But hey, then again, why worry about religious privilege and entitlement when the Vatican is busy telling the UN Human Rights Council that people who dispute its vicious homophbia are “attacking” it and interfering with its human rights? Why bother? Why not just give up, since we’re obviously outnumbered?

People who criticise gay sexual relations for religious or moral reasons are increasingly being attacked and vilified for their views, a Vatican diplomat told the United Nations Human Rights Council on Tuesday.

Or to put it another way, gay people are increasingly being attacked and vilified by reactionary religious fanatics who think they should have the power to tell everyone everywhere what to do down to the smallest detail.

“People are

The pope has plans to fight the good fight against secularization and re-impose Catholic theocracy in developed countries where it has lost a lot of popularity lately.

Pope Benedict XVI announced the new Vatican department dedicated to tackling what he called “a grave crisis in the sense of the Christian faith and the role of the church”…

The new department, to be called The Pontifical Council for New Evangelisation, will try to reinvigorate belief among Catholics in rich, developed countries — or, in the Pontiff’s words, “find the right means to repropose the perennial truth of the Gospel”.

Do we detect a note of sarcasm? Anyway, one wonders how this pontifical council will go about the reinvigorating. Posters on … Read the rest

The Vatican seems to want to have it both ways. It wants to tell everybody what to do, especially all Catholics, especially especially all priests. It wants to tell everybody what to do about abortion and condoms and assisted suicide. It wants to tell all Catholics what to do about that only more so, and on pain of excommunication. It wants to tell priests not to marry or have sex with women (children are ok) or go to the police when they know a colleague has been raping children. It wants to be the boss of everyone. But – then when people get angry about what its priests have been getting up to, it wants to say no no … Read the rest

Belgian authorities heightened pressure on the Roman Catholic Church in a sex-abuse scandal on Thursday, raiding the Belgian church headquarters, the home of a former archbishop and the offices of a commission established by the church to handle abuse complaints.

Police arrived at the church headquarters, the palace of the archbishop of Mechelen-Brussels, on Thursday morning while the monthly bishops meeting was in progress, a church spokesman said, questioning all of those present, from bishops down to staff members such as cooks and drivers.

Now that’s more like it. That sounds as if someone actually realizes that raping children is a crime, and not a little foible that can be gently discouraged by one’s colleagues without anyone’s hair having to … Read the rest

Lawrence Lessig notes that the pope told victims of priestly rape in Malta last week that the church “was doing all it could to investigate abuse accusations and find ways to safeguard children in the future.”

But it’s not, Lessig says. In fact it’s doing the opposite. It’s defending a New Jersey statute immunizing charities against negligence even if their employees acted “willfully, wantonly, recklessly, indifferently — even criminally.”

What was truly astonishing was the appearance of the New Jersey Catholic Conference in the case. As its Web site explains, the conference “represents the Catholic bishops of New Jersey on matters of public policy,” because “the Catholic Church calls for a different kind of political engagement: one shaped by the

It gets crazier and crazier every day. Now a Colombian Cardinal tells us what’s what.

A senior cardinal defended the Roman Catholic Church’s practice of frequently not reporting sexual abusive priests to the police, saying Thursday it would have been like testifying against a family member at trial…

“The law in nations with a well-developed judiciary does not force anyone to testify against a child, a father, against other people close to the suspect,” Castrillon told RCN radio. “Why would they ask that of the church? That’s the injustice. It’s not about defending a pedophile, it’s about defending the dignity and the human rights of a person, even the worst of criminals.”

The cardinal seems to be confused. The … Read the rest