National Secular Society newsletter excerpts:
http://www.secularism.org.uk

"A Christian political party in New Zealand is being closed down after its former leader was
jailed for abusing young girls."

I think religion-based parties (being sectarian, theocratic and bad for democracy) should be banned (see my page on Single-Issue Parties!), and continued events like this show us that it's not just Islamist parties or ethnic reactionary parties that are dangerous, but any religious party.

Rulers and those in power should not be religious, or at least, should not form commitees or power-groups based around religion. Religion should remain private as it should be and simply not be a factor in politics.

Tags: democracy, new zealand, paedophilia, politics, religion
Current Location: Afghanistan

Accusations don't imply guilt, but in the case of the Catholic Church, it's entire history from its foundations, through it's growth, to its domineering violence during the dark ages, and now to its present underground immorality, interference in Africa (etc), etc, anything that harms the Catholic Church is bound to do Humanity an endless good.

"Family members of a Hudson, Wis., man killed by a priest are fed up with what they see as inaction by the Catholic Church and angry that their requests for reform have been ignored. So they're taking the U.S. Council of Catholic Bishops to court.

Nearly 200 bishops were named in a civil lawsuit Tuesday by the family of Dan O'Connell, one of two men shot to death at his family's Hudson funeral home in 2002.

The family filed the unprecedented lawsuit, which asks for the names and locations of some 5,000 clergy accused of molesting children, so they can publicize the list. They say the list is known only to the church."

This is another news article about the case I've already posted about, at http://www.centredaily.com/mld/centredaily/news/nation/15233931.htm , and continues intriguingly:

"The litigation is unique because of its scope and because others may join to make it a national class-action lawsuit against the U.S. Council of Catholic Bishops, said Jeff Anderson, the attorney for Dan O'Connell's family,

"The bishops and the USCCB have established a policy of harboring and protecting suspected child molesting agents, thereby endangering numerous children throughout the United States," the complaint said."

It would be truly beautiful to see the Catholic Church, which has been resistant to all hints of modern morality (no gay rights, no female emancipation, no condoms, no abortion, no euthanasia, etc), finally begin to suffer, legally and morally, after millenia of its abuse of mankind.

Mere loss of numbers isn't enough... I was cataclysmic destructions of bits and pieces of the Catholic body... not merely some slow, painful, bitter withering-away.

Tags: catholic church, christianity, paedophilia, priests, usa
Current Location: Afghanistan
Listening To: "Bomb in my head" by Ultraviolence

Erickson was an enthusiastic born-again Christian, who split his local community in 2 with his new, passionate-style masses... many of the previous regulars left, and the born-again crowd moved in. He came with all the talk, a typical religious-right moral-crusader loon. Two of those who didn't like his approach, but still attended the church, were one day found shot. After a search warrant from police where he had been re-located to after the murders, child porn was found on his computer, and he hung himself a day later in the hallway of his new church, St. Mary's of the Seven Dolors, in Hurley, Wisconsin. [News: http://www.citypages.com/databank/26/1296/article13748.asp ]

"This week, at last, St. Croix County Attorney Eric Johnson is presenting evidence connecting Father Ryan to the murders. Johnson will offer an explanation for what Erickson and O'Connell were talking about in the minutes before the murder. And he will confirm what has long been whispered by Erickson's harshest critics: that the crusading sexual moralist had been engaging in the same crimes against children that have devastated the Catholic church in recent years."

"A right-wing newspaper, Renew America, edited by anti-abortion activist Matt C. Abbott, frequently defends Erickson"

The religious right are the developed world's most insiduous disease; they are long-term, devious, strategic, organized... fundamentalists in a very similar way to Sharia-promoting Islamist fundamentalists of the world.

Europe is caught between Islam's Dark Ages to our East, and America's growing Christian fundamentalism to our West.

Tags: christianity, crime, ecusa, europe, fundamentalism, islam, paedophilia, religion, religious right, sharia, usa
Current Location: Afghanistan
Listening To: "Ritual Noise" by Covenant