Friday, July 30, 2010

Anne Rice Sees the Light

Well said, Anne, well said.

From her last quote (which I totally agree with), it sounds like she's not technically *quitting* the realm of belief in Christ. I 100% understand why she has made this decision and give her kudos for being vocal about it.

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The “Interview with a Vampire” author, who wrote a book about her spirituality titled "Called Out of Darkness: A Spiritual Confession" in 2008, said Wednesday that she refuses to be “anti-gay,” “anti-feminist," “anti-science” and “anti-Democrat.”
Rice wrote, “For those who care, and I understand if you don't: Today I quit being a Christian ... It's simply impossible for me to ‘belong’ to this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group. For ten years, I've tried. I've failed. I'm an outsider. My conscience will allow nothing else.”

Rice then added another post explaining her decision on Thursday:
“My faith in Christ is central to my life. My conversion from a pessimistic atheist lost in a world I didn't understand, to an optimistic believer in a universe created and sustained by a loving God is crucial to me," Rice wrote. "But following Christ does not mean following His followers. Christ is infinitely more important than Christianity and always will be, no matter what Christianity is, has been or might become.”

Thursday, July 15, 2010

Grave Errors

The raping of children by pedophile priests is not on par WHATSOEVER with the ordination of women and should not be subject to the same scrutiny. It is illogical and a fundamentally immoral view.

No Christian bible says the absence of a penis negates the ability to inspire the grace of God. Jesus was a man. It is not indicated anywhere in scripture -meaning THE BIBLE - not Vatican law - that all Catholic priests should be men, nor is there any citation of the issuing of penalties should a woman be ordained. Someone point this out to me. Point it out so I can deconstruct it.

No Vatican boys club has a right to invoke the name of God in a sick declaration that lumps the ordination of women into the same bucket of criminality or "grave"ness as child rape.

Excerpt from article:

"One new element included lists the attempted ordination of women as a "grave crime" subject to the same set of procedures and punishments meted out for sex abuse. That drew immediate criticism from women's ordination groups, who said making a moral equivalent between women priests and child rapists was offensive."

I'm not the submissive, non-questioning type so I don't see or understand how Catholic women (in 2010) can honestly reconcile this statement between their spirituality with God and Vatican doctrine. That chasm between universal truth and institutional policy appears to be widening at an alarming rate.

My blood boils. I thank Christ every day that I was able to see clearly and leave this female-subjugating institution.

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Vatican: Ordination Of Women A 'Grave Crime'
NICOLE WINFIELD -07/15/10 11:05 AM
 
VATICAN CITY — The Vatican issued a revised set of in-house rules Thursday to respond to clerical sex abuse, targeting priests who molest the mentally disabled as well as children and priests who use child pornography, but making few substantive changes to existing practice. The new rules make no mention of the need for bishops to report clerical sex abuse to police, provide no canonical sanctions for bishops who cover up for abusers and do not include any "one-strike and you're out" policy for pedophile priests as demanded by some victims. As a result, they failed to satisfy victims' advocates, who said the revised rules amounted to little more than "administrative housekeeping" of existing practice when what was needed were bold new rules threatening bishops who fail to report molester priests. The rules cover the canonical penalties and procedures used for the most grave crimes in the church, both sacramental and moral, and double the statute of limitations applied to them. One new element included lists the attempted ordination of women as a "grave crime" subject to the same set of procedures and punishments meted out for sex abuse. That drew immediate criticism from women's ordination groups, who said making a moral equivalent between women priests and child rapists was offensive. The Vatican's sex crimes prosecutor acknowledged it was "only a document," and didn't solve the problem of clerical abuse. He defended the lack of any mention of the need to report abuse to police, saying all Christians were required to obey civil laws that would already demand sex crimes be reported. "If civil law requires you report, you must obey civil law," Monsignor Charles Scicluna told reporters. But "it's not for canonical legislation to get itself involved with civil law." Victims' groups have accused the church's internal justice system of failing to deal with abuse allegations and allowing bishops to ignore complaints in order to protect the church. "The first thing the church should be doing is reporting crimes to civil authorities," said Andrew Madden, a former Dublin altar boy who took the first public lawsuit against the church in Ireland in 1995.