Peterr

In watching and listening to the unfolding stories over the last week of sexual assault in the military, I could not help but notice how similar the military’s mess is to the situation in the Roman Catholic church over child abuse carried out by priests. Trusted leaders misused their positions of power to gratify their own sexual desires, and even worse, the hierarchy all too often protected the abusers and failed the victims.

Here’s hoping that the brass at the Pentagon have learned a few things from the bishops about how NOT to deal with the perpetrators of sexual assault by those in authority.

Paul Ryan is the commencement speaker today at Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas. Given Ryan’s approach to budgeting, it’s hard to come up with a more un-Benedictine choice for speaker.

Maybe the college president is trying to show how radical the Benedictine approach to hospitality is.

A suspicious building is being constructed in downtown Kansas City, Missouri, along the southern bank of the Missouri River in Berkley Riverfront Park, near the Kansas City River Market. The purpose of the building, a massive hydroponic greenhouse, is ostensibly legitimate: “The 100,000-square-foot greenhouse would grow mostly lettuce, tomatoes and herbs with local consumers in mind.”

Hydroponic, you say? Herbs, you say?

Cue the Missouri Highway Patrol, because to them, those two words can mean only one thing: marijuana. And no, I’m not kidding . . .

A dozen Republican members of the Washington state legislature are so outraged that a florist would be forced to sell flowers to gays or lesbians that they have put forward a bill to protect homophobic business owners from anti-discrimination lawsuits. Actually, that’s not quite right — the homophobic beliefs have to be “sincerely held” in order to protect the owner from a lawsuit.

Let’s take a moment and imagine just how a lawyer would probe those allegedly sincerely held beliefs . . .

And we note for the record that the mere fact that someone is sincere in their hatred of someone else doesn’t make it right, and certainly doesn’t make it worth protecting.

The Boy Scouts of America are proposing to straddle a barbed wire fence. At the same time they propose lifting the ban on gay scouts, they repeat their opposition to LGBT adult scouting leaders. Thus, the gay youngster who works hard to become an Eagle Scout is shown the door by the Scouts on the day he turns 21.

If there was a merit badge for FAIL, the drafters of this proposal have certainly earned it.

Just two days after the opening of the South Wind Women’s Center, a medical clinic in George Tiller’s former office space that was set up to handle the full range of women’s reproductive health needs (including abortion), the state legislature of Brownbackistan approved a sweeping anti-abortion, anti-women, anti-science bill. Once Brownback signs the bill — and he WILL sign it — doctors will be forced to present women with medically inaccurate information. Tax laws were changed to make abortions more financially onerous, and the rightwing Theocons of the legislature have enshrined fetal personhood into state law with a “life begins at conception” provision.

And before you folks outside of Brownbackistan simply laugh at the goings-on in Topeka, ponder this: Sam Brownback IS going to run for president in 2016, and he’ll have both fiscal and social conservatives solidly behind him for what he’s been able to push through the state legislature. Today he’s in Topeka, but make no mistake: he wants to live in that nice little white house in DC.

This has been a big week in both religious and legal circles. As the US Supreme Court took up Hollingsworth v Perry (the Prop 8 case) and US v Windsor (the DOMA case), the Jewish community began their celebration of Passover and Christians were in the midst of Holy Week preparations for Easter. But outside of the hallowed halls of the Supreme Court, the push for marriage equality continues to move forward. Deep in that liberal hotbed of South Carolina, a famous cupcake bakery is making more news with their icing-covered statements in favor of marriage equality, and the campaign twitter feed of SC-01 Democratic candidate Elizabeth Colbert Busch agrees that “It’s not holy to hate.”

Now *that’s* a sermon.

Another week, another court-ordered document dump of records that detail the abuses covered up by bishops of the Roman Catholic Church. This time, it’s Joliet, Illinois.

While the bishop that comes off worst in these files is retired, another former bishop of Joliet is not only still active, but has been promoted and currently serves in several powerful roles with the USCCB: J. Peter Sartain of Portland.

For victims, this isn’t about simply getting their own abuse to stop anymore. It’s not about money for counseling, treatment, and other things. It’s about making visible the behavior of not only the priests but the bishops who protected them.

The justices of the Supreme Court are famous for saying that they do not decide cases based on polling or popular opinion. That may be. But these same justices are passionate about history — especially the history of the Supreme Court of the United States. Come June, when they pass judgment on DOMA and Prop 8, they will be making history. But it’s up to them as to how history remembers them.

Will it be like Dred Scott, or Loving v Virginia?

In all the writing and (for lack of a better word) pontificating about the new pope, one area of discussion that has some of the most misinformation and misunderstanding has to do liberation theology and the new pope’s relation to it in the 1970s as the supervisor of Jesuit priests at the time. Sifting through some of the profiles of Bergoglio, done by people who understand both the church and Argentina, paints a portrait of the new pope that shows a deep compassion for the poor, disdain for those who seek to puff up their own importance (both outside and inside the church), and also a leader who requires obedience from those he leads.

At this point, everyone is reading tea leaves, including me. With that said, and given the possible other candidates who were mentioned as Benedict’s successor, I’m mildly optimistic about Francis. A pope who isn’t automatically bound by how things were done before, and who sticks up for the poor, single mothers, and those on the margins, has a lot to teach some of the rest of the hierarchy of the Catholic church.