Camille Paglia:It’s Time for a New Map of the Gender World - Quillette

My substitute for religion is art, which I have expanded to include all of popular culture. But when art is reduced to politics, as has been programmatically done in academe for 40 years, its spiritual dimension is gone. It is coarsely reductive to claim that value in the history of art is always determined by the power plays of a self-referential social elite. I take Marxist social analysis seriously: Arnold Hauser’s Marxist, multi-volume A Social History of Art (1951) was a major influence on me in graduate school. However, Hauser honored art and never condescended to it. A society that respects neither religion nor art cannot be called a civilization.

Elisabeth Moss' Emmys-Night Swearing Has Storied Tradition in Scientology, Say Insiders | Hollywood Reporter

"Scientologists are urged to communicate with 'average people,' and to do so effectively you have to 'go down the tone scale.' So they all use 'fuck, fuck, fuck' every time they talk. It’s fascinating," Lugli explains. "The quote-unquote philosophy behind it is you match the tone level in order to communicate on the same level of the people with whom you’re communicating. If you’re too 'high-tone,' people will not understand you."

Not everyone requires swearing. Journalists and gay people, for example, are classified as "1.1" on the scale, which signifies "covert hostility," according to Lugli. "That means I have to communicate just slightly above you — which can be anger or hostility. That's where you get Tom Cruise telling Matt Lauer he's being 'glib,'" he explains. (The Church of Scientology and a rep for Moss declined to comment, but the church has denied animosity toward gay people.)

Why People Are Confused About the Earliest Christian View of Resurrection of the Dead – TaborBlog

The evidence we have found in the Talpiot tombs is primary evidence of what the first Christians believed about resurrection faith. It is not theology, but it is firm archaeological testimony that allows us for the first time to reconstruct the full picture. The tomb evidence agrees completely with the teachings of both Jesus and Paul about the new spiritual body. The confusion has come in the gospels because of a fundamental misunderstanding of the empty tomb. There was an empty tomb—but it was the first tomb, the temporary one in which Joseph of Arimathea placed the corpse of Jesus until the Passover and Sabbath were past. The Talpiot Jesus tomb was not empty—the “Jesus son of Joseph” ossuary held his bones, and as we will see, we have been able to even do DNA tests on those remains. This is no threat to the original Christian resurrection faith, it is actually an affirmation of that faith. Paul knows nothing of that first empty tomb. He knows that Jesus died and was buried and on the third day he was raised up. He then appeared to his followers, not as a resuscitated corpse, but in Paul’s words, as a “life-giving spirit” (1 Corinthians 15:3-8).

Sorting out the Jesus Family: Mother, Fathers, Brothers and Sisters – TaborBlog

Given this information rather different but historically consistent picture begins to emerge. Jesus was born of an unknown father, but was not the son of Joseph. Joseph died without children, so according to Jewish law “Clophas” or “Alphaeus” became his “replacer,” and married his widow Mary, mother of Jesus. His firstborn son, James, the brother who succeeds Jesus, legally becomes known as the “son of Joseph” after his deceased brother in order to carry on his name. This would mean that Jesus had four half-brothers and at least two half-sisters, all born of his mother Mary but from a different father.

Parents ask S.F. Archdiocese to remove school’s leaders - SFGate

Illo, who also didn’t speak during the hour-and-a-half meeting, said afterward that it’s a difficult situation and acknowledged that there is a lot of tension and anxiety between himself and the school parents. He said there have been misunderstandings, but now he’ll leave it to the archbishop to decide what happens next.
“It was a good forum,” Illo said. “It’s important to hear their perspective.”

San Francisco priest bars altar girls, sparks another controversy | National Catholic Reporter

"The first, he said, is that 'boys usually end up losing interest [in altar service] because girls generally do a better job.'

"The second and more important reason, Illo said, is that 'altar service is intrinsically tied to the priesthood and serve as feeder programs for the seminary.'

"'If the Catholic Church ordained women, altar girls would make sense, but the Catholic priesthood is a male charism,' he said. 'Nothing awakens a desire for the priesthood like service at the altar among the brotherhood of young men. At the risk of generalizing, I suspect young men serving with young women might just distract them from the sacrifice of the Mass, and perhaps even from a priestly vocation.'"

Against stupidity the very gods themselves contend in vain.

Cardinal Raymond Burke: 'Feminized' church and altar girls caused priest shortage | National Catholic Reporter

"'Apart from the priest, the sanctuary has become full of women,' he said. 'The activities in the parish and even the liturgy have been influenced by women and have become so feminine in many places that men do not want to get involved.

"Burke, a liturgical traditionalist and a doctrinal conservative, also said that 'men need to dress and act like men in a way that is respectful to themselves, to women and to children.'"

Wow. Read the whole thing. There's lots more incredible quotes. Sit down before you do though. Can Francis take away Burke's zucchetto? Please?

The Pope and the Pederasts by Garry Wills | NYRblog | The New York Review of Books

"3. Patriarchy. The Vatican is not only the West’s oldest monarchy, but its most entrenched patriarchy. For long its official teaching was Thomas Aquinas’s assertion (taken from Aristotle) that “the female is a defective male.” Though the Vatican has tried in recent years to back off from that position, as late as 1976 Paul VI’s Curia said that there can be no women priests because women do not look like Jesus: they lack “this ‘natural resemblance’ which must exist between Christ and his minister.” Pope John Paul II said in 1994 that if Jesus had wanted to ordain women, he would have begun with the best of them, his mother. He ignores the fact that Jesus in the Gospels ordained no priests, male or female. The investigation of American nuns for daring to have opinions of their own shows how far Vatican officials are from understanding women. (How could they understand them?)"

The Day Christ Died | TaborBlog

"Today, with Passover and Easter falling together during the same week, I write this post on a Thursday night, on the eve of 'Good Friday.' I have been convinced for several years now, as I explain in my book, The Jesus Dynasty, that Jesus died on Nisan 14th, which in the year A.D. 30, fell on a Thursday not a Friday. So this is indeed, the 'day Christ died.' He was put in the temporary rock hewn tomb just before sunset, and Friday, the following day, was the first day of Passover. This means the Passover meal or Seder was eaten that Thursday night, just as the Gospel of John records (John 13:1; 18:28). The next day, Friday, was indeed a 'Sabbath,' but not Saturday, the weekly Sabbath, but rather one of the seven “annual” Sabbaths of the Jewish festival cycle (see Leviticus 23:7). This means there were two Sabbaths, back to back, Friday and Saturday, that year. Sunday morning, when Mary Magdalene went early to the tomb and found it empty, it was indeed 'three days and three nights' that Jesus had laid in that tomb (Thurs, Friday, Saturday nights), which comports with the tradition that Matthew has received (Matthew 12:40). Surely a million Sunday school kids over the years have asked, not to mention adults, how can you get three nights, from Friday to Sunday morning. It simply will not work."

UPDATE: Original link is gone. Here is a similar link.

Cardinal Burke labels social justice Catholics communists | National Catholic Reporter

"So the person whose heart is filled with charity wants to do good works will, like Mother Teresa, give his first intention to the worship of God so that when he goes to offer charity to a poor person or someone in need, it would be at the level of God Himself, and not some human level."

Um, not TOO full of ourselves are we Ray? Jeez, dial it down a notch would ya!

U.S. Missions Stormed in Libya, Egypt - WSJ.com:
"The film's 52-year-old writer, director and producer, Sam Bacile, said that he wanted to showcase his view of Islam as a hateful religion. "Islam is a cancer," he said in a telephone interview from his home. 'The movie is a political movie. It's not a religious movie.'"

"Sam Bacile"? Seriously? Sounds fishy, a bit too close to "imbecile".

Bullying the Nuns by Garry Wills | The New York Review of Books:
"It is typical of the pope’s sense of priorities that, at the very time when he is quashing an independent spirit in the church’s women, he is negotiating a welcome back to priests who left the church in protest at the reforms of the Second Vatican Council. These men, with their own dissident bishop, Marcel Lefebvre, formed the Society of Saint Pius X—the Pius whose Secretariat of State had a monsignor (Umberto Benigni) who promoted the Protocols of the Elder of Zion. Pope Benedict has already lifted the excommunication of four bishops in the Society of Saint Pius X, including that of Richard Williamson, who is a holocaust denier. Now a return of the whole body is being negotiated."

Elaine Pagels on the Book of Revelation : The New Yorker:
"You can’t help feeling, along with Pagels, a pang that the Gnostic poems, so much more affecting in their mystical, pantheistic rapture, got interred while Revelation lives on. But you also have to wonder if there ever was a likely alternative. Don’t squishy doctrines of transformation through personal illumination always get marginalized in mass movements? As Stephen Batchelor has recently shown, the open-minded, non-authoritarian side of Buddhism, too, quickly succumbed to its theocratic side, gasping under the weight of those heavy statues. The histories of faiths are all essentially the same: a vague and ambiguous millennial doctrine preached by a charismatic founder, Marx or Jesus; mystical variants held by the first generations of followers; and a militant consensus put firmly in place by the power-achieving generation. Bakunin, like the Essenes, never really had a chance. The truth is that punitive, hysterical religions thrive, while soft, mystical ones must hide their scriptures somewhere in the hot sand."

The Men Behind The War On Women:
"When asked about the dissonance among Catholics and the leadership on abortion and contraception issues, Bishop Lori said that divisions were beside the point.

'It's not for a government to exploit fault lines within religious institutions,' he said. 'We recognize that not everybody shares that teaching; nevertheless, it is a fundamental right for the church to stand by their convictions.'"

Just as in the priest child rape cases, these bishops declare their religious liberty is at stake if they are not allowed to be above the law. This is an extremely disturbing and disgusting group of men.

Bishops to learn best practices to fight sex abuse:
"The Vatican said Saturday it is working to give bishops information on the best ways to combat clergy sex abuse, teaming up with the Jesuit university in Rome to host a major symposium on abuse and launch an Internet learning center for follow-up guidance."

I can tell them the best way to combat sex abuse in 3 words: CALL THE FUCKING POLICE! Ok, that was 4 words but still. This symposium is designed to combat criticism of the Vatican only. The main problem all along has been that ever since Becket the priests consider themselves above civil law and beholden to no one but the Vatican. That must be changed.

Pastor's Laptop: Dressing modestly for the Holy Mass despite the summer heat - St. Joseph's Catholic Church:
"The biggest problem I see (and I have a particularly elevated point of view from the sanctuary steps) is cleavage."

If that's the biggest problem he sees, he's never seen a mirror. Seriously, the dude has severe female trouble to say the least.

Romney Defends Mormon View of Christ's Second Coming on EthicsDaily.com:
"Mickelson switched the conversation to the Second Coming of Christ. 'Your church says it is going to happen in Missouri,' he said.

'No it doesn't,' Romney objected. 'The church says Christ appears on the Mount of Olives and splits the Mount of Olives and appears in Jerusalem. That's what the church says, and then over a thousand years--the Millennium--that the world is reigned in two places, Jerusalem and Missouri. That's what the church says. The Second Coming, the arrival of Jesus Christ, our church says, is in Jerusalem. That's the church doctrine.'"

From lds.org: "Near the time of the coming of Jesus, the faithful Saints will build a righteous city, a city of God, called the New Jerusalem. Jesus Christ himself will rule there. (See 3 Nephi 21:23–25.) The Lord said the city will be built in the state of Missouri in the United States (see D&C 84:3–4)."

I stand corrected. I was led to believe The Second Coming of JC was to occur in St. Louis. It's actually on the western edge of the state near Independence. Glad to have that finally cleared up.

Facebook | Anne Rice:
"As I said below, I quit being a Christian. I'm out. In the name of Christ, I refuse to be anti-gay. I refuse to be anti-feminist. I refuse to be anti-artificial birth control. I refuse to be anti-Democrat. I refuse to be anti-secular humanism. I refuse to be anti-science. I refuse to be anti-life. In the name of Christ, I quit Christianity and being Christian. Amen."

Like.

Will Goldman Sachs prove greed is God? | Business | The Guardian:
"People have to understand this Randian mindset is now ingrained in the American character. You have to live here to see it. There's a hatred toward 'moochers' and 'parasites' – the Tea Party movement, which is mainly a bunch of pissed off suburban white people whining about minorities consuming social services, describes the battle as being between 'water-carriers' and 'water-drinkers'. And regulation of any kind is deeply resisted, even after a disaster as sweeping as the 2008 crash.
This debate is going to be crystallised in the Goldman case. Much of America is going to reflexively insist that Goldman's only crime was being smarter and better at making money than IKB and ABN-Amro, and that the intrusive, meddling government (in the American narrative, always the bad guy!) should get off Goldman's Armani-clad back. Another side is going to argue that Goldman winning this case would be a rebuke to the whole idea of civilisation – which, after all, is really just a collective decision by all of us not to screw each other over even when we can. It's an important moment in the history of modern global capitalism: whether or not to move forward into a world of greed without limits."

I know some of these tea party types. Many are "Christians". This just reinforces the theory that the human brain is "designed" by and for hormones that drive its behavior. The very notion of a "self" is preposterous. We are dumb, stupid animals.

Matt Taibbi - True/Slant: The Catholic Church is a Criminal Enterprise:
"But these guys not only don’t kill themselves, they go out in public ranting about how wronged they are and how they’ve been fucked over by the evil New York Times for airing out their dirty laundry. Again, I admire the balls, but seriously, they must know the game is almost up. Sooner or later people are going to catch on, the state is going to make a move, and there’s going to be a hell of a lot of church property going up for auction along with the seized Escalades of DEA-busted drug dealers. Or maybe not in this lifetime — but one can only hope."

A bit over the top, but just a bit. Stuck in the middle of hard-right Catholicism though, it's apparent they have circled the wagons and girded their loins and battened down the hatches. The God of Love is nowhere to be found any more. It's Us against Them and Them is pure evil everywhere you look. Oh and Them is everyone else regardless.

So keep it up Matt et al. Constant pressure over and over may yet do some damage.