Philippines Begins To Dismantle The Shackles of Catholic Medievalism

Passage of contraceptives law in Philippines shows times have changed for Catholic church

Article by HRVOJE HRANJSKI , Associated Press

MANILA, Philippines – Twenty-six years after Roman Catholic leaders helped his mother marshal millions of Filipinos in an uprising that ousted a dictator, President Benigno Aquino III picked a fight with the church over contraceptives and won a victory that bared the bishops’ worst nightmare: They no longer sway the masses.

Aquino last month signed the Responsible Parenthood and Reproductive Health Act of 2012 quietly and without customary handshakes and photographs to avoid controversy. The law that provides state funding for contraceptives for the poor pitted the dominant Catholic Church in an epic battle against the popular Aquino and his followers.

A couple with links to the church filed a motion Wednesday to stop implementation of the law, and more petitions are expected. Still, there is no denying that Aquino’s approval of the legislation has chipped away at the clout the church has held over Filipinos, and marked the passing of an era in which it was taboo to defy the church and priests.

Catholic leaders consider the law an attack on the church’s core values — the sanctity of life — saying that contraceptives promote promiscuity and destroy life. Aquino and his allies see the legislation as a way to address how the poor — roughly a third of the country’s 94 million people — manage the number of children they have and provide for them. Nearly half of all pregnancies in the Philippines are unwanted, according to the U.N. Population Fund, and a third of those end up aborted in a country where abortion remains illegal.

Rampant poverty, overcrowded slums, and rising homelessness and crime are main concerns that neither the church nor Aquino’s predecessors have successfully tackled.

“If the church can provide milk, diapers and rice, then go ahead, let’s make more babies,” said Giselle Labadan, a 30-year-old roadside vendor. “But there are just too many people now, too many homeless people, and the church doesn’t help to feed them.”

Labadan said she grew up in a God-fearing family but has defied the church’s position against contraceptives for more than a decade because her five children, age 2 to 12, were already far too many for her meager income. Her husband, a former army soldier, is jobless.

She said that even though she has used most types of contraceptives, she still considers herself among the faithful. “I still go to church and pray. It’s a part of my life,” Labadan said.

“I have prayed before not to have another child, but the condom worked better,” she said.

The law now faces a legal challenge in the Supreme Court after the couple filed the motion, which seems to cover more ideological than legal grounds. One of the authors of the law, Rep. Edcel Lagman, said Thursday that he was not worried by the petition and expected more to follow.

“We are prepared for this,” he said. “We are certain that the law is completely constitutional and will surmount any attack on or test of its constitutionality.”

Over the decades, moral and political authority of the church in the Philippines is perceived to have waned with the passing of one its icons, Cardinal Jaime Sin. He shaped the role of the church during the country’s darkest hours after dictator Ferdinand Marcos imposed martial law starting in 1972 by championing the cause of civil advocacy, human rights and freedoms. Sin’s action mirrored that of his strong backer, Pope John Paul II, who himself challenged communist rulers in Eastern Europe.

Three years after Aquino’s father, Benigno Aquino Sr., a senator opposing Marcos, was gunned down on the Manila airport tarmac in 1983, Sin persuaded Aquino’s widow, Corazon, to run for president. When massive election cheating by Marcos was exposed, Sin went on Catholic-run Radio Veritas in February 1986 to summon millions of people to support military defectors and the Aquino-led opposition. Marcos fled and Aquino, a deeply religious woman, was sworn in as president.

Democracy was restored, but the country remained chaotic and mired in nearly a dozen coup attempts. The economy stalled, poverty persisted and the jobless were leaving in droves for better-paying jobs abroad as maids, teachers, nurses and engineers. After Aquino stepped down, the country elected its first and only Protestant president, Fidel Ramos. He, too, opposed the church on contraceptives and released state funds for family planning methods.

Catholic bishops pulled out all the stops in campaigning against Ramos’ successor, popular movie actor Joseph Estrada, a hero of the impoverished masses who made little attempt to keep down his reputation for womanizing, drinking and gambling.

But few heeded the church’s advice. Estrada was elected with the largest victory margin in Philippine history. Halfway through his six-year presidency, in January 2001, he was confronted with another “people power” revolt, backed by political opponents and the military, and was forced to resign.

His successor, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, styled herself as a devout Catholic and sought to placate the church by abolishing the death penalty and putting brakes on the contraceptives law, which languished in Congress during her nine years in power.

It mattered little. Arroyo’s mismanagement and corruption scandals set the stage for Aquino’s election on a promise to rid the Philippines of graft, fix the economy and lift millions out of poverty. The scion of the country’s democracy icon took power several years after Sin’s death, but it was a different era in which the church was battered by scandals of sexual misconduct of priests and declining family values.

The latest defeat of the church “can further weaken its moral authority at a time when this is most badly needed in many areas, including defense of a whole range of family values,” said the Rev. John J. Carroll, founding chairman of the Jesuit-run John J. Carroll Institute on Church and Social Issues. He said he wondered how many Catholics have been “turned off” by incessant sermons and prayers led by the church against the contraceptives law, and how much it contributed to rising anticlericalism and the erosion of church authority.

“People today are more practical,” said Labadan, the street vendor. “In the old days, people feared that if you defy the church, it will be the end of the world.”

Associated Press writers Jim Gomez and Teresa Cerojano contributed to this report.

Related articles

• New law points to Philippine church’s waning sway (sfgate.com)
• New law points to Philippine church’s waning sway (sacbee.com)
• New Law Points to Philippine Church’s Waning Sway (abcnews.go.com)
• New contraceptives law points to Philippine church’s waning sway (washingtontimes.com)
• New Philippine law exposes decline of church clout (thehimalayantimes.com)
• New law points to Philippine church’s waning sway (kansascity.com)
• New law points to Philippine church’s waning sway (dailystar.com.lb)

1000 Years of Carnage & Barbarity in The Name of Christ

1000 Years of Carnage & Barbarity in the name of Christ

Kenneth Humphreys

10th Century Obscenities Vile Princes of the Papacy “Popes maimed &         were maimed, killed & were killed… Without question, these pontiffs         constitute the most despicable body of leaders, clerical or lay, in history.         They were, frankly, barbarians. Ancient Rome had nothing to rival them         in rottenness.” – Peter de Rosa (Vicars of Christ, p48)          John XII (955-964). Born from an incestuous          relationship  between Pope Sergio III and his 13-year-old daughter          Marozie. John, in         turn, took his mother as his own mistress. Pope at 18, he turned the            Lateran  into a brothel. He was accused by a synod of “sacrilege,            simony,  perjury, murder, adultery and incest” and was temporarily          deposed.  He took his revenge on opponents          by hacking off limbs. He was murdered            by an enraged husband who caught him having sex with his wife.	11th Century Horror Church lords over ignorant squalor of millions 1095 - Pope Urban II          calls upon the Franks to invade the more civilized Muslim world. Begins        five centuries of warfare. “Let those who have         hitherto been robbers now become soldiers.” – Urban II addresses his gangsters.   1009: Rivalry from Islam prompts         eastern churches to break with idolatry. This ‘iconoclasm’ begins breach         with idol-worshipping Catholic west. Centuries of bloodshed ensue. 1079: The Council of Rome:         Persecution of Berengarius & his followers who cannot stomach the         dogma of ‘transmutation of bread & wine into Christ.’ Svyatoslav’s Miscellany, 1076. God’s work – a serious business.	12th Century Criminality Christian Church ally of murderous kings & rogue      princes “Warrior Monks”         – Muslim heads catapulted into the besieged city of Antioch by Christian         Knights (Illumination from Les Histoires d’Outremer by         William of  Tyre 12th century, Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris).   1118: Christian fanatics          captured Saragossa; the beginning of the decline of Muslim civilization          in Spain.          1184 Council of Verona         condemns Waldensians for witchcraft. The charge is later extended to condemn         heretics.	13th Century Wickedness Vile Crusaders Plunder & Murder for God 1204 Christian crusaders         sack & ruin greatest Christian city, Constantinople. 1209 Pope Innocent III         launches Albigensian Crusade against Christian Cathars of southern France.         7000 massacred in La Madeleine Church alone. 1211 Burning of Waldenses         heretics at Strasbourg begins several centuries of persecution.            German Teutonic Knights         butcher their way through the Baltic lands, savage Catholic Poles &         Orthodox Russians. 1231: Pope Gregory IX authorizes         Inquisition for dealing with heretics. 1277 Pope John XXI, alarmed          by rumors of pagan heresy among “scholars        of arts in the faculty of theology” pressurizes Stephen Tempier,        Bishop of Paris, to prohibit 219 philosophical and theological theses.      The “Condemnations of Paris” is the first of 16 lists of censorship.
14th Century Catastrophe Church hostility to medicine allows plague to decimate Europe Burning of the Jews of Cologne – blamed by Christians for the         Black Death (Liber Chronicarum Mundi). World Domination? “We declare, say,         define, and pronounce that it is absolutely necessary for the salvation         of every human creature to be subject to the Roman pontiff.” – Pope Boniface VIII, Bull Unun Sanctum, 1302 1311-12: Ecumenical Council         of Vienne. It authorises the brutal suppression of the Knights Templar         (mercenaries of the church who have outlived their usefulness).       1316-1334: Pope John XXII,         world’s richest man and first pontiff to promote theory of witchcraft.         Sanctions bull allowing heresy charges to be brought against dead people.         In 1320 he instructs French Inquisition to confiscate all property belonging         to blasphemers or dabblers in black arts. 1300s.  Glowing eyes and nocturnal behaviour of the cat interpreted by the Church as clear proof of the hapless moggy’s diabolic affinity. Wholesale trapping and burning of cats allowed free rein to the spread of the flee-carrying rat. Subsequently, Europe’s population was decimated  by the plague. 1347-50: The Black Death sweeps         across Europe, killing one-third of the population. “Jews were burnt all         the way from the Mediterranean into Germany… under torture confessing         to have spread the plague by poisoning wells… the poison made from the         skin of a basilisk (a kind of mythical serpent)…” – N. Cantor (In the Wake of the Plague)	15th Century          Malevolence Tortured Bodies by Sadists of the Lord	16th Century Mayhem Pogroms & civil wars in the name of Jesus “My advice…               is: First, that their synagogues be burned down, and that all who               are able toss sulphur and pitch; it would be good if someone could               also throw in some hellfire..” Martin Luther (“On              the Jews and their lies” 1543) 1517: Martin Luther posts         95 theses at Wittenberg. The Reformation will turn Europe into a battleground. 1517 A Dominican monk Johann         Tetzel swells papal coffers by selling indulgences (‘souls freed from         purgatory’!) 1524: Luther – no friend           of the downtrodden – encourages savagery of German princes in           putting  down the two-year Peasants’ Revolt.   Book Burners for Christ– Dominican monks in the service of Ferdinand proudly consign the wisdom         of Moorish Spain to the flames (Berruguete, Prado Museum, Madrid) 1553 John Calvin, the “Protestant            Pope” of Geneva proves his Christian credentials by having Michael            Servetus, the Spanish physician, burned at        the stake for heresy. Servetus      had opposed Trinitarianism and infant baptism. Servetus,                  the discoverer of pulmonary blood circulation (an advance on                  Galen) had fled the Inquisition and had thought himself safe          among Protestants. Oh dear.         1559 Introduction of Index of Forbidden Books (lasts until 1966) 1563 Following the Council         of Trent, Jesuit Order becomes ‘Defender of the Faith’. Huguenots are         persecuted in France.	17th Century Barbarity Burning Witches for Christ Urbain Grandier, burned         in Loudun, 1634. Cardinal Richelieu orchestrated his murder. 1600 After a seven year trail           before the Inquisition, Giordano Bruno, who had the audacity to suggest           that space was boundless and that the sun and its planets were not unique,           is condemned and burned at the stake. 1605: The Gunpowder Plot. Catholic fanatics attempt to blow up James         I of England. 1633 Galileo is brought before the Inquisition. Under threat of torture and death, he is forced from his knees to renounce all belief in Copernican theories. He is sentenced to life imprisonment. He dies in 1642 and the charges against him stand for another 350 years.     1618-1648 Central Europe         devastated by Thirty Years’ War between Catholics and Protestants
	1411 Dominican Vincente Ferrer         revives anti-Jewish hysteria in Spain: “cohorts of the Devil and         Anti-Christ, clever, warped and doomed.” 1415 John Huss           of Bohemia, critic of papal corruption but guaranteed personal           safety,  burned at the stake. “When dealing with heretics,           one is not obligated  to keep his word.” – Pope Gregory           XII. 1415 Pope John           XXIII deposed: “The most scandalous charges were suppressed;           the  Vicar of Christ was only accused of piracy, murder, rape, sodomy           and incest.” – Gibbon (Decline & Fall) 1478: Pope Sixtus         IV, in alliance with King Ferdinand of Spain, establishes the Spanish         Inquisition. Jews, Moors and heretics will be imprisoned, tortured and         murdered for centuries.         The bisexual Sixtus, though suffering from syphilis, fathers children         from his elder sister. 1484 Pope Innocent VIII decrees that cats are unholy creatures, to be burned along with the witches that own them. 1486 Taking a break               from book-burning, two Dominican monks, Henrich Kramer & James               Sprenger, write a best-seller – Malleus Maleficarum               (‘The Witches Hammer’) – ‘the most blood thirsty book ever               written.’ (Peter de Rosa, Vicars of Christ, p184) This unsurpassed               nonsense rests on the bench of every magistrate and judge in Europe               for three centuries and leads to tens of thousands of judicial murders. 1498 Dominican           reformer, Savonarola – burner of books & ornaments of ‘pagan            immorality’ – is himself burned for criticising the degenerate            Pope Alexander VI.
18th Century Scandal Christian Church endorses Slavery, Racism & subordination      of women “And Noah awoke from         his wine, and knew what his younger son had done unto him. And he said,         Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren.         And he said, Blessed be the LORD God of Shem; and Canaan shall be his         servant.” Genesis 9.24-26   “As for your male         and female slaves whom you may have: you may buy male and female slaves         from the nations that are round about you. You may also buy from among         the strangers who sojourn with you and their families that are with you,         who have been born in your land; and they may be your property.”          Leviticus 25:44   1738: Freemasonry is condemned         by Clement XII and Catholics are forbidden to join. 1793: Last ‘witch’ burning at Poznen in Germany	19th Century Evil Christian Church Rejects Science & social        reform; Christian ‘missions’ go hand-in-hand with colonialism.   1814: Society of Jesus, suppressed         since 1773, is restored. The Inquisition continues until 1834, Church-sanctioned         torture until 1917. 1844: ‘Protection of Children         Act’ allows Church missionaries in Australia to kidnap aboriginal children. 1854: Pius IX proclaims the         dogma of the Immaculate Conception in the bull Ineffabilis Deus.         Lourdes shrine introduced.   1864: Pius IX issues the encyclical          Quanta cura and the Syllabus of Errors. It condemns some         80 propositions derived from scientific method and rationalism. Liberalism         & socialism are denounced.   1870: Vatican Council declares         the Pope “infallible”.   ‘Bible Societies’ & ‘Missions’         in European colonies destroy indigenous cultures	20th Century Iniquity Christian Church allies itself with Fascism;        opposes advances of science & personal freedom 1907 Pius X condemns Modernism         in the decree Lamentabili and the encyclical Pascendi. Hitler’s Pope – Pius         XII (1939-1958) Hitler, a Roman Catholic,            is never excommunicated for causing the death of millions; whereas        Martin Luther was excommunicated for criticism of the papal system. Friends of Fascists Everywhere:          Germany          Spain          Croatia	21st Century Menace Churches the Stalking Ground of Paedophiles & Sex        Offenders On March 12, 2000 Pope         John Paul II attempted to purify the soul of the Catholic Church by         apologising for 2000 years of “sins” committed by the church         – quite some compensation for twenty centuries of terrorism, extortion         and murder! And yet – September 2000 – the            same John Paul II issues “Dominus Jesus (Lord Jesus)”,  reaffirming              intolerance: “Only one path to God – the Roman Catholic Church.” And the story does not end: Still the evil continues… Child               sex abuse scandal rocks the US Catholic Church “The Roman Catholic         Church has removed 218 priests from their positions this year because         of child sexual abuse allegations, but at least 34 known offenders remain         in church jobs”- Reuters (June 9 2002) Anti-abortion Anti-birth control Creator of “saints” 31 July, 2003 “Congregation          for the Doctrine of the Faith” condemns same sex deviants          who seek marriage. In contrast, no Vatican condemnation    of priestly paedophiles.

Catholic Fascist Santorum Reveals the True Face of the Republican Party

Santorum Exposes The Real Republican Party

[Re-posted from earlier today.]

What’s fascinating to me about Santorum‘s outburst yesterday was not its content, but its candor. In fact, one of Santorum’s advantages in this race, especially against Romney, is that we can see exactly where he stands. There can be no absolute separation of church and state, let alone a desire to keep it so; and in their necessary interactions, the church must always prevail, or it is a violation of the First Amendment, and an attack on religious freedom. The church’s teachings are also, according to theoconservatism, integral to the founding of the United States. Since constitutional rights are endowed from the Creator, and the Creator is the Judeo-Christian one, the notion of a neutral public square, embraced by liberals and those once called conservatives, is an attack on America. America is a special nation because of this unique founding on the Judeo-Christian God. It must therefore always be guided by God’s will, and that will is self-evident to anyone, Catholic or Protestant, atheist or Mormon, Jew or Muslim, from natural law.

Hence the notion that America could countenance abortion or same-sex marriage is anathema to Santorum and to theoconservatism. It can only be explained as the work of Satan, so alien is it to the principles of Judeo-Christian America. Hence the resort to constitutional amendments to ban both: total resolutions of these issues for ever must reflect what theocons believe was in the Founders’ hearts and minds.

This has long been the theocon argument; it was the crux of what I identified as the core Republican problem in “The Conservative Soul“. It is not social conservatism, as lazy pundits call it. It is a radical theocratically-based attack on modern liberal democracy; and on modernity as a whole. It would conserve nothing. It would require massive social upheaval, for example, to criminalize all abortion or keep all gay couples from having any publicly acknowledged rights or status. Then think of trying to get women back out of the workplace or contraception banned – natural, logical steps from this way of thinking. This massive change is radical, not conservative. It regards the evolution of American society these past few decades as literally the work of the Father of Lies, not the aggregate reflection of a changing society. It is at its essence a neo-Francoite version of America, an America that was not the pinnacle of Enlightenment thought, but an America designed to destroy what the theocons regard as the catastrophe of the Enlightenment.

PM Carpenter is right to note below that “Kennedy was emphasizing an institutional separation; he never denied that his conscience was influenced by his faith.” But to say that Santorum is attacking a chimera is unfair to both men. Yes, of course, Kennedy’s conscience was informed by his faith; how could it not be? But what Kennedy asserted was that his public pronouncements would be defended by non-sectarian reason, devoid of explicit religious content. Moral content – yes. Religious content – no. Which is why I have long found Obama’s occasional digression into defending, say, universal healthcare by invoking Jesus as depressingly part of the problem. Money Kennedy quote:

I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant  nor Jewish–where no public official either requests or accepts  instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of  Churches or any other ecclesiastical source–where no religious body  seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general  populace or the public acts of its officials–and where religious  liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as  an act against all.

This is an explicit public denial that this country is a Christian nation. It is a reaffirmation that “the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.” The most important feature of today’s GOP – and the fundamental reason I have long abandoned it – stands foursquare against that idea. Moreover, in its fusion of explicit religion and explicit politics, it is itself, in my view, an attack on America – and the possibility of a civil republic. Its religious absolutism is the core underpinning of this country’s polarization – because when religion becomes politics, negotiation and compromise become impossible. Bring God into it, and a political conversation must become a culture war.

Note this too from Kennedy:

I believe in a President whose religious views are his own private  affair, neither imposed by him upon the nation or imposed by the nation  upon him as a condition to holding that office.

This is a defense of private conscience as the core bulwark of religious life – emanating from the Second Vatican Council. And that too is what today’s radical GOP is attacking.

For Santorum, as for Ratzinger, if your conscience says one thing, and the Pope says another, you obey the Pope, not your conscience. And for the Christianists, if your conscience or intelligence says one thing, and the Bible says another, you obey the Bible, not your conscience, and certainly not your intelligence. Because beneath Christianism is a deep fear of the human mind – as if they actually believe that reason is stronger than religion and therefore must be restrained. As if the human mind can will God out of existence.

This is Santorum’s fear-laden vision. Which is why he is not a man of questioning, sincere faith and should not be flattered as such. He is a man of the kind of fear that leads to fundamentalist faith, a faith without doubt and in complete subservience to external authority. There is a reason he doesn’t want many kids to go to college. I mean: when we already know the truth, why bother to keep seeking it? And if we already know the truth, why are we not enforcing it as a matter of law in a country founded on Christian principles? It is not religious oppression if it is “the way things are supposed to be”, by natural law. In fact, a neutral public square, in his mind, is itself religious oppression.

We can also see here the collision of the Second Vatican Council and the current hierarchy. Kennedy was a Catholic of another era, unafraid of modernity, interested in other paths to God, publicly humble and cheerful, privately devout and deeply connected to others of all faiths and none. Santorum is of a different kind: authoritarian, deeply suspicious of freedom when it leads to disobedience of the Papacy’s diktats, and publicly embracing a religious identity as his core political one.

I am relieved he is at least candid. For now we can see in plain view the religious fanaticism that has destroyed one of the major parties in this country, a destruction that is perilous for any workable politics. It must be defeated – and not by electing a plastic liar and panderer like Romney. But by nominating Santorum and defeating him by such a margin that this theo-political Frankenstein, which threatens both genuine faith and civil politics, is dispatched once and for all.

(Photo: Republican presidential candidate, former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum speaks  during a campaign stop at the St. Mary’s Cultural & Banquet Center  on February 27, 2012 in Livonia, Michigan. By Joe Raedle/Getty Images.)

Related articles

• Santorum Exposes The Real Republican Party (andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com)
• Santorum is No JFK: A Closer Look at Kennedy’s Speech (bigthink.com)
• What Does “The Privitazation of Faith” Mean (Santorum)? (politicsandlanguage.wordpress.com)
• Joel K. Goldstein: Santorum Misunderstands Both Kennedy and Religious Pluralism (yubanet.com)
• Santorum: JKF’s 1960 Speech On Religion Made Me Want To Throw Up (notesandobservations.me)
• Kennedy, Santorum, and Religious Freedom (thetwowings.wordpress.com)
• Santorum’s Separation Anxiety (andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com)
• Rick Santorum “Almost Threw Up” after Reading JFK Speech on Separation of Church and State (skydancingblog.com)
• 50 years later, JFK speech part of culture war (newsok.com)

Catholic Butthurt | Pop Star Possessed by Satan Say Catholic Fascists

Nicki Minaj, Satan and the Phenomenon of Christian Butthurt

Via:- Ray Garton

If you didn’t watch the Grammy Awards on Sunday night, chances are you’ve probably heard about what you missed — Nicki Minaj’s bizarre performance of “Roman Holiday.”  I’m not going to take the time to describe the performance except to say that it resembled my idea of a lavish musical production of the 1974 Italian demon possession film Beyond the Door (which was a quick, tacky rip-off of the far superior 1973 film The Exorcist) as directed by Baz Lurhmann.  If you haven’t seen it, please watch the video here.

I rarely watch the Grammy Awards because music is something I prefer to listen to rather than watch on TV, and much of what makes up the show holds no interest for me.  But I watched this year because there were some performers I wanted to see — Adelle’s return after throat surgery and performances by Paul McCartney, Glenn Campbell (who won’t be with us much longer) and the Beach Boys.  I’m not a fan of Nicki Minaj, and in spite of its theatrical and pyrotechnical extravagance, I found the performance to be a big steaming bowl of nothing.  But as I watched it, I laughed loudly, turned to my wife and said, “Boy, this is going to infuriate people!”

I was right, of course, because as I began writing this only two hours after the west coast broadcast of the 54th Grammy Awards, the wailing and gnashing of teeth had already started on the internet.  The first sign of it I encountered was in the Washington Post, which listed several comments from Nicki Minaj fans on Twitter.  Here are a few samples:

“I don’t like the fact that Nicki Minaj brought religion into her song #notokay”

“I was expecting LL Cool J to do another Prayer after Nicki Minaj’s demonic performance. I still wish he had.”

“Open with a prayer to the Lord, end with an exorcism? SMH #Grammys.”

From there, I went to a website called DividedStates.com for an article titled “Nicki Minaj Performs Satanic Ritual No. 2 at Grammy’s to Top Satanic Superbowl Show.”

Wait … you didn’t know that Madonna’s halftime show at the Super Bowl was a Satanic ritual?  Whether or not the Super Bowl was Satanic probably depends on which team you were rooting for.  But it also depends on whether or not you embrace the notion that the music industry — like all of mass media in the United States and elsewhere — is (and has been for some time) under the control of the Illuminati — the deeply secret, all-seeing, all-knowing, all-controlling, ultra-wealthy elite who either worship Satan, Moloch, or are reptilian aliens from outer space, depending on who you talk to — and is using the music industry to brainwash the masses and condition them for the coming antichrist dictatorship using subliminal messages, music videos filled with Satanic imagery and rituals, and songs that promote sex, drugs, sadomasochism, mind control, and check kiting … or something like that.  If you’d like to learn more about all of this, I refer you to The Vigilant Citizen, which is one of the most readable websites on the subject.

Back to the article on DividedStates.com.  It wastes no time in making precisely the kind of claims I expected:

“Nicki’s disturbing performance at the 53rd annual Grammy Awards was a blatant attack on the Catholic church.  No one is sure why she has such disdain for the Church but many actually believe she is simply evil and it [sic] reflected in everything she does and every song she sings and every performance she gives.”

Never mind that it’s the 54th Grammy Awards and that what “many actually believe” is given the weight of factual information here and that the article quotes people overheard at the Grammy Awards by an unidentified source (Catholic spies?  A spectral virgin Mary?).  The significant part of that paragraph is “a blatant attack on the Catholic church.”  That leads us to this later paragraph:

“If the stage was [sic] set as a Jewish Holocaust, or a black slavery set or some kind of mockery of Muhammad and Islam glorifying slave owners, there would be outrage.  But because its [sic] the Catholic church that Minaj is mocking, somehow it’s allowed.”

Now “outraged Catholics” are calling for a boycott of CBS because of Minaj’s performance.  Beneath the linked article at IndustryAllAccess.com, there is a comment from a reader identified as Dolores Ziga:

“shame on cbs..i would like them to put something offending muslims or another religion on ..i bet they wont..boycott cbs and nikki [sic].”

As expected, Bill Donohue of the Catholic League disagrees.  An article on the Catholic League’s website asks, “Is Nicki Minaj Possessed?”  In it, Donohue states:

“It’s bad enough that Catholics have to fight for their rights vis-à-vis a hostile administration in Washington without also having to fend off attacks in the entertainment industry.  The net effect, however, will only embolden Catholics, as well as their friends in other faith communities. … Whether Minaj is possessed is surely an open question, but what is not in doubt is the irresponsibility of The Recording Academy.  Never would they allow an artist to insult Judaism or Islam.”

Because as we all know, it’s practically illegal to be a Catholic in the United States today.  And if you think that, I have a bridge to sell you.  On Neptune.

As I traveled around the internet reading the reactions to Minaj’s performance, I was curious to know what else these websites had to say about religion.  I was especially curious to see if they had any coverage of the seemingly endless sex scandal in which the Catholic church had been mired for so long.  The open question in my mind was not whether or not Nicki Minaj is possessed, but whether or not the same outrage expressed over her performance had been expressed over the fact that the Catholic church has been protecting child rapists and even blaming everyone from the victims to gay people in its ongoing efforts to dodge responsibility for it horrifying actions for decades now (that we know of).  Guess what I found.  That’s right.  Not a damned thing.

Pay no attention to that child rapist behind the curtain!  We are the Great and Powerful Catholic Church and we have been OFFENDED by a musical performance!

Probably the most commonly found word in the responses to Minaj’s song is “disrespected.”  She disrespected Catholics.  That was her big crime.

The other common response is to claim that if the show had offended Jews or Muslims, if it had mocked the Holocaust or the slavery of black people in America’s past, it would not have been allowed.

This isn’t the first time such baseless and, frankly, crazy claims have been thrown at something that offends Catholics in particular or Christians in general.  It seems a lot of Christians believe that when someone disrespects or insults their religion or simply does something that they don’t like, it is an offense on the same moral level as mocking genocide and human slavery.  This boggles the minds of those of us who do not share that belief.

Expressing a negative opinion about a religion is not even in the same galaxy as mocking the systematic slaughter of millions of people, even if millions of people express that negative opinion.  That’s because it’s an opinion and not a network of gas chambers.  Having no respect for a religion does not breathe the same air as mocking the selling of human beings into slavery to live as cattle owned by other human beings.

And that performance does not make Nicki Minaj evil.  Hey, I know absolutely nothing about Minaj — for all I know, she tortures kittens and trips old people on the sidewalk.  If either of those were true, then that would make her a bad person.  Performing a musical number in which she portrays a young woman possessed by a demon while a priest and altar boys cavort on stage, no matter how weird or spooky or even bad it might have been, does not.

Let’s all keep in mind exactly what allegedly has been “disrespected” here.  We’re talking about the biggest organization of child rapists and their protectors on.  The.  PLANET.  Unlike the secretive cabal of Satanists that some believe have covertly taken control of the music industry, the Roman Catholic church’s apparent fondness for child rape is pretty much out in the open these days.  The pedophile is out of the bag now and we all know what the Catholic church is up to, and that is only made worse by its appalling attempts to dance around responsibility for its crimes.  None of this is speculation.  We now know — thanks to a damning 1997 letter from the Vatican — that the Catholic church enforces a global policy of protecting its child rapists from the law.

Right now, AIDS is leaving a swath of dying and dead people in its wake in Africa.  It is strangling the continent.  The Catholic church, however, has decided to keep telling African people not to use condoms because that’s part of Catholic dogma.  According to a 2010 article in the UK Guardian, this means the Catholic church is not just a religion — it has become “a major global health problem.”

Right now, the Catholic church in particular and Christianity in general is engaged in an all-out war against women — not Catholic or Christian women but all women.  In addition to its constant efforts to oppose legal abortion, Christians are actively fighting the availability of affordable birth control and health care for women.  They don’t care that not all of these women believe as they do — they insist that all women of all religious beliefs — and no religious beliefs — bend to their religious laws.

In return for its demands that everyone live according to its beliefs, the Catholic church in particular and Christianity in general also demand that everyone remain absolutely respectful of everything they do, that everyone refrain from questioning or criticizing their activities, no matter how illegal or horrifying, because they have god on their side.  It doesn’t matter if you don’t believe in their god — if you have nothing to good to say about their religion, you are expected to remain silent.  This attitude is found throughout Christianity in the United States, where Christians are currently in a perpetual state of being butthurt because everyone in the country simply refuses to behave precisely as they wish.

Remember the comment by Dolores Ziga at IndustryAllAccess.com?  She wrote, “I would like them to put something offending Muslims or another religion on.”  This is a common attitude.  If Christians are offended by something, they then express a passionate desire for other religions to be offended by something — after all, that would be the fair thing, right? — and they get angry if they aren’t.  It’s kind of a “do unto others as we think you’re doing unto us” thing.  They’re keeping score.  Of course, this attitude of fairness vanishes in a puff of spoiled, whining, righteous indignation whenever an attempt is made to be inclusive of all beliefs in the United States.  The law requires that religious displays on government property — during the holidays, for example — be open to all religions or no religions.  That pisses Christians off.  They see themselves as the rulers of the roost in the U.S.  They believe this is their turf and they don’t want it sullied by any false religions with their false gods, or by secularists with their godlessness.

Robert A. Heinlein wrote, “Almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.”  Preventing that requires constant vigilance in a free society — vigilance that, over the decades, has not been maintained here in the United States of Jesus, where Christians are still — in 2012, for crying out loud! — trying to control everyone, whether they are Christian or not.  They are still able to ask, out loud and with a straight face, if someone is possessed by demons.  They are still oblivious — intentionally or otherwise — to the problems and pain their religion causes for so many, of the lives it damages, and even the lives it ends in certain parts of the world.

This is due in part to the unwritten law that still remains in effect in the United States.  It is slowly weakening, but it has not yet gone away.  That unwritten law states that it is absolutely forbidden to question or criticize religion, that blind faith in unprovable invisible beings and forces, alternate histories, and anti-scientific explanations for the origins of human beings, the earth and the universe is a virtuous and sacred thing that must always be shown the utmost respect and remain above reproach.  According to this unwritten law, religious believers are like sleepwalkers and it would be wrong to wake them in the course of their somnambulistic wanderings.

Look where this unwritten law has gotten us.  We currently have Christian presidential candidates who openly believe that birth control should be outlawed, that sexual activity should be legally regulated, that gay people should be jailed for their sexuality, that women should shut the hell up and stay in the kitchen where they belong, that miscarriages should be investigated to see if they were induced.  This isn’t just annoying.  This isn’t just troubling.  This is fucking insanity!  The United States is a nation currently undergoing what appears to be a nervous breakdown!  And it’s a breakdown that might have been prevented had it not been for that unwritten law.

I do not recognize the authority of that unwritten law and I have no problem questioning, criticizing and even ridiculing the most destructive and dehumanizing force on the face of the earth.  So I would like the attention of outraged Christians for a moment.  I would like to have a word with you about Nicki Minaj’s performance.

There is a very good reason why Minaj did what she did Sunday night, why other artists have done similar things in the past and why others will continue to do them in the future.  She did it for attention, to cause controversy, to sell records, and to get publicity, and to achieve those things, she focused her performance on Catholicism because Christians are one of the most effective free marketing tools in the world.

Immediately after Minaj’s performance Sunday night — hell, during her performance! — Christians began promoting it on the internet.  Oh, sure, they were complaining about it, venting what they perceived to be righteous indignation.  But in doing that, they were promoting the performance.  One of the most beloved singers in the world died the night before the Grammy Awards, but what was everyone talking about?  Nicki Minaj.  Why?  Because Catholics in particular and Christians in general made sure of it.

Although you don’t seem to be aware of it, your religious beliefs combined with your attitude of entitlement in the United States make you extremely easy to manipulate and use.  Even I do it — just for amusement!  For example, I have, in the past, calculated my purchase in a store to total $6.66 just to watch the cashier freak the hell out because — well, I don’t know, maybe because he or she thinks the cash register is the antichrist.  I was raised a Christian.  I know where all your buttons are and how to push them, and so do a lot of other people, because your belief not only makes you easy to manipulate and extremely predictable — it makes you pretty damned funny.  That’s right, funny.  If you don’t want people to mock your religion, quit being so damned funny.

How can you do this?  By wising up!  Stop taking the bait!  Stop doing what most people know you will do when your buttons are pushed.  This requires a little more than just wising up — it requires growing up.

You are not the only religion in the world.  You are not the biggest religion in the world.  There are many other religions and they are no funnier or sillier than yours.  To those of us with no religious beliefs, it’s sometimes difficult to tell them apart.  Even your religion is not unified — there are over 30,000 different versions of Christianity because even you can’t agree on what you believe.  Only in the last thirty years or so have you decided to take a break from your constant in-house feuding to band together and instead turn on everyone else — but you’re still accusing some among you of being “un-Christian” or “cults,” like the Mormons.

If you don’t like what Nicki Minaj did on Sunday night, the most effective thing you possibly could do would be to IGNORE HER!  If you ignored the Nicki Minajes and Lady Gagas and Madonnas, they would have to find another way to stir controversy, get attention and promote their work, and they most likely would leave your beliefs alone.

But you won’t do that because you enjoy your outrage too much.  You actually seem to get off on the idea that your religious rights are being smothered and you are being persecuted, even if those things aren’t happening — and despite the claims of your religious and political leaders, they aren’t.  Because you seem to enjoy your outrage so much, I have a few suggestions.  First of all, try focusing your outrage on some real problems.

Get outraged about the fact that your priests, bishops, pastors, deacons and teachers keep raping children and your churches keep protecting them.  The Catholic church gets most of the attention in this particular field of endeavor, but the fact is that all religion is prime hunting ground for child predators because the predators know if they’re caught, the church — whether it’s Catholic or Baptist or Methodist or Seventh-day Adventist or Mormon — will protect them rather than letting unflattering news about the church go public.

Seriously, doesn’t that outrage you?  If not, why not?  Why are some of you still sending your children to Catholic schools, for example?  Why are you handing your children over to Child Rapists R Us?  Why are you still putting money in the offering plate to fund this systematic rape of children and protection of the rapists?

Get outraged about the fact that so many teenagers who are gay or are perceived as gay are bullied and tormented to the point of suicide because Christian leaders keep spreading outright lies about gay people!  Get outraged about the fact that so many Christian churches and organizations are adamantly opposed to any efforts to address and quash this behavior!  They claim its an attack on their religious rights when really, it’s an attack on their right to bully and torment gay people!  If you think homosexuality is wrong, then don’t engage in it.  Stop trying to control others who don’t feel the same way about it.

Get outraged because so many people are dying in Africa because the Catholic church and other Christian organizations keep lying about condoms!

Get outraged

The Catholic League is Catholic Fascism

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