News From Spain: Exorcism

I think yer man and I are equally unimpressed with the Catholic Church's mumbo jumbo, but unlike myself, he takes the piss far more subtly than I ever would.

This is not the first time that exorcism, and Father Gabriele Amorth, has received my attention. Links below.

Exorcist squad hired to fight Satan in Madrid
Steve Tallantyre
24 May 2013

The church has selected eight recruits who will undergo special training to combat what has been described as an "unprecedented rise" in cases of "demonic possession".

The Cardinal Archbishop of Madrid, Antonio María Rouco Varela, has taken the unprecedented step of selecting eight priests to lock horns with Satan as expert exorcists.

Press agency EFE reports that the exorcists' specialist ghostbuster training will be led by Cesar Franco, one of the Spanish capital's three auxiliary bishops.

According to online website 'Religious Freedom', the decision was taken personally by Archbishop Rouco Valera to meet an avalanche of requests for help from the faithful to fight their otherworldly foe.

Many alleged victims of demonic possession and evil influence claim to have opened the gateway to hell with occult practices such as black magic, palmistry, Ouija boards and fortune telling.

Sources close to the Archbishop would confirm only that the issue is "being studied".

No priests are currently licensed to perform exorcisms in the Madrid area, and all would-be banishers of evil must be personally approved by the Archbishop himself.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church states that : "When the Church asks publicly and authoritatively in the name of Jesus Christ that a person or object be protected against the power of the Evil One and withdrawn from his dominion, it is called exorcism."

Church rules say that a "Major Exorcism" can only be performed by a priest authorized by the bishop.

Seasoned exorcists are said to begin with the textbook Rituale Romanum but improvise somewhat once the tête-à-tête with Satan is underway.

Author José María Zavala, whose book, 'This is how you beat the Devil', will be used to train the rookie damned-busters, said that only 18 active exorcists are currently registered in Spain.

Zavala named Father Salvador Hernández Ramón of Cartagena in Murcia, as the Spanish priest generally considered most fit to battle Beelzebub after years of doing regular exorcise routines around the country .

He noted: "Father Salvador spent a year in Rome exorcising with Father Gabriele Amorth. Father Salvador is the top exorcist in Spain, very famous within the church but barely known outside it." The Local Spain's news in English

The Devil Made Me Do It. But Isn't it the 21st Century? Catholic sex abuse scandals are 'evidence the Devil is in the Vatican', says Pope's chief exorcist (How convenient the "Evil One" not pervy priests) Link

Buggery Club To Start Witch Hunt Pope's exorcist squads will wage war on Satan Link

Gang Membership Cards For Catholics?

Card-carrying Catholics

Catholics are being encouraged to carry a 'faith card'. Could it catch on?
by Nelson Jones
02 February 2012



I'm intrigued by the proposal, revealed yesterday by the Telegraph's Martin Beckford, to issue all one million regularly practising Catholics in England and Wales with credit-card-sized "faith cards". One side carries a quote from the recently beatified John Henry Newman, while the other lists six things that good Catholics ought to do (number one is to share the faith, incidentally) and carries the injunction, "in the event of an emergency please contact a Catholic priest."

I assume that this refers to a medical emergency, rather than to a sudden crisis of faith or to a difficulty encountered while trying to explain the finer points of the doctrine of transubstantiation to an incredulous atheist.

Launching the scheme, Bishop Kieran Conry put the card in the context of modern society, in which it is common to carry cards "which reflect something of our identity and the things that are important to us." But it would surely have appealed to the fifteenth century Franciscan preacher St Bernardino of Siena, who used to carry around a plaque inscribed with an IHS logo, the better to impress congregations with reverence for the name of Jesus. He's now the patron saint of advertising.



According to the bishop, the card will remind Catholics of their faith and encourage them to share it. It isn't, though, a membership card. There's no suggestion that it would be necessary to show it before receiving communion in an unfamiliar church, for example. Perhaps they're missing a trick, there. Given the complexity and specificity of the rules surrounding who is and isn't permitted to receive the sacrament, it might be considered surprising that the system continues to function largely on trust. A smart card would provide an excellent way of keeping track of which Catholics were in good standing with the Church, as well as preventing Anglicans from surreptitiously availing themselves of communion, as Tony Blair used to do while he was prime minister.

Nor is it, yet, a loyalty card, although I can imagine enterprising Catholic-friendly businesses offering discounts to its bearers. It's not uncommon, after all, for some clubs and societies to negotiate discounts on behalf of their members, or universities on behalf of their alumni, while many businesses spontaneously offer discounts to students, pensioners or local residents. At a time when the Catholic Church is seriously worried about falling congregations (the pope himself warning the other day that "in large parts of the world the faith is in danger of dying out like a flame that has no more sustenance") some such incentive scheme might prove useful.

More seriously,...... more

See full text for significance.

Child Rape Penn State Catholic Church ''Everyone's doing it''

They may well be, but that hardly makes it right.

In one with which I am in total agreement, the writer argues throughout the article that reality and the behavioural safeguards that it keeps in place, all but disappear when the incredible, in the form of religion, takes precedent to become the guiding light and the moral compass of its adherents.

What was it that Orwell said, ''As with the Christian religion, the worst advertisement for Socialism is its adherents''

Yes quite, he also said, ''One cannot really be a Catholic and grown up'' although I feel he did a disservice to the truth by singling out Catholicism, rather he might have said, one cannot really be religious and grown up.

The free pass we atheists, we realists, are expected to afford those that embrace the most preposterous beliefs, is quite frankly far beyond the pale. I'm not going list even a few of the thousands of bizarre beliefs that we are asked to respect the believer for, suffice to say, were the ''religious'' tag not attached to ridiculous articles of faith, then half the world would be in the asylum.

Perhaps a better quote might have been, one cannot be a realist and religious. The two are totally incompatible. And it this point that the writer repeatably makes throughout her essay. If religion becomes your reality and the ''law'' of a deity takes precedent of the laws of man, then all things become possible in the unreal world that these people have chosen to create.



Child Rape, Penn State and the Catholic Church: Is Religion Especially Bad?

The child rape scandal at Penn State raises inevitable comparisons with the Catholic Church. Does religion make these kinds of abuses worse?
By Greta Christina
November 22, 2011

I can't be the only person who heard about the Penn State child rape scandal and thought, "Holy crap -- it's just like the Catholic Church." The abuse of power by a trusted authority figure; the coverup by people in authority; the unwillingness of witnesses to speak out; the grotesque, morally bankrupt defenses of a beloved institution by its followers... all of it is depressingly familiar.

And I can't be the only critic of religion who's been wondering, "Hmm. If Penn State has been acting like the Catholic Church... then did the Catholic Church child rape scandal actually have anything to do with religion?"

I still think it does. But it's a complicated question. Let's take a closer look.

Apologists for the Catholic Church and its role in the extensive child rape scandal often use the "But everyone else does it!" defense. "Priests aren't the only people in positions of trust and power over children who abuse that power," they say. "Parents, relatives, teachers, babysitters, coaches -- they rape children as well. It's all terrible... but it's unfair to single out the Catholic Church as if it were special."

Atheists and other critics of the Church typically respond to this defense -- after tearing their hair out and screaming -- by pointing out: The rapes aren't the scandal. The coverup is the scandal. The rapes of children are a horrible tragedy. The scandal is the fact that the Catholic Church hid the rapes, and protected the child-raping priests from discovery and prosecution: lying to law enforcement, concealing evidence, paying off witnesses, moving child-raping priests from diocese to diocese so they could rape a whole new batch of children in a place where they wouldn't be suspected. The scandal is the fact that it wasn't just a few individuals in the ranks who protected and enabled the child-raping priests: it was large numbers of Church officials, including high-ranking officials, acting as a cold-blooded matter of Church policy. The scandal is the fact that the Church treated their own stability and reputation as a higher priority than, for fuck's sake, children not being raped.

And many critics of religion have concluded that the nature of religion itself is largely to blame for this scandal. They have argued that religion's lack of any sort of reality check, and its belief in a perfect supernatural moral authority that transcends mere human concerns, makes religious institutions like the Catholic Church far more vulnerable to abuses of this kind.

By some strange coincidence the original photo in the article is the exact same one as this from my archives. Well perhaps not exactly the same, as I'm sure the sharper eyed among might discern.

I've made this argument myself. And in my own writings on this subject, I've asked what I thought was a rhetorical question: "If these scandals had taken place in any organization other than a religious one -- would you still be part of it? If it were your political party, your softball league, your university, your children's school, your employer? Would you still be part of it? Would you still pay your league dues and show up for softball night? Would you still pay your tuition and send your kids off to the school every day? Or would you be walking out in moral outrage?"

But it seems that this question wasn't so rhetorical. It seems that, at least sometimes, the answer to that question is, "Yup -- we'd be defending our school."

At least sometimes, the answer is, "If we see our coach raping a child -- we won't alert the police. If we're in positions of authority in a school and we hear reports about our coach raping a child -- we won't alert the police, and we won't investigate. And if we hear that a coach at our school raped children, and that the authorities at the school knew about it and didn't alert the police or investigate, we will become outraged -- not at the fact that the rapes occurred, not at the fact that the witnesses and school authorities did nothing, but at what we see as unfair treatment of the perpetrators, and at the very fact that the media is covering it."

Clearly, defending the indefensible is not unique to religion.

Clearly, institutions centered on something other than a belief in the supernatural are perfectly capable of inspiring this grotesquely contorted form of loyalty. This unwillingness to believe that the people and institutions we admire could do anything that vile; this ability to rationalize actions we would normally find thoroughly despicable when we've made a commitment to the people who perpetrated them... this clearly isn't just about religion. This is about the more fucked-up directions that the human brain can go in.

So I want to take a step back. I want to be rigorous, and ask: Is there anything special about the child rape scandal in the Catholic Church? Does the fact that the Catholic Church is a religious organization have any effect on how the child rape scandal has been playing out for them? Is there any real difference between the child rape scandal in the Catholic Church, and the child rape scandal at Penn State?

I've been looking at this hard. And I'll acknowledge that I don't think the difference is as great as I'd originally thought. The degree to which many students and supporters of Penn State have behaved like blind religious zealots has, quite frankly, shocked me.

But I still think there is a difference. There are non-trivial differences between these two scandals: differences of degree, and differences of kind. I want to look carefully at those differences and at whether religion has any part in how the Catholic Church has behaved, and continues to behave, when it comes to the rape of children.

How Much Worse Was It?

1: Scope. At Penn State, one man, former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky, has been charged with the rape of seven children. In the Catholic Church, over 4,000 priests raped over 10,000 children. According to conservative estimates. The actual numbers are likely to be much higher.

And at Penn State, about eight school officials and staff members are currently thought (according to grand jury records) to have turned a blind eye to the alleged rapes. In the Catholic Church, the Church officials who either ignored the rapes or deliberately acted to conceal them number in the hundreds -- going all the way up into the top echelons of the Church hierarchy.

That is a huge freaking difference. To be comparable in scope to the Catholic Church child rape scandal, the Penn State scandal would have to extend to multiple major universities across the country, with a deliberate campaign of concealment extending throughout the Association of American Universities and into the top levels of the Department of Education. And as appalling as the recent events at Penn State are, that's clearly not what we're looking at.

Have non-religious institutions sheltered and defended child rapists? Yes. But have any of them done so on anywhere near the scale that the Catholic Church has? Not to my knowledge.

And it's hard to see religion as irrelevant to that. Religion is uniquely unfalsifiable -- and it thus has a unique lack of any sort of reality check. And most religions have a belief in a perfect moral authority, and a belief that it understands the wishes of that moral authority and knows the right way to interpret them. So because of this lack of reality check, and because of this belief in a perfect supernatural moral authority that trumps human morality, religious institutions have a uniquely powerful armor against any sort of criticism or self-correction. And because of that armor, appalling situations -- like the widespread rape of children by priests -- have the capacity to spin wildly out of control, with a scope that's hard to imagine in secular institutions.

2: Duration. As far as we know, the alleged rapes of children by Sandusky at Penn State, and the conspiracy of silence about them, have been going on since about 1996. The rapes of children by Catholic priests had been going on for decades -- possibly centuries -- before people finally began talking about them. Go to page three.

Ratzinger The Nasty Nazi A Brief History

According to some (apologist) Russian.

It's a read if nothing else.

Could Pope Benedict XVI be a Nazi?
by Arthur Priymak
08.11.2011

.....When Joseph and Georg Ratzinger were drafted into the Hitler Youth organization, they agreed because there was no other choice. Georg told reporters in 2008 that the refusal would lead to serious consequences for their family. As a member of Hitler organization, Josef did not attend the mandatory meetings of the organization, which resulted in lost opportunities to study for free. Brothers Ratzinger deemed conscription to the army as a duty to defend their motherland. The Italian newspaper Il Giornale quoted Georg Ratzinger saying that their goals and ideals were the opposite of what Hitler preached, but it was their civic duty and they did not know when the war would be over.


The words of Sarandon about the Pope and the facts of the youth of Benedict XVI make one think: "Could a German Catholic believer be a Nazi? What was the Nazi leadership's attitude towards the Catholic faith?"

Adolf Hitler was born into a Catholic family. After becoming the Fuhrer of the Nazi party, he continued to call himself "Christian." In his speech in 1928 in Lassana, Hitler called the Nazi Party a "Christian movement" that "will not tolerate anyone who attacks the ideas of Christianity." Indeed, at first to be a Catholic believer was considered a good practice in the Nazi Party since the word "Catholic" was synonymous with the word "loyal." The image of the Nazi believer was advantageous since it appealed to ordinary Germans, the old imperial elite, and German industrialists. In many ways, "Christian" image of the Nazi Party helped Hitler to take power.

 more Pravda

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Catholic church can be held responsible for wrongdoing by priests, court rules

High court ruling will make it easier for victims of clerical sex abuse to bring compensation claims against the church more

Who Does This Remind You Of? ''I Was Only Following Orders'' (Said Catholic Monk)

Jesus H! some seriously bad buggers here. Check out various other links at source, bad sods right!

Abuse in Dutch Catholic care: more evidence

Serious abuses went on unreported for years in Dutch Roman Catholic homes for the mentally disabled. They included sex offences, castration, secret medical experiments and possibly murder. One Catholic brother was banished to Africa for doing unethical brain research. Radio Netherlands Worldwide tracked him down.

Until recent years, most abuses in Dutch institutional care were kept out of the public eye. One exception was a scandal in 1978 involving medical experiments at 'Huize Assisië’, a Roman Catholic boarding school for mentally handicapped boys in the southern town of Udenhout.




Brain x-rays
The home's medical doctor and a Catholic nurse known as Brother Dionysius performed spinal taps on approximately 180 patients, including minors. They injected fluid and air into the patients' brains in order to take x-rays of the cerebral cortex. These were used for brain research which was quietly being carried out. After the injections, the patients suffered nausea and headaches for days. Their parents were neither asked for permission nor notified of the procedures.




Sent to Africa
When former employees blew the whistle, the doctor was sacked and ordered to pay a fine. Brother Dionysius was sent to Tanzania by his congregation. The case was discussed in the Dutch parliament, where MPs complained that the health inspector had given private institutions such as Huize Assisië a free hand.




"Nothing untoward"
Radio Netherlands Worldwide has discovered that Brother Dionysius is still working as a hospital nurse in the Tanzanian village of Sengerema, near Lake Victoria. Speaking to RNW by telephone, the 76-year-old brother said he had done "nothing untoward".

"What we did was happening at other institutions too," he said. "As the x-ray technician, I was carrying out the doctor's orders. It was none of my business whether the parents knew. I was fired after the story got out, but that was just to put a stop to all the fuss."




Lurid secrets
It was a rare example of institutional abuse becoming public knowledge. More often than not, such cases are swept under the rug where they remain for decades. But lately, some lurid secrets have come out in the open.

In a Dutch TV investigation, a former head nurse at 'Huize Sint Joseph’, a Catholic home for mentally disabled boys, alleged that one of his predecessors had fatally poisoned at least 20 patients in the early 1950s. The story caused ripples well beyond Heel, the small southern Dutch village where the institution has stood proud since the 19th century.




Indecent assault
Aside from alleged multiple murders, the media have revealed that there was both sexual and physical abuse at Huize Sint Joseph. The latest news dug up by investigative reporters: a rector at the home was convicted of indecent assault of minors in 1967. Two nurses who reported him were sacked and ordered to remain silent. Following his conviction, the rector requested a pardon so he could remain employed at a vocational school where he held a job as a teacher of Child Protection. The judge refused and gave him a short prison sentence.

Several people who formerly lived in Huize Sint Joseph say the Catholic brothers often beat the children in their care and locked them up in solitary confinement. Historian Annemieke Klijn wrote about the violence in a book about the home. She described the many forms of restraint and coercion the brothers used, including "a perhaps somewhat unrestrained smack".




Grave faults
Dr Klijn describes Huize Sint Joseph as an institution where many religious men worked with great dedication, but where the quality of care had grave faults. This was partly due to overcrowding and a lack of well-trained personnel.

Like many Roman Catholic care facilities in its day, it suffered from a lack of funds. Catholic homes for the disabled also resisted outside attempts to impose training to professionalize the quality of care. It is not known how widespread similar abuses to those at Huize Sint Joseph were at other Catholic care institutions.




Castration
A practice which was fairly widespread but not widely publicized until recent years was the chemical castration of patients. One of the institutions where this took place was the Sint Willibrordus home, a Catholic facility for the mentally ill in the Dutch town of Heiloo, north of Amsterdam. Among those castrated were priests who had committed sexual offences and seminary students who were thought unable to keep their libido in check.




Inquiry doubtful
So far, there appears to be little interest in a wide-ranging inquiry into abuses in Roman Catholic care for the mentally disabled. Member of the Upper House and medical ethics expert Heleen Dupuis questions the need for an inquiry. Dr Dupuis, who chairs the main Dutch trade organisation for providers of care to the disabled, says anyone found guilty of abuse must be punished. But she prefers to emphasize how much Dutch care has improved since decades past when so many abuses took place. "Thank God we no longer live in those times," she says. Radio Netherlands

Power Corrupts But Absolute Power is Much More Fun: King Obama

Although it might be a little unfair to single out Bush lite as the villain of the piece, the Constitution and the mythical rights of man, have after all, been under assault for decades.

This story is I suppose of primary interest to Americans, but once I read the opening paragraph, it was destined to appear on these pages, if for no other reason than to drag out the ever topical, Eddie Izzard.










You can't have just one Eddie Izzard.

King George III Won: Happy Fourth of July!
by David Swanson
4 July 2011

The Declaration of Independence is best remembered as a declaration of war, a war declared on the grounds that we wanted our own flag. The sheer stupidity and anachronism of the idea serves to discourage any thoughts about why Canada didn't need a bloody war, whether the U.S. war benefitted people outside the new aristocracy to whom power was transferred, what bothered Frederick Douglas so much about a day celebrating "independence," or what the Declaration of Independence actually said.

When you read the Declaration of Independence, it turns out to be an indictment of King George III for various abuses of power. And those abuses of power look fairly similar to abuses of power we happily permit U.S. presidents to engage in today, either as regards the people of this nation or the people of territories and nations that our military occupies today in a manner uncomfortably resembling Britain's rule over the 13 colonies.

Or perhaps I should say, a large portion of us take turns being happy or outraged depending on the political party with which the current president is identified.

"We have been sliding for 70 years to a situation where Congress has nothing to do with the decision about whether to go to war or not, and the president is becoming an absolute monarch." Thus spoke Congressman Jerrold Nadler (D., N.Y.) on the floor of the House recently, some years after having refused to back the impeachment of President George W. Bush, thus facilitating the slide toward the current situation.

Daniel Ellsberg, the whistleblower who leaked the Pentagon Papers 40 years ago, recently commented that President Nixon had finally won. Although Ellsberg was acquitted of criminal charges, the facts made public, and Nixon compelled to resign, all of the abuses of power Nixon faced possible impeachment and prosecution for have now been legalized (or made acceptable practice): warrantless spying, searches and seizures, baseless secrecy, assassination attempts, etc. By the same logic, King George III is as big a winner as Richard M. Nixon. A quick survey of the charges brought against King George III on July 4, 1776, is illuminating: more

While we are with Bill Maher, try this below, and then watch the moral indignation from Friends on Fox in reply. Seemingly, the three bobble heads majored in the same history course as Michele Bachmann, or is it just selective amnesia when it comes down to the nasty Nazi's major role in covering up the rampant paedophilia practised by the godly men of the Buggery Club.

Sexually Abusive Priests: Society's Fault

Makes a change from blaming the Devil. Something I stumbled upon when reporting the previous post.

Anybody want to buy a bridge?

Report blames society for sexually abusive priests

A study commissioned by Roman Catholic bishops ties abuse by Roman Catholic priests in the U.S. to the sexual revolution, not celibacy or homosexuality, and says it's been largely resolved. The findings are already under attack.

Sexual abuse by Roman Catholic priests in the United States is a "historical problem" that has largely been resolved and that never had any significant correlation with either celibacy or homosexuality, according to an independent report commissioned by Catholic bishops — and subjected to fierce attack even before its release on Wednesday.

The report blamed the sexual revolution for a rise in sexual abuse by priests, saying that Catholic clerics were swept up by a tide of "deviant" behavior that became more socially acceptable in the 1960s and '70s.

As that subsided, and as the church instituted reforms in the 1990s and 2000s, the problem of priests acting as sexual predators sharply declined, according to the study by John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.

"The abuse is a result of a complex interaction of factors," said Karen Terry, a John Jay criminal justice professor who led the research team. One major factor, she said at a news conference in Washington, was social turmoil in the 1960s and '70s that led some priests "who had some vulnerabilities" to commit child sexual abuse. She said Catholic seminaries had done a poor job of preparing priests "to live a life of chaste celibacy," as their vows demanded.

The report found no evidence, however, that celibacy itself contributed to sexual abuse. "Given the continuous requirement of priestly celibacy over time, it is not clear why the commitment to or state of celibate chastity should be seen as a cause for the steady rise in incidence of sexual abuse between 1950 and 1980," it said.

It also found no evidence that homosexuality was to blame. While more boys than girls have been abused, the report said, that is probably because priests had greater access to boys. In fact, it said, the incidence of sexual abuse in the priesthood began declining not long after a noticeable rise in the number of gay men entering Catholic seminaries in the 1970s. more

Monks Having Too Much Fun, Not To Mention The Nuns

Well they were, until the nasty Nazi stuck his oar in. I love little stories like this, they restore my faith in human nature.

But on a slightly more serious note, notice the reasons for building the basilica in the first place. Little wonder that anybody with two neurons bolted together dismisses the whole Catholic shooting match for what it is; dark age mumbo jumbo.

Pope ousts 'loose living' monks of Rome's Santa Croce monastery

Vatican acts after reports of monks staging concerts featuring a former lap dancer and running hotel service




It sounds like something out of Father Ted: a renowned monastery in Rome where monks staged concerts featuring a lap-dancer-turned-nun and opened a hotel with a 24-hour limousine service has been shut down by the pope.

As part of Benedict XVI's crackdown on "loose living" within the Catholic church, 20 or so Cistercian monks are now being evicted from the monastery at the basilica of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, which hosts some of the church's holiest relics.

"An inquiry found evidence of liturgical and financial irregularities as well as lifestyles that were probably not in keeping with that of a monk," said Father Ciro Benedettini, a Vatican spokesman. "The church remains open but the monks are awaiting transfer."




Reports saying the monks amassed large debts have also emerged, but Benedettini declined to give further details of the Vatican report, which was signed off in March.

The monks' days have been numbered since 2009, when the Vatican sacked their flamboyant abbot, Father Simone Fioraso, a former fashion designer who built up a cult following among Rome's fashionable aristocratic crowd as well as show business worshippers such as Madonna, who prayed at the church in 2008.




In 2009 Anna Nobili, a nightclub dancer who became a nun, was invited to perform her "holy dance" before an audience including archbishop Gianfranco Ravasi, head of the Vatican's cultural department. For her performance Nobili, who says she uses dance as a form of prayer, lies spread-eagled in front of the altar clutching a crucifix or twists and turns as in pole-dancing routines.

Dating back to the 4th century, Santa Croce in Gerusalemme was built to house relics brought back from the Holy Land by the mother of Emperor Constantine.

They include items described as nails and splinters from the cross, thorns from Jesus's crown, and a bone from the finger St Thomas pushed into the wounds of Christ.

The monks living there now had opened a shop selling organic produce from their kitchen garden, but this was shut down in 2009 amid accusations of their having secretly stocked the shelves from a neighbourhood grocery.

The Italian newspaper La Stampa said that VIP guests were also encouraged to stay at a hotel opened at the Santa Croce monastery which offered a 24-hour limousine airport service.




In 2008 Fioraso hosted a week-long, televised, reading of the bible with religious figures, politicians and celebrities reading tracts, starting with Pope Benedict himself. But a year later Fioraso was ousted, despite protests from parishioners who defended his "patience, dedication, sacrifice and passion".

The Vatican's removal of the monks to other monasteries, ending their 500-year presence at the basilica, follows Benedict's hard line with other wayward orders, including the Legionaries of Christ, run by the Mexican priest Marcial Maciel Degollado, who fathered numerous children, was disciplined over sexual abuse allegations and was banished to a life of penitence.




The basilica was supported by the Friends of Santa Croce, a who's who of Roman society run by a Italian claiming descent from Charlemagne.

Italian press reports have speculated that the inspectors from the Vatican suspected homosexual relations between monks at the monastery. gruniad

Just What We Need, Another Bleedin' Saint

You'd think they would have enough of 'em by now, it's not as though the Catholic Church is exactly short of saints is it, they've got the buggers coming out of their ears?

And there does appear to be a question or two about the validity of Popey's miracle.

There has as yet been no independent assessment of the medical evidence for Sister Marie's inexplicable cure. Another miracle will have to be certified by the Vatican before Pope John Paul II can be declared a saint.

The thinking behind the reason for requiring evidence of miracles performed by a new saint is that this is the proof that he (or she) is already in Heaven. There have been reports that Sister Marie has fallen ill again since her "cure" and that her diagnosis with Parkinson's Disease may have been incorrect.

Ah those miracles, they can be a bit of a bugger at times, but what are details like that when you're on the fast track to saintliness. When people talk miracles, I'm always reminded of Richard Dawkins exposing the nonsense surrounding Lourdes, where he asks if anyone had ever grown a new leg?

John Paul II beatification: Politics of saint-making
By John L Allen Senior correspondent, National Catholic Reporter

John Paul II's beatification is the quickest of modern times - what does it take to be fast-tracked to sainthood?

Catholics may believe there is something supernatural about their Church, but as the 13th Century theologian St Thomas Aquinas taught, it is not exempt from the normal realities of human nature - including the laws of psychology, sociology, and even politics.

If that is true of the Church writ large, it is also true of the business of declaring saints. That fact was on clear display on 1 May, when Pope John Paul II was beatified, the final step before sainthood, in a ceremony in Rome that drew hundreds of thousands of people to St Peter's Square.

What is beatification?

Beatification, the final step before sainthood, arose as a way of authorising veneration to a candidate in the local area where she or he lived. It entitles the candidate to be called "Blessed". After 1 May, Catholics in Poland and in Rome will celebrate a feast in honour of "Blessed John Paul II" every year on 22 October. In a special decree issued in April, the Vatican has also given Catholics all over the world one year to celebrate Masses in thanksgiving for the beatification of John Paul
Canonisation is the formal act of declaring someone a saint in the Catholic Church

John Paul's beatification comes just six years and one month after his death in 2005. The perception of haste has puzzled some observers, especially those inclined to question the late pope's record on combating the scourge of clerical sexual abuse.

Formally speaking, the Vatican's explanation is that all the traditional criteria have been met. There is a popular grassroots conviction that John Paul was a holy man - an exhaustive four-volume Vatican study concluded that he lived a life of "heroic virtue" - and a miracle has been documented as resulting from his intervention.

The miracle involves the healing of a 49-year-old French nun from Parkinson's disease, the same affliction from which the late pope suffered.
Five fast-track factors

Without questioning any of that, it is probably fair to say that institutional dynamics and even a degree of politics also help explain the rapid result.

John Paul reformed the sainthood process in 1983, making it faster, simpler, and cheaper. The office of "Devil's advocate" - an official whose job was to try to knock down the case for sainthood - was eliminated, and the required number of miracles was dropped.

The idea was to lift up contemporary role models of holiness in order to convince a jaded secular world that sanctity is alive in the here and now. The results are well known: John Paul II beatified and canonised more people than all previous popes combined.
File picture of Josemaria Escriva Opus Dei's Josemaria Escriva had a powerful lobby pushing his cause

Since the reforms took effect, at least 20 cases qualify as "fast track" beatifications, meaning the candidate was beatified within 30 years of death. Taking a careful look at that list, aside from lives of holiness and miracle reports, at least five factors appear to influence who makes the cut.

First, successful candidates have an organisation behind them with both the resources and the political savvy to move the ball. The Catholic movement Opus Dei (of Da Vinci Code fame), for instance, boasts a roster of skilled canon lawyers, and they invested significant resources in their founder's cause. St Josemaria Escriva was canonised in 2002.

Second,...more



Q&A: John Paul II's beatification

The Vatican has hosted its biggest event in years - the beatification of the late Pope John Paul II.

.........How does the Vatican justify beatifying the late Pope?

The CCS has interviewed hundreds of persons who knew the late pontiff, and carried out exhaustive enquiries into his reputation for holiness. Pope John Paul II himself created more new Saints and Blesseds that any of his predecessors.

Vatican experts, including Pope Benedict's own personal physician, have also examined the medical evidence for an allegedly miraculous cure - that of a 49-year-old French nun, Sister Marie Simon-Pierre Normand, in 2005 from Parkinson's Disease, the same malady which afflicted Pope John Paul II in his later years.

Sister Marie claims that she and her fellow nuns prayed for the intercession of Pope John Paul II after his death. Her sudden cure had no logical medical explanation and she later resumed her work as a maternity nurse, the Vatican says.

Do we only have the Vatican's word for the miracle?

There has as yet been no independent assessment of the medical evidence for Sister Marie's inexplicable cure. Another miracle will have to be certified by the Vatican before Pope John Paul II can be declared a saint.

The thinking behind the reason for requiring evidence of miracles performed by a new saint is that this is the proof that he (or she) is already in Heaven. There have been reports that Sister Marie has fallen ill again since her "cure" and that her diagnosis with Parkinson's Disease may have been incorrect.




Could John Paul II be declared a saint?

This depends on the results of the further examination of his personal record over the clerical sexual abuse crisis which hit the Roman Catholic Church on his watch from the 1990s up to the time of his death. The first reaction of the US-based victims' association Survivor's Network of those Abused by Priests (Snap) was to criticise what it described as a "hasty drive to confer sainthood on the pontiff under whose reign most of the widely documented clergy sex crimes and cover-ups took place".



Despite what the Vatican calls his "imposing fame for holiness", the late pontiff also appears to have been duped by the former head of the Legionaries of Christ, a Mexican priest called Fr Marcial Maciel Delgado. This man, who had access at the highest levels inside the Vatican for many years, has been exposed as a swindler and perpetrator of serious sexual misconduct including the fathering of two children who allege that he sexually abused them. More Q&A Vatican.

Related: Hold The Halo. Maureen Dowd
Don't let 'miracles' trump science

Scotish Buggery Club to Attack "Aggressive Secularism"

Yes "aggressive secularism," such a threat to world peace and human suffering. You're wasting your breath old lad, this country made up its mind on religion years ago, and the message was, you can stick your mumbo jumbo up your arse, or in your case, some little boy's arse.

Updates: BBC blah blah.

Opinion: Cardinal O’Brien: is this all that’s left of Christianity?

Older stuff: Bullets in the post Cardinal’s secular attack

Cardinal Keith O'Brien and the Lockerbie murderer: a jaw-dropping error of judgment by the leader of Scotland's Catholics

Pope knew priest was paedophile Times

Pope accused of mishandling case of paedophile priest Guardian

Cardinal Keith O'Brien criticises secularism

The leader of the Catholic Church in Scotland, Cardinal Keith O'Brien, will use his Easter message later to attack "aggressive secularism".

It was an issue Pope Benedict warned about on his state visit to Britain last year.

Cardinal O'Brien will say the enemies of Christianity want to "take God from the public sphere".

The cardinal has made a reputation for his robust defence of traditionalist Christian teaching.

But BBC religious affairs correspondent Robert Pigott says even by Cardinal O'Brien's standards his Easter sermon constitutes a vehement and outspoken attack on secularism and what he will describe as the enemies of the Christian faith in Britain and the power they currently exert.

He will call on Christians of all denominations to resist the efforts of such people to destroy Christian heritage and culture.

In a reference to equality legislation preventing discrimination against homosexual people, Cardinal O'Brien will denounce what he claims is the way Christians have been prevented from acting in accordance with their beliefs because they refuse to endorse such lifestyles.

The Cardinal will say: "Perhaps more than ever before there is that 'aggressive secularism' and there are those who would indeed try to destroy our Christian heritage and culture and take God from the public square.

"Religion must not be taken from the public square.

"Recently, various Christians in our society were marginalised and prevented from acting in accordance with their beliefs because they were not willing to publicly endorse a particular lifestyle.

"Yes - Christians must work toward that full unity for which Christ prayed - but even at this present time Christians must be united in their common awareness of the enemies of the Christian faith in our country, of the power that they are at present exerting, and the need for us to be aware of that right to equality which so many others cry out for."

Cardinal O'Brien will remind his congregation at St Mary's Cathedral in Edinburgh of the plea by the Pope that Christians of different denominations should rediscover their common ancestry to unite in resisting the sidelining of religion.

The Anglican archbishops of Canterbury and York, Dr Rowan Williams and Dr John Sentamu, are also due to deliver Easter messages on Sunday.

The Catholic archbishop of Westminster, the Most Reverend Vincent Nichols, will speak of his hopes for peace in conflict-hit countries such as Libya, Syria, Afghanistan and Ivory Coast. BBC

Pat Condell: Aggressive Atheism.



Pat Condell: Buggery Club

Nick Gisbourne: Noah's Ark. Deleted, he drones on too much.

Ratzinger Talks Bollocks: The Antichrist Dunit

Posted as much for the healthy cynicism and humour displayed in the comments, as much for the content, in both the article and the nasty Nazi's new book.

Even ignoring the fact it is 2011 and Ratzinger is talking about the Antichrist, I find it so totally beyond belief that the CEO of the Buggery Club, the head of the Catholic Church, an organisation whose genocide couldn't be equalled by all the despots in the world put together, could come out with such a jaw dropping statement as these opening lines.

Pope Links Violence In God's Name To Antichrist

By Francis X. Rocca
Religion News Service

VATICAN CITY -- Violence committed in the name of God or religion is a "favourite instrument of the Antichrist," Pope Benedict XVI writes in a new book on the life and teachings of Jesus.

"Violence does not build up the kingdom of God, the kingdom of humanity," Benedict writes. "On the contrary, it is a favorite instrument of the Antichrist, however idealistic its religious motivation may be. It serves not humanity, but inhumanity."

The passage appears in Jesus of Nazareth -- Holy Week: From the Entrance into Jerusalem to the Resurrection, which was published in English and seven other languages on Thursday (March 10), with an initial printing of 1.2 million copies.

According to its American publisher, Ignatius Press, 90,000 copies of the English edition had been sold before publication.

The book is a sequel to the pope's 2007 bestseller, Jesus of Nazareth, which explored Jesus' public ministry from his baptism to the Transfiguration. In the trilogy that he began before his 2005 election as pope, Benedict studies the Gospels in light of the work of other scholars, including those who have sought to discover the "historical Jesus."

In pre-publication excerpts that were released March 2, Benedict wrote that the Jewish people were not responsible for Jesus' crucifixion, and their descendants have not inherited blame for his death. Huffpo

The first six pages of many; selected. Who said the Yanks had no sense of Humour?

OK whatever you say guy in the funny hat.
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Great news.
Now we know that religious violence, like the Inquisitio­n, is caused by the devil.

Wasn't Ratzinger head of the Inquisitio­n?
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Hahahahaha­ha.... Oh, that's a good one, Popey Pope.
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Kill,Steal­,and Destroy in the name of God is an easier sell than do it for the Military Industrial Complex..

Get with the monetary program...­. Pope Dude..
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How does he explain the inquisitio­n?
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how would he?
it was 600 years ago.
hes not that old
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Under Pope John, Cardinal Rottwiler was the Inquisitor­.
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I don't understand the idea of having a Pope, is he like supposed to be god? They even make them Saints !!!!!!!!!
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The leader of a church that covers up child abuse. The leader of a church that is responsibl­e for deaths in Africa. The leader of a church that has slaughtere­d millions. I wouldn't be proud to be the leader of such an organizati­on which is built on greed, intoleranc­e, violence and corruption engulfed in a web of lies and deceit.
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The first things Christians did as soon as there was such thing as Christians was to start slaughteri­ng people .... so I guess Jesus was the anti-chris­t?
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You're about 300 years off; the first documented slaughteri­ng in the name of Christiani­ty happened when Augustine gave Constantin­e the go-ahead to use the state to enforce a church decision. That was about 300 years after there was a such thing as Christians­. And just in case you don't know, psychology slaughtere­d and tortured many individual­s in a much shorter time span from conception to violence.
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Just to be accurate since Constantin­e died before Augustine was born: Constantin­e (c. 320) gave money to the Christians and some political/­legal force. Not until Theodosius (391) did Christiani­ty become the only legal Roman religion, and riots/viol­ence did occur. Augustine got fed up with the Donatists in North Africa and justified coercion for Christian "heretics"­. Later that century the first "heretic" was executed on a magic charge--Ro­mans always executed those accused of magic. Not until medieval period did we get Charlemagn­e asking for conversion or death or the systematic executions of the Inquisitio­n.
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Wrong... you are 300 years off.... Jesus was Jewish and so were his followers and they stayed Jewish ... Christiani­ty did not start with his birth... it started 300 years after his death, when Constantin­e needed an army to do his killing for him.......­....as soon as they were a separate organizati­on they started killing people in his name.
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Those were the GOP Kristians, Jesus don't roll like that.
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Paul hijacked the stories for is own personal power and wealth.

Until then, there were just some Jewish people who added Jesus' philosophy into their own religion.

Remember in Romans... which he wrote first.... All authority comes from God,
so that rulers (those who are in a position of authority) have been appointed by God.
Hence let every person submit to those who rule.

No matter how cruel, corrupt and inhuman... OBEY!

Why? He had absolutely no reason to say such a thing... except that he was a shill for the Romans.
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He's been hitting that holy wine a bit hard, don't you think?
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Joseph to Marry: "That better be the son of God."
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Why anyone would listen to this old queen is beyond me.
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Old Irish and Italian tradition. Either become a cop, a criminal, a policitian­, or if you're gay. a priest.
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There ought to be an internatio­nal "Ignore your Religion Month". Everyone stops filtering their thoughts through religion and just use common sense for a month...no worship, no dietary restrictio­ns, no confession etc. Just use the old bean that "god" gave you aka free will.
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A self-fulfi­lling blah, blah, blah?
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...said the Antichrist­.
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Poor guy doesn't realize that most the world thinks he is obsolete like wringer washer machines or butter churners.
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As Pope John's inquisitor Cardinal Rottweiler was in charge of covering up missdeads. Christophe­r Hitchens was right.
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...said the Pope who was raised a Hitler Youth
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I guess the pope would know... best friends with the AntiChrist­.
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The Bush speech-wri­ters must be kicking themselves for not adding this to the Axis of Evil state of the union. I just wonder if the Pope understand­s the implicatio­ns of his words on Church history.
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Ironically­, the Catholic Church is responsibl­e for more acts of violence than any other institutio­n.
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Why do we continue to give crazy people the pulpit?
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Does that violence extend to the army of priest that have damaged so many children around the world?
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Why even have a religious column if all the comments are from people adamantly opposed to religion and God? It drowns out discourse between the religious, kind of pointless don't you think? Might want to think about renaming it to something like: "the lion's den," or "Atheist's Corner." lol

Sheesh, no one remotely interested in religion is comfortabl­e posting on the denominati­onal or specific religious material for fear of each post being inundated by people telling them to prove their moral understand­ing or pointing out all the flaws in being a Christian, Muslim, Catholic, Hindu, Jew, Buddhist etc....
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I suspect that some atheists post on these columns because it makes them feel superior to "faithers" and their "fairy tales", as they oh so condescend­ingly refer to religion and its adherents. Like Pavlov's dogs salivating in response to the bell, they just can't help themselves from posting derisive comments about people who believe in God whenever a new column appears in the hornet's nest that is the HP religion section.

The funny thing is, most of these people have probably strained their deltoids from constantly patting themselves on the back for being enlightene­d, tolerant individual­s.
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I am no atheist but the ones who are constantly patting themselves on the back and thinking they are morally superior are the fanatic religious types who go to churches/t­emples/mos­ques. Most of them don't translate any of that into their day to day lives - they remain bigoted and intolerant­. Religion doesn't make them into better human beings it just turns them into smug people but they feel they are better than the rest.
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The Catholic church has more firepower than Hallibrton and Blackwater put together. And they can smite you with another Dan Brown, Tom Hanks movie any time they want.
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Well...tha­t's convenient­!
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Does not speaking out, about the Catholic/P­rotestant troubles in Ireland, make the pope antichrist­?
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Look at this picture of the Pope......­... reminds me of " I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti."
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So is raping little boys counted as "violence"­? If so, why did the church support so many of the junior-gra­de Anti-Chris­ts who made a lifetime career out of it?
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who moderates these forums, and why do they have it out for me?
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Anti Christ at work

http://www­.nobeliefs­.com/memen­toes.htm (interesting site)
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So Sister Theophane, the violent scourge of the Second Grade in the 1950s wasn't a nun at all. It was the Antichrist­. Well, that makes it all better, then.
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This idea makes me sad. When is humanity gonna stop making excuses and start taking responsibi­lity for it's own actions: good or bad?
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Old men without women are especially prone to visions, knowledge gained through inspiratio­n. When I reach that level of wisdom, it will be a signal that my time be done.
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The Pope should go back to his office and figure out how many more child abusing priests he'll shuffle around.
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That's easy. He just throws darts at a world map.
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In other news, Santa doesn't exist, nor does the tooth fairy.
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Apparently­, if you have no proof as to how life started ... it is God. Or Santa, or the ToothFairy­.

I am putting my money on the T-Fairy. She will at least spend it on a decent orthodonti­c policy for the poor.
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You're so silly! Everyone knows it is The Flying Spaghetti Monster.
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This from the leader of a religion that has slaughtere­d more innocents in the name of God than any other.
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Violence in god's name is anti-chris­t, maybe his popeiness should read the old testament.
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If I were the Antichrist I'd want my priests to abuse children and protect those priests from any laws that might bring them to justice. Just sayin'.
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LOL Good one!
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Elderly man blames atrocities in name of man in sky on man deep in ground. No one questions the man's sanity. Intriguing­.
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Well, we knew where he is, or at least was: click
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I long for a world that isn't run on mythology.

And if you would like to know more about Ratzinger's role in the Buggery Club, watch this.







Crossposted

CEO of Buggery Club Talks Bollocks

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Well if I'm going to start blogging again I might as well start with an old dependable.

This from an eighty one year old virgin in a long frock.

Pope Benedict XVI has said that saving humanity from homosexual or transsexual behaviour is just as important as saving the rainforest from destruction.

He explained that defending God's creation is not limited to saving the environment, but also protecting man from self-destruction. more

Purely coincidental but I started the year with this post on January First, another doozy from the Nasty Nazi.
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Boy Buggery Exaggerated Says Buggery Club Spokesman

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It would appear the Buggery Club has come up with a list of seven new mortal sins in the hope of upping the dwindling confession rate.

Those newly risking eternal punishment include drug pushers, the obscenely wealthy, and scientists who manipulate human genes. So "thou shalt not carry out morally dubious scientific experiments" or "thou shalt not pollute the earth" might one day be added to the Ten Commandments.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church states that "immediately after death the souls of those who die in a state of mortal sin descend into Hell".

Still playing that old worn out Hell card but it was this little pearl that really caught my eye.

He also named abortion and paedophilia as two of the greatest sins of our times. The archbishop brushed off cases of sexual violence against minors committed by priests as "exaggerations by the mass media aimed at discrediting the Church".more from the BBC's Pope page

You don't say!

Exorcism! Stop Please

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It's not just the Muslims that are living in the dark ages, the buggery club still has it's feet firmly entrenched in the flat earth era and shows every sign of staying there, give me strength.

THE Catholic Church has revealed how growing interest in satanism and the occult has led to a rise in exorcisms across Queensland.

One priest, who asked not to be named for fear of "reprisals", said he was carrying out at least one exorcism a fortnight.

More requests for exorcisms came from the Gold Coast than anywhere else.

An exorcism involves holy water, sacrament and Bible reading and can go on for many hours, the priest said. Linda Blair made the subject famous in the 1973 film, The Exorcist.

"Being possessed by a demon is terrifying in one's mental and emotional life," he said. "Some of these manifestations are extremely powerful, causing people to be plagued by disturbances. They hear voices and see hideous creatures in their sleep.

"There has been a recruitment of pagan practices, and it's sheer poison.more

Paedo Priest HIV Positive

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Add embezzlement and child porn to his list of sins and we have another fine example of a member of the buggery club. How many kids has this cocksucker managed to infect?

FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) -- A former priest accused of sexually abusing children in two states is HIV positive, Catholic diocese officials said Thursday.

Last week, a leader in the Catholic Diocese of Fort Worth heard someone mention that the Rev. Philip A. Magaldi has the virus that causes AIDS, said diocese spokesman Pat Svacina. The diocese leader then got verbal confirmation from Magaldi as well as a letter from his doctor who said he has HIV, Svacina said. Church officials said they believe he has been HIV positive since 2003.

The diocese then alerted the alleged victims - at least five minors in two states - and the parishes where Magaldi served for nearly four decades, Svacina said.more

Let Us Pray For The Jews Says The Nasty Nazi

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"Let us pray for the Jews. May the Lord our God illuminate their hearts so that they may recognize Jesus Christ savior of all men. ... Almighty and everlasting God, you who wants all men to be saved and to gain knowledge of the truth, kindly allow that, as all peoples enter into your Church, all of Israel be saved."

And this be the new non-offensive prayer issued by the Buggery Club. more

Boy Buggery Club. You've Read The Book Now Watch The Movie

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Boy oh boy oh boy, well I did say earlier this morning that I was going to lighten up the rest of today's postings.



First up then is the movie, straight from the mouths of the buggery club.




The Real Truth About The Catholic Church*








Then having had a sconce at what is in fact a very well made skit documentary you can move on to the site proper and have some real blasphemy with you breakfast at LolJesus.com.





There is a fair bit of chaff to be found there but there is also some fine wheat. You will have to explore the site, there are lots of topics and archives, well worth a visit for the ungodly.

* No boys were buggered in the making of this film.