The Pope; worried about 'superstitious' religion

The Pope, apparently, is worried about the growing influence of superstitious forms of religion, what other forms of religions are there? (BBC News)

The very bedrock of Catholicism is based on superstition – demons, devils, miracle performing angels, the magical power of relics, praying to a supernatural entity to win the lotto etc, etc.

He’s also worried about the ‘opposition’, probably Pentecostalism; which is making huge headway all over the world, particularly in Africa.

Perhaps he should consider a crusade.

Time to act against the Catholic Church

Once again the superstitious, medieval mindset of the Catholic Church is endangering the lives of countless people in Africa (BBC News).

The solution to the problem of HIV/Aids lies in a “spiritual and human awakening” and “friendship for those who suffer” according to the Pope.

EU leaders do not agree. Dutch Development Minister Bert Koenders said it was

“extremely harmful and very serious” that the Pope was “forbidding people from protecting themselves”.

French foreign ministry spokesman Eric Chevallier said:

“While it is not up to us to pass judgment on Church doctrine, we consider that such comments are a threat to public health policies and the duty to protect human life.”

Personally, I think it’s time that world leaders acted instead of talking. The Pope and the Catholic Church should be hauled before the International Criminal Court and charged with crimes against humanity.

Fr. Good and the “Anti-Catholic Bigotry League”

From time to time I receive responses to letters published in various newspapers. Religious matters, in particular, seem to trigger strong responses.

I received the following letter from a Fr. James Good in response to my letter regarding a law that makes it a criminal offence to sell a Mass card without first getting the permission of a Catholic bishop.

I’ve reproduced my letter first and then an unedited copy of Fr. Good’s letter to me.

ARTICLE 48 of the EU’s Charter of Fundamental Rights says: “Everyone who has been charged shall be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law.”

Part 7, Section 99 (2) of the Charities Bill 2009, recently signed into law here, makes it a criminal offence to sell a mass card without the permission of a Catholic bishop. The act states:

“In proceedings for an offence under this section it shall be presumed, until the contrary is proved on the balance of probabilities, that the sale of the Mass card to which the alleged offence relates was not done pursuant to an arrangement with a recognised person.

The clear contradiction begs the question: are we living in a liberal democratic republic or a theocracy?

Dear Mr. Sheridan,

I was delighted to see your letter in the Irish Examiner (14.03.09). Since I had not seen a contribution from you for quite some time, I was beginning to fear that you might have departed to meet your Maker. An interesting meeting, indeed.

On the minus side, of course, one could say many things: your little letter, filling a bit of empty space at the foot of a page (as usual), was as bitter and irrelevant as always.

What saddened me, however, was the sight of a supposedly “good” atheist writing to support a MEAN FRAUD. Recent investigations show that the vast majority of Mass Cards sold in shops are legally fraudulent. Could you not perhaps use your God-given gifts to stop THEFT and FRAUD rather than sneering at our government in its effort to eliminate them?

Re-reading my letter of 2nd February suggests that in the intervening three years you have learned nothing about either Mass stipends or a ban on discussion of clerical celibacy. The latter controversy is still ongoing, despite your belief that it is banned.

I notice that your address in the Cork Examiner has dropped the Rock of Eoin. Protection for the writer – from the editor or from the writer?

Yours sincerely
Fr. James Good

Just a few things:

Fr. Good didn’t address the central point of my letter which is that the widely accepted principle of innocent until proven guilty has been reversed by this religious law.

His comment on celibacy concerns a previous letter of mine regarding the ban on theologians from discussing the matter by Pope John Paul II

His comment about my address displays an ignorance of the editorial practice of editing for space.

Fr. Good is also convinced that The Irish Examiner and The Irish Times are supporters of what he calls the “Anti-Catholic Bigotry League” only printing letters from ‘anti-Catholic bigots’ and refusing to print replies. In previous correspondence to me he says:

“The Irish Examiner prints only the letters of anti-Catholic bigots, and refuses to print any reply to these bigots. And of course the newspaper which replaced the Irish Times at the top of the Anti-Catholic Bigotry League is delighted to get nasty little pieces from the Rock of Eoin to fill up small empty spaces in its hate-sheet: that’s why they frequently end up a the end of a page.”

I wonder why editors don’t publish letters from this priest?

Political leadership: low quality, high cost

“Hans Joachim Fuchtel was amazed to find out that while he gets paid €92,000 to represent 280,000 people in Germany, our TDs get more than €100,000 each to represent 25,000 people, plus far more generous expenses.”

(Irish Independent).

Fuchtel would also be amazed at the low quality political leadership that we suffer at such high cost.

The inequality and high cost of a failed state

Letter in today’s Irish Independent.

Ordinary taxpayers pay price of failure

AT least 12 middle-income earners have to work for one full year to provide sufficient income tax just to pay for the pension of failed Financial Regulator Patrick Neary.Similarly, another 12 middle-income earners have to work one full year just to pay for the pension of Rody Molloy, former chief executive of FAS.

Approximately 44 middle-income workers had to toil for one full year to pay for Mr Neary’s golden handshake. Similarly, another 44 middle-income earners had to slave hard to provide for Molloy’s golden handshake.

Therefore, in their first year of “retirement”, it will require the total income tax of over 112 middle-income earners to provide for their golden handshakes and pensions. Assuming that both gentlemen survive for another 20 years (God willing), some 570 middle-income earners will have beavered away to keep them in the lap of luxury.

This simple calculation can be used to put other Government wastage into perspective.

For instance; more than 5,000 middle-income earners had to work one full year to cover the outrageous wastage of Martin Cullen’s infamous e-voting machines, not including on-going storage.

Ordinary working people see these — and the many other unjust and unsustainable payments/wastage — as the real barriers to achieving any consensus in the concept of “shared pain”.

Unless Cowen and co grasp the nettle, through emergency legislation if necessary — and address these issues immediately in a fair, sustainable and transparent way — we will certainly face social unrest and turmoil.

John Leahy
Wilton Road, Cork

Another hidden perk exposed

Letter in today’s Irish Independent.

Reading a recent taxation publication I came across the following regarding PRSI:

“The following are excluded for PRSI purposes: Payments received by a person in respect of the following offices: income related to a member of the Dail, An Seanad, or the European Parliament, the judiciary, public offices under the state such as Labour Court members, the Comptroller and Auditor General, Harbour Commissioners etc.”

Surely this is a scandal at any time, but particularly in the present climate. How do they justify this?

Joe Kennedy
DUBLIN 13

Very strange goings on at Irish Nationwide Building Society

Very strange goings on at Irish Nationwide Building Society (Irish Independent).

Apparently, Noel Harrington a branch manager in Limerick, was asked to step aside while an independent inquiry was conducted into the way he handled his own loans and those of a property developer with borrowings of €36 million.

Yet, Mr. Harrington faces no allegations, is on full pay and is not regarded by his employer as being under suspicion.

The independent inquiry into non allegations that Mr. Harrington’s employers have no suspicions about apparently concerns a substantial €1.2 million difference in a redemption fee, in other words, €1.2 million has gone astray somewhere.

And who is conducting this ‘independent’ inquiry, is it someone inside the Society? Is this not a matter for the Financial Regulator or the Garda Fraud Squad or did the Financial Regulator tell the Society – go away and hire a private investigator, we have enough on our plate already.

The real cause of the global financial crisis

Most people agree that there are two principal reasons for our ongoing financial crisis; the global crisis that originated in the sup prime market in America and the bursting of our own property bubble.

Sunday Independent columnist Gavin Duffy, however, thinks differently. According to Mr. Duffy we Irish are suffering from a persecution complex, we’ve convinced ourselves that the situation in Ireland is worse than any other country (Questions & Answers, 1st question).

In fact, says Duffy, every country in the world is suffering from a property bubble on the same scale as we are because of “an unholy trinity of three seismic events that happened in the last twenty years.”

1. The fall of Communism resulted in a sudden flow of huge amounts of money into the West.

2. Technology that moved this money around the world faster than anyone could count it or any regulator could police it.

3. After a millennium of serfdom the Chinese decided to open up their country and provide the global economy with low cost manufacturing.

That money flowed into the West and it had to find a home and it found it in property and that’s what caused the global financial crisis.

So, does everybody understand? The fall of the Soviet empire, fierce fast money and an evil Chinese plot to swamp the world with low cost goods.

Now Duffy, pass me that joint, you’ve been sucking on it for far too long.

Hurley: Stating the obvious

“The State was facing a difficult year in 2009.”

This was one of the gems of wisdom from John Hurley, governor of the Central Bank, a man who receives but doesn’t earn; an outrageous salary of €368,000 per annum (Irish Times).

Every child in the land knew years ago that the situation was serious when the likes of Hurley was saying there was no problem.

Hurley: A government lapdog

I’m delighted to see that the cowardly and dishonest ramblings of John Hurley, governor of the Central Bank, to the Joint Committee on Economic Regulatory Affairs last week have been exposed.

John McManus, writing in the Irish Times, effectively concluded that Hurley was/is nothing more than a lapdog for a government that didn’t want to know about the very dangerous bubble that was building, a bubble that was bound to burst with dire consequences.