Here’s one my favourites, about George W. Bush:

“He’s unusually incurious, abnormally unintelligent, amazingly inarticulate, fantastically uncultured, extraordinarily uneducated, and apparently quite proud of all these things.”

Great stuff.

The poor generally don’t have the same opportunities that we got, starting right from childhood. Poor nutrition can wreck havoc on a child’s brain development; being raised in a tough and poor neighbourhood greatly reduces your chances of becoming a successful and productive member of society; not having access to proper healthcare can ruin your health and your life; and not having a chance at a good education will kill whatever opportunities you might have left at this point. Only those with an incredible talent and/or luck can pull through all this and become successful. Yes there are many stories of rags to riches, especially in America, but those are the exceptions rather than the rule, and America actually comes out near the bottom of the heap in terms of “upward mobility” in the industrialized world. The Hollywood version of America does not represent reality.

Having said all that, the truth is that I only have modest resources to give away so I like to make sure every single one of my charity dollars counts and goes towards truly helping people. Because of this I have to be selective about the causes I will support. This means, amongst other things, not giving to religious organizations who use part or all of the money for proselytizing or to large bureaucratic organizations who waste up to 80% of the money before it gets to the poor. I also favour organizations that help the poor by providing them the means to help themselves rather than just handing out food. Organizations that deal with education or community health for example. I am also a big proponent of micro-lending organizations like Kiva, which help people start a small business, improve a school, build a well for their village, etc.

But why am I writing this article in the first place? Because of people who give to improve the local church in the village of Picacho (near our home in Altos del Maria, Panama). I have no doubt that these are decent people with very good intentions, but it nonetheless burns me to see this and I will never support such a cause. I’m sure that the religious amongst you will complain that the church is important and provides these poor people with support and solace through their suffering. But I object to this reasoning for several reasons.

The first reason is the most obvious one: why don’t the hypocrites in robes who live in the Vatican palace and sit on hundreds of billions of dollars practice what they preach and give a bit of their pocket change to support the local church? They live in obscene wealth while most of their followers are poor, and we’re supposed to contribute and support that?

The second reason is that these folks have far more pressing and important needs than a nicer church. There are many people in Picacho and the other nearby villages who have a hard time feeding, clothing and educating their kids, isn’t that much more important than the need to improve the village church?

The third reason is that while the Church may provide solace, it doesn’t provide a solution. In fact, the Catholic Church wants to keep its followers poor: that is why they preach against family planning and why they teach that poverty and suffering are virtuous and your ticket to paradise. The Church creates and nurtures poverty; it doesn’t help those in misery, it fosters misery. I’ve seen it in Africa, I’ve read about it in the history of my native Quebec, and I see it here everyday in Panama.

Saying that the Church provides solace for the poor with superstitions and the empty promise of a better afterlife is equivalent to saying that alcohol or drugs provide solace to those who chose that route. It may provide temporary psychological relief for their suffering but it doesn’t provide actual help in resolving their problems in the first place, in getting themselves out of their poverty, in improving their lives and that of their loved ones. I think that religion, just like drugs and alcohol, tends to create a deepening of the problem rather than provide a solution. I firmly believe that if the poor people took all the energy, time and resources they put in religion and instead used them to improve their education, learn a new skill or start a little business, they would stand a much better chance of pulling themselves out of poverty. Even more importantly they could give their children a better chance of doing it.

So if I am asked to give to create a village library, improve the village school, provide school books or uniforms, help send a bright kid to high-school, implement a local One Laptop Per Child program or provide micro-financing for starting a small business, I’m all for that and I will use my limited time and resources to help. But to ask me for charity to help the local church? I find that offensive and counter-productive. I think it is more about making the donors feel good about themselves (or sucking up to God) then it is about helping those who are truly in need.

Once again, I’m not trying to put down the good folks with good intentions who provide charity to the local churches, just saying why I personally disagree with it.


Parents sacrifice 4-yr-old girl to become rich

Sanjay Pandey, Lucknow, Aug 18, DHNS:

Lust for wealth drove a poverty- stricken couple to sacrifice their own four-year-old daughter at a village in Uttar Pradesh’s backward Sitapur district, about 90 km from here.The couple, identified as Srikrishna and Ramdevi, were told by a “tantrik” exorcist that they would become rich if they sacrificed their daughter, according to police sources here.  Acting on the advice of a “tantrik”, a “havana kund”a pit in which the fire is lit and yajna is performed, was prepared in the courtyard of the couple for the rituals late on Monday night.The parents then put their daughter Kanni into the pit amid chanting of “mantra” and lit the fire. The girl, who was also mercillessely beaten, was half buried in the pit. The parents had stuffed a piece of cloth in the mouth of the little girl so that her cries could not be heard by any one in the village, sources said.The badly burnt body of the girl was later buried on the same spot by digging a deep pit, sources said. The grandmother of the girl was also present during the rituals, sources said.The ghastly incident came to light on Tuesday when neighbours found vermillion, flowers, incense sticks and other items used in the rituals and suspected that some “exorcism rituals” might have been performed there.As the crowds of villagers swelled before Srikrishna’s house, the couple, sensing trouble, and others fled from there through the back door. The villagers informed the police, which dug the area and brought out the badly burnt body of Kanni. “The body had injury marks on the head and neck, which shows that she must have been beaten for offering resistance,” according to the police.A case had been registered by the police and a massive manhunt had been launched to nab the culprits, who have been absconding.Barely a couple of days back a nine- year-old girl was buried alive by her own uncle in Uttar Pradesh’s Gonda district to please the goddess so that he could become rich.

via Parents sacrifice 4-yr-old girl to become rich.

In their infinite arrogance they say that when you are baptized into the Church your soul is “marked” for eternity. The only way to get out is apparently to get excommunicated. But what the heck does one have to do to get excommunicated when apparently even child rape doesn’t do it? I shudder at the thought…

Some of my friends ask: why bother? Well, it is a matter of principle. I do not want to be counted as one of the “sheep” of a flock tended by hypocritical men in robes. I do not want my name to be on the registry of this repressive cult. I do not want to be tacitly associated with the Church-sponsored genocide in Africa. I want my protest against the current Pope and his decades long protection of child-rapists to be heard loud and clear.

I’ve been looking into how to do this and here is some of what I found:

Understand that there is no secular legal method for leaving the catholic church, but within the Catholic church a person can be forced out, usually by acting in a way that is contrary to church belief or goes against the code of canon law. Excommunication is the formal way the Catholic church punishes a member. The member is excluded from church worship services and can’t receive the sacraments.

Also found this article on WikiAnswers:

How do you get kicked out of the Catholic Church?

Being “kicked out” of the Catholic Church is impossible. Once you are baptized you become Catholic and one of the effects of baptism is to place an eternal mark on the soul that forever identifies that soul as a member of Christ’s Church, whether in heaven or hell. You can, however, become a “dead member” of the Church. To become a dead member is fairly simple, you can sin and remain unrepentant, thereby depriving yourself of the sacraments by joining another religion or practicing nothing at all, or you can commit an act that will incur excommunication, in which case, the Church Itself will no longer make the sacraments available to you.

The Church, due to spiritual, political or disciplinary circumstances, can pronounce a sentence of excommunication on someone that has shown severe disregard for God, His laws, His Church or Its members. There are certain sins or transgressions considered so heinous, however, that the sinner can incur an automatic excommunication, without the Church having to review and declare it. An automatic excommunication is attached to those sins that are so heinous the soul must have premeditated the deed and maliciously decided to go through with it despite the blatant obviousness of its evil. Automatic excommunication is incurred by heresy, schism (usurping legitimate Church authority), apostasy (denouncing the Faith by a member of the Faith), desecration of the Blessed Sacrament, violence against the person of the pope, involvement in an abortion, ordaining bishops without a papal mandate, absolution of a illicit sexual partner (for priests only, trying to cover their tracks), breaking the seal of confession or being a participant in any of the above. Someone who incurs an automatic excommunication must reveal their sin to a confessor who may require them to confess to a bishop, as some sins are so serious they must be put to a bishop first.

Interesting tidbit, they list: “desecration of the Blessed Sacrament” as worthy of excommunication. Does that mean that if I were to take a communion wafer and spit and step on it I would be excommunicated? Is this really worst in the Church’s eyes than child rape? However, according to this, the only result of excommunication is that you can no longer receive the “sacrament”, they probably still wouldn’t take my name off their books…

Seems like a lost cause, my “soul” is really doomed to be associated forever with the cult that steals from the poor and lives in a $150B gold palace.

the Pope encouraged the Central American country to continue working toward “greater social, economic, and cultural equality between the distinct sectors of society. He explained that this could be done by “renouncing selfish interests, strengthening solidarity, and reconciling wills.”

This is rather ironic and hypocritical coming from a man who lives like a king in a palace that is also a city-state and sits on a fortune estimated at between $50B and $150B while most of his followers are poor and destitute. The same man who protects child-abusing priests and preaches the use of condoms in Africa thereby condemning them to spreading AIDS and making babies they can’t feed.

In light of recent events at the Texas and Florida education boards, this cartoon hits the nail right on the head: