Sunday Evening Open Thread: Nancy Pelosi Is A Better Catholic Than Archbishop Cordileone

‘Insubordinate saboteur’.

Well said, SF Examiner. Well said.

Purple Gobshite Cordileone should be recalled to Rome and, on arrival at the airport, be handed a Bible, an anorak and a copy of Sir Crispen Millsworthy’s 1921 classic ‘Observations on the Feeding Habits of the Polar Bear’ and told he’s the new Papal Emissary to an ice floe off the coast of Nunavit.

May your sour God go with you, fucknuckles.

Claire McCaskill
@clairecmc
· May 21
A Mo legislator that represents a college town:”There are some that I think are okay and some that I don’t believe in,”Sen. Hoskins,R-Warrensburg, said of contraceptives,”especially the morning after pill and things that come after conception. So I think anything’s on the table.”

The anti-abortion movement will be right up in everyone’s business, declaring which birth control methods are off limits to American women.

They are exactly as authoritarian and controlling as we said they were, and anyone who scolded the people who knew it and tried to warn others should apologize.

Republican women who think their lives won’t change under the rule of religious fudamentalists are delusional. You don’t just get abortion bans- you get the entire far Right cultural agenda. They want to push us back 50 years.

@Kay

Women on the pill will be denied communion by this time next year.

The archbishop, who clearly gives not a fig about anything nice young chap from Nazareth ever said or did, could use a trip to Rome for a lovely chat with our resident Pope Francis – the Jesuits have always had a knack for this kind of thing.

Of course, if ‘worthiness’ were actually the criteria for being admitted to the eucharist, the Archbishop would be last in line.

Totally off topic but has anyone else noticed or remarked that embedded Tweets load much faster on this site than they do on original BJ?

Baud May 22, 2022 at 7:02 PM
@Kay

Women on the pill will be denied communion by this time next year.

I love the continued frantic denials by Right leaning pundits.

They’re not trustworthy people and no one should listen to them. They
CONSISTENTLY minimize and dismiss risk and they have been making poor predictions on “worst case” since 2016.

Twenty years of center Right pundits tendentiously scolding the women who predicted exactly what is happening and not one of them has admitted error or apologized. They were wrong. It’s exactly as bad as we said it would be.

I want a specific statute- a right of action- that I can use to keep authoritiarian religious zealots OUT of my business. I don’t want them in the doctors office with me and I don’t want them poking around in my medical records, peering into my windows, or weighing in on what birth control methods meet their religious tests.

We should be protected from them.

Dragging this up from downstairs, since an Open Thread is a better fit.

Way OT, but you folks know everything. I found a turtle in my back yard, looked like it was digging a hole, presumably to lay eggs. Is there anything I can or should do to protect those eggs from local predators (squirrels, etc.)?

They say that abstinence makes the Church grow fondlers…

“Cordileone seeks to deprive her of a key component of her faith, but where is his zeal for punishment and purity when it comes to right-wing politicians? Why don’t Republican Catholics have to fear being cut off from Communion when they vote against health care or funding for the poor? ”

I have long wondered why Gov. Greg Abbott in Texas, a Catholic, is not publicly berated by the Bishop of Austin for his position on the death penalty.

In case you want to keep track, just since the leak of the draft opinion anti-abortion acitivists have told the public three lies:

“It will go back to the states” – lie- they are planning federal legislation

“It won’t affect birth control” – lie number two- they are obviously discussing banning contracteption

“There won’t be punishments for women” – lie number three, they will absolutely pass state laws with criminal sanctions for women- they can’t wait.

Everything they have told the public since the leak is a lie. Their assurances and promises are worth nothing.

@Scout211 – Thanks. Off to the hardware store tomorrow.

@Kay

No wonder they are so focused on projecting their sins onto Democrats.

You can’t deny something to someone if they’ve never asked you for it. I seriously doubt that Pelosi attends mass anywhere this person officiates or has control over. I’ve read there are Jesuit controlled places where she could (and probably does) go to mass and receive communion (should she so desire).

Judd Legum
@JuddLegum
·
7h
Hershel Walker, the presumptive GOP nominee for U.S. Senate in Georgia, says he supports a total abortion ban with no exceptions for rape, incest, or health of the mother.
“There’s no exception in my mind. Like I say, I believe in life.”

Serial domestic violence perpetrator Hershal Walker is the perfect spokesperson for the anti-abortion movement.

He believes in “life”, just not women’s lives.

@Kay
Where the hell does a man like that- any man, in fact- get off dictating women’s health decisions??

@FelonyGovt: “Where the hell does a man like that…get off dictating women’s health decisions??”

I know you know the answer to that question, but I think it bears spelling out. He gets it from the same dark place where he gets the idea that he has the right to knock women around as he sees fit. They are there for him to make use and abuse, they have no other reality for him.

@NotMax,

Dicktating, rotating tag nom,

@Baud: “Women on the pill will be denied communion by this time next year.”

Speaking as the (probably) only practicing Catholic, somewhat pro-life jackal: that couldn’t happen. The Catholic church doesn’t know who is on the pill. Under normal circumstances (Bp. Cordileone is not normal circumstances) receiving communion is left to the individual conscience. I have several gay Catholic friends, and they have no trouble finding priests who will hear their confessions (without demanding they give up their same sex relationships) and will give them communion. Notice that President Biden also attends Mass regularly and is not refused communion.

I live in the Diocese of Oakland, which was previously afflicted by Bp. Cordileone. I breathed a sigh of relief when he was transferred to San Francisco. I shouldn’t have- moving a problem does not solve the problem.

And, to not create a firestorm in the comments, I should explain what I mean by “somewhat pro-life”. I’m not advocating banning abortion by law. (In the age of medication abortions, that would not work anyway.) I do think that unborn life has value, and that it should be public policy to drive down the abortion rate by total access to contraception, a social expectation that a person not willing to have a child should contracept, and ample social/financial support. That’s what they do in most of western Europe, where the abortion rate is much lower than the US.

“”Nick Donnelly @ProtecttheFaith
12 out of 260 US bishops have publicly supported Archbishop Cordileone’s Canon 915 decree banning Nancy Pelosi from receiving Holy Communion
No US Cardinal has expressed support
Now we know what to think of the other 248 US – (bishops)””

Indeed we do, Nick. I appreciate how your tattle-tale works to let us know that Cordie is way out of step with the Cardinals, and probably a majority of bishops!

@lowtechcyclist
@Kay

The report from the Southern Baptist Church, just released today, is getting some wide coverage. NYT, WaPo, and even sincere,igious publications

This from Christianity Today:

Headline: This is the Southern Baptist Apocolypse

“ They were right. I was wrong to call sexual abuse in the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) a crisis. Crisis is too small a word. It is an apocalypse.

Someone asked me a few weeks ago what I expected from the third-party investigation into the handling of sexual abuse by the Southern Baptist Convention’s Executive Committee. I said I didn’t expect to be surprised at all. How could I be? I lived through years with that entity. I was the one who called for such an investigation in the first place.

And yet, as I read the report, I found that I could not swipe the screen to the next page because my hands were shaking with rage. That’s because, as dark a view as I had of the SBC Executive Committee, the investigation uncovers a reality far more evil and systemic than I imagined it could be.

The conclusions of the report are so massive as to almost defy summation. It corroborates and details charges of deception, stonewalling, and intimidation of victims and those calling for reform. It includes written conversations among top Executive Committee staff and their lawyers that display the sort of inhumanity one could hardly have scripted for villains in a television crime drama. It documents callous cover-ups by some SBC leaders and credible allegations of sexually predatory behavior by some leaders themselves, including former SBC president Johnny Hunt (who was one of the only figures in SBC life who seemed to be respected across all of the typical divides).

And then there is the documented mistreatment by the Executive Committee of a sexual abuse survivor, whose own story of her abuse was altered to make it seem that her abuse was a consensual “affair”—resulting, as the report corroborates, in years of living hell for her.“

@Scout211
Although I am not in any way, shape or form minimizing or justifying the way the Catholic Church handled the Catholic sex abuse scandal- it was horrific- I think it is a mistake to assume “these other bad guys did this, my guys never would”.

At this point there have been child sex abuse scandals in:
– the Catholic Church
– the American Boy Scouts
– the Soouthern Baptists
– the Amish
– some Orthodox Jewish communities

In addition, during the Afghan war, US soldiers were told to ignore the pervasive sexual abuse of boys by Afghan warlords allied with the US.

I draw three conclusions:
1. People in a position of power will inevitably use that power to exhort sex from the less powerful.
2, Communities where this is happening will be motivated to ignore what is happening.
3. Items (1) and (2) above must be opposed to the absolute maximum.

Yeah, this sort of attitude is why Mr. Rudbek and I haven’t been to Mass since before the pandemic. And part of why I am really reluctant to attend any alumni events, as I would prefer not to have an assault on my record.

And I’m surviving the new job so far, although I am somewhat behind at the moment due to luck of the draw for my workload. I broke down and had Mr. Rudbek buy me a VersaDesk desk riser from Target, as otherwise I will be sitting down for far too long every day. It took us less than two hours to get it assembled and get my dual monitors, keyboard, and mouse onto it. Now to get all of my tools and toys back into order on the desk…

I’m sorry, there’s just no way for me to take the Catholic Church seriously at this point. (I’m not talking about anyone’s beliefs. I’m talking about the institution.) It’s so transparently awful.

..

@Jinchi- I would agree that ordinary community members do better, on the average, than community leaders, but they do not do that well. There is a lot of documentary evidence of Catholic parishoners, Amish community members, US soldiers in Afghanistan, backing the sexual abusers and being totally in denial. (In the Catholic context, the group that spoke out insistently was not parishoners but nuns, many of whom had experience of fighting sex trafficing.)

@dnfree: That is appalling. However, the 1960s are more than half a century ago, and the overwhelming majority of American Catholics don’t think twice about contraception- and would never consider confessing it. (I never considered confessing contraception.)

Re: denying communion to Nancy Pelosi. A friend pointed out that Jesus shared bread and cup with Judas Iscariot, even though Jesus knew Judas would betray him.

Who is this bishop to deny communion to anyone?

Is there a way to refresh pages and not lose the place I refreshed from? I’ve tried highlighting the time stamp, but that’s not working…

My view is that churches are human institutions and there are good ones and bad ones. The opulence of the Vatican is astounding. But so is the stuff in the Hofburg in Vienna – https://www.sisimuseum-hofburg.at/en/about-the-location/silver-collection/rooms/milan-centrepiece

I’m reminded of the financial implosion of the Crystal Cathedral – https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2012-nov-02-la-me-1102-schuller-bankrupt-20121102-story.html

““As the money flowed in, Dr. and Mrs. Schuller doled out to themselves, their children and their spouses lavish compensation and perquisites that were either completely gratuitous or wholly disproportionate to the services that they were purportedly providing to the debtor,” ministry attorneys said in a court filing.

When church income began to decline in the early 2000s, the family “failed to change their ways” and continued to raid the “charitable purse,” a filing said.

From 1993 to 2010, four family members received compensation totaling more than $12.7 million. When the ministry filed for bankruptcy in 2010 with more than $50 million in debt, 20 relatives were being paid a total of more than $1.9 million a year, filings indicate.”

Smart churches stay out of politics. Too many ones run by white men seem to be of the opinion that they should be telling people outside their faith what to do.

I’m sure Pelosi is torn. My MIL was Catholic and was forbidden communion for remarrying (to someone that the priest thought had some sort of religious defect) after her first husband was killed in WWII (he was on a bomber that crashed). I don’t know the details, but she was crushed and never completely got over it. My J and her twin got yelled at by their new priest when they moved to a new state as youngsters and (because of some timing mixup) had first communion before they had their first confession – told it was practically a mortal sin and that they were probably going to Hell but maybe they’d be Ok if they said enough Hail Marys or something. A great message for a couple of young children. :-/

I understand the appeal of faith and recognize that it is a good force in many people’s lives. But there’s an awful lot about organized religion that is toxic in modern societies that need to address a wide variety of important problems…

My $0.02.

Cheers,
Scott.

It’s not a question of whether there are “good Christians” or “bad Christians. or “good churches” or “bad Churches. That is beside the point. The more relevant question is whether Christianity. on balance. is a force for good or ill in this country and the world. Or, for that matter, religion in general.

Just like one can find good Republicans and bad Republicans. That is also beside the point. The more relevant question is whether or not the Republican party is a force for good or ill in this country.

I come from a very religious family. My father is a retired Mennonite minister and my wife went through K-12 in Catholic schools in Chile. So we know what religion is about. 3/4 of my extended family are more or less Mennonite or evangelical MAGA faithful. And the other 1/4 are good hearted liberal Christians who spend way too much time trying to compromise and find “common ground” with the fundamentalist side of the family and faith.

This country was founded on two original sins. Slavery and the genocide of our native peoples. And Christianity was at the very forefront of both. Creating the philosophical and intellectual justification for slavery as well as genocide.

And it just continues and continues with racism, sexism, abuse, denial of science, and rationalization for treason, coups, and authoritarian rule. Islam, Hinduism, Judaism, and all the major faiths in their dominant fundamentalist forms are frankly no better.

It seems to me that the number of people who’ve gone from being assholes to benevolent beings because of organized religion is way, way less than the number of assholes who’ve found in organized religion justification for being assholes.

IOW, if you’re already a good person, the best that organized religion can do is give you more opportunities to focus and act on your goodness. But if you’re already a douchnozzle, organized religion will allow you believe your cruelty, bigotry, and general lousiness is blessed by god.

And here at the BJ withdrawal clinic John is calling out @365datacenters on twitter. https://twitter.com/Johngcole/status/1528464871691628544

I’m always somewhat bemused to discover that so many people still ascribe any moral authority to what is arguably the largest criminal organization on the planet.