Does the Catholic Church Stand a Chance with Millenials

Even as Pope Francis makes comments that hint at coming change in the Roman Catholic Church reactionary bishops around the world make statements and take actions that show that in truth, NOTHING has changed - e.g., the bishop of Richmond , Virginia, will not allow divorced and remarried Catholics to teach in Catholic schools, and a bishop in Europe just "apologized" for advocating the death penalty for gays after the sharp public outcry his statement ignited.  s a result, many Catholics find themselves questioning how much longer they can tolerate the hate and hypocrisy.  This is especially true of Millennials, 34% of whom have already walked away from institutional religion.  A piece in Religion Dispatches looks at the Church's growing problem with Millennials.  Here are excerpts:

[W]ill a hashtag or two be enough to engage my generation?   Like many Latinos in the U.S., I grew up Catholic. Unlike many Latinos, this was my choice rather than my parents’. They wanted me to decide how I expressed my spirituality, so after taking religious studies (I actually did!), I came to the conclusion that I would be Catholic because Jesus was a progressive political figure who helped others in need. . . . . So I have made a deliberate attempt to accept the Catholic Church for what it can be—a compassionate and welcoming sanctuary,  especially for the marginalized.

But as a Latina millennial who supports sexual and reproductive rights, I find that the Church’s restrictive attitudes make it very difficult for me to remain a committed Catholic.

My generation cherishes autonomy and individualism and rejects rigid identities and roles. Not surprisingly, a recent study from Pew Research confirmed that millennials are less likely to attend church than those in other generations.  More than a third of millennials  say they are unaffiliated with any church.  . . . . Only 16% of millennials consider themselves Catholic, compared to nearly a quarter of other generations.
A second study  . . . concluded that young women are the demographic segment driving this shift. The drop among 12th-grade girls who never attend church surged by 125% in the past thirty years, in contrast to the 83% increase among their male peers.

I believe that the Catholic hierarchy’s narrow view on gender and sexuality is a big factor in my generation’s difficulty with the Church. Whereas the Church has taken steps to address other important issues like economic justice and climate change, it still falls short of acknowledging that a broader, more inclusive view of gender roles, sexual and reproductive health, and sexual expression is crucial to the millennial generation.

What Pope Francis and his Church fail to understand is that reproductive health and rights are very much an issue of justice for the poor and women of color.  . . . access to reproductive care is as much of an issue of social justice as economic disparity or climate change.

Millennials are delaying marriage and finding alternative ways to form families. With a church that establishes rigid limits on how one should create a family, its impositions collide against a major cultural shift that has no signs of slowing down.

The Catholic Church - Nothing Has Really Changed Under Pope Francis

As noted a number of times on this blog, Catholics who have desperately wanted to see Pope Francis as ushering in a kinder, gentler Roman Catholic Church have been serious deluding themselves.  All that has changed is that Pope Francis is much better at the PR game than his horrible Nazi Pope predecessor.   But better PR skills do not equate with substantive change.  For those who need proof that Francis is just more of the same old nasty hypocrisy, one need only look at the "morality clauses" being inserted into contracts for teachers at Catholic schools across America or the ongoing modern day Inquisition being waged against American nuns.  Francis talks a good talk, but actions are far more telling.  The truth is that hypocrisy and the bizarre obsession of bitter old men about all things sexual is what the Church is really all about.  Oh, and let's not forget the Vatican orchestrated cover up of the sexual abuse of children - that other hallmark of the Vatican's leadership.   On the issue of the anti-gay jihad at Catholic schools, a column in the New York Times focuses in on the hypocrisy.  Here are excerpts:

“WOULD Pope Francis Sign the New Catholic Teacher Contract?” That’s the question spelled out on a dozen billboards that have gone up around Cincinnati over the last week or so.

And it’s an excellent one, because it flags the tension between what’s been said in Rome and what’s happening in Ohio, between a message of greater tolerance and the practice of the same old intolerance, between the direction in which the Catholic church needs to move and the matters of sexual morality on which it keeps getting stuck.

Those matters take center stage in an expanded employment contract that the Archdiocese of Cincinnati is forcing on more than 2,000 teachers, some of whom are refusing to sign it. In what the document does and doesn’t spell out, it sends the tired message that virtue resides in whom you share your bed with and how you do or don’t procreate.

The more things change, the more they remain mired in libido and loins.

The new contract expressly forbids a “homosexual lifestyle” and any “public support” of one. But it says nothing about public support of the death penalty, something else that the church opposes.

The new contract specifically rules out any use or advocacy of abortion rights, surrogacy, even in vitro fertilization. But it doesn’t address possible advocacy of the sorts of bloody military engagements that the church often condemns.

The new contract forbids “living together outside marriage,” “sexual activity out of wedlock” and any public endorsement of either. But there’s no reference to concern for the downtrodden, to the spirit of giving, to charity. And while those are surely more difficult to monitor, aren’t they as essential to Catholic principles, and closer to the core of the faith?

And these specifics contradict what Pope Francis said last year about the church’s undue attention to a handful of divisive social issues.

There are so many losers here: kids — many from the inner city — who depend on parochial schools that will now be drained of talent; younger teachers who can’t afford to quit and will carry an embittered attitude into their classrooms; Catholics everywhere, forced to wrestle anew with their church’s archaic fixations; church leaders, who have such a sad knack for driving people away. Isn’t that what Pope Francis was urging an end to?

As for the treatment of American nuns, these blog post highlights summarizes Pope Francis' disconnect between his words and his actions:

Hey, remember when totes progressive Pope Francis said that women should have more influence in the Catholic Church hierarchy? And everyone was all OMG HE IS SO GREAT I LOVES THIS POPE SO MUCH? Ha ha whoooooooooops!

The Vatican official overseeing the crackdown on the largest umbrella group for U.S. nuns is pressing forward with the overhaul under Pope Francis.

Cardinal Gerhard Mueller, the Vatican orthodoxy watchdog, reprimanded officers of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious for planning to honor a theologian who had been criticized by U.S. bishops and said the sisters must show more willingness to cooperate.

Mueller made the remarks in a meeting last Wednesday with the group's leaders in Rome. He apologized repeatedly for speaking so bluntly, while reminding the sisters their organization held its status within the church only through Vatican approval.

"Nice organization you got there, ladies. It'd be a shame if something happened to it!"

The reform order was issued in 2012 under now-retired Pope Benedict XVI, after an investigation concluded the nuns' group had taken positions that undermined Roman Catholic teaching on the priesthood and homosexuality while promoting "radical feminist themes incompatible with the Catholic faith." Investigators praised the nuns' humanitarian work, but accused them of focusing too much on social justice and ignoring critical issues, such as fighting abortion.

You might notice that a theme is beginning to emerge, ahem. Pope Francis says something that sounds vaguely progressive; it gets a whole lot of fawning headlines; then comes evidence that it was nothing but empty rhetoric.

Like I've said for a long time now: This guy isn't interested in progress. He's interested in good PR.

 

 

Five Reasons To Perhaps Stay off the Pope Francis Bandwagon

Many Catholics - at least outside of far right Catholic circles - and members of the news media are gushing over Pope Francis and acting as if he has already worked a revolution within the Roman Catholic Church.  Blogger Andrew Sullivan, for instances, reads much - perhaps too much - into some of Francis' statements and style, which is admittedly easy to do after the Nazi Pope, Benedict XVI.  Yet, the bottom line is that in reality, other than some nice sounding statements and actions which suggest Francis is more humble than Benedict XVI, nothing has really changed at the Vatican.  Only time will tell if Francis will make real, meaningful changes.  In the meantime, it is worth remembering some of Francis' troubling baggage.  A piece in the Global Post reminds one of these issues.  Here are excerpts:

Pope Francis. He loves the sick and the poor. He lives a simple life that reflects his values. He has criticized the Catholic church for its alienating obsession with social issues. And he has called out global capitalism for the greed it has produced and the social devastation it has wrought.
Sounds good? Not so fast.

Here are some reasons we should think twice before hopping on the Pope Francis bandwagon.

1) Unanswered questions about the Dirty War in Argentina

The past is good place to start when questioning the hype surrounding Pope Francis.  Specifically, what was he doing during the Dirty War in Argentina, when the military junta that ruled from 1976 to 1983 was undertaking the systematical mass murder of so-called “subversives,” all under the Western-supported banner of “anti-Communism.” As few as 9,000 and as many as 30,000 men, women, and children were killed or “disappeared” in the course of the purge.

The Catholic Church was complicit in many ways. Archibishop Juan Carlos Aramburu openly supported the military junta and its murderous purge. Some priests gave last rights to men and women as they were headed to execution.

So what was Pope Francis, then known as Jorge Mario Bergoglio, doing during all this?  He was the Provincial Superior of the Society of Jesus from 1973 to 1979, meaning he was the boss of the Jesuits in Argentina. His role in the Dirty War is hazy. According to some reports, he was a willing collaborator: at worst, pointing out liberal ministers to the military and, at least, refusing to protect priests who were seized. He denies all of this, insisting that he secretly helped priests who had been targeted.

We might never uncover all the facts about what happened. But there is enough there to at least be a little skeptical of Francis, his past, and his character.

2) Poor handling of the Church's child sex abuse crisis

Francis has made some headway on the child sex abuse crisis in the Catholic Church. He’s spoken out on the problem and instituted some new laws governing Vatican officials and employees.

That's a start, but there is much more to be done when it comes to putting words into actions.  This is especially true in Latin America, where some have questioned Francis' handling of molestation cases in Argentina, Chile, the Dominican Republic and Peru.  He has been largely silent on four shocking cases.

3) His new tone on abortion and gay marriage is really new

Francis’ softened tone on gay marriage and abortion is one of the things drawing admiration from socially liberal folks. He said that the Church shouldn’t “interfere spiritually” in the lives of gay men and women. And he warned that the Catholic ministry had become “obsessed” with abortion.  He hasn’t always held such views, it seems.

Just before Argentina legalized same-sex marriage, as recent as 2010, Francis called the bill “a plan to destroy God’s plan” and “a move by the fathers of lies to confused and deceive the children of God.”

[T]he less conservative tone is new for Pope Francis. We'll need to wait and see whether it translates into doctrinal change.

4) He’s continuing the Vatican “inquisition” against American nuns

Under the harrowing reign of Pope Benedict, the Vatican cracked down on the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR), an organization that represents most American nuns. A Doctrinal Assessment by the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) accused the LCWR and American nuns of promoting “radical feminist themes” by tempering or even opposing the Vatican’s positions on gay rights and abortion. 

When Pope Francis took over for Benedict, he had the opportunity to reverse or change the CDF’s controversial decision. Instead he “reaffirmed the findings."

So maybe Francis was feeling some pressure as a new Pope in the unusual circumstances of evaluating decisions made by a living predecessor. Either way, he had an opportunity to do end a witch-hunt against American nuns and didn’t.

5) He might have performed an exorcism on live TV

In the scheme of things, this one isn’t nearly as important as Francis’s take on Church doctrine or his willingness to combat child sex abuse. But it’s disturbing enough to join this list.

During a Mass in St. Peter’s Square in May, TV cameras filmed Francis praying over a man in a wheelchair. They exchanged words and Francis placed two hands on the man's forehead for several seconds while then man appeared to convulse slightly and gasp for breath.

Almost immediately, people began to speculate that Francis, who often talks of demons and devils in his sermons, had performed an exorcism.

The Vatican released a statement denying it. Gabriel Amorth, formerly a chief exorcist for the Vatican, saw it differently.

“That was a real exorcism and what is more,” he told reporters, “the boy the pope exorcized came to me today. His name is Angelo and he is possessed by four demons. I performed a long exorcism on him.”

Don't get me wrong.  As a former Catholic, I would be thrilled to see change take place in the Catholic Church.  I just think that some who are having the vapors over Francis may be acting far too prematurely.

Obama Caves on Contraception Manadate

In a move that he hopes will placate the child rapist protectors in the Roman Catholic Church and  anti-women right wing religious denominations, Barack Obama and the Department of Health and Human Services have released new regulations that would allow Catholic institutions and similar religious controlled colleges and hospitals to avoid having to directly provide birth control coverage to female employees.  Candidly, I doubt it will make these religious extremists happy and predict that they will continue to fraudulently claim that the Obama administration is trampling on their "religious liberty."  It is they, not the Obama administration, that want to trample on religious liberty for all but themselves.  A piece in The Daily Beast looks at this new measure by Obama:

On Friday, the Obama administration put forth its proposed compromise for cleaning up the mandated birth control pile of poo it blundered into early last year.

Now, the administration is back with a tinker to its original compromise that holds considerable promise for placating (almost) everyone: in cases where religious employers object to birth control, the insurance companies that handle their health benefits will automatically arrange for separate, free, contraception-only policies, the costs of which will be offset by giving the insurers a break on the fees they are charged to participate in the insurance exchanges being set up under the ACA. (That is, of course, the boiled-down explanation of how it works. There is much fine-tuning yet to come.)

Women get access to birth control. Religious groups don’t have to pay for it, or even directly arrange for it. Insurers get a cost offset. Everybody wins! More or less.

That is not to suggest that everyone will be happy. (Are they ever?) And the 44 lawsuits already filed in protest of this particular mandate—then put on hold until the administration clarified its position—will likely start rolling again. Already, the conservative Susan B. Anthony List PAC is grousing about the White House’s assault on “religious and moral freedom.”

But this proposal makes clear that the White House learned its lesson and is trying to show respect for the concerns of religious conservatives. This, in turn, may help separate hard-core opponents of contraceptive coverage from those who simply disliked the my-way-or-the-highway bossiness of the administration’s original mandate. At the very least, the compromise will defang charges from ranters like Rush that Obama is some high-handed, amoral elitist determined to ram his views down the throats of decent God-fearing Americans. In this political climate, that may be the best the president can hope for.

I suspect that the author is right and Obama will simply never be able to please those who see women as evil temptresses and sluts (e.g., the Catholic hierarchy) or those who want to keep women barefoot, pregnant and preferably uneducated (e.g., the Southern Baptist Convention and evangelical Christian denominations).  A column in the Chicago Tribune last year summed up what's really going quite well:

[W]hat I don't understand is the bishops' obsession with sex. Yes, the Church is (wrongly) against contraception. But the Church is also against the death penalty. Why don't the bishops raise a stink about that? And the Church was opposed to the Iraq war. Why didn't they condemn George W. Bush for bombing a country that did not attack us first? Why do they only get their episcopal panties in a twist when it comes to sex?

No, this is not a case of President Obama trying to interfere with religious freedom. This is a case of Catholic bishops trying to force their narrow views about sex on everybody else.

 Unless, of course, the sex is between priest and children and youths - then the good bishops have amnesia and are blind as to what is happening under their watch.  The hypocrisy is stunning.

Catholic Hospital Wrongful Death Defense: Fetuses Are Not People

The disingenuousness of the Roman Catholic Church and its controlled institutions seems to know few bounds.  For instance, the Catholic Church vehemently opposes abortion claiming that life begins at conception and that nothing justifies an abortion that would end that unborn life.  From the moment of conception, an embryo and fetus are "people" - except apparently when that argument is inconvenient and might lead to a monetary pay out.  Faced with a wrongful death lawsuit involving a woman and her unborn twins, St. Thomas More Hospital's legal defense to the portion of the lawsuit involving the death of the twins - which has been successful so far - is that the twins were fetuses and not people, and that, therefore, this can't legally be viewed as a wrongful-death situation.  Maddow Blog looks at this amazing case of hypocrisy.  Here are highlights:

First up from the God Machine this week is a terribly sad story about a woman named Lori Stodghill, who's brought a lawsuit against a Catholic hospital, which has taken an unexpected legal/political turn.

On New Year's Day 2006, Stodghill, aged 31, was seven-months pregnant with twins, when she started to feel ill. She went to the emergency room at St. Thomas More hospital in Canon City, Colorado, and suffered a massive heart attack. Stodghill's obstetrician, Dr. Pelham Staples, who was on call for emergencies that night at the hospital, never answered a page, and an hour after arriving, Stodghill died and the twins did not survive.

Jeremy Stodghill, Lori's husband, filed a wrongful-death lawsuit, arguing that the doctor should have answered the page, should have instructed hospital staff to perform an emergency C-section, and could have tried to save the twins. And as Amanda Marcotte noted, that's where the story takes a politically charged turn.

The hospital's defense, so far successful, is to claim that because the twins were fetuses and not people, this can't legally be viewed as a wrongful-death situation.

Of course, the problem is that the hospital is run by Catholic Health Initiatives—Catholic, as in that religion whose leadership routinely claims that not only are fetuses people, but so are embryos, zygotes, and fertilized eggs. That claim is used to turn women into sacrificial lambs for the faith, denying them not just elective abortions but telling them that it's not OK to terminate pregnancies where there's no chance of producing a live baby. Women who go to Catholic hospitals in these situations have been denied procedures to save their fertility or even their lives. But, as this lawsuit shows, the passionate belief that anything post-fertilization is a "person" evaporates the second it stops being useful as a way to oppress women (and the second it starts possibly costing the Catholic hospital money).

St. Thomas More hospital is now facing criticism from the right for maintaining malleable principles. "There's a difference between being legal and being right," Southern Baptist ethicist Richard Land said. "Either a fetus is a person or it's not." Local Roman Catholic Bishops have promised to review the case.

In this meantime, the Catholic hospital and its lawyers maintain that the twins were not yet people, and so far, courts have agreed -- a state district court and an appeals court have sided with the hospital. The case is currently pending at the Colorado Supreme Court.

This blog seeks to expose hypocrisy and few institutions provide such a never ending stream of hypocrisy as does the Roman Catholic Church and the bitter old men in dresses in the Vatican and bishopric around the world.  And as we all know all too well, ruthless control over the lives of others and money are the only true God of the Catholic Church hierarchy. 

Catholic Theologian Preaches Revolution and Overthrow of Pope

I have addressed the many problems relating to and the evil, if you will, that the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy works across the globe be it in the form enabling of cover ups for predatory priest or the denigration of women's and LGBT rights.  Having been raised as a Catholic, I know full well just how soul killing and psychologically harmful the Vatican's version of Catholicism can be for so many.  Being raised to loath one's self and be racked with fear and guilt are not healthy attributes.  Yet that is the stock in trade of the Church hierarchy.  Now, a leading catholic theologian - who not surprisingly the Vatican has sought to silence - is speaking out and urging the Catholic laity to revolt and take the Church back from the foul and morally bankrupt hierarchy which cares only about its power, its ability to control others, and to demonize anyone who fails to heel to the Vatican's dictates.  It is note worthy that the oath Benedict XVI demands from bishops and cardinals bears a frightening similarity to the oath Hitler demanded of his generals.  The Guardian has coverage on this call to revolution by theologian Hans Küng.  Here are excerpts:

 

One of the world's most prominent Catholic theologians has called for a revolution from below to unseat the pope and force radical reform at the Vatican.

Hans Küng is appealing to priests and churchgoers to confront the Catholic hierarchy, which he says is corrupt, lacking credibility and apathetic to the real concerns of the church's members.

In an exclusive interview with the Guardian, Küng, who had close contact with the pope when the two worked together as young theologians, described the church as an "authoritarian system" with parallels to Germany's Nazi dictatorship.

"The unconditional obedience demanded of bishops who swear their allegiance to the pope when they make their holy oath is almost as extreme as that of the German generals who were forced to swear an oath of allegiance to Hitler," he said.

The Vatican made a point of crushing any form of clerical dissent, he added. "The rules for choosing bishops are so rigid that as soon as candidates emerge who, say, stand up for the pill, or for the ordination of women, they are struck off the list." The result was a church of "yes men", almost all of whom unquestioningly toed the line.

"The only way for reform is from the bottom up," said Küng, 84, who is a priest. "The priests and others in positions of responsibility need to stop being so subservient, to organize themselves and say that there are certain things that they simply will not put up with anymore."

Küng, the author of around 30 books on Catholic theology, Christianity and ethics, which have sold millions worldwide, said that inspiration for global change was to be found in his native Switzerland and in Austria, where hundreds of Catholic priests have formed movements advocating policies that openly defy current Vatican practices. The revolts have been described as unprecedented by Vatican observers, who say they are likely to cause deep schisms in the church.

"I've always said that if one priest in a diocese is roused, that counts for nothing. Five will create a stir. Fifty are pretty much invincible. In Austria the figure is well over 300, possibly up to 400 priests; in Switzerland it's about 150 who have stood up and it will increase."

He said recent attempts by the archbishop of Vienna, Christoph Schönborn, to try to stamp out the uprising by threatening to punish those involved in the Austrian "priests' initiative" had backfired owing to the strength of feeling. "He soon stopped when he realised that so many ordinary people are supportive of them and he was in danger of turning them all against him," Küng said.

"He [Benedict XVI]has developed a peculiar pomposity that doesn't fit the man I and others knew, who once walked around in a Basque-style cap and was relatively modest. Now he's frequently to be seen wrapped in golden splendour and swank. By his own volition he wears the crown of a 19th-century pope, and has even had the garments of the Medici pope Leo X remade for him."

That "pomposity", he said, manifested itself most fully in the regular audiences who gather on St Peter's Square in Rome. "What happens has Potemkin village dimensions," he said. "Fanatical people go there to celebrate the pope, and tell him how wonderful he is, while meanwhile at home their own parishes are in a lamentable state, with a lack of priests, a far higher number than ever before of people who are leaving than are being baptised and now Vatileaks, which indicates just what a poor state the Vatican administration is in

Calling Pope Benedict XVI's reign a "pontificate of missed opportunities", in which he had forgone chances to reconcile with the Protestant, Jewish, orthodox and Muslim faiths, as well as failing to help the African fight against Aids by not allowing the use of birth control, Küng said his "gravest scandal" was the way he had "covered up" worldwide cases of sexual crimes committed by clerics during his time as the head of the Roman Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith as Cardinal Ratzinger.

"The Vatican is no different from the Kremlin," Küng said. "Just as Putin as a secret service agent became the head of Russia, so Ratzinger, as head of the Catholic church's secret services, became head of the Vatican. 

Will American Catholics wake up to what they are financially supporting at the Vatican?  A portion of every single dollar contributed at the parish level goes to support the Vatican, not to mention the typically morally challenged bishops who act as Benedick XVI  thugs to keep the laity in line while the Church hierarchy lives in luxury and continues to protect sexual predator priests.

Maureen Dowd Slaps Down the Catholic Bishops

As noted in prior posts, I believe the shrieks of the Roman Catholic bishops that their "religious liberty" is under attack by the Obama administration are utterly disingenuous.  Instead it's all about (a) distracting the news media from the constant stories of sex abuse by priests and (b) inflicting their 12th century beliefs on all Americans.  In a New York Times column Maureen Dowd give the bishops a much needed slap down and comes to calling them hypocritical liars.  It's a great read.  Here are highlights:

I wasn’t surprised to see the Gallup poll Tuesday showing that 82 percent of U.S. Catholics say birth control is morally acceptable. (Eighty-nine percent of all Americans and 90 percent of non-Catholics agreed.) 

The poll appeared on the same day as headlines about Catholic Church leaders fighting President Obama’s attempt to get insurance coverage for contraception for women who work or go to college at Catholic institutions. The church insists it’s an argument about religious freedom, not birth control. But, really, it’s about birth control, and women’s lower caste in the church. It’s about conservative bishops targeting Democratic candidates who support contraception and abortion rights as a matter of public policy. And it’s about a church that is obsessed with sex in ways it shouldn’t be, and not obsessed with sex in ways it should be.

The bishops and the Vatican care passionately about putting women in chastity belts. Yet they let unchaste priests run wild for decades, unconcerned about the generations of children who were violated and raped and passed around like communion wine.

They still have not done a proper reckoning, and the acrid scandal never ends. In the midst of a landmark trial in Philadelphia charging Msgr. William Lynn with covering up sexual abuse by priests and then recirculating the perverts, the Archdiocese of Philadelphia announced Sunday that two priests in their 70s who worked in parishes and hospitals had abused minors at some point and were unfit for ministry.  This follows five priests sidelined earlier this month.  .  .  .  . plus 17 others suspended after last year’s sickening grand jury report on rampant sexual abuse in the Philadelphia Archdiocese. 

[T]he pugnacious Cardinal Timothy Dolan of the Archdiocese of New York rejected the compromise and charged that the White House is “strangling” the church.    Interpreting the rule in the most extreme way to scare Catholics, he said: “They tell us if you’re really going to be considered a church, if you’re going to be really exempt from these demands of the government, well, you have to propagate your Catholic faith and everything you do, you can serve only Catholics and employ only Catholics.”

The Archdiocese of Washington put an equally alarmist message in the church bulletins at Sunday’s Masses  .   .   . 

The church leaders headed to court hope to undermine the president, but they may help him. Voters who think sex is only for procreation were not going to vote for Obama anyway. And the lawsuit reminds the rest that what the bishops portray as an attack on religion by the president is really an attack on women by the bishops. 

Catholic Diocese Creates 12 Step Progran for Gays; Bishops Restrict Medical Procedures

We are witnessing more anti-modernity by the Catholic hierarchy in the USA as the Diocese of Colorado Springs launches a 12 step program for gays - treating sexual orientation akin the alcoholism - and elsewhere bishop endeavoring to restrict procedures provided at Catholic controlled hospitals even when do so goes against sound medical care. In one case in Montgomery County, Maryland, such behavior will hopefully result in the state's denial of a certificate of need for a new hospital. Frankly, if Catholic controlled hospitals will not offer needed services and procedures, the state should not give such approvals and the public would be better served with other institutions getting the needed state approvals. Medical and societal backwardness arising from religious extremism needs to carry a cost. It's far past time when the corrupt Catholic hierarchy should be allowed to trump the judgment of medical experts, First these highlights from Colorado Springs Gazette on the anti-gay 12 step program idiocy:
*
The Catholic Diocese of Colorado Springs is borrowing a page from Alcoholics Anonymous by launching a 12-step program that offers pastoral care and support for homosexuals.
*
Over the years, many organizations have appropriated AA’s 12 steps to reach out to people with addictive behavior, such as shopaholics and workaholics. The Catholic Church’s Twelve Steps of Courage is another version of AA’s steps. Participants admit they are powerless in overcoming same-sex attraction, ask God for help, and make amends to those they’ve hurt, among other steps.
*
The program has 110 chapters worldwide, including one in Denver, according to its website. The website offers a few testimonials of success but no statistics or studies regarding the program’s effectiveness. Courage International officials weren’t available Tuesday to comment on its effectiveness.
*
No surprise that these jerks will not talk about statistics and "effectiveness." None of these "ex-gay" programs work and participants might just as well hire an African witch doctor as join such a program that will only inflict additional psychological and emotion harm beyond what the Church's anti-gay agenda has already done. Again, this kind of ignorant bullshit needs to be stopped and as the Washington Post reports, the bishops may be killing Catholic hospitals in the longer term by refusing to accept modern medical practices. Here are some highlights:
*
[D]isputes between hospitals and church authorities appear to be arising because of a confluence of factors: Economic pressures are spurring greater consolidation in the hospital industry, prompting religiously affiliated institutions to take over or merge with secular ones, imposing church directives on them. At the same time, the drive to remain competitive has led some medical centers to evade the directives. Alongside those economic forces, changes in the church hierarchy have led increasingly conservative bishops to exert more influence over Catholic hospitals.
*
The clashes have focused attention on the limitations on care available at Catholic hospitals. In Montgomery County, concern about those constraints has emerged as an issue in the battle over whether Holy Cross Hospital, a Catholic institution in Silver Spring, or Adventist HealthCare in Rockville should be authorized to build a new hospital in the county.
*
A coalition of advocacy groups Wednesday urged the state to reject Holy Cross, citing concerns about access to reproductive health care, especially for poor women and teenagers. A decision in that case is expected Thursday.
*
"Physicians are being told they must refuse to provide certain services even when they believe their refusal would harm their patient and violate established medical standards of care," said Lois Uttley, who heads MergerWatch, a New York-based group that fights the takeover of secular medical centers by religiously affiliated hospitals.
*
In addition to barring abortions, the directives prohibit tubal ligations, the surgical sterilization of women and the second leading form of contraception in the United States. . . Several doctors interviewed across the country, particularly in rural areas, described frustration over being barred from taking a few extra minutes during a Caesarean delivery to tie the tubes of women who no longer want children or face complications if they become pregnant again.
*
Of even greater concern to many doctors and advocates are conflicts over treatments for women who have miscarriages and ectopic pregnancies. Standard care for ectopic pregnancies, which are life-threatening, is to inject the drug methotrexate or to remove the embryo surgically while leaving the fallopian tube intact, both procedures that are intended to preserve fertility. But some Catholic hospitals refuse to perform either and will extract the embryo only by taking out the fallopian tube.
*
For centuries the bitter, corrupt old men who head the Catholic Church have been anti-woman and the above described issues are simply more of that backward and uncaring mindset. The bishops need to be removed from decisions on health care and if they refuse to do so, I hope that Catholic hospitals will be increasingly denied certificates of need. In the case of my LGBT clients, I advise them to avoid the Catholic hospitals in the Hampton Roads area since they are likely to inflict anti-gay attitudes on patients and their partners.

Wingnut Anglicans Meet With Inquisition to Work Against Gay Marriage and Women Bishops

UPDATE: The Daily Telegraph is now reporting that the Church of England looks set for a damaging split last night after its ruling body agreed to press ahead with the introduction of women bishops without any compromise measures for opponents of the controversial move. This part of the story really makes me sick:

*

After six hour of emotional debate, one bishop broke down in tears saying he was ashamed of the church for ignoring the deeply felt wishes of traditionalists.

*
Would this bishop also condone slavery if a certain percentage of lunatics felt strongly about it? I cannot imagine being reduced to tears because no one would accommodate my desire to marginalize women and deny that they are spiritual equals to men. What the f*ck is wrong with these people?

*

The Daily Mail and other papers are reporting that ultraconservative members of the Church of England hierarchy have had secret meetings with representatives of the Vatican. Specifically, representatives of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, a/k/a the Inquisition. Sadly, instead of meeting to discuss ways to feed the hungry, cloth and house the poor or how to bring medical care to those without it, these "Godly Christians" are meeting in secret to discuss ways to thwart gays from achieving marriage equality and to devise a way to keep those pesky females from achieving the rank of bishops. What would Jesus say? Nothing good I suspect given his reported response to the Pharisees who likewise seemed more concerned about suppressing others and patting themselves on the back for being so much better than others. In many ways these anti-female homophobes and the fossilized leadership of the Roman catholic Church deserve one another. Here are some story highlights:

*

Senior Church of England bishops have held secret talks with Vatican officials over the crisis issue of homosexual priests and women bishops in the Anglican Communion. The bishops met senior advisers of Pope Benedict XVI to discuss the controversial topic, the Sunday Telegraph reported.

*

The group of conservative bishops are said to have expressed dismay at the liberal direction of the Church of England and their fears for its future. They met members of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which was headed by the Pope before he was elected Pontiff in 2005, it was said. The meeting was reportedly part of an attempt to build closer ties with the Roman Catholic Church. The Archbishop of Canterbury was not told of the talks, it was reported.

*

Up to 600 clergy have written to Dr Williams warning that they might leave the Church if safeguards such as dioceses for opponents of women bishops are not set up. The Sunday Telegraph reported that in a separate development, three diocesan bishops of the Church of England have written to Dr Williams supporting the threat and another has said he is preparing to leave the Church. The letter from the Bishops of Chichester, Blackburn and Europe - seen by The Sunday Telegraph - argues that traditionalist clergy will not be able to 'maintain an honoured place' in the Church without sufficient legislation.

*

The Rt Rev Kieran Conry, the Roman Catholic Bishop of Arundel and Brighton, said: 'A number of Church of England bishops are looking at the options open to them should things go wrong at the Lambeth Conference.'