At the heart of every great religion is compassion.

Catholic bishops have threatened to excommunicate President Benigno Aquino over a reproductive health bill introduced into the Congress yesterday…The aim of the bill is to control population growth, reduce HIV infection rates and eradicate the need for women to seek backstreet abortions.

Well the Catholic church isn’t having that. Hell no. More population growth despite grinding poverty; higher HIV infection rates; more backstreet abortions. The compassionate approach.

…the church, which has enormous clout in the Philippines, is not about to give way. Since 1998, it has quashed several previous versions of the bill. “Sex is not a game that should be taught to children, along with the use of condoms,

James Hannam reiterates that religion and science have always been quite matey despite what Some People say to the contrary.

…today, science and religion are the two most powerful intellectual forces on the planet. Both are capable of doing enormous good, but their chances of doing so are much greater if they can work together. The award of the Templeton Prize to Lord Rees is a small step in the right direction.

Well religion is one of the most powerful intellectual forces on the planet if by “intellectual force” you mean “force that interferes with humans’ best intellectual skills,” but I suspect that’s not what Hannam wants us to take away from his happy thought.

He has some critics on … Read the rest

Be.neath. con.tempt.

Cowardice. Buck-passing. Blame-shifting. Hiding. Bullshitting.

Refusing to take responsibility.

A report on the child abuse scandal in the US Catholic Church has provoked condemnation for concluding that the permissive society of the 1960s was to blame for the rise in sexual offences by priests.

The investigation commissioned by Catholic bishops said that the peak incidence of sexual abuse by priests in the 1960s and 70s reflected the increased level of other deviant behaviours in American society in the period, including “drug use and crime, as well as social changes, such as an increase in premarital sex and divorce.”

Right, because raping children is exactly the same kind of thing as sex without marriage. That’s high-class episcopal-level moral thinking, … Read the rest

What unites dashing open-shirted Bernard-Henri Levy and dreary “Expelled” “comedian” Ben Stein? Jason Linkins knows.

Levy and Stein find themselves offering up the same response — two of the World’s Most Interesting Men, defending another Interesting Man, on the grounds that the privilege all enjoy makes the crime inconceivable on its face.

Beautifully put, I think. They matter, so they think their friend, who also matters, must be officially Not Guilty, regardless of what he may actually have done. If he did anything, it was Her fault.

And so while it can be acknowledged that the possibility exists that DSK is the perpetrator of a crime (Levy: “I do not know what actually happened.” Stein: “…it’s possible indeed, maybe even