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VATICAN ASKS COURT, U.S. GOVERNMENT TO DISMISS LAWSUIT OVER NAZI GOLD Church Evades Responsibility For Clerical Fascism
From: AMERICAN ATHEISTS. Subject: AANEWS for November 26, 2000
A M E R I C A N A T H E
I S T S #847 11/26/00
http://www.atheists.org ftp.atheists.org/pub/atheists/
??
http://www.americanatheist.org http://www.AtheistViewpoint.tv
??
AMERICAN ATHEISTS:
"Leading The Way For Atheist Civil Rights And The Separation
Of State and Church"
--------------------------------------------------------------
The Institute for Religious Works -- the cover name for the Vatican bank -- has asked a U.S. District Court in San Francisco to dismiss a lawsuit charging the Holy See with laundering gold expropriated from Holocaust and other victims during W.W.II.
A class action filed in November, 1999 accuses the Vatican of colluding with the Swiss National Bank and the Franciscan Order in concealing hundreds of millions of dollars in gold and assets stolen by the Croatian Nazi Ustashi (Ustasha) regime between 1941-1945. A San Francisco law firm headed by Jonathan Levy and Thomas Dewey Easton represents 28 plaintiffs in ALPERIN v. VATICAN BANK.
The suit deals with atrocities carried by the Nazi puppet government of Ante (Anton) Pavelic, head of the "Catholic State of Croatia." The Pavelic regime was typical of political movements which had sprung up throughout Europe and supported "Clerical Fascism" -- an amalgam of orthodox Catholic doctrine, Anti-Semitism and authoritarian politics. These groups enjoyed the assistance of both the Fascist government in Italy under Mussolini and Nazi Germany's "Ausland" department which assisted like-minded movements outside of Hitler's state. In Croatia, Pavelic's Roman Catholic terrorists received critical funding in 1939 from Mussolini, and with the help of Archbishop A. Stepanic helped establish the Croat Separatist Movement and eventually seized power.
Under the Ustashi, a virtual reign of terror descended upon Jews, Orthodox Serbs who refused to convert to Catholicism, and political dissidents. Pavelic's government operated death camps, and extorted a fortune in gold and other valuables, much from Jews who were shipped to work and extermination camps in Germany. The Ustashi had the support of the Catholic Church (Archbishop Stepanic was the group's official "chaplain" and gave his blessing to the Pavelic regime), and especially the Croatian Franciscans. The San Francisco lawsuit charges that the Catholic order "engaged in far ranging crimes including genocide, funding the reestablishment of the Croatian Nazi movement in South America in the 1950s, and setting up a false Marian religious shrine in Medjugorje, Bosnia in 1981 to bilk pilgrims of funds." The money from this "miracles on demand" scam was then "combined with the remnants of the Croatian Nazi Treasury to fund a second round of ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and Kreanjina in the 1990s."
The latest battle in the lawsuit comes after several interesting developments...
* On October 11, 2000, Levy and Easton announced that the plaintiffs were asking a Federal Magistrate to order the Institute for Religious Works (the Vatican Bank) to divulge information about itself "including its ownership." At issue was who actually owned the bank. "There may be certain defenses available to the bank if it is owned by the Vatican City state but if it owned by an individual or individuals the situation is completely different."
* This past Friday, October 24, Reuters news service revealed that the Vatican was asking that the suit against IOR and the Franciscan Order be dismissed. The plaintiffs have been unable to successfully serve legal notice on the Swiss National Bank. In a 41-page filing, Vatican attorneys charged that the Holocaust-Ustashi victims "lack standing to bring a general challenge to the wartime political decisions of a foreign sovereign (state)."
Supporting the Vatican's filing is a "Verbal Note" from the Holy See's Secretary of State posted at http://www.vaticanbankclaims.com/vatsec.htm which acknowledges the San Francisco case and a similar suit in Los Angeles, and cites diplomatic immunity.
"Basing itself upon the diplomatic relations which exist between the United States of America and the Holy See, as well as the recognition which the Government of the United States has accorded to the sovereignty of the Holy See and of Vatican City State, the Secretariat of State requests the intervention of the Federal Government of the United States of America..."
* The suit draws upon a treasure trove of historical documents, including declassified CIA files, a 1998 U.S. Department of State Report, and revelations made by researchers Mark Aarons and John Loftus in their book "Unholy Trinity." These and other materials describe the role of the Vatican and the Franciscan group in providing passports via a "ratline" run by the Holy See for former fascist officials, including Adolph Eichmann, Gestapo official Klaus Barbie, and Ustashi dictator Pavelic. One 1946 U.S. Treasury document, for instance, indicates that the Vatican served as a repository for more than 200 million Swiss francs. Catholic officials linked to the "ratline" operation include Bishop Alois Mudal and Giovanni Montini (who became Pope Paul VI).
* The Los Angeles suit, NAUMOVIC v. SWISS NATIONAL BANK, has sought restitution from Swiss banks on behalf of the survivors of over 12 million non-Jewish victims of the Nazis in Yugoslavia and Russia. There is also LEVY v. CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY which involves a Freedom of Information request for files regarding the activities of the Vatican spymaster, Fr. Krusnoslav Draganovic. Draganovic was part of a cadre of high Catholic officials who were indicted for war crimes, including Fr. Dragutin Kamber; Bishop Ivan Saric ("Hangman of the Serbs"); Bishop Gregory Rozman; and Franciscan Fr. Miroslam Filipovic-Majstorovic, a commandant of a Ustashi torture camp where hundreds of thousands of victims (Jewish and non-Jewish) were slaughtered with a degree of brutality that shocked even the Nazi SS.
Draganovic was a Franciscan and senior Ustashi official in charge of the forced "conversion" of Serb Orthodox believers to Catholicism. In 1943, he gained an appointment in Vatican City where he operated an Ustashi cell housed in a seminary of Croatian monks. He and another priest identified as Golik helped operate the Vatican "ratline" to obtain forged documents, including Red Cross passports, for a number of Croatian fascists. Draganovic came to be known as "The Golden Priest," since he ended up with at least some of the gold smuggled out of Croatia when the Germans retreated. He was never charged for his crimes, and returned to Yugoslavia where he died in 1983.
* The legacy of the "ratline" and other operations -- many of which involved the Holy See -- shaped the postwar era. Some Vatican-held gold made its way to Latin America where German and other Nazi expatriates found a warm welcome, and established economic combines and cultural/political groups. Klaus Barbie, the Gestapo chief of Lyons, used his influence to work with Bolivia drug lord Robert Suarez and pull off the notorious "Cocaine Coup" which placed the notorious Hugo Banzer Suarez in power in Bolivia. Another fascist operative who maintained close ties to the Vatican was the mysterious Liccio Gelli, a former Italian Black Shirt who after the war worked closely with the CIA in "Operation Gladio." Gelli was in charge of a renegade Masonic Lodge, P-2 or Propaganda Due which in the late 1970s and early 80s was linked to an attempted fascist coup in Italy. He was a close friend of Argentine President Juan Peron, and backed the dictator's return to power in 1973; he also was part of an arms-for-machinery deal involving Libya, Italy and Argentina. Gelli was a central player in the collapse of the Banco Ambrosiano and the mysterious 1982 death of banker Roberto Calvi; that story linked the Vatican Bank, then under the control of American monsignor Paul Marcinkus.
Obfuscation, Denials From The Holy See
The bloody history of the Catholic State of Croatia is emerging as part of a larger tapestry involving the role played by the Vatican in World War II, particularly in respect to the Jews. Recent books have explored the role played by Archbishop Pacelli, the papal nuncio in Munich, Germany who later became Pope Pius XII. Not only was Pacelli an anti-Semite, but he may well have found an accommodation with Hitler preferable to the specter of what he described as "Bolshevik atheism." Loftus and Aarons are among those who argue that Pacelli encourage the Church to invest large amounts of cash in the Germany economic recovery, and may have even personally handed Hitler a large amount of "church money."
Other evidence points to an obscure group called the Intermarium, a Catholic laity organization that labored to establish "clerical fascist" regimes throughout Europe as a bulwark against the Soviets. Fr. Draganovic was allegedly linked to this group.
The role played by Pius XII -- and the charge that he ignored the plight of European Jews -- is still debated by historians. Recently rediscovered cables from 1942, such as one sent from the U.S. Envoy to the Holy See, Harold Tittmann to Washington, paint a mixed if not disturbing picture. Tittmann suggests that Vatican leadership "did not (repeat 'not') believe that the Allies were in a position to win the war in Europe." This fueled Allied concerns that the Vatican would push for a "compromise" settlement, and that "the pope's peacemaking ambitions might be exploited for their own ends by the Axis powers." Pius' obsessive fears with Communism may well have led him into refusing to unequivocally condemn the slaughter of the Jews.
The Vatican has steadfastly denied involvement in any this, including the acquisition of Ustashi gold and other pilfered assets. The Vatican Bank was "initialized" in 1929 Lateran Treaty or Concordant between the Holy See and the government of Benito Mussolini. This agreement established the Vatican as an independent city-state, declared Roman Catholicism as the "official" religion of the new Fascist order, and compensated the papacy for the earlier confiscation of papal lands. Along with an estimated $85 million contribution to establish the bank, the Mussolini government declared church properties outside of the Vatican City limits to be tax exempt; and all Vatican Bank investments were tax free as well, a practice which despite the efforts of subsequent Italian governments remains in force to this day. By the 1970s, the known holdings of the Vatican bank, and its investments in Italy, were of such enormous scale as to dissuade any talk of taxation. When faced with such a prospect, Fr. Marcinkus and other IOR officials merely threatened the possibility of selling off Vatican assets in Italy and moving the money off shore.
Earlier this month, a number of financial and political institutions including Italy's largest insurance firm, Assicurazioni Generali, agreed to a final settlement with some surviving Holocaust victims and their relatives. The $100 million compensation has drawn praise from quarters; but the lack of participation and reparations from the Vatican continues to attract criticism.
Another settlement, this one involving reparations for up to 12 million victims murdered by Nazis and their client regimes, including the Catholic Croatian State, has been criticized as too little, too late. Here, as well, the Vatican is not participating in the compensation program.
Consecrating Clerical Thugs, Fascists
Perhaps most disturbing, though, are Vatican denials over the role played by its stable of anti-Semitic popes and clerical officials, and attempts to even glorify their lives. A decision to move forward on the beatification of Pope Pius IX drew worldwide criticism this past August. In a letter to Archbishop Jose Martins, the papal chairman of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, the International Jewish Committee for Interreligious Consultations noted that Pius "perpetuated centuries-old Church contempt and hatred of Jews, referring to them as 'dogs' and declaring that 'of these dogs, there are too many of them present in Rome.' " There was also the move by Pope John Paul II during his October, 1998 visit to Croatia, to announce the beatification of Cardinal Stepanic, elevating him to the last step before a declaration of sainthood. CNN noted that the announcement, made at a rally with 400,000 followers at Croatia's main shrine to the Virgin Mary, saw the pontiff hail Stepanic "as a hero by Catholics for his resistance to communism and his refusal to separate the Croatian church from the Vatican."
Stepanic's fascist-era activities with the Ustashi has been continually downplayed or ignored by the Holy See; instead, a process of historical revision has been underway, complete with the confabulation of a cultish tale about the Cardinal's cape, which allegedly found its way to the Vatican after being smuggled out of Yugoslavia in 1954 by an American Roman Catholic housewife. Stepanic was also hailed as a "Martyr of Atheistic Communism,'" and in 1998, Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley declared May 8 as an official "Cardinal Stepanic Day."
The San Francisco suit may unearth even more details about the political and financial intrigues of the Vatican in connection with World War II. It is quite possible, though, that diplomatic "sovereign immunity" could serve as a legal shield in the Holy See's continued efforts to conceal its historical involvement in the rise of clerical fascism, the Holocaust and the atrocities of that period.
For further
information:
http://www.americanatheist.org/pope99.calvi.html ("Through
the Looking Glass: Vatican Politics, the Calvi Murder and
Beyond")
http://www.atheists.org/flash.line/vat10.htm ("House
votes 416-1 to retain special Vatican status at U.N.,"
7/12/00)
http://www.atheists.org/flash.line/vatican9.htm ("As
conference opens, Vatican accused of subverting progress for
women's' rights," 6/5/00)
http://www.atheists.org/flash.line/vatican8.htm ("Bush chases 'Catholic vote,' affirms support for special Vatican status at United Nations," 5/29/00)
http://www.vaticanbankclaims.com (Easton & Levy, details on San Francisco suit)
==========================================================================
Abortion: Why the Religious Right is Wrong:
Freethought Today, Freedom From Religion Foundation, Inc.
http://www.infidels.org/org/ffrf/fttoday/jan_feb97/morris.html
"The dead women we saw had either bled to death or had died from overwhelming infections. Some had tears along the vaginal tract where they had used coat hangers to get up into the uterus and break things up -- like rupture the amniotic sac . . . Most of the dead women I saw were in their teens or twenties . . . The deaths stopped overnight in 1973, and I never saw another abortion death in all the eighteen years after that until I retired."[1]--Pennsylvanian coroner
By Steven Morris. Dr. Steven Morris is a professor at Los Angeles Harbor College.
Antiabortionists are successfully chipping away at the right that women now possess to choose whether or not to have an abortion, enshrined in law by the Roe vs. Wade decision of 1973. Arbitrary waiting periods, harassment, unjust financial burdens and the murder of doctors by 'pro-life' assassins, are considered by right-wing Christians to be the moral approach to forcing their opinions on everyone else. We may yet return to the 'good old days' of back-alley abortions, and their harvest of abandoned women, mutilated or dead. This places the well-meaning Christian in a difficult dilemma. Despite the immorality of the antiabortion position, how can the Christian be pro-choice when the Bible and the history of Christianity are antiabortion? However, it is the dirty little secret of the antiabortionist leaders that there is nothing in the Bible that condemns abortion, and the historical bias against abortion had nothing to do with the alleged life of the fetus.
Abortion has been practiced since early times. Plato suggested in the Republic that abortion be used in cases of incest or older parents, and Aristotle recommended abortion as a way to limit family size.[2] The position of the Catholic Church varied over the centuries, and it was only in the 18th century that the teachings of the Church shifted significantly toward the position that the human fetus deserves from conception the care due to humans.[3] It was in 1869 that Giovanni Ferretti (Pope Pius IX) issued a decree declaring abortion sinful and banning it entirely.[2] His reason was bizarre, and had nothing to do with morality. The change in doctrine originated with the acceptance of the Immaculate Conception of Mary.[4] This unnecessary doctrine supposed that Mary (not Jesus!) was without sin from the moment of conception. We are not informed of the sins that Mary was expected to commit in the womb, that required such preemptive purity. In any case, the penalty for all abortions was merely excommunication, not civil punishment.
Since then, the Catholic position has become increasingly irrational. In 1968, the encyclical Humanae Vitae by Giovanni Montini (Pope Paul VI) banned contraception. Surveys in the United States indicate that more than 80% of Catholics of childbearing age do not, in fact, observe the encyclical's teaching.[5] This failure has not deterred Church leaders from trying to make secular government enforce theological doctrines that the Church itself did not believe for most of its own history.
Of course the Church can make exceptions, when convenient to itself. In the late 1960's, Sister Claire Murphy was teaching school as a lonely missionary in Nigeria. The Biafran war had just begun when she received an unexpected package from her church. "The Vatican had sent me a whole cupboard full" of birth-control pills, Sister Claire recalled with a thin-lipped smile. "It was OK to protect the nuns against rape by the soldiers, but not the girls in our school."[6]
Abortions were permitted throughout colonial America.[7] The antiabortion laws that Roe vs. Wade overturned were not originally adopted to halt "the murder of unborn children," but to reduce the mortality rate of women who obtained abortions from midwives, homeopaths and local healers. Surgical abortions in the 19th century carried a 30% mortality rate from infection due to the lack of modern scientific knowledge. Antiabortion laws were not passed by an overwhelming public vote against abortion, but rather through the efforts of a few powerful groups such as the American Medical Association. Before these laws were passed, advertisements for abortionists were carried in religious publications as well as newspapers and magazines.[8] The AMA's concerns about women's health are now obsolete; legal abortions have a mortality rate that is thirteen times less than for normal childbirth.[1]
How did parents regulate the size of their families during the Middle Ages, when the churches controlled what people thought and did? Infanticide. Studies of 9th-century manorial rolls at St. Germain-des-Pres, of 15th-century Canterbury Church courts, of 17th-century Somerset parish records, and interviews with women in 20th-century Bosnian hamlets all show the same choice. Let the child be born and then let it die. In particular, let it die if it is female.[9] This callous attitude is echoed in the Christian Right today, whose 'Parental Rights' amendment to the Constitution would strip children of legal protection. Fundamentalists may weep for the fetus in its three trimesters, but when the 'fourth trimester' begins, the baby is on its own.
Before fundamentalists take others to task about the humanity of the fetus, they should first justify the inhumanity toward children that their so-called 'Good' Book contains. Forty-two children are mauled by bears for a minor infraction (2 Kings 2:23,24) and Abraham's only qualification for being the father of his people was a willingness to kill his son (Gen. 22). Detailed instructions are given on how a man should sell his daughter into slavery (Exodus 21:7). Jephtha killed his daughter as a burnt offering, and not a word of condemnation is given. Indeed, he was then made a judge of Israel (Judges 11:30-39,12:7). And the climax of the Christian story is the torture-murder of its central figure; Jesus, the son of their alleged god.
It would surprise many in the antiabortion flock to learn that abortion is nowhere mentioned in the Bible. The closest the Bible gets is an accidental miscarriage that might occur when men are fighting with each other (Ex. 21:22,23). If the woman dies as a result of the miscarriage, the man at fault must die because he committed a murder; "thou shalt give life for life." If a miscarriage occurs and the woman is unharmed, the man merely pays a fine; no life for life here, as no life was lost.
"Abortion is murder!" cry the antiabortionists, despite the Bible. "Thou shalt not kill!" But they conveniently ignore another well-known passage; "To every thing there is a season . . . a time to kill, and a time to heal" (Eccles. 3:1,3). Even if the fetus were alive, the taking of life is Bible-based.
But what is life, anyway? On this subject, the Bible is hopelessly confused. "The blood is the life" (Deut. 12:23), "For the life of the flesh is in the blood" (Lev. 17:11). But fertilized egg cells have no blood, and it is only when the umbilical cord is cut, after childbirth, that the fetus lives as more than a part of its mother. But then the Bible contradicts itself; it is the breath, not the blood that makes the difference between life and death; "I will . . . cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and ye shall live" (Ezekiel 37:6), "thou takest away their breath, they die, and return to their dust" (Psalm 104:29). To die one must first breathe, after childbirth.
"Life begins at the moment of conception!" antiabortionists insist. But there is no "moment of conception." Biological science has revealed only a continuum of development, from separate egg and sperm cells to a newborn baby. What "moment" are the antiabortionists talking about? When the sperm cell reaches the corona radiate? When it reaches the zone pellucida? When egg activation occurs? When syngamy begins? When syngamy ends? When cell division starts? When implantation occurs?7 Antiabortionists fall silent.
If the fetus is life because it has been given a "soul," what evidence can they present that the soul exists, to show when it arrived? And where did it come from? Forty percent of all pregnancies end in miscarriage.[10] Their Jehovah is the biggest abortionist of all!
Many fertilized egg cells are discharged unnoticed through menstruation, but antiabortionists don't demand that these 'humans' be located and properly buried with Christian rites, as such a proposal would expose their underlying assumptions to well- deserved ridicule.
If the fetuses have souls, it ravages reason to suggest that any of them are sent to the flames of the Christian Hell. But if they all go to Heaven, then shouldn't the Christians be bombing the hospitals instead of the clinics, for endangering these fetal souls by exposing them to the mortal sins found in life among the born?
Perhaps most unsettling for the antiabortionist must be the history of Levi; "For he was yet in the loins of his father, when Melchisedec met him" (Heb. 7:10). The notion that Levi was alive as a sperm cell in his father's testicles leads to the horrifying thought that the average man, who produces more than 100 million sperm cells every day,[10] commits genocide on a scale that makes Hitler's efforts look trivial. This mass slaughter can only be prevented by immediate castration, but Pat Robertson and all his followers seem curiously indifferent to the consequences of their own theology in this regard.
Until the antiabortionists have provable knowledge, and not theological guesswork, it is immoral of them to tyrannize others, who merely wish to be left alone. You don't approve of abortion? Don't have one! The pro-choice position is as tolerant and humane as it can possibly be.
On the other hand, the antiabortionists make a virtue of intolerance. In February 1994, Daniel Maguire's invitation to speak at the nation's largest Catholic education congress was revoked by Cardinal Roger M. Mahony, because of Maguire's support of abortion rights. But Maguire's scheduled workshops were on matters unrelated to abortion! Even so, "I will not abide the presence of any speaker at our congress who teaches anything contrary to the full teachings of our Catholic Church," wrote Cardinal Mahony.[11] So when a Catholic tells you, with a straight face, that he believes abortion is murder, he is not speaking for himself, he is just reading the script that the Church has handed him. The fundamentalists proclaim, "We don't have to obey the laws of mere men; we are obeying a Higher Law!" But since they cannot prove that their 'Higher Law' is anything more than a figment of their imagination, this undetectable 'Higher Law' is their license to be completely lawless. The motto of the antiabortion group Operation Rescue, "If you believe abortion is murder, then ACT like it's murder!" is a testament to Christian immorality.
And what if the antiabortionists succeed in criminalizing and prosecuting everyone involved in abortion? A survey performed by the Kinsey Institute in 1958 (when abortion was still a crime) found that more than 20% of married white women were willing to admit to having an abortion during their reproductive life.[12] If the Christian Right is willing to send millions of women to jail for conspiracy to murder, they should first explain how they will prevent the financial crisis and social chaos their actions will inflict upon society. The war on drugs has filled our jails; a war on women would overwhelm them.
The persecution of abortionists and the women who need them isn't based on either the Bible or common decency. What drives the Christian Right to pursue this issue so remorselessly? The answer is simple, and chilling; misogyny, and the Apocalypse.
Misogyny (hatred and fear of women) begins at childbirth:
"If a woman have conceived seed, and born a man child: then she shall be unclean seven days . . . But if she bear a maid child, then she shall be unclean two weeks" (Lev. 12:2,5).
Why is she twice as unclean for producing a daughter instead of a son? And why should a woman be unclean in the third book of the Bible for obeying the commands in the first book of the Bible? In marriage, women are certainly second-class: "thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee" (Gen. 3:16).
The New Testament is just as bad:
"Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection. But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence" (1 Tim. 2:11,12).
"Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience" (1 Cor. 14:34).
The submission of women to men is all-inclusive:
"Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife . . . Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing" (Eph. 5:22-24).
Influential churchmen continued this shameful attitude. In the 4th century, St. Augustine wrote:
"Nothing so much casts down the mind of man from its citadel as do the blandishments of women, and that physical contact without which a wife cannot be possessed."[13]
The Protestants were no better. According to Martin Luther:
"It is evident therefore that woman is a different animal to man, not only having different members, but also being far weaker in intellect . . . For as the sun is more splendid than the moon . . . so also woman . . . does not equal the dignity and glory of the male."[9]
"Men have . . . more understanding than women, who have but small and narrow breasts and broad hips to the end that they should remain at home, sit still, keep house, and bear and bring up children." "We can hardly speak of her without a feeling of shame, and we surely cannot make use of her without shame."[14]
John Calvin, whose writings helped define the Protestant position, similarly wrote, "let woman be satisfied with the state of subjection and not take it amiss that she is made inferior to the more distinguished sex."[14] [That is exactly the same position held by the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant denomination in the world, as formally reaffirmed in 1999 and 2000.]
The Christian hatred of women was most clearly expressed during the Middle Ages. It was then, when the Church held the reins of power, that between 100,000 and 2 million women were tortured to death for the imaginary crime of witchcraft. Fingernails were pulled out. Red-hot tongs were applied to breasts. The women's sex organs provided special attraction for the male torturer. Bodies were stretched on racks and wheels. Virtually every mangled and broken victim confessed -- and was executed on the basis of her confession.[15]
Efforts to humanize Christianity were crushed. The Albigensians taught that by her baptism and by her study, a woman could become the equal of male believers, achieve the ultimate purity, and be called a 'perfecta.' In 1208, Lotario (Pope Innocent III) declared a major crusade to destroy the Albigensians. When the last fortress was taken, the 200 Albigensians inside who had surrendered were burned to death. Years before, when the besieged city of Beziers fell, soldiers asked papal legate Arnald Amalric how they could distinguish the infidel from the faithful among the captives. He commanded, "Kill them all. God will know his own." Thousands were slaughtered -- many first blinded, mutilated, dragged behind horses or used for target practice.[9,15]
Renaissance humanism and modern science have helped to civilize Christianity and wean it away from its worst excesses, but the process is incomplete. It wasn't until the year 1928 that women were allowed to compete in track and field events at the Olympics, the same year that Ambrogio Ratti (Pope Pius XI) was publicly objecting to female participation in any public athletic competitions.
"The bishop of Rome cannot but deplore that . . . the delicate regard due to young women and girls should be weaker than in pagan Rome, which, though it descended to such debasement of habits when it adopted from conquered Greece public games and gymnastic and athletic competitions, excluded women therefrom for reasons of physical and moral good sense . . . If a woman's hand must be raised, we hope and pray it may be raised only in prayer or in acts of charity."
An editorial in the Vatican newspaper Osservatore Romano added, "Girls should think first of being good mothers of worthy sons."[16]
The Catholic Church continues to demand that their priests be celibate, and refuses to ordain women. It is not clear if women are forbidden to be priests due to their spiritual inferiority, or if it is purely a matter of their unsuitable genitalia. When Pat Robertson, the leader of the powerful Christian Coalition, claimed that a proposed equal-rights amendment for women was "about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians,"[17] he wasn't kidding.
The Apocalypse
There is one other reason why the Religious Right hates abortion. Throughout human history, disease and famine have caused untold human misery. As Robert Malthus, who was educated at Jesus College and took holy orders, comfortably noted, "epidemics, pestilence, and plague, advance in terrific array and sweep off their thousands and ten thousands. Should success be still incomplete, gigantic inevitable famine stalks in the rear, and with one mighty blow, levels the population with the food of the world."[18] Modern technology and population control offer the prospect of freeing humanity from these horrors.
But this vision of a well-fed world at peace is a nightmare to the fundamentalist, who yearns for the Second Coming of Christ, which must be preceded by the worldwide calamity of the Apocalypse (Rev. 8,9). The small African country of Rwanda provides a glimpse of the future that fundamentalism demands. After decades of missionary work, Rwanda was 65% Catholic, 9% Protestant -- and had a total maternity ratio (number of births per woman) of 8.3, which doubled the population every 21 years.[19] The social pressures became impossible, and the resulting civil war of 1994 led to the deaths of 800,000 civilians. The group African Rights says it has witnesses who can identify 28 priests and 4 nuns who collaborated in the atrocities. Karol Wojtyla (Pope John Paul II) has washed his church's hands of all responsibility.[20]
According to Gerard Prunier, "In 1990 there were eight times as many people as there had been in 1900. And on top of that . . . one had to make do, where one's religious life was concerned, with virtuous, gloomy Christianity . . . Private frustrations were going to emerge, and the unspoken taboo of the mysterious Tutsi threat would finally be dealt with once and for all. It was literally the Apocalypse, ushering in the relief of the Last Judgement."[21] "Thy kingdom come" (Matt. 6:10) is thoughtlessly muttered by millions, who give little thought to the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse who are supposed to come before them, and are willing to help them arrive.
The Catholic Church has another compelling motive for encouraging such overpopulation; it's good for business. People trapped in a life of misery and poverty are easy prey for a Church that promises a golden life in the hereafter, in exchange for obedience and weekly donations in the here-and-now. The population crisis in Mexico is a case in point. The Church turns a cold and uncaring eye on the 140,000 Mexican women who die every year due to illegal abortions. 22 Mexico's total fertility ratio is 3.2, doubling the population every 27 years.[19] Faced with starvation, Mexicans will migrate to the United States, and the Church will do nothing to stop them. According to official papal positions, every human has a right to migrate to the United States and take up residence; since the Catholic Church rejects the concept of national sovereignty, migration restrictions are immoral.[23] As Father Richard Ryscavage has pointed out with startling honesty, immigration is the "growing edge of Catholicism in the United States . . . We are in the middle of a huge wave of immigration . . . and most of them are Catholics . . . It's the key to our future and the key to why the church is going to be very healthy in the twenty-first century."[23] Is it moral for the Church to encourage policies that lead to massive human suffering, just to enhance a church's "health"? Apparently it is. The man who said, "Lay not up for yourselves treasure upon earth . . . Ye cannot serve God and Mammon," (Matt. 6:19,24) would find himself to be a heretic in the religion that he founded.
A Modest Proposal
The Christian Right has been able to keep the abortion debate going long after it should have been abandoned, because the debate has been a win-win situation for them, so far. By portraying abortion as a second Holocaust, they have won the loyalty and drained the pocketbooks of believers who might otherwise have found better things to do. They have also won against their opponents, who have too often conceded the moral high ground of the pro-choice position, and have been deflected from criticizing the theocratic agenda that the Right continues to pursue.
The antiabortionists will abandon their position only when it becomes unprofitable to hold it. To find out how we can make that happen, it is worthwhile examining a previous position that the Christians have abandoned: pro-slavery. Slavery is regulated and tolerated throughout the Bible. In the decades before the Civil War, 45% of pro-slavery pamphlets were authored by clergymen, who could quote chapter and verse of the Bible to support their position.[24] Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy, was well-aware that the Bible ordained slavery:
"It is enough for me that it was established by decree of Almighty God, that it is sanctioned in the Bible, in both Testaments, from Genesis to Revelations."
"We recognize the negro as God and God's Book and God's Laws, in nature, tell us to recognize him -- our inferior, fitted expressly for servitude."[25]
The Southern Baptist Convention, which now claims a membership of over 16 million, was founded in 1845 in Augusta, Georgia because of the slavery issue.[7] The Southern Baptists do not like to be reminded of their heritage, and few of them (it is to be hoped) desire slavery's return. What changed? The Bible? God? No, the only thing that changed was the prospect of losing money and membership, over an issue that had finally become an embarrassment.
The antiabortionists will fade away only when constantly confronted with the hypocrisy and absurdity of their religious claims, which pro-choice advocates have so far failed to expose. "Sell all that thou hast, and distribute unto the poor" (Luke 18:22) should confront the antiabortionist at every rally, and be visible at every meeting that the very-rich leaders of the Religious Right attend. "If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children . . . he cannot be my disciple" (Luke 14:26) should shame every "pro-family" hypocrite, and "when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret" (Matt. 6:6) should embarrass even the dullest in the midst of their public and oh-so-righteous prayers.
The United States will destroy itself if it abandons the wall of separation between church and state that the First Amendment has erected. Pat Robertson and his ilk dream of running a theocracy, and despise that wall. But do they also despise the man who first asked for it, stating:
"Render therefore unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's" (Matt. 22:21)?
Perhaps not, but they are mad for power and money, and won't let mere Jesus stand in their way.
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A Tribute to Steve Allen: By Dr. Paul Kurtz
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/paul_kurtz/allen.html
Excerpts: . . . he confided that he had spent an inordinate amount of time in hotel rooms as he traveled about lecturing and entertaining, and that he took up reading the Bible and was surprised, indeed appalled, by many of its passages. And so he began to write critical commentaries. . . . Finally, in the late 1980s, at a time when fundamentalists of the "Moral Majority" were speaking out strongly, I persisted in asking him to send me what he had written. This he finally did, some 1,200 pages of commentaries on various aspects of the Bible, religion, and morality . . . published in 1990 as Steve Allen on the Bible, Religion and Morality . . . that did not simply praise Jesus, but provided thoughtful criticisms, pointing out its many factual errors, inconsistencies, and moral limitations. To illustrate from Allen:
"The proposition that the entire human race - consisting of enormous hordes of humanity - would be placed seriously in danger of a fiery eternity characterized by unspeakable torments purely because a man disobeyed a deity by eating a piece of fruit offered him by his wife is inherently incredible."
. . . Martin Gardner, in the preface to that book, said, "No other work by an American can be likened more favorably to Tom Paine's classic, the The Age of Reason than Steve Allen's book" -- a compliment of highest order coming from one of America's leading critical essayists. Indeed, Steve's volume could also be likened to the writings of Robert Ingersoll America's leading orator and agnostic of the nineteenth century.
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Imagine
there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace...
You may say I'm a
dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one
Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world...
You may say I'm a
dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one
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. . . EMMA GOLDMAN: A GUIDE TO HER LIFE AND DOCUMENTARY SOURCES: CHRONOLOGY (1901 - 1919) http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Goldman/Guide/chronology0119.html
. . . Emma Goldman (1869-1940): http://www.nagasaki-gaigo.ac.jp/ishikawa/amlit/g/goldman20.htm Homepages.
. . . Writings of Emma Goldman: http://www.spunk.org/library/writers/goldman/index.html, including:
. . . The Failure of Christianity: http://www.spunk.org/library/writers/goldman/sp001501.html Extracts: Friedrich Nietzsche and Max Stirner have hurled blow upon blow against the portals of Christianity, because they saw in it a pernicious slave morality, the denial of life, the destroyer of all the elements that make for strength and character. . . . They saw in every movement built on Christian morality and ethics attempts not at the emancipation from slavery, but for the perpetuation thereof. . . .
Take the Sermon on the Mount, for instance. What is it but a eulogy on submission to fate, to the inevitability of things?
"Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven." Heaven must be an awfully dull place if the poor in spirit live there. How can anything creative, anything vital, useful and beautiful come from the poor in spirit? . . .
"Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth." What a preposterous notion! What incentive to slavery, inactivity, and parasitism! . . .
The teachings of Christ and of his followers have failed because they lacked the vitality to lift the burdens from the shoulders of the race; they have failed because the very essence of that doctrine is contrary to the spirit of life, . . .
Never can Christianity, under whatever mask it may appear -- be it New Liberalism, Spiritualism, Christian Science, New Thought, or a thousand and one other forms of hysteria and neurasthenia -- bring us relief from the terrible pressure of conditions, the weight of poverty, the horrors of our iniquitous system. Christianity is the conspiracy of ignorance against reason, of darkness against light, of submission and slavery against independence and freedom; of the denial of strength and beauty, against the affirmation of the joy and glory of life.
. . . The Philosophy of Atheism: http://www.spunk.org/library/writers/goldman/sp001502.html Extract: Under the lash of the theistic idea, this earth has served no other purpose than as a temporary station to test man's capacity for immolation to the will of God. But the moment man attempted to ascertain the nature of that will, he was told that it was utterly futile for "finite human intelligence" to get beyond the all-powerful infinite will. Under the terrific weight of this omnipotence, man has been bowed into the dust -- a willless creature, broken and sweating in the dark. The triumph of the philosophy of Atheism is to free man from the nightmare of gods; it means the dissolution of the phantoms of the beyond.
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