A PRIEST has denied knowing how gay porn images appeared on a screen during a presentation he was giving to parents of children preparing for First Communion.

Fr Martin McVeigh was setting up the PowerPoint display when the explicit sex scenes flashed up on the screen.

He was about to give a talk to the parents of First Communicants but abandoned the presentation after the pornographic images appeared.

One of those present said the pictures appeared on the screen after the priest put a USB memory stick into the computer at St Mary’s School in Pomeroy, Co Tyrone.

“There were plenty of shocked faces. There’s a lot of parents very angry about it.”

School principal Sean Devlin is understood to have contacted the Armagh diocese about the incident, which is being investigated by the diocese child protection office.

The Church authorities also went to the police, who said no crime had been committed.

The Archdiocese of Armagh has refused to say whether Fr McVeigh has been suspended from duties or had restrictions imposed on his position while the investigation is under way.

The priest himself insists the pornographic images can be “legitimately explained”.

He told the Ulster Herald newspaper he had no knowledge of how the images appeared on the computer.

A statement from Cardinal Sean Brady said: “The archdiocese immediately sought the advice of the PSNI who indicated that on the basis of the evidence available no crime had been committed.”

A spokeswoman for the Council of Catholic Maintained Schools said they were aware that the principal of the school “immediately referred this matter to the diocesan authorities in accordance with the diocesan safeguarding procedures”.

An emergency meeting was held in the parish last night.

Source: Evening Herald

So, did Jesus really exist? With his new book, Did Jesus Exist? The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth, Bart Ehrman, historian and professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, wanted to provide solid historical evidence for the existence of Jesus.

“I wanted to approach this question as an historian to see whether that’s right or not,” Ehrman tells weekends on All Things Considered host Guy Raz.

The answer is straightforward and widely accepted among scholars of all faiths, but Ehrman says there is a large contingent of people claiming that Jesus never did exist. These people are also known as mythicists.

“It was a surprise to me to see how influential these mythicists are,” Ehrman says. “Historically, they’ve been significant and in the Soviet Union, in fact, the mythicist view was the dominant view, and even today, in some parts of the West – in parts of Scandinavia — it is a dominant view that Jesus never existed,” he says.

Mythicists’ arguments are fairly plausible, Ehrman says. According to them, Jesus was never mentioned in any Roman sources and there is no archeological evidence that Jesus ever existed. Even Christian sources are problematic – the Gospels come long after Jesus’ death, written by people who never saw the man.

“Most importantly,” he explains, “these mythicists point out that there are Pagan gods who were said to die and rise again and so the idea is that Jesus was made up as a Jewish god who died and rose again.”

In his book, Ehrman marshals all of the evidence proving the existence of Jesus, including the writings of the apostle Paul.

“Paul knew Jesus’ brother, James, and he knew his closest disciple, Peter, and he tells us that he did,” Ehrman says. “If Jesus didn’t exist, you would think his brother would know about it, so I think Paul is probably pretty good evidence that Jesus at least existed,” he says.

In Did Jesus Exist?, Ehrman builds a technical argument and shows that one of the reasons for knowing that Jesus existed is that if someone invented Jesus, they would not have created a messiah who was so easily overcome.

“The Messiah was supposed to overthrow the enemies – and so if you’re going to make up a messiah, you’d make up a powerful messiah,” he says. “You wouldn’t make up somebody who was humiliated, tortured and the killed by the enemies.”

So Jesus did exist, but who was he? Ehrman says when historians focus on the life of Jesus, they discover a Jesus who is completely different from the one portrayed by popular culture or by religious texts.

“The mythicists have some right things to say,” Ehrman says. “The Gospels do portray Jesus in ways that are non-historical.”

When Raz asks Ehrman about his relationship to Jesus, Ehrman says that most of it is very historical but that Jesus teaches us valuable lessons.

“Jesus’ teachings of love, and mercy and forgiveness, I think, really should dominate our lives,” he says. “On the personal level, I agree with many of the ethical teachings of Jesus and I try to model my life on them, even though I don’t agree with the apocalyptic framework in which they were put.”

Source: NPR

Longtime Scientology watchers will be at least somewhat familiar with the tale: that after his involvement in WWII, Hubbard shacked up with Jet Propulsion Lab rocket scientist Jack Parsons, a man heavily into the occult, and in particular the teachings of The Great Beast, British occultist Aleister Crowley. You may even know something about the kinky things Parsons and Hubbard did trying to create a “Moonchild.” But what Urban does in a new piece for the journal Nova Religio is produce a thorough, academic study of the ways that Crowley’s “magick” found parallels in what would become Hubbard’s most famous creation, Scientology.

Urban went into some of this material in his book, but he tells me he wanted to explore it more in depth with this article.

Nova Religio is one of those academic journals still doing things the old-fashioned way — its articles don’t appear in full on its website, and readers either need to purchase a copy of the journal or get it through an academic institution or something. So, we’ll play along and hold on to our copy of the story and do our best to describe it here. Perhaps later Urban can convince the publication to allow wider access to the piece.

Urban’s article is titled “The Occult Roots of Scientology?: L. Ron Hubbard, Aleister Crowley, and the Origins of a Controversial New Religion,” and if you’ve read his book, its introduction will seem very familiar.

He then lays out the basics: after returning from his service in the war, Hubbard moved into John Whiteside “Jack” Parsons’s Pasadena rooming house (the “Parsonage”), which was something of a flophouse for his occult friends. Parsons was heavily into Crowley’s “magick,” and soon found a willing partner in Hubbard — and even wrote to Crowley himself about their attempts to engage in some of Crowley’s rituals. The relationship between Hubbard and Parsons ended badly, with accusations of fraud and theft. But later, as Hubbard developed his ideas for Dianetics and Scientology, his experience with Crowley’s “Ordo Templi Orientis” (OTO) seems to have permeated his thinking and even the terminology of the church.

Urban notes that the church itself has virulently denied that Hubbard’s occult activities had anything to do with Scientology, or that remnants of Crowley’s occult ideas can be found in its scriptures. But one of the most useful things about Urban’s article is the way he shows that it’s the church’s own statements and legal maneuvers which tend to verify the connection between Crowley’s “magick” and Hubbard’s “tech.”

If you’ve read Urban’s book, you’ll know that he accomplishes this neat trick with calm, deeply researched and thoroughly convincing material told in a crystal-clear prose style.

To begin his investigations, Urban goes back to the early 20th century and Aleister Crowley’s rise as the most famous occultist of his day. Joining OTO and then becoming one of its leaders, Crowley wrote widely, and Urban focuses particularly on his book Magick in Theory and Practice, which Hubbard would later cite in lectures.

When Urban began to describe some of the ideas in that book, this Scientology watcher has to admit to the hairs on the back of his neck going up. The similarities to what Hubbard would later say about his own “technology” are stunning…

First and foremost, Crowley repeatedly emphasizes that Magick is a science. To distinguish his practice from parlor tricks and stage illusions, Crowley spells Magick with a “k” and insists that it is an exact science based on specific laws and experimental techniques. Hence his book begins with a “postulate” followed by twenty-eight “theorems” presented as “scientifically” as chemistry or mathematics. This science is fundamentally about the correct knowledge of the individual self and its potential. In short, “Magick is the Science of understanding oneself and one’s conditions.”

Oh, L. Ron, you are so busted.

Urban goes on to explain how in Crowley’s magick, the fundamental concept is Thelema, which represents a person’s inner will, and the ability to do “what thou wilt.” Doing the processes of Crowley’s magick rituals, the point is for a magus to astrally project himself so that he can ultimately become an all-powerful being who is “capable of being, and using, anything which he perceives, for everything that he perceives is in a certain sense a part of his being. He may thus subjugate the whole Universe of which he is conscious to his individual Will.”

Sound familiar? In Hubbard’s Scientology, which he insists is a science that will allow you to discover your true nature, you learn that you are a thetan, and through his processes you will ultimately be able to leave your body and become an all-powerful being able to create universes.

Wow. L. Ron didn’t even change the handwriting to throw off the teacher.

But that was in the future. In 1945, Hubbard moved in with Parsons, and the two got up to some seriously kinky activities. Early in 1946, Parsons began what he called his “Babalon Working” experiments as he and Hubbard began trying to take Crowley’s ideas into new territory.

Crowley had written about the possibility of a “magickal child” or “Moonchild,” and Parsons decided he’d try to make one. He identified a woman named Marjorie Cameron as the person who would be his “elemental,” and then the two got busy, Urban writes…

According to Parsons’ remarkable personal accounts of these rites, Hubbard was intimately involved in the Babalon Working…Hubbard was asked to serve as Parsons’ seer or “scribe” during the Babalon Working; indeed, Hubbard became nothing less than the “voice” for Babalon herself, who spoke through him and was recorded by Parsons.

So was Ron sitting by taking notes, or speaking in tongues, or something else while Jack was having occult-flavored sex with Marjorie? Whatever the three got up to, on March 6 Parsons wrote to Crowley saying that the deed was done and that in nine months a Moonchild would be born.

Crowley was not impressed. He wrote to a friend in April, “Apparently Parsons or Hubbard or somebody is producing a Moonchild. I get fairly frantic when I contemplate the idiocy of these goats.”

But all was for naught, apparently. No child was born, Hubbard made off with another of Parsons’s girlfriends, Betty Northrup, and absconded to Florida in a sailboat-sales scheme gone haywire, and in 1952, Parsons blew himself up with an accidental chemical explosion in his home lab.

Urban, meanwhile, is only getting warmed up.

“Perhaps the most remarkable part of this whole story is that the Church of Scientology admits that all of this did happen,” he writes. Apparently unable to deny entirely that Hubbard took part in wild occult sex rites with a rocket scientist, the church has, over the years, floated the howler that Hubbard was actually on a military mission to infiltrate Parsons’s little black magic club in order to neutralize it.

“It is worth noting, however, that neither the Church of Scientology nor any independent researcher has ever produced any evidence for this claim,” Urban calmly notes.

Urban then turns to even more sensitive material that the church has never denied the authenticity of…

One of the most important documents for making sense of the Crowley-Hubbard link and the occult roots of Scientology is a curious text called the “Affirmations” (or “Admissions”) of L. Ron Hubbard. Composed in 1946 or 1947, “Affirmations” appears to be Hubbard’s own personal writings, meant to have been read into a tape recording device and then played back to Hubbard himself. No church official has ever publicly denied that “Affirmations” is an authentic Hubbard document, and Scientology’s own legal position indicates that it does consider the document to be church property and clearly wants to keep control of the text.

As Urban says, in these extremely personal writings, Hubbard sounds very much like Crowley.

“Affirmations” indicates that the author is engaged in some kind of magical ritual and hoping that his “magical work is powerful and effective.” In fact, the “affirmations” describe themselves as “incantations” designed to become an integral part of listeners’ natures, impressing upon them the reality of their psychic powers and magical abilities. Perhaps more significant, however, is the repeated mention of a female guardian figure, the most important spiritual adviser and aid to the listener. The emphasis on the guardian here seems to have been directly influenced by Crowley’s Magick in Theory and Practice…

Urban goes on to note parallels between what Hubbard writes in his “Affirmations,” and then goes into a lengthy description of Scientology’s concepts and how they echo Crowley. (He also points out the ways that Hubbard’s midcentury, Cold War-influenced religion is also very different than the Victorian occult ideas of Crowley.)

Urban only includes a couple of short quotes from Hubbard’s “Affirmations,” but he encouraged me to take a longer look at them where Gerry Armstrong — once a trusted employee who was asked by Hubbard to gather his personal papers – put it online in 2000.

Um, this stuff is amazing. Before I reproduce some excerpts of it here, I’ll quote Urban about the document’s background…

According to a mutual release and settlement agreement between the Church of Scientology of California and former member Gerald Armstrong in 1986, Armstrong agreed to return a number of confidential documents to the church, including all copies of Hubbard’s “Excalibur manuscript” and “all originals and copies of documents commonly known as the ‘Affirmations’ written by L. Ron Hubbard.” Here the church clearly indicates that the text was written by L. Ron Hubbard, and it is difficult to understand why the church would file suit to retain ownership of the text were it not an authentic document.

Urban makes a good point. And so, brace yourself as we read a pre-Dianetics L. Ron Hubbard talking to himself and trying to encourage himself despite several physical ailments and some other knocks he’d taken in his life…

“My service record was not too glorious…”I can have no doubts of my psychic powers…

“Sexual feeling has been depressed by several things amounting to a major impasse. To cure ulcers of the stomach I was given testosterone and stilbesterol. These reduced my libido to nothing…

“In 1942…while training in Miami, Florida, I met a girl named Ginger who excited me…From her I received an infection of gonnohorea (sp?). I was terrified by it, the consequences of being discovered by my wife, the navy, my friends. I went to a private doctor who treated me with sulfa-thiazole and so forth…

“I carried this fear of disease to sea with me. I was reprimanded in San Diego in mid-43 for firing on the Mexican coast and was removed from command of my ship…

“Sara, my sweetheart, is young, beautiful, desirable. We are very gay companions. I please her physically until she weeps about any separation. I want her always. But I am 13 years older than she. She is heavily sexed. My libido is so low I hardly admire her naked…

“I have a very bad masturbatory history. I was taught when I was 11 and, despite guilt, fear of insanity, etc. etc. I persisted. At a physical examination at a Y when I was about 13, the examiner and the people with him called me out of the line because my testicles hung low and cautioned me about what would happen if I kept on masturbating…

“By eliminating certain fears by hypnosis, curing my rheumatism and laying off hormones, I hope to restore my former libido. I must! By hypnosis I must be convinced as follows…

“(b) My mind is still brilliant. My memory unaffected by drugs or experience…

“(d) That things sexual thrill me…That naked women and pornography excite me greatly…

“(m) That I have only friendship for Jack Parsons…

“(o) That I believe in my gods and spiritual things…

“(p) That nothing can halt my ambitions…

“(u) That my code is to be all things a “magus” must be…

“(x) That my magical work is powerful and effective…”

“Course II… You can sing beautifully. Your voice can imitate any singer. Your tones are round and true…

“Material things are yours for the asking. Men are your slaves. Elemental spirits are your slaves. You are power among powers, light in the darkness, beauty in all…

“You will make fortunes in writing. Any book you care to write now will sell high and well…You talk easily to a dictaphone and the copy is excellent. The copyist has no effect upon your work. You don’t care what she reads…

“Your psychology is advanced and true and wonderful. It hypnotizes people. It predicts their emotions, for you are their ruler…

“You will live to be 200 years old, both because you are calm and because of modern discoveries to be made in your lifetime…

“You will always look young. Your weight is 180 lbs. And you will attain and hold that weight…

“Many women are not capable of pleasure in sex and anything adverse they say or do has no effect whatever upon your pleasure. Their bodies thrill you…You have no fear if they conceive. What if they do? You do not care. Pour it into them and let fate decide…”

As you can see if you follow the link above, there’s much, much more in this vein. I’ve only excerpted a very small amount of Hubbard’s lengthy confessions. And in several places, Hubbard refers to his “Guardian,” an angel-like creature that sounds like the same creature in Crowley’s magick, his “Holy Guardian Angel.”

As I said earlier, Urban is also careful to note the dissimilarities between Crowley’s magick and Hubbard’s tech, but I can’t remember anyone doing such a thorough job showing how much Hubbard owed to his occult master. For Scientology watchers, we can only hope that Urban’s article becomes widely available, and soon.

Source: The Village Voice

by Valerie Tarico

Why can’t GOP politicians trumpet their religious credentials without assaulting women? Because fundamentalist religion of all stripes has degradation of women at its core. Fundamentalist Christianity is no exception. Progressive Christians believe that the Bible is a human document, a record of humanity’s multi-millennial struggle to understand what is good and what is God and how to live in moral community with each other. But fundamentalists believe that the Bible is the literally perfect word of the Almighty, essentially dictated by God to the writers. To believe that the Bible is the literally perfect word of God is to believe that women are tainted seductresses who must be controlled by men.

Listen to early Church father Tertullian: “You [woman] are the devil’s gateway: you are the unsealer of that (forbidden) tree: you are the first deserter of the divine law: you are she who persuaded him whom the devil was not valiant enough to attack. You destroyed so easily God’s image, man. On account of your desert—that is, death—even the Son of God had to die.”

Or take it from reformer John Calvin: “Woman is more guilty than man, because she was seduced by Satan, and so diverted her husband from obedience to God that she was an instrument of death leading to all perdition. It is necessary that woman recognize this, and that she learn to what she is subjected; and not only against her husband. This is reason enough why today she is placed below and that she bears within her ignominy and shame.”

Both Tertullian, a respected Catholic theologian, and Calvin, a leader of the Protestant Reformation, took their cues on this matter straight from the book of Genesis:

To the woman [God] said, I will make your pains in childbearing very severe; with painful labor you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you. -Genesis 3:16

No matter how outrageous Santorum and Gingrich may seem to secularists and moderate people of faith, they are right on target for an intended audience of Bible believing fundamentalists. If you have any doubt, check out these fifteen Bible passages.*

1. A wife is a man’s property: You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male or female servant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor. Exodus 20:17
2. Daughters can be bought and sold: If a man sells his daughter as a servant, she is not to go free as male servants do. Exodus 21:7
3. A raped daughter can be sold to her rapist: ²⁸ If a man happens to meet a virgin who is not pledged to be married and rapes her and they are discovered, ²⁹ he shall pay her father fifty shekels of silver. He must marry the young woman, for he has violated her. He can never divorce her as long as he lives. Deuteronomy 22:28-29
4. Collecting wives and sex slaves is a sign of status: He [Solomon] had seven hundred wives of royal birth and three hundred concubines, and his wives led him astray. 1 Kings 11:3
5. Used brides deserve death: If, however the charge is true and no proof of the girl’s virginity can be found, she shall be brought to the door of her father’s house and there the men of her town shall stone her to death. Deuteronomy 22:20-21.
6. Women, but only virgins, are to be taken as spoils of war: Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, ¹⁸ but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man. Numbers 31:17-18
7. Menstruating women are spiritually unclean: ¹⁹ “‘When a woman has her regular flow of blood, the impurity of her monthly period will last seven days, and anyone who touches her will be unclean till evening. ²⁰ “‘Anything she lies on during her period will be unclean, and anything she sits on will be unclean. ²¹ Anyone who touches her bed will be unclean; they must wash their clothes and bathe with water, and they will be unclean till evening. ²² Anyone who touches anything she sits on will be unclean; they must wash their clothes and bathe with water, . . . ³⁰ The priest is to sacrifice one for a sin offering and the other for a burnt offering. In this way he will make atonement for her before the LORD for the uncleanness of her discharge. ³¹ “‘You must keep the Israelites separate from things that make them unclean, so they will not die in their uncleanness for defiling my dwelling place,^[a] which is among them.’” Leviticus 15: 19-31
8. A woman is twice as unclean after giving birth to girl as to a boy: A woman who becomes pregnant and gives birth to a son will be ceremonially unclean for seven days, just as she is unclean during her monthly period. ‘ 3 On the eighth day the boy is to be circumcised. 4 Then the woman must wait thirty-three days to be purified from her bleeding. She must not touch anything sacred or go to the sanctuary until the days of her purification are over. 5 If she gives birth to a daughter, for two weeks the woman will be unclean, as during her period. Then she must wait sixty-six days to be purified from her bleeding. 6 ” ‘When the days of her purification for a son or daughter are over, she is to bring to the priest at the entrance to the tent of meeting a year-old lamb for a burnt offering and a young pigeon or a dove for a sin offering. Leviticus 12: 1-8
9. A woman’s promise is binding only if her father or husband agrees: 2 When a man makes a vow to the LORD or takes an oath to obligate himself by a pledge, he must not break his word but must do everything he said. 3 “When a young woman still living in her father’s household makes a vow to the LORD or obligates herself by a pledge 4 and her father hears about her vow or pledge but says nothing to her, then all her vows and every pledge by which she obligated herself will stand. 5 But if her father forbids her when he hears about it, none of her vows or the pledges by which she obligated herself will stand; the LORD will release her because her father has forbidden her. . . . . A woman’s vow is meaningless unless approved by her husband or father. But if her husband nullifies them when he hears about them, then none of the vows or pledges that came from her lips will stand. Her husband has nullified them, and the LORD will release her. 13 Her husband may confirm or nullify any vow she makes or any sworn pledge to deny herself. Numbers 30:1-16
10. Women should be seen not heard: Women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the law says. 1 Corinthians 14:34
11. Wives should submit to their husband’s instructions and desires: Wives, submit yourselves to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord. Colossians 3:18
12. In case you missed that submission thing . . . : Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. ²³ For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. ²⁴ Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything. Ephesians 5:22-24.
13. More submission – and childbearing as a form of atonement: A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. ¹² I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet. ¹³ For Adam was formed first, then Eve. ¹⁴ And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner. ¹⁵ But women will be saved through childbearing—if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety. 1 Timothy 2: 11-15
14. Women were created for men: For if a woman does not cover her head, she might as well have her hair cut off; but if it is a disgrace for a woman to have her hair cut off or her head shaved, then she should cover her head. ⁷ A man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God; but woman is the glory of man. ⁸ For man did not come from woman, but woman from man; ⁹ neither was man created for woman, but woman for man. 1 Corinthians 11:2-10
15. Sleeping with women is dirty: No one could learn the song except the 144,000 who had been redeemed from the earth. ⁴ These are those who did not defile themselves with women, for they remained virgins. They follow the Lamb wherever he goes. They were purchased from among mankind and offered as first-fruits to God and the Lamb. Revelation 14:3-4

This list is just a sampling of the Bible verses that either instruct or illustrate proper relationships between men and women. In context, they often are mixed among passages that teach proper relationships with children, slaves and foreigners. The Bible doesn’t forbid either contraception or abortion, but it is easy to see why Bible believing fundamentalists might have negative feelings about both.

As futurist Sara Robinson has pointed out, traditional rules that govern male-female relationships are grounded more in property rights than civil rights. Men essentially have ownership of women, whose lives are scripted to serve an end—bearing offspring. It is important to men that they know whose progeny they are raising, so sexual morality has focused primarily on controlling women’s sex activity and maintaining their “purity” and value as assets. Traditional gender roles and rules evolved on the presumption that women don’t have control over their fertility. In other words, modern contraception radically changed a social compact that had existed for literally thousands of years.

Some people don’t welcome change. Since the beginnings of the 20^th Century, fundamentalist Christians have been engaged in what they see as spiritual warfare against secularists and modernist Christians. Both of their foes have embraced discoveries in fields such as linguistics, archeology, psychology, biology and physics – all of which call into question the heart of conservative religion and culture. Biblical scholars now challenge such “fundamentals” as a historical Adam, the Virgin Birth, the Resurrection and the special status that Abraham’s God gave to straight males. Fundamentalists are fighting desperately to hang on to certainties and privileges they once saw as an Abrahamic birthright. If they can’t keep women in line; it’s all over. The future ends up in the hands of cultural creatives, scientists, artists, inquiring minds, and girls. It’s horrifying.

*All verses are quoted the New International Version of the Bible, a favorite of evangelicals. 

Source  ExChristian.net

Driven by simple curiosity, Louis CK did some investigative reporting and found out some surprising things about the Catholic Church.

Beginning “It’s your moment of truth,” the ad asks: “Do you choose women and their rights, or Bishops and their wrongs? You are an enabler. And it’s got to stop.”

“As a member of the ‘flock’ of an avowedly antidemocratic Old Boys Club, isn’t it time you vote with your feet? Please, exit en Mass,” requests the ad, signed by FFRF Co-Presidents Annie Laurie Gaylor and Dan Barker.

Click on ad below for full sized view. 

The Vatican has for the first time appeared on the State Department’s list of money-laundering centers but the tiny city-state is not rated as a high-risk country.

The 2012 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report was made public on Wednesday and Washington’s list of 190 countries classifies them in three categories: of primary concern, of concern and monitored.

The Vatican is in the second category, grouped with 67 other nations including Poland, Egypt, Ireland, Hungary and Chile.

It was added to the list because it was considered vulnerable to money-laundering and had recently established programs to prevent it, a State Department official said.

“To be considered a jurisdiction of concern merely indicates that there is a vulnerability to a financial system by money launderers. With the large volumes of international currency that goes through the Holy See, it is a system that makes it vulnerable as a potential money-laundering center,” Susan Pittman of the State Department’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement, told Reuters.

Last year, the Vatican adapted internal laws to comply with international standards on financial crime.

The Vatican is seeking inclusion on the European Commission’s so-called “white list” of states who comply with international standards against tax fraud and money-laundering. A decision on its inclusion is expected in June.

“Our aim is to make the ‘white list’ and we are happy that we have been put in the State Department’s less vulnerable category,” a Vatican official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The category of most vulnerable centers includes all members of the Group of Eight countries, including the United States, Germany, Italy and Russia, because the size of their economies and banking systems can facilitate money-laundering. It also includes small centers such as Britain’s Channel Islands.

The State Department’s methodology is different from that of the Financial Action Task Force’s International Cooperation Review Group (ICRG), which concentrates on a nation’s compliance with international law and money-laundering regulations.

VATICAN BANK HAS SCANDALOUS PAST

The Vatican Bank, founded in 1942 by Pope Pius XII, has been in the spotlight since September 2010 when Italian investigators froze 23 million euros ($33 million) in funds in Italian banks after opening an investigation into possible money-laundering.

The bank said it did nothing wrong and was just transferring funds between its own accounts. The money was released in June 2011 but the investigation is continuing.

The Vatican’s new financial transparency laws set up internal regulations to make sure its bank and all other departments adhere to international regulations and standards, and cooperate with foreign authorities.

Two months ago, Italian newspapers published leaked internal letters which appeared to show a conflict among top Vatican officials about just how transparent the bank should be about dealings that took place before it enacted its new laws.

The Vatican Bank was formally known as the Institute for Works of Religion (IOR) and was entangled in the collapse 30 years ago of Banco Ambrosiano, with its lurid allegations about money-laundering, freemasons, mafiosi and the mysterious death of Ambrosiano chairman Roberto Calvi – “God’s banker”.

Source: Reuters

The first step toward being able to go to a Mormon temple is an interview with the “ward bishop” (roughly equivalent to a parish priest). During this interview a Mormon is questioned by the bishop to see if he has been faithful in his commitment to the teachings and ordinances of the Mormon church.

The questions cover a variety of subjects, including his tithing track record; use of alcohol, tobacco, or caffeine; sexual immorality; and any failures to adhere to church doctrines and disciplines. If the applicant has had difficulties in any of these areas, he will not receive a temple recommend. For the one who does not pass the interview, there is no trip to the temple.

It is interesting to note that the majority of Mormons do not have temple recommends. This is not to say that they fail their interviews with their bishops. Actually, for a variety of reasons, most Mormons never make the effort to obtain a temple recommend. But for the minority who do obtain one, their chief duties in the temple include baptism for the dead.

On any given day, in more than fifty Mormon temples around the world, thousands of faithful Mormons are baptized vicariously for the dead. Most non-Mormons are dimly aware that the Mormons are interested in genealogy, but they are not sure why. While there is nothing wrong with being interested in genealogy as a hobby, this is far from a hobby for Mormons.

They believe people who have died can be baptized by proxy, thus allowing them the opportunity to become Mormons after their death. The idea behind baptism for the dead is this: God wants each of us to be with him in glory. To effect this, he allows us to accept the Mormon gospel here on earth. If we do not, he sends us to a “spirit prison” until the Mormon gospel has been preached to us there and we convert.

Mormons believe that their church has missionaries in the “spirit world” who are busy spreading the Mormon gospel to dead people who have not yet received it. Should any of these dead people want to convert to Mormonism, they are required to abide by all its rules, one of which is water baptism. Hence the need for proxies to receive the corporeal waters of baptism.

You might be surprised to learn that the Mormon church has teams of men and women microfilming records of Catholic and Protestant parishes, cemetery records, birth and death certificates—virtually any sort of record pertaining to past generations. Temple Mormons hope, in time, to have all of the dead of previous generations baptized posthumously into the Mormon church.

 Baptism for the Dead v. Baptism of Desire

One reason Mormons advance the practice of baptism for the dead is a sense of justice. Billions of people have died without ever hearing the gospel of Christ and without having the chance to be baptized into his Church. How could God consign such people to damnation without giving them the chance to be saved? Surely he would give them that chance. But if they never heard the gospel in this life, when else could they hear and respond to it except in the next life?

There are a number of problems with this line of reasoning. Scripture is very clear in stating that this life is the only chance we get. Once we die, our fate is sealed: “It is appointed for men to die once, and after that comes judgment” (Heb. 9:27). There are no “second chances” after death. Consequently, God judges individuals based on their actions in this life. Since he is a just judge, he does not hold people accountable for what they did not and could not have known. Thus, those who do not hear the gospel in this life will be judged based on the knowledge they did have in this life. God gives his light to all people (John 1:9), and the universe itself gives evidence of God (Ps. 19:1-4), evidence which is sufficient to establish basic moral accountability (Rom. 1:18-21). For those who are ignorant by no fault of their own, God will not hold their ignorance against them; but it is wrong to assume that people have no light from God unless they hear an oral proclamation of the gospel.

If they live up to the light that has been shown to them and would have embraced Christ and the gospel had they known about them, then they can be saved (Rom. 2:15-16). Neither is their lack of baptism an obstacle. Scripture reveals that sometimes the graces that normally come through baptism are given early, to those who have not yet been baptized (Acts 10:44-48). Such people have what the Church terms “baptism of desire” and are united to God through their desire to do what he wants of them.

In the case of those who have not yet heard the gospel or learned of God, but who nevertheless seek to follow the truth as they understand it, they have an implicit desire for God since they desire to follow the truth. They simply do not know that God is the truth. Consequently, they also can be saved through baptism of desire; therefore, a proxy baptism is superfluous, either before their death or after it. They are already united to God, even if they are not fully aware of it in this life (cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church 847-848, 1257-1260).

Thus the Mormon argument from fairness is not persuasive. There are other ways for accounting for God’s justice and mercy in dealing with those who have not heard of God and the gospel. It is not necessary to postulate another preaching of the gospel and second chance of repentance in the afterlife, much less the necessity of proxy baptism for the dead, on that basis. God can simply let whomever he wants into heaven, whether they have water baptism or not. God is not bound by the sacraments he himself instituted (CCC 1257).

The practice of baptism of the dead, then, must stand or fall based on the direct evidence concerning it, and that is where the Mormon position runs into fatal problems.

The Bible Doesn’t Teach It

The doctrine of baptism for the dead was first given to the Mormon church by Joseph Smith in 1836 and is found in his Doctrine and Covenants, (but not, as we’ll see, in the Book of Mormon).

In Paul’s first epistle to the church in Corinth, he treats a number of subjects. This letter was written to counteract problems he saw developing in Corinth after he had established the church there. Corinth had its share of pagan religions, but there were also quasi-Christian groups that practiced variations of orthodox Christian doctrines. Enter baptism for the dead.

Mormons cite a single biblical passage to support baptizing members on behalf of dead persons, “Else what shall they do which are baptized for the dead, if the dead rise not at all? Why are they then baptized for the dead?” (1 Cor. 15:29).

Mormons infer that in 1 Corinthians, Paul speaks approvingly of living Christians receiving baptism on behalf of dead non-Christians; however, the context and construction of the verse indicate otherwise. The Greek phrase rendered by the King James Version as “for the dead” is huper ton nekron. This phrase is as ambiguous in Greek as it is in English. The preposition huper has a wide semantic range and can indicate “for the sake of,” “on behalf of,” “over,” “beyond,” or “more than.” Like the English preposition “for,” it does not have a single meaning and does not require the Mormon idea of being baptized in place of the dead. Such a reading would be unlikely given the more plausible interpretations available, and even if huper were taken to mean “in the place of,” it doesn’t mean Paul endorses the practice.

First Corinthians 15 is a key chapter for Paul’s teaching on the resurrection of the body. He makes no statement on baptism for dead persons except to note that some unnamed “they” practice it. While the rest of his teaching in chapter fifteen refers to “we,” his Christian followers, “they” are not further identified. Who this group was may not be known with certitude today, but there are some reasonable interpretations:

1. Some commentators assume this verse refers to the practice of giving newly baptized children the names of deceased non-Christian relatives, with the hope that the dead might somehow share in the Lord’s mercy.

2. Another interpretation envisions the baptism of catechumens who have witnessed the persecution and martyrdom of their Christian predecessors. With their belief that the dead do rise, the Christian candidates come forward boldly and accept both the faith and its consequences.

3. A related view holds that the group consists of those baptized in connection with a dead Christian loved one. In the first century, many families were split religiously, as only one or two members may have converted to Christianity. When it came time for these new Christians to die, they no doubt exhorted their non-Christian family members to consider the Christian faith and to embrace it so that they could be together in the next world. After the deaths of their Christian loved ones, many family members no doubt did investigate the Christian faith and were baptized so that they could be reunited with their loved ones in the afterlife. At the time, many pagans had at best an unclear idea of what the afterlife was like, and there were a large number of sects promising immortality to those who were willing to undergo their initiation rituals. A pagan husband mourning the death of his Christian wife might thus have an unclear idea of what her religion was all about, but still have it fixed in his mind: “If I want to be with her again, I need to become a Christian, like she was, so I can go where Christians go in the afterlife.” This, then, could prompt him to investigate Christianity, learn its teachings about the afterlife and the resurrection, and embrace faith in Christ, receiving Christian baptism for the sake of being united with his dead loved one. The same is true, by extension, for other family relations as well, such as parents and children, grandparents and grandchildren. Even today deathbed exhortations to live the Christian life are not uncommon. People still resolve to live as Christians in order to please dead loved ones, to honor their memories, and to be united with them in the next life. The difference is that, today, most of those being exhorted have already been baptized.

4. Others advance the possibility that Paul was referring to the practice of a heretical cult that existed in Corinth. On this theory, Paul was not endorsing the practice of the group, but merely citing it to emphasize the importance of the resurrection. Rather, his point was: If even heterodox Christians have a practice that makes no sense if there is no resurrection of the dead, how much more, then, should we orthodox Catholics believe in and hope for the resurrection of the dead.

There is no other evidence in the Bible or in the early Church Fathers’ writings of baptism being practiced on the living in place of the dead. Some Mormon writers assert that some Christian commentators have discussed the possibility of a kind of “baptism for the dead” among some in the Corinthian community in Paul’s time. But these commentators do not suggest that the practice was accepted or mainstream. Given the silence of Scripture and tradition, we conclude rightly when we see this behavior as another aberration within a community of believers already soundly scolded by Paul for its lack of charity, its factionalism, its immorality, its abuse of the Eucharist, and other matters.

Although we have no way of knowing for sure who was engaging in this practice, it is certain that Paul was not referring to orthodox Christians baptizing the dead. Catholic and Protestant scholars agree on that.

A Flat-Out Contradiction

The case against baptism for the dead is also made by the Mormon scriptures themselves. The current Mormon doctrine on baptism for the dead is quite unlike what Joseph Smith first taught. As in other cases, the Book of Mormon becomes an important tool for the Christian apologist. It contradicts much Mormon theology, and baptism for the dead is no exception.

In Alma 34:35-36 we read: “For behold, if ye have procrastinated the day of your repentance even until death, behold ye have become subjected to the spirit of the devil, and he does seal you his. Therefore, the spirit of the Lord has withdrawn from you and hath no place in you; the power of the devil is over you, and this is the final state of the wicked.”

In other words, those who die as non-Mormons go to hell, period. There’s no suggestion of a later, vicarious admission into the Mormon church.

We also see present-day Mormon doctrine contradicted in 2 Nephi 9:15: “And it shall come to pass that when all men shall have passed from this first death unto life, insomuch as they have become immortal, they must appear before the judgment seat of the Holy One of Israel, and then cometh the judgment and then must they be judged according to the holy judgment of God. For the Lord God hath spoken it, and it is his eternal word, which cannot pass away, that they who are righteous shall be righteous still, and they who are filthy shall be filthy still; wherefore, they who are filthy . . . shall go away into everlasting fire, prepared for them; and their torment is as a lake of fire and brimstone, whose flame ascendeth up forever and ever and has no end.”

It is unforunate that Smith abandoned his own, earlier doctrine. It would not have made the Mormon scriptures any more authentic, but it would have prevented millions of futile Mormon proxy baptisms from being performed.

Source: www.Catholic.com

The Westboro Baptist Church did not picket singer Whitney Houston’s funeral on Saturday, but they did upload a fake photo to Twitter in hopes of convincing others that they did.

The Westboro Baptist Church believes that God is punishing the United States because of America’s acceptance of homosexuality and has gained infamy for picketing the funerals of public figures and military members. The church announced last week that it would picket Houston’s funeral in Newark on Saturday.

“Time for Westboro picket of Whitney Houston funeral.So many piling up to blather about her today. Not ONE of them warned her of hell,” Margie J. Phelps, daughter of the church’s pastor, tweeted on Saturday.

Phelps later tweeted an image of what she purported to be Westboro Baptist Church members protesting outside Houston’s funeral. But the New Jersey Star-Ledger confirmed that no protesters had access to the area depicted in the image, which was apparently photoshopped.

Recently, the church has failed to show up to funeral services numerous times after announcing they planned to do so.

The Westboro Baptist Church, which only has a few dozen members, is typically drowned out by counter protesters.

Despite the Westboro Baptists failing to show up for their protest, three “Occupy Newark” counter-protesters showed up with a sign that read, “Occupy prays for another soul our community could not save.”

Source: Raw Story

Westboro Baptist’s special parody of Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You”.