Religious Reputations

Catholic Church and Predator Priests

• The Vatican has recalled the top Irish Catholic after a storm of protest at the way the Catholic Church has apparently continued to suppress details of predator paedophiliac priests.
  
  Victims groups, Catholics and non-Catholics are angry at what is regarded as a systematic cover-up of sexual abuse by priests until as recently as 2009, revealed in the recent Cloyne report.
  
  The church used to be all-powerful in Ireland, with more than 90% of population being Catholic. But its power is rapidly waning in the face of public fury and contempt as the church puts its own interests ahead of its victims.
  
  The church's own tactics are backfiring on them. Every incident is described as 'a tiny minority of renegade priests'. But the internet has linked the previously scattered groups of victims and families and the sheer number of reported cases overwhelms the defence.
  
  
  
  

The Wealthy Catholic Church

Westboro Baptist Church

The Westboro Baptists are a very small group trying to make a very big noise. They claim that 'God hates fags' and that every natural disaster is God punishing America. They picket the funerals of American soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, carrying signs suggesting that God is laughing at the deaths because he is upset with American laws tolerating gay marriage.

The church is not affiliated with any Baptist organization, and is explicitly rejected by the ones which Westboro says they follow. But their polarizing rhetoric ("Thank God for 9/11" "Thank God for IED's") becomes identified with the more moderate , but less publicized, intolerance of other evangelical churches.

The Rapture and Howard Camping

Howard Camping's highly publicized prediction that the world would end May 21 2011 drew widespread ridicule.


Of course more temperate Christians pointed out the biblical verses that said that nobody would know the date for the return of jesus or the rapture or whatever version of 'you sinners are gonna pay!' they believed in.

Drew attention to the fact that people, from the time of Jesus on, have been predicting that the world would come to an end 'anytime real soon now' for 2000 years True believers see this unswerving faith as a sign of true devotion; non-believers regard it as one more proof of their mental shortcomings.

You're Going to Hell

When the St Matthews In The City put up a provocative billboard, a group of bigots ripped it down. The leader said he was a Catholic, and he knew the Anglicans were going to "burn in Hell ... because their teachings are wrong."

Every religious sub-group believes this - (a) that the others are wrong and (b) God will punish them for getting it wrong. But few of them register that the others believe the same thing, just as fervently. They never question how it was that they miraculously were guided to the One True Faith while everybody else is deeply misguided.

But anyone outside the group notices. The obvious conclusion for them is that they're all wrong - that it's all happening in their heads.

Southern Baptists

Original Story: The Southern Baptist Convention's publishing division is recalling pink Bibles it sold to support breast cancer research, after it says some money went to Planned Parenthood. Lifeway Christian Resources no longer markets the pink-bound version of The Holman Christian Standard Bible and is recalling copies it sold, according to The Tennessean. A portion of the purchase price went to Susan G. Komen for the Cure. The Komen foundation issued a statement in which it said all proceeds from the Bible sales were going to breast cancer screenings and expressed disappointment in Lifeway's decision. Lifeway's move came after complaints that some local Komen affiliates were helping fund cancer screenings at Planned Parenthood, which also provides abortions.

And some helpful contributions from Fark:

God: Back so soon?
Jesus: Yeah.
God: So? What happened this time?
Jesus: Well, I materialized in front of a Southern Baptist congregation...did you know, they carry guns in church now?
God: lol

More Southern Baptists

Pastor Steven Anderson has gained national media notice for issuing an anti-Obama "death prayer" and because Anderson's parishioner Chris Broughton showed up, at a townhall event Barack Obama attended, carrying a semi-automatic AR15 assault rifle. But media missed the fact that it was not Anderson's first 'death to Obama' sermon and that Anderson was only one of three national pastors to have declared death-prayers against the new president.

Mainstream media scrutiny has failed to notice the extent of eliminationalist anti-Obama populism on the US right. The conspiracy theories that drive right wing anti-government populism are anything but marginal - up to 1/3 of American adults are at least partially in the grip of paranoid right wing conspiracy theories such as "Birther-ism."

Ignoring the phenomenon won't check its spread, and during the 1990's such conspiratorial outlooks helped power both the militia movement and also the GOP's takeover of both houses of Congress.

Troutfishing's diary :: :: As Steven Anderson told his congregation on August 16, 2009, "you have probably never heard a sermon like this before. Actually, you probably have if you have been coming to church here for a while. But you know what? Here is my sermon, why I hate Barack Obama. That's my sermon tonight, because Barack Obama is coming to town tomorrow morning."

Pastor Anderson has gained national and international media attention for that sermon, in which he declared he is praying "imprecatory prayer" for Obama's death. Media attention has missed the fact that Anderson preached an almost identical but even more virulently hateful version of the same sermon two days before Barack Obama was inaugurated, during which Anderson appeared to veer over the line into direct incitement, declaring "somebody should abort Barack Obama."

But, Anderson is only one of three nationally recognized Christian pastors who have declared they are praying for the death of the current president of the United States.

Pastor Wiley Drake is a Former Vice President of the Southern Baptist Convention who also served as Alan Keyes' American Independent Party running mate in the 2008 election. Wiley Drake has long been linked with the violent wing of the antiabortion movement and prior to the murder of abortion doctor George Tiller, Drake announced he was praying for Tiller's death. After Tiller's murder, during a June 2, 2009 appearance on Alan Colmes' nationally syndicated radio show, Wiley Drake declared that his prayers had been answered and then went on to inform Colmes that he was praying for president Barack Obama's death.

A third, and perhaps even more menacing anti-Obama "death prayer pastor" is Peter Peters of the LaPorte, Colorado Church of Christ. During the 1980’s, members of the white supremacist militia group The Order attended Peters' church and four months after Pastor Pete Peters and his parishioner Colonel Jack Mohr appeared on Jewish talk show host Alan Berg's Denver radio show, during which the radio show host confronted Peters and Mohr about their views, Berg was machine-gunned to death. Members of The Order were later convicted of the murder.

Peters went on to host an October 1992 planning meeting, with white supremacist and NeoNazi leaders, during which an organizing strategy for a national paramilitary network was hammered out. Former Aryan Nations member Floyd Cochran said of Peters, "He doesn't espouse Hitler. He doesn’t use the swastika or Klan robes. Instead he uses the Bible and the American flag. Peters talks in a language we’re used to hearing. His hatred is masked in God."

Along with Steven Anderson, Peter Peters also gave an anti-Obama imprecatory prayer church service prior to Barack Obama's inauguration. In Peters' January 19, 2009 sermon, broadcast over the Internet, Pete Peters concluded with a "party crashing" imprecatory prayer to call down divine destruction on Barack Obama's inaugural celebration.

Churches Claim to Stand Up For Human Rights

(Letter to London Times 26 Dec 2011

Athenian democracy was flawed; but so was democracy in Britain until women got the vote less than 100 years ago.

Sir, I cannot allow Lord Carey of Clifton and Dr Nazir-Ali to get away with the claim that Christianity, not classical Athens, is the source of our democracy (letter, Dec 23). It’s true that Athenian democracy was flawed in some ways; but so was democracy in Britain until women got the vote less than 100 years ago. I don’t recall that the Anglican church was behind the fight for women’s emancipation — rather the reverse. And the Vatican today bans even the discussion of women’s claim to eligibility for the priesthood; there’s not much democracy there.

Christian churches have almost always allied themselves with wealth and power. It began, perhaps, under the Emperor Constantine in AD312. The Orthodox church in Russia today, to take one example, ably continues the tradition. The contradiction this can create is well illustrated by the current stand-off at St Paul’s Cathedral. Meanwhile, the Church of England tenaciously defends the right of its unelected bishops to continue to sit in a reformed House of Lords. How can that be described as democratic?

Haters Gonna Hate