The Pope says he falls asleep during prayer, disses Banks, and says theology isn’t the point. This is great news! We can expect some wonderful things now, right? Hey, he’s kissing babies!

First if prayer is so boring we can stop praying and do some social good. Two, if banks and capitalism is as bad as it is he can endorse Marx and other market regulations that decrease the greatest disparity of wealth in western history. Three, if theology isn’t important he can deconstruct the Vatican, agree the bible is mythology, and endorse the UN’s declaration of human rights as supreme.

He’s just a regular guy. Like the King who wishes he were the pauper. Bullshit. He loves the poor but did he support liberation theology? Will he support the many priests that have died fighting oppression? He has the choice to change his digs at the Vatican. Must be nice to have a choice. A poor person wouldn’t give up nice digs. They’d want to experience them as they don’t have the choice. I went to the Marriott for the first tie and I was pretty excited to be there. Probably my first and last time–might as well grab the expensive shampoo too.

Those poor poor. Let’s help them. If he wanted to help the poor he’d eliminate the largest historical impediments to eliminating poverty in the world: ensoulment and personhood.  He’d endorse birth control, abortion, and say god is without gender and Jesus didn’t have a dick or a vagina and really, women can give mass and those ancestral misogynist bastards in the testaments are no longer relevant except as a negative lesson.

‘When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why they are poor, they call me a communist.” So said the Brazilian archbishopDom Hélder Câmara. His adage exposes one of the great fissures in the Catholic church, and the emptiness of the new pope’s claim to be on the side of the poor…

He now maintains that he “would like a church that is poor and is for the poor”. But does this mean giving food to the poor, or does it mean also asking why they are poor? The dictatorships of Latin America waged a war against the poor, which continued in many places after those governments collapsed. Different factions of the Catholic church took opposing sides in this war. Whatever the stated intentions of those who attacked and suppressed liberation theology, in practical terms they were the allies of tyrants, land grabbers, debt slavers and death squads. For all his ostentatious humility, Pope Francis was on the wrong side.

If theology isn’t important, he’d stop quoting the bible, deciding which passages are right for today and which aren’t. I want to see an annotated and redlined bible. Oh hell, let’s just get rid of it, it’s too confusing. Let’s just admit Jesus was babbling in parables and we need the straight talk of which he says he is so fond.

He’s just fooling us. Pretending to be a regular guy. How is he going to compete now with the evangelical’s prosperity gospel, his biggest competitor in the world? How is saying “we should love the poor” going to compete with “you can be rich beyond your wildest dreams?”

I can’t wait to see this play itself out.

Jim Newman, bright and well

www.frontiersofreason.com

Yesterday I moved 6,000 lbs of cement and mixed and poured 2,000 of it. I had hoped to finish the rest before rain begins for three days. It took so long to make the forms strong enough to resist the weight it didn’t happen. I skipped morning writing but still didn’t finish. I had hired a young, lanky helper off a parking lot (hardware store) to help pour but it still wasn’t enough. Exmarine, second-degree black-belt, hands certified as lethal-weapons, blown 15 feet into the air from an Iraqi IED, yet young, thin, and hyper–it made for a different experience. Hard to recover from war, hard to have normal relationships, and hard to find work.

The Irish prime minister has wonderfully said he stands by the constitution and is not going to be intimidated by the church that threatens excommunication. All to allow abortions that will save the mother’s life.

I am not for babies. I am for mothers. I don’t get the lifeboat thing–throw the baby into the water and save the mother. You can always have another baby but a good mother is hard to find. I am not proabortion, I am promother.

It’s like fighter pilots. Save the pilot and let the plane go if you have to. It’s more easy to make a plane than it is to train a good pilot. I guess military analogies are in my head. Enda Kenny:

“Everybody’s entitled to their opinion here, but as explained to the Cardinal and members of the church, my book is the constitution and the constitution is determined by the people,” Kenny added. “That’s the people’s book. We live in a Republic and I have a duty and responsibility as head of Government to legislate in respect of what the people’s wishes are.”

Did I hear music? Why is this song so rarely heard. in the states? It should be on the lips of every politician.

The debate about abortion, traditionally a controversial topic in Ireland, swirled afterthe death of Savita Halappanavar, an Indian woman who died from blood poisoning after being refused an abortion in an Irish hospital. Halappanavar’s friend claims a nurse told her that the hospital would not perform the life-saving abortion because it was Catholic.’

I would hope the family charged the hospital for murder and the Catholic church for promoting a policy of mother murder.

Hmm, how many mothers will it take stabbing their cervixes with coat hangers or going to underground, back-alley, abortion clinics before conservatives remember why their parents became promother, in law if not in spirit?

Jim Newman, bright and well

www.frontiersofreason.com

Long ago, back in the good old days, to be Christ-like you had to deny sex, marriage, and family. While many see the portrayals of Christ as closeted gay, he was more likely celibate. Christianity was antimarriage, procelibacy. Modern Christians claiming a family position are deviating from the first several hundred years of the church as well as the bible–the old testament is where it says to be bountiful, a barren women is a curse, and the man must perform his sexual duties and not spill his seed onto the ground. Kristen Upson-Saia a scholar of early christianity writes:

The earliest Christian communities considered heterosexual marriage to be fraught with problems and was thus to be avoided. Christian leaders argued that married people were too distracted by their familial obligations to be wholly devoted to God. Rather, they argued that the ideal sexual state for Christians was celibacy. They asserted that since the angels in heaven were asexual, Christians ought to remain single in order to live on earth already “as angels.” They believed that Jesus would commend single and celibate Christians for “making themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 19:10-12). Finally, given that God’s nature was virginal (literally “uncorrupted”), they claimed that Christian virgins shared God’s very nature and were thus best able to commune with God.

This base of celibacy is common to many religions including Buddhism, Brahmanism, Hindu Ascetics, and Greek Cynics. By the time Christ came along, the mideast had been ravished of most of its natural resources and issues of population were common. Being antipagan meant going against the Roman law to have family.

Although the most dedicated Christians remained unmarried, heterosexual marriage and intercourse was tolerated in some cases. For those who could not control their lust, marriage absorbed their sexual impulses, keeping them from committing worse sexual sins. (Note here that marriage is defended not as a “good,” but as better than other evils.) One of the only reasons to regard marriage as inherently good was that it produced children and that Christians who participated in procreative intercourse participated in God’s creation.

Yes, that would be the backdoor to sex; you don’t have to be celibate because if you procreate you participate in god’s creation. Hmm, sounds like Rastafarianism where they believe making love to one women is like making love to all women and so they’d like to. Also, a great way to guilt and shame as control–guilt that men lust and shame to women as seductress. Asceticism and celibacy are a response to the wanton material acquisition of populations gone awry to depletion of resources and resulting hardship–at which point you either go to war or starve. As humans go we haven’t learned how to live in balance with resource.

In Samuel, Old Testament, Amnon rapes his half sister. Old order semites were more then lustful but rather embarrassingly rapacious. Ultraorthox antisexuality is another withdrawal from the world

It was not Christians, but the pagan state that labored hardest to defend marriage. The poor conditions of life in the ancient Mediterranean made for regular population crises (each woman needed to have approximately five children to maintain a stable population). Thus, the state regularly incentivized marriage and procreation. Emperor Octavian (aka Caesar Augustus), for instance, introduced three waves of legislation that rewarded married people with children (e.g., with tax incentives, expanded rights and released obligations) and penalized the unmarried (e.g., taking away rights of inheritance or rights to hold office). Similarly, small tribes within the Roman Empire also prized procreation for the perpetuity of their line. This explains why tribes like the Jews endorsed sexual arrangements that maximized procreation (such as polygamy and Levirate marriage), lamented barren women and denounced all non-procreative behavior (including same-sex coupling).

A “History of Private Life, Revelations of the Medieval World:”

Ideally a women divided their time between prayer and various kinds of handiwork… Yet all the prayer and all the work (group activities, much as males hunted and made war in groups) did nothing to appease the men, persuaded as they were that women were by their very nature perverse and possessed with fantastic anxieties. What, men asked, do women do together when they are alone, locked up in the chamber? The answer was: nothing good.

While I could tease a lot of meaning from this, for now, the point is the development of honor and preservation of virginity precisely because of men’s paranoia that women would be promiscuous. Promotion of sex for procreation only helped keep women in place while men could philander. And both, ideally avoided joyful pursuits whether nonreligious singing or frivolous dancing. Christians have this in common with Muslims. This antiworldy, antisexual, and constant cloistering of women is historic for both Christianity and Islam.

Alexander Sanger writes it is American protestants (WASPs as we used to call them) that reacted to Irish Catholics arriving in the US and decided to preserve WASPdom by criminalizing abortion.

Physicians alone were not able to bring about the criminalization of abortion. At the beginning of their campaign in the 1840s and 1850s, they aligned themselves with the Know-Nothings, a fledging political party of nativists opposed the tide of Irish-Catholic immigration into America, which had begun to increase exponentially with the potato famine…

It did not escape Protestant notice that immigrant Catholic women had large numbers of children, while native Protestant women were having fewer. Since few new birth control methods had been introduced at this time — although there were the beginnings of condom and diaphragm manufacturing — the Know-Nothings suspected that Protestant women were using abortion as their method of birth control. Hence, the Know-Nothing men readily joined the AMA crusade to criminalize abortion. As contraceptive options increased in the course of the 19th century, those who favored the white Protestant hegemony also supported the criminalization of contraception. As one prominent physician said in 1874: “The annual destruction of fetuses has become so truly appalling among native American (Protestant) women that the Puritanic blood of ’76 will be but sparingly represented in the approaching centenary.”

Ever since Catholics arrived at St Mary’s on the East coast, protestants have feared their US imposition of power–the reformation and counter reformation are still held dear. The secular, religious tolerance of John F Kennedy has much to do with his running for presidency as a Catholic. Upson-Saia concludes rightly.

Given this history, those who wish to appeal to tradition to comment on same-sex marriage must recognize two things: First, Christians who cull the tradition of Christian sexual ethics cannot seize only those aspects of the tradition that support their opposition of same-sex coupling while leaving behind other aspects of the tradition that criticize their own heterosexuality. If one wants to uphold the strand of pro-procreative logic in the early Christian tradition, she must recognize that the tradition requires her also to oppose all other forms of non-procreative sex acts that are performed only for pleasure, including those of married heterosexual couples, and to endorse sexual arrangements that maximize procreation (such as polygamy and marriage at a young age). Moreover, she must also acknowledge that early Christians considered heterosexual marriage and intercourse to be far inferior to Christian celibacy and in need of its own defense.

Second, the pro-heterosexual marriage stance of the Roman state was driven by issues of demographics, not morality. And while we’ll soon see what the court understands to be the state’s interest in the allocation of marriage rights, it’s surely the case that our state faces none of the same pressures regarding under-population as did Roman backers of heterosexual marriage in antiquity.

Once again material culture relates to antiquated ideology. The material reason disappears but the ideology remains and is held fast as absolute.

Jim Newman, bright and well

www.frontiersofreason.com

Yup, the bible actually says little about capitalism but is quite clear about communalism or communism. Recently, gospels of wealth and gospels of prosperity, have been propounded to support the egregious wealth of cosmic salesmen like Rick Warren who can claim they are now so rich from fleecing the flock they don’t charge anymore. It is much harder to find biblical support that Christ wanted you to be rich then that he was sympathetic to the poor and promoted asceticism. Christian Communism led to many utopian communities including Mormon towns like Orderville, Utah (yup, Joe Smith defined communalism, the United Order, now anachronistic to Mormon wealth builders). Acts 2:4 is the big source.

Around here we celebrate Easter as a Spring celebration. Decorating Easter eggs is often a friendship event like decorating pumpkins for Halloween. When we lived in cities we would go to neighborhood Easter hunts. At the farm now the parents rise early and help the Easter bunny hide the decorated eggs and other goodies, and the kids have their own hunt. When I lived out West, Easter and spring break were always spent on vacation somewhere else, usually camping in the desert. However, many have thought the Easter bunny to be evil, the devil incarnate to attract people away from Christianity. It’s hard to find photo’s of evil bunnies…

Since before Constantine, Easter, the Teutonic  goddess Eastre, pagan holiday for Mother Goddess Ishtar, competed with Passover. Easter also competed with the invented celebration of the resurrection of which there is no biblical reference to the holiday. Easter is three holidays in one–0dd symmetry. Early Christians celebrated Passover as they syncretized from their Jewish tradition. Constantine an antisemite chose to move the date of Easter so it more readily conflicted with the pagan holiday–the Jewish date of Passover has much to do with contradicting the pagan holiday as well. He also wanted it not to be the same date as Passover so it wouldn’t appear to be the same holiday with the universal appeal of birth and renewal. Traditionally Passover could fall on any day of the week. He also wanted it to be the same day, a Sunday every year. Finally, being the antisemite he was he didn’t want it to fall on Sabbath which is Saturday, the Jewish holy day. The council of Nicene made this all law.

“Constantine the Great, Roman emperor, convoked the Council of Nicaea in 325. The council unanimously ruled that the Easter festival should be celebrated throughout the Christian world on the first Sunday after the full moon following the vernal equinox; and that if the full moon should occur on a Sunday and thereby coincide with the Passover festival, Easter should be commemorated on the Sunday following. Coincidence of the feasts of Easter and Passover was thus avoided.” ….“The name [Easter] probably comes from Eastre the Anglo-Saxon name of a Teutonic goddess of spring and fertility, to whom was dedicated a month corresponding to April. Her festival was celebrated on the day of the vernal equinox; traditions associated with the festival survive in the Easter rabbit, a symbol of fertility, and in colored easter eggs, originally painted with bright colors to represent the sunlight of spring, and used in Easter-egg rolling contests or given as gifts…”

Eusebius the only Christian historian that lies more than David Barton confirms:

Let us then have nothing in common with the detestable Jewish crowd; for we have received from our Saviour a different way.

It’s important to get that both the Romans and the Christians hated the Jews. The Romans because Jews hated pagans, idols, idolatry, pagan rituals, and refused to submit to Roman civil law. The Christians because they saw Christ as reforming the temple and as the latest prophet whom the Jews wouldn’t recognize. Jews also were perfectly happy to stick to themselves and not integrate into the community. Rome as a rule created laws as Law and had no tolerance for anyone not Roman and certainly had no feelings of remorse at the most brutal of corporal practices. Constantine:

“And truly, in the first place, it seems to everyone a most unworthy thing that we should follow the customs of the Jews in the celebration of this most holy solemnity, who, polluted wretches! having stained their hands with a nefarious crime, are justly blinded in their minds. It is fit, therefore, that rejecting the practice of this people, we should perpetuate to all future ages the celebration of this rite, in a more legitimate order, which we have kept from the first day of our “Lord’s” passion even to the present times. Let us then have nothing in common with the most hostile rabble of the Jews.”

Notice he is primarily blaming the jews for killing Christ. The entire narrative of the resurrection being necessary, Christ knowing he had to die, and wanting to die to save all is not here. In the bible Christ brushes away those that would try to save him from the guards taking him.

Ham as an Easter food was created directly as an option of food that was prohibited by Jews. The bible, New Testament, says nothing about eating ham for Easter, the non holiday.

Since some still did not celebrate Easter properly, Theodosius proffered punishment by death.

Edicts of Theodosius against the heretics, A.D. 380-394…Theodosius…decreed that…by the death of the offender; and the same capital punishment was inflicted on the Audians, or Quartodecimans, who should dare to perpetrate the atrocious crime of celebrating on an improper day the festival of Easter {Passover} (Gibbon E. Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Volume III, Chapter XXVII. ca. 1776-1788).

The atrocious crime? You see how stupid it is to say the Christians have been persecuted harshly from the start. When modern Christians say their religion is of love and tolerance it has been love of other Christians and tolerance of Christian ways.

Christians should rightly hate the Easter bunny.

The rabbit is a well-known sexual symbol of fertility; and in various parts of the world, religions that developed from Babel, associate it with periodicity, as in both human and lunar. As you remember the Mother Goddess Easter (Semiramis) is associated with the moon, and is considered the goddess of fertility. In other words, the Easter Bunny, is named after and symbolizes the Mother goddess. Pagan tradition also teaches that Eostre (Easter) saved a bird whose wings were frozen from the harsh winter by turning it into a magical, egg laying hare.

Secularists celebrating Easter as a rite of spring emphasize the nonChristian aspects and it is this I celebrate. If I were to discontinue this ancient ritual of renewal I would be letting the bastards win in their oppression so celebrate on! Enjoy the day and make merry. The year is short and soon it will be winter again.

Jim Newman, bright and well

www.frontiersofreason.com