As I am on holiday, I have scheduled a number of easy news repost for your delectation. From the Guardian:
Court-ordered release of documents reveal what Catholic orders knew of sexual abuse by priests, brothers and nuns
In therapy sessions, the priest confessed to shocking details he’d kept hidden for years: he had molested more than 100 boys, including his 5-year-old brother, had sex with male prostitutes, and frequented gay strip clubs.
You must must watch this. Hopefully I can embed the video. Watch it from 2.12pm onwards. This is why I love this country. Discussing philosophy fairly and squarely within the confines of our Parliamentary system (even if the House of Lords is our non-elected part).
If I can’t get it to embed, check it out here:
Well, the Pope is shaking those old cloisters up! The BBC: Pope Francis: Who am I to judge gay people?…
Those of you across the pond may not have heard about the Church of England’s broadside against the seedy world of payday loans. More ‘reputable’ companies have sprung up offering ridiculously high interest and low security loans to desperate people in need. The whole business is spurious and morally dubious at best.
Here is sa frightening article from USA Today [H/T Russ Rogers]: Norwegian convicted over rape report issues Gulf caution Interior designer…
Funny how Republicans want less government, don’t like banning things and Big Brother… until it comes to social engineering and morality when they want stuff they don’t like banned. Silly people.
HuffPo: [H/T Sarah Bee]
http://youtu.be/ctWj-OV4cI0
Texas state senator Wendy Davis has electrified the pro-choice movement. Not just because of her sheer endurance in a nearly 11-hour filibuster, not just because she stood up to condescension and sexism, and not just because she did it all with aplomb and grace. For pro-choice activists, it has felt far too infrequent that they’ve seen a Democrat – much less one from a deep red state like Texas – unabashedly support reproductive rights without an ounce of ambivalence or calls for elusive common ground.
Some think it could be urban legend, but we do think that this actually happened in Auschwitz concentration camp during the Second World War. The Jews, holding a covenant, a legally binding agreement if you will, with God, decide that God has broken the covenant. After all, how can bad things happen to good people; but not any old good people – God’s chosen people? Surely such preference entitles the Jews to a little safer passage along Earth’s historical timeline, though persecution after persecution? The only logical thing to do, it appeared, was to put God on trial for breaking such an agreement.
As grovels go, this is spectacular: the head of the American “ex-gay” ministry Exodus International has announced that it’s now an…
Oh, the bigotry. Not allowed to hate the gayz via other organisations? Just make your own homophobic groups to indoctrinate children with intolerance. Well done Baptists. The Guardian:
Resolution asks churches to consider rivals to Boy Scouts of America after its lifting of ban on homosexual members
This was an article from The Spectator, a British conservative magazine. Thoughts? I love the remark made by one…
I am going to look at political libertarianism in this post in the context of morality, ethics and philosophy. This has been brought on by the Any Questions live radio programme on BBC Radio 4 the other day from the Centre for Alternative Technology in Machynlleth, Wales which featured right-wing Conservative, Telegraph blogger, Climate Change (AGW) denier James Delingpole, Secretary of State for the Environment Food and Rural Affairs, Owen Paterson MP (Conservative), left wing Labour politician Peter Hain MP, Leader of Plaid Cymru (The Welsh national party), socialist and republican Leanne Wood.
Sweet bejesus, this is the weirdest, craziest shit I have ever seen. The Church of England congregations would have coronaries…
(CNN) – For Southern Baptist pastor Tim Reed, it was Scripture versus the Scouts.
“God’s word explicitly says homosexuality is a choice, a sin,” said Reed, pastor of First Baptist Church of Gravel Ridge in Jacksonville, Arkansas.
So when the Boy Scouts of America voted to lift its ban on openly gay youths on May 24, Reed said the church had no choice but to cut its charter with Troop 542.
George Pell says, “I have always been on the side of the victims.” But the archbishop of Sydney has a funny way of expressing his support.
During an inquiry this week into what the Herald Sun describes as “rampant” child sexual abuse by priests going back decades, Pell admitted, “We’ve been slow to address the anguish of the victims and dealt with it very imperfectly.” He acknowledged that his predecessor, Sir Frank Little, “did cover up” sex abuse and that former Ballarat Bishop Ronald Mulkearns knew of accusations and destroyed documents and moved suspects to other parishes, actions that were“followed by disastrous consequences.”
This is an excellent piece from a blog I came across through a post on facebook (H/T Sergio Paulo Sider,…
Chris Hallquist’s blog The Incredible Halq is the first reputable blog that I have seen which has so seriously gone to…
The article below is from the UK Human Rights Blog. There is an interesting development in allowing subgroups of a society to exempt themselves from national laws or requirements. Then again, is there a sense that there is an analogy here between this and the rights of someone with dietary requirements (eg Halal) to have certain school meal or job-provided provision for their needs?
Andrew Brown in the Guardian:
The settled world order is secular, and fanaticism thrives when people feel alienated and threatened for their beliefs.
It’s a commonplace that wars and religions are closely associated. Since about 1945 there has been an increasing tendency for wars to be fought along religious, as well as ethnic, economic and cultural lines, though I don’t think many people realise that the most warlike religion in the modern world, measured by the proportion of countries at war where it has a significant following, is actually Buddhism.