The Far Right's Effort to Eliminate the Establishment Clause

In addition to guaranteeing freedom of religion, the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution states: says “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.”  It's a provision increasingly ignored by the far right and the political whores in the Republican Party who seemingly have no limits on how far they will go in seeking to force far right Christian dogma on the entire nation and all of its citizens.  Between red state anti-abortion laws and the Trump/Pence regime's new "conscience rule" that exempts right wing Christians from the state and federal non-discrimination laws, America has a de facto established religion.  Worse yet, due to the tax-exempt status granted to churches and the plethora of  "ministries" so loved by Christofascists, all of us are underwriting this de facto established religion.  All of this would shock the Founding Fathers who knew well the evil of an established church.  A column in the New York Times looks at the phenomenon which violates the U.S. Constitution and puts the religious freedom of everyone else at risk.  Here are highlights:

It’s almost exactly a year since Irish voters, by an overwhelming two-thirds majority, threw off the shackles of the Roman Catholic Church and repealed the country’s constitutional provision banning abortion. On Friday, voters are expected to defy the bishops again and repeal the provision that requires at least four years of living apart before a couple can apply for a divorce. (Ireland legalized same-sex marriage by popular vote back in 2015.)

Back in Alabama, the state’s governor, Kay Ivey, issued this official statement when she signed the abortion ban into law: “To the bill’s many supporters, this legislation stands as a powerful testament to Alabamians’ deeply held belief that every life is precious and that every life is a sacred gift from God.”

I lack the social science expertise to explain the opposite trajectories of our two countries: Ireland marching proudly into the future, while the United States is reconfiguring itself into a theocracy that would have appalled our Founding Fathers. (Abortion, by the way, was legal at the nation’s founding, and for much of a century afterward.)

But I do know something about the United States Constitution. If the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause means anything, it has to mean that God’s will cannot be a constitutional justification for a law that erases an individual right.

[I]t’s past time for the rest of us to step back and consider the impact of religion’s current grip on public policy — not only on the right to abortion, but on the availability of insurance coverage for contraception in employer-sponsored health plans and on the right of gay and transgender individuals to obtain medical services without encountering discrimination.

The Establishment Clause says “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” But we don’t hear much about it these days. It has shrunk noticeably at the hands of the current Supreme Court, in contrast to the First Amendment’s other religion clause, the Free Exercise clause, much in favor with today’s majority.

The only Supreme Court justice who ever linked abortion and the Establishment Clause was John Paul Stevens, now nine years into retirement and, at age 99, author of a new memoir.

Thirty years ago, in a case called Webster v. Reproductive Health Services, the court considered a Missouri law that placed several restrictions on access to abortion. The law contained a preamble declaring it to be a “finding” of the state legislature that “the life of each human being begins at conception.”

Justice Stevens, alone, disagreed. The preamble was “an unequivocal endorsement of a religious tenet of some but by no means all Christian faiths,” he wrote in his separate opinion. It “serves no identifiable secular purpose,” he continued, adding, “That fact alone compels a conclusion that the statute violates the Establishment Clause.”

Stevens explained: “Bolstering my conclusion that the preamble violates the First Amendment is the fact that the intensely divisive character of much of the national debate over the abortion issue reflects the deeply held religious convictions of many participants in the debate.” He concluded, “the Missouri legislature may not inject its endorsement of a particular religious tradition into this debate.”

The court will face another Establishment Clause test, which it will predictably fail, in a year or so when it confronts the Trump administration’s Religious Exemption Rule. This rule grants employers who have religious objections to birth control an opt-out from the Affordable Care Act’s mandate to cover contraception in the employee health plan. The rule represents a metastasis from the Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby decision in 2014, . . . the Trump rule offers no such workaround. Women with the misfortune to work for anti-contraception employers will become second-class citizens, their statutory right to full health care benefits sacrificed to protect the boss from complicity in the sin of birth control.

In the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, 14 leading scholars of the Constitution’s religion clauses have filed a brief arguing that the rule manifests unconstitutional “religious favoritism,” an “unyielding preference for religious interests over any conceivable secular interest,” while shifting “serious burdens to third parties.”

This month, the administration issued an expanded “conscience rule” to permit health care workers, down to the level of receptionist, to opt out of involvement with procedures to which they have moral or religious objections. Another new rule to be issued shortly would limit protections for transgender patients seeking even ordinary health care by expanding opt-outs for providers who have religious objections to treating them. These new measures, carrying out [Trump's] the president’s pledge to serve the interests of his allies on the religious right, will undoubtedly be the subject of lawsuits.

[B]efore the end of the current term, we will have a better idea of whether there’s anything left of the Establishment Clause when the court decides the pending case on the constitutionality of a 40-foot cross on public land in Maryland. Lurking in the background of this case is the argument that the Establishment Clause permits any religious favoritism short of actual coercion of non-adherents. You don’t like the public display of sectarian symbols? No problem — no one’s making you look at them.

It took Ireland many years and much pain to claim the secular freedom its people now enjoy. It’s taking us just a few years of disingenuous politics to hurl us backward to a place many of us never imagined.

Be very afraid.  The far right, especially the Christofascists represent a clear and present danger to constitutional government.

Pope Francis Backpedals on Recommendation of Psychiatric Treatment for Gay Children

Pope Francis in Ireland.

With the Roman Catholic Church on the defensive on multiple fronts in the wake of (i) Pope Francis' less than successful visit to Ireland where he was dressed down by that nation's prime minister, (ii) continued reverberations from the release of the Pennsylvania grand jury report - some have called for a federal grand jury to investigate the Church nationwide - and (iii) growing credible accusations that the Vatican covered up Cardinal Theodore McCarrick's sexual molestation, the Vatican/Pope Francis is seemingly trying to quell a new firestorm by attempting to walking back Francis' recommendation that parents of gay children seek psychiatric cures for their children. Agence France-Presse has coverage.  Here are highlights:

The Vatican on Monday rolled back on Pope Francis's recommendation that parents seek psychiatric help for children who show homosexual tendencies.

The Pope made the comments to journalists as he was flying back to Rome from Ireland, but the Vatican later removed his phrase from its official account, saying he had not meant to suggest that homosexuality was a mental illness.

Francis was asked by a journalist what he would say to parents who observe homosexual traits in their children.  "I would say first of all pray, not to condemn, to dialogue, to understand, to give space to the son or the daughter," he responded, before adding that parents must also consider the age of the child.

"When it [homosexuality] shows itself from childhood, there is a lot that can be done through psychiatry, to see how things are. It is something else if it shows itself after 20 years," he said.

The Pope added that ignoring a child who showed homosexual tendencies was an "error of fatherhood or motherhood".

When asked why, a Vatican spokeswoman told AFP it had been done in order to not "change the thoughts of the Holy Father".  "When the Pope referred to 'psychiatry', it is clear that he was doing it to highlight an example of 'things that can be done'. But with that word he didn't mean to say that it (homosexuality) was a 'mental illness'," she said.

Francis's trip to Ireland was fraught with controversy amid accusations that he ignored sexual abuse allegations against prominent US cardinal Theodore McCarrick.

Ahead of his visit, delegates at a Catholic conference in Dublin heard a plea from a US priest for the Church to welcome gay members, whom he said had been made to feel like lepers.

Having been raised Catholic, I can assure you that the message the Vatican and hierarchy clearly and consistently sends is that being gay is pretty much the worse possible thing one can be.  Calling homosexuality a "mental illness" would almost be kind in comparison to being taught that one is an abomination hated by God.  The Church's treatment of gays is nothing less than soul killing - just in a different form than sexual abuse by priests. 

In Ireland only a quarter of the size crowds hoped for showed up.  The Church's credibility is in tatters.

Ireland's Gay Prime Minister Blasts Catholic Church

There are few countries in which the Roman Catholic Church has fallen further than in Ireland.  Once a bastion of Catholicism that exported priests across the globe, attendance at mass has plummeted and scandal after scandal has rocked the nation as crimes and horrible mistreatment of individuals ranging from young altar boys to young unwed mothers and their babies have been revealed.  One has to wonder what possessed Pope Francis to visit Ireland to attend the World Council of Families -  a gathering that is anything but progressive and open to tolerance.  If Francis thought his visit would heal raw wounds, he seemingly was mistaken as Ireland's gay prime minister let loose on the Church's ugly history of abuse and wrong doing.  The Advocate looks at the comments of Ireland's "out" prime minister, Leo Varadkar as Francis stood by.  Here are excerpts::

In a Saturday speech referred to as "blistering" by The Guardian, Ireland's out prime minister, Leo Varadkar, highlighted the numerous scandals and abuses of the Catholic Church, as Pope Francis stood to his side.

The Dublin speech took place during the pontiff's first visit to Ireland in almost 40 years; he was there for the Church's World Meeting of Families. During Varadkar's speech, the prime minister repeatedly brought up the sexual abuse of children perpetuated by Catholic priests and made mention of a recent Pennsylvania grand jury report that detailed systemic clerical abuse.

Varadkar also spoke of the Church's forced adoptions of children from unwed mothers, a mass grave of infants recently found near a Catholic mother-and-baby home, and Ireland's Magdalene Laundries, where "fallen women" were housed and often subjected to horrors.

"I cannot fail to acknowledge the grave scandal caused in Ireland by the abuse of young people by members of the church charged with responsibility for their protection and education," Varadkar said. 

The failure of ecclesiastical authorities — bishops, religious superiors, priests and others —  adequately to address these repellent crimes has rightly given rise to outrage and remains a source of pain and shame for the Catholic community. I myself share those sentiments."

Varadkar described "brutal crimes perpetrated by people within the Catholic church, and then obscured to protect the institution at the expense of innocent victims... stains on our state, our society and also the Catholic church. People kept in dark corners behind closed doors, cries for help that went unheard.”

Varadkar also spoke of a changed Ireland; one where homosexuality and abortion were illegal during the last papal visit. Now, Ireland is led by a gay man and grants women the right to make their own reproductive decisions.

The Irish people understand "that marriages do not always work, that women should make their own decisions, and that families come in many different, wonderful forms, including those headed by a grandparent, lone parent or same-sex parents, or parents who are divorced."

It is a speech that Francis very much needed to hear and which foretells what will happen to the Church if radical changes do not occur. Until bishops and cardinals are punished and removed from office (and not sent into retirement with plush perks) and the Church's stance on sex and sexuality leaves behind 12th century beliefs, the exodus of churchgoers will continue.  The Washington Post also looks at the meeting of Varadkar and Francis and the reality of a vastly changed Ireland:

On Saturday, Varadkar welcomed Pope Francis to Ireland, a nation that has radically changed since the last papal visit, in 1979. At that time, homosexuality was still a crime. Now, the country’s prime minister is gay. 

Varadkar is a distinct example of how what was once an overwhelmingly white, Catholic nation is now increasingly diverse and its laws increasingly secular. Ireland is the first country to have legalized same-sex marriage through a popular vote, and this year, the country repealed its restrictive abortion ban. Many see the country’s new policies and shifting demographics as evidence that the Irish are moving further and further away from the Catholic Church.
 And in his remarks in front of the pope Saturday, the prime minister said the Irish have “voted in our Parliament and by referendum to modernize our laws.” He said new policies reflect the country’s understanding that “marriages don’t always work, that women should make their own decisions, and that families come in many different wonderful forms including those headed by a grandparent, lone parent or same-sex partners or parents who are divorced and remarried.”

Brian Finnegan, editor of Ireland’s Gay Community News, said that the last time a pope visited, 39 years ago, Irish leaders were more likely to have said: “ ‘We wont have any contraception or allow people divorce or even talk of homosexuality,’ just ‘your eminence, you’re here, and we love you, and we love the church.' ”  “There would’ve been no defense at all,” he said.

That makes Varadkar’s meeting with the pope that much more symbolic. For many, an openly gay leader of a predominantly Catholic country meeting the leader of the Catholic Church, an institution that does not recognize same-sex marriage, would have once been unthinkable.

Varadkar had a brief meeting with the pope following his more public remarks Saturday. His spokesman told the Irish Times that he “said to the pope that there are huge numbers of people here who have faith in their heart but who feel excluded and alienated from the church because of what happened.” . . . . campaigners for sex abuse survivors said the pontiff had not gone far enough in taking responsibility for the Vatican’s role in covering up abuse at the hands of the clergy.

I do not envy Francis' situation, but clearly, more inaction and crocodile tears will not save the Church from the consequences of it many wrongdoings. 

The Catholic Church's Accelerating Collapse in the Developed World

While arch-conservatives - extremists, if you will - in the Catholic Church reel from the Irish vote to repeal that nation's strict bans on abortion, the Church is not faring well in other parts of Europe.  Indeed, the only semi-bright spot is Poland where politicians are using Catholicism as part of the white Polish nationalist agenda. In America, Catholic Church membership is ostensibly holding steady for at least two reasons: (i) unless one actively takes them self off of church rolls, you remain in the headcount forever, and (ii) the huge influx of Hispanic immigrants is masking the decline of the traditional American Catholic demographic. The bad news for the Church is that younger Hispanics are leaving the Church like their Millennial counterparts, thus making it crucial for additional new immigrant to fill the places being left by those leaving the Church. Why the global collapse of the Church outside of the developing world?  A piece in the New York Times notes two causes: (a) the sex abuse scandal that shows no signs of going away, and (b) the Church's refusal to embrace modern knowledge and science, especially in the realm of sexuality.  The latter phenomenon is exemplified by right wing Catholics at sites such as "Lifesite" and "Church Militant" rallying to "experts" deemed crackpots by sane, mainstream medical and mental health experts.  The Irish Times looked at one of these, in my view, nutcase "experts." Here are excerpts:

Dutch psychologist Dr Gerard van den Aardweg. . . . said: “Homosexuality is presented by the majority of the media as a question of unjust discrimination of people who in themselves are just a little bit different by nature ... denied rights the majority enjoy. This is absolutely absurd and completely nonsensical.” The event was organised by the Catholic Alliance for the Defence of the Family and Marriage group.

Global organisations with a global sexual ideology wanted “to deal a blow to normal marriage and the family and to this end they use the homosexual movement, the sexual rights movement”, he said. . . . He claimed many scientific institutions have been taken over by “active militant gays” who produce information to further the gay cause. He also said it was not true that homosexuals are born gay.

Many gay people were “comparable with alcoholics or other persons who are addicts but they have the feeling it’s my fate”, he said. . . . He also claimed the Nazi party was “rooted” in homosexuals. . . . . He said wealthy organisations were interested in imposing homosexuality on the world and included the abortion movement, feminism, and freemasonry international.”

It used to be evangelical groups that trotted out such "experts," but increasingly the Catholic Church is embracing such extremists.  It's little wonder Millennials in particular are exiting from the Church.

But back to the Times piece.  Here are highlights on the Church's collapse in Europe and accelerating drift toward ultimately being Africa centric:

In August, Pope Francis will return to Ireland for a World Meeting of Families event attended by the church’s most committed anti-abortion activists. But they will find themselves, after Saturday’s historic repeal of an abortion ban in a landslide vote, in a country that is clearly part of Europe’s secular sprint out of the Roman Catholic fold.

Across Western Europe, the church’s once mighty footprint has faded, in no small measure because of self-inflicted clerical sex abuse scandals and an inability to keep up with and reach contemporary Catholics. Church attendance has plummeted, parishes are merging, and new priests and nuns are in short supply. Gay marriage is on the rise, and abortion is widely legal.

Francis is not sounding the alarm or calling the faithful to the ramparts. He seems resigned to accept that a devout and Catholic Europe has largely slipped into the church’s past. . . . . Instead, he has shifted his focus on the faith’s future to the global South . . . .  This turn has drawn criticism from conservative Catholics like those in the Continent’s most faithful country, Poland, who have allied with a nationalist government to keep out migrants.

The challenge for Francis is to keep the present decline of the church in Europe from becoming a preview of its future in South America and Africa. . . . . Inoculating the Southern Hemisphere from the growing scourge of sex abuse scandals, spreading secularism and out-of-touch clergy that devastated Catholicism in Europe is no easy task and will require much of the pope’s attention.

The church’s looming problems outside Europe’s borders don’t stop with sexual abuse. In Latin America and Africa, where the future of the church seems most promising, there are also signs it is losing ground in a bustling religious marketplace. In Brazil, which has the world’s largest Catholic population, evangelicals preaching prosperity gospels are giving stiff competition to Catholicism, which is projected to become a minority faith in 2030. 

In wealthy Europe, though, the church’s woes show few signs of abating. . . . In Italy, many Catholic parishes are now operated by clergy born outside the country. In mostly Catholic Luxembourg, the government, led by a gay prime minister, abolished religious teaching in state schools in September. In 2012, the Archdiocese of Vienna consolidated its 660 parishes into 150. 

Only one-in-five Catholics attend Mass in Spain now. In France, it’s one in 10. In the Netherlands, Mass attendance among Catholics is down to about 5 percent. In Germany, financial contributions to the church have thinned.

By most measures, Poland is the most faithful Catholic country in Europe. About 40 percent of Catholics attend Sunday Mass . . . . But there is also a more contemporary convergence between the traditional Christian values that John Paul promoted and the nationalism of President Andrzej Duda’s governing Law and Justice Party, which opposes Francis’ calls to accept migrants and to combat global climate change.

If the landslide vote in Ireland bothered Francis, he didn’t show it on Sunday afternoon. He smiled broadly as he blessed tens of thousands of people in St. Peter’s Square and urged them to pray for Africa.  Kilvia Passos, 47, cheered the pope as she held a flag of her native Brazil, the country with the world’s largest Catholic population. She said despite the growing competition of evangelicals there, the country still felt deeply Catholic. But so, until a few decades ago, did Ireland and the rest of Europe.

As a former Catholic very familiar with the Church's 11th century dogma on sexuality and the family, I do not believe the future will be kind to Catholicism which increasingly requires and ignorant, uneducated population to thrive.  Relying on lunatic "experts" will not stop the ongoing collapse in Europe and, I suspect soon, America.  

It's Official: Ireland's Stinging Rebuke to Catholic Church

To me, Ireland should be a case study for Republicans and their Christofascist base of what eventually happens when a minority tries to force its antiquated and hypocrisy soaked religious beliefs on all of society.  With the vote in Ireland official, two-thirds of the citizenry voted to end a near total ban on abortions spearheaded by the Catholic Church in 1983.  The Trump/Pence regime would do well to realize that their agenda of appeasing Christofascists will not end well in the long run despite the presence of right wingers like Neil Gorsuch on the Supreme Court.  Here in America, the sex abuse scandal of priestly sexual predators continues with almost daily stories somewhere in the country (In Australia a high cleric was recently criminally convicted for his role in covering up abuse).  Meanwhile, we see an almost daily stream of evangelical pastors caught up in sexual scandals as evangelicals show themselves to be the most hate-filled and hypocrisy drenched individuals in society as them support an occupant of the White House devoid of any shred of morality or decency.  The New York Times looks at the stunning rebuke in Ireland:

DUBLIN — Ireland voted decisively to repeal one of the world’s more restrictive abortion bans, sweeping aside generations of conservative patriarchy and dealing the latest in a series of stinging rebukes to the Roman Catholic Church.

The surprising landslide, reflected in the results announced on Saturday, cemented the nation’s liberal shift at a time when right-wing populism is on the rise in Europe and the Trump administration is imposing curbs on abortion rights in the United States. In the past three years alone, Ireland has installed a gay man as prime minister and has voted in another referendum to allow same-sex marriage.

The “yes” camp took more than 66 percent of the vote, according to the official tally, and turnout was about 64 percent.

The outcome signaled the end of an era in which thousands of women each year had been forced either to travel abroad or to buy pills illegally online to terminate their pregnancies, risking a 14-year jail sentence. The government has said that general practitioners — doctors who are the first port of call for patients — will be asked to provide abortions, although they will still be allowed to conscientiously object to termination at their clinics.

The vote followed months of soul-searching in a country where the legacy of the Catholic Church remains powerful. It was the latest, and harshest, in a string of rejections of the church’s authority in recent years.

The church lost much of its credibility in the wake of scandals involving pedophile priests and thousands of unwed mothers who were placed into servitude in so-called Magdalene laundries or mental asylums as recently as the mid-1990s.

“This is devastating for the Roman Catholic hierarchy,” said Gail McElroy, professor of politics at Trinity College Dublin. “It is the final nail in the coffin for them. They’re no longer the pillar of society, and their hopes of re-establishing themselves are gone.”

That shift in attitude was driven in part by prominent cases, such as the 2012 death of Savita Halappanavar, who had asked for a termination of her pregnancy but later died of complications from a septic miscarriage. Ms. Halappanavar’s face was printed on placards supporting abortion, and on Saturday morning people placed flowers in front of a mural of her face in Dublin.

Ireland “is taking the proper steps to separate church and state and to move forward as a more progressive country,” said Conor Flynn, a 22-year-old student.

Church and state need to be totally separate and in America, progressives and truly moral people must continue to strive to destroy the power of the Christofascists and their political whores. 

In Rebuke to Church, Ireland Votes to End Abortion Ban

In a sharp rebuke to the Roman Catholic Church - which while ostensibly neutral had numerous Catholic organizations campaigning hard for a retention of Ireland's near total ban on abortion - Irish voters appear to have voted by a landslide for repeal.  The result while not yet formal is yet a further underscoring of the Catholic Church's near total collapse of power in Ireland, once a bastion of Catholicism.  The abortion vote comes roughly three (3) years after Irish voters voted to legalize same sex marriage despite the Church's vociferous opposition (Ireland currently has an openly gay Prime Minister).  A live blog on the Irish Times can be found here.  Another  piece in the Irish Times looks at the projected results.  Here are highlights:

Counting is under way in the referendum to repeal the Eighth Amendment of the Irish Constitution, with a result due to be declared this afternoon.

On Friday night, an exit poll carried out for The Irish Times by Ipsos/MRBI indicated a landslide victory for the Yes side, with 68 per cent, versus 32 per cent for No.

Early tallies in constituencies across the Republic have indicated a strong lead for the Yes side and campaigners on both sides of the debate have been reacting to the forecasts on Saturday morning.

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said: “I think what we’ve seen today really is the culmination of a quiet revolution that’s taken place in Ireland for the past 10 or twenty years. This has been a great exercise in democracy and the people have spoken.

“The people have said we want a modern constitution for a modern country, that we trust women and we respect them to make the right decision, the right choices about their own healthcare.”

Mr Varadkar told RTÉ the results so far show the nation is united, not divided. When asked what he believed the key factors were influencing people’s vote, the Taoiseach said: “Most of all and above all, it was the very many brave women and men who told their personal stories as to how the Eighth Amendment impacted on them, and impacted on them adversely.”

Iona Institute spokesman David Quinn has acknowledged that many people who voted Yes were not pro-abortion, but were pro-choice. He told RTÉ’s Marian Finucane show: “Even the expectations of the Yes side were surpassed.”  This was a complete reverse of the 1983 result, he said. “I don’t think anyone expected it to this extent.”

Ireland has become a modern, educated nation.  This, combined with the horrific sex abuse by Catholic clergy and the now fully revealed horrors of the Church run children's homes and homes for unwed mothers put the hypocrisy and moral bankruptcy of the Church on display for all to see. And for the record, I believe abortion should be rare and that science based sex education - something opposed by the Church and evangelicals in America - should be the main method of avoiding unwanted pregnancies.  That said, the government should not be making choices for women and their doctors. 

Ireland Elects Gay Man as Prime Minister

In yet another display of how low the Roman Catholic Church has fallen in Ireland, Leo Varadkar, a 38 year old gay man, was elected prime minister yesterday.  Also of note is that Varadkar's father was from India and married his Irish mother.  CNN looks at this surprising development which represents yet another rebuke to the homophobic Catholic Church which has already been savaged by public reaction to the Church's institutional cover up of sexual abuse of children and youths that went on for many decades, if not centuries.   Here are brief highlights:

Ireland is to get its youngest prime minister, and the first who is openly gay.

Leo Varadkar, the 38-year-old Minister for Social Protection, was elected leader of the ruling Fine Gael party on Friday. He will be confirmed as Taoiseach, or prime minister, when the Irish parliament reconvenes on June 13. The outgoing Taoiseach, Enda Kenny, stepped down as party leader in May, a position he held since 2002. Varadkar was backed by a majority of the Fine Gael's local council members and, crucially, 51 of its 73 parliamentary colleagues, whose votes counted for 65% of the total.  Varadkar said he was "delighted and humbled" at the result. Varadkar, the son of an Indian-born father and Irish mother, became a doctor before first entering Irish parliament at the age of 27.
 In 2015, as Minister of Health, Varadkar came out on Irish national radio, joining a handful of other openly gay politicians in Ireland in support of the Marriage Equality Bill, which allows same sex couples to marry. Varadkar might seem to be an unexpected pick for leader of Ireland -- a country that's still finding its secular European footing after years of church influence over the state.
 Varadkar is expected to officially take up the role as Taoiseach on June 13 after a formal confirmation from parliamentary members.

Catholic Church Crimes: Mass Grave of 700+ Children of Unwed Mothers in Ireland

Thanks to the constant political turmoil in America, media coverage has been diverted from the continuing moral bankruptcy of the Roman Catholic Church.  Sex abuse scandals continue to rage in Australia, Guam and other parts of the world with the Church hierarchy fighting tooth and claw to cover up crimes against children and youths and to avoid paying compensation to rape and abuse victims.  Now a new bombshell has come out of Ireland, once a bastion of Catholicism, where a mass grave of 700 to 800 children has been discovered at the Mother and Baby Home operated by the Congregation of the Sisters of Bon Secours in Tuam, Ireland.   These small victims are but more of the lives destroyed over the centuries by the Church's warped 12th century approach to human sexuality and the obsession of bitter old men, many closeted self-loathing gays, with all things sexual. The hypocrisy and toxicity of the Church is mind numbing and I again ask how anyone moral and decent can continue to attend and financially support the institution.  Here are highlights from the Washington Post on the gruesome discovery:

Between 1925 and the 1960s, in a tiny town called Tuam in western Ireland’s County Galway, thousands of “fallen women” and their “illegitimate” children passed through the Mother and Baby Home operated by the Congregation of the Sisters of Bon Secours. After a period of involuntary service and penance, many of the women who came to the home left to resume their lives, as The Post’s Terrence McCoy reported in 2014.

But some of the children did not leave. And what became of them remained a mystery into which few cared to inquire.

But after painstaking research, a local historian named Catherine Corless became convinced in 2014 that the infants and small children — perhaps 700 to 800 of them — died in the home and were buried without markers in mass graves beneath the property, perhaps in an underground structure such as a septic tank.

The story, which attracted worldwide publicity, was met with skepticism and even suggestions that it was a hoax. It wasn’t.

A commission established by the Irish government in response to her research and the ensuing controversy has reportedfinding “significant quantities of human remains” in 17 “underground chambers” inside a buried structure.
 There is no uncertainty about the remains.

A small number of them were recovered for analysis, the commission reported. “These remains,” it said, “involved a number of individuals with age-at-death ranges” from approximately 35 fetal weeks to 2-to-3 years.

“Radiocarbon dating of the samples recovered suggest that the remains date from the time frame relevant to the operation of the Mother and Baby Home,” the commission said. “A number of the samples are likely to date from the 1950s.”

The commission said it was “shocked” by the discovery and “is continuing its investigation into who was responsible for the disposal of human remains in this way.” “This is very sad and disturbing news,” Katherine Zappone, Ireland’s minister for children and youth affairs, said in a statement. “It was not unexpected, as there were claims about human remains on the site over the last number of years.” In a statement published in the Irish Times, the Bon Secours sisters said they were “fully committed to the work of the commission regarding the mother and baby home in Tuam. … On the closing of the home in 1961, all the records for the home were returned to Galway County Council, who are the owners and occupiers of the lands of the home. We can therefore make no comment on today’s announcement, other than to confirm our continued cooperation with and support for the work of the commission in seeking the truth about the home.” Without means to support themselves, women by the hundreds wound up at the Home, Corless told The Post in 2014. “Families would be afraid of neighbors finding out, because to get pregnant out of marriage was the worst thing on Earth. It was the worst crime a woman could commit, even though a lot of the time it had been because of a rape.” Corless’s research found that infant mortality at the home in Tuam was particularly high. Records for that home show that babies died at the rate of two per week from malnutrition and neglect, and from diseases such as measles and gastroenteritis, Corless told the Post in 2014.

Her interest in a subject others preferred to forget began when she was doing research for an annual local historical journal. 

The commission is already investigating how unmarried mothers and their babies were treated between 1922 and 1998 at 18 religious institutions used by the state. . . . . the religious [orders] knew it and it was just all nicely covered in and forgotten about.

The truth is the last thing that the Congregation of the Sisters of Bon Secours or the Church hierarchy wants exposed to daylight.  

Catholicism Comes to a Crossroads

Many of the bitter old men in dresses in bishoprics across the western world refuse to admit that times and people have changed and that the Roman Catholic Church is at a likely crossroads that requires that the Church come out of 13th century beliefs or face growing irrelevance.  It is a reality that man of these less than decent men don't want to accept, the arch-reactionary bishop of Richmond, Virginia (who was installed in office by the less than saintly John Paul II, a protector of child rapists) being a prime example.  Not only is he viciously anti-gay, but he still treats divorced and remarried Catholics as lepers and bars them from positions in Catholic schools.  A piece in the Richmond Times Dispatch looks at the crossroads before the Church:

Today’s rapidly changing social views are demanding some uncharacteristically hasty action from the Vatican. The issues of same-sex marriage and the role of homosexuals in the Catholic Church threaten to create seismic divisions within the church or perhaps even leave it in a position of irrelevance.

Currently, 22 nations have legalized same-sex marriage. Many of those are traditionally Catholic-majority countries. In May, Ireland became the first nation to approve same-sex marriage by popular vote. The predominantly Roman Catholic nation stood tall in its opposition to the church’s position, with 62 percent voting in favor of same-sex marriage.

And what was the Vatican’s response? Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Holy See’s secretary of state, called the vote “a defeat for humanity.” But the Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, had a different take. He bluntly admitted that it was time for the Church to do a reality check and ask itself if it has drifted away from young people.

A little more than one month later, the United States Supreme Court ruled that same-sex marriage was a constitutional right. That same day, June 26, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops issued this statement: “Today is a tragic day for marriage and our nation. The Supreme Court has dealt a profound injustice to the American people by striking down in part the federal Defense of Marriage Act. The Court got it wrong. The federal government ought to respect the truth that marriage is the union of one man and one woman, even where states fail to do so.”

So, what happens to the Catholic Church? How can the Roman pontiff continue to exercise supreme and full power within the universal church if its flock in the Western nations deliberately flouts Catholic teachings? Does the church remain rigid and unbending even if many of the faithful leave for other churches more welcoming to gay and lesbian family members and friends? How does the Church remain relevant to young men and women who are far, far more accepting of same-sex marriage then their parents?

Catholics in Western nations represent only a small portion of the church and the religion is not growing in Ireland or anywhere else in Europe. (Nor is it growing particularly fast in the U.S.)

Thanks to social media, we have seen the grim images of violence toward gays and lesbians in nations where homosexuality is considered a crime. Compare those to the joyful celebrations that took place across Ireland and the U.S. when gay marriage was legalized.

I wonder: Which of these attitudes has His fingerprints all over it?

Ireland Moves to Protect Gay Teachers in Religious Run Schools

In a move that needs to replicated in the United States, Ireland is moving forward legislation that would grant employment protections to gay, lesbian and bi-sexual teachers even in schools run by religious institutions.  The move is yet another resounding slap in the face to the Roman Catholic Church which for decades - if not centuries - put protecting predators and sadist above protecting children.   Here in America, such religious affiliated schools typically enjoy tax-exempt status and in some instances receive state funds.  To continue to receive these benefit - which I personally would like to see eliminated all together - at a minimum the simple quid pro quo is that such institutions should be required to apply non-discrimination policies to all teachers, gay or straight.  Sadly, it will not happen any time soon give the GOP's self-prostitution to the "godly folk" best known for hatred towards others and wearing ignorance as a badge of honor.  But back to Ireland.  Here are details from The Advocate:

Ireland’s government this week passed an amendment to the Employment Equality Act that would allow LGB employees working in religious-run organizations, such as schools and hospitals, to be out at work without fear of being fired, according to Irish LGBT site The Out Most.

The bill, which on Tuesday passed the first half of the two-chamber Irish legislature, the Seanad, still has to still pass the final stage in the Dáil before it can become law.

Leaders of the INTO LGBT Teachers’ Group cheered the amendment, telling reporters it will have a hugely positive effect on gay, lesbian, and bisexual teachers.

“LGB teachers can be secure in the knowledge that speaking about our families and our relationships, in the same way as our colleagues, and that being gay or lesbian will have no bearing on job security or on prospects for promotion,” said Anne Marie Lillis, the chairwoman of the INTO LGBT Teachers’ Group. “When signed into law this legislation will end the threat of discrimination in primary schools based on sexual orientation.”


Minister of State for Equality Aodhán Ó Ríordáin promised his offices are "working hard" to ensure the measure is enacted before the new school year begins in September. Gay and lesbian workers in other professions have had legal protections from discrimination since the 1990s.  

How God Really Feels About Same-Sex Marriage

The image from Queerty sums things up well.   The far right - including the always crazy Cardinal Burke - are lambasting Ireland for approving same sex marriage, yet it is anti-gay Texas that is getting pummeled by natural disasters - something the Christian fundamentalists claim the guy upstairs controls. 

Bruni: On Same-Sex Marriage, Catholics Are Leading the Way

Despite the efforts of the bitter old men in dresses - a significant number of whom are likely self-loathing closet cases - the Catholic laity is leading the way in advanced nations in supporting same sex marriage.  It goes without saying that I find a delicious irony in this.  I also see it as a result of the Church hierarchy's own doing through the protection of sexual predator priests, to meddling in matters sexual that they know nothing about, to the continued subordination of women to men.  The official Church position may still hold sway in ignorant, backward parts of the world but it simply doesn't sell in modern parts of the world where Catholics look to their consciences first and increasingly ignore Vatican fiats.  A column in the New York Times looks at the phenomenon.  Here are some highlights:

Take a look at this list of countries: Belgium, Canada, Spain, Argentina, Portugal, Brazil, France, Uruguay, Luxembourg and Ireland. Name two things that they have in common.

They don’t share a continent, obviously. Or a language. But in all of them, the Roman Catholic Church has more adherents, at least nominally, than any other religious denomination does.

And all of them belong to the vanguard of 20 nations that have decided to make same-sex marriage legal.

Ireland, obviously, is the freshest addition to the list. It’s also, in some ways, the most remarkable one. It’s the first country to approve same-sex marriage by a popular referendum. The margin wasn’t even close. About 62 percent of voters embraced marriage equality.

Irish voters nonetheless rejected the church’s formal opposition to same-sex marriage. This act of defiance was described, accurately, as an illustration of church leaders’ loosening grip on the country.

But in falling out of line with the Vatican, Irish people are actually falling in line with their Catholic counterparts in other Western countries, including the United States.

They aren’t sloughing off their Catholicism — not exactly, not entirely. An overwhelming majority of them still identify as Catholic. But they’re incorporating religion into their lives in a manner less rooted in Rome.

We journalists too often use “the Catholic Church” as a synonym for the pope, the cardinals and teachings that have the Vatican’s stamp of approval.

But in Europe and the Americas in particular, the church is much more fluid than that. It harbors spiritually inclined people paying primary obeisance to their own consciences, their own senses of social justice. That impulse and tradition are as Catholic as any others.

Catholics in the United States appear to be more, not less, progressive about gay rights than Americans in general are. . . . about 60 percent of Americans who called themselves Catholic said that they approved of same-sex marriage, versus about 30 percent who didn’t.

And yet, interestingly, the qualms that certain public figures have about same-sex marriage are routinely explained — by the media, and sometimes by those people themselves — as ineluctable consequences of their Catholicism.

But seldom does anyone point out that this explanation puts these men in the minority, not majority, of Catholics in the United States. Their stances win them more political favor among Baptists than among Catholics.

For this large and diverse group in the United States and other Western countries, same-sex marriage has rapidly gained favor and Catholic leaders’ expressions of protest, such as firing employees who marry same-sex partners or speak up for marriage equality, are becoming untenable.

I wonder, especially in light of comments by Diarmuid Martin, the archbishop of Dublin, after the Irish referendum. He noted “a growing gap between the culture of Ireland” and the church, which, he said, “needs to take a reality check.” He meant that its leaders do, and they can turn not just to Ireland but to many other densely Roman Catholic countries to gauge the hearts and souls of Catholics today.

The Future of the Catholic Church After Ireland's Vote

Ireland's vote to approve same sex marriage is reverberating far from Ireland's shores and already there is a renewed energy in Italy to pass civil union legislation if not outright gay marriage.  The forces that transformed Ireland from a nation controlled by the theocratic power of the Catholic Church to a secular nation where the young in particular reject main Church teachings are taking place in modern nations across the globe.  Whether or not the Church faces this new reality will likely determine whether the Church is reduced to a church of the elderly in the western world with new growth only in backward, uneducated areas such as Africa.  A piece in the New York Times looks at Ireland and what the Church must come to terms with.  Modern society is washing its hands of what the Church is peddling, especially on matters of sexuality.  Given the bitter old men in dresses in Roman who live in a Fox News like bubble, I don't see the Church reforming itself anytime soon.  Here are article highlights:

After the votes were counted, the carefully planned and executed campaign by activist groups seemed as much about putting behind a past entrenched in theocracy and tradition as it was about marriage for gays and lesbians. And it underscored how different Ireland is today for the young, who turned out in droves to vote. In a little more than a generation, Ireland has both distanced itself from the church and sharpened its secular identity.

“The church needs to take a reality check,” Archbishop Martin said after the Mass, repeating a comment he had made Saturday. “It’s very clear there’s a growing gap between Irish young people and the church, and there’s a growing gap between the culture of Ireland that’s developing and the church.”

The country’s cultural evolution reflects a blend of disaffection with the church, and Ireland’s willingness to embrace a wider vision of itself in the world. As the church lost many people in its scandals and its unwillingness to yield to sexual freedoms, the European Union found itself with a willing and eager member.

Tony Flannery, a priest who was suspended in 2012 because of his criticism of the church’s views on women and homosexuality, said contraception was a seminal issue for a generation that became the parents of today’s youngest voters.

And it “was the first time that Irish Catholics first questioned church teaching,” Mr. Flannery said. “That opened the door, and after that they increasingly began to question a whole raft of Catholic sexual teaching, and then the child sexual abuse scandal came along which destroyed church credibility in the whole area of sexuality.”

“The people have changed their relationship with the Catholic Church because they’ve been disappointed and let down,” said Christina Breen, 54, who visited Dublin Castle on Saturday to see the results of the vote, a show of support because one of her sons is gay.

Or, as Mr. Flannery put it, “The day when the church had the power to influence social debate in Ireland, or to swing it, is gone.”

“The biggest change I see is the young people,” said Annie Dillon, 58, who works for a community-based health organization.

“I’m thinking of my 20-year-old nephew; it was like a no-brainer for him,” she said. “He was like, ‘Of course, why wouldn’t we want to be including everybody?’ That seems to be the prevailing attitude.”

“For many, and I’ve said this before, inside the church becomes almost alien territory to them in today’s society,” he [Diarmuid Martin, the archbishop of Dublin] said. “If the leadership of the Irish Catholic church don’t recognize that, then they’re in severe denial. Have I got a magic formula? Certainly not.”

With over a third of America's Millennials having walked away from organized religion, the Catholic Church and other anti-gay, fundamentalist denominations  are moving quickly to the sort of rejection that just happened in Ireland.  Preaching hate and division and psychological obsession with all things sexual simply isn't selling anymore.