First up from the God Machine this week is a closer look at the recently-filed lawsuit, brought by 43 Roman Catholic plaintiffs, challenging the Obama administration's health care policy that includes contraceptives in basic health care coverage for female employees. The policy excludes houses of worship, and includes a compromise for religiously-affiliated employers.
It's one of the reasons the suit is a "dramatic stunt, full of indignation but built on air."
Under the Constitution, churches and other religious organizations have total freedom to preach that contraception is sinful and rail against Mr. Obama for making it more readily available. But the First Amendment is not a license for religious entities to impose their dogma on society through the law. The vast majority of Americans do not agree with the Roman Catholic Church's anti-contraception stance, including most American Catholic women.
The First Amendment also does not exempt religious entities or individuals claiming a sincere religious objection from neutral laws of general applicability, a category the new contraception rule plainly fits. [...]
And there was no violation of religious exercise to begin with. After religious groups protested, the administration put the burden on insurance companies to provide free contraceptive coverage to women who work for religiously affiliated employers like hospitals or universities -- with no employer involvement.
So while file the suit? Because, as E.J. Dionne Jr. explained, "Many bishops seem to want this fight."
The suit is certainly worth watching -- the fact that we're having an election-year fight over contraception in the 21st century may even affect the political landscape -- and as Sarah Kliff explained, the eventual outcome of the litigation is hard to predict.
Also from the God Machine this week:
* In a disturbing video out of Indiana, the Apostolic Truth Tabernacle Church cheered a small child singing, "Ain't no homo gonna make it to heaven."
* There's a good reason for evangelical Christian leaders' success on Twitter.
* American nuns are fighting back in a big way against criticism from the Vatican.
* In the wake of his racially-charged plagiarism scandal, Richard Land, who leads the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission for the Southern Baptist Convention, has been stripped of his radio show (thanks to R.B. for the tip).
* In West Virginia, a Pentecostal pastor known for his serpent-handling talents died this week after being bitten by a rattlesnake (thanks to R.P. for the tip).
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Come on Catholic bishops, use your collective heads. There is no way any just deity wants more of us on this planet. If your deity does, you are worshiping the wrong deity.
Santa Claus told me that people make up stuff about God to explain why they are so hateful the other 364 days of the year. I have no proof of this except for the news, so I just take it on faith.
Not to be missed...this Catholic priest from Cleveland writing in his church bulletin in defense of the US nuns. Here's a snip, but read the whole thing at the link, on page 2:
From the Desk of Fr. Doug
What the Nuns' Story is really about:
"The Vatican is hypocritical and duplicitous. Their belief is always that someone else needs to clean up their act; the divorced, the gays, the media, the US nuns, the Americans who were using the wrong words to pray, the seminaries, etc. It never occurs to the powers that be that the source of the problem is the structure itself.
US nuns work side by side with the person on the street. They are involved in their everyday lives. Most cardinals spent less than five years in a parish, were never pastors, are frequently career diplomats. Religious women in the US refuse to be controlled by abusive authority that seeks to control out of fear. They realize that Jesus taught no doctrines, but that the church, over time, developed what Jesus taught in a systematic way.
This investigation is not about wayward US nuns. It is the last gasp for control by a dying breed, wrapped in its own self-importance. It is a struggle for the very nature of the church; who we are, how we pray, where we live, who belongs, why we believe. The early church endured a similar struggle. The old order died. The Holy Spirit won."
http://content.seekandfind.com/bulletins/14/0244/20120527B.pdf
I am unable to get past the fact the the Roman Catholic Church purposely harbors pederast priests of boys they are sworn by their Catholic God to protect. Not able to overcome that, I dismiss whatever else the Catholic Church pretends to be holy and righteous, even if I believe it true.
God bless the little children and damn those who use them and God to promote satanic views of bigotry.
The far right religo-kooks are going to keep pushing their way into politics until the true majority push back.This kind of crap makes all "believers" look like crazed fanatics with an agenda.
in some happier "twig" news
After years of deliberation, the Conservative Rabbinical Assembly has provided guidance to rabbis for performing same-sex marriages.
Created by Rabbis Daniel Nevins, Avram Reisner and Elliot Dorff, the ritual guidelines detail two types of gay weddings, as well as gay divorce. “Both versions are egalitarian,” said Nevins. “They differ mostly in style—one hews closely to the traditional wedding ceremony while the other departs from it.”
The guidelines passed on a vote of 13 to 0 in the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards, with one rabbi abstaining.
http://forward.com/articles/157142/conservatives-give-gay-wedding-guidance/
Well now it would seem to me that given the History of the Jewish people this was an easy decision. I know that might seem a bit ,uh, trite?, but still persecution due to a belief...
As the Romans are Judeo-Christians, perhaps they should take the hint.
Re: Apostolic Truth Tabernacle Church
...and we wonder why we can't stop bullying in our schools...
We have to confront it in our churches first.
Anti-gay sentiment is not an expression of religious freedom. It is a form of bigotry that must not be tolerated in any form. We will never eliminate bullying anywhere until we eliminate it in the pulpit first.
And now, to lighten the mood, a Photoshopped zebra.
LOL! Thanks.
Whenever blatant bigotry appears and is even praised, I have to think of the fear these small-minded people must feel. They are becoming less and less relevant in the modern world. There are so many new explanations of God's mysterious ways and so many temptations that weren't here a generation or two ago. The shadows and hopes trapped in their heads are capable of seeing evil in a puppet or find Jesus' face on a sandwich. Is all the hand wringing and fear-mongering attempts to get God's attention? Is it to feel important among their peers? Perhaps it is, to be kind, an attempt to hold on to some image of righteousness, so they can be more comfortable in a world that left them behind 50yrs ago.
Ah yes. That hypocritical Catholic Church. Anti-abortion and anti-contraception. Got to keep those women popping out those babies so those Catholic pedophile priests will have future children to molest.
What a nice little mixed bag here.. We could do a piece that included John Wayne Gacy(Carter fundraiser before discovery), Anarchists burning buildings(bad rich people and social structure), and Democrats attending a state party convention. Yeah, those have about as much connectedness as Steve's montage. Is Steve a former John Bircher? He seems to like their journalistic technique of mixing, matching, and in the end hoping that something in the stew will touch a conspiracy theorist's or bigot's heart. Pat Buchanan must have passed some of his tips on to this crew as well.
What if the Catholic church owns the insursnce policy? That would mean the catholic church would be the insurer. We probaly would have been better off if we would have put jobs first and health care 2nd. Passing the health cafre law just see what was in it was a misstake in my opinion. We should have read it first and then maybe some of these issiues could have been ironed out.
@High rolla - why didn't you read it? Every version of the bill was available over the internet from the moment it was introduced in the House - it was available at the Senate and House websites and also from links from all the mainstream newspaper sites. There's really no excuse! Summaries were available, bullet-point charts were available, overviews were available -- all in addition to the bill itself. You can still google "Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, text, summaries" and directly read the information for yourself.
The big point here, too, is that theocracy exists within democracy - not the other way around. In my view, Catholic bishops are seeking to bend our democracy to their theocratic will. And were they this upset about Viagra being covered by insurance policies the churches owned? No!
As for "jobs first," the Recovery Act was passed well before healthcare reform - with somewhere around 3 million jobs created -- so "jobs" did indeed come first.
Child abuse of the worst kind!
It's indoctrination day over at the Chapel of the dentally challenged, Jesus loves (using) the little children! As far as the snake charmer goes, he gets a Darwin award to spite his religion!
The Catholic church could solve this problem themselves by simply not employing those who use birth control. Make it a condition of employment, and make the use of birth control grounds for immediate termination of employment.
Thing is, the Catholic Church has NEVER likes our separation of church and state. They are still smarting over how the Mexican government threw them out and rewrote their Constitution during the Revolution down there. No bishops working with the elites running the place. Its time this lawsuit puts the nail in their coffin so they understand the US is not a Catholic or any other country. Believe what you want. But you can't force your religion on people in the US.
Since this is an attempt to interfere in the law of the nation, it is a unconstitunal lawsuit and hopefully all the courts the bishops are trying to clog up will throw them out and refuse to even hear them!! Shades of fourteenth century Popes and Kings, one of the reasons our founding fathers were aware of and wrote into the constitution.
I realize that the show mostly deals with American politics, and so, by extension, This Week in God deals with American religious silliness; however I think an exception should be made for this recent incident involving the leaking of Vatican documents to a reporter who wrote a book about corruption at the Vatican. Especially in light of this headline:
Vatican says leaks a violation of trust
Really? A violation of trust? You mean, like molesting small children and then using your international organization and position "above God" to protect the molesters? A violation of trust like that? HOLY HANNAH THESE PEOPLE ARE TONE DEAF!!!!
A friend shared this letter with me. I stand with the nuns! Fight back, sisters! - from a very catholic woman. =)
BLESSED TRINITY PARISH CLEVELAND , OH , May 27, 2012
From the Desk of Fr. Doug Koesel dkoesel@blessedtrinitycleveland.org
Many of you have asked me to comment on the recent investigation into the US nuns. Here goes. In short, the Vatican has asked for an investigation into the life of religious women in the United States . There is a concern about orthodoxy, feminism and pastoral practice. The problem with the Vatican approach is that it places the nuns squarely on the side of Jesus and the Vatican on the side of tired old men, making a last gasp to save a crumbling kingdom lost long ago for a variety of reasons.
One might say that this investigation is the direct result of the John Paul II papacy. He was suspicious of the power given to the laity after the Second Vatican Council. He disliked the American Catholic Church. Throughout his papacy he strove to wrest collegial power from episcopal conferences and return it to Rome .
One of the results of the council was that the nuns became more educated, more integrated in the life of the people and more justice-oriented than the bishops and pope. They are doctors, lawyers, university professors, lobbyists, social workers, authors, theologians, etc. Their appeal was that they always went back to what Jesus said and did. Their value lay in the fact that their theology and their practice were integrated into the real world.
The Vatican sounded like the Pharisees of the New Testament;—legalistic, paternalistic and orthodox— while “the good sisters” were the ones who were feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting the sick and imprisoned, educating the immigrant, and so on. Nuns also learned that Catholics are intuitively smart about their faith. They prefer dialogue over diatribe, freedom of thought over mind control, biblical study over fundamentalism, development of doctrine over isolated mandates.
Far from being radical feminists or supporters of far-out ideas, religious women realized that the philosophical underpinnings of Catholic teaching are no longer valid. Women are not subservient to men, the natural law is much broader than once thought, the OT is not as important as the NT, love is more powerful than fear. They realized that you can have a conversation with someone on your campus who thinks differently than the church without compromising what the church teaches. (For example, I could invite Newt Gingrich here to speak. You’d all still know what the church teaches about divorce in spite of him) Women religious have learned to live without fear (Srs. Dorothy Kazel, Maura Clark, Ita Ford) and with love (Mother Teresa). And the number of popes and bishops and cardinals following in their footsteps, Jesus’ footsteps, is_____?
This is what annoys American Catholics. The Vatican is hypocritical and duplicitous. Their belief is always that someone else needs to clean up their act; the divorced, the gays, the media, the US nuns, the Americans who were using the wrong words to pray, the seminaries, etc. It never occurs to the powers that be that the source of the problem is the structure itself. We can say that now with certainty as regards the sex abuse crisis. It was largely the structure of the church itself, the way men were trained and isolated, made loyal to the system at all costs and not to the person, that gave us the scandalous cover-up.
US nuns work side by side with the person on the street. They are involved in their everyday lives. Most cardinals spent less than five years in a parish, were never pastors, are frequently career diplomats.
Religious women in the US refuse to be controlled by abusive authority that seeks to control out of fear. They realize that Jesus taught no doctrines, but that the church, over time, developed what Jesus taught in a systematic way. Nuns have always tried to work within the system. This time their prophetic voices may take them out of the system. They may take a lot of Catholics and a lot of their hospitals, schools, colleges, orphanages, prison ministries, convents, women’s shelters, food pantries and, of course, the good will they have earned over the centuries with them.
This investigation is not about wayward US nuns. It is the last gasp for control by a dying breed, wrapped in its own self-importance. It is a struggle for the very nature of the church; who we are, how we pray, where we live, who belongs, why we believe. The early church endured a similar struggle. The old order died. The Holy Spirit won. Happy Pentecost Sunday!
May faith guide the Church beyond fear.
The Wisconsin people are totally right to do this recall. These Republicans have used deception, lies, and deceit to just serve the corrupt rich and their own selfish interests. These corrupt Republicans have shown no concern about the welfare of others, except to do the very worst things of their human nature. And the Republicans want the people to think they are good, caring, generous, compassionate, and kind give me a break. It is more like the Republicans lack any ethics or morals at all.
The pope's butler may be the most important man in modern Catholicism. To remove the secrecy and sanctimonious dogma that enables the old men of church to remain rich and powerful at the expense of everyone else, can free the faithful to grow with the real world. Imagine a religion where everyone is welcome, equal and wants to participate as opposed to the fear, guilt and manipulation used as weapons to keep the sheep in line. Without the wicked secret keepers and power-brokers, it would be people working with and for other people, without the need to destroy or deny what is different or evolving.
There really has to be something said about people who do not believe in something greater than us such as God. These people say there is no God and when worse gets to worse they say prove there is. But really these people who believe there is no God really cannot prove there is no God. Because there is one fundamental fact that will happen to people, they will have some profound spiritual or religious experience, even they may not be able to totally prove it, but they know there is something greater than us. And that no matter what, even when people have felt they have been persecuted by certain Religious Pharisees and because of that say there is no God or by whatever reason they believe there is no God, you will not change a persons attitude about something being greater than us. And that is where you just become a detriment to all people having liberty, rights, equality, choices, and freedoms, because you will never be able to prove there isn’t a God. Because there is plenty of things that do happen in this world that is paranormal and psychic. And some of it comes through the light that is brighter than the sun.
All I can say to this is HUH????
I'm with you, oncearep. I've been vacillating between replying and accepting the futility for most of this afternoon.
I'm low on give-a-damn today.
Come on oncearepublican and ninz think about it, it is just one of the very basic things about our human nature. I am sure you both can use your imagination and thorough thought to see why.
I *think* you are trying to state that your perception of "paranormal and psychic" events is proof that there is a god.
That is one of the most insane assumptions I've ever heard anyone profess.
You are missing the big picture. This is about are we going to be a Nanny state, or a country of rugged individualists as the Founders wanted. And you can't have it both ways, you can't ban prayer in schools, and then tell the Churches what to do with their policies.
No - it's about, do we have a democracy, or a theocracy?
Nobody's stopping kids from praying in school. It just shouldn't be part of some public school indoctrination or disruptive to the educational environment. My daughter and some of her classmates found time for prayer during their free time, like at lunch.
Furthermore, this story seems to be escaping NBC and other news outlets...
http://www.mrc.org/biasalerts/after-spiking-catholic-lawsuit-against-obama-networks-unleash-avalanche-stories-hyping-va
Now, why is that?
Wont be long until MSNBC cancels Maddo's show. Her ratings keep dropping because no one wants to listen to a shrill, bitter, spinster.
Yet YOU are still watching and posting!!! Go figure!!
"Spinster"?
Did you just fall out of the 19th century? Or was it the 18th?