Is this new Pope actually Catholic? Bill Moyers discusses Pope Francis with Thomas Cahill

This is a delightful conversation, in which author Thomas Cahill offers excellent insights into Pope Francis. Cahill's view on Christianity meshes well with the teachings by Pope Francis. Here is how Cahill would describe the important part of Christianity:

I've come to the conclusion that they are really only two movements in the world. One is kindness, and the other is cruelty. I don't think there's anything else, really. You can explain virtually everything by those two movements. The cruelty in religion is so often a form of, "Under no circumstances may you do this, because if you do, we will exclude you. That's not how Jesus spoke. Jesus is the one who, you know, lifted the weeping prostitute off the floor and said, "Your sins are forgiven you." He had no problem with sexual deviancy of any kind. It's we who have that problem. And it's a problem for institutionalized religion as it is for institutionalized anything. The institutions will tend to exclude. ... I'm a believing Christian who finds himself equally at home and equally impatient and equally ill-at-ease in virtually any church. BILL MOYERS: Why is that? THOMAS CAHILL: I just don't think that it matters that much. I think that we've, you know, in the 16th and 17th centuries, we killed one another over doctrine. It was after this period that you finally had in the period of the enlightenment, people saying, "Do we really have to keep doing this? Do we really have to keep-- is it really necessary to kill one another? Couldn't we just agree to disagree?" And then you have the beginning of a new era. And it's time that we got past the largely silly divisions, theological divisions, which really don't count. Because people don't care about those things anymore. BILL MOYERS: What do you think they care about? Or what do you care about? THOMAS CAHILL: "Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth." That's Christianity. The rest of it, isn't worth a hill of beans.

Continue ReadingIs this new Pope actually Catholic? Bill Moyers discusses Pope Francis with Thomas Cahill

Pope invites non-believers to join in effort for peace

I'm ambivalent about Pope Francis. He believes many things I don't, including non-physical sentient beings, virgin birth, life after death and many other things too numerous to list. Today, however, he made another eyebrow raising statement, inviting non-believers to join the effort for peace, according to the NYT:

Francis has regularly attracted huge crowds in Vatican City, and almost overnight he has emerged as a major figure on the global stage, surprising many Catholics with his nonjudgmental tone on issues like homosexuality and divorce, and his focus on the plight of the world’s poor. He has also been unpredictable, telephoning ordinary people who have written him letters, embracing a badly disfigured man at St. Peter’s and making unannounced visits in Rome. He proved unpredictable again on Wednesday, when he went off script to include atheists in his call for peace, rare for a Catholic leader. “I invite even nonbelievers to desire peace,” he said. “Let us all unite, either with prayer or with desire, but everyone, for peace.”
What kind of person would mention non-believers without vilifying them? A half-decent person. Thus, the Pope's neutral inclusion of atheists was quite a low bar, indeed. But he did hop over that bar. For a Pope, this statement was extraordinary, especially considered along with the many other reasonable statements by this Pope, including his refusal to obsess about abortion or homosexuality. Many of this Pope's recent statements are shocking only in comparison with the many ludicrous, bigoted statements of his predecessors. Consider also, this statement the Pope made on December 5, 2013:
In a speech that shocked many, the Pope claimed “All religions are true, because they are true in the hearts of all those who believe in them. What other kind of truth is there? In the past, the church has been harsh on those it deemed morally wrong or sinful. Today, we no longer judge. Like a loving father, we never condemn our children. Our church is big enough for heterosexuals and homosexuals, for the pro-life and the pro-choice! For conservatives and liberals, even communists are welcome and have joined us. We all love and worship the same God.”
I would summarize as follows: "One small step for a man. One giant leap for a Pope." May the new Pope continue to be decent, which must be extraordinarily difficult in such as wretchedly backward and corrupt place as the Vatican.

Continue ReadingPope invites non-believers to join in effort for peace

Burning the spirits free

I burned my old journals tonight.  More than 1,000 pages hand-written pages going back to 1980.  I’m am tempted to say that as the flames consumed the torn off chunks of pages in my fireplace, spirits were released from the papers—sadness, passion, confusion, existential angst, so many emotional moments "captured" in ink, until tonight.   Except that it would not make sense, even if one were to speak of “spirits” in a metaphorical sense.   You see, I painstakingly scanned all of the pages first, and then I backed it all up on an external drive.  I’m trying to get rid of paper, converting almost every scrap of paper I own into a pdf.   Therefore, there's no need for any "spirits" to be released from the pages, although looking at the haunting flames made me occasionally wonder.  Then again, if I were a spirit trapped in a piece of paper, I probably wouldn't understand anything about computers or scans, so I might nonetheless assume a haunting flame shape as my piece of paper burned. IMG_7252 Journal Fire IMG_7222 Journal Fire IMG_7231 Journal Fire IMG_7232 Journal Fire

Continue ReadingBurning the spirits free

U.S. policy: lots of unplanned pregnancies

Based on these statistics from Guttmacher Institute, the official policy of the U.S. is that we welcome lots of unplanned pregnancies. Poor women have a sharply elevated rate of unplanned pregnancies. Instead of encouraging walk-in street clinics with free birth control, many of our politicians vilify the idea that anyone would have sex without intending to get pregnant. The result is exactly what we see in these statistics. pregnancy chart

Continue ReadingU.S. policy: lots of unplanned pregnancies