What a concept! Catholic nuns are actually living Christ's message in the Gospels...

i'm a product of catholic elementary and secondary school and spent my freshman year of college at a catholic university... from my time in elementary school, i remember some outstanding sisters as well as some petty, mean and outright physically and emotionally abusive ones, the latter the object of much scorn and spoofing in later years... they were also no small source of clientele for therapists...

i was 14 years old when vatican ii was held in 1962... the reforms and enlightened thinking it spawned were both a relief and a breath of fresh air to most all catholics except the dyed-in-the-wool, hide-bound conservatives, who were much like the ones you hear so much about today, led on by cardinals defending child-abusing priests and a pope with his head firmly up his ass...


interestingly enough,  ones who took vatican ii most seriously and used it as an opportunity to fully embrace christ's message in the gospels were nuns... even though i am decades removed from my early catholicism - and from religion in general - and even though some negative experiences with nuns in my youth are still crystal clear in my memory, i've done a complete 180-degree turn and have been in total support of the sisterhood for years now... nuns are doing the kind of social justice work that is written into my heart and my dna, the kind of work that should be both welcomed and supported by all, regardless of their faith or lack thereof... to see the warped and twisted church authorities trying to mute their voices and deflect them from such all-important work is more than an embarrassment to one of the world's major religions, it is a rejection both of christ's teachings and of the basic principles of humanity... for shame...

from raw story...

Tuesday night on Current TV’s “The Young Turks,” host Cenk welcomed Sister Diane Donoghue of #NunsOnTheBus, a group of progressive Catholic nuns who are traveling coast-to-coast by bus. The women are bucking the Catholic church’s male hierarchy and spreading what they hope is a message of social and economic justice by protesting the slew of federal cuts to programs for the needy proposed in the Republican budget outlined by Wisconsin Congressman Rep. Paul Ryan (R).

Their plan has sparked an uproar among conservatives, who are accustomed to the Catholic Church and its adherents being staunchly on their side. Right wing AM radio host Jan Mickelson asked Rep. Tom Latham (R-IA) in an interview if there was a plan in place “to pull the nuns on the bus over and pistol whip them?”

Uygur asked Donoghue how she would answer allegations that the rebel nuns are instigators who “threw the first punch” in the fight for the rights of the poor.

“We’ve been doing this a long time,” Donoghue told him, saying that nuns have been on the forefront of all human frontiers of exploration and settlement, bringing aid and comfort to the needy and helping the sick and helpless.

“We are based in Washington, DC,” she said, “but we work for social justice.”

“Sister Diane,” said Uygur, “There’s something weird in this country with Republicans who claim they have the mantle of Christianity on their side and yet, when you go to help the poor, they say, ‘How dare you!’” He asked if he was wrong in his reading of the New Testament of the Bible. Didn’t Jesus care a lot about the poor?

“Jesus talked about sheltering the homeless, clothing people, feeding people, and always with compassion,” Donoghue replied, adding “He spent more time with poor people than anybody else, and that’s what we want to be able to do in terms of saying, ‘This is not fair.’ We want to turn it around."

 damn straight...

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Krugman cheers on Elizabeth Warren

elizabeth warren's definitely got my attention (see previous post), altho' i must admit, i'd rather see her challenging obama in a primary than running for a massachusetts senate seat... she's gotten paul krugman's attention too, evidently...

Elizabeth Warren, the financial reformer who is now running for the United States Senate in Massachusetts, recently made some eloquent remarks to this effect that are, rightly, getting a lot of attention. “There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody,” she declared, pointing out that the rich can only get rich thanks to the “social contract” that provides a decent, functioning society in which they can prosper.

Which brings us back to those cries of “class warfare.”

Republicans claim to be deeply worried by budget deficits. Indeed, Mr. Ryan [Wisconsin Republican Congressman Paul Ryan] has called the deficit an “existential threat” to America. Yet they are insisting that the wealthy — who presumably have as much of a stake as everyone else in the nation’s future — should not be called upon to play any role in warding off that existential threat.

Well, that amounts to a demand that a small number of very lucky people be exempted from the social contract that applies to everyone else. And that, in case you’re wondering, is what real class warfare looks like.

after musing about the demise of frank rich at the nyt, i've begun wondering just how much longer the super-rich elites will tolerate krugman's voice at the gray lady... i would not be at all surprised by a resignation announcement in the near future...

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"A naked attempt to redistribute yet more money to the country's rich at the expense of everyone else"

i don't recognize my own country any more... it's being run entirely by the super-rich, elites hell-bent on getting every scrap of power and money into their own greedy hands...

Government by People Who Hate You

House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan put out a budget proposal last week that will leave the vast majority of future retirees without decent health care by ending Medicare as we know it. According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) analysis, most middle-income retirees would have to pay almost half of their income to purchase a Medicare equivalent insurance package by 2030. They would be paying much more than half of their income in later years.

This sort of broadside against the living standards of the middle class might have been expected to draw an outraged response in a nation that exalts the lifestyle and values of the middle class. Instead, the punditry rallied around Mr. Ryan's plan to deal with the problem of runaway entitlement spending, crediting it for being "serious" even if they did not embrace all the details.

If there is any doubt that our political system is controlled by an elite who is completely removed from the bulk of the population, this response to the Ryan plan ended it. There is nothing at all serious about the Ryan plan. It is a naked attempt to redistribute yet more money to the country's rich at the expense of everyone else.

why should we constantly be fighting off attacks on our livelihoods and the basic security of our lives that should never, ever be in question...? why are we having to fight for every micron of our dignity, our humanity, our future...? when did my country turn so terribly petty, so unconscionably mean, so totally focused on greed, power and money...? yes, i know it has always been that way to some extent - perhaps to a large extent - but now it's nothing but a bald-faced "fuck you, i've got mine" mentality...

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