Disobeying the pope on communion

I Corinthians 11:27-29
Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord. Let a person examine himself, then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself.

I hope, for their sake, that they were worthy... ;)

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It may not be 1984 but George Orwell sure did see the future . . .

"Jesus, the Spirit of God"

Jesus was a man filled with the 'spirit of God'... We are all 'eligible' to be 'sons of God'... Just like the bible says...

"I pray for Christians. They've been misled. They will realize one day the true story."

Although I've been saying that for years, I couldn't have said it better myself... ;)

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It may not be 1984 but George Orwell sure did see the future . . .

Anyone else feel like the guy in the middle? ;)

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It may not be 1984 but George Orwell sure did see the future . . .

In France, up to 70 percent incarcerated are Muslims
Discrepancy is similar in other prisons in Europe

By Molly Moore
THE WASHINGTON POST

May 1, 2008

SEQUEDIN, France – Samia El Alaoui Talibi walks her beat in a cream-colored head scarf and an ink-black robe with sunset-orange piping.

She trudges through half a dozen heavy, locked doors to reach the Muslim faithful to whom she ministers in the women's cellblock of the Lille-Sequedin Detention Center in northern France.

It took her years to earn this access, and she is one of only four Muslim holy women allowed to work in French prisons. “Everyone has the same prejudices and negative image of Muslims and Islam,” said Moroccan-born El Alaoui Talibi, 47, the mother of seven children. “When some guards see you, they see an Arab; they see you the same as if you were a prisoner.”

This prison is majority Muslim, as is virtually every house of incarceration in France. About 60 percent to 70 percent of all inmates in the country's prison system are Muslim, according to Muslim leaders, sociologists and researchers, though Muslims make up only about 12 percent of the country's population.

On a continent where immigrants and their children are disproportionately represented in almost every prison system, the French figures are the most marked, according to researchers, criminologists and Muslim leaders.

“The high percentage of Muslims in prisons is a direct consequence of the failure of the integration of minorities in France,” said sociologist Moussa Khedimellah.

In Britain, 11 percent of prisoners are Muslim; in contrast, they account for about 3 percent of its population, the Justice Ministry said. Research by the Open Society Institute, an advocacy organization, shows that in the Netherlands 20 percent of adult prisoners and 26 percent of all juvenile offenders are Muslim; the country is about 5.5 percent Muslim. In Belgium, Muslims from Morocco and Turkey make up at least 16 percent of the prison population, compared with 2 percent of the general populace, the research found.

Sociologists and Muslim leaders say the French prison system reflects the deep social and ethnic divides roiling France and its European neighbors as immigrants and a new generation of their children alter the demographic and cultural landscape of the continent.

Inside the prisons, El Alaoui Talibi and her husband, Hassan – a rare husband-wife Islamic clerical team – are struggling to win for Muslim prisoners the same religious rights accorded their minority-Christian counterparts. Hassan is an imam. Samia has received religious training and can counsel the faithful, but under Islamic practices cannot become an imam.

The prison system has 100 Muslim clerics for the country's 200 prisons, compared with about 480 Catholic, 250 Protestant and 50 Jewish chaplains, even though Muslim inmates vastly outnumber prisoners of all other religions. “It is true that we haven't attained full equality among religions in prisons yet,” said Jeanne Sautiere, director of integration and religious groups for the French prison system. “It is a matter of time.”

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me@rescam.org

In France, up to 70 percent incarcerated are Muslims

<--- chants: Go Hitler, Go Hitler, Go Hitler... ;)

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It may not be 1984 but George Orwell sure did see the future . . .

In France, up to 70 percent incarcerated are Muslims
Discrepancy is similar in other prisons in Europe

By Molly Moore
THE WASHINGTON POST

May 1, 2008
............ SNIP ....

I am amazed.

It's always been pretty obvious that if you were black or working class that you were far more likely to be arrested (and convicted) but I hadn't realised that being Muslim was so much more illegal.

I can't imagine that Muslims as a general population are any more criminal than any other religious or secular community.

Does anyone believe that for every 30 non-muslim criminals there are 70 muslim criminals in French prisons?

(@ Misfit: It would be interesting to see a direct link/URL to that article.)

Personally I would be amazed if 70% of the criminal population in French prisons were Muslim.

I would have expected a higher number statistically given the way we treat 'foreigners' (due to colour... blah blah..) in Europe.. but 70%???? Mmmmmmm


Is the article by Molly Moore of the THE WASHINGTON POST an attempt to show how the US treats Muslims well by saying how bad Europe treats them?

American's must be quite happy that they live so far away from the main 'criminal' Muslim societies.. (I am being facetious.)


Once it was Christians.

Then the Jews.

It was always the Pagans and Non-Religious. (But who cares about them.)

Now it is the Muslims.


I still can't believe 70% of criminal convictions in France are given to Muslims.

Anyone have any stats that prove this scenario?


.

(@ Misfit: It would be interesting to see a direct link/URL to that article.).

Just how interesting?

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me@rescam.org

Once it was Christians.

Then the Jews.

It was always the Pagans and Non-Religious. (But who cares about them.)

Now it is the Muslims.

First they came...

No matter which version of the poem...

The non-religious will be the last to go...

Because there won't be anyone left to speak up for them... ;)

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It may not be 1984 but George Orwell sure did see the future . . .

Once it was Christians.

Then the Jews.

It was always the Pagans and Non-Religious. (But who cares about them.)

Now it is the Muslims.

First they came...

No matter which version of the poem...

The non-religious will be the last to go...

Because there won't be anyone left to speak up for them... ;)

Wrong: In Niemöllers poems it was the (usually non-religious, btw) Communists who were the first to go... Maybe because they, though being non-religious, are closer to the teachings of Christ than many "confessing Christians"?

Btw: I've met a lot non-religious or pagan people who acted more like Christians should act than the average Christians did themselves... Why is that so?

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Account frozen...

Wrong: In Niemöllers poems it was [snip]

You still don't get it do you? The devil doesn't care what you proclaim to be, the devil hates godliness...

As you have said yourself, they didn't claim to be religious, but they were more christ-like than most christians...

I can also tell you what the devil likes more than anything else, a religious hypocrite... (Hebrews 6:6)... ;)

(When you get to the pearly gates, do you really think God is gonna care what you 'claimed' to be? (Matthew 15:7-9))

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It may not be 1984 but George Orwell sure did see the future . . .

Wrong: In Niemöllers poems it was [snip]

You still don't get it do you? The devil doesn't care what you proclaim to be, the devil hates godliness...

As you have said yourself, they didn't claim to be religious, but they were more christ-like than most christians...

I can also tell you what the devil likes more than anything else, a religious hypocrite... (Hebrews 6:6)... ;)

(When you get to the pearly gates, do you really think God is gonna care what you 'claimed' to be? (Matthew 15:7-9))

Sure I get it, but again I slightly disagree with you: The devil does care: He makes you proclaim to be what you are not. :D
"Do what thou wilst is the Whole of the Law", is what he keeps saying

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Account frozen...

(@ Misfit: It would be interesting to see a direct link/URL to that article.).

Just how interesting?

For me the interesting part of that story is that we are not told if the source of those statistics are 'comparible'. For example the story uses French Muslim leaders / sociologists statistics and compares them against statistics from other countries from un-names sources.

If the reporter really wanted to create a story that had validity they would only have to use the prison records themselves as it is law in Europe (especially for gov services) to keep ethnic, religious stats.

It may well be that the French government are using their prisons as "immigration control / holding' facilities.

In the UK we have a different system and may collect our stats in a different way.

The over all concept of the story though has something that doesn't add up.

Either France has an enourmous capacity (3 times it's national needs for non-muslim / french criminals) or it has started to arrest less non-muslim criminals.

I find the story 'interesting' simply because it leaves a lot un-researched. If the story was originally reported in France and then just copied over by an American newspaper with no care for verification that too has a significance.

Sometime 'acceptable truth' only needs to fit our learnt or desired perceptions.

Have you met this guy yet? I have, and he doesn't seem to like me very much...

In addition to the signs of the Antichrist's coming, the hadith also reveal his characteristics in considerable detail: The Antichrist will cause people to turn away from the true path, portray good as evil and evil as good, deceive those who follow him with so-called blessings, oppress those who fail to obey him, wreak confusion upon the world, encourage conflict, oppose religious moral values, and seek to turn people away from those values. The Antichrist's time on Earth will be one when true believers experience many troubles and difficulties, and when most people turn away from religious moral values.

The Antichrist's emergence will have a profound effect on the whole world, and will be the source of developments that will inflict many catastrophes and troubles upon humanity. Since his main target will be religious moral values and true believers, the period in question may be a particularly difficult one for the believers. In addition, many people will believe in his deceptions and follow him. Such an environment will have to be opposed by all people of good conscience and believers. In addition, they will have to wage a powerful intellectual struggle against this environment, one in which, by God's will, they will be victorious. However, the Prophet revealed that this individual's wickedness will be on a scale never before seen in history, and warned believers to avoid it:

What? Did you really think the Antichrist was gonna come right out and say: "Hey, I'm the devil, follow me"... ;)

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It may not be 1984 but George Orwell sure did see the future . . .

What? Did you really think the Antichrist was gonna come right out and say: "Hey, I'm the devil, follow me"... ;)

It started with a post on SETI@home. It ended with the destruction of the universe.

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me@rescam.org

Christians stress faith over politics

RELIGION NEWS SERVICE and ASSOCIATED PRESS

May 8, 2008

WASHINGTON – Evangelical Christians should be defined by their theology – and not their politics – to avoid becoming “useful idiots” of a political party, a group of leaders said yesterday in a new statement.

The document, “An Evangelical Manifesto,” reflects the frustration of some over how they are perceived by others and who can speak for them. The movement claims about one in four Americans.

The 19-page document declares that evangelicals err when they try to politicize faith and use Christian beliefs for political purposes.

“That way faith loses its independence, the church becomes 'the regime at prayer,' Christians become 'useful idiots' for one political party or another, and the Christian faith becomes an ideology in its purest form,” the document reads.

The manifesto, which at times upbraids evangelicals for contributing to their own image problems, comes about six months after a poll showed that many young people grade Christianity as being judgmental and hypocritical.

Conservative Christians make up about one-third of Republicans, but many younger evangelicals are less tied to the party than their parents and are seeking a broader agenda that includes fighting poverty, racism and global warming.

The document, which was three years in the making, was signed by 75 evangelical leaders from major coalitions, educational institutions and denominations.

Critics say some key names – including conservative evangelical leaders such as Focus on the Family founder James Dobson and Southern Baptist public policy executive Richard Land – are missing from the document.

“The select group drafting the manifesto apparently excludes traditional conservative, pro-life and pro-family evangelical voices,” said Janice Shaw Crouse of Concerned Women for America, who also questioned the timing of the document's release at the end of the primary election season.

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me@rescam.org

John 2:14-17
In the temple he found those who were selling oxen and sheep and pigeons, and the money-changers at their business. And making a whip of cords, he drove them all, with the sheep and oxen, out of the temple; and he poured out the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables. And he told those who sold the pigeons, "Take these things away; you shall not make my Father's house a house of trade." His disciples remembered that it was written, "Zeal for thy house will consume me."

Mark 11:15-17
And they came to Jerusalem. And he entered the temple and began to drive out those who sold and those who bought in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons; and he would not allow any one to carry anything through the temple. And he taught, and said to them, "Is it not written, `My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations'? But you have made it a den of robbers."

If Jesus were alive today, I wonder which church he would belong to... ;)

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It may not be 1984 but George Orwell sure did see the future . . .

If Jesus were alive today, I wonder which church he would belong to... ;)

The same one as John Constantine.

Or is this a trick question about Jesus being "alive"?

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me@rescam.org

Connecting science and mysticism

DAVID BROOKS
THE NEW YORK TIMES

May 14, 2008

In 1996, Tom Wolfe wrote a brilliant essay called “Sorry, But Your Soul Just Died,” in which he captured the militant materialism of some modern scientists.

To these self-confident researchers, the idea that the spirit might exist apart from the body is just ridiculous. Instead, everything arises from atoms. Genes shape temperament. Brain chemicals shape behavior. Assemblies of neurons create consciousness. Free will is an illusion. Human beings are “hard-wired” to do this or that. Religion is an accident.

In this materialist view, people perceive God's existence because their brains have evolved to confabulate belief systems. You put a magnetic helmet around their heads, and they will begin to think they are having a spiritual epiphany. If they suffer from temporal lobe epilepsy, they will show signs of hyperreligiosity, an overexcitement of the brain tissue that leads sufferers to believe they are conversing with God.

Wolfe understood the central assertion contained in this kind of thinking: Everything is material, and “the soul is dead.” He anticipated the way the genetic and neuroscience revolutions would affect public debate. They would kick off another fundamental argument over whether God exists.

Lo and behold, over the past decade, a new group of assertive atheists has done battle with defenders of faith. The two sides have argued about whether it is reasonable to conceive of a soul that survives the death of the body and about whether understanding the brain explains away or merely adds to our appreciation of the entity that created it.

The atheism debate is a textbook example of how a scientific revolution can change public culture. Just as “The Origin of Species” reshaped social thinking, just as Einstein's theory of relativity affected art, so the revolution in neuroscience is having an effect on how people see the world.

And yet my guess is that the atheism debate is going to be a sideshow. The cognitive revolution is not going to end up undermining faith in God, it's going end up challenging faith in the Bible.

Over the past several years, the momentum has shifted away from hard-core materialism. The brain seems less like a cold machine. It does not operate like a computer. Instead, meaning, belief and consciousness seem to emerge mysteriously from idiosyncratic networks of neural firings. Those squishy things called emotions play a gigantic role in all forms of thinking. Love is vital to brain development.

Researchers now spend a lot of time trying to understand universal moral intuitions. Genes are not merely selfish, it appears. Instead, people seem to have deep instincts for fairness, empathy and attachment.

Scientists have more respect for elevated spiritual states. Andrew Newberg of the University of Pennsylvania has shown that transcendent experiences can actually be identified and measured in the brain (people experience a decrease in activity in the parietal lobe, which orients us in space). The mind seems to have the ability to transcend itself and merge with a larger presence that feels more real.

This new wave of research will not seep into the public realm in the form of militant atheism. Instead, it will lead to what you might call neural Buddhism.

If you survey the literature (and I'd recommend books by Newberg, Daniel J. Siegel, Michael S. Gazzaniga, Jonathan Haidt, Antonio Damasio and Marc D. Hauser if you want to get up to speed), you can see that certain beliefs will spread into the wider discussion.

First, the self is not a fixed entity but a dynamic process of relationships. Second, underneath the patina of different religions, people around the world have common moral intuitions. Third, people are equipped to experience the sacred, to have moments of elevated experience when they transcend boundaries and overflow with love. Fourth, God can best be conceived as the nature one experiences at those moments, the unknowable total of all there is.

In their arguments with Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins, the faithful have been defending the existence of God. That was the easy debate. The real challenge is going to come from people who feel the existence of the sacred, but who think that particular religions are just cultural artifacts built on top of universal human traits. It's going to come from scientists whose beliefs overlap a bit with Buddhism.

In unexpected ways, science and mysticism are joining hands and reinforcing each other. That's bound to lead to new movements that emphasize self-transcendence but put little stock in divine law or revelation. Orthodox believers are going to have to defend particular doctrines and particular biblical teachings. They're going to have to defend the idea of a personal God, and explain why specific theologies are true guides for behavior day to day.

I'm not qualified to take sides, believe me. I'm just trying to anticipate which way the debate is headed. We're in the middle of a scientific revolution. It's going to have big cultural effects.

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me@rescam.org

No justifying polygamous practices

ELLEN GOODMAN
THE BOSTON GLOBE

May 15, 2008

During the Vietnam War there was a phrase that came to symbolize the entire misbegotten adventure: “It became necessary to destroy the village in order to save it.” It was said at first with sincerity, then repeated with irony, and finally with despair.

I have heard similar thoughts in the weeks since Texas authorities invaded a ranch in Eldorado and rounded up hundreds of children from the polygamous sect of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Did they traumatize the children to protect them? Did they shatter their lives to rescue them?

The invasion came after a tip from a 16-year-old who called herself a victim of sexual abuse. The tip may turn out to be a hoax, but the practices of the sect are well-known.

In the world of the FLDS, “spiritual marriage” between older men and underage girls – what the law defines as rape – is given the stamp of religious approval. Of 53 girls believed to be between 14 and 17, more than 30 have children or are pregnant, including one who gave birth to her second child in custody. Among the boys, too, there is suspicion of widespread physical abuse. Indeed, many teenage boys are routinely banished to preserve the odds of polygamy.

Nevertheless, the story of children taken from parents, of families wrenched apart, has produced enormous concern and worry in recent weeks. Is this a rescue operation or a state-sponsored attack on parents? Should the state enforce a set of values or tolerate “alternative lifestyles” and religions?

These questions themselves say something about our own cultural moment. Who, after all, doesn't do a double take when hearing that these “endangered children” were never exposed to the Internet or television or processed food? The girls in their prairie dresses who are raised for assigned men have never text-messaged or eaten Froot Loops or seen “Hannah Montana.” The children's requests for a bread-making machine and prayer time have led to some ironic comments about exactly which culture is protecting children.

More to the point is the concern about separating children from parents. Every agency balances the risks of leaving children in a dangerous setting and the trauma of removing them. But cases are generally weighed one at a time. What's different about the FLDS case is that it was a wholesale roundup of all the children of a whole community.

This makes many, like Jane Spinak, a Columbia Law professor who has represented children in foster care, uneasy. “We may not like their lifestyle,” she says. “We may not condone the practice of multiple women living together with a man, but it's not for the court to decide lifestyles.” Spinak remembers when children were removed from biracial families, let alone gay families. “Lots of people live lives we don't think are good for their children, but we don't take the children away.” Indeed, this citizen of New York archly reminds me that two governors have admitted multiple partners in the last months without having their children removed.

Nevertheless, what do we make of an entire sect that has sexual abuse at its very heart? That believes plural “marriages” between older men and underage women are not an aberration but a pathway to heaven?

Nobody can prosecute the FLDS for what they believe, says Marci Hamilton, author of “God vs. the Gavel.” “They can stay together and believe what they want into eternity. What they can't do is illegal action.”

She compares their community to a crack house. “If you go into a drug den in a burnt-out row house and all the adults are drug addicts, how can you leave the children there?” Hamilton calls this sect a “conspiracy of adults to commit systematic child sex abuse.”

I understand the ambivalence toward this dramatic story. The uprooting of distraught children from pained parents strikes a primal core. And we are aware that many state foster care systems are flawed enough to amount to a second kind of abuse. But surely the call to understand this sect as just another unique corner of multicultural America is relativism run amok.

Individual hearings will begin next week. I hope the children and mothers will tell the truth rather than follow the admonition to “keep sweet.” I hope mothers will choose their children over obedience to their patriarchs.

But in the end, what we have on that ranch in Eldorado is not a lifestyle. It's a pedophile ring. If we cannot rescue children from that, we've already destroyed their village.

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me@rescam.org

SNIP....

Misfit... so many newspaper's quoted yet so little said.

People love quoting stuff.

So few people willing to just be... (for better or for worse.)


I think I will go and start a "Spiritual" thread based upon no one quoting anything...

It will probably fail.

Worth a try!