Vatican Event Loses Out to Soccer in Ireland

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

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In 1932 a Eucharistic Congress in Ireland was testament to the power of the country's Catholic faith in freeing them from British rule. Today's Eucharistic Congress marks an attempt to staunch the bleeding from the Church's self-inflicted wounds.

An international conference celebrating Roman Catholicism opened Sunday in Ireland against a backdrop of anger over child abuse cover-ups and evidence of declining faith in core church beliefs.

More than 20,000 Catholics, many from overseas, gathered for an open-air Mass in a Dublin stadium at the start of the Eucharistic Congress, a weeklong event organized by the Vatican every four years in a different part of the world. The global gathering, begun in the 19th century and last held in Quebec in 2008, highlights the Catholic Church's belief in transubstantiation, the idea that bread and wine transforms during Mass into the actual body and blood of Jesus Christ.

An opinion poll of Irish Catholics found that two-thirds of Irish Catholics don't believe this, nor do they attend Mass weekly. The survey, published last week in The Irish Times with an error margin of 3 points, also found that just 38 percent believe Ireland today would be in worse shape without its dominant church. And just three-fifths even knew the Eucharistic Congress was coming to Ireland.

Ireland is becoming a secular country where the Church's big, international event has been eclipsed by Sunday's soccer game. What a difference eighty years and a sex abuse scandal of epic proportions makes.

Mammoths of the Midwest

Mammoth mammoth bones are being retrieved from an Iowa family's backyard after their accidental discovery of a four foot femur.

The bone was discovered two years ago, and now the family's quiet home in Oskaloosa has turned into a bustling excavation site, where the bones are kept in the living room, according to ABC-affiliate ABC5-WOI in Des Moines. The University of Iowa Museum of Natural History reportedly has stepped in to oversee the research.

“The size of this discovery is quite uncommon,” Sarah Horgen, the museum's education coordinator, told ABC News. “It’s pretty exciting-–partially because the mammoth is being discovered where it died. And we know that because we’re finding very large bones right alongside very small bones.”

The mammoth bones, reported to be at least 12,000 years old, were found about 10 feet underground. "The conditions of the bones were ideal," archaeologist Marlin Ingalls of the Iowa State Archeologist's office told The Huffington Post.

Vampire Graveyard

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Iron rods? I thought they had to be wooden stakes. Clearly I've seen too many movies. 

Archaeologists in Bulgaria have found two medieval skeletons pierced through the chest with iron rods to supposedly stop them from turning into vampires.

The discovery illustrates a pagan practice common in some villages up until a century ago, say historians.

People deemed bad had their hearts stabbed after death, for fear they would return to feast on humans' blood.

Similar archaeological sites have also been unearthed in other Balkan countries.

Views of Venus

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

Well, we missed it. Nothing but clouds and rain here. But thanks to the magic of technology, voilà ici!

More viewing options and information can be found here.

Amish Hate Crime Case Going Forward

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

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Every so often you read a legal decision so clear, so lucid, that, for a moment, all the lights in the room seem brighter. Such language issued from Judge Dan Polster in his dismissal of the First Amendment claim of the sixteen Amish men accused of a hate crime against other Amish victims. In short, Judge Polster found that an assault based on sectarian differences can be charged as a hate crime.

"In fact, violent acts of the kind charged in the superseding indictment are designed to punish individuals who exercise their religious beliefs, or to chill others from doing so," he wrote.

. . .

"By the Defendants' logic, a violent assault by a Catholic on a Protestant, or a Sunni Muslim on a Shiite Muslim, or an Orthodox Jew on a non-Orthodox Jew, would not be prohibited by this statute," Polster wrote.

It's just beautiful logic and completely demystifies defense attorney Dean Carro's argument that "intrareligous actions" are not covered under the law.

Vatican Explains It All For Sister Margaret Farley

Article first published as Vatican Explains It All for Sister Margaret Farley on Blogcritics.

I can't remember when or how I learned that a great many nuns were not so down with the Catholic Church's rules on abortion and birth control. It may even have been from my grandmother who, like many women of her social station and era, did a lot of charity work. She was nothing if not pragmatic and she saw the hard reality of women living in poverty who can't plan their pregnancies. My grandmother was far more tolerant than many of her generation when it came to reproductive rights.

Nuns do a lot of outreach in poor communities and they have a better view of that toxic alchemy than does much of the greater society. And I dare say, they understand it a far sight better than do the men of the Church - especially in the hallowed halls of the Vatican. To the nuns who are working directly with women in crisis, there is nothing abstract or idealized about the birth control question. They see the toll of teen pregnancy, rape, incest - the endless cycle of abuse and exploitation from which so many women and girls in poverty have little insulation or means for recourse. They see the toll of ignorance that arises from the curtailing of sex education - yet another casualty of the culture wars.

In a way that it never has in dealing with the sex abuse crisis, the Vatican is cracking down on these uppity nuns who aren't toeing the Church line. The main issues seem to be support from nuns on Obama's health care plan, their lack of full-fledged homophobia, and something the Church calls "radical feminist" ideas. I guess that means supporting anything that doesn't keep women barefoot and pregnant. Oh, and any whisper of women's ordination, which, if you'll recall, Pope Benedict has named a "grave crime" on par with sexual abuse.

Today: Venus Transit 2012

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

It won't be visible from Earth again until 2117. Today the planet Venus will transit the sun and astute sky watchers in the Northern Hemisphere will see it as a tiny black dot moving across the sun's surface.

Transits of Venus happen in pairs eight years apart, with more than a century between cycles. During the pass, Venus appears as a small, dark round spot moving across the face of the sun, like a bug on a dinner plate.

. . .

Tuesday's transit, which bookends a 2004-2012 pair, begins at 6:09pm EDT (2209 GMT) and lasts for six hours and 40 minutes. Times can vary by seven minutes depending on the location of the observer.

Skywatchers on seven continents, including Antarctica, will be able to see all or part of the Venus transit, which should only be observed with telescopes outfitted with solar filters to protect the eyes.

MSNBC has detailed information on how the sun can be viewed safely.

Cafe

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Around the Web, Around the World

"Why Shamanism Now?" with Christina Pratt

Loneliness and Solitude

Loneliness and isolation have risen sharply in America over the past couple of decades, a trend exacerbated by the time and energy we spend cultivating our vast, but shallow social networks through Facebook, Twitter, and other social media. Loneliness is an internal psychological state that is not fundamentally changed by external conditions. "When loneliness rises to the surface of our awareness it is an internal voice calling us into solitude and honest self connection," explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt. "It means we are avoiding the very self we are looking for outside of ourselves liking on Facebook and following on Twitter." When we have the courage of heart to turn inward, into the loneliness, solitude, and the inner self we have isolated, we can change the fundamental conditions of our psychological state. If we restore our intimate connection with that inner self, we restore our appetite for intimacy and authentic connection with others in the world. Shamanic healing, which bypasses the psychology and moves from the heart, allows us to find the stamina to move through our loneliness and to create the fruitful solitude necessary to develop soul satisfying connections in our inner and outer flesh and blood worlds.

Tuesday, June 5, 2012 at 11:00 AM Pacific

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Warren Jeffs: Born Again Feminist?

Sure, there's a certain train wreck quality to it all, but I kind of wish people would stop giving Warren Jeffs's deranged ramblings so much ink.

"Let women be free, to be educated, to have full law protection from abuse, ye nations." (Verse 9 of the revelation of Sunday, May 13, 2012 at the State Prison in Palestine, Texas.)

. . .

How striking that a man convicted in Texas of molesting little girls is now calling on nations to protect little girls -- all women actually. "Full law protection." Yup. That's what he said.

Can I get an "Amen?"

We shall see how faithful his followers are. 

Except that child molesters don't think they're abusing children. It's true love. They say things like, "I would never hurt a child."

Scientism at CERN

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

I've long been a little chary about the Large Hadron Collider. I don't know if it really could open up a black hole and "swallow the earth" as some critics fear. But I also don't know that it couldn't -- law of unintended consequences and all that. It just takes on a whole new level of seriousness when you're tinkering around with the building blocks of the universe. There's more than a whiff of hubris that comes from CERN.

On the one hand, I'm sort of relieved that they're winding this grand experiment down. On the other, I kind of can't believe the arrogance of their stated position in doing so. According to CERN director Ralph Heuer:

We will know by the end of this year whether it exists or whether it is non-existent.

Except you can't prove a negative unless the positive is already known. I can prove there's no milk in my cereal bowl because I know what milk is and where my bowl is. But if I've never seen milk, I really can't. In point of fact, all they can know at the end of the year is whether or not they've proved the existence of the Higgs Boson or whether it will remain a mystery for the time being. You can't prove the non-existence of the God Particle any more than you can prove the non-existence of God -- a concept that continues to confuse dogmatic atheists. Not everything can be measured empirically. To say otherwise is the very definition of scientism. And to assume that because you haven't proved something when you've reached the limits of existing knowledge and technology is to damn the future. If science isn't self-revising it isn't science anymore.

I don't know why I'm a little stunned at the arrogance coming out of CERN considering the nature of this experiment... but I am.

The Gospel of Hate

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

Have you heard the good news? No homos in heaven! Hallelujah!

Come on. Sing it with me. Such a clever little ditty.

I know the the Bible's right
Somebody’s wrong
I know the Bible's right
Somebody's wrong
Romans 1 and 27
Ain’t no homos gonna make it to heaven

From the mouths of babes, my friend. From the mouths of babes.

"And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet." ~ Romans 1:27