The Church, and idiocy

Kang: Abortions for all!
Crowd boos.
Kang: Very well… no abortions for anyone!
Crowd boos.
Kang: Hmm… abortions for some, miniature American flags for others!
Crowd cheers
- Treehouse of Horror VII

Yeah, going there again. I really don’t understand the thought process that goes into a lot of the decisions the Catholic Church makes. It’s like they decide what the logical course of action would be, and then go in the opposite direction. Seriously, how do things like this keep happening?

First, there’s a pretty sad case coming from Brazil. A nine year old girl was raped by her stepfather, became pregnant with twins, and had an abortion. Abortion is illegal in Brazil except in cases like rape or when the mother’s life is in danger. Both of these exceptions are present in this case. Any guesses who the Church excommunicated?

Most people, I imagine, would guess that the rapist step-father was the one kicked out of the Church. However, as Rome has reiterated many times over the last couple decades, raping children really isn’t that big a deal. The stepfather gets to stay in the Church, and, if he takes Holy Orders, may end up presiding over an Arch Diocese somewhere.

No, rather than side with logic and compassion, the Church instead decided to excommunicate the doctors who performed the operation, and the girl’s mother. What the fuck? Does anyone think that this is a good idea? Brazil is one of the most fiercely anti-abortion countries in the world, but even most Brazilians are appalled by the Church’s actions here. Nothing about the Church’s decision makes sense.

Seriously, can’t we just calm down about abortion. It’s a legitimate medical procedure, and if you think it’s wrong you don’t have to get one. Over two hundred thousand woman are treated in Brazilian hospitals for problems spawned by illegal abortions every year. I doubt that anyone has any idea how many illegal abortions go unreported. This is obscenely dangerous; when one out of every three pregnancies is unwanted, people are going to be having abortions. It’s the government’s responsibility to offer a safer alternative to a wire hanger in a Sao Paolo alley.

Barack Obama is also catching shit from the Catholic Church, this time over his decision to fund stem cell research. The Church says he’s just doing this to help drug companies, because I guess there’s no way that being able to regenerate cells would help anyone ever. The Church says that Obama is choosing politics over ethics, which I guess is one way to look at this, albeit a retarded way. I feel like this is something that the Church is going to apologize for opposing in like six hundred years, after some hellbound scientists have cured Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and most spinal cord injuries.

I’m going to give Jon the last word on this Church stuff:

"I'm tired of all this from-down-on-high bull, I don't really understand the people who get to make these rules up. It doesn't make any sense that they should be able to decide the fate of someone's soul, based on an interpretation of a translation of a translation of a collection of passages from a series of possibly unrelated documents passed down through generations that were supposedly written via the influence of an invisible spirit. Honestly, I think Church doctrine has been interpreted more often and far more loosely than our own Constitution, and the conservatives all applaud their 'hard lines' on dogma when it's pretty plain that it’s being manipulated for the hierarchy's benefit."

Bill Donohue Should Have Been Aborted

President Obama has nominated Kathleen Sebelius, the Governor of Kansas, to fill the role of Secretary of Health and Human Services. She seems to be a brilliant woman and an excellent governor, and, provided that she’s done nothing to draw the IRS’s ire, you would think she would sail through the confirmation process. But anti-abortion people are getting pissy about it.

I’m going to get my biases right out in the open out front: I don’t like the pro-life movement. I think that, for the most part, they’re insufferable, hypocritical assholes. The headmaster where I went to middle school and high school, Father Shea, was one of the worst of this type of person. He was staunchly pro-life, and did his absolute best to indoctrinate each of the students. Every January he would organize a trip to the Pro-Life March in DC, and he would basically bribe students to go. He chartered coach busses and gave plenty of free time in DC after the march; it was basically a day off school. He would even cancel school that day if more than half the student body would go, adding an element of peer pressure. He would do all of this just to swell the numbers at this rally. But seriously, what the hell does a sixth grader know about abortion? At no point in the 7 years I went to his school was the other side of the issue presented at all. It was all just shameless brainwashing. And how can people, like President Bush, claim to be pro-life, yet have no problem sending people to be executed? It just doesn’t make sense to me. And the rationales behind it, all that nonsense about souls and things, it’s just terribly inconsistent with the First Amendment. In fact, the more I think about it, the more certain I am that these people hate America. If you personally think abortion is wrong, that’s fine, and I have no problem with it. But shut the fuck up, and stop trying to legislate it away. I’ve never heard a good reason for outlawing abortion that was independent of religious beliefs, and I probably never will.

Anyway, these anti-abortion people are giving a lot of shit to Sebelius in this confirmation process. Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League, called her an “enemy of the unborn.” Putting aside how cool a title that is, incendiary rhetoric doesn’t really serve a purpose. Does Donohue have any statistics to back up his argument? If he did, I doubt I would have this bad a headache. Rather than point to any sort of empirical study, Donohue says that Sebelius has been criticized by the last three archbishops of Kansas City. So what? Honestly, if a Catholic politician hasn’t gotten shit from the Church he probably hasn’t been doing a very good job in office. And the archbishop of Kansas City? How many little boys do you need to molest before being put in charge of such an off the beaten track dioceses? Probably between four and nine; double digits and they just give you a posting to the Vatican.

More rational Catholics, notably Catholics United, were quick to shed light on one of the pro-life movement’s biggest foes, the truth. First, they pointed out that Sebelius is on record saying that she personally opposes abortion. Then they point out that Sebelius has lowered abortion rates in her state, offering incentives for adoption and offering more care for pregnant women. Anti-abortion crusaders point out that Sebelius vetoed a bill that would tighten restrictions on abortions. I guess they weren’t really concerned by its unconstitutionality and the dangers it posed to women’s lives. I guess they think the world would be a better place if abortion were a crime performed by hobos charging half a sandwich and a bottle of malt liquor in alleys with rusty wire hangers.

Whatever. People are going to get all up in arms about this, it’s not going to do any good, Sebelius will be confirmed, and we can all forget about it until Obama makes his first Supreme Court appointment. Maybe during the interim we can go back to actually respecting the Constitution.

Effing Effingham

This past weekend I drove halfway across the country and back again over the course of about four days. I learned that America is a pretty weird place.

As demonstrated by a mildly retarded man from Texas winning two Presidential elections, most of America is a pretty religious place. Some people demonstrate their religion by helping poor people and stuff like that, things Jesus would have done. Others, however, like the residents of Effingham, Illinois, decided to build the biggest cross in the world. So yeah, there’s a 198 foot tall metal cross along I-70. Truckers are, of course, welcome.

This wasn’t the only cross I saw though, as it was pretty common to see three crosses on hilltops. So here’s what I’m thinking. When Christianity first started, it was really popular with women and slaves, because in Rome their lives sucked, and that whole Heaven thing seemed pretty sweet. This same thing helps explain why it took so long for people like the Vikings to convert: their afterlife is much better than Heaven, they just drink and fight all day, every day, so there’s really no reason to convert. I think that what I’m basically getting at here is that most of the center of this country, like Effingham, really sucks, and the people who live there are already looking ahead. Clinging to their religion (and guns).

Crosses were only the second strangest thing that I saw along the road. First place goes to a series of billboards stretching across Ohio and Indiana, advertising RVs and homes. The name of the RV company, as you may recall if you’ve also been forced to pass through what I’m sure Sarah Palin would describe as the pro-America America, is Tom Raper RVs. How is that someone’s name? If your last name is Raper, just change it.

One of the coolest parts about driving for 14 straight hours is learning all sorts of place names. Driving from Philadelphia to St. Louis is a pretty international experience; I passed London, Lisbon, Brazil, Troy, and Rome. I guess that it’s pretty tough to come up with original place names for an entire country, as demonstrated by Nameless Creek and Arnold City.

Ok, but that’s enough about that journey, I have more important things to talk about. First, science. I’ve made no secret of my desire to see scientists just start doing really cool things, and do them well. I don’t necessarily care what it is, cloning, flying cars, robots, anything like that, I just want to see cool things. Dick knows of this, and the scorn I’ve been heaping on scientists for their failure to keep me properly amused, and sent me this article to show that they’re doing stuff. I’m not impressed. Yeah, it’s cool that they were able to save some guy’s hand. But they used leaches. Come on, doctors have been using leaches for centuries. I’m surprised that they didn’t sacrifice a bull too. And anyway, the guy still doesn’t have feeling in his hand yet. I am not impressed with these scientists.

At least astronomers are still making moves. As this article says, some guys are speculating that there could be tons of earth-like planets scattered throughout our galaxy. That would be pretty cool. If there are alien lifeforms out there, these guys were thinking that most of them would be the kind of things that were on earth hundreds of millions of years ago, not cool things like people or wookies or even dinosaurs, but single cell organisms, and things like that. Which makes me think, how cool would it be if by the time these things get to where we are, evolutionarily speaking, we’ve mastered interstellar travel? We could be the conquering aliens that plucky planet bound movie stars would have to fight off. There could even be an alien President Whitmore. He would give such a good speech, I bet. Europeans are taking the first step here, running an isolation experiment to see if people could handle a trip to Mars. Getting to Mars and back would take over 500 days, so they want to make sure that people could deal with that. Fuck it, I'm sure I could do it. They wouldn't even need to pay me. Just put me in some spaceship on my way to Mars, 18 months in space wouldn't bother me; I don't think anything would. It would be so cool.

So John McCain is on twitter now (here's the story about it, there's probably a link to his twitter page too, but I felt no need to go look at it.) I’m not excited. First of all, fuck twitter. It’s completely unnecessary, who feels the need to put out vapid updates several times a day. Their character limit is going to finish what AIM and texting have started; I cant w8 2 c the first book tat looks liek this. Fuck. Anyway, McCain. What’s his deal? He clearly can’t be considering another Presidential run in 2012; he got his ass kicked this year, he’s going to be even older then, and if he gets in her way, Sarah Palin may shoot him from her helicopter. So why is he trying to stay in the spotlight so much? Doesn’t seem real mavericky.

I just saw a commercial for some show that the Golf Chanel is doing, The Haney Project, where the world’s best swing coach is going to try to fix Charles Barkley’s swing. The commercial said that the show would be uncensored, and I guess to underscore this point they had Barkley saying “shit” after a swing. But they bleeped it.

So it’s looking conceivable that Nadya Suleman won’t be able to take her octuplets home with her. It would suck if the kids have to be put into foster care, but that’s gotta be best for them in the long run. She’s out of her mind crazy, and doesn’t need to spread that crazy around. I’m still really frightened by her. When she has another four kids next year, and she will, someone will hopefully step in then and steal her uterus or something. She’s just terrifying.

I think that’s pretty much it for now. Happy Marty Brodeur Day everyone.

Vatican City Exports: Coins, Stamps, Stupidity

So this has been a pretty big weekend for the Holy See to say and do dumb things. More than most weekends, I swear.

First, a senior Vatican official predictably criticized President Obama for once again permitting government funding for family planning groups that operate outside of the United States. That’s fine, that’s their belief and everything, but, well, he said some dumb things, calling this “the arrogance of someone who believes they (sic) are right.” I guess this is somehow different from the arrogance of the Church in telling people not to vote for pro-choice politicians because the Church believes it is right. Or maybe not? Whatever, fuck them.

The Pope must have decided that he couldn’t let any of his subordinates steal the dumbass spotlight from him, though, so he did stuff too. Most notably, he reinstated four bishops who had been excommunicated by John Paul II. The bishops, members of the Society of St. Pius X, an utterly forgettable Pope who’s notable only because he chose the same name as Pius IX and rejected any form of modernization, were excommunicated because some French guy made them Bishops, not the Pope. Whatever, if Benedict is cool with that, fine, I’d have no problem with papal primacy being slightly diminished. I don’t even care that they oppose the Second Vatican Council, which is one of the only things the Church has done right in a really long time. But one of the guys refutes the Holocaust. Despite pretty much everything pointing the other way, this dumbass is siding with people like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in saying that Hitler didn’t have a deliberate policy to kill Jews. And now he’s a Bishop again. What the hell, how is this ok? Shouldn’t this guy be in a Pius XII society instead? And does Benedict really think that this guy is going to shepherd souls into Heaven? Ugh, I guess this is what happens when the Pope was a member of the Hitler Youth. How close are we to opening Mass with "In nomine Patris, et Fuhrer, et Spiritus Sancti?"