Catholics Persecuted over Gay Adoption in Illinois? Not Even Close.

Once again, the Roman Catholic Church is giving out misinformation instead of facing the truth.

Catholic Charities, an Illinois adoption agency, had to close its doors because it lost funding from the state. According to attorney Peter Breen, the state is breaking the plain language of the law and violating the will of the citizens:

"The Religious Freedom Protection and Civil Union Act only passed after specific assurances that the law would not impact the work of religious social service agencies. Specific protections for these agencies were written into the law, but unfortunately, Illinois officials refused to abide by those protections. This stands as a stark lesson to the rest of the nation that legislators promising 'religious protection' in same sex marriage and civil union laws may not be able to deliver on those promises."

Gosh, that sounds awful, doesn't it?

But this is nothing more than a smokescreen to hide the real truth. They lost on Constitutional principles that had nothing to do with the Illinois Civil Union Act.

The simple fact is that the Catholic Charities can continue to provide

Catholics Ban Girl Scout Membership

Pity the poor Girl Scouts of America (GSA). They've been criticized heavily for discriminating against atheists, agnostics, humanists, Muslims, Buddhists and other non-monotheistic girls. But unlike the Boy Scouts, who have stuck to their old discriminatory habits, the GSA modified its pledge to allow girls of all faiths ... as long as they have some faith (atheists are still not allowed).

But now they're getting hammered by Christian groups! Who would have expected that? Christians are banning their young girls from joining GSA, and the ringleader of this is the Roman Catholic Church itself.

The reason should be obvious: GSA has ties to Planned Parenthood, which provides resources on sex education to teens around the world. Yes, it's true. Girl Scouts of America is educating teen girls about their bodies! Can you imagine?

I should at least give the Roman Catholic Church credit for consistency. Their stance on abortion is unbending, and Planned Parenthood does provide abortions. I may vehemently disagree with the Church's moral position on abortion, but I can't blame them for enforcing it.

But other Christian groups are really going nuts. They have all sorts of crazy>

Irish Catholic Church: Slavery for Pregnant Girls

Back in 2009 I wrote a blog about Philomena Lee, a young Irish lass of eighteen years who became pregnant. Her baby was stolen from her and sold for a profit by the Catholic Church. The story would have been lost in obscurity except for this:

Philomena's baby became Michael Hess, a chief architect of the Republican National Convention's election strategy, whose brilliant work ultimately won the presidency for George H.W. Bush (senior), and for which he was appointed Bush's chief legal counsel.

It turns out it's even worse. In addition to selling babies for profit, The New York Times now reports that the babies' unwed mothers were forced into slavery:

The Magdalene laundries were a network of profit-making workhouses run by four religious communities ... they were initially used to reform prostitutes. By the 1940s, however, most of the residents, or “penitents” as they were called, were young women who had sex outside of marriage (in some cases victims of rape), unmarried mothers, women deemed flirtatious and the mentally disabled.

These weren't voluntary homes for unwed mothers. The women were kept behind locked

Child Denied First Communion Because of Cerebral Palsy

I'm on holiday this week, so I'll leave my faithful readers with this article.

Child Denied First Communion

The child has cerebral palsy, and Catholic law says that the person receiving communion must have "sufficient knowledge" of Christ. The priest decided that the child didn't qualify. It seems to me that anyone with "sufficient knowledge" of the story of Jesus would know that it's all a bunch of mythology anyway. But hey, I don't make the rules.

The Papal Priority: Un-Christian names top the list!

I keep trying to give up writing about Pope Benedict XVI because I don't want to sound like a one-note samba. But then he pulls another one, and I can't help myself.

You'd think with priest pedophilia, prostitution scandals in the Vatican and wars around the world, the Pope would have lots to keep him busy. But apparently there's an even more urgent crisis brewing: Parents are naming their kids with un-Christian names!

Can you imagine? Using a name that's not Biblical? This is a travesty! And the Pope, bless his soul, jumped all over it:

"Every baptised child acquires the character of the son of God, beginning with their Christian name, an unmistakable sign that the Holy Spirit causes man to be born anew in the womb of the Church."

The Pope went on to stress what an un-Christian act it is to name a

Canadian Christians Just as Discriminatory as Americans?

I've always thought of Canada as a bit more progressive than the United States. Their health care is way ahead of ours, and they don't go around blowing up other countries for no reason.

But apparently the Canadian Christians (in this case, it's mostly Catholics) take their cues straight from the same playbook as Americans. When it comes to religious discrimination, they're in the big leagues.

The city council of Saguenay, Quebec refused to take a crucifix down from the City Council's chambers. It took a lawsuit from a local atheist and a court order to settle the issue. But is it settled? No. The mayor still refuses to take the crucifix down! Not only that, he's vowed to fight the court order and has started privately gathering funds for the battle.

But what's even more amazing is that he's claiming discrimination!

"Why is it us Christians that always have to bend?" [Mayor] Tremblay told the Globe and Mail newspaper. "Our values have no importance. I am the first mayor in the history of the world to be punished for reciting a prayer."

Sorry, Mr. Mayor, but Christians have been killing each other for 2,000 years for

God Made the Big Bang? Does Pope Understand Complexity Theory?

I know the Pope isn't a scientist, but he claims to support science. In fact, the Roman Catholic Church even sponsors evolution conferences! But does the Pope and his the Vatican bureaucrats listen to those scientists, or is it all just for show?

The Pope once again reminded us that even though scientists might be right about the Big Bang, it was God who caused the Big Bang in the first place.

"The universe is not the result of chance, as some would want to make us believe. Contemplating it (the universe) we are invited to read something profound into it: the wisdom of the creator, the inexhaustible creativity of God."

Sorry, your holiness. There's a fundamental principle in nature: Entropy. You can't make a perpetual-motion machine, and you can't create complexity from nothing. A machine that produces energy requires more energy to feed it, and a system that produces complexity also requires energy to feed it.

Here on Earth, the development of life, including our incredibly complex brains, was driven by a staggering influx of solar radation. The sun pours 1.2 gigawatts (that's a billion watts) of energy per square kilometer of Earth. When you consider

Ghost Prostitution: The Discovery Channel and the Catholic Church

I love some of The Discovery Channel's programs, but their ghost-hunter series has always been a huge blight on their reputation. It's pure money-making balderdash, taking advantage of people's gullibility and superstitions to make a buck. I've tried to watch it, but it's so ... stupid. Do people actually fall for that stuff?

Sadly, yes. People still believe in ghosts, and fall for the stupid tricks they pull when producing the show. And I guess I can't blame Discovery Channel for wanting to make money.

But now The Discovery Channel is going too far. They announced a devil's pact with the Roman Catholic Church for an exorcism series. They're sanctioning the mistreatment of mentally ill people and making money from it.

It's pure economic prostitution.

Schizophrenia and other delusional mental disorders are among the worst diseases one can get. They turn the victim's own mind into an instrument of torture, often leaving the patient terrorized and tormented for years, decades and even for life. Modern medicine has made some real progress, giving life and hope back to many patients. But even those who for whom these drugs work are not actually cured; the drugs merely reduce symptoms. The schizophrenic patients lead lives plagued by voices, doubts, anxiety and fear. They frequently can't work, live alone or have normal romantic relationships.

Before we understood schizophrenia and other mental illness, it might have been reasonable

Pope Blows Another Apology, Needs to Return to Kindergarten

Will Pope Benedict XVI ever get it right? Apparently not. His latest attempt to apologize for the priest sex and pedophilia scandal is agonizingly bad. The man either doesn't know how to apologize, or is genuinely not sorry.

I don't know about the Pope's childhood, but way back in kindergarten I learned that there are three parts to a good apology:

1. You have to acknowledge a fault or offense without reservation.
2. You have to say you're sorry and mean it.
3. You must take responsibility for the consequences and try to put it right.

Simple, right? Everyone knows this.

Except maybe His Holiness. His latest failed apology was given during his traditional meeting with the cardinals:

Phoenix Catholic Bishop Confirms: Hospital Should Have Let Mom AND Baby Die

Remember the nun who was excommunicated by her bishop for participating an emergency abortion to save a woman's life? The patient, a mother of four, developed life-threatening pulmonary hypertension while pregnant, and would probably have died along with her baby without the life-saving procedure.

Today we find the truly disgusting disregard the Roman Catholic Church has for human life and morals. Thomas J. Olmsted, the Bishop of Phoenix, has reiterated his position: the mother should have been left to die.

But even worse, he is now "pulling rank" on all of the doctors and insisting that they never again defy his authority.

He refuses to even consider anyone else's opinion. In a letter to the hospital's president, Olmsted wrote:

Second Most Famous Catholic: Gayness Denied

Did you know that the second-most famous Christian in history was gay? Probably not. And you're not alone. Almost nobody knows this, and it's no accident.

So first of all, who is this #2 Christian? I'd give the #1 spot to St. Paul, author of so many of the Biblical letters. But the #2 spot has to go to Leonardo da Vinci. There's hardly a Catholic alive, or any western Christian for that matter, who hasn't seen The Last Supper. And his painting of the Mona Lisa is called the "most famous painting in the world."

Everyone knows the name da Vinci. But very few people know that he was gay!

If you were writing a biography of someone famous man – say your history teacher wanted to know about Albert Einstein – wouldn't you include a bit about his life and family, his personal life? You'd write about his two marriages, and you'd surely want to mention Einstein's ten mistresses.

Any good historian would do this. Right?

Wrong. If the historian is working for the Roman Catholic Church

Catholic Church is Looking for MORE Exorcists. Seriously.

Good grief! It's hard enough to take the Pope and the Catholic Church's politics seriously these days, given all their misguided priorities and scandals. But exorcism? For real? Do these people still believe in demonic possession?

Apparently they do. And it's not just something that the Roman Catholic church winks at. Exorcism is an official duty of Roman Catholic priests, one that requires special training. And worse, they seem to have a serious shortage of exorcists!

I'd like to think that this is just a funny joke. But there are real live victims at the bottom of this story.

These "demonically possessed" people are mentally ill and in need of serious professional medical help. To the church's (small) credit,

Kicking the Pope Around ... Again.

After losing the California governor's race in 1962, Richard Nixon gave his famous reply, "You won't have Nixon to kick around anymore..." He blamed the media, rather than his own arrogance and poorly run campaign, for the loss.

When is Pope Benedict XVI going to give us the same pleasure? When is modern history's most unloved Pope going to do the right thing and resign his corrupt reign of indifference? Even Santa Claus wants Benedict to resign!

The Pope's remarks to a UK audience yesterday in which he compared modern atheists and secularists to Hitler are so pathetic it challenges my ability to make a witty remark. Doesn't he know about Godwin's Law? By mentioning Hitler, he automatically lost the debate and he doesn't even know it!

What seems to concern Benedict today? Could it be the safety of our children?

Santa Claus tells Pope Benedict XVI: Resign!

In a follow-up to last week's press release by Santa Claus criticizing the Pope for putting children's welfare in second place behind the Roman Catholic Church's reputation, Santa now says Pope Benedict XVI should resign.

"The handwriting is on the wall," said Santa, in a somber departure from his usual joviality. "The Pope will be called to account." Santa points out that recent court decisions are denying the Vatican its traditional immunity. "It is only a matter of time before the Pope and Vatican are compelled by law to submit to criminal investigation, perhaps resulting in the Pope’s arrest."

Santa Claus, who lives at the North Pole, is well know for his pro-children advocacy, and it's refreshing to hear that he has come down solidly on the side of the kids, unlike the Pope who seems to only be concerned with his own reputation.

Santa Claus Slams the Pope!

Santa Claus sticks it to Pope Benedict XVI! But there's a serious message behind the lampoon:

A Christian Bishop, Monk, and child advocate, whose legal name is Santa Claus, is taking Pope Benedict XVI to task, for what Bishop Santa Claus describes as, "the Pope’s continued moral failure to address urgent children's issues within the Roman Catholic Church."

... In the United States, between 1950 and 2009, the Roman Catholic Church has paid more than $2.6 billion to settle claims of abuse by clergy, has obstructed criminal and civil investigations, and often filed for bankruptcy to avoid making court-ordered payments to survivors of clergy abuse. Santa observes that, “The Roman Catholic Church clearly is more concerned with protecting its clergy and assets than protecting vulnerable children."

You can read the entire "news release" here. It's good stuff.

Santa Claus, who always puts his children first, proposes mandatory reporting laws, a one-strike lifetime ban for any priest who molests a child, mandatory fingerprinting of all priests, revoking the tax-exempt status of any church that fails to report abuse, and requiring all priests to take classes in how to detect and report child abuse.

Now here's where we're screwing up as a society. If these rules that Santa Claus proposes were put to Congress, there would be howls of protest! I can just hear it now, a cacophony of spluttering outrage at the insult to our priests. Fingerprinting priests? Treating them like criminals?

Vatican Screws Up, Fires Half of its Priests

Vatican officials today made the "shocking" discovery that they'd accidentally ordered almost all of their priests to quit, apparently due to a bureaucratic snafu that insiders attribute to poor interdepartmental communication.

The calamity started earlier this week when Panorama, a weekly Italian magazine, published a huge exposé (not safe for work, adult content) The Wild Night of Gay Priests... (here's the English translation).

The calamity started when the Roman Diocese urged the gay priest to "leave the closet" and the priesthood too. But someone forgot to tell the Diocese that somewhere between 50% (the low estimate) and 98% of the priests in the Vatican are gay. Word finally got through but by then it was too late – the halls were empty, and the Pope couldn't find even one priest to bring him his morning coffee.

OK, enough poking fun. The Panorama exposé really did happen,

UK Govt Changes Law To Prevent Pope's Arrest

England has always been a leader in human rights and the rule of law. Now they've thought of something new: Put a politician in the courtroom!

Children in the UK and particularly Ireland, which is heavily Catholic, have been hard hit by the pedophile priests who lurked in the Roman Catholic Church, and then were protected from prosecution by church seniors including Cardinal Ratzinger, who is now the Pope. There is some strong evidence that Ratzinger was directly complicit in shielding priests from prosecution, and worse, for allowing them to move from parish to parish, abusing more and more children. It's likely that Ratzinger is personally responsible for a number of children's nightmare sexual abuse at the hands of a Roman Catholic priest that Ratzinger protected.

Now, quite reasonably, some Brits want Ratzinger to answer for his deeds. The UK apparently has a law that allows a private prosecutor to take up a case when the public prosecutor can't or won't. A private prosecutor can provide evidence to a judge and, if the evidence is strong enough, have the alleged criminal arrested.

Well, no more. The UK government is in the process of changing the law:

Catholic Priorities: Forget Pedophiles, Get Those Atheists!

Here's a story that typifies Pope Benedict XVII:

(AP) "VATICAN CITY — Pope Benedict XVI is creating a new Vatican office to fight secularization and "re-evangelize" the West — a tacit acknowledgment that his attempts to reinvigorate Christianity in Europe haven't succeeded and need a new boost."

Never mind about those pedophile priests. Forget about AIDS in Africa and the Pope's role in spreading it. Pay no attention to those pesky Belgian police who keep raiding your church records to root out your crimes.

No, the real problem is those atheists and secularists! Why, the Church needs a whole new office to fight secularization! It's obviously the only problem facing the Roman Catholic Church worthy of serious action!

It's stuff like this that makes me predict that the Roman Catholic Church will fade into obscurity in the next couple of decades. It has become self-perpetuating.

Another Incredible Stonewalling by Pope to Protect Pedophiles

Will it ever stop, or is the Roman Catholic Church simply doomed to die of stupidity? The latest report is just outrageous: The Pope is rebuking one of his cardinals for speaking out against pedophilia.

Apparently the Pope is more concerned with his authority than he is with children's lives and well being. Cardinals aren't allowed to criticize each other, only the Pope gets to do that. So when one cardinal broke this rule and criticized another for blocking a probe into allegations of child abuse, what did the Pope do? Did he join in the criticism, thank the cardinal for bringing it to his attention, and root out the sick, corrupt priests, bishops and cardinals who were sodomizing little kids?

Of course not! Instead he issued a rare rebuke of one of his cardinals – the whistleblower who is trying to help the abused children.

It's clear where the Pope's priorities are: protecting his authority is paramount. Protecting kids doesn't seem to be of interest.

Oldest Known Paintings of Catholic Saints Include Naked Boys!

This one is too funny to let pass.

ROME – Twenty-first century laser technology has opened a window into the early days of the Catholic Church ... the first known icons of the apostles Peter and Paul. Vatican officials unveiled the paintings Tuesday, discovered along with the earliest known images of the apostles John and Andrew in an underground burial chamber ... The images, which date from the second half of the 4th century, were uncovered using a new laser technique that allows restorers to burn off centuries of thick white calcium carbonate deposits without damaging the brilliant dark colors of the paintings underneath. ... [The] gem is on the ceiling, where the four apostles [Paul, Peter, John and Andrew] are painted inside gold-rimmed circles against a red-ochre backdrop.

The ceiling is also decorated with geometric designs, and the cornices feature images of naked youths.

Gosh, it seems like modern Roman Catholic pedophile priests are just following a long and honorable tradition, started by St. Paul himself!

Ok, I know that ideas about nudity and the human body were much more natural back in Roman times,