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...

Submit To Propeller
Tweet

[Permalink] 0 comments

The Constitution is not subject to opinion polling [UPDATE]

among so many other disgraces, what's happening in the u.s. regarding religious tolerance is a true national disgrace...

keith olbermann...



[UPDATE]

glenn zooms in on the islamophobia touched on above by keith... it's worth posting in full because it also touches on our ever-expanding surveillance state...

One of the most under-reported political stories is the increasingly vehement, nationwide movement -- far from Ground Zero -- to oppose new mosques and Islamic community centers. These ugly campaigns are found across the country, in every region, and extend far beyond the warped extremists who are doing things such as sponsoring "Burn a Quran Day." And now, from CBS News last night, we have this:

Fire at Tenn. Mosque Building Site Ruled Arson

Federal officials are investigating a fire that started overnight at the site of a new Islamic center in a Nashville suburb.

Ben Goodwin of the Rutherford County Sheriff's Department confirmed to CBS Affiliate WTVF that the fire, which burned construction equipment at the future site of the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro, is being ruled as arson. . . .

The chair of the center's planning committee, Essim Fathy, said he drove to the site at around 5:30 a.m. Saturday morning after he was contacted by the sheriff's department.

"Our people and community are so worried of what else can happen," said Fathy. "They are so scared" . . .

Opponents of a new Islamic center say they believe the mosque will be more than a place of prayer; they are afraid the 15-acre site that was once farmland will be turned into a terrorist training ground for Muslim militants bent on overthrowing the U.S. government.

"They are not a religion. They are a political, militaristic group," Bob Shelton, a 76-year-old retiree who lives in the area, told The Associated Press.

Shelton was among several hundred demonstrators who recently wore "Vote for Jesus" T-shirts and carried signs that said "No Sharia law for USA!," referring to the Islamic code of law.

Others took their opposition further, spray painting a sign announcing the "Future site of the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro" and tearing it up.

Earlier this summer opponents criticized the planned mosque at hearings held by the Rutherford County Commission, as supporters held prayer vigils.

At one such prayer vigil, WTVF reported opponents speaking out against construction.

"No mosque in Murfreesboro. I don't want it. I don't want them here," Evy Summers said to WTVF. "Go start their own country overseas somewhere. This is a Christian country. It was based on Christianity."

• Continue reading

The arsonists undoubtedly will be happy to tell you how much they hate Terrorism. And how there's a War on Christianity underway in the U.S. The harm from these actions are not merely the physical damage they cause, but also the well-grounded fear it imposes on a minority of the American population. If you launch a nationwide, anti-Islamic campaign in Lower Manhattan based on the toxic premise that Muslims generally are responsible for 9/11 -- and spend a decade expanding American wars on one Muslim country after the next -- this is the inevitable, and obviously dangerous, outcome.

* * * * *

Three other items worth noting:

(1) Kudos to The New York Times for publishing this Op-Ed by Palestinian-American journalist Ali Abunimah, with views on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict -- and the role played by the U.S. -- which are typically excluded from the American debate on those issues.

(2) Reflecting the fact that primitive fundamentalism is found in all religions and is by no means unique to Islam, this Jerusalem Post article details how an Israel singer was sentenced by a rabbinical panel to receive 39 lashes for the crime of singing in front of an audience mixed with men and women. That article rather substantially exaggerates the punishment -- the video reflects that the "lashes" were essentially symbolic and undertaken voluntarily, fundamentally distinguishing it from involuntary, genuine punishment for moral "sins" -- but the notion that such an act merits punishment is nonetheless instructive.

(3) This short though important post documents how children are being trained to give up all privacy, and to be good, dutiful Surveillance State citizens, through constant, pervasive surveillance in schools. As I wrote recently here, what is lost from the societal elimination of privacy is difficult to describe but of incomparable value:

Many people are indifferent to the disappearance of privacy -- even with regard to government officials -- because they don't perceive any real value to it. The ways in which the loss of privacy destroys a society are somewhat abstract and difficult to articulate, though very real. A society in which people know they are constantly being monitored is one that breeds conformism and submission, and which squashes innovation, deviation, and real dissent.

The old cliché is often mocked though basically true: there's no reason to worry about surveillance if you have nothing to hide. That mindset creates the incentive to be as compliant and inconspicuous as possible: those who think that way decide it's in their best interests to provide authorities with as little reason as possible to care about them. That's accomplished by never stepping out of line. Those willing to live their lives that way will be indifferent to the loss of privacy because they feel that they lose nothing from it. Above all else, that's what a Surveillance State does: it breeds fear of doing anything out of the ordinary by creating a class of meek citizens who know they are being constantly watched.

Training children from an early age to have no expectation of privacy -- to live on the assumption that their every move and even thought (which is what Internet activity is) will be monitored and recorded by authority figures -- exacerbates these harms quite substantially.

ya know, sitting here in a struggling little country like kosovo and reading about the insanity that's going on back in the u.s. isn't a particularly pleasant experience...

Submit To Propeller
Tweet

[Permalink] 0 comments

All state societies be they French, be they American, be they any, are by definition violent systems

the musée du quai branly in paris is hosting an exhibition of ceramics from the peruvian moche culture that flourished between the first and eighth centuries... i have actually seen some of these many years ago during a trip to peru and was stunned at the explicit sex acts depicted... in the news article describing the paris exhibit, the exhibit curator, steve bourget, makes one of the most cogent observations i've yet read about the power of states and organized religions to exert control over people's lives...

Originally interpreted as evidence of a decadent culture, Bourget says the sexual acts should be seen as a visual discourse on the power of the Moche elite.

It's a story that has parallels with modern debates from the burqa to the death penalty.

"All state societies be they French, be they American, be they any, are by definition violent systems," Bourget said.

"The state gives itself the right to kill, to put people in jail, to control them."

In places where the ideological pole is strongest — from the Moche sacrifices through Ancient Rome to modern day Texas — the state tries to magnify its power through ritualized violence.

He says the Moche religion is not the only one to seek to control sexuality. The burqa is a form of control, as is the Catholic aversion to condoms, he says.

"You control sexuality, you control access to it, and in the process you give yourself power over groups, over people and you embed this power into values and you disseminate the values as being part of the population," he says.

"The population accept this because they believe its part of their values. They don't think they are being controlled."

i've been aware for many years that the essence of both state and religious control is based on convincing people that the source of authority and truth lie outside of themselves as individuals... "truth," "normalcy," and the definition of what is "right" and what is "wrong" must not be left to the individual but instead must come from the so-called "legitimate" - socially, religiously or institutionally sanctioned - holders of authority...

the very last thing a state or religious power structure can tolerate is people deciding for themselves what's right and wrong... the belief that we must abdicate our individual power to determine our own truth is succumbing to humanity's biggest lie, a lie that has been used over countless centuries right up to today to keep people in thrall to their masters... when that lie is finally laid to rest, we will finally be on our way to true civilization...

Submit To Propeller
Tweet

[Permalink] 5 comments