”In two blows to church-state separation, Justices Breyer and Kagan joined the conservative majority on the Supreme Court in granting even more preferential treatment to religious bodies. In one case, the court gave the green light to religious employers to apply the “ministerial exemption” to pretty much any employee; a teacher is a coach is …
(This post is a bit longer than usual, but the injustice is so troublesome that I wanted to reproduce it; one won’t find it easily in the American media): Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP) decries the Israeli government’s intended annexation of significant parts of the occupied West Bank (to start this coming Wednesday), for the …
The leaders of the Greek Orthodox Church have formally warned adherents against taking up yoga. The practice, they say, is “completely incompatible” with the Christian faith. In a statement last week, the church’s Holy Synod (the Patriarch and the most senior bishops) cautioned that yoga is not “a kind of physical exercise”, but rather a …
Horrific killing Iran’s President Rouhani has ordered his government to speed up new laws to increase the penalties for “honour killings”, following the murder of Romina Ashrafi (pictured), a 14-year-old girl who’d run away with her 29-year-old boyfriend. In a case that has appalled Iranians, Ashrafi’s father is suspected of beheading her with a sickle …
If you haven’t read it Stephen Greenblatt’s book, “The Swerve: How the World Became Modern”, do try to find time to do so. It a very readable. It introduces the modern reader to the most famous of Epicurean books, de rerum natura of Lucretius. Greenblatt’s book, which won several prestigious awards, is contentious because it pictures …
A robot priest has been installed at a 400-year-old temple in Kyoto. Costing almost £800,000, the android Kannon is 6ft 5ins tall and is modelled on the Buddhist deity of mercy. “With AI, we hope it will grow in wisdom to help people overcome even the most difficult troubles,” says Tensho Goto, a priest at …
Norma McCorvey, who died in 2017, was the plaintiff known as Jane Roe in the 1973 landmark supreme court case Roe v Wade that led to abortion becoming legal in the United States, made, it turns out, a stunning deathbed confession. In a new FX documentary McCorvey admits that her infamous reversal on abortion rights …
Continue reading ‘Abortion: the ruthless scam connected with Roe v Wade’ »
Pastor Rich Vera, who runs a church in Florida, says he believes that faith can stop the coronavirus. He is one of a vocal minority of Christians in America who feel it’s appropriate to gather to worship despite US federal advice to stay home, and who supports protests against the restrictions in place to try …
I have resurrected the following two year old news item because it has relevance for Epicureanism, the rights of women and the irrationality of outdated religious practice: “A national conversation is needed in Sweden about “where the limits of religious freedom lie”. Judging by the stunt in 2018, pulled by the conservative newspaper Göteborgs-Posten, it …
Brazil’s far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, called for a national day of fasting and prayer last Sunday, to “free Brazil from this evil” of coronavirus. Bolsonaro’s popularity has plunged recently, owing to his refusal to take seriously the threat of Covid-19. However, he retains strong support among Brazil’s large community of evangelical Christians, and he has …
Continue reading ‘Bolsonaro and the Brazilian evangelicals’ »
Earlier this year, In a rare public intervention, the Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI issued a stout defence of priestly celibacy – just as Pope Francis was considering lifting the restriction on married priests in some circumstances, in particular, the ordination of married men in the Amazon region, where there is a severe shortage. Francis, who has …
Reader: I know someone who, when she attends luncheons (both business and social), always announces she is a Christian and then asks people around her, “Would you be offended if I pray before the meal?” Often, she gets the attention of the entire group, and invariably they allow her to say grace without protest, regardless …
Continue reading ‘A Humanist dilemma: a letter to the local newspaper’ »
“……..Virtuous people find it difficult to believe that such evil exists on earth. It’s proponents, moreover, often proclaim (if they have a degree of intelligence) teachings that are designed purposefully to win others to their side: teachings like “the greatest good for the greatest number” and “each according to his need, from each according to …
From the Washington Post Much white evangelical support for President Trump is based on a bargain or transaction: political loyalty (and political cover for the president’s moral flaws) in return for protection from a hostile culture. Many evangelicals are fearful that courts and government regulators will increasingly treat their moral and religious convictions as varieties …
Continue reading ‘Evangelical support wanes among young people’ »
We concentrate on the obvious places where dictators thrive and warfare kills thousands, but tend not to note the stress experienced by the people of Greenland, who are struggling to cope with global warming, which is totally altering their way of life. More than 90% of Greenlanders accept that the climate is changing, while 76% are …
From the New York Times: Many of the people who have worked for President Trump have ended up “diminished” or humiliated in some way. To that long list we can now add a new name: John Bolton. Trump’s national security adviser won the role by impressing the president with his regular bellicose contributions to Fox …
Continue reading ‘A humiliating way to treat an old warmonger’ »
In Poland a simple poster distributed by an LGBT activist featuring an image of the Virgin Mary with a rainbow halo has got Catholic leaders in a lather. Elzbieta Podlesna allegedly put up the posters near a church to protest an anti-gay Easter message that denounced words like “LGBT” and “gender” as “aggressive” and “deviant”. …
Lawmakers in Alabama have passed a bill that virtually bans abortion. The legislation, to be signed by the state’s Republican governor, outlaws abortion except in cases where the pregnancy poses a “serious health risk to the mother”, the “unborn child has a lethal anomaly”, or the pregnancy is ectopic (in an abnormal place or position). …
In the early church nearly all Christian priests were married. Popes tried to ban marriage and co- habitation, but to little effect. Pope Gregory the Great (590-604) said that all sexual desire is sinful in itself (meaning that sexual desire is intrinsically evil?), but right up to the 800’s the majority of priests were nonetheless married. …
Only 40% of adults in the United States believe evolution to be “true”. A third of American adults positively believe it to be false, presumably believing that God delivered man and woman, fully formed, to the Garden of Eden five thousand years ago, as per one of the Hebrew creation myths (there were two of …
Some 380 Southern Baptist pastors, ministers, Sunday school teachers, deacons and church volunteers have been accused of sex offenses over the last twenty years. 700 victims have come forward, the youngest only three years old. One hundred are still in prison and one hundred are registered sex offenders and at least thirty-five have been allowed …
White House press secretary Sarah Sanders kicked up dust recently when she told the Christian television network CBN that she believed that God wanted Donald Trump to be president. “I think God calls all of us to fill different roles at different times,” she said, “and I think that he wanted Donald Trump to become …
Both Vice-president Pence and Mike Pompeo are active evangelicals, believing in the whole evangelical package, including the so-called rapture, a final battle between good and evil, and the second coming of Jesus, when the faithful will ascend to heaven and the rest of us will go to hell. One of the preconditions for this event …
At the Second Lateran Council 1139 Rome imposed mandatory celibacy for priests. The issue was money because, under primogeniture (now disappeared) the sons of bishops and priests had a legal claim on the land and holdings of the priestly “living.” Celibacy was instituted, but at the same time the Church, not then or since, has …
In an interview published on Wednesday evening by Religion Digital, the religious portal of the Spanish-language news site Periodista Digital, Cardinal Maradiaga once again strongly criticized Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò for having gone public about McCarrick’s sexual predations and the protection the Cardinal received from the highest spheres in the Vatican, especially since Pope Francis …
Continue reading ‘The scandal in the Catholic church goes from bad to overwhelming’ »
