Episode 71: Thinking For Oneself

Apart from the aches, pains, disabilities, obvious drawbacks and the unknown but certain finale, Geezer is a happy man.

I know that's counterintuitive, given the state of the banks, the car companies, foreclosures, the wars, terrorists, immigration, and all that. But with an adequate retirement fund showing signs of recovery, no deadlines, no editors, no bosses, and no stress, as well as recent multiple getaways to Manhattan and the Berkshires and upcoming trips to Montréal, Barcelona, Paris, and Amsterdam, this one old guy is all aglow. Life is good, pretty much.

Should I require a shot of adrenaline-fueled indignation, though, all I require is attendance to the ravings of the world's assorted religionists to achieve a state of highest dudgeon. Consider these few examples among many such events and pronouncements of recent weeks:

* Two Taliban thugs in Pakistan held a teenage girl down on a street in Sawat while a third flogged her mercilessly despite her pitieous cries to stop. Her crime? According to the source, either leaving the house without a male relative's permission or for refusing to marry the man wielding the belt.

Shariah Law: Your certainty in a confusing, undisciplined world.

* About 300 Afghan women marched in Kabul to protest a new law that restored Taliban-inspired restrictions on women that include requirements that they must receive permission to go to school or work outside the home and must use makeup and dress themselves up if their husbands so demand (presumably only in the bedroom). Worse, the law made it illegal for women to refuse their husbands' sexual advances. That is, marital rape is OK. A thousand male counter-demonstrators surrounded the women, courageously spitting, throwing stones, and shouting, "Get out of here, you whores!" and "Death to the enemies of Islam!" and "We want Islamic law!"

* Isn't there something more productive to do with the days and years available to them? Orthodox Jews spend a lot of time in observance of Talmud-dictated events. As if there weren't a sufficiency on the calendar already, they recently made note of Birkat Hachamah, a holiday celebrated every 28 years when the sun returns to the position it held at the time of its creation. This required the Observant to remove all chametz (unleavened bread) from their homes and cars and persons before Passover. Then they had to burn some of it and throw out the rest. A prayer was recited that has the magical power to release them from ownership of any crumbs still not dispatched. Reassuring. What bread has to do with the sun's movements is unclear, but at least it only happens two or three times in the average lifetime.

* Creationism isn't superstitious nonsense. At least, that is the conclusion to be drawn from a recent judicial decision in California. A history teacher impolitically uttered the reverse apostasy in his classroom, and a student sued. The judge agreed that it was a statement disparaging to Christians and their beliefs, and that government employees aren't permitted to display religious hostility.

The First Amendment, in his view, protects people convinced of nonsense but not their educated instructors who hold alternative views.

For daily descents into mindless dogma, it's hard bottom out lower than the Catholic church:

*On a visit to an Africa beset by H.I.V./AIDS, Il Papa Benedict, extending his reputation for cultural cluelessness, pronounced his church at the forefront of the battle against the disease. "You can't resolve it with the distribution of condoms. On the contrary, it increases the problem." The best weapon? Abstinence, natch.

*Having already welcomed a Holocaust-denying priest back into the fold, Benedict appointed Rev. Gerhard Maria Wagner the auxiliary bishop of Linz, Austria. That totem of enlightenment previously declared that (1) homosexuality was curable, and (2) the sins of New Orleanians brought on Hurricane Katrina.

*The Papal personage recently felt the need to acknowledge the role of his church in "forcing 150,000 Native Canadians into residential schools where many were sexually and physically abused." The Canadian government and three Protestant denominations had previously offered compensation and apologies, leaving the Roman Catholic Church, which ran most of the schools, the only responsible institution to be left unheard.

* You've heard about the Fort Wayne bishop who announced he would boycott the Notre Dame commencement speech of President Barack Obama. Way to continue a dialog, father. But did you

catch the letter sent by Bishop Thomas Olmsted of Phoenix to Notre Dame president John Jenkins? He said the invitation to Obama was "a public act of disobediance" to U.S. bishops. Disobediance? Does Fathead Olmsted grasp the concepts laid out in the First Amendment? No doubt against his wishes, the United States of America is not a theocracy. Americans, even Roman Catholic Americans, are not obliged to "obey" the commands of allegedly celibate old men in funny hats.

* No doubt Olmsted concurs with the archbishop of São Paulo, Brazil, who said recently "The law of God is above any human law," that law to be interpreted and disseminated by him and his fellows, of course. At the time, he was arguing that rape was bad but abortion was worse. The specific case he addressed was a girl who aborted twins last month after

her stepfather raped her. The thoroughly detestable archbishop José Cardoso Sobrinho excommunicated the two doctors who performed the operation, but not the stepfather who abused the girl and her older sister.

The raped girl was barely four feet tall. She weighed 79 pounds. She was nine years old.

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