Habemus Papam: Francis I

‘Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Argentina was elected in a surprise choice to be the new leader of the troubled Roman Catholic Church, taking the name Francis I and becoming the first non-European pontiff in nearly 1,300 years. (13 Mar ch 2013)’.

‘The first Latin American pope, Argentina’s Jorge Bergoglio is a moderate known for his strong negotiating skills as well as a readiness to challenge powerful interests’.

The first non-European Pope may have been born on the other side of the world, in South America, but his heritage is still resolutely European and white . . . still he seems to be quite different from his two staunchly conservative predecessors, John Paul and Benedict. The BBC gives this short press review: ‘The first non-European leader of the Catholic Church for 1,300 years is pictured on most front pages, waving to the thousands of people gathered in St Peter’s Square. “Pope Francis the humble” is the main headline in the Daily Telegraph, which says he appeared “as surprised as anyone” by his election. The paper describes him as the “antithesis of Vatican pomp”, highlighting that he is “a man known for catching the bus and eschewing the luxuries of high office”. For the Independent, he’s an “inspired and original choice” and a signal that “change has come” to the Catholic Church. The Sun says that when Pope Benedict announced it was time for a younger man, “few imagined his replacement would be 76″, but the paper reckons Francis has “energy and charisma”. The Guardian welcomes an “extraordinary leap” from the conservatism of the last two papacies, and a “decisive shift in the church’s centre of gravity”. The Daily Mail asks simply whether he can “clean up his troubled Church?”. The Times believes the new leader of the Catholic Church gives “every indication of inspiring admiration, even devotion, as well as respect”. But it goes on to add that the Argentine is “not untainted by controversy”. The Sun reports, bluntly, that “Pope Francis wants Britain to hand back the Falklands”. The former Archbishop of Buenos Aires has said previously that the islands were “usurped” by Britain, and in 2010 he insisted the Falklands “are ours”. Several papers also report that he’s been accused of complicity in the kidnapping of two liberal Jesuit priests by Argentina’s military junta, during the so-called dirty war. He has denied the allegations, and insists he helped many dissidents during the dictatorship’.[1]

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[1] “Newspaper review: Press react to new Pope Francis” BBC News (14 March 2013). http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-21781637.

Waco Massacre: 20 Years after

Abby Martin does what she does best, dig up some historical fact to then spin the rhetorical wheel out of proportion: ‘Abby Martin takes a look back at the 1993 Waco massacre, the tactics used by federal agents and the subsequent cover up that remains to this day (15 Feb 2013)’.

The Pope Resigns: Uygur’s Take

‘Benedict XVI always cast himself as the reluctant pope, a shy bookworm who preferred solitary walks in the Alps to the public glare and the majesty of Vatican pageantry. But once in office, he never shied from charting the Catholic Church on the course he thought it needed — a determination reflected in his stunning announcement Monday that he would be the first pope to resign since 1415 (12 Feb 2013)’.

The Austin Atheist Experience #414: The meaning of life

‘Russell and Keryn talk about the meaning of life as it relates to atheism.

The Atheist Experience is a weekly cable access television show in Austin, Texas geared at a non-atheist audience. The Atheist Experience is produced by the Atheist Community of Austin. The Atheist Community of Austin is organized as a nonprofit educational corporation to develop and support the atheist community, to provide opportunities for socializing and friendship, to promote secular viewpoints, to encourage positive atheist culture, to defend the first amendment principle of state-church separation, to oppose discrimination against atheists and to work with other organizations in pursuit of common goals (29 May 2011)’.

Syrian Opposition United: George Sabra

‘Syria’s main opposition group, the Syrian National Council, has agreed to join forces with other opposition groups at a meeting in Qatar Made up of various anti-government factions, in a step toward forming a broad-based interim government, the new umbrella organisation will be called the Syrian National Coalition. Al Jazeera‘s Hashem Ahelbarra reports from Doha (10 Nov 2012)’.

Also from Doha, Reuters’ Regan Doherty reports that the “new chief of the main Syrian opposition group overseas said on Saturday [. 10 November] he still had hope for more military aid from Western powers in the revolt against the rule of Bashar al-Assad. “Now we will push the Arab countries and the international community to change their position. We need a new decision,” George Sabra told Reuters in Doha, where Syrian opposition figures have been meeting for the past week to try to forge a new leadership including activists overseas and in Syria itself. He spoke after the Syrian National Council (SNC), formed last year as Damascus tried to crush the protest movement for democratic reform, voted him as its new leader on Friday night. “We need military equipment – rockets against tanks and airplanes to protect ourselves… We hope we will get something soon,” said the 65-year-old Sabra, when asked if the SNC had received any assurances of more military support forthcoming”.[1]

Now that the CIA seems to have admitted that its Syria strategy is not working, given Petraeus’ unexpected departure, would a Christian figurehead at the helm of the anti-Assad coalition inspire sufficient confidence to overtly arm the “rebels” or “terrorists”???  Last June, Eric Schmitt disclosed in the pages of the New York Times that the CIA was funnelling arms and training towards Syrian recruits in an effort to oust Assad.[2]  Petraeus was undoubtedly the brains behind that semi-covert attempt at regime change in Damascus . . . now the General is gone and a Christian has been appointed the public face of the “United Opposition to Assad” . . . As long ago as last April, the journalist and blogger Malik Al-Abdeh wrote that “George Sabra is being increasingly touted as a future leader of the Syrian opposition, and potentially, of Syria itself”.[3]

Al-Abdeh continues his sketch as follows: “Many factors have shaped the forceful yet understated politician that is George Sabra: disillusionment, as for so many other Syrians communists, with the Soviet brand that forced itself onto them and against which they rebelled; a work ethic that saw him distinguished as a primary school teacher then a Geography student at university, and which, by 1985, made him a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party – Political Bureau at the age of 38; perseverance, having spent two years in solitary detention, and almost a lifetime in a country where, up until very recently, the prospects for democratic change appeared very slim indeed”.[4]  In other words, Sabra has been a long-standing opposition figure, not necessarily enamoured with the U.S. or its agenda, and thus his current appointment will in all likelihood not last very long nor will it be very effective in steering the opposition into a more powerful position. But as a Christian, Sabra will undoubtedly be used to convince the leaders of the West that an extremist Islamic takeover following Assad’s demise can be avoided . . . Reuters’ Doherty even mentions that “Sabra also played down the presence of jihadist groups among rebels in Syria, saying such talk was ‘exaggerated’. Al Qaeda-linked militants from Iraq are thought to have joined the fight in Syria, where militants are accused of beheading some of those thought to support Assad and warring against the Alawi sect of Assad and much of the ruling elite”.[5]  And adding even more colour to Sabra’s rosy picture, the Reuters’ piece also states that “Sabra said the SNC would appoint some women to the general secretariat to make up for their failure to win seats”.[6]  I wonder what the ‘Al-Nusra Front, an al-Qaida-inspired Islamist militant group’,[7] in VOA parlance, would have to say about that . . .

 

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[1] Regan Doherty, “Syria opposition leader still hopes for military aid” Reuters (10 Nov 2012). http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/11/10/us-syria-doha-sabra-interview-idUSBRE8A90DC20121110.

[2] “The New Cold War: The CIA Prepares Battleground Syria???” A Pseudo-Ottoman Blog (22 June 2012). http://sitanbul.wordpress.com/2012/06/22/the-new-cold-war-the-cia-prepares-battleground-syria/.

[3] Malik Al-Abdeh, “George Sabra: A man for all seasons?” Syria in Transition (09 April 2012). http://syriaintransition.com/2012/04/09/george-sabra-a-man-for-all-seasons/.

[4] Malik Al-Abdeh, “George Sabra: A man for all seasons?”.

[5] Regan Doherty, “Syria opposition leader still hopes for military aid”.

[6] Regan Doherty, “Syria opposition leader still hopes for military aid”.

[7] “Car Bombs, Air Strikes Kill Dozens in Syria” VOA News (05 November 2012). http://blogs.voanews.com/breaking-news/2012/11/05/car-bombs-air-strikes-kill-dozens-in-syria/.

Beirut Bomb Blast

In the region where scheme and plots are often used to create division and chaos, on Friday, Lebanon was the scene of a deadly car bomb where eight people were killed and many others injured.

Top Lebanese intelligence officer Wissam al-Hassan was among the victims of the blast which took place shortly after his return from France.

As fingers are being pointed at various entities, the question we will explore on this News Analysis is who could be behind the assassination of a senior intelligence official, Wissalm al-Hassan, and who can benefit if Lebanon is gripped by turmoil and sectarian violence? (21 Oct 2012).

Charlie Hebdo: Nothing is Sacred!!!

The police protection provided for journalists proves that a physical threat is taken seriously. In this story, offended Muslims are thought to pose a potential danger to French satirical weekly newspaper Charlie Hebdo. It prizes freedom of expression to an extent many consider extreme. In its turn, Charlie attacks what it considers extreme, and always has. No subject is untouchable, certainly not religion, not even the Prophet Mohammed. Those at the paper don’t see it as inciting hatred, but as pushing thinking beyond conformism. The publishing director Charb (Stephane Charbonnier) said: “What? We can’t lampoon Mohammed in France? Yes we can. We can caricature everyone in France. I don’t hold it against a Muslim for not laughing at our drawings, but he’s not going to tell us what law we have to follow. I live under French law. I don’t live under the law of the Koran.” The team at Charlie Hebdo has a history of not backing down, with a mantra that says no one’s going to do their thinking for them. Charb said: “It’s plain to see that the sole subject that poses a problem is radical Islam. When we attack the Catholic extreme right, very strongly, no one talks about it in the papers. But we’re not allowed to laugh about Muslim fundamentalists. Well, there’s a new rule that will have to be written up, but we won’t respect it.” Charlie won’t be bullied. Last year someone burned the offices with a Molotov cocktail and its website was hacked as it was preparing an issue commenting on the Islamist electoral victory in Tunisia, an issue headed ‘Sharia Hebdo’. Even veterans of left politics in Europe have said the satirists are masochists, pushing as hard as they do. The paper started out called ‘Hara-Kiri’. It was shut down by the Interior Minister in 1970, a few days after a fire in a disco had claimed more than 140 lives. Then the father of the Fourth Republic, General de Gaulle passed away in his home, and it ran the headline: ‘Tragic dance in Colombey – one dead.’ It came back from the ban, borrowing the leader’s first name in its new masthead – or was that just a coincidence?  As British parallels to this approach to the sacred we can perhaps cite Monty Python or Private Eye. Only lack of readers put Charlie Hebdo out of business for a decade. Resurrected in 1992, it put the boot into all faiths, the Jews as well, and the editors faced lawsuit after lawsuit. They weren’t gentle with politicians either. An early reader slammed them as ‘dumb and nasty’ (‘bête et méchant’). They made the label their motto. They say what many people might say behind closed doors, only they put it in print, and say damn the risk (26 Sept 2012).

A Married Jesus and the Meaning of Christian Life: Coptic Claims

In the esteemed Harvard Gazette B. D. Colen writes: “Four words on a previously unknown papyrus fragment provide the first evidence that some early Christians believed Jesus had been married, Harvard Professor Karen King told the 10^th International Congress of Coptic Studies” on Tuesday, 18 September 2012.[1]  Colen elaborates that Karen “King, the Hollis Professor of Divinity at Harvard Divinity School, announced the existence of the ancient text at the congress’ meeting, held every four years and hosted this year by the Vatican’s Institutum Patristicum Augustinianum in Rome. The four words that appear on the fragment translate to “Jesus said to them, my wife.” The words, written in Coptic, a language of Egyptian Christians, are on a papyrus fragment of about one and a half inches by three inches”.[2]

Professor King elucidates that “Christian tradition has long held that Jesus was not married, even though no reliable historical evidence exists to support that claim. This new gospel doesn’t prove that Jesus was married, but it tells us that the whole question only came up as part of vociferous debates about sexuality and marriage. From the very beginning, Christians disagreed about whether it was better not to marry, but it was over a century after Jesus’ death before they began appealing to Jesus’ marital status to support their positions”.[3]  Christianity, as the conceptual edifice built by the overtly misogynistic Saint Paul, has always had ambivalent feelings about issues relating to love and marriage, celibacy, the role of women and the meaning of life. Does man live solely to enter the next life in the heavenly kingdom or should he consider his sojourn on this mortal coil as equally valid and meaningful???  Celibacy, as a life style, clearly favours the former view. And there have been examples of excesses in early Christian history. The case of Origen of Alexandria springs to mind. It seems that the saintly figure had been inspired by Matthew 19:12 to castrate himself: “For there are some eunuchs, which were so born from their mother’s womb: and there are some eunuchs, which were made eunuchs of men: and there be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake. He that is able to receive it, let him receive it”.[4]  The King James translation seems to make it quite plain that celibacy could be considered a safe way to enter the heavenly kingdom. In the end, however, the pragmatic view that life on this mortal coil also deserves human sacrifice and hardship, as possibly symbolised in the institution of marriage necessarily leading to human reproduction, prevailed. As a result, the continuation of the human race was guaranteed and the figure of God in heaven remained unassailable. This then left Jesus as the ultimate example to be followed by those Christians deemed extremely pious and other-worldly, such as monks and nuns.

Now the whole debate in connection with the meaning of Christian life, as condensed in the issue of marriage or celibacy, has been reduced to squibbles about Jesus’ marital status . . . In conclusion, Professor King states that the “discovery of this new gospel offers an occasion to rethink what we thought we knew by asking what role claims about Jesus’ marital status played historically in early Christian controversies over marriage, celibacy, and family. Christian tradition preserved only those voices that claimed Jesus never married. The Gospel of Jesus’ Wife now shows that some Christians thought otherwise”.[5]

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[1] B. D. Colen, “Suggestion of a married Jesus” Harvard Gazette (18 September 2012).  http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2012/09/suggestion-of-a-married-jesus/.

[2] B. D. Colen, “Suggestion of a married Jesus”.

[3] B. D. Colen, “Suggestion of a married Jesus”.

[4] “Matthew 19:12” Biblos. http://bible.cc/matthew/19-12.htm.

[5] B. D. Colen, “Suggestion of a married Jesus”.

Exorcism in Europe: New Polish Magazine Egzorcysta

If it weren’t so tragic, if not downright frightening, one could say that the Poles had it coming . . . namely, their own periodical publication devoted to driving out demons and other ungodly visitations. Whereas the late 20^th century was the heyday for secularism and a waning of religious influence on people’s lives and thoughts, the early 21^st century, by contrast, will go down in the annals of human history as the time when the beast of religion reared its ugly head again. As a member of the EU and an apparently staunchly Catholic nation, Poland now also boasts another editorial first: the world’s first monthly magazine focused exclusively on chasing out the devil.

‘Poland. It’s one of Europe’s most devoutly Catholic nations. And now, it’s becoming the first nation to launch a magazine all about chasing out the devil. Roman Catholic priests say they have created the world’s first monthly exorcism magazine to meet the demand of a growing population of Poles that are turning to demonology. 15 years ago, there were reportedly only 4 exorcists. Today, there are over 120 priests helping chase evil spirits away from people by using prayers that were approved by Pope John Paul II in 1999. The 62-page first issue called “New Age — the spiritual vacuum cleaner” has just hit news newsstands and is selling for about USD 3 per copy’.

‘With its 62-page first issue including articles titled “New Age — the spiritual vacuum cleaner” and “Satan is real”, the Egzorcysta monthly with a print-run of 15,000 by the Polwen publishers is selling for 10 zloty (2.34 euros, 3.10 dollars) per copy’.[1]

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[1] “Catholic Priests in Poland Launch Magazine Focused on Exorcism” BLT (16 September 2012). http://bltnotjustasandwich.com/2012/09/16/catholic-priests-in-poland-launch-magazine-focused-on-exorcism/.

Another Muhammad Controversy: Who is Nakoula Basseley Nakoula?

55-year-old Nakoula Basseley Nakoula voluntarily went with authorities when he was ask to come in for questioning (15 Sept 2012) .