The Sins Of Rick Warren: Sin #1 "Wives Must Submit!"

Attention all wife-beaters! It's O.K.!
Pastor Rick Warren says so!

Sin #1:

Pastor Rick Warren of Saddleback (mega-mucho-great big) Church thinks God hates divorce so much that he'll let the wife take a beating as long as she "submits" and acquiesces to the husband even if he's an a**hole. To Warren, the only reasons for divorce are adultery (the husband's) or abandonment (hey, if the guy's not around who's there to submit to?). Those are the only reasons because they are the ones listed in the Bible.

Abuse is no excuse.

Then what, pray tell, is a battered wife to do? Pray. And if the beating is REGULAR, then you can separate while BOTH you and your husband seek holy guidance.

What is a good enough reason ivorce? Well, according to Rick Warren’s Saddleback church, divorce is only permitted in cases of adultery or abandonment—as these are the only cases permitted in the Bible—and never for abuse.

As teaching pastor Tom Holladay explains, spousal abuse should be dealt with by temporary separation and church marriage counseling designed to bring about reconciliation between the couple. But to qualify for that separation, your spouse must be in the “habit of beating you regularly,” and not be simply someone who “grabbed you once.”

That "grabbed you once" might mean he crushed your skull with a baseball bat. But hey, it's O.K.! Jocelyn Anderson, author of Woman Submit! Christians and Domestic Violence asks "How many beatings would have to take place in order to qualify as regularly?” She correctly sees Warren's attitude as laying groundwork for an epidemic of domestic violence.

Wives, it's time to say something to Pastor Rick: F**k You!

Just a thought.

Pope Benedict: "Holocaust? What Holocaust?"

Aw, Those Holocaust Deniers! Always Good For A Laugh!

NOT!

Pope Ratzinger (Benedict XVI) is certainly showing his true colors with this one:

VATICAN CITY (AP)

— Pope Benedict XVI has lifted the excommunications of four bishops consecrated without papal consent 20 years ago by the late French ultraconservative Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, the Vatican announced Saturday.

One of the four bishops was shown this week in an interview saying that the Nazi gas chambers probably didn't exist. The report prompted Rome's chief rabbi to ask the Vatican to halt plans to rehabilitate him.

AP has that last bit slightly askew: reinstate, yes, rehabilitate, no.

"Bishop" Richard Williamson is a Holocaust denier and today was reinstated by Pope Benedict XVI. His anti-Semitism is well known (as can be seen explaining his views - as "scientific" of course).

That he was reinstated by Benedict is not really a surprise (remember that Benedict was a Hitler youth and his position before becoming Pope was as head of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith (the descendant of the Inquisition.) In fact, delving into Williamson's life is just as interesting, because his mentor was the infamous Archbishop Marcel-Francois Lefebvre.

Infamous? This was a "man of God" who favored dictators. He was a staunch supporter of France's Vichy government (the puppet of Hitler's Germany), he was a rabid Holocaust denier, and hated the precepts of the Vatican II ecumenical council. He openly favored Franco and his fascist regime. In other words, he was exceptionally far to the right. He was a father of today's Christofascism. In today's parlance of celebrities, just think of him as Mel Gibson's dad.

Let's associate then, shall we? Because of his extreme authoritarian views Lefebvre was an enemy of popes John XXIII, Paul VI, John-Paul I and John-Paul II. His protege and successor was/is Bishop Richard Williamson. Williamson, along with Lefebvre was excommunicated 20 years ago by John-Paul II. Now-pope Benedict XVI has reinstated him.

Benedict/Ratzinger is scheduled to visit Israel in May of this year.

He should make other plans.

Perhaps the Oświęcim synagogue* in Poland.

In his native tongue, however, it would be called ...Auschwitz.

Just a thought.

*In 1939, more than the half of the population of Oświęcim was Jewish. The community was more than 400 years old and there were more than 20 synagogues. The last native Jew in Oświęcim died in 2000.