Due to the press of work, I’ve sorely neglected Jeffrey Tayler’s secular Sunday sermons in Salon. With his latest piece, timorously called “Make them shut up about God: The right-wing’s religious delusions are killing us—and them,” he’s solidifying his position as a latter-day Mencken.
Although the piece is mostly about the Republican Presidential candidates’ perennial God-osculation, which Tayler calls a “crazy-house carnival of lurid grotesquerie,” he starts off with a few swipes at the Pontiff:
These are trying times for rationalist rejecters of make-believe celestial tyrants and human-authored “magic” books.
A paunchy old man in a white frock and beanie (aka Pope Francis), who happens to preside over an obscenely wealthy institution (the Catholic Church) riddled with practicing child molesters, flies to the world’s first secular republic and receives not torrents of abuse and cries for impeachment, but a reception befitting a head of state (which he is, thanks only to the fascist government of Mussolini and the Lateran Treaty).During his visit, said frocked and beanied pontiff utters soothing verbiage about tolerance and rights and the need to welcome refugees, yet the Vatican itself has taken in a total of one Syrian family (and a Christian one, of course). Aware of mounting criticism to his organization’s penchant for aiding, abetting and sheltering child molesters, he nevertheless lauds his bishops for their courage, “self-criticism” and “great sacrifice” in having to deal with their proliferating child abuse cases, thereby outraging their victims. (This, just after it emerged that Syracuse Bishop Robert Cunningham, in sworn testimony delivered in a federal court, has de facto blamed such victims for their own molestation.) Speaking before a joint session of Congress, the pontiff then proffers insipid banalities and gets standing ovations, and has the gall to preach about the welfare of children.
For a truly horrifying look at one Catholic bishop, click on the word “blamed” above.
At the end, Tayler criticizes reporters’ tendency to avoid questioning candidates about religion, and offers his own questions:
Sample questions to be put to pietistic contenders for the White House: What makes you believe in God? Do you hear voices? See visions? Do you believe God answers your prayers? If so, please provide objective evidence. Why is, say, the Bible or the Torah better than the Quran? Does not the eternal hellfire the supposedly merciful Jesus promised sinners epitomize Constitutionally prohibited cruel and unusual punishment? If you consider the Bible a reliable guide for your personal life, may I ask if would you slaughter your child on God’s command (as Abraham was prepared to do)? Would you stone your daughter to death for not being a virgin on her wedding night? If not, why not? What scriptural authority can you cite for following your “Holy Book” in some cases, but not in others?
And what about Balaam’s jabbering donkey? Please explain how 21st century humans are to take such a tale seriously.
Of course, those questions will never be asked, and for obvious reasons. But if a candidate were a Raelian or Scientologist, or for that matter a 9-11 truther or UFO-abduction believer, you can be that they’d be asked about those faith-based beliefs. The days in which candidates didn’t want to discuss their religion, as in the case of Harry Truman or JFK, are gone. Now they can’t shut up about it—and the American public is eating it up. What has changed?
h/t: John C.
sub
subordinate sub
sub^2 ??
Wow this Jeffrey Taylor is almost if not as good as Hitch was at pointing out the BS. And as for what has changed in America to make it a virtue to god speak, I believe it all started with Reagan – so whatever he did!
And on second thought – wasn’t it somewhat extraordinary that a practicing Catholic made it to President of the United States? JFK may have thought it wise not to push the point that he was a Catholic.
This contrasts in Canada where belief is private and many of our leaders were Catholics but didn’t promote it. It’s only our recent Evangelical leader who seems to sprinkle his relgious propensities throughout public life with his out of place “God bless Canada” and his “prayers”.
Being a bit of a JKF buff, I know that his religion was an issue and it was often discussed and worried about. A main concern that was brought up was whether he would place our country and laws before the will of the pope since a Catholic was not supposed to disobey the will of Rome. If I recall, he addressed it carefully and directly, but also managed to deflect the issue as he was effective at working with the press. If the same sensibilities were around today I expect it would have been magnified to a great controversy by todays’ media which loves to echo and re-echo every prurient bit of nonsense and speculation.
But remember too that JFK barely won his election. I do not know how much his religion effected that.
As a certain wise man once put it, “The president of the United States has claimed, on more than one occasion, to be in dialogue with God. If he said that he was talking to God through his hairdryer, this would precipitate a national emergency. I fail to see how the addition of a hairdryer makes the claim more ridiculous or offensive.”
Brother Tayler is clearly channelling the same spirits….
b&
sub (may have something to say later)
Herewith my poem:
Professor Dr C.W. Jefford
Office:
Institute of Chemical Design
5 chemin du Milieu
CH-1279 Bogis Bossey
Tel: +41-22-776-3693
Fax: +41-22-776-3601
Mob: +41-79-263-7905
Skypename: cwjefford
Good comments, Jerry and Jeffrey.
You all might like my take on the papal visit, Pope Francis, and Catholicism:
http://ivn.us/2015/09/25/opinion-visit-pope-francis-reminds-us-need-outgrow-religion/
He also mentioned Fiorina’s comment that “people of faith make better leaders” which, oddly enough, has to be interpreted to mean that self-admitted and willing sheep make better leaders. I’m confused.
There is an optimist in the house. The House of WhyEvolutionIsTrue, that is. Of that collection, the only one that I think would face a better-than-evens chance of being grilled over their beliefs would be the Raelian – and that is solely on the basis that they’re the smallest of the groups.
But it’s bed time for me, if I’m going to try to see the eclipse.
The Mormons seemed to have escaped that sort of scrutiny.
Good PR flacks, or relatively large population? Or both.
I think this is a good answer to Jerry’s question. I’d also add that George W. pretended he was actually chosen by G*d and flaunted his religion at every opportunity. This really riled the R-zealots, and then with Obama came the hate and bigotry card and viola…the rabid base of American-Taliban is born.
I’m surprised Taylor left out the canonization of Junipero Serra as another black mark on the Pope’s visit.
Ha, indeed! I see that Serra was as demented as the R candidates.
And this, oy: “The declaration of Serra as a Catholic saint by the Holy See was controversial with some Native Americans who criticize Serra’s treatment of their ancestors and associate him with the suppression of their culture.[5]” [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junípero_Serra ]
Not only that, he also was prone to self-flagellation but perhaps the most telling paragraph in his Wikipedia article is this:
In September 1752, Serra filed a report to the Spanish Inquisition in Mexico City from Jalpan, on “evidences of witchcraft in the Sierra Gorda missions.” He denounced several Christian non-Indians who lived in and around the mission for “the most detestable and horrible crimes of sorcery, witchcraft and devil worship… If it is necessary to specify one of the persons guilty of such crimes, I accuse by name a certain Melchora de los Reyes Acosta, a married mulattress, an inhabitant of the said mission… In these last days a certain Cayetana, a very clever Mexican woman of said mission, married to one Pérez, a mulatto, has confessed — she, being observed and accused of similar crimes, having been held under arrest by us for some days past — that in the mission there is a large congregation of [Christian non-Indians], although some Indians also join them, and that these persons,…flying through the air at night, are in the habit of meeting in a cave on a hill near a ranch called El Saucillo, in the center of said missions, where they worship and make sacrifice to the demons who appear visibly there in the guise of young goats and various other things of that nature… If such evil is not attacked, the horrible corruption will spread among these poor [Indian] neophytes who are in our charge.”[22]
Here, we have a supposedly “modern” Pope, but no one blinks an eye about this mass murderer who believed in possessed goats and flying witches being honored and canonized. Move along folks…nothing to see here…
Jerry, I want to thank you for “turning me on” to Jeffery Taylor. Since your first mention of him, I have been enjoying his commentary in Salon. Man, that dude can write! Lotsa fun. Shades of Hitchens. I wonder what he’d be like in a debate?
Gotta love “frocked & beanied pontiff.”
‘Pontiff swiping’ that’s a good one!