Religion – Page 2 – The Wrongologist

Monday Wake Up Call – January 10, 2022

The Daily Escape:

Kohler-Andrae State Park, Sheboygan, WI – January 2022 photo by Nick Schroeter Photography

Wrongo rarely delves into religion, but since Pope Francis had comments on the slowing global population growth, Wrongo has thoughts. From the Guardian:

“In a move likely to raise the hackles of millions of cats, dogs and their human cohabitees, Pope Francis has suggested that couples who prefer pets to children are selfish.”

The Pope said that owning a pet instead of having kids meant that:

“…civilization grows old without humanity because we lose the richness of fatherhood and motherhood, and it is the country that suffers”.

Ouch. As someone who has had both children and dogs, Wrongo knows that taking care of a pet is far from selfish. As Bloomberg’s Lara Williams said:

“…the Pope could do better than to rhetorically kick puppies. There are solid economic reasons for the decline of birthrates across the world, and they need addressing.”

This isn’t a new trend. Despite optimistic predictions for a post-pandemic baby boom, last year, the US recorded the lowest rate of population growth since we began gathering data. In the year from July 2020 to July 2021, only 392,665 people were added to the US population. That’s about a tenth of one percent growth. It’s also the first time since 1937 that the population grew by fewer than 1 million people.

Here’s Bloomberg’s graph of our reproductive performance:

Meanwhile, pet ownership has been increasing, especially among younger generations. The American Pet Products Association’s annual survey revealed that millennials are now the biggest cohort of American pet owners. A 2021 AlphaWise survey revealed that 65% of 18-to-34 year-old Americans plan to acquire or add another pet in the next five years, driving a predicted 14% increase in US pet ownership by 2030.

But the falling birth rate is concerning. According to the US Census Bureau the proportion of married couple households with children fell from 40% in 1970 to 20% in 2012. While seven in 10 households included a pet.

So why are people delaying having children? A Morning Consult survey revealed that, no surprise, money is the top reason for millennials being childless, followed by the other key ingredient to starting a family: a willing and appropriate partner. The poll showed that 38% of millennials say that children are too expensive, while 33% of millennials said they hadn’t found a suitable partner.

Millennials face more economic hurdles than the older generations: high levels of student debt, stratospheric real estate prices and career instability all have been exacerbated by the pandemic. The recent rise in inflation also makes the cost of living, and thus the costs of raising a child, more expensive.

Here’s the comparison of the average cost of raising a child versus owning a dog. Pets are way cheaper:

This shows that pets aren’t cheap, but they’re far less expensive than having a child. The lifetime cost of a dog is just 15.6% of the cost of a baby. Cats are cheaper, but that isn’t necessarily a reason to choose to have one in your life.

The cost differential makes it clear why millennials might not feel financially secure enough to bring a child into the world, while the financial costs of adopting a pet is much more achievable. A few things to remember:

Pope Francis took the name of the patron saint of animals
Having children is a choice, it shouldn’t be an obligation
Catholic opposition to birth control and abortion rights hasn’t led to “loving families”

The Pope shouldn’t weigh in on the intensely personal decision about whether to have a child, any more than parents, or family friends should. And the Pope shouldn’t be condemning the childless pet owners of the world as selfish when people are simply struggling to make good life choices.

He, along with politicians, should be committed to doing more to tackle the underlying reasons why the people who might want children feel that they have to delay it.

Time to wake up, Pope Francis! How many times does the Roman Catholic Church need to hear that they should stay out of people’s bedrooms?

To help him wake up, let’s all listen to Billy Bragg perform “Ten Mysterious Photos That Can’t Be Explained‘ from his 2021 album, “The Million Things That Never Happened”. In the 1980’s, Bragg was described by Rolling Stone as “a contemporary, urban British folksinger”. Still true today:

Sample Lyric:

The conspiracy acts
The cyberchondriacs
Gripped by their fevered imagination
They switched the filters off
Too much is not enough
You know that you can overdose on information

But you know that you can’t overdose on The Wrongologist!

Do Religious Exemptions From Vaccination Protect Anyone?

The Daily Escape:

Coast Guard Beach, Cape Cod MA – October 2021 photo by Anna Olivera Alabarg

From Military.com:

“US service members should have the right to refuse the military’s COVID-19 vaccination requirement on conscientious grounds, the Catholic Church’s Archdiocese for the Military Services said Tuesday.”

The statement by Archbishop Timothy Broglio focuses on potential objections over the use of fetal cell lines in vaccine development: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“The Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines were tested using an abortion-derived cell line. That type of a link has been for centuries considered remote material cooperation with evil and is never sinful. The Johnson & Johnson vaccine was developed, tested, and is produced, with abortion-derived cell lines. That vaccine is, therefore, more problematic.”

That’s the Catholic Church’s overriding position on Covid vaccines. Since the military has the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines available, no military member needs to take the J&J shot. Where Archbishop Broglio goes off the rails is with this:

“….no one should be forced to receive a COVID-19 vaccine if it would violate the sanctity of his or her conscience.

Individuals possess the “civil right not to be hindered in leading their lives in accordance with their consciences.”

Even if an individual’s decision seems erroneous or inconsistent to others, conscience does not lose its dignity. This belief permeates Catholic moral theology as well as First Amendment jurisprudence. As stated by the United States Supreme Court, “[R]eligious beliefs need not be acceptable, logical, consistent, or comprehensible to others in order to merit First Amendment protection.”

So, every Catholic in the military has a vaccination hall pass from the Archbishop from taking a vaccine that is “never sinful”? The curious thing is that Catholics are the most vaccinated group in the US, according to a recent national survey by the Pew Research Center.

Should religious exemptions from vaccine mandates really be a thing? Exceptions were designed to protect religious faith. But where vaccines are concerned, they often seem to be used in bad faith, as a way to get around complying with a public health requirement.

Some Constitutional history from Wired: The First Amendment restricts the government from prohibiting the “free exercise” of religion. For much of our history, there were no religious exemptions from secular laws that applied to everyone. As the Supreme Court observed in 1879, “To permit this would be to make the professed doctrines of religious belief superior to the law of the land, and in effect to permit every citizen to become a law unto himself.”

Congress couldn’t tell you what to believe, the Court ruled, but it can tell you what to do.

By the early 1970s, the justices carved out space for religious exemptions. They ruled that if a superficially neutral law conflicted with a religious command, the government would have to meet the “strict scrutiny” test by showing that it had a “compelling interest” in enforcing the law.

In 1990, the Court narrowed its thinking. In a case involving members of a Native American Church who took peyote as part of religious ceremonies, the Court held that religion doesn’t give someone the right to challenge a “generally applicable” law. Ruling otherwise, wrote the conservative Catholic Justice Antonin Scalia, “would open the prospect of constitutionally required exemptions from civic obligations of almost every conceivable kind.” An example of a civic obligation that Scalia cited for his slippery-slope argument: compulsory vaccination laws.

In fact, religious opposition to vaccines is rare. In 2013, John D. Grabenstein, a vaccinologist and practicing Catholic, surveyed a wide range of world religions and couldn’t find any that had anti-vaccine teachings, except for the Christian Scientists, who teach that the material world, including disease, is an illusion. And the way to overcome disease is through prayer, not medicine or vaccination.

In the 1960s and ’70s, as vaccine mandates for diseases like measles and polio proliferated, a wave of state laws enabled religious opt-outs. Today, 48 states and the District of Columbia allow some form of exemption.

As Aaron Blake asks in the WaPo: How long before Republicans’ coronavirus vaccine skepticism and anti-mandate fervor makes the next logical jump – to the other vaccines that have been mandated for many years?

It’s already happened. Ohio Congressman Jim Jordan tweeted:

“Ohio should ban all vaccine mandates”

Jordan supposedly is vaccinated. But apparently, he wants not only Covid, but whooping cough and measles to be spread as far and wide as possible.

It seems likely that the US will end up with fewer vaccine requirements in some places than we had before this pandemic that has killed over 700,000 people. You know, the one that we have vaccines for.

We live in a country where there’s no agreement on what constitutes the common good.

Monday Wake Up Call – August 30, 2021

The Daily Escape:

Abandoned house, eastern plains of Colorado photo by Daniel Forster

On Sunday, Wrongo talked in passing about how religion may bring some people together, but that it divides many more. And that the lessons about being a good person are too often pushed aside in the service of doctrine.

A fine example of this comes from the Religion News Service, who reported that Daniel Darling, SVP of communications for the National Religious Broadcasters, was fired after making pro-vaccine statements on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe”.

Darling told Joe Scarborough:

“I believe in this vaccine because I don’t want to see anyone else die of COVID. Our family has lost too many close friends and relatives to COVID, including an uncle, a beloved church member and our piano teacher…”

Sounds innocuous, but them’s firing words to the National Religious Broadcasters (NRB). According to its website, the NRB “works to protect the free speech rights of our members by advocating those rights in governmental, corporate, and media sectors.” Of course they do.

Darling shared his personal experience at a time when White evangelical Christians and Hispanic Protestants are among the faith groups most likely to be hesitant or refuse to get the COVID-19 vaccines, according to a recent survey from the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI). Although the study found vaccine hesitancy has dropped recently, 1 in 4 White evangelicals said they refuse to get a vaccine, while an additional 1 in 5 was hesitant.

So, here’s an Evangelical Christian trying to do the right thing. Urging others to get vaccinated is something that will help them and our society. But his religious organization, one apparently dedicated to “free speech”, fires him for expressing an opinion, something that’s an obvious good for humanity, that is contrary to their policy.

Darling’s statement is clearly free speech. And his viewpoint doesn’t infringe on the rights of either those who are promoting the vaccine, or those who have decided not to get the vaccine. Wrongo has no stake in whether this is wrongful termination. That is a legalistic construction which has nothing to do with what our individual duty is to each other and to society.

Sadly, this is another example that some Christians haven’t developed a code of ethics to guide their lives. Instead, they rely on learned doctrine to justify their behavior, even when their actions fly in the face of good humanity.

Let’s also spend a minute thinking about the impact of Hurricane Ida on Louisiana. As Wrongo writes this, the eye is 10 miles in diameter, the storm is over land, and severe damage reports are starting to come in.

Remember that this is also the 16th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina’s landfall in 2005 as a Category 3. Of course, back then, Pastor John Hagee said that Katrina was God’s vengeance on the gays. We’ll probably be hearing others offering similar revealed truths soon.

Remember too that Louisiana hospitals are just starting to reduce their census of Delta patients after a record surge of Covid infections. Now New Orleans is evacuating because of the Hurricane Ida storm surge, but hospitals have nowhere to send patients.

We should also remember that Ida went from a tropical storm to a Category 4 Hurricane in 48 hours. There are no rental cars, the highways are clogged. The airport in New Orleans is shut down.

Wake up America! Our 21st century horrors rare rarely subtle. And 2021’s horrors range from what we’re seeing in Afghanistan to Louisiana. Maybe that makes firing an Evangelical for speaking his mind about Covid a lesser problem, except for doctrine taking precedence over a good act.

To help you wake up today, let’s listen to “This is All I Want” by Corey Ledet, from his 2021 album, “Zydeco”. Ledet has incorporated Kouri-Vini, a regional Cajun dialect spoken by family members, into songs on his album. It’s a lot of fun and you should listen to it:

Monday Wake Up Call – November 30, 2020

We’re back from our turkey-induced coma, but it’s hard to start a new week without our usual Sunday humor:

Yummy Thanksgiving pie:

Looking forward to the Inauguration:

This Thanksgiving, Biden thanked all the front line workers for all they have done. Trump thanked all of his lawyers.

Wrongo hadn’t realized that Trump has now spent more than an entire year of his term on a Trump property (418 days), and 307 days playing golf. Imagine how much more damage he could have done if he wasn’t so lazy.

Why is it so difficult for Americans to understand the threat to our society from Covid? From the WaPo: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“In nine states, more than 1 in 1,000 people have now died of coronavirus-related causes, while daily covid-19 deaths nationwide are climbing to levels not seen since early in the pandemic.”

A few long-reluctant Republican governors recently adopted statewide mask orders and stricter social distancing measures. But not all: For example, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), last Tuesday extended an executive order that bans city and county governments from enforcing mask ordinances or limits on restaurant capacity. South Dakota’s governor Kristi Noem (R) is still resisting any kind of mask mandate. Nebraska’s governor Pete Ricketts (R) again stated his opposition to mask mandates, while Nebraska’s rural hospitals are nearly at capacity, as are bigger cities, like Lincoln.

White, rural American states are late to the pandemic’s deadly impact – partly due to how physically distant their residents are, by definition. But rural states have the smallest margin for error in terms of health care infrastructure. Their lack of ICU capacity combined with their relative inability to handle delivering the new vaccines when they become available, may see rural Trump-loving Americans take a much harder hit than they expected from Covid.

The exact criteria for who will be first in line won’t be defined until immediately after a vaccine is authorized. But the pressure’s on: The WSJ reported that United Airlines is already flying doses of Pfizer’s vaccine to points around the country in order to be prepared for distribution, if Pfizer wins government approval.

Think about the enormous pressure there is on the FDA to approve use of these vaccines. That approval starts with a meeting of its Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC). The FDA has scheduled a Committee meeting on Dec. 10 to discuss the request for emergency use authorization of Pfizer’s vaccine.

As of now, the FDA hasn’t made the names of Committee members’ public. But imagine if there are a few Committee members who disagree that the vaccine should be made available immediately.

This recently happened with an Alzheimer’s drug. The FDA’s review division reported that the drug’s effectiveness data was “extraordinarily persuasive”. But many on that drug’s Advisory Committee rejected the study, saying that the data showed the drug offered no significant improvement to patients.

Now, the FDA is not required to follow the recommendations of its outside advisors, but it often does. So what happens if the Pfizer Committee has a split decision?

Finally, the Supreme Court’s decision in a Covid case about whether or not a state official could close down places of worship in order to stop the spread of a deadly disease, seems out of step with where we are in America. They ruled that restrictions previously imposed on New York places of worship by Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) during the coronavirus pandemic violated the First Amendment.

That’s a huge shift since Coney Barrett joined the court. In a similar case earlier this year, the court declined to lift pandemic restrictions in California and Nevada when Ruth Bader Ginsburg was alive.

But the longer term issue isn’t the possible infringement of individual religious liberty. It’s how the American Right wants to expand it so that religious people can ignore just about any law they don’t like.

The problem with this decision is that it expands an individual right to a communal right. A religious person should be able to follow their faith, but once you start giving religious communities separate rights, you’ve weakened the rule of law.

Your exercise of a right shouldn’t impose unreasonable burdens on others. But Conservatives want to treat religion as having a higher level of rights then others’ individual rights, and this isn’t right.

Time to wake up America! The fault lines of our society have been exposed by Covid and the Republican response to it. To help you wake up, listen to a cover version of Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song” by cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason and his siblings. He became an instant sensation after his cello performance at the royal wedding of Prince Harry and Megan Markle. Watch it, you won’t be dissapointed:

Turkey Reclaims Museum as a Mosque

Happy Saturday, fellow disease vectors! The Saturday Soother is on break this week. So today, we’re moving far afield from the horrors of the Trump administration and COVID to talk Turkey.

From the WaPo:

“Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced Friday that Istanbul’s iconic Hagia Sophia would become a mosque once again, brushing aside a legacy of Turkey’s secularizing modern founder, who converted the site to a museum more than eight decades ago.”

The Sophia represents the intersection of two of the world’s religions. The Sophia was built by the Romans in 360. The dome visible in the photo below was added in 537. Constantine made it the home of the Roman church (and named the city, Constantinople). It was an Eastern Orthodox Church for a short period. And from 1453 to 1931, it was a mosque. Here is a photo of the Hagia Sophia taken by Wrongo in 2013:

Since 1935, the Sophia has been a museum, neither a church nor a mosque. This was the solution devised by Kemal Ataturk, one of the 20th century’s great statesmen, to resolve competing claims by the Muslim and Christian communities in Turkey and neighboring countries.

The Sophia shows both additions and subtractions as its religion changed from Christian to Islam. Following the building’s conversion into a mosque in 1453, the minarets were added. Many of its Christian mosaics were whitewashed, due to Islam’s ban on representational imagery. The images were partially rescued by a team of archeologists from Edinburgh University between 1958 and 1962. Since then, there has been a continuing effort to restore and maintain some of the Christian provenance of the building:

2013 photo by Wrongo

Since Islam does not permit Christian-style depictions, it remains unclear whether this uncovered iconography will now be hidden once again. Here is a photo taken inside the Sophia that demonstrates the multi-cultural history of the building:

2013 photo by Wrongo

The medallion on the right above represents Allah, while the medallion on the left is for Mohammad. Behind the medallions is the nave of the original church, with the middle window pointing towards Jerusalem. The lighted arch in the nave was added when the building became a mosque. It points toward Mecca.

The Sophia was designated a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1985, and receivers 3+million annual visitors. It has been an example of tolerance and pluralism in a world that is rapidly moving away from these concepts.

There is no shortage of mosques in Istanbul. From Reuters: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“For those who don’t know, really near to Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, the Turks built the Blue Mosque, which is newer and big enough for all the Muslims in the area (and then some). Erdogan is just trying to provoke Christians and show to Muslims worldwide he is their leader.”

Until a few years ago, Turkey was held up as an example that Islam is perfectly compatible with multi-party democracy, a pro-Western foreign policy, and healthy economic growth.

Most of that has been weakened under Erdogan, and re-converting the Sophia to a mosque should make many Western countries rethink their alliances with Turkey.

The timing of the conversion is clearly political. Erdogan’s popularity has been sagging under the weight of a damaged economy. His AKP party lost control of Istanbul and Ankara to the opposition in the last elections. Their prospects for the upcoming elections are not very good either, so this current gambit is an attempt to strengthen Erdogan’s chances.

Some Turkish clerics are saying they are ready to whitewash the faces of the Seraphim that surround the dome. Here’s what they look like now:

2013 photo by Wrongo

It was a massive amount of work to uncover them, and it would be a tragedy if they are again covered up.

First prayers at the Hagia Sophia mosque are planned for July 24. This date is highly symbolic, as that is also the anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Lausanne, when Turkey gave up all claims to the remainder of the Ottoman Empire.

The artwork, now over 1500 years old, will most likely be lost again. Once more religious triumphalism will rear its ugly head. Once again, one group can rub another group’s face in the dirt.

The Sophia should keep all of its artwork, and remain open to all.

Coughs And Prayers

The Daily Escape:

Lake Colchuck, Alpine Lakes Wilderness, near Leavenworth, WA – photo by atgcgtt

Until 1956, e pluribus Unum (out of many, one) was the country’s unofficial national motto. It was officially replaced by “In God we trust“ by Congress in 1956. And in America today, there are many, many pastors who are telling their members that for Coronavirus, trusting God is enough. There’s no need for social distancing or flattening the curve. From Crooks and Liars: (Brackets by Wrongo)

“Apparently the Coronavirus was wiped off the face of the earth Sunday by televangelist Kenneth Copeland, [who]…around 12 eastern [said]…..In the name of Jesus… I execute judgment on you, COVID-19!..It! Is! Finished! It! Is! Over!”

But it isn’t over, we still have plenty of coughs right along with our prayers.

Many Americans just don’t like to be told what to do, even when it’s readily apparent why they should do it. Most are beginning to accept the arguments about transmission rates and mortality rates being higher than with the flu.

They are accepting curve flattening. But it’s doubtful they would have accepted it simply based on the words of scientists. Without the exercise of state and local power closing schools and stores, and banning social gatherings, along with their painful economic consequences they would be out and about like the kids in Florida during spring break.

Social media is filled with pandemic denialism and fantastic rumors about the true origin, or the severity of the virus. Most of us aren’t public health experts, so going along with the program boils down to “the government seems to be taking it seriously, so maybe I should too.”

And the government is finally taking it seriously, despite Trump’s refusal to take the COVID-19 outbreak seriously during the entire first quarter of 2020. Now suddenly, he is, and much of the media are giving him credit for a change in tone, for looking presidential, and for finally acting seriously.

Praising Trump for changing his tone is like praising your puppy for shitting closer to the door.

Trump frittered away January, February and most of March as a coronavirus denialist. It is a hoax, he said. We only have 15 cases. It will just go away. It is like the ordinary flu. It shouldn’t interfere with business, or with the stock market.

But it did interfere with our lives, and now it looks like an unstoppable force. Here’s a chart from the Financial Times:

This graph tracks most countries by number of cases and the days since the country’s 100^th case. The steeper the curve, the faster the cases are growing, and the bigger the national problem. There are reference curves for cases doubling every day, every other day, every three days, an once a week.

The graph shows that America’s on a track to face a massive public health problem, perhaps the worst among nations. One made worse by the wide mistrust of the state’s authority by significant segments of America. Many politicians and citizens seemingly reject stay at home orders, or other measures to control the rapid spread of the virus.

Two stories of interest. First, a delicious irony is how dependent America is on foreign-born doctors and other health workers, given Trump’s aversion to immigration. Juan Cole reports that nearly one third of American physicians are foreign-born. And about a quarter of nurse aides are first-generation immigrants. More from Cole:

“About 17% of US physicians are Asian-Americans. These are the same Asian-Americans against whom Trump fomented beatings and harassment by calling Covid-19 “Chinese.” About 6% of our physicians are Hispanic. Fully one percent of them are Muslim, which is proportional to the Muslim-American population.”

Second, returning to the “In God We Trust” motto, a makeshift tent hospital was built in Central Park in Manhattan. The group Samaritan’s Purse is working with Mount Sinai Health System to open a 68-bed respiratory care unit. Sounds great, we need all the help we can get, right?

Wrong. Gothamist reports that Samaritan’s Purse has asked all volunteers working at the field hospital to sign a pledge that includes one that defines marriage as “exclusively the union of one genetic male and one genetic female” and another that says “human life is sacred from conception to its natural end.” So, don’t work here if you are for same sex marriage, or abortion.

Maybe it helps to know the group is headed by Franklin Graham, the son of Billy Graham, and a guy with a history of incendiary comments. Samaritan’s Purse is specifically seeking Christian medical staff for the tent hospital.

In the middle of this plague, the last thing anyone needs is a bunch of superstitious hatemongers judging those who either want to help, or who need help.

People should both cough and pray privately.

Saturday Soother – April 13, 2019

The Daily Escape:

Angel’s Rest, Columbia River Gorge, OR – 2019 photo by Thenervouspoops

(Sunday cartoons will be published on Monday, as Wrongo and Ms. Right are visiting a granddaughter in Buffalo NY)

Busy week at the Mansion of Wrong, as Wrongo prepared the Wrong family taxes for presentation to the Swamp on Monday.

His town responsibilities led to interviewing three interns for a part-time (paid) construction accounting position at the Department of Public Works. All three were accounting majors at Western Connecticut State University, and all were smart, articulate and working in multiple jobs while attending college full-time.

Those students made Wrongo feel hopeful about the next generation. That maybe America will avoid being consumed in the dumpster fire that the previous generations are leaving them.

Possibly lost in the news about Assange and William Barr was this from CNN, who reported on the bizarre words by former Pope Benedict XVI. He “retired” just before the current Pope, Francis II was elevated. Benedict wrote an essay on the sex abuse crisis in the Catholic Church that was published this week in a German magazine for priests. In the article, Benedict claims that the sexual abuse of children by priests was caused in part by the sexual revolution of the 1960s and the liberalization of the church’s moral teaching:

“Part of the physiognomy of the Revolution of ’68…was that pedophilia was then also diagnosed as allowed and appropriate…Benedict says that this mentality also affected bishops and Catholic seminaries and caused, the extensive collapse of the next generation of priests….here were — not only in the United States of America — individual bishops who rejected the Catholic tradition as a whole and sought to bring about a kind of new, modern Catholicity….In various seminaries homosexual cliques were established… which acted more or less openly and significantly changed the climate in the seminaries.”

His Awfulness. Benedict blames clerical pedophilia on the swinging sixties. He blames pedophilia on homosexuality.

It’s too bad the Catholic Church didn’t have a guy who is completely and unquestioningly in charge, like some sort of a “Super Bishop” who could have told everyone what to do. Someone who could have put a stop to all the child raping. Yes, that would have been Benedict, or those who came before him, or after.

The sexual revolution wasn’t about raping kids. What kind of moral failure is it on the part of the Catholic Church for the former Pope to say: “But they were doing it too!” Coming from an institution that prides itself on being the arbiter of morality, this is an historic failure.

There are tons of records of priestly pedophilia that predate the 1960’s, including plenty of cases of churchly cover-ups. Why is this retired guy entitled to speak about anything?

Enough! It’s time for our Saturday Soothing! Let’s start by checking out Vancouver, BC’s Notch Coffee’s flagship coffee, Sumatra Boru Batak (C$18.00/340 grams). Expect notes of Baker’s Chocolate, dried mango and tobacco, says the brewer.

Now, contemplate all of your to-be-done yard work while you sip this coffee and listen to “Simple Gifts” from Aaron Copland’s “Appalachian Spring” played in 1962 by the New York Philharmonic conducted by Leonard Bernstein. You’ll remember the melody, and maybe, you will think of the simple gifts that are missing from your life today:

Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.

Religious Right Praying Justice Ginsburg Dies

The Daily Escape:

Winter, Yosemite Valley, Yosemite NP, CA – photo via wallpaper studio

This week Right Wing Watch, who follow America’s least attractive thinkers so that we don’t have to, had a column about how Evangelical Christians are circling around Ruth Bader Ginsburg like vultures. The article included this tweet from anti-abortion and anti-gay activist Matt Barber:

We know that RBG just had cancerous tumors removed from her lungs. Yet, what has been made public so far is that RBG was given a clean bill of health, and is expected to make a full recovery. That diagnosis seems to be a big disappointment to many on the Christian Right.

They were extremely happy with Donald Trump’s choice of Neil Gorsuch. They weren’t so thrilled with Brett Kavanaugh, preferring Amy Coney Barrett, who they saw as totally committed to overturning Roe v. Wade. And they want more. In addition to overturning Roe v. Wade, they want prayers back in schools, and they want same-sex marriage abolished.

Things get interesting when you consider just how much Evangelicals truly, deeply hate RBG:

In October, pastor Rodney Howard-Brown, who has prayed over Trump in the Oval Office, guest-hosted The Alex Jones Show on Infowars, where he said that Ginsburg should be shot for treason.
Lou Engle, a dominionist organizer of stadium-sized prayer rallies, urged Americans to engage in three days of fasting and prayer over the Supreme Court. Earlier, he led prayers asking God to “sweep away the judges” who support the right to abortion.
A few weeks ago, Phyllis Schlafly’s Eagles re-distributed a 1993 Phyllis Schlafly attack on Ginsburg’s feminist philosophy.
Liberty Counsel President Mat Staver has argued that Congress should have impeached justices who supported Roe v. Wade and Obergefell vs. Hodges (the case that legalized same-sex marriage). (BTW, Liberty Counsel opposed the Senate’s bill that would outlaw lynching in the US because the bill extends the right not to be lynched to gays and transgender people.)
Earlier this month, former Trump campaign adviser Frank Amedia insisted that Chief Justice John Roberts has not proven to be sufficiently reliable to the Religious Right. That means God has to remove more justices so that Trump can fill Roberts’s seat with another justice whose “values and morality” reflect a “kingdom enlightenment as to what is required by God to change the law of this land now.”
Heritage Foundation Senior Legal Fellow John Malcolm told the Daily Caller that Trump would be under pressure to replace Ginsburg with a woman, and named Amy Coney Barrett as a preferred successor.

You may not believe that God spends much time thinking about who sits on the Supreme Court, but these people are deadly serious. They think God is a “family values” Republican. They believe that they know who God wants on the Supreme Court.

America needs to look very closely at any group that argues for followers of a specific religion as a test of who is worthy to sit on the Supreme Court, or who should head our government.

Praying for the death of RBG ought to repugnant to all Americans, but sadly, it isn’t particularly surprising that some “Christians” exhibit such callous inhumanity. They, and their kind of thinking, should be repudiated by all Christians.

There’s some consolation in the fact that RBG has worked to make America a more fair and equitable place. She has made that her life’s calling.

Contrast that to these phony Christians who are working to make America a one-party political entity that follows Jesus Christ.

Monday Wake Up Call – Christmas Eve, 2018

The Daily Escape:

Christmas in Karachi, Pakistan: Who needs reindeer when you have camels? Dawn, the English language newspaper had pictures of people celebrating Christmas this week in Karachi. Revelers decorate Christmas trees and churches all over the city for the occasion. This procession is on Karachi’s main street, and is part of the celebrations by the Christian community (which many local Muslims join, apparently for the fun of it).

This Pakistani scene may give you some hope, or you may just see it as an exception to the rule that people of different religions must always be at each other’s throats.

But, it’s Christmas Eve, and Wrongo chooses to be hopeful. Here’s his wish for peace on earth and good will to all.

Let’s try waking up to a better day, and a better year in 2019. To help you wake up, listen to Jack Johnson singing “Someday at Christmas” written by Ron Miller and Bryan Wells and performed on Johnson’s “This Warm December – A Brushfire Holiday Vol 1” in 2008:

Lyrics:

Someday at Christmas, men won’t be boys
Playing with bombs like boys play with toys
One warm December, our hearts will see
A world where men are free

And some day at Christmas, there’ll be no wars
When we have learned what Christmas is for
When we have found out what life is really worth
Then there will be peace on earth

Someday all of our dreams will come to be
Someday in a world where men are free
Maybe not in time for you or for me
But someday at Christmas time

And someday at Christmas, there’ll be no tears
All men are equal and no men have fears
One shining moment my heart ran away
From the world that we live in today

And someday at Christmas, men will not fail
Take hope because your love will prevail
Someday in a new world that we can only start
With hope in every heart

And someday all of our dreams will come to be
Someday in a world where men are free
Maybe not in time for you or for me
But someday at Christmas time

Well, there will be peace on earth
I said there will be peace on earth

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Sunday Cartoon Blogging – August 19, 2018

Everyone in the media is talking about John Brennan, who lost his security clearance this week. On the Trump side of the ledger, Brennan is an enemy of the people. On the other side, he’s America’s hero for talking truth to power.

Wrongo won’t shed any tears for Brennan.

Let’s go back in time: When Barack Obama became president, he tried to make Brennan Director of the CIA. But even Democrats in Congress were opposed to that, because, while serving under GW Bush, Brennan enabled the rendition of terror suspects to countries where they could be tortured. So, Obama made him Deputy National Security Advisor, where he created and managed Obama’s “drone kill” list.

After Obama’s reelection, Brennan was named CIA director. In that role, he ordered the CIA to spy on the Senate Intelligence Committee that was at the time, investigating CIA torture. While under oath, he lied to Congress, denying it. When it was proven that the CIA did in fact spy on Congress, he had to apologize. At the time, a WaPo editorial said: Obama should fire John Brennan, but nobody remembers any of this today.

Brennan is a hot, steaming pile of CIA shit. But, since he recognized the threat that Trump represents, suddenly we should make him America’s sweetheart? Brennan will have a long career, now that Trump has elevated him to be his foil. We shouldn’t allow Brennan to be the face of the resistance to Trump. Brennan’s a corrupt and terribly flawed messenger.

While Trump and Truth both contain 5 letters of the alphabet, they have never met: