Pope Francis on Friday said couples whose marriages fail should be “accompanied” and not “condemned”, wading into a debate on divorce that is testing his promise to put the Church in touch with modern life.Francis's words are completely meaningless. But that's apparently the best he can do because the Vatican plan is to keep attacking divorced people and gays. They're stuck in a hateful groove and they have no intention of climbing out. Thanks for nothing, Frankie.
“When love fails, and it fails many times, we have to feel the pain of that failure, accompany the people who have felt the failure of their love,” the pope said during the daily mass he holds in the Vatican.
“Don’t condemn them! Walk with them!” he said, adding: “We have to be so close to the brothers and sisters who have suffered the failure of love in their lives”.
Another possibility could be the Orthodox model, which allows some divorcees to re-marry in church and take Holy Communion but gives only a blessing for the second marriage and does not consider it a sacrament.But see, the divorced couples have absolutely nothing to apologize for. A human-inspired joining failed; these things happen. And now they're supposed to submit themselves to "a period of penitence"?! The only penance that is called for is the jailing of every Catholic priest who raped or abetted the rapes of children. I don't hear too much about that from this "moral" church.
Francis mentioned the Orthodox solution as a “parenthesis” on the plane during his return from a visit to Brazil and it was raised again by some cardinals in their consistory this month in which they said it could happen following “a period of penitence”.
“[Obama's] arrogance is breathtaking,” Dr. Janice Shaw Crouse, director and senior fellow of Concerned Women for America’s Beverly LaHaye Institute, told LifeSiteNews. The “president repeatedly insists that his personal values and beliefs are equated with the nation’s values and beliefs. When he insists that those controversial ideas constitute a human right, the president is saying that the deeply-held religious beliefs of many Americans are irrelevant.”Yup, it's another edition of: "My beautiful Christian faith compels me to spew venom at certain groups of people while trying to harm them and destroy their families -- but I'm blameless!" I don't think we need say anything about that. It's just your typical Christian persecution complex in action. These people are nuts. But that wasn't what struck me about the paragraph.
In biology, there was a teacher who talked about how when you cried, the tears got rid of toxins, so it was good for you to cry. I said, “What about the other way — is it good to laugh?” And the teacher said, “Please, be serious.”I was never as bored as when I sat in high school science classes. Talk about a long day! They never presented one thing in an interesting fashion. And that's exactly where Alan Alda comes in. Stony Brook worked with him to set up the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science. (No other university was interested. Gotta love that. Nitwits.) It's a place where scientists are taught how to reach out to everyday people, to help them understand what science is all about.
By going back and forth between creationists and Darwin’s life story, the documentary crafts a compelling image of the conflict between two world views: That of curiosity and that of incuriosity/fear. I agree with the New York Times reviewer that the creationists are presented non-judgementally, but as these clips amassed by Gawker make clear, the creationists do all the work for you anyway. There’s a pastor explaining he would have to accept it if the Bible said “2+2=5″ and people talking, over and over again, about the strategies they have to employ to shut down their minds in the event that they’re presented with an opportunity to think more broadly. The major emotion that comes off them in waves is that of fear: Fear of asking questions, fear of the “world” (which is always talked about negatively), fear of difference, fear that thinking might lead them into dark places, fear that they really aren’t special that manifests in making up a God who loves you so you never have to go a moment without that feeling, fear that they will fall into the abyss without blind obedience to authority, and, of course, fear of death.Is that perfect or what?
In a large sixteenth- to early eighteenth-century English house, a withdrawing room was a room to which the owner of the house, his wife, or a distinguished guest who was occupying one of the main apartments in the house could "withdraw" for more privacy.And then it was shortened with the passage of time, as many things are. Seriously, what would we do without Wikipedia? Change your will today to add Wikipedia as a beneficiary.
VATICAN CITY — Retired Pope Benedict XVI joined Pope Francis at a ceremony Saturday creating the cardinals who will elect their successor in an unprecedented blending of papacies past, present and future.
After processing down the central aisle at the start of the service, Francis went directly to Benedict, clasped him by his shoulders and they embraced. Francis greeted him in the same way at the end of the service, and Benedict removed his white skullcap in a sign of respect as Francis approached.
Hungarian Jewish leaders say they have found 103 Torah scrolls taken from Hungary during the Holocaust in a Russian library.
In a Russian library, Hungarian Jewish leaders found 103 Torah scrolls taken from Hungary during the Holocaust.
Jared Leto’s casting in “Dallas Buyers Club,” for instance, has been met with a sense of exhaustion by some parts of the trans community. In the wake of Mr. Leto’s Golden Globe for his portrayal of the character Rayon, the trans activist Jen Richards wrote, “That’s it. I’m going to write movies with entirely trans casts. Even the cis” — or non-transgender — “characters will be played by trans people. And then we’ll have our own awards ceremony and lavish them with awards for their brave portrayals.”
After controlling for variables like age, income, education level, religious attendance, and sex, the two researchers again found that belief in Hell was associated with unhappiness while belief in Heaven was associated with happiness.So why do they do it? Why do they insist on this ill belief in a punitive afterlife that never ends?
“[T]he belief in Hell, and religious malevolence more generally, may contribute to the encouragement of rule following, through the deterrence value of supernatural punishment, but may do so at the cost of well-being,” Shariff and Aknin wrote."He was a god-fearin' man." I often hear that said when some religious git dies. To me, it seems like a negative comment about a person who was too fearful to live his life. But religious people see "fear of god" as a plus. Well, too bad. The votes are in. Rather than being healthy, belief in hell is a horrifying notion that takes a toll on believers. Who would have thought the prospect of being burned for all eternity was negative?
“This creates an intriguing trade-off between the interests of the group, which benefit from the ethical behavior of the group’s members, and the interest of the individual, who shoulders the emotional costs of a society that follows norms out of fear.”
Federal prosecutors say they're appealing the sentence for billionaire Beanie Babies creator that included no prison time for hiding around $25 million from U.S. tax authorities.
At his sentencing last month, a judge went to lengths to praise Warner's charitable giving and concluded society would be better served by keeping him out from behind bars. He was sentenced to two years of probation.
NEW YORK — As the Winter Olympics begin in Sochi, a close Russian ally in Ukraine is suppressing and shooting pro-democracy protesters.One could be forgiven for thinking that the hour of triumph for autocrats and the retreat of democrats is at hand as the world gathers to celebrate the shining rule of Czar Vladimir.
True believers yearn for the rest of us to be locked up in the same mental prison where they have consigned themselves and their children.Yes, indeed. And this is the basis of their jealous rage against atheists. How dare atheists and other free folks not consign themselves to a equally horrible prison? This gets on their nerves. It's why old religious guys are always telling people they're going to hell. (Note the glee in their eyes as they say this!) They so want this to be true. Because if it's not, they've lived their entire lives in a squalid prison for absolutely no reason.
Camels appear in stories of early Jewish patriarchs in the Bible, even though it was before the animals’ time, evidence that writing or editing of the book happened long after the events it narrates.
It is not an inaccurate or extreme statement to declare that ideological Republicans do not understand what it means to be human. They view human beings as economic units to be plugged at their lowest possible price into a maximally efficient market that provides the greatest possible returns on investment to the wealthy few, with any resulting human resentment and misery dulled by humility before a pleasure-fearing angry God promising rewards to the obedient in the hereafter. It is a dark, meager, shriveled and cramped vision of humanity.
To accept their worldview is to reject the essence of human identity and purpose. If human beings could create a sustainable world of plenty free from violence, war, hunger or want, a world in which human beings were free to devote 24 hours a day to the leisurely pursuit of whatever activities they wished so long as they harmed no one else, conservatives would be terrified.
It's not so much that conservatives don't believe such a world of boundless human potential is possible. It's that they don't want it to be possible.That's the whole tale, right there. Nice to see someone say it plain and clear.
If you’re going to define yourself in opposition to a predecessor whom many people had misgivings about, go all the way. Francis is the Bill de Blasio to Benedict’s Michael Bloomberg, doing a complete semiotic overhaul. Less investment in festive footwear, more in the washing of other people’s feet. He’s not telling priests to stop being priests, any more than de Blasio is telling the police to stop being the police. He’s just urging them to tamp down the brusqueness and bullying. No more theological stop-and-frisk.
“Who am I to judge?” he said. This, from a pope, is like Streisand saying, “Who am I to sing?” It’s a bit of self-effacement that you never saw coming.
"Reader Diana MacPherson, who is famous for reversing the toilet rolls at other people’s houses..."What a good idea. I'm scandalized by the incorrect placement of toilet tissue in other people's bathrooms. Have they no sense?! I'm going to start doing this immediately.
On the same day the Russian deputy prime minister told gays coming to the Winter Olympics not to touch children, he divulged that cameras are keeping an eye on Olympic tourists while they’re in the shower.If anything, the Olympics seem to be lowering Russia's reputation in the world. I don't think this is what Puti intended.
The blunder happened when Dmitry Kozak was asked about conditions in hotels and the lack of water, the subjects of ongoing media criticism.
Kozak suddenly became defensive and blurted: “We have surveillance video from the hotels that shows people turn on the shower, direct the nozzle at the wall and then leave the room for the whole day.”
VATICAN CITY — The Vatican struck back Friday at a U.N. human rights committee that issued a scathing report on sex abuse by priests, accusing it of straying beyond its mandate and discrediting the U.N. as a whole by adopting the "prejudiced" positions of anti-Catholic advocacy groups.
[The UN report] called for the Holy See to use its moral authority to condemn discrimination against homosexual children, or children raised by same-sex couples.In his statement Friday, Lombardi said by entering into such matters, the committee "appears to have gone beyond its competence and interfered in the moral and doctrinal positions of the Catholic Church."
The areas of the committee's report that most piqued the Holy See were those concerning girls' access to reproductive health care and the need to protect gay children and children in same-sex households from being discriminated against. Those issues are key parts of the treaty, but they also touch on core doctrinal teachings of the Catholic Church.
Despite the Vatican's objections, [Lombardi] said the Holy See was nevertheless committed to working for the good of all children via the U.N. treaty.
The Nexus is an extradimensional realm in which one's thoughts and desires shape reality. Inside the Nexus, time has no meaning, allowing one to visit any time and any place that one can imagine.You never want to leave the Nexus. Never. Nothing can compare with the ecstasy it provides. I always thought the episode was a parable about heroin use.
Stacy St. Clair of the Chicago Tribune was ready to take the Olympic torch to her place.Lookin' good, Puti. You sure knocked this one out of the park. Seriously, read the linked article. It's a nightmare.
“My hotel has no water,” she tweeted. “If restored, the front desk says, ‘do not use on your face because it contains something very dangerous.’”
She later tweeted a somewhat terrifying picture of two glasses filled with a urine-colored liquid.
"Right now everything we have is remotely controlled and there's always a human in the loop," Akerson says. "We're heading in the direction to give the decision to kill to an algorithm."That's right. The plan is to unleash murderous drones that don't need humans to push an actual kill switch. They'll be able to do it all by themselves.
TENS of thousands of people have descended upon the New York-New Jersey metropolitan area this week for tomorrow’s Super Bowl, accompanied by the usual media frenzy. A now familiar feature of this coverage, wherever the Super Bowl is held, is an abundance of stories, from Reuters to CNN, reporting that the event will cause a surge in sex trafficking to capitalize on the influx of fans and tourists.Representative Christopher H. Smith, Republican of New Jersey and co-chairman of the House anti-human trafficking caucus, and Gov. Chris Christie announced a law enforcement crackdown. Cindy McCain, in advance of next year’s Super Bowl in Arizona, flew in to stand at Mr. Christie’s side, declaring that the Super Bowl is “the largest human-trafficking event on the planet.”
The problem is that there is no substantiation of these claims. The rhetoric turns out to be just that.
Remove the guise of “preventing” human trafficking, and we are left with a cautionary tale of how efforts to clean up the town for a media event rely on criminalizing people, with long-lasting implications for those who are then trapped in the criminal justice system. If we continue to perpetuate fallacies like the Super Bowl sex-trafficking phenomenon, we will continue to perpetuate the harm caused by prostitution arrests in the name of helping victims.
