Ivana Bacik thinks that bishops shouldn’t be telling legislators what to do.

A call by Labour Senator Ivana Bacik for a Seanad debate on the separation of church and State led to sharp exchanges.

Ms Bacik said she looked forward to the debate on the Protection of Life During Pregnancy Bill, adding that she welcomed the fact that after 21 years legislators were facing up to their responsibilities.

“I call on the leader, in the aftermath of the Bill, perhaps in the autumn, to arrange a debate on the separation of church and State, given the rather robust interventions by the bishops, essentially seeking to tell legislators what to do, which, I believe, is not appropriate in a republic.’’

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Here’s a new one, via a comment by Marie-Thérèse. From the Irish Independent in August 2010:

A CLERICAL child abuse victim revealed the full horror yesterday of the ‘human guinea pig’ drug trials carried out in church-run children’s homes.

Hundreds of children are feared to have been subjected to the experimental trials while in the care of the Catholic Church.

Now the victims’ cases could be reopened, as calls for the Government to deal with the scandal intensifies.

Legal action is being planned against  GlaxoSmithKline and the Sacred Heart Order, which allowed the tests at the Bessborough Mother and Baby Home in Cork.

Campaigner and abuse survivor John Barrett, who was born at the home outside Cork city,

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Oh now that’s satisfying to read…

A United Nations panel is demanding that the Vatican hand over detailed information on child sex abuse cases involving Catholic clergy.

In a document published online, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child has asked the Vatican to come clean with how it addresses children’s rights around the world, including what measures it takes when dealing with sexual violence.

See what I mean? No bowing, no scraping, no apologies, no deference, no reverence, no extra “respect”; instead, demanding that the secretive lawbreaking self-serving bastards hand over the information. It is about.fucking.time.

The panel, which polices the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child, wants the Catholic Church to reveal

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

For the first time in Bangladesh someone has been prosecuted and convicted for the murder of a journalist.

Shortly before his murder in November 2005, Das published a series of reports for the Dhaka-based daily Samakal, detailing corruption by BNP officials, according to news reports. His body was found strangled in his bureau in the town of Faridpur, 40 miles outside the capital. The following day, Das’ colleague filed a complaint with local police, accusing 10 individuals in connection with the murder, many of whom were members of the then-ruling BNP, according to reports.  

But the long road to justice was pitted with potholes. One of the accused died during the course of the trial. Others were released on

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Via Fidalgo, First Things spots some scary atheist existentialism in the new Smurfs movie.

[pause to laugh very much for a long time]

It’s someone called Collin Garbarino who spotted this smurf atheist existentialism.

This weekend I saw the new trailer for Smurfs 2. It looks to be a fun romp. Gargamel is back, and he’s got a new plan for catching those little blue people who are two apples high. If the trailer accurately represents the film, we’ll be entertained by nonstop shenanigans and high jinks. We’ll also get a healthy dose of atheistic existentialism.

Watch the trailer below. At the 1:45 mark Papa Smurf says, “It doesn’t matter where you came from; what matters is who

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

The cult of Sylvia Plath has always been creepy, you have to admit. Now this year is the [sharp intake of breath] 50th anniversary of that time she stuck her head in the oven, so the cult has to get even creepier. (Why? I mean, why? Fifty years; so what? Why is that more significant than 49 or 51? Humans are so stupid sometimes. Honestly.)

Terry Castle thinks it’s stupid too. Terry Castle is right.

A clutch of new biographies (including the two reviewed here) are likewise among the morbid tie-ins. “Sylvia Plath may be the most fascinating literary figure of the twentieth century”—so the publisher’s copy for one of them gushes. “Even now, fifty years after her death,

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Garry Wills takes a jaundiced look at the current pope’s fastracking of “sainthood” for a recent one.

He starts with John Paul’s beatification of the horrible Piux IX.

Pius IX was a polarizing figure. He wrested from the Vatican Council a declaration of his own infallibility; he condemned such modern heresies as democratic government; he took a Jewish child, Edgardo Mortara, from his family—on the grounds that Edgardo’s Christian nurse had baptized him as an infant, making him belong to the church, not to his infidel parents.

So he beatified someone a little bit nicer at the same time. Clever wheeze.

Now Pope Francis has come up with another ablutionary pairing. He is canonizing John Paul II in record

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Jen Keane (@zenbuffy) tweeted a freezepage of the hacked Youth Defence site. Youth Defence is the horrible far-right US-funded ”pro-life” group making so much trouble in Ireland. The hacked page makes interesting reading.

This is not the hate-filled truth-distorting website you’re looking for.

Note: We the Irish do not appreciate US organisations pouring money into shady groups here to try change our rules and society for their own gains. Youth Defence has been the seed of more hatred here that any group in a long time. It has to stop.

Youth Defence is not what you think it is. Youth Defence is an extremist group who actively hide their links to shady right-wing connections and where their funding comes

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Maryam is annoyed by channel 4′s “provocative” call to prayer during Ramadan.

What about all the Muslims (and ex-Muslims) who can’t stand to hear the call to prayers? or who don’t fast during Ramadan? There is a movement of eating during Ramadan as a way of challenging laws that make it an offence to eat in public. Here’s one example of people being arrested for “inciting public eating during Ramadan” but of course none of these will be shown on Channel 4.

Rather than being provocative, Channel 4 is feeding into the narrative that all Muslims are religious and conservative and fast during Ramadan. Something Islamists insist upon thereby justifying their attacks on those who refuse to fast

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

The guy who made death threats on Facebook has been jailed.

A British man who threatened to kill 200 people in the US, in posts he made under a false name on Facebook, has been jailed for more than two years.

Reece Elliott, 24, of Foss Way, South Shields, made the threat in February on online memorial pages for two Tennessee girls killed in car accidents.

About 3,000 pupils in Warren County missed school the next day as a result.

Elliott, who pleaded guilty at Newcastle Crown Court in April, was jailed for two years and four months.

Huh. Isn’t he just a troll? Aren’t we supposed to ignore trolls? Isn’t that the rule?

Sentencing Elliott to 28 months

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Religion News Service reports that African religious leaders are very annoyed at Obama for telling them not to shit on gay people. Well yes that makes sense – how dare Obama tell good god-fearing clerics not to shit on people? Shitting on people is a god-given right of clerics.

In a news conference in Senegal during his three-nation tour, just as the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a federal ban on same-sex marriage, Obama said African nations must grant equal protection to all people regardless of their sexual orientation.

“My basic view is that regardless of race, regardless of religion, regardless of gender, regardless of sexual orientation, when it comes to how the law treats you, how the state treats

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

The new pope is helping some previous ones get to be saints.

Showing more of his sprightly personality and his priorities, Pope Francis sped two of his predecessors toward sainthood on Friday: John Paul II, who guided the Roman Catholic Church during the end of the cold war, and John XXIII, who assembled the liberalizing Second Vatican Council in the 1960s.

In approving the sainthood of John XXIII even without a second miracle attributable to the pontiff, Francis took the rare step of bypassing the Vatican bureaucracy.

Ok but so how does all this work? Are there rules, or is it just whatever the pope feels like? And if popes can speed other popes, why mess around, … Read the rest

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

A pregnant child in Santiago Puerto Montt, Chile.

A young girl in Puerto Montt is 14-weeks-pregnant after being raped by her mother’s boyfriend. She is not able to have an abortion as the procedure is illegal in Chile in all cases. The man has confessed to sexually abusing the child.

She’s 11.

The mother spoke in defense of her boyfriend, who was arraigned in court in the southern city of Osorno.

“She wasn’t violated and he would not have used force,” she said, adding that the relationship between them was consensual.

Ah, that’s nice. The child is 11 years old – and her mother says she had “consensual” sex with her mother’s boyfriend? That is some loving mother.

This

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

A nasty fella.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRF_vanRUZU

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Last week American Atheists unveiled an atheist monument in Starke, Florida.

Kent Eric Hovind jumped up onto the monument to nag everyone about god.

I think that’s rude and belligerent.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkxatQ3q9i4

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

There’s this website called The Irish Catholic, where you can read a guy called John Waters explaining how horrible women are. He starts with a little thought experiment by someone else.

‘What is the difference, in human rights terms, between a situation in which a distraught male goes in to his doctor and says that his partner is making him suicidal and that he fears that unless he/she (the doctor) arranges to have the partner killed he will kill himself, and a situation in which a distraught female goes to her doctor and says that her unborn child is making her suicidal and that she fears that unless he/she (the doctor) arranges to have the child killed she will

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

It turns out there’s this movie star who is a feminist. Uh oh! Right? Men are people too you know. Human rights. Don’t talk to me about women’s rights; human rights.

Who is this twisted radical person who is a feminist? Ellen Page, of the irritating Juno in which our quirky brave intelligent heroine age 16 decides to have the baby and give it to some nice people instead of having a nasty filthy ol’ abortion, because girls of 16 have nothing better to do than bear children.

Apparently she didn’t realize it was an anti-abortion movie until this reporter pointed it out to her, which seems odd for a feminist.

There is, though, an unfortunate irony that one

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Greetings to the new Council of Ex-Muslims in France.

On Saturday, members of the Council of Ex-Muslims in France met to launch their group publicly and discuss their mission: to promote liberty and equality for all people, regardless of their faith. Their Facebook page explains:

“We are a group of atheists and non-believers who have, because of this fact, been threatened or faced restrictions in our personal life. Many of us have been arrested for blasphemy.”

Maryam was there today for the launch, with Waleed Al-Husseini and Caroline Fourest among others.

Palestinian blogger Waleed Al-Husseini first organised the council, after being accused of making blasphemous comments towards the Prophet Mohammed, and seeking refuge in France.

The Council is composed

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Via Maryam – an Egyptian boy age 12 talks more political sense in two minutes than most people manage in a lifetime.

How come there are only seven women in the constituent assembly, and six of them are Islamists?

…

For example, they say that women are equal to men in all matters, except in matters that contradict sharia. But then, sharia allows men to “discipline” their wives. This can’t work in society.

[Reporter] Why not, what’s the problem?

The problem is it’s outrageous.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QeDm2PrNV1I

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Horrifying news from Nigeria – Mamudo, in Yobe state, in the north. At least 29 students and a teacher killed in an attack on a school; some of the victims were burned alive.

A reporter from the Associated Press found chaotic scenes at the hospital in nearby Potiskum, where traumatised parents struggled to identify their children among the charred bodies and gunshot victims.

Survivors said suspected militants arrived with containers full of fuel and set fire to the school.

Some pupils were burned alive, others were shot as they tried to flee.

Another message from a god of hatred, no doubt.… Read the rest

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)