Irregular Times Diaries: Unfit Discussion

It’s not just in America, and in Ireland, and in Canada, and in… well, you know, pretty much any other country you can think of. Catholic priests have been caught sexually molesting kids in Germany now too. Wouldn’t you know it? The Catholic Church lied about it. Covered it up. Who could have imagined such a thing?

Barry C. Black the government-appointed, tax-paid high priest of the United States Senate, spoke yesterday of the evils of self-sufficiency. Praying to his Christian deity, which he wrongly presumes is the deity of every American, he preached, “Deliver us from the self-sufficiency that will not recognize our need of You.”

In these times of record-braking budget defecits and general economic disarray, is a message against self-sufficiency really what our nation needs to hear? Has the problem with Wall Street been that it was too self-sufficient? Do we need more corporate dependence on taxpayer bailouts?

Is corporate welfare the message Barry C. Black intended to communicate, or does he merely want the United States to become dependent upon his religion?

Day after day, year after year, preacher Barry C. Black keeps on using his pulpit in the Senate, as its official, government-paid chaplain, to agitate in favor of mass conversion to Christianity. Yesterday, Chaplain Black gave a speech on the floor of the U.S. Senate in which he called upon his deity to transform United States Senators so that they would do the bidding of Christian religion: “Cause them to be men and women of integrity, so that our citizens can lead quiet and peaceful lives in all godliness and honesty.”

You know, Mr. Black, here in the United States of America we have a little old thing called the First Amendment to the Constitution. It guarantees us freedom of religion, which includes the right to lead lives that don’t fit with your definition of being godly and quiet. I don’t want to live a life in quiet godliness. It may not fit your religious ideals, which call upon everyone but preachers like you to be silent, but I’ll talk back to your continuing violation of the separation of church and state.

It’s an abuse of your power, Barry, to take a public salary and use it to keep pushing your religion. If you must pray using taxpayer money to do it, why don’t you do something useful, and pray for rain in the desert?

The Obama Administration, despite the promises Barack Obama made during the 2008 presidential campaign, has expanded the federal government’s funding of religious programs (“faith-based initiatives” in politically correct government lingo) without instituting any reforms of the programs’ often discriminatory use of government resources. The justification for this unconstitutional mixture of church and state is that religious groups are supposed to be uniquely able to deliver community services.

That justification is belied by the content of programs developed by the Department of Health and Human Services in response to h1n1, the swine flu. Under the orders of the White House office of government religious programs, the Secretary of Health And Human Services set up a separate office for a new governmental organization called the Health and Human Services Center for Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships.

The premise of this government center for religious programs is that it would be specially able to work with religious groups in order to deal with health emergencies, like some said H1N1 flu would be. However, if you examine the Center’s publication, H1N1 Flu: A Guide for Community & Faith-based Organizations, you won’t find any special “faith-based” instructions or activities. There’s nothing in the guide for religious organizations to do in dealing with the flu that secular organizations wouldn’t do as well. There’s not a single thing identified in the guide that a religious organization can do just because it’s a religious organization – no way of dealing with the flu that sets religious groups apart.

There’s no need for this special Health and Human Services guide for religious groups. It’s a waste. A general publication for all community organizations, public and private, secular and religious alike, would have been just as effective, and more efficient, as a way of communicating with communities about how to deal with the flu.

What’s next? An official government guide, How Christians Can Cope With The Common Cold? A Buddhist Guide To Bunions? A Muslim Guide To Medicating Measles? A Hindu Task Force For Handling Herpes?

Last week, Congressman Steve King helped us all understand morality by explaining that only Christians feel sorry when they kill dogs. Apologizing is something only Christians do, says Representative King, and Americans often say they’re sorry. That proves that the United States is a Christian nation, argues King.

There’s a little old flaw to his argument, though. Most Americans, when they do something wrong, apologize fairly soon after the mistake – within a day, a week, a month, and certainly within a year. However, the members of the oldest Christian church in the United States, just today apologized for massacres and other violent atrocities it committed against Native Americans four centuries ago.

It seems that most Americans are doing better than this Christian standard for admitting guilt and seeking forgiveness.

The Catholic Church has already received a substantial concession from the Washington D.C. City Council in the struggle over legislation that would grant marriage equality to all residents, regardless of sexual orientation. In order to placate the Catholic church’s lobbyists, the Council placed exemptions for religious organizations. If the law passes, churches won’t be required to treat people equally. They’ll be allowed to continue their policies of hateful disregard.

Oh, but that’s not enough for the Catholic Archdiocese of Washington D.C. The Archdiocese is now threatening to withhold services for poor people if marriage equality legislation becomes law.

The D.C. City Council has responded with a great deal more dignity than the Catholic Church seems able to muster. Council members say that if the Catholic Church wants to stop being charitable, then the City Council will simply step forward and make up the difference itself, but it will not allow any organization’s threats to interfere with the constitutional rights of the citizens of D.C.

Government-appointed Chaplain Barry C. Black was at it again yesterday, preaching bizarre Christian religious prophecies from the floor of the United States Senate. This time, Chaplain Black begged his deity to unleash some kind of weird cosmic attack against the Earth.

“God of grace and glory, pour Your power on Your people!” he prayed.

I hope Black’s prayer isn’t answered. Having God’s power poured onto me sounds kind of sticky.

Yesterday, the official government-paid Chaplain of the United States Senate made special time in the legislative day for a government-established ritual of Christian prayer. The prayer was given by Timothy Keller of the Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City, who begged his Christian God to “empower us, as a nation, to love all that You do command.”

You know, where I come from empowerment refers to a state in which people are able to create the means to act according to their own consciences. Empowerment as I understand it does not refer to the ability to learn to love the things that one is commanded to do. Where I come from, we call learning to love the things we are commanded to do as surrender or acquiescence or submission.

I don’t particularly appreciate some preacher being given a designated government-funded pulpit in order to preach that I should become the happy slave of his deity. In an empowered nation, there’s a separation of church and state to prevent that sort of thing.

As the remaining Roman Catholics in the United States wonder why their numbers are declining, they might want to take a look at the name of one of their organizations in Missouri:

Leadership Team of the Sisters of the Most Precious Blood of O’Fallon

Just a thought, but perhaps a name such as this one does not communicate suggest that the Roman Catholic Church remains relevant and reliable very effectively.

A solicitation for participation in a documentary on Lily Dale, the Western New York community that continues spiritualist seances and general psychic fair fare, asks,

“Are you at a crossroad in you life and searching for answers?”

You life?

If someone doesn’t have the ordinary sensory powers to detect a typographical error, why should I trust that they have supernatural, extrasensory powers to talk to the dead?