Catholic bishops on Friday voted to create guidelines on the meaning of Communion, a move that could be an early step toward limiting the serving of the Eucharist to President Biden and other politicians who support abortion rights.
Since the decision about who can receive communion is delegated to the local bishop, and DC’s archbishop has said that Biden will get communion, this is moot. But, fuck ’em anyway, and tax them for being a political action group rather than a church.
Here in New York, the Child Victims Act was passed to allow a short-term suspension of the statute of limitations on sexual abuse. The “look-back window” closes on August 14, 2021. The Rochester Diocese declared bankruptcy and is now trying to foist a $35 million settlement onto the 475 victims who have filed claims — a little less than $75K/each. They’ve also, predictably, dragged their feet on mediation. I hope those victims get at least a million bucks each and assume custody of every god damned piece of property owned by the Rochester Diocese. Then, they can rent all those churches back to the Diocese, or maybe just sell them off.
Wag
Impossible to argue against anything that you said.
laura
Whole lotta kid fucking, beating, killing, dumping in pits and other unmarked graves or imprisoned in orphanages and laundries in these so called houses of god. Redemption without acts for the most barbaric and no communion for those who almost always are Democratic elected officials.
Funny old world.
Anotherlurker
As ax ex-catholic, I would love to see the Church of Rome thoroughly bankrupted and run out of business.
I would also like to see the same outcome for all fundy organizations, Xtian, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism and the LDS. Frauds and psychos, all.
Keith P.
Didn’t the Vatican already tell the US bishops not to that?
VeniceRiley
Mary G
@Keith P.: Like those MAGAts who believe Biden is an illegitimate socialist president who stole the election, there is a clique within the Catholic church who believe the same thing about Pope Francis
ETA: Sample of same right here:
scav
@Keith P.: Nobody tells a real ‘merkan Bishop what to do. Pope? ha. Obedience? They scoff at that slightly more than the whole poverty, abstinence and charity rigamarole.
dr. bloor
@Keith P.:
Much like members of another cult that shall not be named, many do not consider Francis to be their Pope, and feel no need to adhere to his leadership.
Benw
The colossal pettiness of being mean to Joe Biden…
Alison Rose
Or convert them to Planned Parenthood clinics.
gvg
I want to start with jail sentences for the actual rapists. I also think some of the individual authorities in the organizations should be jailed, just as when a regular person helps cover up rape.
Bankrupting some churches would put the members of the rest that they need to pay close attention to what is going on under their noses.
A Ghost to Most
Religion is the Longest Con, and the second oldest profession.
Keith P.
@scav: Vow of obedience be damned, I guess
Elizabelle
If I were Pope Francis, I would use that vote to retire the signees’ asses.
If you want to see why America has so many lapsed Catholics, look no further than these buffoons in dresses.
I also love how the WaPost pointedly refers to THE MEN several times. Because this is all men. It is a travesty.
Tax the churches. Separation of church and state. You can do your good works without a tax exemption. Jesus would like that, actually.
geg6
There are few institutions I despise more than the Catholic Church that victimized me as a teen. Fuck these assholes. Fuck that church. Fuck these child rapists and everyone and everything that props them up. Fuck them, fuck them, fuck them. Gawd, I hate these mother fuckers.
Another Scott
@laura: Rules are to enforce on those unworthy little people.
E.g. Twice-divorced BoJo’s 3rd wedding in Westminster Cathedral.
They’re shameless.
It’s good they’re finally, but all too slowly, being held to account in the USA, Canada, and elsewhere.
Grr…
Cheers,
Scott.
geg6
@Anotherlurker:
I second every word.
Mallard Filmore
I don’t understand the morality of a culture that will fight birth control, fight abortion, fight like demons to bring babies into this world but won’t take care of the kids that are already here.
The right wing anti-abortion types want to bask in God’s glory for doing holy work, saving all these countless “lives”, while fiercely resisting the use of tax money to care for the children. “Take responsibility for your actions”, so I don’t have to spend MY energy on YOUR kids, waste MY time, not MY money.
They want God’s smile while dumping the work on someone else. This is the religious version of Stolen Valor.
Elizabelle
I notice the WaPost has not allowed reader comments on either of the stories it’s run this week on this situation.
The NY Times did allow comments, and the Catholic Church got an earful on their hypocrisy.
Elizabelle
I don’t think there is any institution or theory that (arch)conservatives have not totally ruined.
Anything.
germy
A BIG VICTORY!
sdhays
@VeniceRiley: So, if you’re a member of a Christian church in Germany, you pay an 8% (!) tax that goes to that church? Does that mean if you’re a member of a non-Christian faith or an atheist, you get to keep your money?
Chief Oshkosh
@laura: It’s not that I’m a lapsed Catholic, it’s that the Catholic Church is a lapsed religious body.
Searcher
Can we take a moment to appreciate that conservative Protestants have long had a thing about a Catholic President being a tool of the Pope, and conservative Catholics are now trying to force a Catholic President to do what they want — what the conservative Protestants want — through his Catholicness?
trollhattan
@Another Scott:
How about Newt’s Wife The Number Being Three becoming our ambassador to the Vatican? That one flabbergasted me even after acknowledging it was Trump being Trump.
laura
@Mallard Filmore: There is no morality- your going to strain yourself looking for it. There is power, subjugation and abuse. And always ALWAYS a woman is to blame. Me, I’m an “acts without faith” type of gal. Nothing but distain for the Profits of God in organized religion, with the exception of Pope Francis who is the Pope my mother always hoped for but didn’t live long enough to see.
brendancalling
“Then, they can rent all those churches back to the Diocese, or maybe just sell them off. ”
Sell them off to the housing authority, and make them into mixed-income housing and a community center, like they did to a crumbling church in Philly. That building is now thriving, BTW, and doing more good than any pretend sky-god ever did.
sdhays
@sdhays: Answering my own question:
Tony Jay
@Elizabelle:
I’m sure there are quite a few underground knocking-shops whose owners have put their kids through University and Medical School thanks to the patronage of local Men of God.
So there’s that.
JoyceH
@Mallard Filmore:
That’s like these QAnon characters wanting moral Brownie points because they’re ‘fighting pedophilia’. Um – no, you’re not. You’re sitting at your computer getting all wound up about fictional child victims, while ignoring the actual child victims out there who could probably use some help.
germy
Somewhat like Senator Schumer co-sponsoring Senate Bill 720.
germy
@JoyceH:
Kay
@germy:
That’s a bad one. Prosecutors still (informally) use the “4 year rule”. 16/20 is thus not as bad as 14/23.
Baud
@Searcher:
Ironically, conservative Protestants are with the conservative Catholics on this, and the Pope is not.
Mike in NC
Was it last month where the Orange Clown addressed the loons at the cesspool known as CPAC? Now Pence gets booed at the Faith & Freedom Coalition hoedown. Do these grifters plan on putting on one of these demented carnivals every month now?
Kay
I think religious conservatives are so angry because a big part of the belief system is that they’re morally superior. Trump shot that all to hell- they groveled and kissed his ass and worshiped before him and he’s an absolute sleaze and degenerate, so someone has to be punished from their humiliation, and they will punish Biden.
Baud
I’m looking forward to the debate over Catholic funerals when Biden eventually passes away.
AM in NC
@Anotherlurker: Amen.
trollhattan
@Kay:
Guessing he went with the “She said she was eighteen but looked nineteen; how could she have done this to me?!?” defense.
MattF
I think one should bear in mind that the Catholic bishops are, generally, religious fanatics who are also middle-managers of a world-wide bureaucracy. Rather than, e.g., just a group of kindly, white-haired old men.
trollhattan
@Baud:
Ten bucks says the same fine folks demand Biden crank up federal executions.
Baud
@Kay:
I agree with this. The right knows deep down that they lost big. We’re not even debating them on the point anymore.
Hoodie
@MattF: They’re also generally a bunch of self promoters and control freaks, as the “humble servant of god/serve the poor” types don’t rise in the hierarchy. A lot of this is about control, they don’t want their parishioners getting uppity and questioning the power of those in the local hierarchy and, if you can nail a Catholic dem politician, all the better for demonstrating your control. The pope is only relevant to the extent that he agrees with their program, otherwise they feel free to ignore him by casting him as a spiritual figure outside of the church’s earthly pecking order.
cckids
@geg6:
Yes indeed, I can co-sign to every word of this. Not minimizing the pain and crime against all the children actually raped and molested; there are millions more who were terrorized and mentally tortured by representatives of the Church, with the help of parents and teachers, in “God’s name”. So many lives and minds fucked up.
If there is a hell, they have a special place on stage there.
Steeplejack (phone)
@sdhays:
The article says it’s “calculated at 8 per cent of their income tax,” which they are paying anyway. I think it’s just a matter of saying don’t direct that portion to the church.
cain
@Mallard Filmore:
They save their lives only to rape and traumatize them. They are fucked up people.
Chris Johnson
@brendancalling: This. Cash settlements? Give ’em the property, the churches. I’m not sure how practical this is: there are some big complications. But owning land, owning property, is power in a way that cash settlements isn’t.
Ksmiami
@Anotherlurker: religion has no place in our modern world
Ksmiami
Ps: former church buildings make for very cool bars and restaurants- fyi
Old Man Shadow
Funny how the child rapists never talk about sanctioning pro-war and pro-death penalty politicians or sanctioning politicians who refuse to care for the poor, the immigrants, and the refugees.
I guess like the white Evangelicals, they only give a fuck about “life” as long as it lets them dictate what women can and can’t do with their bodies. Once “life” is outside of a womb, it’s on it’s own with these jerk-offs.
Omnes Omnibus
@Ksmiami: You may find that quite a few people disagree with you and that many of those people are on our side of the aisle.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Ksmiami: True, here’s Vibiana here in LA
@Omnes Omnibus: The example above was where the Church wanted to tear down the old cathedral(dating from the late 1800’s) and build a new on the site. The city and county wanted to preserve the old building so did a property trade with the Church so they could build the Rog Mahal*(Cathedral of Our Lady of Angels).
*Rog Mahal was what my Catholic friends used to call it since it was built by the former Archbishop Roger Mahoney.
NCSteve
@Keith P.: Yeah, but he wasn’t really elected Pope. There was tremendous cardinal fraud. Tremendous fraud.
Old Man Shadow
@Omnes Omnibus: I don’t know, Mate. I used to be “live and let live” sort of guy about religion, but more and more the “strangle the last king with the entrails of the last priest” sounds better and better.
Elizabelle
Bishop Wilton Gregory of DC, recently made Cardinal, is a decent man. FWIW, he is African American and the first AA cardinal. He was raised on the South Side of Chicago, and was previously Archbishop of Atlanta. There he spoke out against some of the gun legislation craziness (allowing them in bars, schools, libraries) which apparently still passed.
He also has never been a fan of Donald Trump. Per wiki: In an interview on August 1, 2019, Gregory criticized rhetoric from [soon to be indicted]
trump, saying, “I fear that recent public comments by our president and others and the responses they have generated, have deepened divisions and diminished our national life”; he called for an “end” to “the growing plague of offense and disrespect in speech and actions.”So: Bishop Gregory is a good man. And: tax the Catholic Church and all the rest of them.
Kay
Agree. I will say this though- in the past I have carefully read voter lists that the bd of elections keeps and in MY town (because we were organizing for a school levy campaign and Ohio lists your partisan affilliation when you pull a D or R ballot in a primary) and both the parish priest the one elderly nun who works at the Catholic church are registered Democrats. There are only 7000 people in the city so you recognize names. Which made me smile :)
JoyceH
And yet, and yet… I haven’t gone to church in decades, but doesn’t it seem like the presidents who have been regular church attendees have just been nicer people? I’m thinking of Biden and Carter. A lot of Republicans mouth the words and wave the Bibles, but they seldom crossed the threshold of a church.
Omnes Omnibus
@Old Man Shadow: Tell that to the AA churches who ran souls to polls programs, etc.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Elizabelle:
Churches have tax exempt status since they’re non-profits, so are you suggesting that all non-profits pay taxes? Or are you suggesting the religious organizations have different treatment? The later would run into First Amendment issues.
oatler.
There was the movie “The Devils” with Oliver Reed/Vanessa Redgrave and OF COURSE they tried to ban it.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@oatler.: They also tried to ban “Life of Brian”.
Omnes Omnibus
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: To be fair, the space fight scene wasn’t very realistic.
Yutsano
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Yutsano: He’ll nail a thesis to the door?
Another Scott
Texas state Democratic legislators talked to Manchin’s staff about voting.
An excellent short video there.
“West Virginia Standard” – that’s good.
Let’s hope S&M are listening.
(via LOLGOP)
Cheers,
Scott.
prostratedragon
@trollhattan: Wasn’t it around that time that Francis began talking of the reality of Satan? Because if that choice of ambassador wasn’t amazingly ignorant, then it was amazingly insulting.
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
They used to pull this bullshit with Mario Cuomo. NYC’s cardinal would routinely launch shrill attacks on Cuomo for being pro choice, but when pro choice republicans like Giuliani and Pataki got elected, the cardinal suddenly…. (checks notes) dropped the matter.
The double standard completely exposed them as nothing more than political hacks.
Another Scott
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
NOLO:
I think I see an opening there… ;-)
Cheers,
Scott.
jeffreyw
@NCSteve: No fraud! No fraud!
KM in NS
@sdhays: you have to opt out of the payment. It’s deducted from your pay cheque the same as any other tax.
if you opt out, you keep your money but you don’t get a funeral or wedding in the church.
The tax covers both Catholic and Protestant churches.
zhena gogolia
@Omnes Omnibus: I knew this was a thread I needed to skip.
Tazj
@Keith P.: Yes, the Pope told them not to do that and create further division. They don’t care, they think they’re right. Whatever they proposed has to be approved by the Vatican and it won’t be but I guess they think they’ve made their point.
The bishops seem to have no idea how many people don’t care about their opinions and will continue to leave the church.
trollhattan
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Not-for-profits of any sort can lose their IRS tax-exempt tatus through violating the rules. I do not know all the ways that can occur, but having worked in the 501(c)(3) world can assure it’s an ongoing concern, from management to boards of directors.
Churches do seem to have extra armor-plating against IRS involvement but it happens, and the reason $cientology had to work so very hard to get their prized nonprofit status reinsatated after losing it in 1967. They basically declared war on the IRS and won.
The Holy Church of the Gun was watching with interest.
kindness
I have a digital WaPo subscription and today there is an article on this topic. It plays to the conservative side more than down the middle so I immediately wanted to add my 2 cents to the comments there. Alas, the article doesn’t have a comment section. That happens but only about 10% of the time. My guess is that some editor or other saw what was coming and disables commenting on it before they put the article up.
Orthodox folks from just about every religion are shitty at religion. They miss the forest looking at one or two trees so intensely.
Charluckles
@Kay:
This is going to piss off a lot of moderate non-political folks as well. My mother has remained a huge supporter of the Catholic Church precisely because she feels a massive sense of community and connectedness through the Church. These exclusionary and judgmental fits are against everything she thinks Catholicism should stand for. They are going to push her right out.
Constance Reader
Child rape enablers, baby brokers and child enslavers (Magdalene Laundries, Christian Brother homes, et al.).
prostratedragon
@Elizabelle:
citing a prior commitment
Indeed.
Kent
Both abortion and gay marriage (the other issue that has the Catholic bishops in a hot frenzy) are constitutional rights as defined by the Supreme Court. All presidents (and all Federal office holders) swear an oath to uphold and defend the CONSTITUTION.
What these bishops are actually saying is that Catholicism and public service are incompatible. One cannot uphold their oath of office and be a Catholic.
Which is fine. Maybe the 6 members of the supreme court and the dozens of Senators and Congressmen need to resign their seats (or disown the Catholic church).
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
Doug strikes again.
Steeplejack
Steeplejack
@jeffreyw:
?
Jeffery
If the bishops are going to ignore the pope, then the priest should ignore the bishops. If the bishops complain tell them to take it up with the pope.
Searcher
@kindness: I’m a big fan of the Fundamentalist-Modernist controversy.
About a century ago, at the time of the Scopes Monkey Trial, there was a huge schism in a number of churches (starting from the Presbyterians but cascading through all the rest) about whether Christian churches should be “fundamentalist”, and hold to what they viewed as the unalterable truth of their religion regardless of how the world changed, or “modernist”, and continually reinterpret their faith in the context of new discoveries in science and changes in society.
Three guesses on which branch most of the loudest churches in America today took.
Almost Retired
The little Catholic school down the street from me was run by two embezzling nuns, who fired a teacher when she asked for an accommodation for her cancer treatment. The teacher sued, and the fucking Archdiocese of Los Angeles took the case ALL the way to the US Supreme Court – claiming (successfully) that they were exempt from workplace anti-discrimination laws. So fuck you cancer-stricken teacher. They really have the moral high ground, don’t they?
Another Scott
CalculatedRisk – The Housing Conumdrum:
An excellent post on the various measures, demographics, and all the rest.
Cheers,
Scott.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Constance Reader: the Residential Schools like the one in Kamloops, BC
Another Scott
@Another Scott: Conundrum
Of course.
(sigh)
Cheers,
Scott.
KM in NS
Canadians are dealing with the discovery of 215 children’s graves from a residential school. This, most likely, is the beginning of discoveries across Canada. Most of the schools were run by the Catholic Church, some were run by the Anglicans and other denominations. However, the Catholic Church hasn’t apologized and the others have. Very sad and disturbing revelation.
J R in WV
@Mallard Filmore:
Fixd that for ya. They not only don’t take care of the kids, they mistreat them horribly. Murder, mass graves, rape, the story goes on, and even now that the crimes are being discussed, NO ONE gets prosecuted for aiding and abetting, much less the actual rapes.
Baud
@David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch:
@Steeplejack:
It’s nice to see someone find their true calling.
Searcher
@KM in NS: “We’re sorry if some people were offended by the deaths of hundreds of children.”
Kay
@Charluckles:
That’s a great point. I think we tend to forget about the “non political group” but they’re really the majority and some of them resent when politics are “brought in” (how they see it).
I took the Chicago architecture tour a couple of weeks go, the one on a boat, and we passed a Trump property. An older couple sitting next to me were talking about how they hoped the guide wouldn’t dwell on it – “I just don’t want to talk about politics”. The guide didn’t – he said “Trump property” gave the year it went up and described the structure. They were relieved. For a lot of people it means “division and conflict” and they don’t want everything they do infused with it. That probably goes double for people who find solace or peace in religion.
J R in WV
@MattF:
Tried to fix that a little bit for you…
ETA: I want to make it clear here that I don’t disrespect the Catholic Church any more than I disrespect any patriarchal theocratic organization from the Southern Baptists thru Calvinists right up through the Bishops and Cardinals of the Catholic Church.
I’m not going to list all the tragic theocratic organizations I disrespect. If they rule women out of their pulpits and schools, If they coverup abuse and assaults, you can be sure I don’t respect them.
Kay
@Charluckles:
I’m not religious but that seems like an insanely bad decision they made. Just so catastrophically short sighted. REALLY poor leadership.
artem1s
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Religious organization do have different treatment. They have different tax reporting requirements. When they get contracts from the government (to provide social services) they are allowed to be granted exceptions when it comes to their hiring practices AND who they offer services to. Catholic Hospitals are infamous for refusing to treat women for their reproductive health. There are a number of huge NP religious organizations that use politics as a guide to determine who they will provide services to. That fucking bitch from Georgia essentially took down one of the most lucrative breast cancer fundraising NPs when she decided as CEO that she would change the Komen’s policy and deny any of the funds raised be given to Planned Parenthood. The backlash meant that they had to stop using Komen’s name to raise money. But the pressure came from the religious right.
BTW, not only didn’t the men who raped those children not go to jail, the Districts Attorneys, Prosecutors, Judges, and Mayors that protected them didn’t go to jail either. I always assumed Governors Voinovich and AG DeWine helped cover up the Ohio Catholic Diocese messes. There were thousands of priests being sheltered from having to go into the system. That couldn’t have happened without some collusion on the part of government leaders. Want to know why some pol was so willing to bend the knee to obviously corrupt religious leader? And we also have thousands of protestant religious schools in this country where there is no oversight and where women are told they have no rights or agency over their own bodies. Liberty University already is famous for rape victim blaming and sheltering serial rapists on their campus.
Religious institutions get all kinds of special treatment in this country.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@artem1s: I was responding to Elizibelle’s comment that they should be taxed, the basis of their tax treatment is that they are non-profits. As pointed out above, they can be taxed if they have operations that are for-profit. My point is that they would need to be treated the same as other non-profits as far as taxation or there could be First Amendment issues.
J R in WV
We contribute to a ton of progressive causes, including Planned Parenthood. We used to contribute to Komen, but dropped them like a hot rock when they dropped Planned Parenthood! Right wing motherfuqers destroy everything they touch.
I note that many people who accuse Democratic leaders of pedophilia and other perversions turn out to be convicted sex criminals themselves — they can’t help themselves, every accusation is a guilty plea~!!~
PPCLI
But we should also make a list of politicians who were not denied communion, so we can get a sense of where the Church draws the line. I’ll start:
Ante Pavelic, who ran the Croatian version of the Holocaust in WWII. Not excommunicated. The Vatican actually hid him from justice in Rome when he fled Croatia.
Jozef Tiso, who ran the Slovakian version of the Holocaust. Tiso was actually a priest. Not only did Pius XII not excommunicate him — he didn’t even defrock him! Tiso was hung by the Soviets, proudly wearing his clerical garb.
I confess I don’t know whether or not Pinochet, or Franco, or the Argentine generals, during the dirty war were denied communion, but I have a hunch the answer is no.
Big Red
They should ban the bishops from watching FOX news. That is where this is coming from.
Darkrose
@Yutsano: Allow me to swoon over my legislative boyfriend once again.
persistentillusion
@Searcher:
As a lapsed Presbyterian, I am interested in your comments and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
Soprano2
I disagree with the premise. Religious conservatives have agency. No one forced them to embrace Trump – they did that all by themselves. They have no one else to blame for the fact that their ability to paint themselves as morally superior is gone because they embraced him. It never convinced me anyway, but they had a lot of people fooled for a long time. That’s one favor Trump did for us – these people exposed themselves for him so much that they can never go back.
MontyTheClipArtMongoose
@Anotherlurker: i see you wisely excluded seaorg.
MontyTheClipArtMongoose
@trollhattan: operation snow white did nothing wrong.
Nancy
@Alison Rose:
June 18, 2021 at 2:26 pm
“Or convert them to Planned Parenthood clinics.”
Oh, yeah! Thank you for this comment.