the charges against Hullermann in Essen was that he forced an 11-year-old boy to perform oral sex. And now after 30 years of abusing boys and after hundreds of victims have come forward, the priest, Peter Hullermann, as of yesterday has finally been suspended from his priestly duties. From the NYT article, the level of ignorance in the Roman Catholic Church about pedophilia is stunning. People were quoted as saying Hullermann was down to earth and popular, that he was “loving and appropriate” with children, that “if we can no longer believe in forgiving sins, we might as well close the whole store.” It’s not about whether Father Peter Hullermann seemed sweet and kind, it’s not about forgiving sins. It’s about the fact that a pedophile cannot be cured. A pedophile can NEVER be around children. It’s about the fact that after being convicted of sexually abusing minors in 1986, this priest was given an 18-month suspended sentence with five years of probation, fined 4,000 marks and was returned to priestly duties with no oversight whatsoever regarding his working with children. And the person who allowed this man to abuse children for 30 years is Pope Benedict XVI. It’s impossible to find an analogous situation to explain to people what returning pedophiles to priestly duties with children is like. Because it’s like nothing else. It’s not like hiring a convicted bank-robber to work in a bank, because no bank would hire a convicted bank-robber and besides he wouldn’t be harming children. It’s not like hiring a recovering alcoholic to tend bar, because some can do it successfully and besides, they wouldn’t be harming children. When the Roman Catholic Church knowingly allows pedophile priests to continue to work in the church with children, the church has also committed the crime. The church is aiding and abetting. The church is a criminal. And let us be clear, pedophilia has nothing whatsoever to do with homosexuality. If a pedophile is also homosexual, it’s a coincidence because 85% of pedophiles are straight. What is mind-boggling about this case and the Pope is that Pope Benedict is adamant about homosexuality in the church--it is not to be tolerated, although it harms no one. And yet pedophile priests who cause lifelong injury and harm to children are coddled and protected by this Pope.

Pope Ratz and Brother Ratz

When the now-Pope Benedict XVI was just lowly Cardinal Ratzinger—better known as Pope John Paul II’s Enforcer--he said that the buggering of little boys in the Roman Catholic Church was “an American problem”. Now it turns out that Cardinal Ratz not only allowed a buggering priest in his Archdiocese in Munich in 1980 to return to pastoral duties after a period of bogus therapy but the offending priest went on to commit further abuses. AND Pope Ratz’s brother Ratz, Msgr. Georg Ratsinger was slapping kids around in a choir he directed in a German boarding school from 1964 to 1994. Not only that, two students in that boarding school have come forward with abuse claims. On Friday, the New York Times reported: “Experts said the scandals could undermine Benedict’s moral authority, especially because they cut particularly close to the pope himself. As head of the Vatican’s main doctrinal arm, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, he led Vatican investigations into abuse for 4 years before assuming the papacy in 2005. “What is at stake, and at great risk, is Benedict’s central project for the ‘re-Christianization’ of Christendom, his desire to have Europe return to its Christian roots,” said David Gibson, the author of a biography of Benedict and a religion commentator for Politicsdaily.com. ‘But if the root itself is seen as rotten, then his influence will be badly compromised.’” So much for abuse in the RCC being an American problem. The NYT also said, “The scandal is not limited to Germany. This week, two dioceses in Austria suspended five priests pending investigations into allegations they had molested students. The church in the Netherlands has said it would open an investigation after more than 200 people came forward in recent weeks.” The Pope’s apologists are saying, of course, that he didn’t know any of this was going on. NONSENSE! As John Paul’s Enforcer, Ratz knew EVERYTHING about JPII's realm and dynasty. And JPII knew all about the abuse and molesting going on in churches and church schools around the world. What I don’t understand is why these big-time moral authority guys (read, all the Popes) can’t man-up and admit when they are wrong or when they’ve made major bad decisions. Popes, without exception, weasel out. Naturally, Pope Ratz has put JPII up for sainthood. When I hear of these guys in the God-business who have made huge moral mistakes being beatified and canonized, I always think of Livia in “I Claudius” (so wonderfully played by Sian Phillips) begging to be made a goddess, after all her shenanigans, murders, and nasty double-dealing. It's as though they believe, as Livia did, that if they can sit on Mount Olympus they won't have to face up to Judgment Day.

The Truth About Scientology...Again

Simple logic makes it difficult for many of us to believe in religions that are under 200 years old. And yet, Mormon founder con-artist Joseph Smith bamboozled enough people in 1826 to believe in a religion brought to him by an angel named Moroni, that today Mormons are still finding plenty of new converts. Whether the angel took those gold plates back to a realm far-far away named Moron, is not known. And nutcase Escriva de Balaguer of Spain started the Roman Catholic cult Opus Dei in 1928. It had strange practices including daily mortification with a whip and the requirement that devotees turn over all their worldly goods and assets to the cult. By the 1990’s word was leaking out about intimidation, forced labor, and Opus Dei members being kept prisoner. Nevermind, Pope John Paul II had Balaguer canonized in 2002. In 1954, Sci-Fi writer, L. Ron Hubbard cynically started a cult called Scientology which he later admitted was a hoax. And although exposes are routinely mounted regarding this religion, the warnings seemingly are never heeded. Hubbard was so crafty that he said he had in fact started Scientology to bilk the gullible, but then, to his amazement, all of his writings turned out to be the truth. In 1982, L. Ron’s son, L. Ron Hubbard, Jr., was interviewed on “20/20” telling horror stories about Scientology and his admitted role in its heinous practices. And in June of 1983, “Penthouse” magazine printed a 9000-word interview with Hubbard, Jr. about the inner workings of Scientology and its Nazi-like shenanigans. But either no one was listening, or, as detractors have alleged, people were scared to speak out lest they be punished or killed. In any case, Scientology is still alive and well. Yesterday, the New York Times printed a 2600-word article, “Defectors Say Church of Scientology Hides Abuse”. People who have left Scientology (and it ain’t easy) are now able to access Internet sites that cater to Scientology defectors who are disillusioned and broke. They are all talking to each other and publicly spilling the beans. So let's hope people are finally listening and that Scientology’s methods of intimidation and scare tactics no longer work. May I say that I absolutely believe every word ever printed about the evils of Scientology. I also believe that Scientology’s prime propagandists John Travolta and Tom Cruise are so frightened of what the church’s enforcers will put in print about them--all of which would be true because taped confessions are part of Scientology’s “auditing” methods and they are archived just in case of defection—and they are toeing the party line until death them do part. Scientology morphed from being a laughably on-the-cheap do-it-yourself psychotherapy system in 1954, into having mega-buck centers and opulent so-called churches around the world. I remember seeing pictures of the original e-meters that looked like nothing more complicated than two cans on a string. After years of living on a boat, being on the run, fleeing from tax audits, fraud claims, being addicted to drugs, sex and his own self-aggrandizement, L. Ron Hubbard died on a ranch in California in 1986. David Miscavige, who now controls Scientology, said of L. Ron Hubbard in 1987 that Hubbard had deliberately discarded his body to conduct his research in spirit form and was now living on a planet a galaxy away. L. Ron, Jr., who used the pseudonym Ron DeWolf for years because he was scared of what Scientology might do to him, made a big bucks settlement with Scientology in 1986 in order to pay his medical bills. He signed papers prepared by Scientology, retracted things he’d said previously and agreed to comment no further. He died in 1991. Yesterday's NYT article about Scientology is very good. The “Penthouse” article which can still be accessed on the Internet—“Penthouse Interview With L. Ron Hubbard, Jr.”-- is an eye-popper. Miscavige and everyone who has anything to lose by negative Scientology PR, say all the negative stories are a pack of lies. They say the folks who have defected and have lost years of their lives and all of their money are liars. Film director Paul Haggis who was in Scientology for years says he has now come to believe that what the defectors say is the truth. If Nancy Cartwright (the voice of Bart Simpson) ever pulls her earnings out of Scientology, the whole house of cards may tumble down. Maybe she, Tom Cruise and John Travolta at long last will have the guts to defect.

Washington Post Headline aTad Overstated

This morning, the Washington Post featured this head: “Democrats’ Ethical Lapses Could Threaten Hold on Power” In the first place, the Democrats haven’t had a “hold” on power since the Clinton era. When Obama became president, the Democrats merely gave the nation a chance to bring to an end the deadly stranglehold the Republicans had on the federal government. But secondly, even if the Dems had a hold on power, how come the recent ethical lapses in the Democrat Party were endangering that hold? For eight years, from 2000 through 2008, the Republican Party’s egregious ethical lapses did not threaten its hold on power. And those ethical lapses were not the puny ones the WP is referring to today in the Democrat Party. The Republican Party’s ethical lapses included an unnecessary war in Iraq; granting unheard of powers to the executive branch of government; lies and cheating in the Justice Department; lies and cheating in the State Department; lies and cheating in the Defense Department. When the WP talks about the Democrat’s gaining the upper hand, it is referring to the Dems’ reclaiming control of Congress in 2006. However, the Repubs’ never turned loose its control of the federal government until Obama was elected. Which control, let us be clear, was gained by the Repub’s using illegal means of coercion, wiretapping, threats, blackmail, and giving itself wartime powers never intended to be used when the US mainland was not threatened by war. And even the WP had to admit that the ethical lapses it referred to were “not as severe” as the Repubs’ lapses--Jack Abramoff going to jail, for one, and Mark Foley putting the make on Senate pages, for another. But let’s face it, the media seems to be only too willing to jump on the Repub bandwagon when the party cries “foul” or makes up bogus charges. It’s as though the media is still scared to death the Repubs will exact retribution if it doesn’t toe the GOP party line.

How Do We Know Karl Rove Is Lying?

First, as is my wont, and, as I see it, my duty, let me remind you: Everything that is going wrong right now in the world, in the USA, in your city, in my city and in our back yards is due to the malfeasance, misconduct, and crimes of the Bush administrations from 2000 through 2008. Do not forget that. There, that done, back to Karl Rove. Karl Rove, the man with the title of being President George W. Bush’s senior adviser and deputy chief of staff during the Bush years, has just come out with a book, “Courage and Consequence: My Life as a Conservative in the Fight”. Now let’s all stop being coy and acting like we didn’t know what was going on while GWB held the title “president”. For eight years, Karl Rove was the president of the United States. So when Rove writes a book which is a defense of George W. Bush’s presidency, Rove is defending himself. And how do we know there are major lies in Rove’s book? The book is by Karl Rove, what other evidence do we need? But also, Rove is telling the same lies he told while he was president and, according to the review in the New York Times this morning by Peter Baker, apparently Rove has added some new lies. “For the most part,” Baker writes of Rove’s memoir, “his book is an unapologetic defense of Mr. Bush and his presidency, and takes aim at Democrats, the news media and others for what he describes as hypocrisy, deceit and vanity.” According to Baker, Rove writes that “the White House” genuinely believed the reports about Weapons of Mass Destruction. He asks and answers the question, “Would the Iraq War have occurred without W.M.D.? I doubt it...Congress was very unlikely to have supported the use-of-force resolution without the W.M.D. threat. The Bush administration itself would probably have sought other ways to constrain Saddam, bring about regime change, and deal with Iraq’s horrendous human rights violations.” No, Mr. Rove, that last sentence is total sophistry—it sounds plausible but it is total bullshit. The first goal of the Bush administration was to take over Iraq by force. The second goal of the Bush administration was to kill Saddam Hussein because he was powerful. The rhetoric about regime change and human rights violations was thrown into the mix to justify attacking a small country that the US feared might pose a threat in the future and whose oil we wanted immediately. When Rove says “the White House” he means Karl Rove and Rove’s minions. But even if he meant George W. Bush, it rings hollow. GWB could not and did not think a cogent thought for eight years, due to being an idiot and to his medications for, among other things, being an idiot. Rove asks and answers two more questions: “So, then, did Bush lie us into war? Absolutely not.” Baker reports that Rove says the White House had only a “weak response” to the harmful allegation, which became “a poison-tipped dagger aimed at the heart of the Bush presidency.” “So who was responsible for the failure to respond? I was. I should have stepped forward, rung the warning bell and pressed for full-scale response. I didn’t. Preoccupied with the coming campaign and the pressure of the daily schedule in the West Wing, I did not see how damaging this assault was.” Oh please! That’s not the point. The point is, and Rove should have said, “I did not see how damaging this assault was to my plan. I thought we’d bamboozled the entire world." Dubya supposedly is writing a memoir called “Decisions”. But it’s not out yet. The ghostwriters no doubt needed to see how the ventriloquist would rewrite history before tackling the dummy’s version. Now that Rove’s book is out, The Decider’s deciders can decide which lies to print and which lies to let lie.

Frank Rich, David Barstow...And a Nutty World

As usual, the New York Times op/ed column by Frank Rich this morning (“The Axis of the Obsessed and Deranged”) was easy reading. It was about the Republican Tea Party. And because Rich mentioned David Barstow’s “chilling” investigation of the Tea Party--Barstow’s NYT article (“Tea Party Lights Fuse for Rebellion on Right”) was printed in the NYT on February 16th—I downloaded the Barstow piece. It was not easy reading. Not because the writing is turgid...quite the opposite, the writing is clear and a very good read. But the subject matter is hard to get through. Although there are, of course, sane and thoughtful people who have allied themselves with the Tea Party because of frustration with the current lack of leadership and disorganization in the Republican Party. But a majority of the Tea Party constituents are (as Dorothy Rabinowitz noted in the Wall Street Journal) “conspiracy theorists, anti-government zealots, 9/11 truthers and other cadres of the obsessed and deranged”. And that’s hard to read about. Barstow says, “the Tea Party movement has become a platform for conservative populist discontent”. But it’s also a lunatic fringe dump site where proponents of militias taking over Washington, DC meet with “No Government Whatsoever” nutcases and talk about the morality and beauty of dying for one’s country and say things like, “I’m cleaning my guns and getting ready for the big show”, “you’re either with us or you’re the enemy”, and they chew over the possibility of fighting “another civil war”. And underneath all the rhetoric and bombast, under all the gun-totin’ bluster and ill-thought-out mechanics of getting rid of all government agencies is the very real racism that still exists in the United States. One faction of the Tea Party is a core of folks who despise Barack Obama just because he is black and who want to have done with all government because we now have a black president who has tainted our government forever. It’s not as though the Tea Party has co-opted the Republican Party and has an agenda for a plan to democratically change things. The Tea Party's point is that they have guns, they are pissed and they will use their arms to make their point if given half the chance. Recently, Louis Menand noted in an article in the “The New Yorker” magazine about mental illness and the trend of mental health professionals toward pathologizing depression, that being depressed is not a disease but a very sane response to a crazy world. The emergence of the Tea Party is major evidence of how crazy our world is.