Crimen Solicitationis

You'd better have a strong stomach to watch this (and don't even think of looking for this in the American mass media); but it needs to be seen and acted on. Click the graphic at left and watch as much of it as you can: it is explosive. Endemic child sex abuse, knowledge of which is traced to the very man who is now the Catholic Pope, who also was involved in the covering up of these criminals. As one investigator points out, "The Vatican has no child protection policy. The only policy they have is to protect the perpetrators."


Still on the fundamentalism front, DefCon (it's short for "Defend the Constitution") has a new video out on what may be the defining issue for the upcoming mid-term election, not to mention the next generation's chance at a safe and democratic future. It's about the threat to freedom posed by the religious right, the force that has funded and otherwise buttressed the Bushies from day one, even as the whackos in Washington privately referred to their most maniacal adherents as "nuts," according to one right-wing turncoat's recent book.

Keith Olbermann has the rest of the story on Kuo's book (here and here); and later this week, we'll have a unique perspective on Karl Rove in particular. Hint: it has to do with the speaker of this week's mystery banner quote.

When it comes to exposing religious fundamentalism and its campaign for the destruction of democracy, there is scarcely room to contain the stories of deceit and depredation. Mr. Kuo wrote a book about it; Amy Berg made a movie.

In an academic paper(pdf download, 156kb) with the same title as Berg's film, a group of psychologists reminds us of the foundation on which the entire program of the religious right rests. These authors quote Ernest Becker, who we have heard from recently:

It is [fear] that makes people so willing to follow brash, strong-looking demagogues with tight jaws and loud voices: those who focus their measured words and their sharpened eyes in the intensity of hate, and so seem most capable of cleansing the world of the vague, the weak, the uncertain, the evil. Ah, to give oneself over to their direction—what calm, what relief.
—Ernest Becker, The Birth and Death of Meaning (1971, p. 161)

Until, of course, one of them starts trying to stick his dick up your ass.

Those of you who visit here regularly (and thanks to you all!) know that I teach and write of a personal experience of spirituality. But when I see what creeps dwell behind ritual robes and what tyrants they empower and endorse, well, Richard Dawkins' work starts to look attractive.

But I still think there is a place in the heart and in daily experience for soul, or something like it. I have written about it in one of my books, and you can now listen to part of it as well (mp3, 24MB).