Without doubt one of the greatest presidents of the United States was Theodore Roosevelt. He stood as a Colossus over his age leaving his imprints for generations to come. No stranger to energetic action he wrote the oft quoted passage that rebuts the ease with which onlookers criticize and gives credit to "the man who is actually in the arena" - even if in his effort he fails.
By some accounts George W. Bush is now the man in the arena, and by Roosevelt's dictum we should not criticize him. Tcha!
Half of America roundly rebuts him; the educated press finds his record tarred with inadequacies of varying colors, most of the rest of the world is highly critical of him.
Until the current President it is doubtful is any of them were the creation of a committee. They were men of education and reading, men of stong opinions - well able to handle themselves under pressure. I doubt Teddy Roosevelt ever imagined a President who would not read the newpapers but leave it to his staff to filter the news and tell him what they thought he should know.
Bush's book reading habits are poor to the point of utter embarrasment. Read this CNN article, or this Slate commentary.
President George Bush is the product of Carl Rove's amazing determination to make him President. He is still nursed along by his neo-con nannies - Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld and Co., and carefully kept from facing the press most of the time because they know their 'boss' cannot be trusted not to put his foot in his mouth. He deliberately surrounds himself with people who tell him what he wants to hear. With Powell gone, George Bush is now in soft cocoon with little sense of the real weight of debate and opinion in the outside world. That is very scary, and very dangerous.
To change the metaphor from the second term lame duck presidency; Bush may be "the man in the arena" but it's increasingly apparent he's been thrown from his horse and is limping for the rails.
Friday, January 21, 2005
Saturday, January 15, 2005
Landing on Titan
Cool pictures of the descent of the Huygens probe onto the surface of Titan!
You can see the ocean, a coast line, smog, etc: Much the same as flying in to LA.
Now wait a minute ...!
Thursday, January 13, 2005
Knickers in a twist about prayer
President Bush's inaugration on January 20th contains the usual extraordinary anomaly of public prayer. And we are not surprised that a small group of citizens is going to the courts to challenge its constitutionality.
An opening invocation will be delivered by The Reverend Dr. Luis León. The closing benediction prayer will be by offered up by Pastor Kirbyjon H. Caldwell.
Americans are all over the map on church and state. As we say in Britain - they have their knickers in a twist - where knickers means underpants!
They (and I generalize grossly) do not understand what is meant by the words "an establishment" in the First Amendment, and many of them think that the words "building a wall of separation between Church and State," are actually in the Constitution (No!). In truth, Thomas Jefferson coined these words in a communication to the Danbury Baptist Association.
I'm not going to deal with the technicalities here - but I will later. Here is the extraordinary inconsistency:
Spin, spin, spin if you will, you legal whizz-kids, you constitutional jurists. But you dig the hole deeper.
An opening invocation will be delivered by The Reverend Dr. Luis León. The closing benediction prayer will be by offered up by Pastor Kirbyjon H. Caldwell.
Americans are all over the map on church and state. As we say in Britain - they have their knickers in a twist - where knickers means underpants!
They (and I generalize grossly) do not understand what is meant by the words "an establishment" in the First Amendment, and many of them think that the words "building a wall of separation between Church and State," are actually in the Constitution (No!). In truth, Thomas Jefferson coined these words in a communication to the Danbury Baptist Association.
I'm not going to deal with the technicalities here - but I will later. Here is the extraordinary inconsistency:
- The President is allowed to have a pastor lead in public prayer at his inauguration, but schools and sporting events may not have public prayer.
- The state can pay for the House and Senate to have a chaplain but no such religious person would be employed in a public school.
- The President will take an oath of office with his hand on a Bible, but a court house may not have a small extract from the Bible (the Ten Commandments) on the wall.
Spin, spin, spin if you will, you legal whizz-kids, you constitutional jurists. But you dig the hole deeper.
Wednesday, January 12, 2005
The loophole for torture
ANYONE who reads widely has long known that Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheyney and George Bush have always wanted to be able to torture their enemies to extract from them maximum possible information about potential terrorist threats to the United States.
To do that they needed to have an appearance of high moral conduct towards their enemies while keeping quiet the fact that unknown men in unknown places are being subjected to treatment so brutal that it is indistinguishable from Saddam Hussein's torture chambers or the Spanish Inquisition. Here the prying eyes of the Red Cross never pierce the darkness and the Geneva Convention on the treatment of prisoners of war is but a joke.
Since the revelations of abuse at Abu Ghraib the Administration has to tried to clean up its act sufficiently to calm public fears. That, as we might say in England, is a load of bollocks.
Our new Attorney General elect crafted the clever sidestepping legal advice that made the case for the President to do whatever he likes to captive terrorists in a time of 'war'. And Rummy had no difficulty in making sure it filtered down to the right level while trying to cover its origin in the Oval Office. The show trials of Lynndie England, Jeremy Sivits and now Charles Graner are a neat whitewash to make believe the abuse came only from low level and irresponsible military personnel. Attempts to prove the culture of abuse was spawned from the top only peter out in official obfusfaction.
And even though Mr Alberto Gonzales has gone on record that he abhors torture, his words in the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings were carefully measured so that he never actually totally denied his complicity in the Administration's torture policies.
Today's New York Times reveals that whereas the restrictions on prisoner abuse cover the Defense Department they do NOT extend to the CIA. So the military may not torture prisoners but the intelligence community may!
At the end of last year the House and Senate thought they had sufficiently fenced up the White House, to prevent further abuse. It turns out, however, that under Adminstration pressure just four men removed the ultimate safeguards AFTER the bill had been approved on a 96-2 vote. It was sneaky and underhand. Condi Rice, under questioning, used her usual weasel words to wiggle out of the implications of what had been done. (Click the title of this blog to read the NY Time article, or see my previous blog.)
Be sure of this, the United States government has secured for itself locations which are so far outside the law that they can do almost whatever they want with the inmates. But Guantanmo and Abu Ghraib have come under such scrutiny that these places - run by the miltary - are now obliged to restrict the extent of tough treatment to prisoners. This rule does not reach to the CIA's secret locations in Afghanistan and elsewhere.
What's the issue? Do we really care if very evil men are treated very badly to make them cough up information? These terrorists are not prisoners of war - they are international criminals; at least, they might be if we applied our usual rules of law and brought them to trial and proved the evidence. But the US could not even build a case against the alleged 20th highjacker of the 9/11 attacks, so it certainly does not want to go public with the three dozen our so men it now holds and tortures in secret.
But do we really care? Yes, because the US should be held to the very highest values of humane and ethical treatment. Yes, because Mr. Right-Wing-Family-Values-Born-Again-Bush, who reads his Bible and prays every day so that God can give him 'gut feelings, should know that the Apostle Paul taught us we should treat overcome evil with good (Romans 12:17-21). Yes, because our extreme treatment of high value prisoners makes a nonsense of our 'shock' when Muslim extremists cut off the heads of our people before the gaze of the video camera. Yes, because the foreign policy of the present US Government is the main cause of the whole appalling debacle in Iraq and our treatment of prisoners only adds to the contempt that our enemies have for us. Yes, because we expect our leaders not to be two-faced.
Sure, we need to take major steps to defend the United States homeland against further terrorists hits. But we can NEVER beat terrorism at its own game by returning violence with violence. Mr Bush is incapable of getting that. Rummy knows he has screwed up big time, but will not admit it. Doctor Condi Rice knows she advised Mr Bush badly but her only safe haven is inside the White House where she must sing the same tune as her boss. The discredited Cheyney, the gullible believer of the spurious nonsense that Chalabi channeled to him to build a case for war with Iraq can never bring himself to admit he was so wrong about the reasons for war. We have an adminstration locked into being unable to admit its ghastly miscalculations; painted into a corner - while yet pretending to be the paragon of international leadership and freedom.
Rather than taking the big bold steps necessary to be truly great and magnanimous on the world stage, they use artifice, legal evasions and weasel words to obscure the moral baseness of the their treatment of their enemies.
There's nothing original in what I've said. I can do no more than deliver another pin-prick in the hide of an elephant.
White House weasels out of torture restrictions
The New York Times > Washington > White House Fought New Curbs on Interrogations, Officials Say
With the news focus on tsumani relief and storm damage at home this important news item may not get sufficient recognition. You need to spend 10 minutes reading it in the New York Times. Please also see my next blog.
With the news focus on tsumani relief and storm damage at home this important news item may not get sufficient recognition. You need to spend 10 minutes reading it in the New York Times. Please also see my next blog.
Friday, January 07, 2005
Mr. Bush's values!
CNN.com - Feds paid pundit to push Bush policy - Jan 7, 2005
Mr. Bush went to the country in the 2004 Election leaning heavily on values. Well here is one of his values - bribery! Read the story.
I suppose it was his administration. Maybe he know nothing about it? But we'll be watching.
Way to go George!
Mr. Bush went to the country in the 2004 Election leaning heavily on values. Well here is one of his values - bribery! Read the story.
I suppose it was his administration. Maybe he know nothing about it? But we'll be watching.
Way to go George!
Thursday, January 06, 2005
AIDS - and the Survival of the Fittest
Nelson Mandela, one of the great fighters for justice of our age, today announced the tragic news that his only surviving son has died of AIDS. In fact, every day in South Africa 600 people die of AIDS.
This courageous announcement will help to bring discussion into the open about this 'unspeakable' disease. The continent of Africa is being decimated by HIV/AIDS and only slowly, very slowly are attitudes changing and governments responding to the need to make medical care available at reasonable costs to stem the tide of human destruction. It may still be too late, for already whole communities have been so ravaged by the anti-immune disease that they may never recover.
Over 40 million people worldwide live with HIV/AIDS, and we do not know how many others have it without their knowing. The epidemic is not waning - so before it ends it will wipe out vast numbers of the global population. But of this we can be sure - it WILL burn itself out. It will hit a limit beyond which it cannot travel, a margin not fenced in by medicine but by behavioral change.
Did you ever think to apply the theory of evolution to the spread of disease? To be precise I mean that element of the theory we call the survival of the fittest. Whether plants or animals - including human beings - those who are best able to cope with stress from the environment, disease, war or famine will survive. It is usually thought that this is entirely a biological tug-of-war in which physical considerations alone determine who will survive. But when we come to homo sapiens we have to factor in man's intelligence. Smart decisions, wise courses of actions can lead to the survival of families, towns or nations. Intellectual fitness also makes for survival.
Many things inform the intellect: science, education, fear, necessity, morality, religion, and more. Apply this to AIDS. Tragically, vast numbers have this awful disease through no fault of their own: babies born with it, adults infected from compromised blood transfusions, accidental infection in hospital - even rape of an innocent victim by an AIDS infected man. An informed intellect will not help these.
But even more have contracted the syndrome because of risky behavior. Some knew they were taking risks while many - especially in Africa - did not know that having multiple sexual partners (for whatever reason) was potentially dangerous.
The law of the survival of the fittest will inexorably have its way. The high risk takers will be eliminated in time until their number is so reduced that the remaining members of these groups will change their behavior or die the same way. Treat them with all the drugs they can afford to prolong life, they will still die of AIDS related diseases. Sexual hedonism will be hit so hard that eventually there will grow a wisdom - a morality if you like - that reverts to the old traditional sexuality of both Muslim and Christian traditions. Education, openess and a new morality in Africa will eventually be the salvation of a young and orphaned population.
Now it becomes evident that those best fitted to survive are those who, for intellectual or moral reasons, do not share needles, do not engage in prolific anal sex, do not make it a lifestyle to develop long lists of sexual partners. In the end, those who choose risky behavior will all die out - maybe hundreds of millions of them. But the spreading epidemic will hit a wall where a revised global morality or common sense eventually learns when to say No. We cannot count on medicine to secure that boundary.
These, the fittest, will survive.
In the meantime, compassion, education and medical research are still engaged in battle against a forest fire which they can, at best, only hope to contain. The fire will go out when there is no more tinder to burn.
This courageous announcement will help to bring discussion into the open about this 'unspeakable' disease. The continent of Africa is being decimated by HIV/AIDS and only slowly, very slowly are attitudes changing and governments responding to the need to make medical care available at reasonable costs to stem the tide of human destruction. It may still be too late, for already whole communities have been so ravaged by the anti-immune disease that they may never recover.
Over 40 million people worldwide live with HIV/AIDS, and we do not know how many others have it without their knowing. The epidemic is not waning - so before it ends it will wipe out vast numbers of the global population. But of this we can be sure - it WILL burn itself out. It will hit a limit beyond which it cannot travel, a margin not fenced in by medicine but by behavioral change.
Did you ever think to apply the theory of evolution to the spread of disease? To be precise I mean that element of the theory we call the survival of the fittest. Whether plants or animals - including human beings - those who are best able to cope with stress from the environment, disease, war or famine will survive. It is usually thought that this is entirely a biological tug-of-war in which physical considerations alone determine who will survive. But when we come to homo sapiens we have to factor in man's intelligence. Smart decisions, wise courses of actions can lead to the survival of families, towns or nations. Intellectual fitness also makes for survival.
Many things inform the intellect: science, education, fear, necessity, morality, religion, and more. Apply this to AIDS. Tragically, vast numbers have this awful disease through no fault of their own: babies born with it, adults infected from compromised blood transfusions, accidental infection in hospital - even rape of an innocent victim by an AIDS infected man. An informed intellect will not help these.
But even more have contracted the syndrome because of risky behavior. Some knew they were taking risks while many - especially in Africa - did not know that having multiple sexual partners (for whatever reason) was potentially dangerous.
The law of the survival of the fittest will inexorably have its way. The high risk takers will be eliminated in time until their number is so reduced that the remaining members of these groups will change their behavior or die the same way. Treat them with all the drugs they can afford to prolong life, they will still die of AIDS related diseases. Sexual hedonism will be hit so hard that eventually there will grow a wisdom - a morality if you like - that reverts to the old traditional sexuality of both Muslim and Christian traditions. Education, openess and a new morality in Africa will eventually be the salvation of a young and orphaned population.
Now it becomes evident that those best fitted to survive are those who, for intellectual or moral reasons, do not share needles, do not engage in prolific anal sex, do not make it a lifestyle to develop long lists of sexual partners. In the end, those who choose risky behavior will all die out - maybe hundreds of millions of them. But the spreading epidemic will hit a wall where a revised global morality or common sense eventually learns when to say No. We cannot count on medicine to secure that boundary.
These, the fittest, will survive.
In the meantime, compassion, education and medical research are still engaged in battle against a forest fire which they can, at best, only hope to contain. The fire will go out when there is no more tinder to burn.
Wednesday, January 05, 2005
Tsumanis and God
A long time ago I gave up believing that God controlled every little bit of the universe. Had I not, the biblical view that God manipulates the environment to trigger earthquakes, blast off volcanoes, send plagues, and withold rain or overwhelm with floods would now be intolerable. I would now be trying to understand the purposes of God in sending (as though he did it on purpose, or at least allowed it to happen) the appalling tsunamis that followed the Sumatra earthquake.
Did he have it in for Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists? Was he trying to cull part of the globe's over-population? Was this a sign of the Last Times! Was he shaking a fist at man's sinful defiance? To be honest, I would be having a very hard time with God if I really believed what I used to believe.
The Archbishop of Canterbury - head of the worldwide communion of Anglican churches - went on record to say that there would be something wrong with Christians if this event did not make them question the very existence of God. See The Electronic Telegraph, Jan 2nd.
This is how the world IS. Sometimes it is a pleasant, harmonious place where the sun shines, fruit ripens on the bough, we are happy and content and all is well with the world - in our little corner. Equally so, we abuse this Earth's resources polluting the oceans and the very air we breathe, killing off thousands of species of plants and animals in the process, stripping the sea of fish stocks, hacking down the rain forests - (those great engines for soaking carbon dioxide out of the air and replacing it with oxygen).
We are the exploiters and plunderers of a world whose abundance we have failed to respect. We proliferate our race until mankind is obliged to live in the fragile margins where floods assail the land, mountains rain down mud and fire and storms rip our houses from their roots.
Sometimes the natural harshness of this untameable world snaps back through its own inexorable nature and we are found in the way. That's just how it is.
In the midst of the appalling human tragedy we are also seeing man at his noblest and best rising to respond to an impact so severe that conventional boundaries and differences become (for a short while) irrelevant and we reassess our priorities to be those of giving and caring rather than grabbing and keeping.
Did he have it in for Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists? Was he trying to cull part of the globe's over-population? Was this a sign of the Last Times! Was he shaking a fist at man's sinful defiance? To be honest, I would be having a very hard time with God if I really believed what I used to believe.
The Archbishop of Canterbury - head of the worldwide communion of Anglican churches - went on record to say that there would be something wrong with Christians if this event did not make them question the very existence of God. See The Electronic Telegraph, Jan 2nd.
This is how the world IS. Sometimes it is a pleasant, harmonious place where the sun shines, fruit ripens on the bough, we are happy and content and all is well with the world - in our little corner. Equally so, we abuse this Earth's resources polluting the oceans and the very air we breathe, killing off thousands of species of plants and animals in the process, stripping the sea of fish stocks, hacking down the rain forests - (those great engines for soaking carbon dioxide out of the air and replacing it with oxygen).
We are the exploiters and plunderers of a world whose abundance we have failed to respect. We proliferate our race until mankind is obliged to live in the fragile margins where floods assail the land, mountains rain down mud and fire and storms rip our houses from their roots.
Sometimes the natural harshness of this untameable world snaps back through its own inexorable nature and we are found in the way. That's just how it is.
In the midst of the appalling human tragedy we are also seeing man at his noblest and best rising to respond to an impact so severe that conventional boundaries and differences become (for a short while) irrelevant and we reassess our priorities to be those of giving and caring rather than grabbing and keeping.
Tuesday, January 04, 2005
OC Catholic church pays up. Issues still unresolved.
The $100 million settlement by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange to victims sexually abused by some of its priests only goes part way to resolve the real issues at stake. The running scandal of the Roman Catholic Church's complicity in this vile corruption by denial, cover-up, obstruction, evasion and finally monetary compensation is an ongoing spectacle of horrific proportions. That much is clear to most people.
But it seems to me that neither the people nor the press are yet getting to the real point. For the moral and spiritual decadence of this church strikes at the very heart if its historic claim to be the one true church of Jesus Christ.
The only true church?
These are ecumenical days - days when many Christian churches appear to be getting along better and being more accommodating of each other. Since Vatican II even the Roman Church has appeared to open its arms to other churches including the Greek and Russian Orthodox communions. But be not deceived, it has never yet abandoned its claim to have the only truly legitimate and apostolic ministry, to be the only means of receiving true grace, to be the only vehicle of salvation for the peoples of the world. This means that outside of the Roman Catholic communion nobody can be sure of being right with God or attaining the bliss of heaven.
Admittedly, there will be many practicing Catholics who are neither aware of this or who give it scant recognition, but that is irrelevant. The general views of the catholic churchgoer do not define the nature of the church. That is the preserve of the church itself.
Today the lid is blown off the preposterous claim that the Roman Catholic Church is the only ark of salvation. It is exposed as a wretched, conniving, corrupt, self-serving organization of so-called religious men. And to be immediately fair - the church does contain many humble and truly dedicated god-fearing men. But the shared responsibility of the church in recognizing its collective moral failings has besmirched even the holiest.
The heart of the matter
Let's see why this current scandal is so damning - and we will do so in a very down to earth fashion. What aspect of Roman Catholic worship most commonly hits the headlines? It is the Mass. The Pope makes visits to the countries of the world and thousands attend his huge open air Masses. A prominent catholic citizen dies and his funeral Mass is attended by princes and presidents. Every Sunday it is the obligation of the faithful of the church to attend Mass.
What is this Mass? And why do so few people ever ask this question? Most people might understand this to be the commemoration of the death of Jesus by participation in the symbolic elements of bread and wine. As such this is common to all churches. But that is a mistake. For the Roman Catholic Mass claims to be far more than a symbolic commemoration. The very word mass means sacrifice. When the celebrant priest takes the wafer and pronounces the words "This is my Body" a MIRACLE OCCURS! The very substance of the wafer, or bread and wine, becomes totally and utterly transformed into the very body and blood of Jesus Christ. Outwardly, the bread and wine will appear unchanged, but we are to believe that the actual substance is as truly the physical Jesus as if we lived in the days of Christ and held his hand in ours. When the priest lifts up the wafer - which is now a host to the essence of God - he re-offers the sacrifice that Christ made on the cross. And when the communicant eats the wafer or bread, he actually consumes the physical stuff of the body and blood of Jesus. In this way the child of God receives the grace of God to fit him for heaven.
Now I, for one, do not believe that. I never have. But if I were thinking this through for the first time I would now have huge problems in believing it.
A graphic illustration
Look at it like this. It is Saturday night and up in the bedroom of the rectory the parish priest is entertaining a young teenager from his parish.
The priest is a great friend of the family. He has shown love and kindness on innumerable occasions and they all regard his as so close to God that it is a huge privilege merely to have this man enter their house or dine at their table. He has shown especial interest in their son who, the priest tells them, has all the qualities of one day being a priest himself. So the family raises no objection that the boy is often over at the father's home. The young boy himself is then introduced to a very special form of love (the priest tells him); a love that must be a closely guarded secret because most other people do not have the wisdom and maturity to understand it - not even the boy's family!
At first the boy is scared and horrified. But soon he is drawn into the strange intimacy. Priestly hands remove his clothes and explore every part of the young boy's body. The priest's body, normally covered with holy vestments, is exposed and made accessible to the boy as a special gift. Their penises are erect, excited, intrusive, dancing the seminal dance of the most sacred and ancient of priestly celebrations. The wild excitement spins giddily, and slowly subsides.
Those hands, those fatherly, priestly hands, that caressed the young boy's buttocks, that held his throbbing member, now pull on their clothes to resume the outward appearance of social normality. And the next morning these same hands take the bread, hold it aloft in front of a believing congregation and declare "This is my Body" - turning the bread into the very body of Jesus. God is there, physically, in the hands of the priest with the same certainty that he held a young boy's penis the night before.
And you want me to believe the miracle has happened?
The necessary inference
For if the God the priest proclaims bears any resemblance to the Jesus of the New Testament this Mass, this sacrifice, is a travesty, a blasphemy, a monstrous lie. For surely, if I dare to second guess God, he would pronounce in as many words, "The bread remains bread. There is no way my Son will now come at your bidding to inhabit that wafer in your semen stained hands." For a God who is mechanically at the beck and call of a corrupt priest is not a God who commands our belief.
And the grace the priest places in the mouths of the communicants is no grace at all. It is dry bread. Salvation has ebbed from the chalice. This representational act has occurred not once or twice, but tens of thousands of times over the years as child molesting priests have moved from illicit congress to communion.
When some of the bishops learned the truth, many were too ashamed to confront the issue in their priests for they knew at first hand the same experiences. Others knew about it but preferred to keep it quiet with minimum fuss less the scandal demean the Holy Mother Church in the eyes of an unbelieving world or deter the faithful. They became complicit in the felony. It was guilt by association.
Shall we not therefore say that the same righteous God who denied the grace of Christ's presence in the wafer to the offending priest, also denied it to the conspiring bishops? And why stop at the bishops? For the archbishop of Boston, the publicly humiliated Cardinal Bernard Law, was recalled to the Vatican and stripped of his position as archbishop by the Pope. But why did the Pope leave him as a Cardinal - a Prince of the Church? So even this much revered Pope has compromised his judgment by his failure to do that which was right.
Now let us say it. If ever there was a claim by the Roman Catholic church to be the only way of salvation, the true guardians of the sacraments of grace, that claim is once and for all trashed by the behavior and admission of its own priests. Its claims are phony. The mass is a myth - a medieval vestige of religious hocus-pocus. It is therefore sad that the people and the press do not call the church on its fraudulent masses, that they superficially skip over the arrogant claims of an archaic institution and continue to give respect where none is due.
Perhaps because the church is still such a large social institution able to command millions of votes and even more millions of dollars it would be imprudent to press the point.
But it seems to me that neither the people nor the press are yet getting to the real point. For the moral and spiritual decadence of this church strikes at the very heart if its historic claim to be the one true church of Jesus Christ.
The only true church?
These are ecumenical days - days when many Christian churches appear to be getting along better and being more accommodating of each other. Since Vatican II even the Roman Church has appeared to open its arms to other churches including the Greek and Russian Orthodox communions. But be not deceived, it has never yet abandoned its claim to have the only truly legitimate and apostolic ministry, to be the only means of receiving true grace, to be the only vehicle of salvation for the peoples of the world. This means that outside of the Roman Catholic communion nobody can be sure of being right with God or attaining the bliss of heaven.
Admittedly, there will be many practicing Catholics who are neither aware of this or who give it scant recognition, but that is irrelevant. The general views of the catholic churchgoer do not define the nature of the church. That is the preserve of the church itself.
Today the lid is blown off the preposterous claim that the Roman Catholic Church is the only ark of salvation. It is exposed as a wretched, conniving, corrupt, self-serving organization of so-called religious men. And to be immediately fair - the church does contain many humble and truly dedicated god-fearing men. But the shared responsibility of the church in recognizing its collective moral failings has besmirched even the holiest.
The heart of the matter
Let's see why this current scandal is so damning - and we will do so in a very down to earth fashion. What aspect of Roman Catholic worship most commonly hits the headlines? It is the Mass. The Pope makes visits to the countries of the world and thousands attend his huge open air Masses. A prominent catholic citizen dies and his funeral Mass is attended by princes and presidents. Every Sunday it is the obligation of the faithful of the church to attend Mass.
What is this Mass? And why do so few people ever ask this question? Most people might understand this to be the commemoration of the death of Jesus by participation in the symbolic elements of bread and wine. As such this is common to all churches. But that is a mistake. For the Roman Catholic Mass claims to be far more than a symbolic commemoration. The very word mass means sacrifice. When the celebrant priest takes the wafer and pronounces the words "This is my Body" a MIRACLE OCCURS! The very substance of the wafer, or bread and wine, becomes totally and utterly transformed into the very body and blood of Jesus Christ. Outwardly, the bread and wine will appear unchanged, but we are to believe that the actual substance is as truly the physical Jesus as if we lived in the days of Christ and held his hand in ours. When the priest lifts up the wafer - which is now a host to the essence of God - he re-offers the sacrifice that Christ made on the cross. And when the communicant eats the wafer or bread, he actually consumes the physical stuff of the body and blood of Jesus. In this way the child of God receives the grace of God to fit him for heaven.
Now I, for one, do not believe that. I never have. But if I were thinking this through for the first time I would now have huge problems in believing it.
A graphic illustration
Look at it like this. It is Saturday night and up in the bedroom of the rectory the parish priest is entertaining a young teenager from his parish.
The priest is a great friend of the family. He has shown love and kindness on innumerable occasions and they all regard his as so close to God that it is a huge privilege merely to have this man enter their house or dine at their table. He has shown especial interest in their son who, the priest tells them, has all the qualities of one day being a priest himself. So the family raises no objection that the boy is often over at the father's home. The young boy himself is then introduced to a very special form of love (the priest tells him); a love that must be a closely guarded secret because most other people do not have the wisdom and maturity to understand it - not even the boy's family!
At first the boy is scared and horrified. But soon he is drawn into the strange intimacy. Priestly hands remove his clothes and explore every part of the young boy's body. The priest's body, normally covered with holy vestments, is exposed and made accessible to the boy as a special gift. Their penises are erect, excited, intrusive, dancing the seminal dance of the most sacred and ancient of priestly celebrations. The wild excitement spins giddily, and slowly subsides.
Those hands, those fatherly, priestly hands, that caressed the young boy's buttocks, that held his throbbing member, now pull on their clothes to resume the outward appearance of social normality. And the next morning these same hands take the bread, hold it aloft in front of a believing congregation and declare "This is my Body" - turning the bread into the very body of Jesus. God is there, physically, in the hands of the priest with the same certainty that he held a young boy's penis the night before.
And you want me to believe the miracle has happened?
The necessary inference
For if the God the priest proclaims bears any resemblance to the Jesus of the New Testament this Mass, this sacrifice, is a travesty, a blasphemy, a monstrous lie. For surely, if I dare to second guess God, he would pronounce in as many words, "The bread remains bread. There is no way my Son will now come at your bidding to inhabit that wafer in your semen stained hands." For a God who is mechanically at the beck and call of a corrupt priest is not a God who commands our belief.
And the grace the priest places in the mouths of the communicants is no grace at all. It is dry bread. Salvation has ebbed from the chalice. This representational act has occurred not once or twice, but tens of thousands of times over the years as child molesting priests have moved from illicit congress to communion.
When some of the bishops learned the truth, many were too ashamed to confront the issue in their priests for they knew at first hand the same experiences. Others knew about it but preferred to keep it quiet with minimum fuss less the scandal demean the Holy Mother Church in the eyes of an unbelieving world or deter the faithful. They became complicit in the felony. It was guilt by association.
Shall we not therefore say that the same righteous God who denied the grace of Christ's presence in the wafer to the offending priest, also denied it to the conspiring bishops? And why stop at the bishops? For the archbishop of Boston, the publicly humiliated Cardinal Bernard Law, was recalled to the Vatican and stripped of his position as archbishop by the Pope. But why did the Pope leave him as a Cardinal - a Prince of the Church? So even this much revered Pope has compromised his judgment by his failure to do that which was right.
Now let us say it. If ever there was a claim by the Roman Catholic church to be the only way of salvation, the true guardians of the sacraments of grace, that claim is once and for all trashed by the behavior and admission of its own priests. Its claims are phony. The mass is a myth - a medieval vestige of religious hocus-pocus. It is therefore sad that the people and the press do not call the church on its fraudulent masses, that they superficially skip over the arrogant claims of an archaic institution and continue to give respect where none is due.
Perhaps because the church is still such a large social institution able to command millions of votes and even more millions of dollars it would be imprudent to press the point.
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