With the recent change in Pope and the long-running child abuse scandal the new Pope must now handle, Roman Catholicism is clearly in the spotlight. The recent news that Pope Francis has a history of close cooperation with the military Junta in Argentina is clearly not a good sign.

As head of the Jesuit order from 1973 to 1979, Jorge Bergoglio – as the new pope was known until yesterday – was a member of the hierarachy during the period when the wider Catholic church backed the military government and called for their followers to be patriotic.

Bergoglio twice refused to testify in court about his role as head of the Jesuit order. When he eventually appeared in front of a judge in 2010, he was accused by lawyers of being evasive.

The main charge against Bergoglio involves the kidnapping of two Jesuit priests, Orland Yorio and Francisco Jalics, who were taken by Navy officers in May 1976 and held under inhumane conditions for the missionary work they conducted in the country's slums, a politically risky activity at the time.

His chief accuser is journalist Horacio Verbitsky, the author of a book on the church called "El Silencio" ("The Silence"), which claims that Bergoglio withdrew his order's protection from the two priests, effectively giving the military a green light for their abduction.

(Via The Guardian)

There's also a comment from an Argentinian on Pharyngula's blog summing up the situation as follows:

As an Argentinian I can confirm your “rumours” and add that this guy was a collaborator with the military during the last coup d’etat during the 70′s : Among many things, he informed to the military that two monks that were working in a low income neighbourhood were no longer protected by the catholic church, facilitating their detention and posterior disappearance.

Mind you, to “disappear” at that time meant to be detained by the military, held without rights or trial, possibly (and often) tortured under suspicions of being a Marxist/ “terrorist”, being completely incomunicated [sic] with your family and finally be killed and buried on an unmarked grave, or thrown from a plane into the river.

Thrown.

From a fucking plane.

Into the river. (Known as “deathflights”: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_flights )

(via Butterflies and Wheels)


Jorge Mario Bergoglio (now Pope Francis) with General Jorge Rafael Videla leader of the oppressive Argentinian military junta, who seized power in a military coup d'etat in the late seventies and early eighties.

However, while the religion I wish to talk about today certainly committed recent atrocities in full knowledge of the central authority, I do not mean to discuss Roman Catholicism below. Sure, I'm going to talk about forced child labour and there IS at least one Roman Catholic example of this. The film "Oranges and Sunshine" dramatises the real life event where children where taken from their parents without permission and sent to Australia for 'a better life' which, for those sent into the care of the "Christian Brothers" meant forced labour and abuse.

However, while there are plenty of cases of religions where individual groups have been involved in horrific practices, some of which they are unwilling to apologise for and which may continue to this day, there's one religion for which is seems to comprise a central raison d'etre. I am of course talking about the religion of Scientology and their organisation known as the Sea Organisation.



It's recently been revealed that the Sea Organisation deliberately denies children a proper education, forces them to engage in hours and hours of forced labour, and keeps the children separate from their parents for much of their lives. When followers of Scientology sign up for the SeaOrg they sign a billion year contract. That's possibly one of the most creepy things I have ever heard.

This isn't a matter of a religious organisation being stuck in old fashioned thinking or taking advantage of the current political situation or even a horrible act from centuries past for which they still hold the guilt. This is an organisation set-up within a particular religious body by its central authority figures and run centrally with the sole purpose of exploiting, abusing and neglecting its followers, including many young children.

Now I'm not about to give other religions a free pass here. I've already stated that Roman Catholicism, amongst others, has a lot to answer for. But I really do wonder whether this new revelation about Scientology doesn't make "The Church of Scientology" the most abhorrent religious organisation of its size functioning today. And I seriously thought the bar was already pretty high....



For the whole transcript for Jenna Miscavige Hill's interview with the BBC plus a video of another interview look under the cut below...

( Read more... )

Also, check out the recent podcasts from "The Good Atheist" about the Church of Scientology:
(Part one)
(Part two)

Okay, there's a new story about a member of a religion complaining about intolerance based on their choice of clothing. A Jedi has been ejected from Tesco for wearing a hood. Daniel Jones, who prefers to be known as "Jedi Master Morda Hehol" is a leading Holyhead Jedi in the Anglesey Jedi Church. They have a website and have made (preliminary) plans to establish a base on the moon.

Just when you thought Jedi Knights were the keepers of peace and order in the galaxy, Tesco has all but branded them nothing more than common hoodies.

Morda Hehol, 23 – known in his spare time as Daniel Jones – accused the supermarket of religious discrimination after he was banned for refusing to remove his hood.

Members of the Star Wars faith, a global religion, choose to wear their hoods in public.

But Master Morda, leader of the UK’s first Jedi Church, was branded a security risk by supermarket staff and ejected from the premises in Bangor, North Wales.

He said he would advise other Jedis to boycott Tesco if this happened again, adding that “they will feel the force.”

“I walked past a Muslim lady in a veil. Surely the same rules should apply to everyone,” said Morda.

The handbook of the UK Jedi Church states: “Jedis must wear a hood up in any public place of a large audience.”

But a spokesman for Tesco said: “We would ask Jedis to remove hoods.  “Obi-Wan Kenobi, Yoda and Luke Skywalker all went hoodless without going to the Dark Side.”

Clearly, when Yoda said, “Luke, when gone am I, the last of the Jedi will you be,” he was not banking on the religion flourishing a long time ahead in a galaxy far far away.   (Daily Dust)

( Five other examples of religious clothing disputes in the UK... )


So anyway, Topless Robot first alerted me to the Jedi Knight story and he begins his article as follows:
Okay. You know how a bunch of people went and made "Jedi" an official religion in England?

*BEEP!* Sorry, incorrect.

It was believed that if enough people wrote down their religion as Jedi on the census it would become an official religion in the UK. The fact is that all it did was make Jedi a recognised thing that people write down in the 'religion' section of the census.

This is the official line: the Census does not provide recognition to any religion in the official statistics nor does it attempt to define religion. The list that you can see by checking out the pdf file above is merely a list of possible answers that people have been known to put in the box marked religion.

As such, Jedi Knight is not officially recognised as a religion.

This is the same situation that Scientology is currently in within the UK. It has never been recognised as a religion in the UK and even failed to receive charitable status when it applied for it. This was noted during the odd scenario where a protester was given a written warning by the police for holding up a sign during a protest referring to Scientology as a dangerous cult. What was even more absurd was how, even after this had been cleared up at the London event, the same mistake took place again in Glasgow and again in Birmingham. In any case, these were all judged to be mistakes and scientology can be freely and publically referred to as a cult because legally it is.

Anyway, first of all I'd note that the Jedi religion does not have a long history of wearing their hoods down in public, not least since they only established their church about 5 years ago. Secondly I'd note that they don't really have much excuse for setting up such a tradition in the current setting. But the best rebuttal amusingly came from Tesco themselves:

'He hasn't been banned. Jedis are very welcome to shop in our stores although we would ask them to remove their hoods.

'Obi-Wan Kenobi, Yoda and Luke Skywalker all appeared hoodless without ever going over to the Dark Side and we are only aware of the Emperor as one who never removed his hood.

'If Jedi walk around our stores with their hoods on, they'll miss lots of special offers.'

x-posted to atheism