jimrigby.org

I was so glad “Confessions of a nun groupie” was picked up by a Catholic site. It is called “Sister News” and will allow us to follow the remarkable pilgrimage these women are on. If you go to the site you will see responses from the old guard claiming that the sisters need to obey the supreme authority, as if the supreme authority were male clergy and not God. We need to support these women any way we can. If the good ol’ boys win this struggle, the American branch of the Catholic Church will slowly drift away from its European overlord. If the Catholic church will hear what these women are saying, it will recognize that they speak with both feet firmly planted on the Sermon on the Mount. Much of the male leadership of the Catholic Church has not yet left the Middle Ages. Whether or not they know it, the hopes of every American Catholic is riding on that bus.
To go to the site, click here

It has been said you are known by who your friends and enemies are. Our nation preaches democracy and freedom. We even invades other nations in the name of freedom. But one look at our historic friends like the former South Africa and the current Saudi Arabia convinces much of the world that we don’t mean what we say. Glenn Greenwald has written an essay on this discrepency in our values when it comes to Saudi Arabia.

To read article, click here.

Abby Zimet has given us a compilation of fearmongering by Wayne LaPierre of the National Rifle Association.

To read, click here.

Trying to defend our earth’s dwindling resources has become a deadly act. In Brazil alone 365 activists have died trying to protect the rain forests. As long as the rich nations ask poor nations to make sacrafices we have never made, it is the environmental activists who will pay the price.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/jun/19/environment-activist-deathsTo read article click here.

This blog from the World Policy Journal presents a good summary of what has gone wrong in the war on terrorism. From Bush’s use of torture to Obama’s targeted assassinations, as the U.S. has drifted further and further from international standards established after WWII, it has surrendered any claim to being a moral leader of the world. It has also opened up ever deeper levels of resistance.

In the last few months I have adopted a strange group of heroes (sheroes?). They are the defiant nuns who are threatening to bring sanity back to the Catholic Church. You will remember that the boys club, otherwise known as the Vatican, tried to bully them into silence about social issues. They were told to be like the boys in Italy and focus their ethical statements on the scrotum. They were to focus not an economic justice, but on issues Jesus never mentioned like abortion and homosexuality.

What do you do when facing such overwhelming odds? What’s a gal to do when sent to her room unfairly? Road trip!

The nuns are out on the road drawing focus on the Republican budget cuts that will hurt the most vulnerable of America’s poor. The Pope may have the sparkly hat and fancy red shoes, but these pictures of nuns in blue jeans are offering a new awakening for the Catholic Church in America. The Pope and his boys follow the tradition that brought us the inquisition and crusades. These powerful women represent the open-handed open-hearted compassion of the saints. I’m no Catholic, but I can see what is dying and what is being born.

To read NY Times article, click here.

Is it not strange that the “right-to-life” movement, which is intended to honor the sanctity of human life, has resulted in so much terrorism and death? Every week reproductive clinics suffer damage, threats and even violence. Doctors have even been shot down in the name of “life.” Having received such threats myself, I have had time to think about this. I want to point out three factors that lead the “pro-life” movement toward violence. But I want to be clear that I am speaking about “pro-life” political activism, not a pro-life philosophy. It is one thing to believe and to try to pursuade others that life is sacred, it is quite another to force that viewpoint on others through force of law.

Reason number one is over-simplification. An ethical dilemma is easily resolved by ignoring either horn of a dilemma. To claim that incipient life is merely tissue ignores the ethical need to treat life as a value in and of itself. It is equally simplistic to say that the potential humanity of a microscopic organism outweighs any need or responsibility that the pregnant woman might have. Such over-simplification may sound pious, but one need only look at the sacred cows wandering the streets of India to realize where the right to life argument can lead if not balanced by other human realities.

To call a fertilized human egg a “child” may seem like an honest generalization, but is it really truthful? When I make an omelet in the morning is it really truthful to say that I am sticking a fork in an unborn chicken? Does the egg, even if fertilized, feel the fork? I would agree that, some point in the pregnancy, we are speaking of a human person, but to call all abortion murder begs the question of human origins rather than answering it.

Just as it would be violent to tie a dog to a tree and let it starve, so it is violent to disallow choices that another person may need to survive, but which we don’t want to see. It is one thing to think in black and white, it is quite another to force someone else to live in the simplistic world of our own imagination.

A second reason the “pro-life” position becomes violent is that it is patronizing by its very assumptions. To work to make abortion illegal means to make ethical decisions for other people without knowing anything about their situation. Do some women misuse their reproductive freedoms? Of course they do, just like some men misuse the women themselves. To say, however, that women should not be allowed to make their own reproductive choices is to say that their bodies do not belong to them. The “pro-life” rhetoric unwittingly dehumanizes women by not recognizing that which is most quintessentially human about them, namely, their wills. To deprive women volition over their most personal bodily functions is to dehumanize them by making them a kind of community property. Whenever we dehumanize another person, violence is never far away even if it is not we who actually do the deed.

Which brings us to our third reason. “Pro-life” rhetoric turns violent because it is so easily misappropriated. Emotionalism and name calling may begin with people who have good intentions, but they are most effective in the hands of charlatans. Most people who carry a sign saying that abortion is killing a person, would never themselves kill the woman or the doctor that they are calling a murderer, but there are those who will hear that rhetoric and act on it at face value.

Most people who consider themselves “pro-life” are outraged and saddened by the violence which comes from the movement, but those who employ the rhetoric of emotionalism, paternalism, and oversimplification are unwittingly planting the seeds of violence. When those factors are turned into law, they represent the very essence of violence against actual human persons. It is a wonderful thing to call others to a reverence for life by teaching and by example, but to force that same value on others is violent even if done in the name of “life.”

The problem isn’t that our government has grown big. The problem is that our government has been bought. Democratic government is our only defense against corporate feudalism. The fact that government isn’t doing its job should prompt us to reform our government at any cost, not to concede our planet to predatory corporate giants.

Many atheists have long questioned whether religious groups should be tax exempt. The article below claims that the U.S. is passing up 71 billion dollars in revenue by not taxing churches, temples and mosques. It is further estimated:

* States bypass an estimated $26.2 billion per year by not requiring religious institutions to pay property taxes.

* Capital gains tax exemptions for religious institutions may be as much as $41 million a year.

* U.S. clergy may claim as much as $1.2 billion in tax exemptions annually via the parsonage allowance.

There are even voices from within religion uncomfortable with the trading off the ability to endorse candidates that embody their message to receive tax exempt status.

As a pastor I am grateful that our little community and other non-profit groups don’t have to come up with the money that would go to taxes, but I also think the article raises some fair questions.

This is a story from last week, that I should have passed on. Commondreams.org ran the story with the headline, “US Trade Agreement Leak Reveals ‘Radical New Powers’ for Multinational Corporations.” It was also titled, “Obama administration agrees to deal that contradicts domestic agenda”

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) might be described as NAFTA for Asia. Negotiations have gone on behind closed doors. Public Citizen has posted a leaked document that shows that, like NAFTA, the treaty is intended to weaken democracy and strengthen corporate power over and against sovereign nations.

To read the article, click here.