Asymmetric Religion and Philosophy

Haters will pounce on every opportunity to hate. The media realize that anything with the words "Catholic," "Sex," and/or "Vatican" will generate some clicks. That's what happened when CNN, Huffington Post, and others produces the headline, "Vatican Hit by Prostitution Scandal."

With that headline, you'd think that one of the Cardinals were running the service or procuring the hookers. Or, that the Vatican knew about it and condoned it.

Instead, the story is that a lay choir singer spoke to an unpaid lay adviser about getting some lay men to lay with him. Does it really say anything about the Church that some of its members sin?

I guess people have high expectations of choir boys, what with the stereotypes and all, and that makes it interesting.

Every time disaster strikes, somebody should drive to Pat Robertson's house and restrain him for two weeks.

He makes religion (which is providing Haiti with spiritual and material aid as we speak) look stupid. And, it isn't because he's exposing some essential point of Christianity; it's because he's foolish.

Robertson's problem is that he takes religious truths, that God interacts with the real world and that there's cosmic justice, and simplifies them to a ridiculous degree, making this earthquake seem like an empirically verifiable cause-and-effect phenomenon.

(Omniscience means God knew it would happen. Omnipotence means He designed the world in such a way that this could happen and could have stopped it. The Devil can't cause earthquakes)

It's essential to know the above tenets. It's dumb to try to make direct connections between a particular attitude or behavior, especially amongst large groups, and a physical, mass event that happens to occur wherever there's a fault in the earth's crust.

Did Haiti's leaders make a pact with the Devil? Probably not. Is it generally not a good idea to invoke the Dark One? Yes. What role does this have in anything? Who knows?

Please Mr. Robinson, be quiet. Besides being theologically simple-minded, your utterances do nothing but give opponents of Christianity legitimate targets.

Statement by 700 club:

CBN.com – VIRGINIA BEACH, Va., January 13, 2010 -- On today’s The 700 Club, during a segment about the devastation, suffering and humanitarian effort that is needed in Haiti, Dr. Robertson also spoke about Haiti’s history. His comments were based on the widely-discussed 1791 slave rebellion led by Boukman Dutty at Bois Caiman, where the slaves allegedly made a famous pact with the devil in exchange for victory over the French. This history, combined with the horrible state of the country, has led countless scholars and religious figures over the centuries to believe the country is cursed. Dr. Robertson never stated that the earthquake was God’s wrath. If you watch the entire video segment, Dr. Robertson’s compassion for the people of Haiti is clear. He called for prayer for them. His humanitarian arm has been working to help thousands of people in Haiti over the last year, and they are currently launching a major relief and recovery effort to help the victims of this disaster. They have sent a shipment of millions of dollars worth of medications that is now in Haiti, and their disaster team leaders are expected to arrive tomorrow and begin operations to ease the suffering.

Chris Roslan

Can Fox report something about the Vatican and science without mentioning Galileo in the first sentence or Giordano Bruno, who was not burned at the stake for being a scientist, in the middle of the report. Really, the article needs two anti-Catholic references?

Why didn't they say that the search for extraterrestrial life follows the great history of the Catholic Church in encouraging science in general and particular scientists like Galileo; Copernicus; Mendel; and Georges Henri Joseph Édouard Lemaître, who first proposed the Big Bang theory or Nicholas Steno, one of the pioneers of archaeology?

How about mentioning that 5% of the greatest mathematicians in history were Jesuit priests?

Too much to ask?

I may have a mini-obsession at any one time (the last being 40s music), but I'm pretty moderate about any one thing over time and my interests have breadth- from the physical like cars and technology to the metaphysical to those things in between, like music and art. I partition my radio listening according to this tendency. When I reach maximum political talk radio capacity, I switch to straight news, music, or, like I did a couple of years ago, the Comedy Channel on Sirius.

Lately, I've been listening to Catholic radio on Sirius. They have two Catholic channels, the Catholic Channel and EWTN. The former has a good psychologist show called Fully Alive! with Dr. Greg and Lisa Popcak.

EWTN is more serious, generally. My favorite show, one that I've been podcasting for the last month or so, is the Catholic Answers radio show. Patrick Coffin hosts the show and he's a very talented broadcaster. Calm and goofy, he has a great radio presence. Each day, he welcomes a different guest, with Sister Rosalind Moss, a convert from Judaism, being an especially powerful speaker, combining as she does intelligence and emotion to produce one engaging presentation. I see her being the successor to Mother Angelica.

Anyways, they're having a membership drive. The site for the drive is here. I suggest you download one of their free podcasts, here.

1. The Church has never spoken on the authenticity of the Shroud. Still, I imagine people of faith pull for the Shroud and people who hate the Church yank the opposite way.

2. I'm not a scientist and therefore wouldn't dare weigh in on the debate, but semi-official response is here and a good forum thread on the subject here. News report on scientist claim is here.

3. It doesn't matter that the scientist was funded by atheists. The only thing that matters is the truth. Which is why I'd like the Church to take the shroud out again and have them perform further investigations.

4. It could be that the scientist's shroud proves an inadequate explanation and further examination of the real shroud leaves room for doubt as well, leaving whether to believe it Christ's burial shroud up to a person's faith; which is how God prefers it.

I've seen this guy. In fact, his book is in my bookcase (my wife's). Nobody was hurt directly by Fr. Cutie's actions, but he damaged the Church. Every time a leader of any organization goes against its tenets, it demoralizes his followers.

Ama De Verdad, Vive De Verdad by Padre Alberto Cutie

The Church has hurt itself greatly through recent scandals. Influential people in the media like LA Times reporter William Lobdell specifically cite the sex abuse scandal as the reason he left the Church. "Crunchy Con Rod Dreher left Catholicism for Orthodoxy, as he recounts in this well-written essay. God knows how many more people have left the Church or have been afraid to approach it because of scandal.

Losing My Religion: How I Lost My Faith Reporting on Religion in America-and Found Unexpected Peace by William Lobdell

Going way back, the scandalous behavior of many in the Renaissance Church inspired Erasmus to write In Praise of Folly and Luther to hammer his 95 Thesis on the Wittenberg Church door, starting the Reformation which has separated Christians in the West for 500 years.

Of course, many artists over the years have commented on the poor behavior of Church officials, even faithful Catholics like Erasmus and Dante.

In Praise of Folly by Desiderius Erasmus

Christian Classics: Works of Martin Luther, in a single file, with active table of contents by Martin Luther

The Divine Comedy (The Inferno, The Purgatorio, and The Paradiso) by Dante Alighieri

The Church's enemies have also exaggerated Church scandals to a great degree, from Fox's Book of Martyrs to the Nazi effort to discredit the Church through show trials of clergy, to Chick comics, to modern media attempts to paint the Church as some sex molestation cult.

Fox's Book of Martyrs by John Foxe

So, how to react to scandal? First, we have to keep things in perspective. Only a small percentage of modern priests have ever hurt children or had mistresses. It should be 0% of course, but with the unique nature of the priesthood, some might be impressed that it's as low as it is (1-6%).

Second, we should push the Church to lessen the chances of abuse. Why not lie detector tests? The Church would give its flock confidence as well as root out those despicable, Hellbound priests who continue to hurt the innocent.

Despite all of its self-inflicted wounds, the Church has persevered. Shortly after the Reformation, the Lady appeared in Mexico and converted a continent.

As to the celibate question: I think the Church should allow priests to marry. My reasons here.

As it pertains to the use of condoms in combating AIDS in Africa, the Pope is correct dogmatically, of course, but also from a social scientific perspective.

In short, condoms are useful in individual contacts, but can't replace the Christian message of chastity at a societal level.

Critics on Facebook would point out that the pope has an ulterior motive (it can't be called a "hidden agenda" as the intent is clear). They'd be right. The Church might still be against condoms even if they were effective in preventing AIDS on a mass scale.

But the pope isn't the only one with an agenda and the Catholic Church isn't the only institution to prioritize dogma. The other popular Western religious movement, environmentalism, has placed bird eggs above African babies for close to forty years by discouraging the use of DDT. They're efforts, usually by tying money to the non-use of DDT, have constituted a de facto ban on DDT that has resulted in millions of deaths (there is a time when environmentalists care quite a bit about malaria: when it spoons with another agenda, global warming).

Victim of environmentalists

To summarize the environmentalist mindset:

Global warming: little evidence, ambiguous impact (it may be positive), efforts to control it will be super-expensive (trillions upon trillions) and may not even have any effect- "Let's go for it!"

Malaria reduction through DDT: Cheap, guaranteed to save millions of lives- "no way!"

Mainstream evidence here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Here's another clarifying article. Read towards the bottom and you'll see the number of people killed by the Spanish inquisition in its 350 years is about 3000.

Spanish Inquisition.