| atheism.davidrand.ca: Living Without Religion | |
|---|---|
| > Table of Contents | |
| > > News Archive | en français |
| Previous page | Next page |
| |
USA Today, 2002-03-28
WARSAW, Poland (AP) -- An archbishop who was one of the few Poles at the Vatican when John Paul II became pope announced his resignation Thursday, the highest-ranking prelate to be brought down in a spate of sexual harassment allegations shaking the Roman Catholic Church. Archbishop Juliusz Paetz of Poznan, an appointee and longtime acquaintance of the only Polish pope in history, stepped down amid a mounting scandal in the overwhelmingly Catholic country over accusations that he made sexual advances on young clerics.
Webmaster's comment:
Some commentators would like to blame the epidemic of sexual abuse on a few "bad apples" among priests.
But the problem is inherent in the institution of the Catholic priesthood itself. When an entire caste of men is accorded "divine" authority by the Church but denied a basic human need -- sexuality -- then inevitably there will be abuses.
It is no surprise that many priests abuse their authority in order to work around the constraints which would deny them any sexual outlet.
USA Today, 2002-03-26
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- The mullahs of Islamabad want Younis Sheikh dead. They say the medical lecturer defamed the prophet Mohammed when he told students the prophet's parents weren't Muslim because they died before God revealed Islam to their son. At the urging of hard-line clerics, police arrested Sheikh under Pakistan's draconian blasphemy laws, and last August, an Islamabad judge sentenced him to be hanged. Sheikh, himself a moderate Muslim, languishes in a jail in nearby Rawalpindi, waiting for Pakistan's High Court to hear his appeal.
The Globe and Mail — Toronto, Ontario, Canada, 2002-03-20
The strange force of justice in northern Nigeria spared with one hand and condemned with the other yesterday. Safiya Hussaini, 35, was acquitted of adultery on appeal by an Islamic court in the northern state of Sokoto yesterday, the day she was to have been buried up to her shoulders and pelted with stones until dead. But before human-rights activists could celebrate the victory, a court in the nearby state of Katsina announced that it had given a stoning sentence to Amina Lawal Kurami, for giving birth out of wedlock.
The Globe and Mail — Toronto, Ontario, Canada, 2002-03-20
A gay teen who has been told he can't bring his boyfriend to the prom has sparked a human-rights debate at his Roman Catholic high school in Oshawa. Grant Andrews, director of education with the school board, said in a statement yesterday: "The church does not condemn an individual for his or her sexual orientation. However, the behaviours associated with a homosexual lifestyle are not consistent with church teachings and our values as a Catholic school system."
Webmaster's comment:
The school administration, displaying the hypocrisy so typical of Roman Catholicism, is saying that it is OK to be gay, as
long as you are not gay. The underlying problem is that the Catholic school system in the Canadian province of Ontario is
publically funded, a situation which should never have been allowed.
BBC News, 2002-03-15
Saudi Arabia's religious police stopped schoolgirls from leaving a blazing building because they were not wearing correct Islamic dress, according to Saudi newspapers.
In a rare criticism of the kingdom's powerful "mutaween" police, the Saudi media has accused them of hindering attempts to save 15 girls who died in the fire on Monday...
The Saudi Gazette quoted witnesses as saying that the police - known as the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice - had stopped men who tried to help the girls and warned "it is a sinful to approach them".
The father of one of the dead girls said that the school watchman even refused to open the gates to let the girls out.
Washington Post, 2002-03-08
A discussion of how religion motivates murderous violence in India.
The defining image of the week, for me, is of a small child's burned and blackened arm, its tiny fingers
curled into a fist, protruding from the remains of a human bonfire in Ahmadabad, Gujarat, in India. The
murder of children is something of an Indian specialty....
...I write as an Indian man, born and bred, who loves India deeply and knows that what one of us does today,
any of us is potentially capable of doing tomorrow. If I take pride in India's strengths, then India's sins must
be mine as well. Do I sound angry? Good. Ashamed and disgusted? I certainly hope so. Because, as India undergoes
its worst bout of Hindu-Muslim bloodletting in more than a decade, many people have not been sounding anything
like angry, ashamed or disgusted enough....
...
Of course, there are political explanations....
...
The political discourse matters, and explains a good deal. But there's something beneath it, something we don't want to
look in the face: namely, that in India, as elsewhere in our darkening world, religion is the poison in the blood. Where
religion intervenes,
mere innocence is no excuse. Yet we go on skating around this issue, speaking of religion in the fashionable language of
"respect." What is there to respect in any of this, or in any of the crimes now being committed almost daily
around the world in religion's dreaded name? How well, with what fatal results, religion erects totems, and how willing we
are to kill for them! And when we've done it often enough, the deadening of affect that results makes it easier to do it again.
So India's problem turns out to be the world's problem. What happened in India has happened in God's name.
The problem's name is God.
| XHTML CSS |