I Don't Believe In Hell

I don't believe in Hell.  I think the whole idea is contemptible nonsense.  If someone does believe in Hell, they must agree to some version of the following paradigm:

1. God created everything, including people;
2. People did stuff they shouldn't have and that made God upset;
3. God set-up a place for people who make him miffed, and it is called 'Hell' (there's all sorts of unimaginably horrific torture that goes on without end in Hell);
4. God wants to forgive everyone for not only doing irksome things themselves, but also for inheriting the irksomeness of the first people to ruffle God's feathers, as it were;

Conclusion: If you exist, you've been created sick, commanded to be well by asking forgiveness for sins you didn't commit but inherited, and if you don't ask forgiveness for those sins, then you'll suffer unmitigated torture forever and ever.  Amen.

Nope.  Sorry.  I don't buy it.  If the Christian message holds true, then Christ shouldered the burden of everyone else's sins.  That leaves everyone else standing on their own two feet, not taking on myriad generations of others misgivings.  That also means that if God created everyone sick, and demands that they be well, then there's no point in condemning them for the state he created them in.  Why bother creating anyone in the first place just to condemn them if they don't recognise their malady?

That is the message of a capricious and malevolent deity.

I think God's a little better than that.  If I can think of a more moral outcome to being a little spiritually daft, then I'm sure God must be slightly ahead of regular human morality, no?

Ratzinger's Plausible Deniability Is Bunk

Apparently the pope needs no defense: he's clean, he's without stain, and he never involved himself in the alleged cover-up of child-raping priests. Everybody should be slapped on the hand for even thinking that Ratzinger might have something to do with protecting deviant priests, and the image of the church. Afterall, that reporter shouldn't have been so insidiously rebellious to question the authority of a leader he has no allegiance to. He deserved that slap. We should all practice assault when we don't like how questions make us feel, or when they show up our hyporcisy.

On the other side of papal obstructions to justice, the Vatican has offered three reasons why it isn't liable for the abuses thousands of its faithful have endured over the past 50 years:

1. As the head of the Vatican, a city-state, the pope has immunity;
2. American bishops who abused thousands of wee uns weren't actually employed by the Vatican;
3. The 1962 document Crimen Sollicitationis does not provide proof of a cover-up.

Perhaps I'm out of my depth making comments on international politics and their interface with religious powers and power-mongers (e.g., the pope). So be it. But it does seem a matter of practical logic, to me, that if crimes are committed internationally, by priests of various nationalities, and who all happen to trace their legal fiat back to a single religio-political entity called The Vatican, that perhaps that single religio-political entity and the person who oversees it should be made accountable for the actions of the people he is claiming sovereignty over.

When Saddam Hussein slaughtered the Kurdish people, his immunity as head of the Iraqi state wasn't worth spit. On December 30th, 2006, Hussein was executed for his crimes against humanity. I'm certainly not calling for the exectution of the pope, not by any means. However, I am concerned that the pope's factual involvement in protecting the image of Catholicism, and the offices of the priests under him, amounts to nothing more than a chance for Ratzinger to plead plausible deniability on the world stage.

Let him deny it, if he dares. But to then move on and say that the bishops involved in covering up the actions of lecherous priests were not actually employed by the Vatican is a clear-cut case of four-square stupidity. If they weren't employed by the Vatican, they wouldn't have been acting in their offices. There wouldn't be any question of their alleged cover-ups because they wouldn't have been Catholic bishops. How fucking stupid do they really think the observing public is? The medieval period is over, Ratzinger. We're not baffled by ecclesial Latin anymore, and you certainly can't moonshine us any longer by suddenly changing the story and preying on our illiteracy.

Still, Crimen Sollicitationis is not proof of a cover-up. I'll quote the document, and you be the judge about whether it is a blatant attempt to keep sexual crimes secret, or just an exercise in fancy rhetoric.

"As, assuredly, what must be mainly taken care of and complied with in handling these trials is that they be managed with maximum confidentiality and after the verdict is declared and put into effect never be mentioned again (20 February 1867 Instruction of the Holy Office, 14), each and every person, who in any way belongs to the tribunal or is given knowledge of the matter because of their office, is obliged to keep inviolate the strictest secrecy (what is commonly called "the secrecy of the Holy Office") in all things and with all persons, under pain of automatic (latae sententiae) excommunication, incurred ipso facto without need of any declaration other than the present one, and reserved to the Supreme Pontiff in person alone, excluding even the Apostolic Penitentiary."

To end this article, I would like to draw your attention to the words of Christopher Hitchens, who wrote the following on March 29th, 2010. I echo his sentiments, and could not have phrased them any better.

"This is what makes the scandal an institutional one and not a matter of delinquency here and there. The church needs and wants control of the very young and asks their parents to entrust their children to certain "confessors," who until recently enjoyed enormous prestige and immunity. It cannot afford to admit that many of these confessors, and their superiors, are calcified sadists who cannot believe their luck. Nor can it afford to admit that the church regularly abandoned the children and did its best to protect and sometimes even promote their tormentors. So instead it is whiningly and falsely asserting that all charges against the pope—none of them surfacing except from within the Catholic community—are part of a plan to embarrass him.

This hasn't been true so far, but it ought to be true from now on. This grisly little man is not above or outside the law. He is the titular head of a small state. We know more and more of the names of the children who were victims and of the pederasts who were his pets. This is a crime under any law (as well as a sin), and crime demands not sickly private ceremonies of "repentance," or faux compensation by means of church-financed payoffs, but justice and punishment. The secular authorities have been feeble for too long but now some lawyers and prosecutors are starting to bestir themselves. I know some serious men of law who are discussing what to do if Benedict tries to make his proposed visit to Britain in the fall. It's enough. There has to be a reckoning, and it should start now."

The Vatican and the Devil

Apparently the Vatican is possessed. Well, maybe not possessed as such, but definitely not doing too well in its fight against the devil. At this point, some cynics might add the words of Christ that "a house divided against itself surely cannot stand" (Matt. 12:25).

But that's okay, really, because the gates of hell won't win out against the Holy See, right? 'Cause it was a religious city-state Jesus was talking about when he assured his followers that hell would do its best but fail in its attempt to replicate the falling of the walls at Jericho. Where's Linda Blair when we need some head-spinning proof?

E.T.A.: Is the Holy See really endorsing the "devil made me do it" excuse for all their misdeeds? Pedophile priests, ambiguity toward genocide (Pius XII), residential schools, witch-burnings, the Crusades, etc... It all falls under the clause "the devil made me do it"? What kind of wing-nuttery runs the Vatican? Who are these dottering fools that they can write-off their personal culpability, their responsibility and accountability by stating that it's the devil's fault?

Nevertheless, I think the chief exorcist is right: the devil is in the Vatican. He's a legion of priests, bishops, and deacons that use their position to exploit the vulnerabilities of others. And who can hold them accountable? No-one. They are an autonomous entity enveloped within the religious city-state called The Vatican. They answer to themselves, and hold court on their own, by their own terms, and in their own time. And despite how much they like to reach out and touch others, they are themselves completely untouchable.

E.T.A. #2: Christopher Hitchens has weighed in on the issue, and I have to say that I quite agree with his conclusions. Read for yourself here. And for a more in-depth depiction of the cirque du corps rampant in the Catholic church of late, here's Foreign Policy's article.

Camping at the End of the World

Remember Hal Lindsey? He was wrong!

What about Grant R. Jeffrey? He was wrong, too!

Then there's the Left Behind nutbags, LaHaye and Jenkins. Wrong. In general.

Well, another prophet has arisen from amongst the rank-and-file of the Van Impe wannabes: Harold Camping. He predicted the world would end in 1994. But he was wrong. Now he's throwing in against the Mayans for the preview spot; he wants to open up for the 2012 crowd a year early. Yep. The world is going to end on May 21, 2011.

This is fair warning.

I guess 2010 should be a year of Corinthian proportions, hey? Awesome.

Wait! Maybe Mayan means 'may'. Crap! We're doomed. Hey, that was some apocalyptic alliteration, if ever I've heard any.