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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
I was heavily involved in the Catholic church during my high school years (1997-2001). I was still not a fan of the church's treatment towards women (amongst other things), but I loved the social service aspects. I loved JPII's reaching out towards other faiths. And when I say "involved", I mean putting in about 8 hours a week in a CYO youth leadership council, with volunteer projects on top of it all. Quite a bit for someone who had never gone to Catholic-school proper, had an agnostic father, and was debating even getting confirmed.
Yeah, the church needed to be more progressive with women (esp. contraception) and the sex-abuse scandal - a hella lot more progressive - but we were making good progress. And we were a-OK with evolution, and very anti-death penalty, so I figured it was going to happen in baby-steps. We did some awesome things, got more people involved in the church, great service projects in Detroit... I was finally loving the church I was born and raised in. And the pope was always a constant and generally respectable presence the whole time. Hell, I'm of Polish ancestry. The first "concert" I ever went to was seeing Pope John Paul II giving mass when he visited Michigan.
... and then he died. And I saw the complete jubiliation of my very old-school conservative Catholic lab partner, and knew it couldn't be good.
And it hasn't been. I'm ashamed to even say I'm a lapsed Catholic when stuff like this surfaces - although moreso at the Auschwitz incident, especially as plenty of my Polish relatives went down in WWII with their Jewish neighbors.
There were about 30 of us in that leadership group. I'd say about 20 have completely left the church, save visits home to the family. Way to go. The church is all worried about losing its hold in the US - well, you lost 2/3rds of your best and brightest and most dedicated from a tri-county area, and only 3 of us actually came out as gay. The rest just saw where things were going, found ways to incorporate what we loved about the church in other service-oriented projects, and backtracked the hell out. ... Congrats.
...stands in contrast to the op-ed piece written by Kathleen Parker, who, in my opinion, presents a more balanced picture of THE CONTEXT of what the Pope said. But to be honest, I'm not as informed on these topics as many Salon readers are, so I look forward to reading their thoughts, too. But I am troubled by Bunting's acknowledgement of what is immutable about the Islamic faith. Is the way that Muslims view the female gender, is that immutable as well?
Having read the controversial speech, I now wonder if this pope is simply too much of an academic and not enough of a pastor. His head and heart seem to be buried in books, history, and theology, and out of touch with the modern world and how people today think and react. Furthermore, for one who seems to love learning, Benedict XVI seems to lack the open mindedness and curiosity of one so bound to the academic life. I think he means well. Unfortunately, he may be too sheltered to serve well in his current position - and that doesn't help the Church at all.
http://tinyurl.com/rww3p
...her point (I think) is that the Pope's speech aimed to reconcile two points of view concerning religion: faith (i.e. Islam) and reason (Europe and the rest of the West).
Fire away!
that the muslims want to kill the pope because he said they are violent.
Poco
The problem is reverence for the Prophet is non-negotiable.
Non-negotiable means direct conflict.
Islamics are allowed to insult the Pope, insult Christ (to most Christians by disavowing his divinity or that he was crucified) yet, anything seen by them as insulting excuses murder.
Over and over we are seeing comics or speeches about Islamic violence produce Islamic violence.
Then we have people in the West excusing such behavior. It's inexcusable.
Murdering a anyone because of what someone else said cannot be excused.
So the top shot-caller puts it out, a major, major dis on the other guys and everybody on the street is like, “What the fuck?”, because everybody knows this top guy is savvy, he knows exactly what kind of shit he just stirred up. The other guys say it ain’t over yet. They already burned a couple places and they hit one of their women, shot her in the back.
The talk on the street is war, that the top guy who put out the dis aint safe. Who knows? With whack guys like these who’s gonna predict anything? Check it out – the top guys all totally gave up sex, like that’s gonna get em somewhere, like that aint totally whack. Turns out (no shit !) it did get em somewhere – a whole lot of these top guys end up bein punks, messin with little boys. Their protection held for a while, but then it was no good, so couple of em end up goin in for some time. But it’s like nobody gives a shit, like forget about how whack this organization is. They got their women lined up on some weird shit too. No sex for them either. One of them takes a hit after the top shot-caller’s dis, then she says she forgives the guys who hit her! Maybe they shoulda forgave those top guys punkin the little boys, maybe a little forgiveness woulda put a stop to them messin with the little boys.
Yeah on the street they’re askin “What was this top guy thinkin?” Thing is, he don’t have to care. Check out his bling-bling. Whatever kinda fear and protection he’s peddlin, it’s givin him the juice.
Apparently the way Muslims view women is far from immutable. Check out Broadsheet -- they're linking to an article stating that the new leader of the largest pan-Islamic organization in North America is a woman.
The problem with Islam is that it took hold in the *most* misogynistic cultures on the planet. Ancient Judaism was just as bad, but because the Jews were forced to leave the Middle East and spread out around the world, they were forced to adapt more to the rest of the world's cultures and became much more cosmopolitan. Actually, Islam is no more misogynistic than Christianity in and of itself, and in places like Malaysia and Indonesia it's not unusually sexist. Some aspects of it are actually more enlightened about women than Christianity is. But the Middle East has always been the breeding ground for the most overall inhumane treatment of women in the world (other places are bad, but in, say, Ethopia, a woman who is raped is often forced to marry her rapist, whereas in the Middle East, her family or the government will murder her.)
One has to look at the context. Arabs were still treating their women as chattel when Mohammed told them that it was a man's duty to sexually satisfy his wife and that all people, including women, were required to learn to read so they could understand the Koran for themselves. Similarly, Jesus Christ's prohibition on divorce wasn't intended to lock women into loveless abusive marriages, but to prevent Jewish men from throwing aside wives and failing to provide for them on basically no grounds whatsoever aside from "she bores me". If there are still Christians who believe it is wrong for a woman to leave a man who beats her because Christ said there is no divorce, that's because they're bringing their personal prejudices from their own culture into the mix (god knows, Jesus said *nothing* about abortion or homosexuals). The same goes with Muslims.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
