Ratzinger names another enemy of women to college of cardinals

Here's what Mr. Collins said on February 4, 2010:

Here's what he said on July 1, 2008 - paying Newswire to issue a press release so no one would miss it:

The announcement of his nomination was hailed by Stephen Harper. You can look it up yourself.

Religious officials are treated with respect by politicians and the MSM when they spew hateful poison like this. This man should be greeted with scorn and condemnation wherever he shows his sacred face.

"A community's worth is measured by the way it treats the most vulnerable.."

so is its church your eminence

http://rabble.ca/comment/1279957

Well, that's obviously true, and the same could be said of many other religions (the misogynist Anglican Church, the misogyny and homophobia of many Jewish sects, Muslim clerics, etc. etc.).

Maybe I didn't express myself clearly as to the reason for opening this thread, but I just thought it was important to observe that even while societal values are slowly changing, hate propagandists continue to be given a pass if they speak in the name of some bullshit religion. It's similar to the "debate" over whether Catholic school boards should be allowed to be homophobic because the Vatican tells them to be. If there were no religious cover involved, I think it would be less likely that such medieval and anti-human practices would be tolerated.

In any event, just because they're all disgusting criminals, it doesn't mean we should remain silent when another criminal is crowned, especially when the Prime Minister hails him on behalf of all Canadians.

This should brighten your day then, Unionist:

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/01/tn_bill_would_give_ant...

"A proposed bill in Tennessee would create a loophole in the state’s anti-bullying laws to protect those expressing religious, philosophical or political beliefs, which one proponent says would ensure that people can still express their “views on homosexuality.” "

I guess you and I are guilty of being intollerant of other people's fantasy based bigotry.

Perhaps if I wasn't such a millitant, fundamentalist athiest, I could learn to embrace the bigotry of religion.

Unionist I never said that only religious fundies are homophobic/sexist, and I never said that you said that. I agree with the religious cover argument you're presenting. Wholeheartedly.

But with no "religious cover" lots of secularists get away with oppressive behaviour. Sure nost of it is technically illegal but when has that stopped anyone? 

As you know, I don't share the "all organized religions suck" perspective, and that's not what the thread topic is anyways. 

Exactly my point, and well put, Tommy.

Here's another try:

Harper could not get away with naming a cabinet minister who publicly calls for a halt to contraception and abortion.

But he can hail the cardinalization of Thomas Collins.

It's that double standard which makes it important to have a serious public discussion about the limits to religious freedom.

Here's what I mean, Tommy. Our human rights legislation requires serious efforts to accommodate disability in the workplace, or in the provision of public services. We also have to try to accommodate people whose religious convictions prevent them from working on certain days of the week, etc. Where we should draw the line, in my opinion, is accommodation of anti-human or discriminatory practices - for example, allowing accredited schools to exclude access to sex education, contraception counselling, LGBTQ rights and lifestyles, complete equality of men and women, etc. In such areas (and they need to be carefully defined), it must be made clear that religious beliefs give no one a free pass.

That doesn't require legislation (in my opinion) and it doesn't produce martyrs. I know of no law or constitutional clause that stops the Ontario government, for example, from telling all schools that if they don't favour the creation of gay-straight alliances, their right to issue recognized educational certificates will be revoked, and students (below school-leaving age) will be required to attend real public or private schools in order to avoid truancy charges.

Likewise, no law would be required to (for example) decide that Cardinal Collins will never be invited to any official function of government until he renounces his public declarations against contraception, abortion, and homosexuality. The premier, the mayor, other elected officials could publicly condemn him. Will that make him a martyr? I don't think you'll find too many who mourn his passing.

If Collins said (for example) what he really thinks about Muslims and Jews and Protestants, we wouldn't allow him into any place where decent people gather. Why is he then allowed to spew his woman-hating shit and receive praise from our Prime Minister? I'll tell you why. Because we don't practise what we preach. We should.

drift: in the New Hampshire debate, Gingrich attacked Obama's 'war on the Catholic Church'.

Precisely - but it's a waste of time, since religious organizations (as I've said) get a pass on virtually every aspect of human rights legislation.

We discussed here, for example, where the Supreme Court ruled that some religious thugs who set up a phony "university" which bans homosexual activity among students, could properly prepare students to become teachers in BC.

Likewise, religious organizations openly discriminate in employment on all sorts of prohibited grounds, by citing their vicious anti-human deeply and sincerely held religious beliefs that (for example) non-Catholics or lesbians aren't suited to teach in Catholic schools.

Here's a typical provision (Ontario Human Rights Code) which religious fanatics use to flout fundamental human rights:

Accommodation of disability is a significant advance in a democratic society. Accommodation of discriminatory attitudes and practices, masquerading as "religious beliefs", must be eradicated, or else our commitment to human rights is nakedly hypocritical.

Unionist it is a noble goal, but censoring people's religious beliefs would cause all kinds of strife. And by the way, everything in life is 'nakedly hypocritical'. If one wants to be in politics, one is going to be accused of being hypocritical.

That's right, and so our neighbors next door tend to give their unofficial blessings to the King of the madrasas operating over 100 charter schools in the U.S. Apparently Allah has connections in USrael and the American CIA.

I think Canada and the USA ignored many requests from the former USSR and Israel to extradite thousands of Nazi war criminals living in our midst for decades after the war. Imagine the Russians surprise when they discovered that Himmler's SS was reconstructed after WW II and were working for western intelligence agencies to spy on our WW II allies, and to commit acts of terrorism and sabotage.

And before the 1980s, madrasas in Afghanistan and Pakistan numbered a few hundred. Today they number in the thousands thanks to the American CIA and US taxpayers, British, Pakistan's army intellgence agency and their Saudi royal friends.

Saudi, Pakistani, British and U.S.-backed militant Islam represents the greatest threat to women's rights in Asia and countries at the edge of Eastern Europe. The U.S. and friends have been supporting militant Islam since the 1950s.

The Nazis were our friends then the same as the Khmer Rouge in "Democratic Kampuchea" in the 1970s the same as Al-Qa'eda, LIFG, KLA etc are our secret best friends forever today in destabilizing a number of resource-rich and strategically situated countries. Most of the scum of the earth have been our bosom friends at one time or another. Pope Nazinger is just another fascist symbol of the western world.

Actually, Wilf, I have posted some of Takei's cartoons.  Wickedly funny man.

There will be no future for children as long as the Catholic Church and the like roam the land. But I'm so sorry for returning to the topic of the thread, which must cause great pain to people of faith.

Clergy urge politicians to remember the poor 2008

Being an atheist woman, I'm not keen on traditional hierarchical socio-political structures, but there is so much to be learned from people's belief in the supernatural.  I recently read that the only supernatural event that anyone experiences is death.

Organized religion hasn't done well by itself.  In fact, as most of you know, it has been the driving force behind some of the worst atrocities in history.  As have secular politics.  Well, there probably isn't a whole lot that seperates religion from any other strong and structured political belief anyway.

I'm pretty sure that stone age and iron age humanity had a better grasp on what made things work than any belief system that followed.  Not, in many cases, a scientific process of understanding, but an intuitive one.  The mathematical accuracy speaks to ancient cultures having an understanding of the systems and predictability of the universe that might not have been systematic.

The Catholic church is a very nasty organization, which does't mean that Catholics worldwide are nasty but pertains to the institution itself.  The Catholic church is very wealthy and powerful, and Protestant churches have been learning and amassing great wealth as well.  Where spirituality (whatever that may mean) has become secondary to wealth and power isn't news to anyone, but the structures of the institutions are not the keepers of sprirituality.

The Roman Catholic church is patriarchal, sexist, and divorced from reality.  Practising Catholics are not necessarily so.  While I might not have faith in any organized conception of how the Universe works, I am certaint that humanity, in its quest for understanding of who we are and where we come from, is botching the process through ignorance and fear.

/rant

Well, I've checked some of the links you've provided, and I must say, the Canadian Islamist Congress at least reprinted some materials which took decent stands against Harperite cutbacks and other attacks. I shouldn't have based my reaction solely on what was quoted in that Star story.

In short, I'd like to withdraw my scornful remarks and apologize to the Canadian Islamist Congress. I'll look more carefully in the future. Thanks for the info, Fidel.

No, it really hasn't, but religious inspired writing could be a source of inspiration for us even today, whatever the intention might have been of the original work.  Take for instance this examination of St. Thomas' writing on the question of purgatory from an extract contained within The Coming Community circa 1993:

Findings of this nature might very well have a theoretical utility if one were to slightly extrapolate things to the contemporary political realm.  Unfortunately the author never did reveal how we might return ourselves to some blissful state of political ignorance once we've been made privy to the goings on.

It was decent social policy then, as it would be now.  Too bad we can't seem to find anyone who would be so bold as to chisel it into today's legislation like they did way back in the old days.

I think during certain eras the lack of influence might have had something to do with the fact that those who practiced minority religious dissent, be they Catholic or Protestant, were largely distracted from their influence peddling by being set on fire at the stake.

See Linda McQuaig, Karl Polanyi, E. P. Thomson and Eric Hobsbawm on enclosure era England from 14th to 18th centuries.

The Church really was England's first social services. Anyone visiting Protestant England today can still observe the reduction of monasteries to piles of rubble as Henry's legacy. They've been trying on this free market baloney throughout the western world since 14th century Italy. I realize that the Church as taken some very hypocritical points of view through history and were the largest property owners leading up to Henry's time in the sun, but it is also ahistorical to lay all of the blame for gross human rights violations on the Church's doorstep.

ETA: Imperialists committed gross human rights violations and mass murder against women and children in Tiberius' to Henry's times through today. I think the central problem continues to be imperialism and is why I tend to want to abide by Rabble's pledge of anti-imperialism.

According to Rushton and Rushton(pdf), 19th century historians gave little credit to Catholic monks and priests for their charity work.

Does this sound like the typical conservative view on poverty relief today? A few of my English relatives think a lot like this even today.

Savine's analysis of national Church tax assessment of 1555 tells that the annual expenditure on poor relief was a modest 2.5 percent of gross monastic income.

However, early modern historians such as Slack have produced other analyses showing that Savine's estimates were lower than actual. And that disruption of monastic relief must have caused profound hardships for England's poor.

I've been to England a number of times. The local historians of Roche Abbey near Maltby, Yorkshire where my mother grew up have said the same things about medieval monks and poor relief. Very few Catholics in or around Maltby, Maltby Beck, the crags, Aston Common etc today, I can say for sure. A father of a relative of mine, dead since the 1980s, told me a story about him and his mother living at the workhouse for a time as a child. And he told me about walking some way past the common to an Irish boys school to ask/beg for beef drippings and bread and whatever else they would give him and his mother. That was turn of the last century. Denis' dad was greatful for everything he and his family had and especially so after Atlee's Labour government. The last time I talked to him I was a teenager in 1980, and he thought life in England was wonderul.

I have to wholeheartedly agree with Unionist here.  All public support for religious based schooling and all tax exemptions must end.  We should hail the appointment of a religious head of this or that branch or region as we would the appointment of a grand wizard, with the same vigor whenever and whereever such an announcement would occur.  These are not respectable upstanding citizens we're talking about.  They are, and always have been, the dregs of humanity dressed up like befrocked dandys with zero sense of modern fashion.  On that account we must insist.  To the political representatives our position must be that at long last, we have had it with their bullshit pandering of hate groups.  Anything else constitutes a 'that's just the way things are' approach which just doesn't cut it and never did.  Collectively these institutions have refused thousands of years in which to adapt.

The historical explanation is very helpful in explaining why Harper can praise individuals like Thomas Collins who oppose contraception, divorce, abortion, homosexuality, and equal rights for women.

Right. Ratzinger says it's ok to vote for a politician because you agree with their stand in favour of capital punishment or aggressive war, but not because you agree with a politician's stand in favour of abortion:

Source.

Please read the whole letter. It's positively illuminating.

Any form of political advocacy, including suggestions on how to vote, should be enough to yank tax exemption status.  But lets be charitable and say on a case by case basis.  I agree about the NDP looking better and better in the soul market right now..a real bargain I'm sure.  At one point it amounted to the cost of an ATM transaction...as a plank LOL!