Fucking Bibles...
Yes, Ed stole this. Yes, Ed knows that it's long. But you must read this.
Sr. Jeannette Normandin was a prison chaplain in a Massachusetts women's prison for years and dedicated her life to working in the community helping needy women make something of their lives. She also worked extensively with the AIDS community in trying to alleviate suffering through real works based on real solutions. She touched the lives of many. Jeannette Normandin made the mistake, one day, however, of sprinkling water during a baptism and was summarily fired--as well as evicted from the home she shared with members of her order.
Recall what was going on at the time in Massachusetts in 2000. As a routine matter, child-molesting priests were sent to expensive spas for "treatment," were provided apartments and salaries when they were determined to be unfit for parish duty, and were shielded from authorities at all costs. Indeed, hush money was offered to families to keep the sexual abuse quiet. And one 70-year-old nun, with an extraordinary lifetime of service, is evicted from her home and fired from her job for participating in a baptism. Her story was reported far and wide in these parts as illustration of the rampant hypocrisy of the Catholic Church.
Bernard Cardinal Law, under whose administration the molestation and rape of hundreds of Massachusetts children went virtually unchecked, is now leading a life of comfort and authority right in the Vatican. His bio on the Vatican's website doesn't mention his immoral, unethical, and in the minds of some, criminal behavior. It doesn't mention that under his watch the lives of hundreds of children and their families were destroyed, their futures irrevocably harmed. He is a holy man.
Let's travel abroad. Vatican policies endanger the lives of women and children in developing nations all over the world. Extraordinary political pressure, religious coercion, and the calculated dissemination of factually inaccurate information are used to consistently deny women and children responsible health care and policy. Understand that no other organization with as many resources and as many spheres of influence is as obstructionist in matters of family planning as the Catholic Church. So I say this without any reservation: any organization, its leaders included, that would actively lobby to deprive third-world women of contraceptives and family planning choices should be roundly condemned by all people of conscience. I abhor the efforts of the Catholic Church to derail birth control initiatives in third-world nations as well as their intense lobbying efforts to derail and suppress United Nations funding for family planning programs. Such policies result in untold suffering, disability, and death to innocents who have no voice, no agency, and no recourse. Such policies, in my view, epitomize evil and under no circumstances should they be accepted or tolerated simply because they exist under the imprimatur of a particular religious faith.
I have read a great deal of commentary on this site about what a wonderful man the Pope was, and, frankly, I'm appalled. There can be little doubt that the policies of the Catholic Church, propped up by $330 million a year simply to run its Vatican operations, are downright inhumane, injurious, and immoral. Yes, immoral. How else to describe concerted and prolonged efforts to prevent women from improving their lives, their health, and their children's lives? The results of such policies are plainly evident. There are millions of orphaned children in third-world nations as a direct result of the Catholic Church's coercive policies. Fact: more than a million children, mostly in the third-world, are left motherless annually by the greater than 500,000 women who die of pregnancy-related complications each year. Many suffer devastating child-birth related injury. For example, in some cultures, women are ostracized from their homes and villages due to the extremely common (80,000 per year) but horrifyingly devastating recto-vaginal fistula.
From Safe Motherhood:
Globally, at least 585,000 women die each year from the complications of pregnancy and childbirth - 99 percent in developing countries, and 90 percent in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia(2,3). Maternal mortality is the health statistic with the largest discrepancy between developing and developed countries(2). Women in northern Europe have a 1 in 4,000 chance of dying from pregnancy-related causes, while for women in Africa, the chance is 1 in 16(2). More than 70 percent of maternal deaths are due to five causes: hemorrhage, infection, unsafe abortion, hypertensive disorders of pregnancy, and obstructed labour(2). Most maternal deaths - 61 percent - take place in the postpartum period, with more than half occurring within a day of delivery(1).
In addition to the risk of death, an estimated 40 percent of pregnant women, 50 million each year, experience pregnancy-related health problems (morbidities) during or after childbirth. Fifteen percent of these women suffer serious or long-term, often debilitating, complications(3,4). As a result, 300 million women currently live with pregnancy-related health problems and disabilities, including anemia, uterine prolapse, fistulae (holes in the birth canal that allow leakage from the bladder or rectum into the vagina), pelvic inflammatory disease, and infertility(3).
The resources of the Catholic Church would be better spent in helping women gain some control over their reproduction than in foisting their obviously injurious policies on vulnerable women and children. There is absolutely nothing Christian or Christ-like in the organized subjugation of women.
I'm sorry, the hypocrisy is stunning. Those who call themselves "religious moderates" turn their backs on the suffering of the world's poor women and children every time the Catholic Church is praised, every time they tolerate Pope John Paul II being held up as a Holy Man, every time they are respectful of the pomp and ceremony [read: atrocious squandering of money--let's see the number again: $330,000,000 per year] to prop up an organization that actively seeks to retain a human hierarchy in which women are second class and are to have no real control over their reproductive future.
Now, I'm sure there will be people who counter that the Church does wonderful things. I imagine that's true. But what, pray tell, can effectively render the suffering of millions of women and children around the world an acceptable trade-off? What good can possibly overshadow such suffering?
There is nothing moderate about respecting a religious faith whose precepts and practices hurt others. That so-called tolerance, I would argue, while well-intentioned, is little more than indifference bordering on cowardice. And those who object to the Catholic Church's policies must object to the individual in charge of shaping and managing those policies--and that means holding the Pope--every Pope--accountable. I daresay so many of these very same people who are mourning the loss of a "great man," who preach religious tolerance as some sort behavioral acme, are screaming for the heads of Rumsfeld and Bush when it comes to the evils committed under the banner of U.S. governmental policy. But where is the moral outrage here? Oh, yeah. I forgot. He's a holy man. We must respect the world's faiths and religions. Such a romantic concept.
Sr. Jeannette Normandin was a prison chaplain in a Massachusetts women's prison for years and dedicated her life to working in the community helping needy women make something of their lives. She also worked extensively with the AIDS community in trying to alleviate suffering through real works based on real solutions. She touched the lives of many. Jeannette Normandin made the mistake, one day, however, of sprinkling water during a baptism and was summarily fired--as well as evicted from the home she shared with members of her order.
Recall what was going on at the time in Massachusetts in 2000. As a routine matter, child-molesting priests were sent to expensive spas for "treatment," were provided apartments and salaries when they were determined to be unfit for parish duty, and were shielded from authorities at all costs. Indeed, hush money was offered to families to keep the sexual abuse quiet. And one 70-year-old nun, with an extraordinary lifetime of service, is evicted from her home and fired from her job for participating in a baptism. Her story was reported far and wide in these parts as illustration of the rampant hypocrisy of the Catholic Church.
Bernard Cardinal Law, under whose administration the molestation and rape of hundreds of Massachusetts children went virtually unchecked, is now leading a life of comfort and authority right in the Vatican. His bio on the Vatican's website doesn't mention his immoral, unethical, and in the minds of some, criminal behavior. It doesn't mention that under his watch the lives of hundreds of children and their families were destroyed, their futures irrevocably harmed. He is a holy man.
Let's travel abroad. Vatican policies endanger the lives of women and children in developing nations all over the world. Extraordinary political pressure, religious coercion, and the calculated dissemination of factually inaccurate information are used to consistently deny women and children responsible health care and policy. Understand that no other organization with as many resources and as many spheres of influence is as obstructionist in matters of family planning as the Catholic Church. So I say this without any reservation: any organization, its leaders included, that would actively lobby to deprive third-world women of contraceptives and family planning choices should be roundly condemned by all people of conscience. I abhor the efforts of the Catholic Church to derail birth control initiatives in third-world nations as well as their intense lobbying efforts to derail and suppress United Nations funding for family planning programs. Such policies result in untold suffering, disability, and death to innocents who have no voice, no agency, and no recourse. Such policies, in my view, epitomize evil and under no circumstances should they be accepted or tolerated simply because they exist under the imprimatur of a particular religious faith.
I have read a great deal of commentary on this site about what a wonderful man the Pope was, and, frankly, I'm appalled. There can be little doubt that the policies of the Catholic Church, propped up by $330 million a year simply to run its Vatican operations, are downright inhumane, injurious, and immoral. Yes, immoral. How else to describe concerted and prolonged efforts to prevent women from improving their lives, their health, and their children's lives? The results of such policies are plainly evident. There are millions of orphaned children in third-world nations as a direct result of the Catholic Church's coercive policies. Fact: more than a million children, mostly in the third-world, are left motherless annually by the greater than 500,000 women who die of pregnancy-related complications each year. Many suffer devastating child-birth related injury. For example, in some cultures, women are ostracized from their homes and villages due to the extremely common (80,000 per year) but horrifyingly devastating recto-vaginal fistula.
From Safe Motherhood:
Globally, at least 585,000 women die each year from the complications of pregnancy and childbirth - 99 percent in developing countries, and 90 percent in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia(2,3). Maternal mortality is the health statistic with the largest discrepancy between developing and developed countries(2). Women in northern Europe have a 1 in 4,000 chance of dying from pregnancy-related causes, while for women in Africa, the chance is 1 in 16(2). More than 70 percent of maternal deaths are due to five causes: hemorrhage, infection, unsafe abortion, hypertensive disorders of pregnancy, and obstructed labour(2). Most maternal deaths - 61 percent - take place in the postpartum period, with more than half occurring within a day of delivery(1).
In addition to the risk of death, an estimated 40 percent of pregnant women, 50 million each year, experience pregnancy-related health problems (morbidities) during or after childbirth. Fifteen percent of these women suffer serious or long-term, often debilitating, complications(3,4). As a result, 300 million women currently live with pregnancy-related health problems and disabilities, including anemia, uterine prolapse, fistulae (holes in the birth canal that allow leakage from the bladder or rectum into the vagina), pelvic inflammatory disease, and infertility(3).
The resources of the Catholic Church would be better spent in helping women gain some control over their reproduction than in foisting their obviously injurious policies on vulnerable women and children. There is absolutely nothing Christian or Christ-like in the organized subjugation of women.
I'm sorry, the hypocrisy is stunning. Those who call themselves "religious moderates" turn their backs on the suffering of the world's poor women and children every time the Catholic Church is praised, every time they tolerate Pope John Paul II being held up as a Holy Man, every time they are respectful of the pomp and ceremony [read: atrocious squandering of money--let's see the number again: $330,000,000 per year] to prop up an organization that actively seeks to retain a human hierarchy in which women are second class and are to have no real control over their reproductive future.
Now, I'm sure there will be people who counter that the Church does wonderful things. I imagine that's true. But what, pray tell, can effectively render the suffering of millions of women and children around the world an acceptable trade-off? What good can possibly overshadow such suffering?
There is nothing moderate about respecting a religious faith whose precepts and practices hurt others. That so-called tolerance, I would argue, while well-intentioned, is little more than indifference bordering on cowardice. And those who object to the Catholic Church's policies must object to the individual in charge of shaping and managing those policies--and that means holding the Pope--every Pope--accountable. I daresay so many of these very same people who are mourning the loss of a "great man," who preach religious tolerance as some sort behavioral acme, are screaming for the heads of Rumsfeld and Bush when it comes to the evils committed under the banner of U.S. governmental policy. But where is the moral outrage here? Oh, yeah. I forgot. He's a holy man. We must respect the world's faiths and religions. Such a romantic concept.