Jesus and Religion

Did you ever hear the question, "What would Jesus do? " This query has been used to try to reconcile issues of today with the teachings of Jesus Christ. So what would Jesus do about the recent events in Virginia and Denver?

Denver Archdiocese bars student from Catholic preschool since parents are lesbians.

Some parents are considering pulling their children out of a Catholic preschool after the school told a family a student could not return because the parents are homosexual.

In a statement sent to 9NEWS, the Archdiocese said, "Homosexual couples living together as a couple are in disaccord with Catholic teaching."

According to the Archdiocese, parents who enroll their kids at Sacred Heart of Jesus Catholic School are expected to follow the Catholic Church's beliefs.

"No person shall be admitted as a student in any Catholic school unless that person and his/her parent(s) subscribe to the school's philosophy and agree to abide by the educational policies and regulations of the school and Archdiocese," the statement said.

Virginia Attorney General wants state colleges to end gay protections.

Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II has urged the state's public colleges and universities to rescind policies that ban discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, arguing in a letter sent to each school that their boards of visitors had no legal authority to adopt such statements.

"It is my advice that the law and public policy of the Commonwealth of Virginia prohibit a college or university from including 'sexual orientation,' 'gender identity,' 'gender expression,' or like classification as a protected class within its non-discrimination policy absent specific authorization from the General Assembly," he wrote in the letter.

Colleges that have included such language in policies that govern university hiring and admissions -- which include all of Virginia's largest schools -- have done so "without proper authority" and should "take appropriate actions to bring their policies in conformance with the law and public policy of Virginia," Cuccinelli wrote.

So, what would Jesus do?

In the name of Jesus...

The nature of religious difference seems to be based on that old sing-song school-yard taunt...na, na, na, na, na, na...."my God is better than your God."

Or maybe, "my make-believe friend is better than your make-believe friend."

Whatever the interpretation, the following quote demonstrates why differences based on religious belief seem to be irreconcilable in nature.

"I contend that we are both atheists.
I just believe in one fewer god than you do.
When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods,
you will understand why I dismiss yours."

-Stephen F. Roberts

Whether one believes in God or not, should not determine how one thinks about the following. In the name of Jesus...

Church 'lied without lying'

The four archbishops of Dublin during the period covered by today's report into the handling of allegations of clerical child sex abuse. Clockwise (from top left) John Charles McQuaid, Dermot Ryan, Kevin

Commission finds Church covered up child sex abuse

One of the most fascinating discoveries in the Dublin Archdiocese report was that of the concept of “mental reservation” which allows clerics mislead people without believing they are lying. A formal investigation of Dublin’s Catholic Archdiocese concludes that there is “no doubt” that child sexual abuse was covered up by Church authorities over four decades.

Read more here and here.

h/t The Aristocrats, "worthless piece of sanctimonious shit"

Religion - Not a Laughing Matter

Via AlterNet, remember the days when Al Franken used his humor to make a point. In the video below is Al Franken's animated comic strip, "Gospel of Supply-Side Jesus."

We can laugh at Franken's "Supply-Side Jesus."

But what is not a laughable matter is an article by Adele M. Stan at AlterNet entitled, Meet the Senators in the Creepy Right-Wing Cult Trying to Defeat Health Care Reform. This is an in depth look into the Republican Senators and Representatives of Congress who are members of a right-wing religious cult known as The Family.

You could chalk it up to nothing more than pure partisanship, this obstructionism on the part of these Republicans. Or you could say that the ideology-cum-theology of The Family, which has spent decades consolidating power within the GOP, has at last come to dominate the party even among those who do not belong to the cult. [...]

The people of South Carolina, Oklahoma, Iowa, Nevada, Kansas and Wyoming find themselves represented by at least one U.S. senator who belongs to The Family. If he subscribes to the theology of the cult of which he is a member, the senator believes himself to be anointed to his lofty position by Jesus himself -- a Jesus who tells him that his constituents' health care dilemmas are of no consequence to God; they are just the natural order of things as deemed by him.

The Jesus worshiped by The Family is neither Jesus the peacemaker, the champion of the poor, nor even Christ the personal savior. He is Jesus the power broker, who works his will through well-situated men committed to free enterprise of a most unregulated sort.

The Family members believe that God is all powerful and all controlling.

Things are as they are in the world because that's the way God wants them. The poor are poor because God ordained it to be so -- a condition that they may have earned through disobedience to the creator. The powerful are powerful -- be they murderous dictators or corporate polluters -- because they are God's chosen. Any regulated economic system, according to this theology, is less than godly, because regulation forestalls the exercise of free will.

Who are the Representatives and Senators in Congress who are members of The Family?

In the Senate members include: Sens. Charles Grassley [R-IA]; Sen. Jim DeMint [R-SC]; Sen. Tom Coburn [R-OK]; Sen. John Ensign [R-NV]; Sen. James Inhofe, [R-OK].

In the House of Representatives members include: Mike Enzi [R-WY]; Zach Wamp [R-TN]; Joe Pitts [R-PN]; and Frank Wolf [R-VA].

Government regulation is not acceptable!

There appear to be only two decipherable things about the God of The Family: his unyielding disdain for government regulation of any kind and his demand for obedience to that notion.

The Family's notion of free-market capitalism...any attempt to regulate a market means you're messing with God. This doctrine is known, in The Family's language, as "Biblical capitalism."

And so government services, by this doctrine, are against God's will; they interfere with God's markets, skewing values and disturbing the natural order of things, just as a public health-insurance plan would do to the current insurance industry. Having been exempt from anti-trust law since 1946, the health-insurance business must be as close to godly perfection as one can get, in the minds of The Family's key men.

And what of the poor and suffering, the health care-related defaults on mortgages that claim 60 percent of all home foreclosures? What of those who have no health insurance? They are simply not among the anointed. Or worse, according to a report commissioned by The Family, the cause of their poverty, the cause of all poverty, is "disobedience."

Is healthcare a privilege or a right?

South Carolina's DeMint told a reporter from his hometown newspaper, the Charleston Post and Courier, "I think health care is a privilege. I wouldn't call it a right. ..." On the House side, Family member Zach Wamp of Tennessee told MSNBC's Tameron Hall virtually the same thing in March: "Health care is a privilege."

One issue which has arisen in this healthcare debate is whether Senators and Representatives should read the legislation before they vote on it.

Sen James Inhofe, [R-OK] seemed untroubled by that dilemma: his religion would appear to demand that he oppose health care reform as a matter of principle.

As a government disruption of God's free markets, the very concept, by The Family's reckoning, is an abomination. At an August town-hall meeting, Inhofe told residents of Chickasha, Okla., according to the Express-Star of Grady County, that "he does not need to read the 1,000-page health care reform bill, he will simply vote against it." Inhofe explained: "I don't have to read it, or know what's in it. I'm going to oppose it anyways."

Appearing on C-SPAN's Washington Journal last month, Inhofe was asked by a caller to explain what bearing, if any, his religion had on his politics. "I'm a follower of Jesus," he said, "and I’m not embarrassed about it."

Other members of the Family have been in the news lately regarding other issues.

South Carolina Republican Gov. Mark Sanford, who disappeared for five days in August, ostensibly hiking the Appalachian Trail while actually visiting his Argentine mistress, and former Rep. Chip Pickering, R-La., whose affair led his wife to sue his alleged mistress for loss of affection. [...]

While the apparent hypocrisy of fallen, self-righteous prudes will grab the spotlight every time, The Family's other scandals -- its cozy relationships with despots around the world, its embrace of big business at the expense of the poor, its reinvention of Jesus as a figure contraindicated by his teachings -- should be of far greater concern to the rest of us. Especially when one considers the group's longevity and its extraordinary power.