Rationalist Society of St. Louis

The Vatican needs to spend more time tending its own and less worrying about condoms and withholding communion from politicians who do their job.

Police investigating corruption involving a Vatican member of high position uncovered a male prostitution network:

Religion: Male prostitution scandal rocks Vatican. A police investigation into corruption at the Vatican has taken a twist with the discovery of an organised network of male prostitution. So far a senior aide to the Pope and a Vatican chorister have been removed from their posts over allegations of involvement in the homosexual prostitution ring.

Makes one wonder who else at the Vatican is involved.

Of all religions, Scientology is the most evil. It claims tax exempt status, takes its members’ money, then systematically destroys them if they leave. It’s all about money and using physical and psychological abuse to keep it rolling in.

The New York Times recently published an article about two escapees.

They signed a contract for a billion years — in keeping with the church’s belief that Scientologists are immortal. They worked seven days a week, often on little sleep, for sporadic paychecks of $50 a week, at most.

But after 13 years and growing disillusionment, the Collbrans decided to leave the Sea Org, setting off on a Kafkaesque journey that they said required them to sign false confessions about their personal lives and their work, pay the church thousands of dollars it said they owed for courses and counseling, and accept the consequences as their parents, siblings and friends who are church members cut off all communication with them.

A German minister criticises the Vatican for a “wall of silence” over recently emerged sexual abuse allegations.

Go to BBC to read the original article.

Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger said Vatican secrecy rules were complicating investigations of the cases.

Ms Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger referred to a Vatican rule dating to 2001 that requires abuse cases to be investigated internally.
She expressed dismay at the fact that prosecutors were not called in
“as soon as possible.”

So the Catholic Chruch feels exempt from the law and it protects itself instead of it’s followers. In fact, it will let its children be raped if that’s what it takes to protect its pedophile priests and outdated dogma.

From American Atheists:

American Atheists will be among the non-believer groups led by the Secular Coalition for America for an historic briefing with the Obama Administration in Washington, DC, on Friday, 26 February 2010 CE.

Representatives of several leading Atheist, Freethought, and Humanist organizations will gather in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, next door to the White House, at 11:00 AM ET, for the briefing.

Dr. Ed Buckner, President of American Atheists, said “We are delighted that we will get the chance to speak to and to hear from the Obama administration at the briefing with the Secular Coalition for America tomorrow. We will not be seeking support for Atheism from the federal administration, because we know they must be neutral and because we are confident that our conclusions can compete and win in the marketplace of ideas, unaided by government. We seek an end to special rights for religious ideas and beliefs–in all regulations, laws, procedures, and pronouncements. The privileging of religiosity violates the First Amendment and good sense.”

The American Atheists delegation will include Dr. Buckner; AA Vice President and National Spokesperson Dave Silverman; Vice President and Military Director Kathleen Johnson; Indra Zuno, AA general member, translator, and writer; Ellen Birch, Chair of the American Atheists Life Membership Committee and systems engineer; and Camille A. Brewer, AA general member, political/freethought activist and art expert.

“We will be represented by a wonderful cross-section of our membership,” Said Dr. Buckner. “Atheists come from across the social, ethnic, economic, and political spectra.”

From KMOV in St. Louis:

WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) — A federal judge has ruled that the Indian River School Board can continue to start its meetings with a prayer or moment of silence.

In an opinion released Monday, U.S. District Judge Joseph J. Farnan Jr. said that it is constitutional for the board to open meetings with prayer and threw out a lawsuit over the practice.

The lawsuit was filed in 2005 by two Jewish families, “John and Jane Doe,” parents of a child in the school district, and by Mona and Marco Dobrich, who sued after a Christian prayer was offered at their daughter’s 2004 graduation.

The suit accused the board of violating the constitutional separation of church and state with prayer that the plaintiffs said excluded other groups. Farnan found that prayer is permissible because the elected school board is closer to a legislative body than a school.

The attorney for the plaintiffs says they expect to appeal the decision.

From the Huffington Post comes news that Benny Hinn’s wife filed for a divorce.

Judge Cherie Blair, wife of former Prime Minster Tony Blair, apparently gave a man a lighter sentence because he was religious. From richarddawkins.net:

A senior judge could be called on to investigate a complaint that Cherie Blair handed down a more lenient sentence to a man who had been convicted of fracturing a person’s jaw because he was religious.

Mrs Blair, a devout Roman Catholic who sits as a part time judge under the title Cherie Booth QC, spared Shamso Miah from jail last month after he was convicted of assaulting a person at a bank queue in east London.

The 25-year-old from Redbridge, north-east London, was given a two-year suspended sentence instead of a six-month jail term because, Mrs Blair said, he was a “religious person” who had not been in trouble before.

Press release from Americans United:

An Ohio judge should remove a poster displaying the Ten Commandments from his courtroom, Americans United for Separation of Church and State has told a federal appeals court.

Americans United has filed a friend-of-the-court brief arguing that Richland County Common Pleas Judge James DeWeese’s poster is an unconstitutional governmental endorsement of religion. A lower court has already held that this display shows “a preference for Judeo-Christian faiths” and does not belong in a courtroom.

The poster, designed by DeWeese, features the Commandments alongside “humanist precepts.” Below the text is a statement that says DeWeese believes in moral absolutes such as the Commandments rather than the moral relativism of the Humanist Manifesto.

Although the poster references DeWeese’s acknowledgment of “the importance of Almighty God’s fixed moral standards,” he claims that his display is not religious but merely an illustration of legal or philosophical “theory.” [bold is mine: ed.]

“Who is Judge DeWeese kidding?” asked the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, Americans United executive director. “It’s obvious that he is using his courtroom to advance his personal religious viewpoint. That’s wrong, and the appeals court should say so.”

Lynn noted that the judge has been on something of a crusade against church-state separation. Before erecting this particular poster, DeWeese had already been ordered by another court to remove a Decalogue display from his courtroom.

Americans United, joined by The Interfaith Alliance, the Anti-Defamation League, the Hindu American Foundation and the Union for Reform Judaism, filed the brief in the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

The case against the judge’s religious display was brought by the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio on behalf of its member, Bernard Davis. Judge DeWeese is being represented by TV preacher Pat Robertson’s American Center for Law and Justice.

The AU brief asserts that DeWeese’s “attempt to characterize his religious display as legal or philosophical ‘theory’ is one in a long line of efforts to dress religious doctrine in secular clothing.”

AU reminds the court that this argument has failed in a similar case before the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. In 2003, the court demanded that Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore remove a Ten Commandments monument outside the Alabama State Judicial Building. Moore, who refused to take down the 2.5-ton monument, was soon removed from the state supreme court.

The brief in ACLU of Ohio v. DeWeese, was drafted by AU Legal Director Ayesha N. Khan and AU Madison Fellow Taryn Wilgus Null with assistance from AU Senior Litigation Counsel Alex J. Luchenitser.

Americans United is a religious liberty watchdog group based in Washington, D.C. Founded in 1947, the organization educates Americans about the importance of church-state separation in safeguarding religious freedom.

Cecil Bothwell was elected to the Ashville, North Carolina, city council. But some Christians believe he is unfit for office because he is an atheist. These wing nuts have the N.C. state constitution on their side since it says belief in a supernatural power is required to hold office in that state. Of course they conveniently neglect the fact that the U.S. Constitution prevents ever requiring a religious test. So these wing nuts are wasting tax payer money to bring their lawsuit.
Here’s Rachel Maddow on the issue:

From Sky News:

The Police and Catholic Church in Dublin have come under fire today as a report reveals that child abuse within the church was known about but they ‘turned a blind eye’ to it.

The Catholic Church named three rapist priests, however, two are dead and one is retired.