Confessions of a Recovering Pharisee

[Times Online]

After 1,500 years the Vatican has brought the seven deadly sins up to date by adding seven new ones for the age of globalisation. The list, published yesterday in L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, came as the Pope deplored the “decreasing sense of sin” in today’s “securalised world” and the falling numbers of Roman Catholics going to confession.

The Catholic Church divides sins into venial, or less serious, sins and mortal sins, which threaten the soul with eternal damnation unless absolved before death through confession and penitence.

Read about it here.

[From me]

Who give the Catholic Church the right to add additional sins?  Isn’t that tampering with the Bible?  Also, a sin is a sin in the eyes of God.  You can’t rank sins.  There may be different consequences but sin is sin.

What do you think?

[Fox News]

A transgender woman in California has gone to court, claiming that a Catholic-affiliated hospital discriminated against her when it denied her request for breast augmentation surgery. The man-turned-woman, Charlene Hastings, filed the complaint in December and said she wants to have the surgery because it will make her look more feminine, but the hospital has refused to operate because she was not born a woman.

“I honestly believe that God has plans for me to have this surgery,” Hastings told FOXNews.com.

“I felt simply less than equal,” she said. “Here I am, a woman. I had the reassignment surgery, and not to allow me this right, I felt violated.”

Hastings, who was raised Catholic and says she attends church every Sunday, said the hospital told her that the surgery was not part of God’s plan for her. She filed the complaint in San Francisco Superior Court alleging harassment and discrimination on the basis of gender.

The Catholic hospital does not allow transgender surgery, the statement says.

“Seton Medical Center, a Catholic hospital and a member of the Daughters of Charity Health System, provides services to all individuals. However, the hospital does not perform surgical procedures contrary to Catholic teaching; for example, abortion, direct euthanasia, transgender surgery or any of its related components.”

Read about it here. 

[From me]

This person had to know it goes against the teachings of the Catholic church.  Why not go to a public hospital and stop trying to make a statement?

What do you think?

[USA TODAY]

Dana Jacobson, co-host of ESPN2’s First Take, will remain off-air until Monday for comments at a social event she now says were “foolish and insensitive.”

Jacobson spoke at a roast of ESPN’s Mike Greenberg and Mike Golic in Atlantic City Jan. 1. Onstage there, according to The Press of Atlantic City, she was “swilling vodka” and “cursing like a sailor” and made “an absolute fool of herself” as the crowd booed.

That prompted her current one-week suspension. Says ESPN spokesman Mike Soltys: “She’s been disciplined.”

Ironically, the Orlando Sentinel says Jacobson was one of those who defended Golf Channel’s Kelly Tilghman when she was being criticized for using the word “lynch” in reference to Tiger Woods.

Read about it here.

[From me]

Apparently she dropped a few “F” Bombs about Notre Dame and Jesus. Why is she only getting a one-week suspension when Jimmy the Greek and Rush Limbaugh get fired for just expressing their opinions. Now their opinions were misguided and I don’t agree with them. But they didn’t use profanity. They didn’t say things about someone’s religion. Why weren’t they suspended for only one-week? No, they were fired. There is a double standard.

Jacobson offended the Catholic church for sure. But as a Protestant Christian I’m offended too. I’ll bet she would have been fired had she said the same about Muhammad, Buddha or made a racial slur.  Should she be fired?  I don’t know.  I would rather give her a second chance.

But, where is the consistency?

What do you think?

[HT] bryan allain

[WLKY]

A father is in a courtroom battle, trying to keep his son from attending a Catholic high school.

The parents involved in this case are divorced. David Ryan, the father, is an atheist. The mother is a Roman Catholic. Their son, who is in the eighth grade, attends a Catholic school in Oldham County.

“This is something where it can’t be both ways,” said Ryan’s attorney, Edwin Kagin. “We think the constitution wins.”

Read about it here.

[From me]

What does the constitution have to do with this? If the boy was already attending the school and the mother won custody, then the judge probably wanted the boy to have some stability. I think the dad wants him to go to public school not because of the indoctrination but because he doesn’t want to shell out the cash!

What do you think?

[Yahoo News]

When a man dressed in black and wearing crosses said to charge his groceries to St. Rocco’s Roman Catholic Church, clerks at a West Pittston store obliged.  St. Rocco’s has a tab at the Gerritys Supermarket. And Officer Joe Campbell says the man “played the part,” with his black clothing and a white strip of cardboard around his neck.

But his grocery orders began to stray from the necessities. Energy drinks and cigarettes crept in, and store officials became suspicious.

Read about it here.

[From me]

Sounds like a SNL skit.