Pope Francis needs to go kick some New Jersey ass

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Consider:

John J. Myers, the archbishop of the Newark Archdiocese, comes to this vacation home on many weekends. The 4,500-square-foot home has a handsome amoeba-shaped swimming pool out back. And as he's 72, and retirement beckons in two years, he has renovations in mind. A small army of workers are framing a 3,000-square-foot addition. 

This new wing will have an indoor exercise pool, three fireplaces and an elevator. The Star-Ledger of Newark has noted that the half-million-dollar tab for this wing does not include architects' fees or furnishings.

There's no need to fear for the archbishop's bank account. The Newark Archdiocese is picking up the bill.

And it's not just the upscale living while so many struggle and suffer:

He is known to insist on being addressed as "Your Grace." And his self-regard is matched by his refusal to apologize for more or less anything.

It was revealed last year that a priest seemed to have broken his legally binding agreement with Bergen County prosecutors to never again work unsupervised with children or to minister to them so long as he remained a priest. When next found, he was involved with a youth ministry in the Newark Archdiocese.

Parishioners in Oradell, N.J., also discovered that the archdiocese had allowed a priest accused of sexual abuse to live in their parish's rectory. A furor arose, and last summer the archbishop sat down and wrote an open letter to his flock. He conceded not a stumble. Those who claim, he wrote, that he and the church had not protected children were "simply evil, wrong, immoral and seemingly focused on their own self-aggrandizement."

Evil, wrong, immoral, focused on self-aggrandizement? Huh. It really does seem that Pope Francis should have a chat with this prick. And while he's in the beautiful Garden State, maybe he can also teach its bullying blowhard of a corrupt, power-hungry governor a thing or two about humility and true public service.

Pope Francis takes on "radical feminist" American nuns

By Michael J.W. Stickings

The new pope has been a breath of fresh air, at least with respect to poverty and social justice, but let's not forget that he's a dogmatic conservative who is solidly orthodox on most matters (how else could he have been chosen by a group of cardinals appointed by John Paul II and Benedict XVI?). And he's now going after those dangerous heretics, U.S. nuns:

Pope Francis has backed the Vatican's doctrinal crackdown on a major group of American nuns, reasserting the Roman Catholic Church's conservative approach to various social issues in a move that could cool the warm reception he has received from some liberal Catholics since taking office last month.

The Vatican said in a statement Monday that Francis had reaffirmed the doctrinal evaluation and criticism of U.S. nuns made last year by the Holy See under his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI. The assessment accused the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, an organization that represents most U.S. female Catholic orders, of promoting "radical feminist themes" and ignoring the Vatican's hard line on same-sex marriage and abortion.

Oh sure, the symbolism is admirable, and it's nice that he'll wash the feet of women and prisoners, and that he'll buck stale tradition now and then, and that he's got a softness to him, and what appears to be genuine humility, but really, what did you expect?

HABEMUS PAPAM FRANCISCUM: Popetastic conclavular 2013 ends with a surprise win for Argentinian Jorge Mario Bergoglio

By Michael J.W. Stickings

A surprise pick: Jorge Mario Bergoglio becomes Pope Francis

Okay, so I was wrong.

Wrong about Marc Ouellet winning the big prize, then, having doubts earlier today, about Angelo Scola taking it. But I was right about the white smoke coming today -- even though a conclave with no clear frontrunner could have been expected to go longer -- and when it did, after just five ballots, I really did think it was Scola, whose election, as experts like John Allen were saying, would have been a vote for continuity, as he's an orthodox thinker in the mold of Ratzinger/Benedict (if more personable), and so a fairly safe pick at a time of crisis and uncertainty throughout the Church.

But if not Ouellet or Scola, then maybe one of other leading non-Europeans like Peter Turkson or Odilo Scherer, or maybe even an American, Sean O'Malley.

And so when Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, the senior cardinal deacon, appeared on the balcony at St. Peter's to say (in Latin) those famous two words -- habemus papam -- and announce the name of the new pope, and I heard the name Bergoglio, I was surprised, to say the least. Who? What? Bergoglio? That guy? Really?

Yes, that guy.

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Crisis in the Conclave: First day of 2013 Popetacular reaches popeless conclusion

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Black smoke = the absence of God, or failure, or something

So here we are. A few hours into the papal election and still no pope. What are these guys waiting for? Isn't their "God" telling them what to do?

Actually, we're only one vote into the conclave. The 115 cardinals (all cardinals under the age of 80) entered the Sistine Chapel at 4:30 pm Vatican time and conducted a single vote that, not surprisingly, failed to produce the necessary two-thirds majority for any one candidate.

And so the smoke was black. (Check out this interesting piece on the mysteries of the smoke.)

There will now be four votes daily -- two in the morning and two in the afternoon, with ballots burned afterwards, black and finally white -- until there's a winner.

Apparently there's no campaigning in the Sistine Chapel itself, with the politicking taking place during dinner and other breaks. So what happened today is that the cardinals stated their initial preferences. It may be that the first vote today determined the obvious frontrunners, as it did last time when Ratzinger emerged as the likely pick, or it may just be that the cardinals are divided behind a number of choices. Either way, today's vote no doubt set the table for the quiet discussions and deliberations to come, and that the situation will be much clearer by the morning.

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Crisis in the Conclave: The Picking of a Pope, 2013

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Canada's Marc Ouellet: Will this man be pope?

I was really into it the last time, back in the spring of 2005. Those were early blogging days for me. I'd started The Reaction on March 29 of that year, without all that much of a clue as to what I wanted to write about, and I was just finding my way around the blogosphere, and finding my voice. There were other things going on, of course, and my focus was generally on U.S. politics, but there was simply no denying the allure of the papal election.

I dove right in, reading everything I could, taking it all in, obsessing over the odds at Irish betting sites, learning about the various papabili, the leading contenders to the throne of the Bishop of Rome, names like Martini and Tettamanzi and Arinze and Hummes and Danneels, and, of course, Ratzinger, all while submerging myself in the inner workings of the Vatican and the politics of the conclave.

Yes, I was fascinated by the whole thing, even though I'm not a Catholic and actually find most of the "teachings" of the Church utterly repellent, not to mention most of Christianity complete bullshit, and I wrote a lot about the election that would produce Pope Benedict XVI. For example, picking four out of so many:

-- Cardinals in the home stretch...;
-- Smoke, mirrors, and bells: The Conclave begins;
-- The Conclave: Day Two; and
-- Habemus papam: How did Ratzinger win?

And now here we are again, sooner that we thought at the time but, then again, no one really expected Ratzinger to be pope for long, given his advanced age, even if resignation was largely unthinkable (and historically... well, you have to go back 600 years, to Pope Gregory XII in 1415, who was forced out, and so really back to Pope Celestine V in 1294, but he never really wanted to be pope anyway, and he was actually chosen in the last non-conclave papal election, so we're really in new territory now with Benedict. 

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Off to a rough start in the Vatican

By Mustang Bobby

 
 The process for picking the next head of the Catholic Church is not exactly beginning well: 

The first day of discussion was rocked by revelations of scandal, with Scottish Cardinal Keith O'Brien admitting that he had engaged in sexual misconduct not befitting a priest, archbishop or cardinal.

I know I'm just a simple Quaker, but I thought that one of the rules of being a priest, archbishop, or cardinal was that there was no room for sexual conduct, let alone misconduct. Isn't sex of any kind on the permanent given-up-for-Lent list? (h/t Hawkeye Pierce) The only punishment for Cardinal O'Brien is that he can't come to Rome to pick the next guy; he gets to stay home and presumably spend the rest of his days updating his profile on Manhunt ("Semi-retired and now available on Sundays. Can't host.")

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Oh really?

By Capt. Fogg

I parked next to a new Lexus at the bank yesterday and my car being as low slung as it is,  a magnetic sign on its door was right in my face.  I had to think for a while, wondering if the state of American education was really that defective or if the owner simply wished it were.

Now I'm assuming the Lexus driver, an elderly women was referring to Roman Catholicism and not to some abstract universality of taste -- an assumption aided by the iconography -- and if that assumption is correct, she must assume that Jewish followers of Jesus as the Messiah became a universal church based in Rome in the year of Jesus' crucifixion.

I don't want to seem like I'm picking on Catholics, after all a good portion of this fine Southern Community are convinced and would argue a little too heatedly that the entire universe was established in 4004 BC, or at least our infinitesimal mote.

Funny how organizations that use history as a justification, have to tailor it to fit -- with an occasional taking in or letting out of the seams.  Somewhere along the line Constantine and perhaps Athanasius of Alexandria were patched over or removed as you might eliminate a pocket or a buttonhole, but who's going to argue with the old lady Lexus driver.  It's Florida and she's probably armed.

(Cross-posted at Human Voices)

Catholic church's procreation problem

By Frank Moraes

I read this morning over at the Bilerico Project, Top Papal Candidate Blames Child Sex Abuse Scandal on Gays. In it, John Becker quotes Ghanaian Cardinal Peter Turkson as claiming that there are unlikely to be many pedophilia cases in Africa because the culture there just doesn't countenance homosexuality. This is offensive in all kinds of ways, but let me start by naming two of the minor ways. First, I would think that someone from Ghana would not make the American mistake of thinking Africa is one homogeneous entity. Second, it is the most ignorant of people who think that by making homosexuality taboo a society will limit it.

What is most offensive about the comment, of course, is the old canard that pedophiles are homosexual. It turns out that generally what makes one a pedophile is not having developed a mature sex drive. Thus, they aren't interested in adults as sexual objects at all. Of those who do, it seems to be a wash: statistically they are like the rest of the population. Now let us think: what is a good way to stunt someone's sex drive? I can think of one way: dogmatic religious doctrine requiring priests to be celibate.

This got me wondering why Catholics are so anti-gay when in some ways they are fairly enlightened. Only part of it is the Bible, and I think they could get past that. The big anti-gay writings are in the Old Testament. The anti-gay passages in the New Testament were all written by Paul who seems to have had a hard on regarding the issue. In Romans 1:27, he's downright pornographic, "And in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error." Jesus, of course, was silent on the subject. And no one at that time could have imagined the nice same-sex couples we have today with their very boring jobs, kids, and music tastes. On this issue, I think the church has to ask, "Are we really going to continue to base our theology of the bigotry of people 2000 years ago?"

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Good Scouts

By Mustang Bobby 

(Ed. note: For more on this, see Carl's post from yesterday, "Scout's honor." -- MJWS)

Via NBC:

The Boy Scouts of America, one of the nation's largest private youth organizations, is actively considering an end to its decades-long policy of banning gay scouts or scout leaders, according to scouting officials and outsiders familiar with internal discussions.

If adopted by the organization's board of directors, it would represent a profound change on an issue that has been highly controversial — one that even went to the US Supreme Court. The new policy, now under discussion, would eliminate the ban from the national organization's rules, leaving local sponsoring organizations free to decide for themselves whether to admit gay scouts.

Good for them to finally realize something that has been true as long as there has been boys and scouts: some of them are gay.

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Both sides, now

 By Capt. Fogg

No, this isn't about Joni Mitchell and I'm not going to talk about bows and flows of angel hair,  just about stunning hypocrisy.  How many ice cream castles have been built upon the idea that a fertilized human egg cell is a human being possessed of  human rights?  It would be hypocritical enow that those rights are allowed by Church doctrine to foetuses when they have been so often denied to adults by religious authorities, but that's not what this is about. It's about, as I said, hypocrisy; about arguing both sides when needed to avoid guilt, or at least to avoid prosecution and penalty.

Catholic Health Initiatives, with assets estimated at around 15 billion dollars, operates a chain of hospitals and as a response to a wrongful death suit involving twin foetuses who died before birth, their attorneys argued that in cases of wrongful death, the term “person” only applies to individuals born alive, and not to those who die in utero, says Raw Story today.

Perhaps that will be a precedent that plagues them in future when they try to argue otherwise according to Roman Catholic doctrine regarding abortion and birth control, but looking at this cloudy argument from both sides now is pretty entertaining, don't you think?  And of course we remember all the adages telling us that when they argue principle, what they mean is money.

Feather canyons everywhere, indeed.

(Cross posted from Human Voices)

Insufferable

By Mustang Bobby

I am getting really tired of hearing about people like this:

The Catholic Church has been a leading force against marriage equality in all four state campaigns, and Archbishop John Nienstedt has been the fact of that opposition in Minnesota. He has repeatedly asked parishioners to vote and pray against marriage equality, arguing that such views "not prejudicial." Now a letter has surfaced he wrote in 2010 "to a mother who pleaded for acceptance for her gay child," in which he tells the woman she must reject her son according to Catholic teachings, or she might go to Hell as well.

I know that a number of people who read this blog, as well as my own, are faithful members of the Catholic Church and have invested a great deal of their lives to it, and yet they also support the idea of marriage equality as a fundamental human right. So my question to them is simple: how can you see this happening and not be angry and moved to change it? I just don't get it.

As you might expect, Chris Kluwe has some thoughts on the matter:

Millions of children grow up raised in the Catholic faith. Some of these children will be gay, through no choice of their own, but because of how God created them. What does it say to those children when the head of their religion in this state, a man who claims to "explain and defend the teaching of the Church because I have been ordained to do so and I believe those teachings with all my heart", a man acting under the direct auspices of the Pope himself, tells them that they can't be as worthy as everyone else, even though they believe in the teachings of Jesus? What will these children think, as they suffer the barbed insults of their classmates and teachers; I ask you, sir, what will these children think as they are belittled and tormented due to teachings you espouse? What judgment will be passed on your soul when yet another poor child reaches for the knife or the noose to end his or her earthly torment due to your example?

Do you presume to speak for God, Archbishop Nienstedt? Will you tell these children, faithful children who attend Sunday school and earnestly pray every day, that they are somehow lessened in God's eyes? Will you grasp that millstone, Archbishop Nienstedt, grasp it all the way to the bottom, clutching at the heavy weight of earthly power and influence even as it drags you down?

Amen.

(Cross-posted at Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

Please file under: It's about damn time

By Richard K. Barry

The New York Times ran this story today:

Msgr. William J. Lynn, the first Roman Catholic official in the United States to be convicted of covering up sexual abuses by priests under his supervision, was sentenced to three to six years in prison Tuesday.

"You knew full well what was right, Monsignor Lynn, but you chose wrong," said Common Pleas Judge M. Teresa Sarmina as she imposed the sentence, which was just short of the maximum of three and a half to seven years.

Perhaps recent events at the Holy Church of College Football have helped clear the way for the courts to start doing the right thing with Catholic officials who fail to protect children in their charge.

Let's hope.

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)

The Fox and the Pope: A cautionary tale

By tmcbpatriot 

Well, that didn't take long.

From HuffPost:

VATICAN CITY, July 21 (Reuters) - The Vatican has stripped the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru, one of the most prominent centres of learning in Latin America, of its right to continue calling itself a Catholic or pontifical university, saying it had damaged the interests of the Church...

The Vatican said on Saturday that the break came after the university had several times unilaterally modified its statutes and had "gravely prejudiced the interests of the Church". It did not elaborate.

I wonder what that means? Did the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru refuse to abuse children? That would certainly gravely prejudice the interests of the Church. However, what is actually afoot is something far more sinister. According to the story: "The university in the Peruvian capital, Lima, was founded in 1917 and has been identified with liberal, progressive thinking for decades."

Aha! The plot thickens.

This would be a surprise if one had not paid attention to this story back in June: "Fox News Reporter Hired as Vatican Media Adviser." Remember now? No? Here's more from the Times article:

In an effort to shore up its communications strategy amid a widening leaks scandal in a troubled papacy, the Vatican has hired the Fox News correspondent in Rome as a senior communications adviser. Mr. [Greg] Burke is a member of the conservative Opus Dei movement, and his hiring underscores the group's role in the Vatican.

Now, I know what you're thinking. How better to deflect bad media attention than to hire a Fox correspondent, and one involved with Opus Dei! I mean, it's an inspired idea. Just think of the possibilities? Charges of sexual abuse by priests? Response: just a bunch of liberal atheists trying to defraud the church. Leaked documents accusing the papacy of "cronyism and corruption"? Response: Did Michelle Obama call the pope "whitey"? And all written by a creepy albino wearing a black hood. Brilliant!

You see where I'm going with this? I'm sure this is only the tip of the iceberg, too. Before long, I imagine the Pope going on Fox and Friends and Hannity for exclusive interviews. In the meantime, expect to hear more flourishes like "gravely prejudiced the interests of the Church" followed by "it did not elaborate."

In other words, the Vatican is getting what it paid for.

(Cross-posted at Take My Country Back.)

Obey in the name of Freedom!

By Capt. Fogg 

"[It] is quite unlawful to demand, defend, or to grant unconditional freedom of thought, or speech, of writing or worship, as if these were so many rights given by nature to man."

-- Pope Leo XIII

**********

Face it, we live in a country in which the KKK can adopt "We shall overcome" as a song about their own struggle for freedom, where the unrepentant South can pretend that their secession was about protecting freedom -- and where only a "genetically inferior Liberal," as Allen West, the Republican congressman from my district, calls me, would mention anything like irony.

So really, I shouldn't be surprised to read in the local paper that the Roman Catholic churches of the Florida's Treasure Coast are hosting a "Fortnight for Freedom" in a pathetic attempt to avoid having to comply with the demand that in return for the tax exempt status they consider their due, they treat secular employees in the way that other employers must do. Perhaps the hope is that while a major political party, fond of asserting nearly absolute personal freedom can get away with saying "Take your government hands off my Medicare," they can get away with campaigning against reproductive rights, the equality of civil rights and other guarantees of a secular democracy.

Forgive my recurrent mention of irony and my ridicule of organizations that promote freedom only when it suits the need to maintain authority, but if there is one single organization that has campaigned against religious and even secular freedom longer than any other in the Western world, it is the Roman Catholic Church, and please remember that heresy is just another word for religious freedom. We've had nearly 2000 years of genocide, repression, torture, war and the most grizzly executions imaginable resulting from claims to divine authority. A decent respect to the opinions of mankind, as Jefferson wrote in 1776, seems always to have been at odds with the peremptory proclamations of God's enforcers, and the idea that we the people have an innate and inalienable right to liberty and pursuit of happiness that owes nothing to the demands of priests, preachers and shamans is clearly anathema to the Catholic churches of the Treasure Coast, much to their shame.

The fact is that nearly all American Catholics ignore the ban on birth control that is based on a rather flimsy interpretation of what their God(s) said to a man who never existed in a time long before birth control was an option. This embarrassing little attempt has little support amongst anyone but churchmen (Church women have no vote and are sworn to obedience anyway) and it certainly has nothing to do with our freedom. I hope that some people, even in this stupefyingly religious and resoundingly Republican part of the country, will see through it.

(Cross-posted from Human Voices.)

You really want another fight over birth control?

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Here we go again:

Forty-three Catholic groups, including the University of Notre Dame and Archdioceses of New York and Washington, have sued the Obama administration over a controversial mandate requiring employers to offer insurance plans that include contraception coverage.

In a coordinated filing of 12 lawsuits in federal courts across the country, the groups argue that the mandate would unconstitutionally force religiously-affiliated institutions, like Catholic schools and hospitals, to indirectly subsidize contraception for female employees in violation of religious beliefs.

President Obama in February attempted to accommodate the groups' concerns with an administrative compromise he said would ensure no religious organization had to pay for or provide the services directly. But today’s lawsuits signal that the Catholics groups found the effort insufficient.

Actually, this is bad for Romney, who wants the focus now and through November to be on the economy (and on his own various anti-Obama smears), not social issues, and particularly not something as hugely popular as birth control. (Look for Mitt to do his utmost to wave away this matter. He could instead go after the president over his health-care reforms generally, but of course those reforms are based largely on Mitt's own from Massachusetts.)

It was bad for Santorum to emphasize his retrograde views on birth control during the Republican primaries, and it'll be bad for Republicans this fall that these high-profile Catholic organizations are going there again -- either Republicans side with them, in which case they find themselves opposed to public opinion, or they try to distance themselves from them, and from this non-issue generally (birth control being, and having been for decades, a mostly settled matter, with most Catholics disagreeing with their church's leaders), in which case they find themselves opposed to much of their own right-wing base, which continues to espouse views way outside the mainstream of American society.

You really want this fight? Bring. It. On. (As Dubya might say.)

It's settled, then: Women, we're at war

By Ramona

Don't expect me to be going over every single attack on women's rights just because I'm writing about modern-day, 21st-century, 2012, just-in-the-last-month attacks, which, as you might have noticed, are escalating at such a dizzying pace we can no longer ignore the rumblings of war.

It's ugly and it's all out there. Even Rush Limbaugh's scrubbed transcripts of his diatribes against Sandra Fluke, the Georgetown University student who had the temerity to attempt to testify before certain members of congress about the need for free contraception. Even Patricia Heaton's deleted tweets about that same student (aka G-Town Gal). They're out there. They're not going away.

No, we're here today to look at the big picture: How did this latest war of the sexes start? What was the catalyst? And what can we do to grind it to a halt now that it's started? 

The obvious answer to question number one is that it's all Obama's fault. As a part of his health plan (the catalyst), he told insurance companies they would have to offer contraceptive care at no cost to women. (That would mean, for most, no co-pay.) Birth control aids would be free and available everywhere, and since it was mandatory, not to mention laudatory, not to mention commonsensical and a long time coming, that was supposed to be it. End of conversation.

Ha! We wish!

President Obama's first mistake was that he thought he was taking steps toward helping women more effectively and responsibly manage their reproductive years, when what he was actually doing was antagonizing pissants who have been posing as Manly Men for so long they're not about to be ousted from their comfy zones.

A whole host of Catholic Bishops, pseudo-religious politicians, and paid-to-be-mean pundits jumped on the bandwagon called Control the women by denying birth control, and weren't they surprised when the women they were so itching to suppress wouldn't give in? A real donnybrook ensued, with everybody weighing in, pro and con, and here we are, in the middle of it all, coming out swinging, and if they want a war, okay, they've got one.

Some highlights:

• The Susan G. Komen Foundation is taken over by a right-wing zealot who makes it known from Day One that Planned Parenthood can kiss SGK goodbye. Susan Komen's sister/founder helps figure out a way to do it. A huge, unprecedented fuss ensues. Right-wing zealot goes on to greener pastures. The sister stays and apologizes -- a Pyrrhic victory that nobody feels good about.

• Long probes up the vagina with cameras on the end used not as medical tools but as instruments of shame -- Zap! Gone! Battle won!

• Gooey cold stuff massaged onto a bare belly so a government-issue wand can be waved, not to detect a zygote already determined by other methods to be there, but to establish once and for all that a woman doesn't actually have control over her own body -- still working on it but we've got them in our sights.

• Dozens of state legislatures scrambling to make laws against contraception and abortion so harsh Draco the Greek, if he were still alive, would be crying foul -- this one may take a while.

The legal issues, having some semblance of form and substance, are easier to deal with. There are wise and learned people on our side ready to take them on. But there's another, uglier issue and it's one we've faced many times before. It's our old but formidable nemesis: blind, consuming hatred toward people of our gender.

With the rise of the Tea Party and pressure from the Religious Right-to Life-Until-It-Actually-Becomes-A-Child, fortified by resident misogynist Rush Limbaugh and hardline Catholic men in red robes and black robes and pullover sweater vests, the battle to enforce the reproductive rights we've already fought long and hard for is a battle we can't afford to lose.

The spotlight is on Rush Limbaugh at the moment, but it's Rick Santorum we need to keep an eye on. He showed his hand when he talked about his reaction to John F. Kennedy's 1960 speech to the Baptists, where JFK said he would fight hard for the separation of church and state.

Santorum wanted to throw up when he read that. Why? Because it's disgusting and unforgivable that  Kennedy had the chance to pave the way for an American Pope and he didn't take it. Rick will remedy that when he's president. And guess who will suffer the most under his reign?

The obvious goal is to make sure Rick Santorum never becomes president, but once that threat is gone we'll still be fighting those others working to take us down. We thought that war was over, but all we really won, we know now, was détente.

Men (and, incredibly, other women) are fighting against those of us who go on believing our reproductive rights are sacrosanct. Suddenly they're coming out of the woodwork, no longer pretending that Roe v. Wade is all that's keeping us apart. Now it's about contraception -- a real puzzler, since birth control is the obvious remedy for unwanted pregnancies.

Only women can incubate babies. It's a fact. If they get knocked up and it's not a good time, the sex police want us to believe they have no one to blame but themselves. Really? What other species on the planet punishes the female for being impregnated by a male? Birth control is a two-way street. It's irresponsible and gutless to pretend that women did this to themselves, and yet we're hearing it louder and clearer every day.

And why is that? Because to the people who are coming at us with the same hoary arguments, it's not about the control of birth, it's about the control of sex. That nutty comment by Santorum backer Foster Friess about birth control being as simple as holding an aspirin between our knees? The admonishment from Rick Santorum that all birth control should be banished because it can only lead to badness? Rush Limbaugh's crazed, three-day masturbatory fantasy about the reasons women want free birth control? Sex, sex, and, yet again, sex.

It's the same tiresome struggle, but this time we're going to win. Why? Because we have a secret weapon.

It's men. There are more than just a few good ones out there and they're on our side. They're men who work with us, talk with us, and see us as equals. They're men who live with us and see our roles as complementary and not competitive or without merit. They're men who can love unconditionally and have grown so far beyond the ancient need to keep women bound and tethered, they're willing to fight beside us until this war is ended. Some of them are already at the front lines.

So put that in your pipe and smoke it, you dirty old men of yesterday. A new day dawns and you've been left behind. It has to be this way. It's the way human progress works.

(Cross-posted at Ramona's Voices.)

In Dublin, a stolen heart

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Seen this yet?

The preserved heart of Dublin's patron saint has been stolen from the city's Christ Church Cathedral, officials say.

The thief would have needed metal cutters to prise open the iron bars protecting the wooden heart-shaped box holding St Laurence O'Toole's heart.

Police believe it happened some time between Friday night and about 12.30 GMT on Saturday.

"They specifically targeted this, they wanted the heart of St Laurence O'Toole," a church spokeswoman said.

"It's completely bizarre," she said, adding that valuable gold chalices and gold candlesticks were ignored by the thief.

Bizarre? Sure. But, then, so is the Roman Catholic Church's grotesque obsession with relics, including the preserved body parts of its "saints."

That someone would actually want this specific "relic" is just part of the madness that is not just Catholicism but Christianity generally.

The Obama-Santorum conspiracy

By Nicholas Wilbur 

Convinced that President Obama's contraception battle with the Catholic Church is not a "short-term tactical blunder" but yet another example of the president's "strategically shrewd" long game, conservative-turned-Dem-loving-ratiocinator Andrew Sullivan this week dabbled in a potentially promising career as a conspiracy theorist with a column at The Daily Beast that shocked Washington insiders and rubes, Democrats and Republicans, Obamabots and Birthers alike:

The more Machiavellian observer might even suspect this is actually an improved bait and switch by Obama to more firmly identify the religious right with opposition to contraception, its weakest issue by far, and to shore up support among independent women and his more liberal base... And if this was a trap, the religious right walked right into it.

Not only did the right-wing establishment walk right into it, their constituents turned out en masse to vote on it, handing three presidential primary victories to the rigidly conservative and proudly orthodox Catholic Rick Santorum.

Is it therefore impossible to assume that President Obama expected that such a hot-button issue would effect turnout among conservatives, and therefore timed the contraception ruling in order to boost Santorum's odds of besting the only candidate with even a remote chance of beating Obama in November, presumed nominee Mitt Romney?

That's a rhetorical question, of course.

Obviously, the president is going to capitalize on whatever means are available to him in his race for re-election.

It doesn't take a political genius to see that this contraception fight was a win-win-win for Obama. It riled his own base, pissed off the conservative wing of the Republican Party, and "reinforce[d] Obama's reputation as a man willing to compromise, one of his core strengths among independent voters."

As Sullivan observes, riling the "righteous" conservatives is especially important, if only because their extreme views on religious issues have done nothing to improve their popularity among the more moderate masses.

If the Catholic bishops and the religious right eventually reject the proposed Obama compromise, they will be digging themselves even deeper into a hole that is quickly losing traction. Citing the civil union-versus-marriage debate and the religious right's ongoing pursuit to criminalize abortion, Sullivan writes that, "[t]ime after time, they have rejected compromises on social issues because of fundamentalist rigidity, not Christian engagement with a changing world." And as the polling shows, they're losing ground on each of these aforementioned issues.

As this and other social issues come to the fore in an election pundits claim will be "focused almost entirely on jobs," the clear beneficiary is Santorum.

Given the Republican Party's lukewarm enthusiasm for Romney, Santorum's hard-line stances on abortion, gay marriage, and other hot-button issues very well may propel him toward the nomination.

Anything Obama can do to help that potentiality become a reality is just good politics (especially when the majority of Americans support the specific policies being used to divide Republicans, as they do in the case of contraception).

Such political gamesmanship may not land Santorum the nomination, but fracturing Republican voters between the unelectable true-blood conservative and the electable but unlikeable "milquetoast Massachusetts moderate" plays well for the incumbent no matter how you slice it.

In a not-so-subtle hint to the Santorum campaign on what ought to be the focus of their attacks in the coming months, Sullivan states that the contraception issue "could not be more tailor-made to benefit" Santorum.

It could finally unite the Christian fundamentalist right behind him -- especially since Romneycare contained exactly the same provisions on contraception that Obamacare did before last week's compromise was announced. That's right: Romneycare can now accurately be portrayed as falling to the left of Obamacare on the contraception issue.

"[This] could be the issue that wins him the nomination," Sullivan says.

Or it could not be. Santorum could fall short of winning the nomination and succeed only in postponing Romney's expected victory, bleeding the eventual nominee's campaign coffers, dividing the Republican Party along social lines, and riling socially liberal and moderate Americans behind the incumbent's less dogmatic, more pragmatic compromise.

Win or lose, Santorum's surge into the #1 slot in the GOP primary race may prove nothing more than what is already obvious: that Barack Obama is more than a "chess master." He's one BAD motherfucker!

(Also published at Angry Black Lady Chronicles.)

The Catholic contraceptive controversy: Where's the health care part?

By Ramona

(Ed. note: Ramona did five excellent guest posts for us -- her last one is here, with links to the others -- and I'm very pleased to welcome her as a regular contributor to The Reaction. -- MJWS)

Effective August 1, thanks to a provision in the Affordable Care Act, most working women will have their contraceptives fully paid for, without a co-pay. That's the good news. The bad news (you knew there had to be bad news, right?) is that the unenlightened among us see it as nothing more than an unconscionable threat to virile manhood. Especially Catholic virile manhood.

The U.S Conference of Catholic Bishops, all male at last count, have decided amongst themselves that they will not be pushed into reversing their age-old hoo-haw laws forcing Catholic women to have as many babies as their wholly-owned bodies can produce. (The laugh's on them: Most Catholic women use artificial birth control. (The Guttmacher Institute says it's as high as 98%.) When was the last time you heard a Catholic woman talking about the rhythm method, except to marvel at how crazy that whole notion was?

Cardinal-designate Timothy Dolan, president of the USCCB, sharply criticized the decision by the Obama administration in which it "ordered almost every employer and insurer in the country to provide sterilization and contraceptives, including some abortion-inducing drugs, in their health plans... Never before has the federal government forced individuals and organizations to go out into the marketplace and buy a product that violates their conscience. This shouldn't happen in a land where free exercise of religion ranks first in the Bill of Rights."

We're talking about birth control here. We're talking about a woman's right to choose when the time is right to carry and bear a child. This is not baby-killing, it's responsibly managing an event as life-changing as it's ever going to get. It's the smart, sane way of controlling the use of our own bodies and, oh, by the way, preventing the birth of unwanted children.

We're talking about birth control products already approved and already a part of most insurance policies. The only mandate is that insurance providers will now be required to provide those products without additional cost to all women who want to use them. The mandate isn't for the use, it's for the availability and the cost.

This is a manufactured right-wing controversy designed to kill yet another positive outcome of "Obamacare," and the Catholic Bishops are more than happy to become the spark that creates yet another phony firestorm.

Mitt Romney, Republican candidate for president and a Mormon who, until now, apparently had no problem with that particular provision in the Affordable Care Act, has jumped on the bandwagon and is now on the side of the Catholic Bishops, taking this grand opportunity to to rail against his expected opponent, Barack Obama, about an issue he clearly doesn't even begin to understand:

"I'm just distressed as I watch our president try and infringe upon our rights, the First Amendment of the Constitution provides the right to worship in the way of our own choice," Romney said to nearly 3,000 people gathered in the gymnasium of Arapahoe High School, in Arapahoe County, an area known as a so-called "swing county" that Obama won in 2008.

"This same administration said that the churches and the institutions they run, such as schools and let's say adoption agencies, hospitals, that they have to provide for their employees free of charge, contraceptives, morning after pills, in other words abortive pills, and the like at no cost," Romney said. "Think what that does to people in faiths that do not share those views. This is a violation of conscience."

"We must have a president who is willing to protect America's first right, our right to worship God according to the dictates of our own conscience," he said.

In addition to Romney, two other manly-men candidates for Obama's job, Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich, are outraged that women should be able to get free birth control. (It only adds to their outrage that women should have the audacity to think they can control their own bodies):

Andrea Saul, a spokeswoman for Mitt Romney, said in an e-mail that he regarded the administration's rule requiring religious employers to furnish birth control as wrong. "This is a direct attack on religious liberty and will not stand in a Romney presidency," she said. Mr. Romney has also pledged to end a federal program, Title X, that provides family planning services to millions of women. 

Mr. Santorum has taken the position that health insurance plans should not be required to cover birth control. He also favors allowing states to decide whether to ban birth control. He and Mr. Gingrich both support "personhood" initiatives that would legally declare fertilized eggs to be persons, effectively banning not just all abortions but also certain contraceptives, including IUDs and some types of birth control pills. 

Mr. Gingrich wants to withdraw government money from Planned Parenthood because it performs abortions in addition to providing contraceptives, though the federal money cannot be used for abortion.

A lie dressed in pink

I wonder how they feel about Viagra and other male enhancement "medications." Say there was a group of people who believed with their whole entire hearts that workplace insurance coverage of male sex-tool enhancement was not only outside any notion of "health care," it was maybe even "unconscionable." Should that group be exempt from providing it?

And if those bishops had wombs, would they be open to letting someone else tell them what they could do with them? (It's a rhetorical question. No, they wouldn't be open to letting someone else tell them anything.)

Addendum: Well, looky here: Catholic hospitals and universities already provide contraceptive coverage:  Here it is. What's their excuse now? 

(Cross-posted at Ramona's Voices.)

For Catholics, women priests are akin to child molesters

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Just in case you needed another reason to detest the Roman Catholic Church:

The Vatican today made the "attempted ordination" of women one of the gravest crimes under church law, putting it in the same category as clerical sex abuse of minors, heresy and schism.

The new rules, which have been sent to bishops around the world, apply equally to Catholic women who agree to a ceremony of ordination and to the bishop who conducts it. Both would be excommunicated. Since the Vatican does not accept that women can become priests, it does not recognise the outcome of any such ceremony.

With all due respect to you Catholics out there, perhaps the Church you place as the intermediary between you and your God, the Church to which you confess your "sins," the Church that you allow to govern so many aspects of your lives, could do with some perspective, don't you think?

Then again, this is a Church that did its best to cover up the sexual abuse that was rampant in its ranks, a Church with a long and bloody history at the center of a bigoted and bloodthirsty religion, a Church that has long oppressed women (and so many others), so I'm not sure perspective of the kind we expect in civilized, liberal society is likely.