excommunication isn’t about popularity or sanity, right?

Dr Karma January 26, 2009

The Pope just re-communicated four bishops who were excommunicated in the 1980s. Richard Williamson, one of the four, is a holocaust denier and thinks 9/11 was a zionist plot. While he’s been vocal about these things for years, since he gave an anti-semitic talk this week, people are upset about the timing of the re-communication (know a better term? I don’t).

First: this has nothing to do with timing. He’s been a bigot and an idiot 24/7 for years. If the issue is his belief about Jews, then what week he gets reinstated shouldn’t have anything to do with the complaints against the church now.

Second: but, his excommunication didn’t have anything to do with his beliefs about the Jews. It was because he saw the church as becoming too liberal and he joined a splinter group of traditionalists. Now that we have a very traditional Pope, it makes sense for him to be brought back in.

Third: after all, you can be a bigot and an idiot and be a Catholic; you just aren’t supposed to go against whatever they’re for at the moment.

Theoretically, excommunication comes if you’re a heretic. To be a heretic (by the way, that word comes from the Greek for choice), you have to have a member of the Church tell you what to believe and then refuse to believe it. This is what distinguishes it from paganism, etc.

As far as I know, Catholics still have the choice to not believe in the holocaust. Has there been an official position on that?

P.S. I’m not defending this guy; I’m just questioning the logic of the complaints. If I got to design hell, he would be in it, along with a bunch of other stupid/evil people.

0 comments

What will Cheney do now?

Dr Karma January 22, 2009

Politics and other nonsense

My friend Afzal asked me yesterday what I thought Cheney might do now. Here are my top five ideas:

1. He will retire to an undisclosed location to ponder whether his nickname is unfortunate, if fitting.

2. He will start construction on the third Death Star.

3. He will hide in his man-size safe to wait out the racial civil war my mother assures me is coming.

4. He will wait for someone to ask him who to hire for a powerful job and then nominate himself.

5. After taking off his human camouflage, he will return to his planet of Predators a failure. While he hunted the most dangerous game–man–he did not get a kill shot. It's true--there is no good part of him anymore. Tell your sister you fucked up.

1 comment

On watching the inaugeration via CNN

Dr Karma January 20, 2009

Politics and other nonsense

1. I was not impressed when Wolf Blitzer told me that they could show me what the Mall would look like if I were watching the inaugeration from a plane overhead. Methinks CNN believes random technology is a replacement for coverage.

2. I was happy that they did not have that stupid crawl on today. The crawl started right after 9/11, when there was news other than 9/11, but we couldn’t talk about anything else. 9/11 is over and there isn’t usually enough news in the day (that the American press will cover), so they need to get rid of the words at the bottom of the screen. I get distracted from what they’re saying because I see ” . . . Madonna’s elbow” and then I have to wait until it comes around again.

3. I can’t help but think that Justice Roberts was trying to ruin Obama’s mojo on purpose.

4. Great music, which is why Wolf Blitzer needed to shut up about the “president at noon” thing. He said that about every fifteen minutes.

5. The preachers did a great job. And I say that as a woman who doesn’t generally believe what they do.

6. I liked Obama’s nomination acceptance speech better than this one–the former was longer and more specific.

7. Obama said “forebearers” instead of “forefathers.” Right on!

8. Am glad that Obama mentioned that some people didn’t have faith (a shout out to the atheists), but he only mentioned a couple of the “major” religions. Would be pissed if I were Hindu.

9. Atheists need to come out of the closet. When Julia Sweeney “lost” her faith, her father said he wishes she’d come out as lesbian instead, because that was “socially acceptable.” We need to fight for the right to be a humanist/naturalist (even if we aren’t–we need to fight for the rights of others in the land of the free.)

10. Bush looked a little pissed when Obama said some things that went against Bush’s policies.

11. Obama is President! Woohoo!

8 comments