Opinion: Finding Against The Gospel of NOT - That EHRC Judgement

The rise of religious politics

Each time I think about the ministry of Jesus Christ when he trod the lands of Judea and Samaria as depicted in the gospels I am at times wont to channel Mahatma Gandhi when he was purported to say, “I like your Christ but dislike your Christians.”

Over the last few decades or so, a brand of this religion has emerged which looks very much like modern-day expressions of other Abrahamic faiths, political Judaism with its cauldron in Israel has held the world to ransom with Gentile guilt for the Holocaust and other pogroms that go back centuries, political Islam first expressed in Saudi Arabia, then radicalised in Iran before it was hijacked to be become a potent terrorist movement once spearheaded that the Al Qaeda crusade and political Christianity.

This, I dare say is more widespread and finds expression in social issues that polarise, attempt to ostracise and in terms can be quite discriminatory in a world that is tending more towards secularity than the Dark Ages of moralising sententiousness.

The Christian right and wrongs

In America, it started with the abortion wars, then the issue of homosexuality, gay marriage and stem cell research. God or at least the Christian God is inserted into every debate of the right to have slaves then to prayer, to bear arms, to limit opportunity where a majority of Americans are not by any stretch of the imagination native to the land they have colonised corralling the Native Americans into reservations with money-making casinos and attendant mental issues.

In Africa, they have not rallied round the cross Jesus so succinctly said they should bear and follow him but around an obsession with homosexuality as observed by Archbishop Desmond Tutu and a gullible flock of bees feasting on the narcotic pollen of the prosperity gospel.

The activist Christian

In Europe, homosexuality and gay marriage and aggression secularism taking hold in our societies have become the gospel of Not as preached by the Holy Padre in the Vatican, who without much distraction cannot have been oblivious of the clergy who have said mass in the name of the Catholic Church whilst satisfying their lascivious tendencies with the innocence of the small – much prosecuted for redress and justice in North America and Europe but no one has lifted the lid on possible heinous deeds in Africa, Latin America or Asia.

The issue of women having titular roles in the Anglican Church is as engaging as it is disheartening much as gay marriage, abortion issues, reverse missionary journeys – where Africans are coming to Europe to open churches along with pervasive issues of financial impropriety or excess – our televisions have become the means of intruding on our lives without necessarily affecting our lives.

It isn’t Christians in the love for humanity

The most compassionate of our humanity campaigning against grinding poverty, debilitating disease, bad governance or war are hardly religious, they are pop stars and billionaires who openly shame the many followers who have long departed from the ideals of the founders of their systems of faith and have become activists portraying a sense of being under siege from the world around them and being discriminated against.

That many have conflated persecution which comes from adherence to faith with discrimination which is borne of taking social positions against secular norms that allows for diverse strands of humanity to live in some semblance of communal bliss is most interesting and it is exemplified in symbols and beliefs that seek to discriminate and differentiate, ostracising those who in a secular setting have a right to service denied them by those paid in public service to be professional about their vocations.

The cross and the belief

Four Christians having exhausted all legal process in the UK when to Europe to seek redress and a judgement on the matter was pronounced on Tuesday.

Two of them were challenging the decision of their employers to exclude and sanction them for wearing crosses and the other two working for social service organisations put their beliefs before the interests of people who presumably have lifestyles they disagree with.

I am glad that the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) proffered arguments that came out in support of one and against the other three.

Christian identity most morose

On the matter of wearing a cross, whilst it might well be symbolic of Christian faith, it is not mandated as an expression by law or doctrine that practitioners of the faith should wear a cross to portray what some have called a Christian identity.

Christian identity in my view is political-speak and if what that means is wearing jewellery moulded as a cross and a representation of the amazing gospel of the man that walked the roads of Judea and Galilee two millennia ago, then we are much poorer for what it really represents apart from the fact that it has patently lost its power to affect people’s lives.

Christianity is supposed to be a light and lamp, a light to gain perspective of beauty and a lamp to show the path when one walks in the dark. That same light when shone brightly into the eye for all the goodness and pleasure it bring to sight and vision, risks blinding the person – In other words, it should never be in-your-face whilst at the same time efficacious.

Reasonableness always wins

I can very when agree that it is reasonable to wear a cross in the workplace as long as there are no requirements for sterility in a controlled environment like a hospital. It would be trite to bring up the matter of whether cross wearers do sterilise their crosses and that is beside the point that there are many who wear crosses that are hardly Christian in belief or in practice.

In the case of the other two, one with professional duties of conducting marriages on behalf of the state and the other trained to provide relationship counselling, in a society comprised of diverse belief systems and governed by a compromise of secularity that seeks to get everyone to co-exist, it is antithetical to professional conduct to refuse to despatch services you paid to provide because of a sentiment.

Our secularity is paramount

The need to separate church and state cannot be more pertinent than to have individuals arrogate to themselves rights that conflict with community in order to prove a religious point – we do not live a theocracy and we do not believe the same.

It goes without saying that I am of the opinion that if such people intend to place their beliefs above secular co-existence, they should seek employment where only their beliefs are paramount.

The moment we engage with the public we become subject to the norms that promote societal cohesion as is necessary for the compromise of secularity we have adopted in our somewhat mature civilisations that confers the freedom to religion but not that right to use it to discriminate and contemn the lives of other members of our diverse humanity.

Where I stand

I take no positions on any of the matters I have raised apart from these reasonable views, we should protect our children from sexual exploitation and pursue to the ends of the earth anyone who have abused and violated children for any ends.

The matter of abortion should be between the woman, her doctor and her conscience, if health issues are of significance, then the law should support the safety of the female over the consequences for the unborn.

That the Israeli-Palestinian issue should be brought to a resolution that allows Israel to exist safely whilst restoring a greater sense of dignity to the Palestinians in their land with all that rightfully belongs to them.

To reason to all

That the separation of religion and state must be inviolable, Christians do not own the institution of marriage and whilst their beliefs are widespread their views cannot be allowed to denigrate the beliefs and lives of others – we need to reach an accommodation and that is mostly on the side of religionists than on the side of secularists.

I applaud the judgement of the ECHR, there was no discrimination in the case of the three that lost; they tried to assume victim status to excuse their unprofessional obstinacy that many including the judges saw through.

The Gospel of Not has lost against the fight to live and let live – long may it be so.

Catholic Church sacrifices girl's welfare on the altar of Canon Law

Considering welfare for abortion

This is one case where my chain does get yanked and a clear situation of where religion has gone off on a tangent from the sombre circle of and sense of Christianity.

A girl of 9 was sexually abused [1] to the extent that it was discovered after she complained of stomach pains that she was carrying twins.

Doctors, note plural, there was more than one were concerned about the welfare of the girl and were of the professional opinion that the child was so small that her uterus cannot sustain one foetus let alone two.

In other words, this is a life threatening situation of a child who had been sexually abused by her step-father, a supposed person of trust in her family since she was six and it transpired that he had also been taking sexual favours off the girl’s handicapped older sister of 14.

A reason to act for life

Abortions in Brazil, a very Roman Catholic [2] country where the clergy hold sway in matter of social opinion has on its statute books the legality of abortion for cases of rape or where the life of the mother is at risk.

The girl’s condition ticked both boxes, so an abortion was procured to save the girl’s which no doubt is already traumatised but sexual abuse and unusual changes to her body along with the attention all that would have garnered.

It was the responsibility of well-meaning adults and professionals in society to consider and protect the welfare of the child with the hope that all would gather round her to ensure are welfare can find solace, succour and compassion in their religious communities.

Between the born and unborn

This was not to be the case, rather than finding a situation where religion deferred in service of humanity the Catholic Church in Brazil stuck to its “Absolutely No Abortion” stance.

The story reads that the Catholic Church tried to intervene to prevent the abortion, the corollary meaning they were happy to bury a child of 9 who had been sexually abused than preserve her life and counsel her to some sort of healing.

When the abortion was procured, the Catholic Church driven by religious dogma masquerading as God’s law excommunicated [3] the mother, the doctors and others that might have been involved.

On the altar of bad dogma

The Archbishop of Olinda and Recife [4], Jose Cardoso Sobrinho [5] seriously believes he is doing God’s bidding by saying the law of God was above any human law, which I would agree with but what law prefers risking the life of a child for the survival of an unborn child that cannot medically be carried to term?

I beg to differ, the Catholic Canon Law [6] that drives this decision is part of a legal system that is crudely church government; Canon Law [7] is NOT chapter and verse the Bible, it is NOT God’s law, it is human law promulgated for their purposes of association and adherence.

This is where the Catholic Church or its fundamentalist clergy have failed in their service to humanity because even if the girl has not been excommunicated she might well be driven in to the more compassionate arms of other church denomination when she fully learns that the Catholic Church did not care one iota about her life and welfare.

God does not live in the Catholic Church

Most importantly, what we should know is that the Church as a political and religious entity is simply a community gathering of people who adhere to a particular creed; it is not the conduit to God and not the exclusive arbiter in things concerning life.

God does not live in the Catholic Church and just being kicked out of the church does not mean the heavens have been brazen and impervious to prayer, supplication and thanksgiving.

These people should not be ostracised even though the Catholic hegemony lords it over 94.4% of a community of 3.5 million people, suggesting about 200,000 do not think the Catholic Church fulfils their religious requirements.

Do not hold back in condemnation

The mother has at least 2 daughters to rear and the doctors in their humanity were just doing their jobs – this kind of intemperate and atrocious action by the Catholic Church must be excoriated with the harshest words and condemned in its totality.

The causative actions that lead to this sorry episode were wrong, the Catholic Church have passed up on the opportunity for healing and ameliorative actions which is also wrong.

I am no advocate of abortion on demand, but the particular case of this girl is littered with unchristianly conduct, abominable indifference and unconscionable fundamentalism, coming so soon after one other holocaust denier’s excommunication was rescinded [8], the Catholic Church might be true to its soul but it is out of touch with its nominal societal goal.

It begs the question when the church would take the cases of child sexual abuse in their communities seriously rather than sacrifice the children on the altar of bad religion.

Source

[1] BBC NEWS | Americas | Rape row sparks excommunications

[2] Roman Catholic Church - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[3] CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Excommunication

[4] Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Olinda e Recife - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[5] Archbishop José Cardoso Sobrinho [Catholic-Hierarchy]

[6] Abortion and Excommunication - Catholic Christian Article

[7] Canon law - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[8] BBC NEWS | Europe | Profile: Bishop Richard Williamson

The dishonest rights of the unborn child

Conceiving the time of conception

I had to ask the question from a more practical perspective because I do believe we are being dogmatically conned with information that bares not basis in fact and reality.

I am sorry, that we hear something that strikes an emotive cord with conservative and religious connotations and fail to research the facts of those assertions and prove beyond debate if those views are true or just utter bunkum.

At the Saddleback Presidential Civil Forum, Pastor Rick Warren asked [1] John McCain, What point is a baby entitled to human rights? And he answered, "At the moment of conception," everyone applauded and I was quite befuddled by it all.

Do you know when?

So, I asked the lady who runs the African store above the Amsterdam Metro Station, if a woman knows that she is pregnant at 2 months gestation, to which she answered, the woman might be suspicious but cannot be definite [2] that she is pregnant as it is unlikely that she would have a bump as evidence of pregnancy

You mean, you cannot say that you have conceived [3] on the day that you had intercourse until such a time that it is obvious by missing periods first and then some sort of pregnancy test – that was in the affirmative.

So for 2 months, it is possible that we would have conferred on an embryo, foetus, baby or some non-descript feeling of unease and anatomical change human right whilst not being really sure it is there or not. Very interesting.

She even offered that when she was having her first child, at 6 months pregnancy the doctor said to her she had another unexplained ailment rather than the impending arrival of a child.

Naming the foetus

I felt, I could carry on this journey of the absurd, so when the bump is really so obvious you think at any moment you would be sequestered into midwifery have you ever asked the woman whilst the baby is still in the womb what the name of the baby is? She looked at me with incredulity.

Well, I was just trying to be logical here, there is probability that the unborn child might have rights it wants to exact from the womb just in case it needs to be identified in court.

It would appear that a child is not named until when it is out of the womb and that might depend on when during the gestation period it was born.

The rights as birth

For instance, I was born at 26 and half weeks, over 40 years ago, there was the possibility I would not thrive, in fact, doctors do not try to exercise the supposed right to live on a baby born at less than 21 weeks except in the most exceptional cases where faith, persistence and the sheer will to live of the child defies all medical science.

The issue of abortion allows for this absurd notion of unborn child rights to take prominence where reason should inform us of better arguments for sustaining the life of an unborn child.

I am of the opinion that a women should be able to decide within the first trimester of a pregnancy that she might only have confirmed from about the sixth week if she wants to keep the changes that are occurring in her or not.

Between rights and moral duty of humanity

There are all sorts of reasons why a woman with or without the consent of a partner, with the advice of her doctor and possibly matters of conscience why a woman would decide to terminate a pregnancy. I do not believe they take those issues lightly at all because there can be serious consequences as physical leading to barrenness or emotional scars that could be impossible manage despite the passage of time.

There might be some women, who have turned terminations into a routine, but they can hardly be in any majority and they probably have their reasons.

However, I do not think that the issue at stake for an unborn child is that of rights because it would portend to separate the entity of the conception, embryo and foetus from the person of the body that provides it nourishment.

It would be interesting if medical science offered the means to prevent the nourishment of a child through the umbilical cord by the accident of medical contra-indications whether there can be a legal premise for the unborn child to seek compulsory nourishment because of where it resides before birth.

The matter really is one of our humanity rather than one of legality; we have reached a point in our civilization where we believe we owe that developing child a burden of care or careful nourishment and an adjusted lifestyle.

Conducive conditions for birth

Where we believe that bearing the child would be a source of joy and there is love around to cater for the upbringing of that child.

Where the act of conception whenever it might have happened is through the consent of the parties involved such that neither sees the product from a perspective of revulsion created by the violation of the body.

Where all things are equal, laws protecting the rights of the unborn child are redundant because it would be brought into a loving, caring and welcoming situation.

Unfortunately, things are not as perfect as one would expect for everyone and those situations do need to be dealt with on their merits through famous trilogy of stakeholders as enumerated by Senator John Kerry years ago – it should be between the woman, her doctor and her God.

Thriving on the compassion of society

After the first trimester, the unborn child is probably going to thrive and be born, whilst medical science can allow for abortions up to term, society frowns on issues where after the well into the second trimester the pregnancy is terminated.

At the point, one can see the possibility of acts criminal, not so much for sake of the unborn child but the reasons that society and medical science have tacitly agreed that after a particular period, the pregnancy should be brought to term.

In many cases, these are moral and medical dilemmas, it would be perilous for us to legislate on moral dilemmas where clear codes of conduct based on the expectation of a civilized society should suffice.

What we owe the unborn child

I think it is utter dishonest to suggest that an unborn child has rights at conception when the exact time of conception cannot be determined until well after other events have passed, which could be well into gestation.

In all, we owe the unborn child the duty of care and for those who are expecting the best wishes for a safe delivery, beyond that, those who do not want or need a baby should either abstain or use contraception.

I cannot begin to imagine the legal minefield that can be opened into the legality and legal status of the unborn child to sue for its rights to be established from the question of paternity, a conducive environment for birth, the right of the pregnant woman to refuse to continue to carry the child as opposed to the supposed undeniable right of the child to nourished whilst still in the womb.

I would contend reason and counsel should prevail in these matters rather than try to legalise moral issues that would convert our courts into grotesque theatres of the most absurd activities of humankind.

For all intents and purposes, an unborn child cannot have rights at conception, the person carrying that developing miracle simply owes themselves that that bundle of joy the greatest duty of care, if that is what they wished for and have settled on the idea of parenthood.

Sources

[1] CNN LIVE EVENT/SPECIAL - Saddleback Presidential Candidates Forum – Transcript

[2] From Conception to Birth - A Foetal Growth Timeline – Expectant Mothers Guide

[3] Baby planning time - Understanding conception

The hard facts about preventing teenage pregnancies

They do get pregnant

It is now a news story that you have a probably read about and I would not dwell too much on the exact event itself but the context in relation to society as a whole.

A young beautiful woman with a fascinating life in the executive leadership of her home state gets plucked from obscurity to join in a national ticket for a job that leaves her a heartbeat away from world leadership.

She has five children, one would be loved dearly through the personal situation of having Down’s Syndrome, one would tug at the heart strings as he get sent to a war zone to fight for his country and one is a parental dilemma, she is 5-months pregnant out of wedlock at 17.

Conservative or liberal, in America or anywhere else, I am sure we all have a story to tell about daughter, sister or niece who happens to have fallen pregnant by circumstance.

Did it jump on you?

I have been witness to at least one interrogation of a housemaid in our home where my mother had having noticed the spitting, the whites of the eyes and early morning discomforts asked questions that included if I was responsible for the housemaid's anatomical changes.

Oh! Mother! You surprise me, whilst, I might have been interfered with, I have never interfered with our staff, she should have known that even if opportunity and privilege presented itself, the maid would never be laid; I would hope I was brought up both well and discerning enough to behave appropriately.

The funniest question if it was not that serious came when the girl could not account for how she fell pregnant, so she sneered in Yoruba (O fo mo e ni), which translates to in context, if you do not know how you got pregnant, did the baby just jump on you and result in an unexplained conception?

Dealing with a rampaging dilemma

In one instance, I could well tell when it happened, my mother had gone to have her hair done on a day we were to travel to our home town, as the driver arrived to take us away, my cousin and I had gone to get mother, leaving the driver and the maid at home – when we returned, the maid’s hair was all messed up she looked dishevelled, I just suspected something had happened.

Two months after, I found out exactly what had happened, the driver had taken advantage of her, most definitely raped her and the result was this rampaging dilemma that resulted in the sacking of the driver, a termination and the return of the maid to her people.

The truth from the delusions

But this does not half represent the fact that no matter how devout, strict and disciplined our families are, there is little we can do to prevent or arrest teenage pregnancies if we are not open about the possibilities – boys and girls are experimenting with sex and suddenly finding out the potency of their sexual organs after the fact – the sperm of the boys can fertilise the eggs of the girls and result in a PREGNANCY! Shock Horror!!!

I have never in my early life been warned of the possibility that this could happen, rather I have heard threats of foreboding, the girls terrified into nothingness with the father bellowing from afar – If a girl brings a pregnancy to my house, I will ... unprintable and unspeakable.

Insurance brings some assurance

Now, having no kids puts me at a disadvantage, but I have seen other parents do the very pragmatic, they have put condoms in the bags of their kids realising that adolescents would be adolescents with the probability that what they have been warned against might well be what they would indulge in.

So, as an insurance despite their stern entreaties, the condom is not so much a license to be promiscuous but a warning that if the child does find themselves in a tight situation of frenzied excitement, there would be the possible or slight presence of mind to wrap it up before dipping it in.

Unfortunately, there are many parents who cannot countenance the reasonableness of this approach and have lived to rue the day they have not been more forth-coming about the realities of life that good sex education prevents in the long term.

The more religious have joined in cults of the ring [Source: Silver Ring Thing - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia] saving themselves until marriage in sexual abstinence vows; a movement and discipline in numbers that I commend, but what if the ring is not a good enough contraceptive at a moment of unanticipated weakness?

The facts of life are

As the child falls pregnant, many parents despair at the longer term and wonder if the life of their child is about to be truncated with a responsibility the child is hardly ready for or complicated by a decision the child had no power to make – there have been extremes from having the baby to term, telling the child that it was a still-birth whilst put the baby up for adoption to the trauma of an abortion.

Can we not agree that kids do experiment and the best thing to do is provide material and knowledge to prevent unwanted pregnancies and through that we most definitely would not have to deal with the matter of abortion or other complicated life decisions?

It is time to throw away those pseudo-religious goggles and the hubris of supposed insulation of our children from societal ills because we have been such good parents, guardians or mentors and face the possibilities that could hit us in the face so hard we cannot fathom when and where it all went wrong.

Very few of those out-of-wedlock pregnancies results in the seeming fairy tale ending of the event I alluded to at the beginning of this blog – young secret lovers having stolen a moment of sexual excitement now planning on becoming man and wife; in all, I wish that couple the very best of good fortune.