Posts matching tags 'catholic'
2008/3/20
Health authorities in the Philippines have warned devout Catholics taking part in Easter crucifixion rituals to get tetanus shots before they flagellate and/or crucify themselves, and to practice good hygiene:
In the hot and dusty atmosphere, officials warn, using unhygienic whips to make deep cuts in the body could lead to tetanus and other infections.
And they advise that the nails used to fix people to crosses must be properly disinfected first. Often people soak the nails in alcohol throughout the year.
In the northern city of San Fernando alone there will be three separate improvised Golgothas - the biblical name for the hill where Jesus was crucified.
2008/3/10
The Catholic Church has just revised the list of mortal sins. Among new things which damn the sinner to Hell for all eternity if not absolved is engaging in "manipulative genetic science", i.e., modifying genetic material. To be fair, the Vatican did just erect a statue of Galileo, the scientist they forced on pain of death to recant the theory that the earth went around the sun, so they're not entirely anti-scientific; they just like their science to mature for a few centuries.
Other things Catholics may not do without risking eternal damnation include abortion (natch) and paedophilia, taking or dealing drugs (presumably not including socially acceptable ones, such as alcohol, nicotine or caffeine) or "the excessive accumulation of wealth by a few" (that's a few individuals, not the Church itself).
2006/12/12
After Italy saw a spate of gruesome murders carried out by self-professed Satanists (who, apparently, indulge in "a lethal blend of black magic, hard drugs, sex and heavy metal"), the Italian police are planning to set up a "Satan squad". The special task force will include psychologists and a priest and will investigate "potentially dangerous religious movements". Some are concerned, though, that such a squad would become a hammer of Catholic majoritarianism and persecute harmless minority religions.
2006/11/22
Conservative Catholic youth flock to Glastonbury to "cleanse" it of its pagan influences.
Maya Pinder, the owner of the shop, said: "We've had to hear comments such as 'burn the witches', we've had salt thrown in our faces and at our shop, people were openly saying they were 'cleansing Glastonbury of paganism'.
"It was as if we had returned to the dark ages. This is hugely damaging to Glastonbury ... it is hard enough to trade in Glastonbury as it is, if you were to take away the pagan element it would be a dead town." The Somerset town is known for having a large population of resident and visiting pagans.The Youth 2000 group, a conservative Catholic youth group which organised the pilgrimage, has publicly distanced itself from the incidents.
2006/1/23
The world's oldest multinational corporation, the Catholic Church, is joining the intellectual-property age; the Vatican has declared it intends to claim copyright on the current and previous Popes' words, and require any publications carrying those words to license them for a royalty equivalent to 3-5% of the cover price. Newspapers are exempted from the royalty, but only by "prior agreement" (i.e., giving the Vatican the power of veto over unflattering uses of the Pope's words). This has raised the ire of those who object to a price being put on the "word of the Lord" and its official interpretation.
(via bOING bOING) ¶ [no comments]
2005/12/8
Today, in theological news: the Catholic church is set to abolish the concept of limbo, as a place for the souls of unbaptised children and virtuous heathens, saying that it "has always been just a theological hypothesis".
Meanwhile, terminally ill patients in Israel will be allowed euthanasia, as long as it's carried out by machines and not humans, as that would be forbidden under Jewish law:
A special timer will be fitted to a patient's respirator which will sound an alarm 12 hours before turning it off.
Normally, carers would override the alarm and keep the respirator turned on but, if various stringent conditions are met, including the giving of consent by the patient or legal guardian, the alarm would not be overridden.
Similar timing devices, known as Sabbath clocks, are used in the homes of orthodox Jews so that light switches and electrical devices can be turned on during the Sabbath without offending religious strictures.As Jamie Zawinski said, "Judaism is so awesome -- it's the only religion composed entirely of loopholes!"
(via 
jwz) ¶ [1 comment]
2005/5/10
A Roman Catholic cardinal and a priest in charge of Vatican Radio have been convicted of polluting the atmosphere with electromagnetic radiation; studies have found that magnetic fields around the Vatican Radio transmitters north of Rome were much higher than normal limits allow, and may have caused high rates of cancer in the area.
(via substitute) ¶ [no comments]
2005/4/2
Pope John Paul II has died, aged 84. He was the most widely travelled pope in the history of the Catholic Church, and extended the religion to new audiences; he also was an ideological hardliner, a veteran of the battle against communist totalitarianism who then turned his guns on secularism and liberalism; or, to quote a Guardian article on his legacy:
"I think this has been a papacy of missed opportunities and lost years, leaving scars that will persist for decades. I would say the Pope has left the church in a shocking, sad state. There is an arrogance and a lack of spirituality in the Vatican, ecumenical relations are at their worst ebb for many years and we have a church crippled by clericalism. I think the Pope lacked faith to allow for a rebirth and renewal of the church."
As the old Pope's grip on power loosened, those around him issued proclamations that amplified his natural doctrinal conservatism, incautiously suggesting non-Catholics were not really Christians, casting anathemas at homosexuality and, most recently, suggesting that girl altar servers should be banned.
There was even an attempt to force God into the European Union constitution - a miscalculated political intervention doomed to failure on a continent where many parties were formed to fight Catholic clericalism in countries which had struggled free of an authoritarian state religion into secular and religious pluralism.
My views on his legacy are mixed; on one hand, he was clearly a man of personal integrity, who deeply believed in both social justice and the dignity of the individual, and was instrumental in ending Soviet tyranny in eastern Europe. On the other hand, the hard-line positions he took on issues such as contraception and the role of women caused much misery in the world. (Still, misery in the temporal world makes demand for hope for the next, and thus is good business if you're running a church. Though I doubt that he thought of it in such cynical terms.) The John Paul II Vatican, having ruled out compromise and rolled back many of the changes of Vatican II, has alienated a lot of liberals, though arguably gotten more converts in need of a strong religion demanding of absolute submission. Whether this is enough to maintain the relevance and power of the Catholic church remains to be see.
And here is the list of the leading candidates for the next Pope, who are also the conclave set to elect the successor. Given that John Paul II had a history of appointing theological conservatives on ideological lines (one cleric accused him of selecting cardinals the way U.S. presidents select Supreme Court judges), there is unlikely to be a radical about-turn during the next papacy. There are a number of Italians there (as expected) and a few other Europeans (notable among them head of Cardinal Ratzinger, head of the Office for the Doctrine of the Faith, a.k.a. the Holy Inquisition), but the other bloc expected to exercise sway is from Latin America.
2005/1/25
What do Saudi Arabia, the Bush Whitehouse, the Mormons, the Vatican and former Malaysian strongman Mahathir Mohamad have in common? They are all part of an international alliance against liberal secularism:
The Doha conference, and the resulting UN resolution, provided a striking example of growing cooperation between the Christian right (especially in the United States) and conservative Muslims - groups who, according to the clash-of-civilisations theory, ought to be sworn enemies.The coalition succeeded in introducing a resolution in the United Nations asserting "traditional" definitions of the family and attacking progressive social policies including promotion of contraception, tolerance of homosexuality, nontraditional views of the status of women and sex education. The resolution, proposed by Qatar, was backed by the United States, though, unusually, Australia (with its socially conservative and vehemently pro-US administration) sided with Godless Europe. Chances are that was the result of a miscommunication and, the next time such a resolution comes up, Australia's UN ambassador will vote with the Coalition of Willing.
The family debate certainly divides the world, but the divisions are not between east and west, nor do they follow the usual dividing lines of international politics. The battle is between liberal secularists - predominantly in Europe - and conservatives elsewhere who think religion has a role in government.
On this issue, with a president who sounds increasingly like an old-fashioned imam, the United States now sits in the religious camp alongside the Islamic regimes: not so much a clash of civilisations, more an alliance of fundamentalisms.
And in another unholy alliance, US Christian Fundamentalist groups are holding their noses and jumping into the hot tub with Hollywood on the issue of file-sharing, in the interest of instituting centralised control over the lawless internet, mechanisms control which could just as easily be used for enforcing religious morality and stamping out sin as for making sure that every byte of copyrighted content is paid for.
2004/11/14
The twilight of secularism (an ongoing series): Australia's highest-ranking Catholic clergyman and leading conservative hardliner, Cardinal George Pell, gave a speech comparing Islam to Communism and saying that secular democracy has failed and must be replaced with what he called "democratic personalism", with paternalistic Christian government being the only hope of countering the spread of fundamentalist Islam.
"The small but growing conversion of native Westerners within Western societies to Islam carries the suggestion that Islam may provide in the 21st century the attraction which communism provided in the 20th, both for those who are alienated or embittered on the one hand, and for those who seek order or justice on the other," he said.
He asked: "Does democracy need a burgeoning billion-dollar pornography industry to be truly democratic? Does it need an abortion rate in the tens of millions? "What would democracy look like if you took some of these things out of the picture? Would it cease to be democracy? Or would it actually become more democratic?"
Perhaps, after a few more terms of John Howard/Tony Abbott, we'll find out. Besides which, "democratic personalism" has a nicely euphemistic ring to it. Given how misleading it is for the Tories to call themselves the "Liberal Party", perhaps they'll take the hint and rename themselves the Democratic Personalist Party.
2004/10/4
The latest round of beatifications is out; among the candidates is Emperor Karl, who ruled the Austro-Hungarian Empire between 1916 and 1918. Some objected to his beatification on the grounds that he signed off on the use of poison gas in the trenches of World War 1, but he also miraculously healed a Brazilian nun's varicose veins, so it's alright. The last Habsburg Emperor is not a saint yet (that requires a further miracle to be attributed to him), but he may be accorded a feast day and his relics may be venerated. Which makes me wonder whether, in a century's time, the world may see Tony Blair or someone nominated for sainthood, supported by some true believer or other miraculously recovering from a medical condition.
2004/7/9
A Catholic canon lawyer has filed heresy charges against Senator John Kerry, the US presidential candidate, in an ecclesiastical court. The charges relate to Kerry taking communion whilst advocating legalised abortion.
It will be interesting to see if the Catholic Church prosecutes these charges. They seem to have had a policy of not prescribing Catholic politicians' agendas, though this is changing somewhat with the conservative line taken by the current Pope (and, indeed, doesn't look to get any more liberal, with demographic shifts giving more power to conservative bishops in Africa). On the other hand, there are politics to consider; aside from the likelihood of a backlash occurring from any perceived interference in the election, the Vatican is not too fond of Bush (indeed, it has been claimed that the Pope thinks he may be the Antichrist foretold in the Book of Revelation, though this may well be apocryphal), and may not be too keen to shoot down the opposition.
2004/6/18
A lot of stuff is being outsourced to India these days; call centre work, programming jobs, Catholic prayers...
2004/3/17
Patrick Farley (who writes/draws the excellent Electric Sheep online comics, and has his head screwed on the right way on most things) has some interesting things to say about St. Patrick's Day:
A few facts about St. Patrick:
- He wasn't Irish, he was Roman.
- There never were any snakes in Ireland.
- "Driving the snakes out of Ireland" is a euphemism for leading the slaughter of the indigenous Celtic pagans.
Now, tomorrow I'll be wearing green to celebrate the arrival of spring, and surely I'll raise a pint or two of Guiness in honor of the Emerald Isle. But an Irish person celebrating "St. Patrick's Day" is as absurd as a Mexican celebrating "Cortez Day."
2003/11/13
A new book from the Disinformation troublemakers: 50 things you're not supposed to know, with "irrefutable evidence" of factoids like "Nearly all American milk-cows are infected with Bovine Leukemia Virus", "Pope Pius II wrote a best selling erotic novel", and "One of the heroes of 'Black Hawk Down' was a convicted child molester". (via bOING bOING)
2003/10/23
Arch-contrarian Christopher Hitchens gets mediæval on Mother Teresa, best known as the world's leading brand of goodness. According to him, her works served to increase poverty and suffering whilst boosting her personality cult, raking in lots of money from the guilt-assuagement industry, and the Pope (himself a reactionary) has improperly cut corners in the usually rigorous beatification process, eliminating procedures designed to guard against fashionable superstition, in order to make her a saint before he dies. Oh, and the "miracle" "she" performed was a fraud too.
A Bengali woman named Monica Besra claims that a beam of light emerged from a picture of MT, which she happened to have in her home, and relieved her of a cancerous tumor. Her physician, Dr. Ranjan Mustafi, says that she didn't have a cancerous tumor in the first place and that the tubercular cyst she did have was cured by a course of prescription medicine. Was he interviewed by the Vatican's investigators? No.
I wonder what would happen if one could look more closely, using primary evidence, at the miracles for which most historical saints got their haloes; how many of them would turn out to be polite fictions, well-meaning conspiracies of true believers cooking the books for the greater good of giving the faith (and the local community) a new saint. Faith can make people do intellectually inconsistent things; for example, Creationists who truly believed that the world was created in six days 6,000 years ago have been caught doctoring evidence and knowingly lying about verifiable facts that supported unfavourable hypotheses; who's to say that the vast majority of beatifications aren't the product of conspiracies of consensual deceit? I'll lie if you look the other way, and a hundred years from now, nobody will know the difference.
MT was not a friend of the poor. She was a friend of poverty. She said that suffering was a gift from God. She spent her life opposing the only known cure for poverty, which is the empowerment of women and the emancipation of them from a livestock version of compulsory reproduction. And she was a friend to the worst of the rich, taking misappropriated money from the atrocious Duvalier family in Haiti (whose rule she praised in return) and from Charles Keating of the Lincoln Savings and Loan. Where did that money, and all the other donations, go? The primitive hospice in Calcutta was as run down when she died as it always had beenshe preferred California clinics when she got sick herselfand her order always refused to publish any audit. But we have her own claim that she opened 500 convents in more than a hundred countries, all bearing the name of her own order. Excuse me, but this is modesty and humility?
Forgotten were the elementary rules of logic, that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and that what can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence. More than that, we witnessed the elevation and consecration of extreme dogmatism, blinkered faith, and the cult of a mediocre human personality. Many more people are poor and sick because of the life of MT: Even more will be poor and sick if her example is followed. She was a fanatic, a fundamentalist, and a fraud, and a church that officially protects those who violate the innocent has given us another clear sign of where it truly stands on moral and ethical questions.
2003/8/23
A claim has emerged from Ireland (where else?) that incense, of the sort used in Catholic churches, can cause cancer, with altar boys and girls being at particular risk from carcinogens in the smoke. Ireland, once the most fiercely Catholic state in Europe, is currently banning the smoking of tobacco in most public places.
2003/7/25
Only in Los Angeles would you expect to find something like this: Blessing of the Cars:
The all-day and into-the-night annual affair, held at Hansen Dam (this year's on July 26), begins with a mass morning blessing by a Catholic priest, who then goes car to car, blessing each individually. Some people also ask him put holy water in their radiators.
With the Shag title art and copious numbers of scantily-clad vixens in photos, I suspect it's not an official Catholic Church-sponsored event. I wonder where exactly it falls in the ironic/sincere spectrum. (via MeFi)
2003/2/25
2003/1/31
The World's Oldest Multinational Corporation: The local branch office of the Catholic Church has attracted criticism after officially supporting a visit by an American psychologist who claims that homosexuality is an illness and can be cured.
Meanwhile, it has recently emerged that, on the other side of the world, a religious organisation has been rounding up single mothers, sexual abuse victims and orphans as well as girls who were too dangerously pretty to be allowed out, stripping them of their identities, forbidding them to speak, and forcing them into slavery, making a tidy profit of their labour. Is this in Saudi Arabia? Nigeria? Or perhaps one of the excesses of the Taliban? No; it's the work of the Catholic Church in Ireland, and its "Magdalene Laundries", the last of which closed way back in 1996.
2002/9/11
The World's Oldest Multinational Corporation: Looks like the Vatican is still unclear on the concept of free speech and the open debate of issues, fiercely condemning a film about abuse in convents. Perhaps they should bring back the Index and summarily excommunicate anyone who partakes of forbidden media. Incidentally, I wonder how it will fare against Australia's film censorship regime.
2002/5/24
The Issues that Matter: The Vatican, the world's oldest multinational corporation, has issued a media statement criticising celebrities for wearing jeweled crucifixes. Then again, mentioning celebrities by name is good for publicity, and right now, any publicity not connected to child sex scandals is good news for them.
2002/5/22
In today's Onion: Pope forgives molested children for their misdeeds:
"The pope has shown great love and compassion, much as Jesus did when he ministered to tax collectors and whores," said Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston. "Despite all they have done to jeopardize the careers of so many priests--to say nothing of imperiling the priests' immortal souls--the church embraces these underaged seducers and tempters with open arms. The pope's words and actions prove that the church is willing to put an end to the suffering and let the healing begin."
also, Handlers Desperate To Prevent Tara Reid Political Awakening:
"There was a lot of concern when she was cast in Dr. T And The Women ," Braterman said. "[Director Robert] Altman is known for his subversive, countercultural views, and [co-star] Richard Gere is a passionate advocate for Tibetan independence. It was a dangerous situation to put her in, but by keeping Tara's trailer far away from Richard's and by frequently pulling her off the set for premieres, press junkets, and racy pictorials for Stuff magazine and Maxim, we managed to shield her from any potential indoctrination."
"It is just so unfair," Pressly said. "Because of her control-freak handlers, Tara will never learn of the joys and rewards of political awareness. Since my own awakening last year, I feel so much more full of knowledge and awareness, and I think celebrities should use their fame to educate the public about important issues. Like, for example, did you know that women in Pakistine have to be buried alive with their dead husbands, whether they want to or not? That is so wrong."
2002/2/11
The World's Oldest Multinational Corporation: A Catholic high school in Pennsylvania has awarded students extra credit for picketing an abortion clinic. More than 50 students of a religion class earned extra credit for picketing outside a Planned Parenthood clinic. The clinic also offers counselling, cancer screenings and contraceptives.
2002/1/29
The World's Oldest Multinational Corporation: Speaking of unswerving religious sanctions, Pope John Paul II has instructed Catholic lawyers to refuse divorce cases. How binding is his decree? Are Catholics still absolutely required to subordinate their consciences to the Church in all matters or face excommunication?
(This reminds me of how the Catholic church has been taking over hospitals, often dominating entire regional markets, and eliminating services which the Vatican doesn't approve of, for patients of all cultural persuasions.)
2001/2/7
Did Tom and Nicole split over which evil cult (Scientology or the Catholic Church) to raise their kids in? (via Plastic)
2000/11/13
Moral ambiguity of the day: The Catholic Church vs. McDonalds:
...a Catholic newspaper declared fast food to be fit only for atheists, or perhaps Lutherans. Munching a Big Mac with fries was the antithesis of receiving communion and should be spurned by Catholics, declared Avvenire.
(via YAWL)