Thursday, September 19, 2024
The Catholic Church's stance on IVF procedures
Monday, February 1, 2021
The Catholic church and Trump
I correspond at Christmastime with a friend from my college years who just happens to be a Catholic priest. This year we’ve gone back and forth since Christmas due to his support of, and my lack of support of, Trump for president. It surprised me that he was a Trump supporter, but I’m finding out that a good number of Catholic priests supported Trump for president, and rallied for him from their pulpits. I’m also finding out that this did not sit so well with many of their parishioners who could taste and smell the hypocrisy of this blatant support of a man who basically has little to no understanding of Christian principles and behavior. I am not trying to change my friend’s mind, but I want to present the other side, as it were, because it strikes me that the Catholic Church doesn’t really pay much attention to or listen to its followers. Perhaps it doesn’t need to do so, but I think it would behove them to do so.
The American Catholic church’s blatant support of Trump has upset many
parishioners who react to the hypocrisy--how we as normal Catholics have been
told for years to ‘abide by the laws of the church, to avoid adultery, to not
steal, to not worship idols, to follow the commandments’. Sex outside of and
before marriage are mortal sins according to my priest friend, therefore
adultery must also be. Yet Trump was held up as a savior of the USA in many
Catholic churches, because he is (presumably) anti-abortion. He is also a liar,
a cheater, an adulterer, but those sins were not discussed from the pulpit. Yet
priests have been lecturing about the evils of sexual immorality for years when
it pertains to normal married couples and young people. Yet during the
entire pedophile scandal, there was not one peep from the pulpit about the
crimes of pedophile priests, how they belonged in jail, how they had betrayed
the loyalty and confidence that parishioners had in them. Likewise with
Trump--no criticism of him, only held up as savior. Cardinal Dolan in NYC
was/is also a Trump supporter, and he has been criticized roundly for failing
to acknowledge how parishioners felt about this: (https://www.americamagazine.org/politics-society/2020/05/04/cardinal-dolans-praise-president-trump-was-pastoral-failure).
People who are staunch Catholics, who go to mass every Sunday, who pray and read
Catholic literature--are quite upset about the utter hypocrisy they are witness
to, as I am. The Church will surely endure, but it lost many followers due
to the pedophile scandal, and perhaps its support of Trump will result in the
same. The Church can say that it is no problem to lose followers, but perhaps
it should still take a look at why they leave. The reasons are not always
frivolous, as is often stated by well-meaning priests who have their heads in the sand.
And just as a reminder to those who thought otherwise, the
Church was forced to deal with the pedophile scandal by external organs
and institutions. It did not seem as though they took it seriously enough, at
least in the beginning. They reassigned pedophile priests to other parishes. They
wished to deal with it as an internal matter, and it is not. Pedophilia is a
crime. The children who were victimized were hushed up, pushed aside, and held
down by church leaders who knew what would happen if the truth came out. These
children did not choose to be ‘victims’ of evil behavior. Neither did their
parents.
I have never particularly identified with any societal group. I don’t trust group mentalities, and that includes blind loyalty to any religion. I am not blindly loyal to science either. My loyalty is to God and Jesus Christ. I will speak up when I see wrongdoing, as do many Catholics. We don’t interpret Christ’s words ourselves; we read the Bible and know what we have been taught through the years. After many years of Catholic education and churchgoing, we can at least do that. Apart from the pope when he speaks “ex Cathedra” about matters of faith and morals, the clergy are human and fallible. My father always made the point that the church was a human institution, founded by Christ, yes, but run by men; I believe that GK Chesterton made the same point. Priests are human beings first, and fallible like the rest of us.
Trump is not a good example for children, nor for marital
partners be they male or female. I know both married male and female Trump supporters. There is nothing Christian
about one partner in any marriage spewing out his or her belligerence and
aggression toward their families who don’t share their blind worship of
Trump, who don’t want to listen to their constant daily screaming about
socialism and the end of America. Trump is not holding a gun to these people’s
heads and telling them to behave this way. But they bought into his hype.
Misery loves company. Trump’s anger and frustration with his own life have
seeped into the minds of these people in an insidious way. They are not poor,
downtrodden or victims. Trump is no longer president, and they are still spewing
their rage and frustration. They are acting as though they have been victimized
and that the country will go down the drain with Biden--illegal immigrants
flooding into the country, taking jobs away from Americans, etc. etc. Who has
‘victimized’ these people, I ask? They are privileged beyond their wildest
dreams--they own their own homes, several cars, they have hobbies and they
travel, they eat out, they have good jobs and good incomes. What the heck is
wrong with them? They should know better.
If there is a role for the Catholic Church in all this, it
is to support a ‘live and let live’ philosophy. Or a ‘love your neighbor as
yourself’ philosophy. Isn’t that what we are called to do as Christians? It
doesn’t mean that we have to necessarily like everything about our neighbors or
other cultures, but ‘do no harm’ is a good mantra. My view of Christian behavior
is for the most part shaped by my parents, who tried to live a Christian life
as best they could. If they had their prejudices, they kept the basest of them
to themselves, as I wish most people would do. I don’t want to listen to you spew your bile and your hatred. That’s MY prerogative. My soul will be forever glad for my
parents’ good example. My mother always said ‘if you can’t say something nice,
don’t say anything at all’. She also said ‘you can catch more flies with honey
than with vinegar’. I do believe that Trump could have learned something from
my mother and my father about how to behave.
Saturday, January 9, 2021
The Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten's coverage of the US Capitol invasion by Trump's thugs
Anyone who thinks that the USA lives in a vacuum or can live in a vacuum, isolated from the rest of the world, is deluded. Like it or not, what happens in the USA affects the rest of the world, which by the way was horrified at the events that unfolded in Washington DC on Wednesday January 6th. This is not supposed to happen in the USA.
To all those who participated in the invasion, remember--the deaths of five people are on your consciences. You are pathetic individuals just like your leader. You have dragged the good name of the USA through the mud. You showed the world just how deluded and evil you are. You embarrassed the country and committed major crimes, and my hope is that you all rot in prison for years to come, together with the man who incited you to action--a pathetic piece of shit and an evil man. I feel sure that there is a special place in hell for men like him. My hope is that his future suffering befits his crimes.
Thursday, June 14, 2018
Trolling as practiced by our president--who knew?
Wednesday, February 7, 2018
More Lincolns and less Trumps
The media cover every little thing that is said and done by politicians (among others), ad nauseum. I believe in the necessity of a free press. But I also believe in a citizen's right to privacy. It's not necessary to dissect every little thing about an individual. To dissect means to 'cut to pieces' and is usually done to a dead animal for scientific/medical purposes. Dissections of political figures are not necessary, at least not on a daily basis. The media dissect politicians and politics to a point where we cannot escape, no matter how hard we try. The constant unrelenting coverage is like a hungry animal that consumes us; the problem is is that it's never satisfied. Sometimes my reaction is to take a break from all the coverage, to seek silence and peace. Because silence and peace are what are needed to allow for reflection on the events of the world and how one might want to tackle them. It is ok to say that 'yes, I've had enough of the world's problems for one day', and to go for a long walk in nature. It's ok to want to start the day by feeding the birds, watching how they start their day. It's ok to start the day with a prayer of thanks for another day of life. It's ok to want to start the day with a peaceful soul. Because God knows that your half hour of reprieve won't last long. You will face spouses, friends, and colleagues who want nothing more than to discuss with you the latest political or world news: Trump, all the atrocities committed in the name of patriotism, why this, why that, the world is coming to an end, civilized society is coming to an end. My retort is that we need to seek refuge from the coming zombie apocalypse. That usually silences the fatalists. But who knows, that could be a relevant scenario in a few years--a genetically-engineered virus that spreads rapidly, infecting its victims and causing them to become 'anger zombies', similar to the zombies in the horror film '28 Days Later'.
This is what I don't want each day, at least when I first wake up. I don't want to start my day being bombarded with all of the bad news in the world. I want to say hello to the birds outside my kitchen window, to give them some food to start their day, to watch them for a few minutes. I want to make some coffee, putter around my kitchen in complete peace and quiet, ignoring the presence of the newspaper that will invade my day. I do read it, but I start with the comics, as they give me some fortitude to face the coming day. I need fortitude because our days are nothing short of frustrating and complicated. Bureaucracy, rules and regulations are the order of business. Our bosses and co-workers require our attention or interrupt us during the day with their concerns. Plans that have been discussed and agreed upon at multiple meetings are tossed aside in order to remake them in a new image. Our society is in constant upheaval, everywhere you turn. The seasons in nature do not change like this; the change is more orderly. Spring leads to summer leads to autumn. Autumn doesn't arrive and then suddenly decide that nature must return to July again. It would be a bizarre chain of events if such things happened in nature. But such bizarreness is almost the order of business now in the workplace and in politics.
I am looking for consistency and will never find it. I have accepted that now. I am looking for peace and quiet in a global society that has forgotten what peace and quiet are and why they are valuable for society. I am looking for manners, less aggression, more real feelings, more caring, more respect. I am looking for less egoism and more interest in the welfare of others. I wonder if we could all take a collective step backward and collectively breathe. Count to ten. Dig into our souls to find some patience, with ourselves and others. Be quiet. Be grateful. Stop forcing our ways of thinking down others' throats. Stop being aggressive. Stop being crude. Stop being Trump. For God's sake, start there.
Thursday, January 4, 2018
Is this any way to run a country?
Saturday, November 19, 2016
When was America great? A short history of America during the past century
So bringing us to modern times, to what period in time do Trump and his supporters want to return America? There is not one decade in the past century of American history that has been without strife, unrest, war, terrorism, unemployment, or social problems. Following the devastating Great Depression (1929-39), the country needed to rebuild its infrastructure and to get people working again. FDR’s programs helped to do that. But I found out this past summer that FDR had his opponents, and that one of them tried to assassinate him in 1933. His name was Giuseppe Zangara and he was executed in 1933 for that crime. America became involved in WWII following the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941, and that war did not end until 1945. The country had to deal with returning veterans and how to reintegrate them into American society; women’s roles also changed, as they were now encouraged to re-embrace home and family after having staffed the munitions factories while the men were at war. The 1950s saw the Korean War (1950-1953); the US involvement in that war was wonderfully depicted in the 1970 film M*A*S*H and the TV series M*A*S*H that ran from 1972-1983. The 1950s will be remembered for the intensification of the Cold War (1945–1991) between the USA and the Soviet Union and the rise of McCarthyism and blacklisting of people deemed to be Communists. Civil rights for African-Americans was also a dominant and polarizing topic in the period from 1954–1968, with the attendant protests led by Martin Luther King Jr. and others. The fight for equal rights for all Americans, regardless of color and ethnicity, was not a pleasant one in our history, and has never been, stretching all the way back to the protests about slavery in the years leading up to, during, and after the Civil War.
1963 saw the assassination of President John F. Kennedy; it remains unclear why Lee Harvey Oswald shot Kennedy or whether he acted alone or was part of a wider conspiracy. His assassination and the reasons for it have been the subject of official inquiries and innumerable books and articles for the past half century. In 1964 America became involved in the Vietnam War. That war began in 1954 and ended in 1975, but its escalation and American involvement was what dominated the 1960s and early 1970s. I remember being in grammar school and discussing America’s role in this war; our teachers made us read the newspaper articles about the war and discuss them in class. It was an extremely controversial war that led to protests and societal division; many young people protested this war, not surprisingly because it was the young men of this generation that were being sent to fight in this war that many Americans meant we had no business fighting. TV news coverage showed the casualties of war and reported the body count in a way that most Americans had never seen or heard before. The anti-war outrage on college campuses also led to violent outcomes; one need only remember Kent State University in Ohio and the 1970 shooting of four unarmed college students by the Ohio National Guard during campus protests. The music (think the Woodstock music festival of 1969), writing and art of that era, as well as the hippie subculture (often connected with the anti-war movement), documented the outrage and unrest. It was not unusual growing up to see the peace-and-love hippie icons juxtaposed with the ‘Archie Bunker’ types (think about the TV show ‘All in the Family’ that ran from 1971 to 1979). This is the era when we were teenagers, and it was impossible not to be affected by what we saw and heard. The Watergate break-in/cover-up was also the political scandal of the 1970s; the Watergate investigation and hearings led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon and to forty-eight government officials being found guilty of burglary, obstruction of justice, conspiracy, and perjury, among other crimes.
By the time the 1980s arrived, the USA was involved in the Iran hostage crisis (1979-1981), which led to the loss of the presidential election by Jimmy Carter to Ronald Reagan. Reagan survived an assassination attempt in 1981 by John Hinckley Jr. During the Reagan years, inflation levels increased, in part due to his expansionary fiscal policies aimed at stimulating the American economy, including oil deregulation policies. In October 1987, Black Monday occurred. It was the largest one-day market crash in history. The repercussions were felt well into the 1990s as it ushered in a new era of stock-market volatility. The Reagan years were not without their own political scandals--namely the Iran-Contra affair. The Reagan administration sold weapons to Iran; the money from these sales was used to provide CIA aid to pro-American guerrilla Contras in Nicaragua (see Wikipedia for more information). The end of the Cold War occurred during 1989-1991; Reagan was praised for calling on Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall, which did occur in 1989 and for working together with Gorbachev to end the Cold War.
The 1990s was a decade of prosperity for America. Kurt Andersen of The New York Times described it best in an excellent article from 2015: (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/08/opinion/sunday/the-best-decade-ever-the-1990s-obviously.html?_r=0):
America at large was prospering in the ’90s. The United States economy grew by an average of 4 percent per year between 1992 and 1999. (Since 2001, it’s never grown by as much as 4 percent, and since 2005 not even by 3 percent for a whole year.) An average of 1.7 million jobs a year were added to the American work force, versus around 850,000 a year during this century so far. The unemployment rate dropped from nearly 8 percent in 1992 to 4 percent — that is, effectively zero — at the end of the decade……..
From 1990 to 1999, the median American household income grew by 10 percent; since 2000 it’s shrunk by nearly 9 percent. The poverty rate peaked at over 15 percent in 1993, then fell to nearly 11 percent in 2000, more or less its postwar low. During the ’90s, stocks quadrupled in value — the Dow Jones industrial average increased by 309 percent. You could still buy a beautiful Brooklyn townhouse for $500,000 or less. And so on.
By the end of the decade, in fact, there was so much good news — a federal budget surplus, dramatic reductions in violent crime (the murder rate in the United States declined by 41 percent) and in deaths from H.I.V./AIDS — that each astounding new achievement didn’t quite register as miraculous. After all, the decade had begun with a fantastically joyful and previously unimaginable development: The Soviet Empire collapsed, global nuclear Armageddon ceased to be a thing that worried anyone very much, and the nations of Eastern Europe were mostly unchained.
The 1990s also saw the terrorist bombing of the World Trade Center by Al-Qaeda in 1993, so that decade wasn’t all rosy and joyful. I remember that day very well, because my brother worked at the World Trade Center. I was working in San Francisco at the time, and spent the day trying frantically to reach him, without success. It wasn’t until late in the evening that he called me to tell me that he had taken the day off and had not been at work. He hadn’t become aware of what had happened until the afternoon because he had not heard the news. So that first terrorist attack on the Towers affected me and my sister too; you would not want to experience the feelings I had when I thought my brother and others might have been killed in the bombing. During the 1990s Bill Clinton enjoyed a successful first presidential period, but the second period was marred by the Lewinsky scandal. The OJ Simpson trial of 1995 and the 1998 grand jury investigation of Bill Clinton’s affair with Lewinsky did not do much for elevating respect for the USA globally—they were media circuses that should never have happened. In many ways they helped to tarnish the good name of our country, at least for a while.
In 2001 George W. Bush succeeded Bill Clinton as president; his presidential era (until 2009) will be remembered for the Al-Qaeda terrorist attack on the World Trade Center Towers on September 11th 2001. Before that attack, no one had heard of Osama bin Laden, but after the attacks, the hunt for him began in earnest. Again, I was frantic that day as well, because my brother was still working in that area, having left his job at one of the Towers for a job nearby. But again, as fate would have it, he had taken the day off. Bush’s tenure was marred by the Iraqi WMD controversy, the Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse scandal, and the Guantanamo Bay detention camp controversy. He did not succeed in hunting down Osama bin Laden; that was accomplished by the Obama administration. The 2000s were characterized by recessions and global financial scandals, as well as huge changes for the IT industry. The latter changes have impacted on the way we live now; nearly everyone is connected to the internet and now owns a cell phone, usually a smart phone. Cell phones have become an appendage, a part of us. We ‘don’t leave home without them’. The way we use cell phones and the internet has in turn impacted on how the media presents the news to us. Social media has overtaken the traditional news media as a news source, for better or for worse. The traditional news media are scrambling to keep up. The 2016 election will go down in history as one that was dogged by false internet news sites that are thought to have negatively influenced the election results. Most of them were rabidly pro-Trump and by extension rabidly anti-Clinton.
Trump supporters would have you believe that Obama has ruined America. I don’t see that or even understand what they’re talking about, but it’s clear that they’re not referring to Obama’s America when they talk about returning to a time when America was great. Are they talking about the 1990s? That was the Democratic Clinton era in the White House, Americans enjoyed prosperity, women were making good strides in the workplace, and gender equality and equal pay for women were accepted as the norm, among other things. Women had the freedom to choose between family and career, or to choose both. They could marry later and have their children later. The Trump folk would have to admit that a Democrat did something right, and it's doubtful that they would do so. The 1990s also saw great advances in science, with the advent of the genomics era and the impact of that on personalized medicine.
Given that Trump and his coming administration have a predilection for sexism, misogyny and white supremacy, I cannot see how the 1990s would appeal to them at all. So we go back further to the 1980s and the Reagan era. Women at that time had the freedom to choose between family and career, or to choose both, and many struggled with their decisions. But it was an exciting time for women in the workplace, and feminism had firmly taken hold. So the Trump folk cannot hold this decade up as a model era for American greatness either, because it simply doesn’t fit with the American values they hold dear. Let’s examine the 1970s. I cannot for the life of me envision that this decade, or the 1960s for that matter, could be of any interest to the Trump folk. These decades were peopled by hippies, counterculture people, rock artists, beat poets, anti-Vietnam war protesters, and civil rights activists, among others. Far too liberal and left-wing for the Trump folk.
Back even further to the 1950s. This is possibly the only decade that I can envision the Trump folk possibly liking. Minorities knew their place, women knew their place, white men had the power in society and in the workplace, and a lot of wonderful platitudes about God and country were uttered. Communism was anathema and Communists in all walks of life had to be rooted out. The Soviet Union was the enemy (and now Trump is courting Putin's friendship in an odd twist of events--you would have thought he and his administration would be anti-Putin). If you were a Communist, you hated God and Christians. Americans tend to forget that they don’t own God. There is no place in the bible where it says that the USA is God’s favorite country. It didn’t exist when Christ lived. So we should be careful about claiming God for ourselves when we talk about our Christian values and wanting to return to a time when America was great, especially if that time does not support true Christian values. The 1950s were hardly the greatest time in America, as I’ve described above.
I grew up in the 1960s and 70s. We enjoyed summer picnics with family, ice cream sundaes with family and friends to celebrate a successful school year, sitting on front stoops on summer evenings talking to the neighbors, playing with our friends, and taking vacations to the New England states and trips to amusement parks. Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter holidays were spent with family after we had been to mass in the morning. We went to Catholic grammar school, were taught by the nuns, and then some of us went our separate ways once it was time to go to high school. Life was fairly idyllic, as it probably is for most children who grow up safe and sound in good families with good parents. Once we got to college, our lives changed irrevocably, became uncertain, risky, and a bit scary. What would become of us, would we make it in society, would we get a job, would we succeed? Would we marry and have a family? Would we maintain our friendships? If I am nostalgic at times, it is for the times before everyone separated and went their own ways. When you could spend hours together with good friends and/or siblings and not think about time passing, when parents were still alive and in good health--all those things. Time doesn't stand still, and nostalgia is just that, a poignant and bittersweet reminder of happy past times. We cannot go back, no matter how much we might miss those times. Because each person has a period in his or her life that he or she might want to return to at times. But the point is that those times are as individual as the person who remembers them. They are not the same for all.
And that brings me back to returning to a time when America was great. We can't, because what truly makes America great is that has experienced, dealt with, and survived the problems that have been thrown at it during each decade since the early part of the 20th century. There isn't one best decade. America has been mired in controversy, wars and protests from the day it was born, and it has evolved, survived and flourished. It has kept its doors open to diversity and heterogeneity. It airs its dirty laundry to the world in a way that no European country ever has or will do. But despite Trump's win, I believe that the majority of America's inhabitants still believe in the real values on which it was founded—liberty and justice for all. That is what America stands for, and what I hope it always stands for.
Wednesday, October 26, 2016
Sexism and misogyny are alive and well
You might also think that dinosaurs like these are only an American problem. WRONG again. Norwegian academia has and has had its share of these dinosaurs throughout the past twenty years. Men who comment inappropriately on your looks, men who step over the line physically and verbally at Christmas parties when they’ve had too much to drink, an institute leader (deceased) who saw nothing wrong with patting the rear end of a visiting woman scientist from Brazil. The same institute leader who used to like to corner non-Norwegian women in the elevator to ask them if they knew the difference between ‘fytte’ (used in connection with curse words) and ‘fitte’ (pussy) because if you are not Norwegian, those words often sound alike and you can make a fool of yourself if you pronounce them the wrong way. Another male scientist who regaled his female colleagues with jokes about ‘bushes’, again in the elevator where you couldn’t just escape immediately. The list of sexist, odd and questionable behavior is endless. These are men who enjoyed making women feel uncomfortable so that they could joke about it afterward. These are men like Trump, with a lot of power and no respect for women. Because it's really simple in my book--if you respect women, you don't behave this way. These are men who consistently ignore women in favor of men when it comes time for choosing new leaders or promoting from within, even when those men are clearly less qualified compared to the available women. Men who tell women who get angry about the unfairness and injustice of these types of behaviors that they are ‘unbalanced or psychologically unstable’, or that ‘perhaps they should get some professional help’. Men who joke that these women who get angry just need to get laid. And the women who joke like this about other women are just plain traitors to their own gender. Men have had the power now for eons and eons, and it’s time women took the reins. I don’t know how long that’s going to take, but we’re not going to get there if feminism is defined solely by women who take off their clothes in the name of emancipation (from what or who?), so that they can appear in porno rags and online videos and define these actions as feminist. It might be one definition of modern feminism, but it’s not the major one. They get paid a lot of money for it, however. Perhaps that’s how they think they will gain respect. They will gain money and power, yes, but not necessarily respect. That’s not a given. But perhaps for them, it's enough. I don't know and frankly, I don't care. It's not my definition of feminism and it does not help most average working women to fight the daily battles that they fight in their workplaces.
Oddly enough, if you look at many of the classic films from the 1940s and 1950s, there are roles written for women that are worthy of respect. The female characters are strong, opinionated (think Katharine Hepburn's character in the comedy Adam’s Rib), and they sometimes suffer for their independent ways and strong wills. But they are women to look up to. Many of them work, they are professional, they speak and dress well, and they stand up to and stand their ground with the men in their lives. I can relate to the women's roles in these films, in a way that I cannot relate to many of the modern roles written for women now. How can that be? I am not sure what happened, but respect for women has taken a real nose-dive recently. We need to figure out why and how to fix that. And I think we should start by emphasizing that both men and women have a lot to gain by treating each other with respect, in the workplace and outside of it.
The Spinners--It's a Shame
I saw the movie The Holiday again recently, and one of the main characters had this song as his cell phone ringtone. I grew up with this mu...