Religion should be a crime.

 

Penn and Teller - The Vatican (Full Episode)

This is a full 28-minute show produced for Showtime and is commercial free.

About what we expect anymore

Pope’s Advisor Arrested

from The J-Walk Blog

A nice juicy Catholic Church scandal: Priest Sex-Abuse Case in Archdiocese of Benedict's Adviser.

The latest sex-abuse case to rock the Catholic Church is unfolding in the archdiocese of an influential Italian Cardinal who has been working with Pope Benedict XVI on reforms to respond to prior scandals of pedophile priests.
Father Riccardo Seppia, a 51-year-old parish priest in the village of Sastri Ponente, near Genoa, was arrested last Friday, May 13, on pedophilia and drug charges. Investigators say that in tapped mobile-phone conversations, Seppia asked a Moroccan drug dealer to arrange sexual encounters with young and vulnerable boys.
"I do not want 16-year-old boys but younger. Fourteen-year-olds are O.K. Look for needy boys who have family issues," he allegedly said. Genoa Archbishop Angelo Bagnasco, who is the head of the Italian Bishops Conference, had been working with Benedict to establish a tough new worldwide policy, released this week, on how bishops should handle accusations of priestly sex abuse.

C'mon, Catholics. Just walk away. Sure, the Catholics have nice ceremonies, but the organization is run by a bunch of criminal thugs. We all make mistakes. And yours was choosing the same religion as your parents because you didn't even think about it. Nobody in their right mind would actually decide to be a Catholic. People are Catholic by default.

There was this debate...

There was this debate, before an audience, on the added value that the Catholic Church brings to society. After the debate, the viewing audience was polled as to who won the debate. As you can see - the Catholic church did not improve it's image - nor will it any time its activities are studied carefully by reasonable people.

Open Ended Condoms

From Acerbic Politics

Catholic Church Becoming Politically Active

Catholic Church gives D.C. ultimatum.

The Catholic Archdiocese of Washington said Wednesday that it will be unable to continue the social service programs it runs for the District if the city doesn't change a proposed same-sex marriage law, a threat that could affect tens of thousands of people the church helps with adoption, homelessness and health care.

Under the bill, headed for a D.C. Council vote next month, religious organizations would not be required to perform or make space available for same-sex weddings. But they would have to obey city laws prohibiting discrimination against gay men and lesbians.

Fearful that they could be forced, among other things, to extend employee benefits to same-sex married couples, church officials said they would have no choice but to abandon their contracts with the city.

"If the city requires this, we can't do it," Susan Gibbs, spokeswoman for the archdiocese, said Wednesday. "The city is saying in order to provide social services, you need to be secular. For us, that's really a problem."

For God So Hates The People He Created That He Condemns Them All To Hell

From Reuters via the J-Walk blog...

Vatican officials seldom single out political leaders who differ with the Church on issues like abortion rights or embryonic stem cell research. But now that the Vatican’s highest court is led by an American, the former St. Louis Archbishop Raymond Burke, we can expect things to get more explicit in Vatican City — at least when when it comes to U.S. politics.

Burke, who was named prefect of the Vatican’s Supreme Court of the Apostolic Signature in June, told the Italian Catholic newspaper Avvenire that the U.S. Democratic Party risked “transforming itself definitively into a party of death for its decisions on bioethical issues.” He then attacked two of the party’s most high profile Catholics — vice presidential candidate Joe Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi — for misrepresenting Church teaching on abortion.

He said Biden and Pelosi, “while presenting themselves as good Catholics, have presented Church doctrine on abortion in a false and tendentious way.”

Sigh - and this is the sort of mindset that wants to start wars and blow people to kingdom come. An over abiding sense of righteousness.