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In a move intended to signal that the Vatican will no longer tolerate sexual abuse, the disgraced Scottish Cardinal O’Brian has been asked to leave that country and to spend several months in prayer and atonement. The Vatican will rule on the case at some point, but so far the church’s track record of disciplining cardinals has been pretty weak. For example, a cardinal in the United States was caught covering up for priests who had committed acts of child abuse. The cardinal resigned from that post, but was given a plush job at the Vatican. Some have said, in today’s Catholic Church, cardinals are virtually “untouchable.”

To make the story more complicated, this Cardinal has been an outspoken critic of gay rights. He had called same-sex marriage a “grotesque subversion of a universally accepted human right.” So when he confessed “that my sexual conduct has fallen below the standards expected of me as a priest, archbishop and cardinal” (translation: he had inappropriate sexual behavior with men), some said that his (and the church’s) primary sin is hypocrisy. How can the church be so persistent in forcing its morals upon others, and so negligent in holding its own hierarchy to any kind of meaningful accountability? For the same acts, lay people go to prison and clergy get transferred.

Some will object to the statement that Cardinal O’Brian has been sentenced to a three month vacation. They will say that this will be a time of prayer and penitance. But shouldn’t priests be doing that all the time? When all is said and done, Cardinal O’Brian is expected to move to a comfortable retirement in church supported lodgings. For now, his “punishment” is to lay low for several months. Perhaps, his transgressions will soon be forgotten; but, right now, the Scottish bishops want him out of that country because they say he is damaging the church’s credibility.

And I suspect this problem will continue as long as the church is more concerned with its credibility than its integrity.

“I think I’m getting old.” Rev. Clovis Jones said shaking his head. “I seem to find an argument with everything these days. Little noises in the library throw me off. I keep criticizing my daughter for little things I did when I was a teenager, even when I wake up promising myself I won’t. The other day I got mad at the cicadas for making so much noise when I was trying to sleep. The more I try to control the things around me, the crazier I get.”

Texas Buddha smiled in recognition of the all too human trait. “I once heard of a woman who had jaundice. Everything she looked at appeared yellow.  She washed her sheets over and over. She washed her plates for hours. She scrubbed her teeth until her gums bleed.  Nothing she did could get the yellow out until she cured her own sickness.”

“And the moral is?” Rev. Jones asked, already suspecting the answer.

“We cannot stop the disturbances  all around us, until we quiet the disturbance coming from within.”

TB took a pad and wrote, “Do not disturb.”

“Here,” he said, “hang this on your soul.”

The good Reverend laughed and put the note in his pocket.

We know so little about her. She has emerged onto the big stage so suddenly. Unlike most political stars she has more gravity than charisma. So far, Senator Elizabeth Warren is naming the elephants in the room, at least when it comes to economic issues. She wants to know why Attorney General Eric Holder has made no effort to punish big banks for the crime of the century. She is asking hard questions, and is not satisfied with typical answers.

When Thomas Curry who heads the independent bank regulation within the Treasury Department said there is not need to actually put people on trial, Warren responded:

“There are district attorneys and United States attorneys out there every day squeezing ordinary citizens on sometimes very thin grounds and taking them to trial in order to make an example, as they put it. I’m really concerned that ‘too big to fail’ has become ‘too big for trial,'”

She may turn out to disappoint, but so far she is saying what needs to be said to the crony capitalists who call themselves our government.

Most of what people think they know about hell doesn’t actually comes from the Bible but from literature. Milton and Dante had much more to do with popular notions of hell than anything Jesus said. The following article from the BBC is a nice introduction to some of the incredible inconsistencies anyone faces who would take the symbol of hell literally.

Any God who would imperfectly create human beings and then built a torture chamber to punish them for being imperfect would be beneath contempt, much less worthy of worship.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22512160

“Obama’s Justice Department is under fire following revelations revealed by the Associated Press that the government secretly obtained two months worth of private phone records from the news agency in 2012 during what appears to be a brazen attempt to discover the source of an intelligence leak.” -Joe Queally, Alternet

“The media’s purpose is to keep the public informed and it should be free to do so without the threat of unwarranted surveillance,” -Laura W. Murphy, ACLU

What surprises me most about the president’s AP scandal is that people are surprised.

This president is very smart and likeable. I voted for him both times, but to be painfully honest, this president has waged war against civil liberties and transparency in government from day one. Where did people think that train was going to go?  President Obama has been more successful than even President Bush at peeling back protections against invasions of privacy. Did anyone think that shattering protections so the government could spy on Muslims, and others linked (however remotely) to terrorism, would not be applied elsewhere? Did liberals really think an administration that would violate the rights of Tea Party members would treat them differently? Did anyone really believe the president’s war against whistleblowers was so the Government could be more open? Did people think it was a coincidence that this administration would nominate someone linked to government spy programs to head the FCC?

The UK Guardian laments:

“Although Obama was elected on a liberal ticket in 2008 and again in 2012, his administration has mounted a sustained campaign through the courts and other means against whistleblowers, particularly in relation to what it claims are sensitive intelligence matters.

Media organisations and civil rights groups complain that many of the cases it appear to have to do with administrative secrecy than matters of national security.

The Obama administration has brought six cases against people suspected of leaking classified information, which AP described as being more than under all previous presidents combined.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which focuses on protecting civil liberties in the digital age, said that US citizens and press advocates should be upset at the new revelations, but that it should be seen as an expected development given the pattern of behavior by law enforcement and government intelligence agencies in recent years.

Overall, the group said in a post on their blog, “this revelation of government’s secret access to huge amounts of calling records as part of its leak investigation should not be such a surprise. The DOJ has long maintained that no one has any privacy interests in their call data records and has also engaged in unprecedented and aggressive prosecutions around government leaks.”

The problem isn’t just with President Obama, it it is a weakness of our entire national culture. Here’s a news flash: There is no honor among thieves. Which ever party one belongs to, we need to find principles that are fair to all even those who aren’t American. If we do not believe  in human rights for all people, we do not believe in human rights at all.

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/05/14

The prophets were not fortune tellers. They were people who understood human nature and tried to tell arrogant and powerful nations that they were destroying themselves when they mistreated the weak. Apocalyptic literature is a form of poetry that emerged when a nation or culture was past saving. After prophets had failed in their attempts to get a nation to change its course, they revert to a different kind of speech.  When it was too late to avoid calamity, apocalyptic poetry encouraged people to give up their false hopes in the dying forms, and to develop a new hope that would guide them through the transition.

If a prophet like Jeremiah were to speak to us today, I think he would say there apocalyptic signs all around us. The word “apocalypse” means to take the lid off something. So I think Jeremiah would say that the shooting in New Orleans on Mother’s Day was not just a self contained tragedy, it was also a revelation of our larger plight as a people.

A nation is dying when its leaders are more concerned that every citizen has a gun than that they have a decent job.

A nation is dying when it can find water on Mars before it can provide drinkable water for people in Africa.

A nation is dying when there are army recruiting stations in high schools within visual range of veterans holding cardboard signs begging for money at traffic intersections.

A nation is dying when the rich are making unprecedented profit and the poor cannot make a livable wage.

A nation is dying when people have to turn to reality shows because they have no real lives of their own.

A nation is dying when typed conversations on Face book replace face to face living in real communities.

A nation is dying when the masses flock to movies about violent action heroes but are afraid to take any real risk of their own.

A nation is dying when it spends more time spying on its own citizens than its supposed enemies.

When it is easier for a mentally ill person to obtain a gun than treatment, a nation is dying.

Apocalyptic literature was not a call to despair but to a different kind of hope. Jeremiah told the people that something old was dying and something new was being born.

It is very difficult, but we must now let go of any hope we can save ourselves within this preditorial economic system, or within this military empire.  We must find our worth in humanity and our safety in communion with people all over the world. If Jeremiah were here, I think he would warn us that our money and our power will not save us from the changes to come. He would remind us that the dinosaurs died with all their weapons intact. I think he would say to us, “Let go of that which is dying and choose life.”

Father McMurray had spent much of his life praying and fasting. He deeply wanted to purge himself of desire, but his ambition to be a bishop or maybe even a pope kept breaking into his meditations. Eventually, the priest went to his good friend, Texas Buddha, to ask how he might obtain the purity that eluded him.

Over dinner, TB lifted up a glass and asked, “What does it mean to speak of “pure” wine?”

The father knew his friend was leading somewhere, he smiled and answered, “It means the wine isn’t mixed with anything else?”

“Exactly. So when we speak of a “pure” human being could it not mean someone who is “purely human,” not tainted with artificial beliefs, constraints and aspirations? Have you ever danced with such abandon that you completely forgot about your feet?  Purity is like that. If you can feel your teeth there is some decay. If you see your eye as you look out of it there is some damage. Purity of heart is when we are so fully present to life and to others that the self disappears.  Stop fighting with your desires. Give yourself fully to living and loving in this moment and everything else will drop away.

After desert, TB concluded, “The pursuit of religious purity can be completely self-absorbed. Our egos are endlessly tricky. They do not mind if we fast or gorge so long as we are focused on ourselves.”

“Tolerance” does not mean to treat the bully and the bullied equally. Tolerance seeks communion with all, but if it does not stand on behalf of the oppressed, it is not tolerance but mislabeled indifference.

So Plfugerville was not only the first little town (or city) in Texas to offer equal benefits to same sex couples working in their school district, now they become the first Texas municipality where the citizens themselves stood up for equal rights for everyone in town. When two courageous school board members ran for re-election this weekend against an organized opposition, this little town smack dab in the heart of Texas rose to its full stature and demonstrated what it means to offer equal treatment before the law to everyone. A majority voted not let their school board be targeted because it had offered benefits to GLBT couples and domestic partnerships. Not to take anything away from Hutto and it’s hippo, Port Isabel and its lighthouse from the 1800’s, Marfa and its lights, or Luckenbach and its music, but today Pflugerville stands tallest in the Lone Star State.

After my sermon Sunday, I had a bunch of requests for the illustration by Thich Nhat Hanh. Thich Nhat Hanh is a wonderful Buddhist priest speaks very simply but also very profoundly. The point in sermon I was trying to make was that the line between life and death is not so clear if we consider the whole of things. I remembered Thich Nhat Hanh’s commentary on the Heart Sutra where he gives a wonderful image of a leaf dying and being reborn.

“I asked the leaf whether it was frightened because it was

autumn and the other leaves were falling.  The leaf told me,

“No.  During the whole spring and summer I was completely

alive.  I worked hard to help nourish the tree, and now much

of me is in the tree.  I am not limited by this form.  I am also

the whole tree, and when I go back to the soil, I will continue

to nourish the tree.  So I don’t worry at all.  As I leave this

branch and float to the ground, I will wave to the tree and tell

her, ‘I will see you again very soon.’

Suddenly I saw a kind of wisdom very much like the Wisdom contained in the Heart Sutra. You have to see life. You should not say, life of the leaf, you should only speak of life in the leaf and life in the tree. My life is just Life, and you can see it in me and in the tree. That day there was a wind blowing and, after a while, I saw  the leaf leave the branch and float down to the soil, dancing  joyfully, because as it floated it saw itself already there in the  tree.  It was so happy.  I bowed my head, knowing that I have a lot to learn from the leaf because it is not afraid-it knew nothing can be born and nothing can die.”