Evangelist Oral Roberts dies at age 91
Evangelist Oral Roberts, who rose from tent revivals to found a multimillion-dollar organization and an Oklahoma university bearing his name, has died. He was 91.
Love the comments on this video. Too funny. Click the YouTube logo to watch it over there (and read the comments).
Non-denominational “Silent Night”
Sensible night, appropriate night Snow on ground, left and right Round yon purchase of decorative things Tolerant rewrite of carols to sing Function with relative ease, Function with relative ease.
That was the lovely rendition of this traditional Christmas hymn rewritten for the masses. Shirley actually has a beautiful voice, but it was more hilarious than moving. I like this show because it’s clever and Joel McHale is funny as Jeff Winger (also see “The Soup“). Best of all, the show acknowledges every week that the world is made up of many different types of people, and this week, many different religious philosophies including “none” (Comparative Religion on Hulu).
Turns out, Shirley is a Christian (WWBJD – What would Baby Jesus Do?), Jeff is agnostic, Britta is an atheist, Troy is a Jehovah’s Witness, Abed is Muslim, and Annie’s a Jew. Oh, and Pierce is part of some dope smoking cult with Buddha bongs. And don’t forget about non-denominational Mr. Winter! They do a really nice riff off of each characters’ beliefs while skewering religion in general and essentially highlighting what little sense it makes. Funny aside from Shirley when she noted that Britta brought something to the party that represented what she believes in… nothing.
Check it out. Worth your time and good for a few laughs.
Cast:
Yvette Nicole Brown as Shirley
Danny Pudi as Abed
Gillian Jacobs as Britta
Joel McHale as Jeff
Alison Brie as Annie
Chevy Chase as Pierce
Donald Glover as Troy
Bonus:
Anthony Michael Hall as the Bully
I have recently been enjoying a complimentary subscription to ‘The Week’ – (”All you need to know about everything that matters.”) It’s very well done. Similar to ‘The Economist’ but not so dry and boring. Anyway, the most recent issue had this piece:
Ireland: Our priests teach us how to lie
Such hairsplitting is repugnant even if the liar weren’t a priest, said Vincent Browne in The Sunday Business Post.
Vincent Browne
The Sunday Business Post
It’s official: We now have Catholic doctrine on how to lie, said Vincent Browne. A damning government report on sexual abuse by the clergy shows that Archbishop Desmond Connell covered up for the abusive priests under his authority, even lying to investigators. But Connell claims that these lies were not really lies because he had a “mental reservation” about what he was saying.
As he put it, “You can use an ambiguous expression, realizing that the person who you are talking to will accept an untrue version of whatever it may be.” So, for example, when asked whether he had paid off a victim of one of his abusive priests, Connell answered that diocese funds “are not used” for that purpose. By using the present tense, he reasons, he wasn’t excluding the possibility that diocesan funds had been used for such a purpose in the past. It’s the same defense Bill Clinton used when he invoked the definition of “is.” Similarly, when a female victim complained that Connell was lying when he said he had cooperated in the investigation of her case, he countered that he never stipulated that he had cooperated “fully.”
Such hairsplitting is repugnant even if the liar weren’t a priest. “And these guys presume to lecture the rest of us on morality?”
A longer version of his column is here:
Vatican cannot escape blame in abuse scandal
06 December 2009
By Vincent Browne
The cynical indifference by Irish Catholic bishops to the sexual abuse of children perpetrated by their brother priests is not the full story, by any means. The culpability of the leadership of the Catholic Church at the Vatican is part of that fuller story, as I hope to demonstrate.
Clerical child sex abuse is only a small part of the scarifying phenomenon of child sex abuse in Ireland.
However, let’s examine the culpability of the Vatican authorities and its indifference to the welfare of children. Desmond Connell became Catholic archbishop of Dublin in 1988. Twelve years later he was singled out to hold the second-most prestigious position in the Catholic Church, that of cardinal.
It is not believable that, from 1988 to 2000, when Connell was appointed cardinal, the Church authorities in Rome had no idea how he handled (or rather, mishandled) clerical sex abuses cases here, and how he had lied about at least one of these cases.
The case in which clearly he lied concerned the courageous victim Andrew Madden, and the priest, Ivan Payne.
Payne was a serial child abuser who abused at least 31 people.
Madden made a complaint about Payne in 1981, claiming that Payne had sexually abused him for five years. The Church authorities knew of the abuse from 1981 onwards but, essentially, nothing was done.
In 1989, Madden repeated his complaint, this time to an auxiliary bishop, and asked why Payne had been moved to another parish where he might well abuse again.
Neither this auxiliary bishop nor Connell made any effort to enquire into the grounds of the complaint to determine whether Payne remained a danger to children.
Madden threatened legal proceedings against Payne in March 1992. Madden wrote to Connell in April 1993 complaining about the delay in settling the case. Connell instructed the diocesan solicitors to offer Payne financial assistance to settle the case. A settlement was reached the following month.
In 1994, Madden went to the media, first on the Gay Byrne radio programme. The case got widespread publicity.
Connell went on radio in May 1995 and said, in relation to the handling of clerical child sex abuse cases: ‘‘I have compensated nobody, I have paid nobody.” He went onto say that the finances of the diocese ‘‘are not used in any way’’ to make settlements in civil actions concerning clerical child abuse. Madden exposed this claim as a lie.
On October 4, 1995, I wrote in a newspaper column, in reference to Connell’s statements quoted above: ‘‘We now know that each of these statements is essentially misleading. Archbishop Connell provided £27,000 to compensate a clerical child abuser victim and, in doing so, the finances of the diocese were used in a particular way to make a settlement.
‘‘But not just that. We also know that Archbishop Connell failed to report the commission of a crime to the Garda, in spite of a legal obligation to do so. Connell knew that a crime had been committed because he had made £27,000 available to the priest to make a settlement for the crime.
‘‘We also know that the priest in question was given some form of therapeutic assistance, after which he was proclaimed fit to resume pastoral work.
‘‘If no crime had been committed, then what was this therapy for and, if it was for something unconnected with the crime, why was it mentioned in this connection?”
I do not claim any special insight.
My purpose in quoting myself is simply to show how there was widespread appreciation at the time that Connell had failed to report a crime to the Garda and had lied about making funds available to compensate a victim of clerical abuse and had failed quickly to move a priest from a parish, who he had every reason to believe was a child sex abuser.
If I and several others, including the dogs in the street, knew about this at the time, is it believable that the Vatican did not know about it?
Neither is it believable that they knew nothing about any of the other cases which he mishandled during that period from 1988 to 2000.
When the proposal arose – I assume some time in early 2000 – of appointing Connell to the College of Cardinals, one assumes rudimentary checks were made to determine the suitability of the appointment.
One assumes the Papal Nuncio – and perhaps some other bishops in Ireland – would have been consulted.
Is it plausible that none of them would have mentioned to the Vatican anything about the Payne case and the lie which Connell told in that connection?
Assuming that such mention was made, isn’t it likely that further enquiries would have been made into how Connell had handled other clerical sex abuses cases since his appointment as archbishop in 1988?
If the Papal Nuncio made no such report and not a single bishop did so, doesn’t that in itself say something about the institutional Catholic Church?
More likely, the Vatican was aware all along about the ‘‘mental reservation’’ and the cover-ups, and saw absolutely no reason why that should disbar Connell from the College of Cardinals, because the sexual abuse of a few children is a trifling matter in the panoply of power and importance of the church.
One final reflection. This quite proper outrage over the bishops and the cover-ups and the lies disguises a larger phenomenon.
The incidence of child sex abuse in Ireland is enormous.
According to that Sexual Abuse and Violence in Ireland (SAVI) report of 2002, around 320,000 people were raped in childhood, and there is little reason to believe the incidence of child rape has diminished.
The incidence of child rape among the clergy is certainly greater than among the population at large, but only about 4 per cent of child rapes have been perpetrated by the clergy.
The government shows no interest at all, aside from the odd photo opportunity.
sbpost@iol.ie
I would guess this is about par for the last couple of thousand years.
Sam Ogden, contributing writer for the wildly popular skeptical blog, Skepchick, sits down with Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson of the Hayden Planetarium and the NOVA scienceNOW program for a conversation about the universe, scientific literacy, and sundry other topics. Part 1 covers the latest in astrophysics and the universe.
I have always liked Jeff Atwood’s blog. I really appreciated his latest post. I have seen the Project Xanadu list many times, but it’s always nice to see a refresher… it’s that important and that thought provoking.
Most importantly are Ted Nelson’s four maxims:
Here is a very cool screenshot of Project Xanadu showing the Bible cross referenced with myriad other sources:
Thanks for the post, Jeff. Keep up the excellent work.
And the people replied…