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Archive for the ‘Organized Religion’ Category

Iran is Pissed Off, Supreme Leader to Speak

TEHRAN — As another day of defiance and uncertainty loomed in Iran’s capital on Friday, it was increasingly apparent that there was no clear path out of a deepening confrontation that has posed the most serious challenge to the Islamic republic in its 30-year history.

After another day of mass protests Thursday, apparent concessions by the authorities and ominous threats, many Iranians looked to a scheduled appearance by the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who is to lead the national prayer service from Tehran University on Friday.

Political analysts said they hoped that the leader will reveal his ultimate intent, indicating a willingness to either appease the opposition or demand an end to protests.

Hundreds of thousands of silent protesters flooded into the streets Thursday. They roared a welcome to their champion, Mir Hussein Moussavi, the opposition candidate for president whose reported defeat by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in elections a week ago touched off the crisis.

Impeach the Pope

By Robert S. McElvaine
Professor of Arts & Letters, Millsaps College

Enough! No–Too much!

Amid all the justified outrage we all feel at Bernie Madoff and the AIG bandits, let us save some intense outrage for Pope Benedict XVI.

After insulting Muslims by declaring in 2006 that Muhammad had brought “things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached,” after reiterating  in 2008 that the subject of the ordination of women is not even open for discussion and declaring that anyone involved with the ordination of women will be automatically excommunicated.

After lifting in January of this year the excommunication of Holocaust-denier Richard Williamson, now Benedict XVI opens a visit to Africa by telling the people of a continent decimated by AIDS that the distribution of condoms “increases the problem” of the spread of AIDS.

I am a Catholic and the idea that such a man is God’s spokesperson on earth is absurd to me.

There are, of course, no provisions in the hierarchical institution set up, not by Jesus but by men who hijacked his name and in many cases perverted his teachings, for impeaching a pope and removing him from office. But there ought to be.