Paul C. Anagnostopoulos said:
Slow news day, I guess.
~~ Paul
Religion in the news today:
Greece is lacking in Seperation of Church and State:
In the run-up to the August 2004 Athens Olympic Games, Dr Altana Filos presents a survey of religious freedom in Greece. This is the only European Union country to ban proselytism in its Constitution, despite condemnation by the European Court of Human Rights in 1993 for this. Dr Filos finds that there have been improvements since 2001, however, religious minorities are still banned from corporately owning places of worship and being represented in court, and the police can still prosecute religious communities who operate or build places of worship without the permission of the government and the Orthodox Church. Religious freedom is the Achilles' heel in Greece's human rights record.
Greece is the only European Union (EU) country to ban proselytism in its constitution, and the only EU country to have been condemned by the European Court of Human Rights for a lack of religious freedom, in the Kokkinakis case (see the Greece section of the full 2001 Forum 18 report
http://www.forum18.org/PDF/freedomofreligion.pdf). Although Greece has made progress in the protection of religious freedom, the run-up to the 2004 Athens Olympic Games finds Greece still displaying this Achilles' heel in its human rights record.
Nothing much to comment on from myself personally.
Bye-bye Women's Rights (Registration Required):
Current law allows insurance providers that morally or religiously object to birth control to not cover contraceptives as long as they maintain the same policy for all of their clients. The new measure would allow individual religious organizations and institutions to not provide coverage for contraceptives even if their insurance provider did offer that coverage to other clients. ... "This is a separation of church and state issue," Gilligan said. "We don't believe the state should be defining what we can and cannot do in terms of providing benefits to our employees."
[O]pponents of the bill said the original law was meant to promote equality for women. Feigenholtz said that allowing the Catholic Church to opt out would mean that even non-Catholic employees who work for Catholic institutions could not have access to affordable birth control. ... Also, she said the broad language of this new bill opens the possibility for secular companies to claim a moral objection simply to keep down the cost of their premiums.
Sen. Iris Martinez (D-Chicago) said this new measure is unfair because women take contraceptives not just for birth control, but for other health reasons as well. "When Viagra hit the market, four months later, insurance companies covered it," she said. "Forty years ago they introduced contraceptives for women, and apparently we still can't get the coverage."
So your employer can pick and choose which health benefits its employers are entitled to based on his moral beliefs? I sure hope my employer isnt a practicing member of Christian Science or a Homeopath.
Hal Lindsey Comments On Iraqi Abuse Scandal:
We have to face the fact that there is taking place a real polarization in America. On the one side there is a growing aggressive minority of Americans who are amoral, agnostic, anti-religious, reject traditional American values and are very liberal politically.
...
There is no question but what it is the irreligious minority that is seen by most of the world as being the true American.
This terrible situation in the Iraqi prison abuse brings this out into the open for all to see.
Most Americans cannot understand such behavior. It isn’t a matter of being better trained. These military personnel should have known not to do such things from having just simple traditional American decency.
And we have been treated to a glaring example of majority of the media’s lack of morality and concern for the best interest of America.
Hal Lindsey is a stupid stupid man.
Somehow he managed to blame the abuse of Iraqi prisoners on atheists. What on earth does increasing American Secularity have to do with Iraqi abuse?
After that little tangent, he critical thinking muscle all but gives out on him when he blames the media for putting the abuse in context and letting the American public know about it. "Forget the American soldiers, lets blame the atheists and those who publicize the torture for blah blah and goobly gobble blah! Hahaha, cant argue with that!" Has this man's moral conscience left him or is he being deliberately obtuse.
So thats the voice of the conservative evangelical Christian in America... ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊ moron.
Bizarre Catholic School Incident:
A 11-year-old Queens fifth-grader was booted from her Catholic elementary school for blowing the whistle on a bizarre sex-bracelets game.
Michelle said school officials claimed she slandered Holy Child by allowing her daughter to be photographed by The Post in front of it wearing bracelets and rings that represent different sex acts.
"I didn't slander anybody," said Michelle, after her daughter's expulsion was reported on Fox News. "But what they did today - throwing my daughter out of school - that's slander."
Megan was the subject of a Post front-page story Sunday revealing that some city kids - including girls at Holy Child - play a strange game called "Snap" where girls wear bracelets and rings of different colors and boys try to rip them off.
If a boy succeeds, he gets a coupon from the girl promising to perform whatever sex act the color stands for. Black, for example, represents sexual intercourse.
Michelle said she allowed her daughter to be interviewed because "I wanted parents to know that if it's happening in Catholic schools, its happening in public schools and it's happening everywhere. Half the school does it."
"They said I did an un-Christian thing," Michelle said. "They said if there was a problem, I should have reported it to them first. But I feel I was right to let other parents know what their children are doing."
I agree, those kinds of "games" do not belong in a Catholic elementary school, or any school for that matter.
However, this sounds eerily like how church officials tried to handle the sex abuse scandal: attack those who go public as being un-Christian and un-Catholic while ignoring the real source of the problem. It’s not even clear that these bracelets really “mean” what people are saying (it could just be another urban legend). Attacking those who go public with their concerns it just ridiculous. Morons.
Lightning hits a church:
A small fire broke out yesterday in a Lowell church after it was struck by lightning, fire officials said.
The church survived but it really casts doubt on idea that a church might be the safest place to hide from the wrath of God...
More Church and State Conflict:
A local pastor's participation in a rally promoting traditional marriage has angered some members of the city's gay and lesbian community, and led to calls for the city to sever ties with the pastor's church.
John Small, the pastor of New Beginnings Church, attended the Mayday for Marriage rally at Safeco Field in Seattle this month. The event, organized by churches in the region, was held to show support for marriage between a man and a woman at a time when some state and local governments have moved to recognize gay marriages.
...
For each of the past three years, New Beginnings has received $1,000 from the city to organize the community's annual Easter egg hunt.
"The hours he puts in for the city as a volunteer are fantastic," City Councilman John Zambrano said. Until now, Zambrano said, there's never been a question of an improper relationship between Small and the city.
...
"I was shocked and hurt when I learned he'd attended the rally," Amundson said. "I brought it to the council because I was concerned that an organization so intricately involved in the city has gone political."
Amundson told the council that New Beginnings should not receive any more money from the city's Community Donation Fund, which was created to help local organizations pay for citywide events.
...
Elaine Haig-Widner said the city had "created the appearance of a relationship favoring one church above all other churches." She noted that the City Council had presented Small with a proclamation in advance of the National Day of Prayer on May 6 and that Small, in turn, had led prayers on the steps of City Hall that day.
It shouldnt be at all a problem for the city to break off its improperly close ties to this church, the church is undoubtedly recieving special treatment and that is inappropriate.
One of the problems with favoring a particular church like this is that, if they support some discriminatory policy, now the government becomes associated with that position. The church should be able to adopt whatever theological position they want without worrying about how that will look in political circles. The politicians shouldn’t have to worry about what their favorite pastor will say on the news.
