Thoughts of a Freethinker

Some Buddhist monks are walking from Texas to Washington DC for peace. They had not yet taken all the publicity from Melania's documentary about herself or Trump's roundup of humans, but they have potential to call attention to something more noble than shooting people. The simple act of walking unarmed in unusual places in an old practice with a history of success. We all know about Rev. Martin Luthur King's walks. Gandhi was another who stood unarmed in front of armed police. Filling the streets with shouting and angry people has its place. So does the unarmed noble walker.  The effectiveness and reason for effectiveness is not hard to see after events unfold. We can understand today why King and Gandhi made such a difference. It's another thing to come up with the idea of protesting in this way, convincing others to do it with you and then winning the public relations war that follows. King defeated Sheriff Bull Connor. I think all readers would like to see an end to...

  It's fun to see real progress where some stuck in the past have prevailed. An example is a woman was recently named the Arch Bishop of Canterberry. Unfortunately, there was a loud protest . At her installation ceremony, a right-wing priest shouted out a protest. Instead of the mostly progressive Church of England, this sounds like the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention. I remember a well-known Southern Baptist preacher saying, "We in the SBC can bend a little on a few issues. We absolutely cannot allow women preachers." Popes have said there will never be Catholic clergy.  That women cannot be clergy is either a power play or a misreading of the faith's teaching of both. The highest positions in all of society are shared by both men and women. How could it be different in Christianity? The Church of England is, of course, the church of England's government. This makes it even more sensitive to current cultural forces than the Southern Baptist Conv...

The German Catholic Church is the wealthiest of any country. Rome needs its share of that wealth. Germany, however, needs to guard access to its cash flow. This cash flow requires that Bishops alien with popular political values. We have to remember the European way of paying churches. It is for the government to collect a voluntary payment earmarked for the church and turn it over accordingly.  Pope Leo has pledged to hold the "One Church" together. He says this with even more conviction than did Francis. The German Bishops see this as their checkmate. Rome will have to allow gay marriages by priests and women as priests as Germans demand. Rome will have to either approve or find some way to ignore. It needs German money more than German Catholics need Rome. German Catholics see a church of the future as one which has a lot of democracy. How clergy and the public together see things will lead to its version of the truth. This is a good way, also, to keep government in the mi...

When Trump won office there was an uncomfortable amount of inflation. Grocery prices were up because covid had harmed production of some things and people had pent up demand from staying at home for a year or two. When things opened up, and salaries available, it helped pull prices up. As I write this, Trump is 10 minutes away from my place trying to put out the political fires he set. If Trump had paid attention to history, or, had advisors who paid attention, he would have predicted production would rise, demand would level off and inflation would largely disappear. He could have said during his first six months, "I am working night and day to reduce inflation" even though he did nothing. Prices would have leveled off or come down and he could have taken a bow. Easy-peasy.  Instead, he started fiddling with tariffs. The existing tariffs were the result no doubt of hundreds of hours of talk around the world and piles of correspondence. All countries thought they should get a...

When one is outside the faith, interesting personal stories are ones of people leaving the faith. It's all but impossible to be interested in people who found happiness by going deep into Christianity or any other religion. This one is about a man who tried his best to leave homosexuality behind be doing every Mormon duty assigned to one who grew up Mormon. He, like so many others, thought the deeper they dove into their religious indoctrination the better the chance their same sex attraction would disappear. Instead, he found happiness in a hobby of drag performing and giving away the money he received. I've read about and known quite a few same sex attracted people who tried over and over to stop the attraction by use of prayer and faith. Once in a while one reads about someone who lives as a heterosexual because homosexual acts are sin. If such people are happier living this way let them do so. The only foolish part of it is believing homosexual sex is a sin. This is made-up...

Pope Leo is not in DC now at the annual "March for Life." The Vatican press office released some remarks he made recently about abortion, creating the image of him being on board with the program. Some things are changing, however, in anti-abortion politics and fund raising. At the end of the press release it is noted the Pope is not demanding laws against abortion which has been the decades-long message. That backfired with the overturn of Roe and made abortion increasingly available in some states. The new narrative is that the public needs to be "persuaded." The Pope's view that anti-abortion is part of a "healthy society" could rightly be called political misdirection. He does not say equal treatment and opportunity for women is part of a healthy society. The practice of treating women as second class members of society, no women clergy, will forever be a part of the decline of Christianity, Catholic and Protestant.  An anti-abortion post in the Na...