magdaleneswift-blog

[magdaleneswift-blog]

RE: St. Paul and the virtues of men and the Church hierarchy

Dear Fathers:

We have Pope Open Mouth Insert Foot, who when challenged about pedophilic priests preying on children stated that women who want to become priests are worse.   How DARE he make a comparison between women wanting to dedicate their lives to God and vile predators? I supposed he should be thanked for so clearly stating in unmistakable terms the god he is really interested in worshipping. The true Church is our children.  The current pope is willing to sacrifice the good of the church so he can entertain his dick.

From the recent articles on pedophile priests in the Philadelphia Inquiry, I see that at least the hierarchy of the Philadelphia Archdiocese is at it again. To make matters worse, at least one priest wrote back and tried to deflect responsibility and shift blame by raising the abortion banner.  Was he defending life or bewailing the loss of potential victims? I guess mea culpa does not apply to anyone wearing a Roman collar.  How does that response relate to preparation for making a good Confession by first admitting fault?  Apparently, acknowledgement of guilt applies only to the Laity.

I think they forget that Jesus always led by example.

The whole behavior of the Church hierarchy reminds me of a study done recently on male aggression.

Researchers noted the behavior of both male and female toddlers in playpens and how they tried to escape from them.  As expected, the boy babies started grabbing the sides and shaking them to escape, while the girl babies immediately started in with "Mommy!  Mommy! Mommy!  Mommy! ......... Mommy!  Mommy! Etc."  until the exasperated mothers lifted them from the pens.  The researchers congratulated themselves on proving the aggression of male babies (and their supposed superiority) until it dawned on them which gender was actually getting out.

It is pathetic to watch men more than 50 years older than toddlers using the same counterproductive mindset with ludicrous results.  What is worse, they consider this type of thinking a virtue.

Some examples:

Isaac Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz simultaneously and independently discovered calculus in England and Germany.  Rather than combining the best of both works to advance studies of area, volume, maximums, minimums, velocity and acceleration, scientists wasted 50 years arguing over who invented the mathematics first.

The Native American Ghost Dancers of Wounded Knee believed their dance would bring back the buffalo and their magic shirts would stop bullets.  The soldiers, with their right of arms, slaughtered them all, men, women, and infants for daring to defy the 'Christian' society.

When Benjamin Franklin invented the lightning rod, he explained the importance of the pointed end that allows electrons to 'bleed' into the atmosphere and reduce the number of lightning bolts.  (We proved this mathematically in physics class.)  Instead, the British insisted on using ball ends on their lighting rods and ringing church bells to scare away the lightening because since Franklin was a revolutionary, he couldn't possibly be right.

I am disgusted working for male bosses convinced that if they yell loud enough, the laws of physics don't apply to them.  (If you scream loud enough, you can hold up several tons of soil, parking lot and cars by putting a piece of plastic over it.  This from a PE licensed in two states.)

At an ASCE meeting a member stated that he knows of several of male drivers convinced that since they were big athletes in high school, even if that was more than 30 years ago, they don't need to wear seat belts because their reflexes and eye sight are so good, they can avoid car accidents.

The simple conclusion is that men are brain damaged.

I don't know whether to laugh or cry reading a lot of laws where governing bodies believe they can legislate away the laws of physics and mathematics by their belief that if they say so it is.  

The most horrific example is World War I, in which the upper class twits slaughtered their countrymen by the thousands by having them charge machine guns.  We had proven the old Napoleonic techniques did not work with modern armament in the Civil War, but as the US was considered a backward colony, the lessons went unheeded.  The slaughter did prove effective in stopping the German machine gunners, however; as they were so sickened by the slaughter that they had mental breakdowns.

The most appalling examples are when this might makes right thinking and if I say so it is thinking is used by religious leaders.

Too many so called religious people seem to believe that if you are a member of the magic group, you are allowed to kill anyone you want.  A recent news article had the Roman Catholic couple believing that since they were Roman Catholic, they could declare open season on Jehovah Witness. The KKK also believed their religion gave them the right to murder whomever they wanted.

You have those few Muslim extremists and some Christians whose actions seem to indicate that the whole basis of their religion is "If it moves, shoot it. If it doesn't move, blow it up.  If it is female, beat it." Do they believe their theology so weak that no one will believe it unless forced by violence? Verily I say until you.  I don't care what you call yourself; that is NOT the God of Abraham, Isaac or Moses, but the god of Cain, the Lord of the Flies, or the god of the male chimpanzee.  (I call this worshipping their dicks.) If you want to prove you are better than the animals, ACT LIKE IT.  

Now remember, men think this mindset is a virtue, so St. Paul is right when he tells wives to submit to their husbands.  It certainly does no good to reason with them when they are in this state; you have a better chance of an intelligent conversation with your dog.  You are better off waiting until they are rational, then making them see reason.

Another benefit to that statement of the current pope has been the opportunity to open a dialog with a women priest down in the Philadelphia area.  She said that the Vatican did a study in the 70's that proved the bible does not contain anything that would bar women from being priests. I would love to obtain a copy of this document.  I am sure it exists as it is obvious from reading the Bible that it is true. Counter arguments from the church sound as easy to refute as the KKK's claim that Genesis says that Negroes should be slaves.

It has been scientifically proven that when you gather a group of people together, the IQ of the group drops to the IQ of the dumbest member.  What I want to know is why do we always follow the lead and policy of the bottom 10% of the population?

It has also been said that the only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing. I say that the faith of the Roman Catholic Church is too important to be left in the hands of senile old men who are too busy worshipping their dicks to worship God.  

All my life, I have been stuck cleaning up other peoples' messes and have seen that it usually takes a woman to clean house.

[magdaleneswift-blog]

RE:  Active Catholic offering assistance in ridding the vatican of pedophile despite protests of cardinals.

Dear Father Wall,

No matter what your official status, you are still protecting the most important members of the flock; the children.

I found out about you through the New York Times article on your success suing the Minnesota Diocese.

As Francis recently referred to pedophiles as a sacrilegious cult, he may have heard of my tirades.  He may even be fighting with the cardinals over the proudly proclaimed and documented policy of his predecessor - Catholicism is too precious to have senile perverts who prefer pedophiles to women in

Catholics have more abortions / 1000 than any other group.  The rate of US abortions per year is 1,060,000. The number of people claiming to be Catholic is 75,380,000.  That is 71 Catholics per aborted child.  If we were serious about stopping abortion, at least 2 of those Catholics should be providing assistance to the mother.  I didn't see much press about the Catholic Church offering the use of any of its surplus property to the Central American refugees either.

The vatican is in a position to do more to take concrete measures to improve conditions than any other organization including the U.N.  Instead they seem to do everything to hamstring themselves.  Their 'survey' on the family was rigged to minimize responses from family and maximize the responses of the pedophiles.  Maybe they are trying to flush them out of the woodwork, but I'm afraid the response is more likely to be them combing through the bible looking for justification of molestation of minors by clergy and more of the attitude that we are male, therefore we should be able to make everyone do what we want.  Francis has at least appointed some lay couples to babysit, so we shall see. (Wasn't that the fallacy of Gnosticism?  If you have the 'special knowledge', you can do all kinds of evil.)

The Gospel of Christ - The being that created the universe(s) and time itself cares enough for its creation to split off a portion of itself to be tortured and killed to bring ALL of us back to him/her and we are most like God when we sacrifice ourselves for each other.  Christ was unique in having female disciples.

The 'gospel' of Benne dick - Anything is allowable if you are male - i.e. Shut up bitch. The brat is mine and you are next. Women can't be priests because priests represent Christ. ie The 'holiest' thing about Christ was that he was MALE. ->  my dick is god! The PhD theologian sitting behind me in choir said that Ratzy was known for his clarity.  He wasn't kidding!

I recently read an article saying how Benedict has placed himself in self imposed confinement but is still writing to 'correct errors in theology.'  Neither he nor Francis has seen fit to correct that 'theology' so it appears they both believe it to be valid.

You can try using the enclosed to see if you can rattle any cages.  I can e-mail pdfs if you want.  From what I have seen of the vatican, it is more likely the second sheet will become the crowning jewel in a highly prized collection of child pornography or immediately thrown out as it doesn't praise the hierarchy: The probable fate of any survey results that differed from the desired response.

I was recently at an engineering seminar that discussed the Citi Corp building over St. Peter's Lutheran Church in Manhattan.  It related how the design engineer, realizing he had made a mistake, risked his career to safeguard the people in danger. (He made mistakes doing that, too but with God's grace it worked out without anyone actually getting killed.)  He was only responsible for the physical life of a few thousand souls.

The vatican has as a major point of its theology that everything they do is perfect. How very male. Through my life I have seen no more dangerous mental handicap than the male ego.  Death before dishonor ( admitting a mistake)!  They are responsible for the eternal life of billions. After Benne Dick's statement, I wouldn't put any of them in charge of a pet rock. At this point, the vatican has no honor.

When the previous entity in possession of the vatican was threatening to invade Philadelphia next year, I wrote the president to have it declared persona non-grata, the Meagan's law branch of the Philadelphia police department and vatican security pleading to have it safely confined in the vatican instead.  I do not want any creature that prefers pedophiles to women on the same planet as my children, let alone the same state.  Francis at least seems saner and my children are now safely out of state.  What other potential vatican pedophile would he be bringing with him and what security precautions are being made to ensure 24/7 monitoring?

The one good thing to come out of this is I found out about the organizations of Catholic Women Priests. I never would have heard of them without Benne dick's assistance.

[magdaleneswift-blog]

Jesus explains the role of the divorced in the Church.

(I left the references, because from all the evidence, no one at the vatican has read the Bible)

Jesus Talks With a Samaritan Woman

John 4: 1-42 Now Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that he was gaining and baptizing more disciples than John—  although in fact it was not Jesus who baptized, but his disciples.  So he left Judea and went back once more to Galilee. Now he had to go through Samaria.  So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph.6 Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about noon. When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?”  (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.) The Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.) Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.” “Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water?  Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his livestock?” Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.” He told her, “Go, call your husband and come back.” “I have no husband,” she replied. Jesus said to her, “You are right when you say you have no husband. The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.” “Sir,” the woman said, “I can see that you are a prophet.  Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.” “Woman,” Jesus replied, “believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews.  Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks.  God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.” The woman said, “I know that Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.” Then Jesus declared, “I, the one speaking to you—I am he.”

The Disciples Rejoin Jesus

Just then his disciples returned and were surprised to find him talking with a woman. But no one asked, “What do you want?” or “Why are you talking with her?” Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people,  “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Messiah?”  They came out of the town and made their way toward him. Meanwhile his disciples urged him, “Rabbi, eat something.” But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you know nothing about.” Then his disciples said to each other, “Could someone have brought him food?” “My food,” said Jesus, “is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work.  Don’t you have a saying, ‘It’s still four months until harvest’? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest.  Even now the one who reaps draws a wage and harvests a crop for eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may be glad together. Thus the saying ‘One sows and another reaps’ is true.  I sent you to reap what you have not worked for. Others have done the hard work, and you have reaped the benefits of their labor.”

Many Samaritans Believe

Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I ever did.”  So when the Samaritans came to him, they urged him to stay with them, and he stayed two days.And because of his words many more became believers. They said to the woman, “We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Savior of the world.”

Jesus has this divorced woman proclaiming him Christ before the twelve. The cardinals are questioning the vatican about allowing divorced members communion. What justification do they have for reversing the words and actions of Christ concerning the role of the divorced in the church? THEY HAVE PENISES!  Therefore, they get to make the rules! Jesus was also very clear about the role of being in the magic group that says you are holier than anyone else.

Mathew 3:7-10 .But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to where he was baptizing, he said to them: “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? 8Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. 9And do not think you can say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham. 10The ax is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire. How hard does the vatican work at it to achieve this level of deranged incompetence? Mathew 5:30 And if your right hand causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell. Gelding the vatican would more than double their intelligence.

[magdaleneswift-blog]

Father Patrick Wall c/o Mawly & Stewart 19100 Van Karmen Avenue Suite 800 Irvine, CA 92612

RE: Active Catholic offering assistance in ridding the vatican of pedophile despite protests of cardinals.

Dear Father Wall,

No matter what your official status, you are still protecting the most important members of the flock; the children. I found out about you through the New York Times article on your success suing the Minnesota Diocese. As Francis recently referred to pedophiles as a sacrilegious cult, he may have heard of my tirades. He may even be fighting with the cardinals over the proudly proclaimed and documented policy of his predecessor - Catholicism is too precious to have senile perverts who prefer pedophiles to women in Catholics have more abortions / 1000 than any other group. The rate of US abortions per year is 1,060,000. The number of people claiming to be Catholic is 75,380,000. That is 71 Catholics per aborted child. If we were serious about stopping abortion, at least 2 of those Catholics should be providing assistance to the mother. I didn't see much press about the Catholic Church offering the use of any of its surplus property to the Central American refugees either.

The vatican is in a position to do more to take concrete measures to improve conditions than any other organization including the U.N. Instead they seem to do everything to hamstring themselves. Their 'survey' on the family was rigged to minimize responses from family and maximize the responses of the pedophiles. Maybe they are trying to flush them out of the woodwork, but I'm afraid the response is more likely to be them combing through the bible looking for justification of molestation of minors by clergy and more of the attitude that we are male, therefore we should be able to make everyone do what we want. Francis has at least appointed some lay couples to babysit, so we shall see. (Wasn't that the fallacy of Gnosticism? If you have the 'special knowledge', you can do all kinds of evil.)

The Gospel of Christ - The being that created the universe(s) and time itself cares enough for its creation to split off a portion of itself to be tortured and killed to bring ALL of us back to him/her and we are most like God when we sacrifice ourselves for each other. Christ was unique in having female disciples. The 'gospel' of Benne dick - Anything is allowable if you are male - i.e. Shut up bitch. The brat is mine and you are next. Women can't be priests because priests represent Christ. ie The 'holiest' thing about Christ was that he was MALE. -> my dick is god! The PhD theologian sitting behind me in choir said that Ratzy was known for his clarity. He wasn't kidding! I recently read an article saying how Benedict has placed himself in self imposed confinement but is still writing to 'correct errors in theology.' Neither he nor Francis has seen fit to correct that 'theology' so it appears they both believe it to be valid.

You can try using the enclosed to see if you can rattle any cages. I can e-mail pdfs if you want. From what I have seen of the vatican, it is more likely the second sheet will become the crowning jewel in a highly prized collection of child pornography or immediately thrown out as it doesn't praise the hierarchy: The probable fate of any survey results that differed from the desired response. I was recently at an engineering seminar that discussed the Citi Corp building over St. Peter's Lutheran Church in Manhattan. It related how the design engineer, realizing he had made a mistake, risked his career to safeguard the people in danger. (He made mistakes doing that, too but with God's grace it worked out without anyone actually getting killed.) He was only responsible for the physical life of a few thousand souls. The vatican has as a major point of its theology that everything they do is perfect. How very male.

Through my life I have seen no more dangerous mental handicap than the male ego. Death before dishonor (admitting a mistake)! They are responsible for the eternal life of billions. After Benne Dick's statement, I wouldn't put any of them in charge of a pet rock. At this point, the vatican has no honor. When the previous entity in possession of the vatican was threatening to invade Philadelphia next year, I wrote the president to have it declared persona non-grata, the Meagan's law branch of the Philadelphia police department and vatican security pleading to have it safely confined in the vatican instead. I do not want any creature that prefers pedophiles to women on the same planet as my children, let alone the same state. Francis at least seems saner and my children are now safely out of state. What other potential vatican pedophile would he be bringing with him and what security precautions are being made to ensure 24/7 monitoring?

The one good thing to come out of this is I found out about the organizations of Catholic Women Priests. I never would have heard of them without Benne dick's assistance.

[magdaleneswift-blog]

I explain the Latin mass to the pope

February 23, 2013

Your Holiness Pope Francis 00120 Vatican City Italy, Europe

RE: - The Latin Mass or Be careful what you wish for, you may get it. Dear Your Holiness:

I tried your predecessor's e-mail. It didn't work.

I see in the news that the Traditionalists in the Church are disappointed that you will not be bringing back the Latin Mass. I have a suggestion for a compromise. Why not expand the feast for St. Jerome to include the option of a Latin Mass as a Heritage/Legacy day? The mass would stress the great work of the Saint in translating the mass from the foreign tongues of Greek and Hebrew (Those fancy hi- faulting languages of the day.) to the common language of the Romans of the day. It would be:

A way to stress the advantages of mass in the native language of the day.

A great learning experience in church history and a way to show the Protestants that the Church was translating the Bible to every day speech long before they did.

An extra prayer experience for the Communion and Confirmation classes

As the feast is the end of September, it would be a reminder to school children settling back into school after having the summer off, to be thankful they don't need to learn Latin anymore.

An opportunity for the elderly to remember Mommy taking care of them. I remember the newspaper columnist who hadn't been to church since Vatican II wanting to give her children the experience of Mass. To her it only counted if it was a Latin Mass.

A means of keeping the beautiful music of the mass from dying out.

An opportunity for a cultural experience. The church members in Africa can be as confused as this Midwestern German was by the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

Lead to a chance for discussion of the faith with children's grandparents and great grandparents and honor the elderly.

A learning opportunity to explain the difference in the symbolism in the old and new Mass. Priest facing forward or backward, etc. (More or less chance to doze off?)

It would be interesting at least once to see if the 'Harry Potter' effect of the ancient languages still is a popular draw. I always wondered if the Latin mass was part of the Voodoo Catholicism effect of looking for magic charms to ward off the devil. My 7 year old nephew was here last weekend using the Gideon New Testament as a 'spell book.' I did my best to explain that is not the purpose of the Bible. He said he knew, he just wanted to play.

We have masses here in Polish, Spanish, and English. Our parish, at least, is large enough we could probably add a Latin Mass. I really see no reason not to allow the option more frequently if the interest is there. (Definitely not as the standard or only option)

[magdaleneswift-blog]

SAILERS EXPLAIN – GOOD LUCK

To Russell Crowe

RE: Jonah and the interpretation of the Bible by the functionally illiterate. I have been wanting to write a fan letter about my experience watching, "Master and Commander, the Far Side of the World" for some time. I originally wanted to thank the writer, but unfortunately, he is dead.

I saw the film after attending Father Perry's Bible Study on the book of Jonah. I was struck by the contrast in the sailor's firm belief in what the story said compared to the book itself. It is very similar to the study on PBS on what the Constitution says compared to what 'everyone' believes it says.

I read the book of Jonah to my children and we were all roaring with laughter. In the movie, the book is all about fire and brimstone and Jonah bringing "bad luck" to the sailors. The Bible story is all about forgiveness, the foolishness of pride, and how counterproductive it is to disobey God. The movie has the sailors giving Jonah for the Captain to read at the end. If the Captain had read it to the crew at the beginning of the story, the life of the first mate might have been saved. Jonah in the Bible was a head strong fool, who when ordered to preach redemption and conversion to the enemy, immediately heads in the opposite direction. Raising my daughter, my conscientious objector, I can relate to God's annoyance. Whatever I asked, she would conscientiously object to it. When God delays Jonah with the storm, it is Jonah who takes the blame and begs the sailors to throw him overboard. The sailors, rather than trying to sacrifice Jonah, do everything to save him until the situation gets so bad that they give in to his wishes. The seas immediately calm and the sailors have the incredible good luck of being converted to God.

Jonah, now safe in the belly of the fish, sings in joy and thanksgiving of his rescue. The fish, now probably transporting him in the direction he was SUPPOSED to have gone; deposits Jonah safely on shore. Jonah now convinced, enthusiastically preaches to the pagans.

I'm sure his death warmed over appearance after spending three days inside the fish contributed mightily to the effectiveness of his preaching.

He converts the entire capital city of the enemies of the Israelites faster than it was possible to walk across it. Then after succeeding in his preaching better than any prophet since Moses, he throws a temper tantrum. He had wanted God to punish his enemies, not save them. While he is sulking, God has a plant grow to shade him; then kills the plant. When Jonah grieves for the plant, God reminds him how important all the souls he has just saved are compared to the plant. In teaching the pagans, Jonah learns the hardest lesson. In disobeying God, he made his mission more effective. The Captains plea at end for the forgiveness of the First Mate is right out of the ending of Job, which stresses the importance to God of us forgiving each other. (There are a lot more important theological points in both stories, but this is the Readers Digest condensed version.)

[magdaleneswift-blog]

Functionally illiterate Creationists explain time and biology to God

January 22, 2010

Phi Kappa Phi Forum - Letters to the Editor 7576 Goodwood Blvd Baton Rouge, LA 70806

Dear Mr. Szatmary,

I seem to have missed the Spring 2009 issue with an article on Evolution.  I read a letter to the editor referencing it in the Summer 2009 issue.

I don't know how well Creationism was defended in that article, but I was not impressed with the Creationists of Dover, PA or many others that I have heard about.  

From beginning to end:  When I was in college, I read a technical magazine with an article written by a college biology professor with a class in the bible belt.  He had numerous students who all insisted that men have one less set of ribs than women, "Because the Bible said so."  The Bible says no such thing.  The Bible states that God removed one rib from one individual one time. Removing a body part from one individual does not mean that all their progeny will be missing that same body part.  By this logic, generations of Jewish and Muslim men would be jumping for joy at not needing to be circumcised because Abraham had been circumcised and therefore none of them would be born with foreskins.

From the PBS documentary, the Dover Creationists did not seem to have gotten to "Thou shalt not lie, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not kill."  Apparently, they weren't able to make it out of Genesis to Exodus.

From their behavior, their code of beliefs seems to be: Believe what I believe or I will beat you up.  Verily I say unto you, Might Makes Right is the same 'god' that you can see worshiped in any Jane Goodall chimpanzee documentary;  it doesn't matter if you call yourself, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, animist or Druid.  Primate researchers have documented that even chimpanzees have a better code of ethics than that.  I want to know why all these people who claim no relationship to the rest of the animal kingdom are the ones most likely to prove the point of the evolutionists by their actions.  If you want to prove you are better than the animals, THEN ACT LIKE IT.

Many Creationists seem to have no understanding of symbolic language.  The book of Daniel is full of 'weeks' where the days represent years.  Even then, the numbers don't add up.  I guess a lot of Creationists don't get that far.

Take this concept back to Genesis, the sun isn't created until the 4th day.  How are they measuring the days without the sun?  Most of the time, the greatest theological question I want answered is why the Good Lord didn't quit on day 5 when he was ahead of the game.  He already thought it was a bad idea at least once if you believe Noah and the Flood.

This situation puts me in mind of the old joke. "God, to whom a million dollars is a penny and a million years is as a second, give me a penny.  In a minute."  My faults are legion, but demanding that God punch a time clock for my benefit is not one of them.

The Creation story is intended to teach the concept that God created everything to small children.  It is not a text on higher mathematics.  I can picture Fanny Brice or Lilly Tomlin getting a great skit for Baby Snooks or Edith Ann getting sidetracked on the big numbers and long periods of time out of a factual rendition of the Creation.

A mangled literal interpretation of the Bible kept St. Augustine from converting to Christianity way back in the 4th century and his mother was St. Monica.  He was told that Christians believed that God was this really big person floating in space somewhere.  Even 5 year olds have more sense than that. (Mr. God, This is Me, Anna)

In conclusion, I refuse to allow my faith to be terrorized by the functionally illiterate.

[magdaleneswift-blog]

Catholic Schools Explain Catholicsm

Dear Bishop:

I have been trying to figure out for years exactly why people send their children to Catholic School.  The evidence seems very confusing.  

First it is necessary to realize that in the small Midwestern town that I grew up in, the only Catholic School available was a boarding school for Native American students.  It was necessary to prove at least 1/8 Native American ancestry to get in.  (I'm 100% German.) I worked there when I was in high school.  Some of the children would come back to school after Thanksgiving vacation thankful to be back as no one at their homes were sober enough over the break to get them anything to eat.  So for those children, thank God, the school was available.

The only white person I knew growing up who went to Catholic school K-BS was my mother.  What I remember about my mother was her sense of wounded entitlement, her ability to lie, steal towels from hotels and drop kick a puppy out the front door.  She would tell us she loved us and spent most of the time we were growing up in another state; Thanks be to God.

I asked my father once why he married our mother.  He said that she had gone to Sister School and women who went to Sister School were supposed to be good mothers.  He said she didn’t even know how to change a diaper without sticking us with a pin.  I image his concept of Catholic School was a series of Home Economics and child development classes.  His own mother only went up to the 4th reader, but had many practical skills.

Then you have the Bart Simpson effect. My sister briefly dated a man who went to Catholic School because he was expelled from public school.

My next experience with Catholic School graduates was my ex-husband; the two hundred pound parasite.  We went to mass for several years at the same, yet he would continually ask me what time the service was.  He found his Catholic School experience woefully inadequate in STEM subjects and he had found himself way behind when he went to high school.  I asked his mother once why they had sent their children to Catholic School.  She said she regretted it and would not do so is she had to live her life over.

The college girl my sister rented a room to had gone to Catholic School.  She was mostly puzzled as to why her parents wanted to pay so much money for what she considered a stripped down education.

My current husband, ex Roman Rite altar boy, Catholic School K-12 is agnostic and ignorant of the most basic parts of the faith and bible.  He hadn't realized that we don't say the Gloria during Lent.  He does participate in our parish as I am interested in my faith.  I find this very common among the Catholic School graduates I have worked with since moving to the east coast after graduation.  I find most of them theologically ignorant and mostly anti Catholic.  I hear a lot of stories of Catholic School teacher behavior that would get a public school teacher drummed out of town.  A common consensus seems to be that the purpose of a Catholic School education was to try to instill fear of the church hierarchy.

I never considered Catholic School for my children as the reputed lock step requirements would not be suitable for special needs children or my conscientious objector and that services for special needs children would be less available than at public school.

Previously from local reports, the purpose of sending your child to a Catholic School had less to do with the education and more to do with the fear that sending a child to Public school might result in their child having to sit next to a nigger.  The recent ads for Catholic schools in the church bulletin would seem to reinforce this belief. All the children shown were white. I consider this attitude a great evil that should be eliminated.

I hear the latest is for wealthy Chinese to send their children to Catholic Schools.  Would they even be allowed to practice Christianity if they went back to China?  Also with the reports of corruption, how are the parents making their money in a communist country?

One of my coworkers is growing rapidly disillusioned by the local school.  She is amazed how her child blossomed after he left and wishes she had pulled him out years ago. She talks of one family struggling economically having to drop out and that no one in the school offered to help them at all.  She talks of how her children's ex-friends from Catholic School would jeer her child and call him loser after she left.  If that is the example of Christian charity taught at Catholic School, they would be better off raised Buddhist.

[magdaleneswift-blog]

RE: Gender roles in the new economy

I had many thoughts on the New York Time Magazine 9/3/12 article on changing gender roles in the new economy.  Here are my two cents from a Roman Catholic female civil engineer from SD who had Edith Bunker from All in the Family as a hero growing up.  Agree or disagree, I think the pastor in the article could get at least a half dozen sermons from this letter.

These role reversals are not as new to the economy as you seem to think.  The beginnings of feminism started in the "wild west" of the gold rush days when women were the legal property of their husbands.  The 'ADD' husbands would pack up families to strike it rich in the west and it was often up to the women to make things work. (RE Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman)  It seems that more than one male pioneer was surprised that manna did not fall from heaven.  Men would travel miles to buy a loaf of bread "baked by a woman" at $5 a loaf.  It was the western states that first gave women the right to vote for these reasons.  (The fact that the Wyoming bill granting women the right to vote was 'lost' between the legislature and the Governor's office is another story altogether.)

On the husband who told his wife to either drop out of college or he would not marry her.  I'm glad that it worked out for them, but I would advise any young woman told the same thing today that she would be much better off dropping the boyfriend.  Partners who try to emotionally blackmail their significant others in that manner are often abusive.

My ex-husband had a Masters degree in education, yet never did get around to getting a teaching position.  I was always the sole source of income for both my children from before they were born.  He was the one who stayed home with the children full time.  As long as he was providing for his children in that manner, I did not mind 'differing' to him.  It was when he stopped to 'open a hobby' store that produced negative income, caused our children to be neglected, and left me with two full time jobs, that I reduced my work load in half and my stress level by 3/4 by moving out and becoming a single parent.  Unable to care for himself, he was dead within three years.

(I found Father's sermon on God drop kicking you out of your complacency and periodically providing 'excitement' in your life non-applicable.  My two year old daughter spent the service trying to scale the holy water fount, while I was worried about my ex going postal or giving me a custody battle and my new job.  I told Father I had more than enough excitement in my life, thank you very much.)

I asked my current husband who he thought was head of our household.  He said that he didn't think that applied to our family.  He thinks we defer to each other based on who has the better skills in the area under question.  That was also often the case when he was aboard ship in the navy. A single person in charge structure is really not as common as thought either in human or animal societies.  It seems more a 'male ego' fairy tale than reality.  Herd societies are more often democratic.  The herd heads to water when the majority of the herd gets thirsty, often leaving the head stallion wondering where everyone went.  I remember driving cattle from one pasture to another while growing up on a farm.  The bulls would stand in the gate, blocking the cows from going from their territory to another bulls.  We had to bring the dog to help drive.  The cows were not about to defer to the bulls when that 'wolf' thing' was barking at them and pushed the bulls aside.  Once past the gate, the cows led the way back to the home pasture.  Primate groups normally have a titular alpha male, as long as he puts the welfare of the group above his own.  A bully is only tolerated for a short time before the rest of the group gangs up on him and beats sense into him.  Another alpha male is then chosen.  

In human society, archeologists have determined that early societies gave equal status to both men and women until men figured out they had a part to play in the reproductive process.  Then they decided they were better than the women.  The leadership classes I have taken show that the big executive top down structure is not the best.  The best is usually someone coming up from the ranks who rely on the expertise of the entire group.  This is often a more 'feminine' group structure. (I found out that my employers were often paying large fees for information that most people could get for free by going to church if they bother to pay attention.)

It is more comforting to have the paternalistic employer in a company town.  Human history is full of the divine king who can magically take care of his people.  It is often frightening to think of the ruler as just another human being and democracy is a great deal more work.  You can find religious parallels with the Protestant Reformation and the declining percentage of people who believe in God.  Many 'believers' miss the point that religion isn't a magic formula to wealth.  I am sorry to say that my faith is more Jeffersonian in that I recognize that religion is often a 'magic feather' that allows those that can fly by themselves the illusion of a safety net.  I also recognize that religious faith often does result in material wealth, as even the Communist Chinese acknowledged, not because that God rewards you for your belief, but that the basic tenant of at least Christianity and most of the other major religions stress that to look to the welfare of your neighbor above that of yourself is holy.  This stability benefits all and allows for wealth to accumulate.  Sin does not hurt me.  All of the Ten Commandments are harm to your neighbor. If I have the time scales right, Buddhism was the first 'religion' (It has no deity and is therefore more a philosophy.) to result in a massive population jump.  I don't think we can count the animal sacrifices leading to the discovery of soap and that subsequent population jump as religious.  Note that both must be properly applied to work.

The true believers also need to recognize that faith is a gift from God and that agnostics and atheists aren't evil people thumbing their noses at God.  I think most agnostics and atheists would be the first to agree that they would be happier if they could believe in God.  (See last week's New York Times Magazine's Article on the Agnostics.) You will not be effective missionaries if you don't recognize that and scream at them for their 'wrong doing.'  (I find religious debates with Jehovah Witness entertaining, they so seldom think through their beliefs.  My husband entertains himself by harassing telemarketers.  My daughter entertains herself harassing televangelists.  "The Bible says …"  "No, it doesn't."  "You READ the Bible?!"  Yes.  Unfortunately, I am pretty sure she doesn't believe in God. )

I can relate to the English teacher in the article re-reading the Bible with new interpretations.  I cannot understand the Protestant horror of the annotated Catholic Bible.  A lot of the meaning in the politically driven (and most beautiful) King James translation is lost without the translators' notes.  I am frightened by what I see as Biblical interpretations by the functionally illiterate.  Some of the most bizarre are that the Bible says that men have two less ribs than women.  No, it doesn't.  The Bible is not Rudyard Kipling's "Just So Stories."  The Bible says that God removed ONE rib from ONE man ONCE.  For all men to be short two ribs is NOT how the world works or a lot a Jewish and Muslim men would be jumping for joy at not having to be circumcised.  My father would have been pleased not to have to dehorn cattle every year either.

The movie, Master and Commander, the Far Side of the World is another example.  To the sailor's, the book of Jonah is all about bad luck and God punishing Jonah and sinners.  It is not.  Jonah was singing for joy at being safely in the belly of the whale and given a second chance after disobeying a direct order and doing the opposite of what God wanted.  It is also about God's forgiveness.  It is mankind that is unforgiving in the story. The story is funny and my 16 year old daughter loves to have me read it to her and laugh her head off.  The officer in question was a Jonah, not because of his bringing the crew bad luck, but in his sacrificing himself for what he thought was the good of the ship.  The Captain's eulogy at his funeral was straight from the ending of Job.

The husband at the gate mentioned in the article, is NOT goofing off with his friends.  The elders at the gate are the JUDGES and witnesses (notaries), see the book of Ruth.  Note that is a group, not one magic individual dispensing wisdom and justice, though they are probably too old for hard physical work.  I think the book of Judges has women as well as men as judges.  With death in child birth, I think that women were not as statistically likely to live to be old enough to be judges.

This passage is also about men wise enough to be judges being wise enough to pick good wives.  In that regard, it is the wisdom of the wife conferring status on her husband.  Not once is the physical beauty of the wife praised.

It is a big difference in stay at home mothers who stay home for the 'silk pillows' of one the first feminist detractors, so they can goof off, get their hair done and let their husbands do all the work and the farm wives who are equal business partners with their husbands, the PTA presidents, volunteers, artisans, church pastors, and community leaders, etc.

The incidence of domestic violence usually goes up during economic downturns as men try to 'prove they are men' by beating up their wives.  The real men are those who put themselves at risk to protect their wives and children.  I would ask the mother who wants her daughter to find a boyfriend and settle down in order to get protection, who it is that she thinks her daughter needs protection from?  No doubt it would be irresponsible men.  The New York Times recently did an article on the economic and emotional benefits of two parent versus one person households.  A crucial factor was the number of "marriageable" men; i.e. those who would be responsible for their offspring.  I would like to know how many of the young men her daughter knows who are happy to spend their twenties hanging with their friends in the parking lots she considers marriageable.  If Mom is worried about the physical safety of her daughter she would be better off enrolling her daughter in a self defense and/or gun class than trusting to the maturity/mental stability of a random young man.

(The gun class may not even be necessary.  I heard of one study that determined an enraged woman with no firearms training can put 6 shots in a six inch diameter area at 20 paces.  The marines in the South Pacific during WWII trained both men and women to defend their islands from the Japanese.  The men, male dominance mode, broke and ran.  The women, protect my children mode' held, fought, and won.  The alpha gorilla or chimpanzee does not even think of messing with the mothers or using the juveniles as shields in dominance battles.  The females will drive them out of the group.)

Note to all you he men, taking care of a family is not limited to taking up arms or bringing home a paycheck.  Sometimes taking care of a family is Hank from King of the Hill or Tommy Lee Jones in Man of the House going down the dreaded "Aisle 13" in the grocery store to take care of a teen age girl having her first period or shopping for a group of co-eds who can't leave their witness protection house.  Or "Major Dad" learning how to do a mean French Braid or Archie Bunker buying a Star of David for his orphaned Jewish niece.  The feminists could have a field day with two adult males being needed to replace one dead mother in Full House.  It could also be Franc filling in for Steve Martin in "Father of the Bride Part 2" doing prenatal aerobics.  It was the father though who stayed with both during the time of delivery.  (Ladies, if you go by James Herriot of All Creatures fame, it is a smaller percentage of men who can handle this.  You may be better off with a less squeamish substitute, traditionally more often female.)

One study of what women really want showed that; forget the washboard abs, handsome face, huge arms or other physical attributes, showed that women pick the men who are best with children.  The study showed they are right the majority of the time.

How much of the angst the men in the article were going through related to the stress on their families and how much what the other men would think of them if they moved into feminine positions?  Men often seem more concerned with their ranking among their male peers and their social status than their family status. The serial killer in most criminal shows is often the middle aged white male with the sense of wounded entitlement.  The best parable I have seen is the book, "Who Moved My Cheese?" It was enjoyed by both my children and my mother recovering from a broken hip in the nursing home. I have seen more men who are Hems and Haws than women. They more often concentrate on what they are losing rather than looking for new opportunities.  Maybe it is just that they more often have more to lose.  I think I am less likely to look for a position paying less than I make now than my husband is who has always made less than I have in the time that I have known him. I think we should all consider how this relates to the new global economy.

It could be similar to the statement about the women in the town shutting the men out of the last paying positions.  At the last Women in Business luncheon I went to, only one other woman at the table wasn't in a banking position.  So much for women not being good in math.  I can also see the women preferring not to have to deal with the male ego at work.  My college agricultural engineering classes and the last ASABE magazine issue I last read dealt with the need to design around the male ego when working for the Peace Corp.  A fully automated system will be confiscated by the men, leaving the women to starve.  Manually steps must be left in place in order to provide a means of survival for widows and single mothers.

Even in the 50's though, my cousin the nurse, said that male nurses were preferred by the patients on the prostate ward.

Women moving to the cities is a nationwide trend as they look for more opportunity.  It is the rural areas in which single men outnumber the single women.

[magdaleneswift-blog]

Dr. Brennan shows bad anthropologist

CBS - Bones - Bad anthropologist

Dear Dr. Brennan:

I find your character to be a very poor anthropologist as you are very anti-religion.  I believe it is your focus on bones rather than history.  The historical record shows the importance of the major monotheistic and even the pagan religions to the well being of humanity.

Good anthropologists respect others beliefs, not make fun of them.

The pagan animal sacrifices gave us soap.

The monotheistic religions allowed us to live together peacefully in large groups.  The archeological record shows a massive jump in population from Buddhism and Christianity.  Christianity stresses the importance of humanity both individually and in groups. (I will admit that not all so called Christians behave that way.)

Your character acknowledges the positive impact of religion on the character of your husband.  Do you want your child to emulate your husband's behavior?

Your character's upbringing did not involve religion and your character suffered because of it.

As a scientist, you assume that the universe is knowable.  This implies a consciousness behind the universe. As an engineer, I see science as reinforcing my belief in God, not the other way around.

Attendance of church is like attendance at school. People often say they felt forced to go to church when they were children.  They also feel forced to go to school growing up.  Yet how many of them want to further their education? How many believe that school has no value for their children?

You have heard of the book, "All I Needed To Know, I Learned In Kindergarten."  I find the really important lessons, the ones learned in the church and Bible.  When I moved here, the company I was with paid over $1000 dollars for a Dale Carnegie class and the one where I work did the same for a "Leadership Pocono" class.  I found that a lot of the base of both was stuff you can learn for free going to church if you bother to pay attention.  Both classes stressed the importance of thinking of the group or others before yourself.

Giving something up for Lent fosters discipline.  What substitute do you provide your children to learn the self discipline that will help them survive in adulthood?  Our youth director's wife is in charge of a college ministry.  She often has parents come to her wanting her to force their children to continue to go to Church during college. The truth is that the students who do attend religious services during college are at the lowest risk for suicide and other dangers during college.  The Church comes with a built in support system.

It is a frightening fact that psychopaths kill because they lack fear of repercussions.  Lack of religious belief with no fear of consequences increases poor behavior.

It is faith that adds the element of love or heart to the duty or Macheavellian scheming or rule following of good behavior.  It is faith that can turn duty to joy.  It teaches forward thinking rather than simple rule following.  Temple Gradin in her books on animal welfare talks how she HATES rules.  She often found that people would fixate on the rules while becoming blind to the goals the rules are trying to enforce.  She talks of the horrors of slaughterhouses where animals are needlessly suffering while the employees fixate on the water spilled on the floor because that was in the code book.

[magdaleneswift-blog]

THE KNIGHTS OF COLUMBUS EXPLAIN INSURANCE TO WOMEN

Our local Knights are wonderful; always willing to help and respectful.  The National Knights have at least two ladies auxiliaries.  When our local Knight’s chapter first started in the 50’s, one of the first things they asked was if they could start a ladies auxiliary.  The national Knights, rather than mentioning either of the ladies auxiliaries, sent back a letter saying that they could start a ladies’ auxiliary if they really had to;  nothing about either ladies group then in existence.  I have yet to see any mention of either ladies auxiliary in the Columbia.  Some Knights chapters when a ladies auxiliary is mentioned have said that they should be banned because the only function of women is to be subservient to their husbands.  Verily I say unto thee, thy dick is NOT my god.

Director of Policy Knights of Columbus Insurance P.O. Box 1492 New Haven, CT 06506-1492

RE:  Sexist Insurance Policy Endangering Catholic Families and Company's Bottom Line

Dear Sir or Madam:

I have had three Knights of Columbus Insurance Policies for approximately 20 years, have funds, and am unable to obtain additional insurance policies as we are the wrong gender.  My previous letter resulted in a letter saying sorry for my ‘loss’ and my existing policies are up to date.  That was NOT the point at all.

If I join a ladies auxillary, am I able to purchase insurance for myself and my daughter without the need of being 'sponsored' by an 'adult' male?  Would my daughter be able to buy insurance if she joined?

Around the time our son was born, my ex-husband joined the Knights of Columbus.  We purchased policies for all three of us.  As far as I am aware, that was the limit of his involvement with the Knights.  I was impressed with the quality of the insurance and the history of the organization.  I wished to encourage a quasi Catholic Organization that was founded to promote the goal of protecting each other.

I was always the sole economic support of our family from before the time our children were born.  My ex husband, with a Masters degree in education, never did seem to get around to finding a teaching or other position, so he was the one to stay home with our two children.  This was an acceptable arrangement until he decided to open a hobby store that produced negative income and usurped nearly all the time he had for taking care of two preschoolers.

Unable to do the work of three people, take care of three children (The 50 year old generated the most amount of work) and support two children, a husband, and a hobby store, I moved out.  This allowed me to cut out a 45 minute one way commute while moving the least amount of possessions.  Being a single parent reduced my work load in half and my stress level by 3/4.  It also greatly improved the security of my finances; reducing the potential liability resulting from his haphazard book keeping and his expenses.

As part of the divorce decree, my ex signed over my policy and my two children's policies to my possession.  He was supposed to purchase a term policy and pay child support.  One year he paid enough support to fund the children's allowances ($100) and he never did get the policy.  I have diligently been paying my policies ever since.  I would have paid his policy if I had been given the opportunity as he was a heart attack waiting to happen.  He was dead within three years of my moving out as he was unable to survive on his own.  I got nothing from the Knights, but did get SSI survivor benefits from the federal government.

I have continued to be active in the Church, going to weekly Mass, singing in the choir, and signing my children up for CCD.  I had my autistic spectrum son join the Knights  I took advantage of my son's membership to re-evaluate my life insurance status.  My son blew his college savings by skipping his classes to play video games all day on campus.  He is broke and living at home.  My daughter still is eligible for SSI. She also has her act together is more likely to be employed than my son.

I was hoping that the Knights would have better saving opportunities than the current 0.4% CDs.  What I found out is that it is irrelevant as my daughter and I are the wrong gender and therefore ineligible.  The local agent seemed rather embarrassed by the policy. I have yet to receive an answer if my joining an auxillary makes me eligible for insurance.  

With the recent economic downturn, it has become much more a women's economy as more men lost their jobs and the women's skills were more transferrable.  More and more households are being supported exclusively by women.  And yes, if I lost my job, my household would be destitute.  If my husband lost his job, the worst effect would be dealing with a cranky, bored male.

Your current policy therefore fails your mandate to provide for Catholic families, is designed to ensure the Catholic Church becomes increasingly irrelevant and has got to be harmful to your bottom line from a business perspective, all to promote the myth that a man is important simply by breathing.

In a litigious frame of mind,

I finally found out – No, joining one of the Knight’s ladies auxiliaries does not allow you to be eligible for insurance.  Nor did having my son join the Knights make either myself or my daughter eligible for insurance. To the National Knights a woman only has value as a subsidiary appendage to an adult male.

The Knight’s claim that they mission is to protect the most vulnerable of Catholic families is a bald faced lie.

[magdaleneswift-blog]

CELIBATE OLD MEN EXPLAIN SEX TO THE WORLD.

The vatican documents on sex are all about love and being a symbol of God’s love for humanity.  Bull – With their protection of the pedophiles and endorsement of the rape culture, their actions show what they really mean the purpose of sex is – It is the best way to declare war on another human being and make sure to do the maximum amount of damage possible.  My experience of sex after two marriages are that it has NOTHING to do with love and men see it only as a means of domination.

MEN HATE SEX

Through the years of my life I have noted that men really hate sex and go to elaborate and continuous efforts to avoid it as much as possible while pretending the opposite.  After 40+ years of live I am no longer under the illusion that sex is about love, affection, comfort, support, reassurance, or even carnal desire.  It is purely a male power trip or adrenalin rush.

AVOIDANCE TECHNIQUES AND EVIDENCE

The following are some of the more common methods men use to avoid sex while pretending the opposite.

PORN

I can think of no other activity that is LESS likely to result in long term physical contact with another adult person of the appropriate gender.  Porn is nearly always watched by oneself shut up in a closed room.  Most of the public mock priests for choosing celibacy to devote their lives to God and the time they spend gazing in adoration at the holy presence or sacred writings contemplating the love of God.  Porn watchers spend hours gazing in adoration at CRT screens or color photos.  I don't know what they can be contemplating other than the space between their ears or the space between their legs.  It is pretty much guaranteed that neither is seeing much use. One of porn's saving graces is that as its disciples lock themselves away from the general public for long periods of time, they normally avoid annoying the rest of us, except for the occasional crusade against censorship.  These usually wind up resulting in the promotion of celibacy. That is porn's second saving grace.  The discussion and/or content of it completely turns off most women; making celibacy seem incredibly attractive.  The old copy of Playboy my ex kept to read the fighter plane articles was enough to bring me out of the mood in minutes. I just spent time in a hotel where I couldn't sleep at 3:00 am.  I went down to the lobby to read to avoid waking the rest of the family.  I used the public computer to read my e-mail.  The previous user had left about a dozen porn pages up that I had to shut down to get to the e-mail program.  Most of the images looked at women as objects to hurt or humiliate.  When I got up, I noticed the seat was soaking wet.  I was afraid to think what it could be.  The hotel manager said the person had sat down with sopping wet clothes. The female equivalent, the 'Cinderella/vampire Romance' in which the love and attraction is for one partner for life/eternity either bores most men or causes them to flee in terror.  The exception seems to be if they are looking for someone to volunteer to do their laundry.

MASTURBATION

A related technique is masturbation.  Again, the point is to spend as much time as possible away from members of the opposite sex.  It also warps your outlook such that when you do find a partner, they are only seen as extensions of a dick.  That is the truth to the priests saying that masturbation causes blindness.  It has nothing to do with a need for an optometrist.  It has to do with allowing your lower head to control how you see the world.  You have to admit the view down there is pretty limited. (Note to religious fundamentalists:  Truth does not always need to be literal to be true and often becomes ridiculous when interpreted that way. See St. Augustine's Confession Book 11 Chapter 20)) Masturbation also leads to the perception that the penis is all.  Men are often so fixated on these few square inches of skin, that when it fails them, they are left with nothing. Some men become so conditioned on masturbation that they can't function any other way. I can't imagine any woman's dream partner is some putz who can only relate to his right hand. Again it does have the saving grace to partially clear you head to allow you to separate true feelings from hormones.  Mostly I just found it depressing to think I had flushed my life and my children's lives down the toilet for the small benefit of the physical sensation.

REALLY 'IMPORTANT' TASKS THAT HAVE TO BE DONE DURING LIMITED TIME ALONE WITH SPOUSE

Men always say they are interested in sex during dating and they are good for maybe a month or two after marriage.  After that, they start trying to avoid it and come up with the most transparent excuses, especially after children when couple time is limited. My ex said he had to read computer magazines for half an hour to get in the mood.  This was before children.  Also, it was absolutely vital to spend hours cataloging screen savers. He also often 'had to wait for a BM.' I swear he spent half his life on the toilet.  He must have heard the study that said the most fool proof way of avoiding rape was evacuating your bowels.  This is supposedly such a turn off that most rapists will leave. To all those naysayers, I used to have an excellent figure, but gave up trying to get any response from initiating interest in my 20's.  I even told him that I was going to stop annoying him as it was too humiliating to be always brushed off.  I remember years later, during one of the few times he was interested in sex.  After we finished, he said, "Wow! Why don't we do this more often?"  I remember lying there thinking "I've been wondering that for years, but if I say a word he will never want sex again." He also said the unconditional love was wonderful, but chose celibacy to devote his life to little pieces of cardboard:  Pokémon, Magic the Gathering, Star Trek, Pong, etc." (Just how much lead do they put in the ink on those cards?)  I mean get real, what is unconditional love when you can have little pieces of card board.  On the plus side, it does give new meaning when considering the unconditional love of our Savior, what he chose to go through, and the trash we choose rather than him. With husband number 2, it is the fish tank that can only be changed during the short time we have to be alone.  Or worse, when it he would literally RUN out the door, including the time right before I was going to leave to make an emergency trip cross country to care for my mother's cancer and move her to our town. Of course, once I was gone for over a week, he is on the phone insisting he wants me to abandon my mother to come home because HE is horny.  He wondered why I was upset when I got home.

SMOKING AND OTHER HEALTH SABOTAGE.

This is another extreme measure men use to avoid sex.  Their systems functions with basic hydraulics.  Smoking and obesity both clog the pipes and interfere with the function of the system.  Based on experience, they are only functional until about 35 anyway.  I assume 30 if they choose to smoke.  They must really hate sex in order to sabotage their health this way to avoid it.

THE QUICKIE

Also known as "Let's get this onerous activity over as soon as possible."  This most often happens when they wake up in the morning with an erection.  (I think they are shocked when their equipment works.)  Of course this only happens when you have to hurry to get to work on time and they have the day off.  It never happens on a weekend when you have time.  It is one of the sadistic games they like to play.  Believe me; we get the message in a hurry.

YENTL - EXHAUSTION

The corollary to this is to keep you working non-stop so you drop from exhaustion.  Barbara Streisand made this technique famous in the movie "Yentl".  She was a woman pretending to be a man so she could go to school.  She got railroaded into marrying another woman and was trying to find ways to avoid sex and not blow her cover.

CONTINUOUS DISCUSSION OF SUBJECT

My ex always used to say that the easiest way to tell if high school boys were having sex was to listen to how often they talked about it.  As he said, "If you are doing, you don't need to talk about it."  I would agree.  Based on this premise, there are a lot of celibate people in this world.   Unfortunately, it gives the impression when you are dating that they ARE interested in a physical relationship.  This is a second sadistic game men like to play. A good test is to ask for help with housework while dating.  If they flee, dump them ASAP.  They aren't worth the bother and celibacy is better.  If they agree and show signs of wanting to help out long term, latch onto them, it doesn't matter WHAT they look like.  This is the female version of the old male advice.  "Cooking lasts.  Kissing don't."

FASHION

Men also try to get out of sex by perpetuating the myth you have to wear sexy clothes.  I tried that. The only reaction I got was contact dermatitis from the synthetic material.  They are all designed to be as uncomfortable and impractical as possible to add injury to insult.  My ex always used to say that women's clothes are designed by gay men who hate women and want to make them suffer as much as possible.  This has been well documented since at least the 40's.  My aunt had a book from around that time frame called "The Hussy's Handbook."  It asked the question "Why would women want to look ridiculous by wearing a hat that looked like a pair of mittens?"   I find the ones who design the patent leather shoes for little girls the most frightening.  Those shoes have soles as slippery as ice.  Wearing them is a threat to life and limb.  Their designers must want to kill girls off before they have the chance to reach sexual maturity. Mostly, I think men just get off on seeing how ridiculous they can make women look.  They will then sometimes flaunt this by taking you out to dinner to show you off.  This does what is really important to them; impress the other guys.  You can't do anything in a public restaurant.  Going to a hotel with a spouse does absolutely nothing.

PREGNANCY & BIRTH CONTROL

It is often hypothesized that men are frightened of fatherhood and pregnancy.  The truth is that they look forward to it as a way of avoiding sex.  My ex used it as a tacit excuse to avoid sex for nine months.  Of course that was about how often he was interested anyway.  It never dawned on me that hoping for maybe once a month qualified me as a nymphomaniac. When my ex and I first became a couple, I assumed part of his lack of interest was fear of pregnancy.  I offered to go to a doctor for birth control, but he said he didn't want me destabilizing my body chemistry for something that happened so infrequently.  I didn't dare touch that statement. With husband number two, I tried the ring.  It worked beyond his wildest dreams.  He said it changed my scent and he lost all interest in sex.  I could only stand it a week anyway, as I reacted to it and had to put up with the soreness as well as the celibacy.  I just read a study confirming this.  Male lemurs loose all sexual interest in female lemurs on birth control. I also tried natural family planning.  I gave that up after a few months as well.  He was never interested in finding out when the safe times were anyway.  Also guess the only time he showed the slightest interest? The saddest part to all of this is the feminine myth that a baby will make a man want to stick around forever.  Some of the worst are the Harlequin Romances.  Too often the males are actually looking at pregnancy as an excuse to avoid any kind of long term relationship.  At least one study says male abandonment is the number one reason for abortions.  At least one male African American sex education instructor spoke out against this practice saying the men in the community needed "to stop walking away from their children as if they had had a bowel movement."  The real African (not American) men I have heard put a priority on providing for their children.  The walking away was a dehumanizing technique started by the slavers looking for justification for their genocidal behavior.  Getting a woman pregnant and then walking away is NOT the action of a man, but of a two year old with a hormone problem. Remember, a wedding ring is part of a WITNESSED promise (legal contract) to stick around and provide for any children of the woman.  Ladies - Don't believe anything else.  Even if the men still don't intend to follow through, you at least have some legal recourse.  Celibacy is a small price to pay for the security of your children. Some of these men may even believe what they say themselves; until they find out there is work involved. I have heard that the Islamic version of heaven is supposed to be several virgins.  This makes absolutely no sense.  I suppose a woman in this heaven could form a dancing group for entertainment. What would the men do?  The virgins wouldn't be virgins in a short period of time.  What would the man do after that? Flee for all eternity from several wives or try to provide for an infinite number of children?  In any case, if this is your incentive, are you worshipping God or your dick?

WHAT THEY REALLY ARE AFTER IMPRESS OTHER MEN

Don't let them kid you.  Sex to men is only a way to impress other men.  They swear up and down they aren't gay, but the only time they are interested in sex is when they are around other men.  My ex would swear he wasn't gay, and then make life choices such that he spent all of his time with adolescent males. The best example of this was one of my coworkers.  He was loudly proclaiming at the office Christmas party that he wanted to go home and sleep with his wife.  With that kind of behavior, it was obvious he wouldn't have even thought of sex if the other guys weren't there.  Since his wife was there, he was also obviously trying to get out of sex for another year.  Publically embarrassing your wife is one of the best methods to do so.  It didn't help that their children and other co-worker's children were there. Unfortunately for him, it may have backfired.  I have been in the position of having sex with someone I totally despise because I was that tired of celibacy.  It is not an experience I would ever want to repeat. If you watch the nature chimpanzee documentaries you can see this often, as part of the male dominance battle, the male ends by having sex with a female.  He apparently isn't interested in the female except as a minor prop for the contest with the other males. Growing up around cattle, it soon becomes apparent that all herd animals have homo sexual tendencies.  Human beings are herd animals.  My own crack pot hypothesis is that it is necessary for civilization as it allows men to tolerate each other long enough to build something.  The female version in primates is a survival technique to promote bonding to avoid getting beaten up by the inferior males.

POWER TRIP

The above reminds me of one of my daughter's favorite stories.  It also relates to the "The more they talk, they less they do" hypothesis.  My daughter is big into the Warrior Cats series.  In this series, the cats are intelligent and live in human social structures.  One fierce cat was called "Scourge."  He was a house pet turned feral and took over a large urban territory.  In one scene, he is being run down by a pack of dogs.  They surround him and tell him, "Run." He stands his ground and tells them, "No."  The graphics on the dogs immediately changes from threatening to confused and upset.  They say, "Please?"  They have absolutely no idea what to do with a cat if it isn't running away.   Men are often like that.  They are either into the challenge of the hunt itself, or get off on the power trip of making women afraid or insecure.  You can see this nearly every day.  A car of young men will drive by and you will see them emulate Marley, the dog.  They roll down the window and bark something stupid; thereby disturbing the peace and announcing to everyone in a one block radius that they have no intention of getting within 100' of a woman.  This also announces that they prefer the company of their male palls to a woman. A male health class lecturer when I was in high school confirmed this.  He said that the last thing these guys wanted was sex.  He said he wished he was a girl in those cases.  He would run up to car and say, "Sure, let's go", just to see how fast they can run away. (Note:  Don't try this for real.  You can find a real nut case ready to cause you grievous injury.) This attitude, taken to the extreme, is rape.  This isn't sex.  It is open war fare.  It makes you wonder what kind of men can hate women enough to do this.  The socially acceptable consequence of perpetrating rape is to be locked up for long periods of time with other men.  That must be their ultimate goal. Thankfully, I have never had to deal with a rapist.  I have thought though, that my daughter's hero may be on to something.  It might work to stare them down.  Look at them like they have a screw loose.  Shrug.  Ask them if they are allergic to the really strong antibiotics and head toward them.  I wouldn't be surprised if they would run so fast they would knock themselves cold on the nearest fixed object. The man who kidnapped the woman for several years and thought he was treating her well was not only on a power trip, he was also about 900 years out of date.  The kidnapped bride was outlawed under English law in the 1100's.  The right of ownership of any woman you could catch was part of many Native American cultures.  It may still exist in some cultures around the world.  In this country, women were the legal property of their husbands until the 1900's.  Go to any courthouse and read all the land deeds that include "To Have and to Hold."  This is a legal phrase dealing with property transference.

ADRENALINE RUSH

The Ancient Greeks had a god for this.  Eros (Sexual Passion) was the son of Ares (War) and Aphrodite (Love).  It is a well known biological fact that terror triggers a drive to reproduce before you die. "There is no passion like that snatched from beneath the blade of a sword."  I think this is why a lot of men lose interest in sex after they are married.  Once they realize their partner isn't going to try to kill them, the drive is gone. Note: If you know that what you really want is only the adrenaline rush; TAKE UP BUNGEE JUMPING!.  It is safer and causes less damage. This also relates to the teenage girl vampire fantasy.  With a vampire you get both the eternal love and the adrenaline rush from potential death.  I just pray they grow out of this BEFORE they have a baby. Also note: the search for eternal love is one reason women tend to be more interested in religion than men.  The reason the first 'Mormons' practiced polygamy was the fact that they had several women for every man and they insisted their fellow church members share. George Bernard Shaw's version was, "Women would rather share a good man, than have all of a poor one."  It works for gorillas anyway.  (See PBS - Nature - The Gorilla King)

COLLECTING

You also get the opposite; men who seem to want to have sex with as many different women as possible.  Various books talk about the inferiority complex of men like this.  It may be just me, but this seems more like stamp collecting than sex.

AVOIDANCE OF HOUSE HOLD CHORES

This is the flip side to the Yentl approach.  Leave the women to do all the work as avoiding cleaning is much more important than sex. One of the great mysteries of the universe:  Why is the gender that spends the most time staring at a toilet bowl, the one that is the least likely to clean it?  From women who have to clean up after them:  The aim and eyesight of a lot of them are so bad; the thought of male fascination with weapons and live ammunition is doubly frightening.  Is this part of the army physical? Girls you may want to watch this one.  If they can't control this day to day function, don't believe it if they say, "Don't worry, I can pull out in time."  Men and women both have a great potential for self delusion. I told my son.  "Watch where you aim that thing.  You can kill someone with it."

SHORT OF ENTERTAINMENT

Sometimes men don't want sex, they just can't think of anything else to do.  That at least was the one "Rescue 911" episode.  The man broke into the woman's house and asked for sex because he was bored and couldn't think of anything else to do.

WHY? BRAIN DAMAGE

According to Dr. Amen in his book about curing ADD, the SPECT brain scans of men show a great deal less activity in the area of awareness of emotions than women.  So ladies, they aren't always trying to feed you a line.  Apparently, most of them have no clue how they feel and what they want. He also hypothesizes that the rapid increase in autism spectrum cases is a result of the population bomb.  If you have no impulse control, you are going to have unprotected sex at an early age.  This results in a rapid reproduction of people with little education and no self control having lots of children. Their children will reach sexual maturity before the age of the children of people with self control; who postpone having children until they finish school and have stable employment. For survival of the species, women are biologically programmed to choose mates who will stick around for the twenty some years necessary to raise a child to maturity.  At least one study, showed women to be masters at choosing men by sight who are likely to do so.  The above brain study explains why men don't understand why women want to talk about relationships.  A large part is trying to gauge whether you are worth the effort.  Ladies you may want to forget the conversation and go by determining if they are trust worthy in other parts of everyday life.  Forget looks.  Go by ethics.  It is well known that women want church going men.  It is one indication the man is thinking about something other than 5 minutes of entertainment.  If they can't be believed for the little truths, how can they be trusted for the big ones?  "Don't worry.  I'm sterile and don't have HIV" It has also been proven that adolescents of both genders are like the HERO robot I programmed in college.  It was designed to have two batteries:  One for movement, the other for 'thinking.'  It was not uncommon for the 'thinking' battery to run down before the movement battery, causing the robot to take off in random directions.  The brain of a human adolescent has not matured to think more than 5 minutes ahead, leading too many of them to use the head between their legs for their thinking.   I haven't been able to able to understand why when men hit middle age; they want to return to this condition.

FEAR OF WOMEN

At least some psychological texts say at least some men are terrified of a woman's sexuality and what it does to them.  These men must really hate sex.  Apparently a lot of them must live in Middle Eastern nations. Some not only mutilate women's genitals out of fear of their sexuality, they have been known to wire them shut.  This also increases death in child birth and birth defects.

NON-FUNCTIONAL EQUIPMENT

Judging by the amount of e-mail I get for male enhancement medication, 99% of the men on this planet must have problems.  It is enough to make you wonder how we got to 6 billion people.  I have yet to see an ad for women having problems with sex. Incidentally, the male sexual enhancement pills work fine, much to my husband's dismay.  He told the doctor he was getting them because I wanted them.  After making a big deal of getting them, he refused to take them for nearly a week until I called his bluff when we knew the children would be out of the house.  I get the message and will not bother him again.

BIRTH CONTROL

This may be related to the fact that waste water treatment plants and apparently the natural water cycle do not filter out pharmaceuticals.  We have had over a generation of men drinking the birth control pills we invented to prevent pregnancy.  It seems they work better than expected.  Ironic if you realize they were invented to INCREASE sexual activity.

CONCLUSION

It seems the only women with realistic expectations of male sexuality are the nuns.

[magdaleneswift-blog]

THE CHURCH EXPLAINS TRANSGENDER AND HOMOSEXUALITY TO THE WORLD

Acts 8:26-40

From the English Standard Version (ESV) Philip and the Ethiopian Eunuch:

Now an angel of the Lord said to Philip, “Rise and go toward the south to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.” This is a desert place. And he rose and went. And there was an Ethiopian, a eunuch, a court official of Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, who was in charge of all her treasure. He had come to Jerusalem to worship  and was returning, seated in his chariot, and he was reading the prophet Isaiah.  And the Spirit said to Philip, “Go over and join this chariot.”  So Philip ran to him and heard him reading Isaiah the prophet and asked, “Do you understand what you are reading?”  And he said, “How can I, unless someone guides me?” And he invited Philip to come up and sit with him.  Now the passage of the Scripture that he was reading was this: “Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter    and like a lamb before its shearer is silent,    so he opens not his mouth.    In his humiliation justice was denied him.    Who can describe his generation?    For his life is taken away from the earth.” And the eunuch said to Philip, “About whom, I ask you, does the prophet say this, about himself or about someone else?”  Then Philip opened his mouth, and beginning with this Scripture he told him the good news about Jesus.  And as they were going along the road they came to some water, and the eunuch said, “See, here is water! What prevents me from being baptized?” And he commanded the chariot to stop, and they both went down into the water, Philip and the eunuch, and he baptized him. And when they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord carried Philip away, and the eunuch saw him no more, and went on his way rejoicing.  But Philip found himself at Azotus, and as he passed through he preached the gospel to all the towns until he came to Caesarea.

Under Hebrew law, a eunuch would not have been allowed to worship at the temple.  He would never have made it past the immersion baths and would have been sent to join the women and children.  They would have been as close to trans-gender as medical science was possible at the time.

What is God’s order to the Church?  Run after him.  As soon as the eunuch understands that he has the potential for full participation and welcome into the community he jumps for joy at the first chance he gets to be baptized.

The Bible says absolutely nothing about lesbianism.  In all primates, it is a survival trait to avoid being beaten up by the inferior males.  The inferior males hit.  The Old Testament has about 1 sentence on gay men.

So I would say I don’t understand the confusion.  The Church’s position on transgender and homosexuality is quite clear and joyfully fully welcomes them into the Church under direct orders from God.

Vatican Secretariat of State Palazzo Apostolico Vaticano Citta del Vaticano 00120

RE: Civil Unions – Tool to HELP families

Dear Catholic Politicians:

I created the first version of this letter over four years ago, when at mass, the church handed out a letter from the bishop instructing us to write our state senators concerning civil unions.  I had wanted to write such a letter for a long time and decided that since I was ordered it was a good time to do so.  I am updating this letter to correspond to the latest debate.

I am totally disgusted that House Speaker John Boehner seems to be twisting conditions as an opportunity to attack the President.  I see it is a positive that the President has elected not to waste tax dollars defending a law of questionable constitutionality and practicality.  From what I have seen, the President didn't initiate this debate; the civil union proponents did.  I'm sure the economy had a great deal to do with their timing, as they are asking for the right to bond together and take care of each other for health care and other costs rather than stick the American taxpayer with the bill.

From his rhetoric, he no doubt would have railed against President Lincoln for not fighting for slavery and the 'right' of slave owners to chase and reclaim their 'property' as far as the Canadian border.  Those also were laws of Congress.  It also was the law for women to be the property of their husbands and to not have the vote.  I'm sure he would be happy to see us return to the original Constitution for those laws as well.

I am also disgusted by how the subject of sex turns off all semblance of rational thought.  It amazes me how many people equate the law with right and wrong.  The law is and always has been primarily about the regulation of property and personal injury.  Right and wrong is religion.  I believe it is necessary to keep the two separate as a check and balance on each other. Religion without law results in Inquisitions.  Law without religion results in Nazi Germany.  

The second highest order of Christianity is to take care of each other.  It is a natural consequence of the first.  It is said that the whole purpose of society is to protect children and the infirm.  I believe we need as many tools as possible to take care of each other and people committing/ contracting to take care of each other and should be encouraged in as many ways as possible, sexual orientation is irrelevant.

I am also annoyed that the Catholic Church, which has over a millennia of experience in helping people of the same gender set up communities (with & without children) care for each other, and transfer property amongst them hasn't taken a leadership position in assisting with advice and practical solutions.

A traditional marriage between a man and woman totally committed to raising their children and caring for each other until death is and always will be the best way to raise children and ensure their own health.  I’m sure every minister or justice would willingly sell their souls to the devil if they could ensure their ceremony would cause that to happen. (I for one do not believe that the magic of a marriage ceremony will guarantee responsible behavior.) Nothing any one individual can do (short of armament) has the potential to cause as much damage as a thoughtless and unprotected sex act.  That is why the whole weight of the law and influence of religion is brought to bear in favor of marriage.

Now life happens and it is time for Plan B. How many children today live with both parents?  How many children have health insurance?  I think of many common possibilities such as the programs “Full House” or “Kate and Alley” "My 3 Sons' "Family Affair" where related and non-related adults team up to care for children.  How many people in these situations would welcome the opportunity to pick up the other adult on a company health policy? How many older residents would like to form an economic union to share expenses and provide for an aging friend?

You as lawmakers are supposed to have access to demographic information and have the legal background to determine the feasibility of such laws.  How well have the civil union laws in other states been working?  What have been the best benefits and worst abuses in those cases?  How do you minimize the abuses and increase the benefits?

As for homosexuality, all evidence seems to show it is a biological condition.  Growing up around cattle, I have come to think that all herd animals have homosexual tendencies.  It probably is necessary to living in groups.

I don’t believe in punishing people for something that ‘God’ did to them and tends more to be a difficulty for them than others.  I’m sure the Surgeon General would agree with all religious people that the best way to prevent the spread of STD’s is a lifelong monogamous relationship.  This would indicate that the best way to protect us all would be to encourage homosexuals to get ‘married’.

I wonder how many of those talking about the ‘good old days’ of marriage realize that until about 100 years ago a wife was considered the property of her husband.  Nothing reminds me of that as much as researching land deeds in the courthouse and seeing “To have and to hold” on nearly all of them.  Legally, marriage is an economic union.  It was not and still is not that uncommon for people to marry just to get a ticket to the U.S. (See Phi Kappa Phi - National Forum Spring 2015 & Summer 1995 "The Way We Weren't" - many variations on family through the centuries.)

As part of the non-survey survey on the family that the vatican did recently, I started reading the Bible cover to cover to find out exactly what it does say about family.  I am up to Proverbs.  So far it seems to be saying - You are lucky to survive.  I have also found not one word against either Lesbians or pedophiles. (Male homosexuals do have more potential for health problems.)

The previous entity in possession of the vatican seemed to have no problem with pedophiles "Women who want to be priests are worse than pedophiles."  I see no reason they should object to lesbians on the same grounds.

Of course after that statement, I believe they have the moral and theological credibility of child pornographers.

[magdaleneswift-blog]

ISIS & ChurchMilitant.com explain Islam to the world

Dear Islamic Sisters:

I agree with the New York Times assessment on the need for the theological battle against ISIS.  If you can use the assistance of a recently ex Roman-Catholic furious at the Vatican and the likes of ChurchMilitant.com for their theological support of ISIS think, keep reading.  They both hold hostage true believers of both religions.

I cannot understand why so many people allow religion to be corrupted into the worst examples of humanity.

The proud pagan pedophiles in the vatican define Christ as a vicious pedophile who is holy solely because he was male.

They both follow the policy of all dictators and Adam in the Bible – declare themselves god and destroy all those who oppose you.  They declare themselves the sole moral authority and promote their ‘doctrine’ via force.  None of them believe enough in their own religion to think that anyone with sense would follow it voluntarily.

They are all the best examples of the fallacy of Sharia Law.  In the first place, law has nothing to do with either right or wrong or religion.  It has to do with the disposition of property.  Religion functions best as the inspiration for law.  Religious authorities in charge of courts lead to the corruption of both.  The Christian Inquisition is a horrible example of what happens when self righteous bullies are allowed in charge of courts.  ISIS and the others deliberately and violently attack the rule of law not enforce it.

They hold all livelihood hostage to their whims in order to keep followers totally dependent on themselves alone. God created the world for all, not for a psychotic 1%.

God is the force of knowledge and creation, not destruction and ignorance.

I liked the article in the paper a few months ago from the Islamic family whose young male member left to join the ‘jihadists’ of ISIS.  The article explained that jihad is supposed to be service to others and righteous living.  The patriarch told him his jihad was staying here and taking care of his young family.  The young man wanted no part of that.  It would involve hard work, responsibility for his actions, dirty diapers, and no explosives.

ISIS, ChurchMilitant.com and the others don’t even bother trying to use religious arguments, especially as they are religiously clueless.  The only authority they recognize are vast quantities of explosives and terror.  I recently read a theological text by a ‘christian’ theologian in Chicago who believed that religion started when humanity learned to kill things.  I have read better theological explanations in a Tarzan novel.  Edge Rice Boroughs saw God in our deeds of self sacrifice for others.  The primate experts agree.  They see moral codes among the larger apes.

I find those who preach creationism are the ones who best prove the theory of evolution. They demand God conform to their concept of time. Beyond the arrogance of demanding the eternal God punch a time clock for their benefit, their functional illiteracy often results in behavior usually seen in the lower animals.

ISIS is a case in point.  Their recruits seem to stem mostly from the ‘Trump’ coalition of disaffected losers looking for a convenient scapegoat for their problems.  Primate studies show that female band together for protection against the inferior males, as the inferior males hit.  They know that neither the women, nor their families would ever allow them reproductive access without the threat of violence.

They say they want to bring back the glory of the caliphate and “Make American Great Again.”  From the little I have read, it seems that the safest place for Jews and other religious minorities was Islamic territory when the caliphate was at its prime.  When resources get scarce, humanity devolves and starts looking for outsiders to blame rather than looking in the mirror.

I don’t see how anyone can survive in the cesspool ISIS has made of the mid East.  It is Muslims who are fleeing to the relative safety of Christian Europe.  ISIS declares them apostate because they have something of value to steal. Hitler did the same with the Jews.  Trump supporters also look only at what others have and give in to envy, not at the real cause of the problem. History is full of other examples. The Trump supporters social programs as only benefitting ‘others’ without acknowledging the assistance they receive.  No American functions without the benefit from these programs, from health care, food, the interstate road system, clean water, etc.

They are correct that there is a war going on between the religious and non-religious.  The non-religious ones who see their religion as “I believe I belong to the magic group that means I get to kill people” are the most dangerous whether they call themselves patriotic Americans, Christians, Jews, Muslim, white, or anything else.  The Latin mass is just a symbol to exclude as many as possible from their belief in their entitlement.

The vatican’s focus on protecting pedophiles, joyfully excluding 80% of the congregation, and endorsing depraved thugs who believe women are things to molest for President to the exclusion of all else has Catholic’s fleeing the Church in terror.

It is a biological imperative to be frightened of those outside the ‘herd.’  It is only reason and religion that counters this instinctive response.  When the trust within the group breaks down, it is easier to be frightened of the outsider.  If you can’t trust your friends, how can you trust strangers?  ISIS has enslaved Islam by ensuring that most Americans see Islam as their interpretation of If it moves, shoot it.  If it doesn’t move, blow it up.  If it is female, beat it.  If it has value steal, it.  Even I know “Allah Ackbar” is supposed to mean something other than – Dive for cover! The vatican defines Christ as the great penis in the sky to which children must be sacrificed.  Trump and Church Militant define Christianity as I’ve got mine. Screw you.  All the complete opposite of what God stands for.

Our only hope of survival worldwide is to learn as much as we can about others and really to follow the true teachings of religion concerning self sacrifice and the worth of all.

The Islamic Research Foundation in India seems very counterproductive judging by their web site.

I am a recently active Catholic, furious at the vatican.  I saw the Movie Spotlight and wanted to write to you.  I was most struck by the nonchalant attitude of Father Paquin in the movie, seeing nothing wrong is his behavior.  I would be interested in your opinion on how he was just the tip of the iceberg when compared to the vatican.  Worse, with the ‘adoption’ of the 12 Syrians, Francis has now dropped 6 incredibly vulnerable children in the center of the world’s largest concentration of unrepentant pedophiles. I would not let any child of mine close to the vatican without an armed guard.

We lost a great opportunity when Francis rounded up all the proud pagan pedophiles in the walls of the Vatican.  A couple hundred feet of wall and we could have penned them up to ensure the safety of our children.

[magdaleneswift-blog]

The Male Rosary

Be a man – Is it safe for my son to attend your conference?

My local parish is posting your brochure and I am doing background checks.  I got my son to join the Knights, but I don’t let him go on the Atlantic City gambling bus trips.

I agree with the need to stress Jesus Christ as the True Face of Manhood with his emphasis on the protection of children, respect, inclusion, and empowerment of women, the example of virtue in the face of the corruption of the religious authorities, and above all heroic love. The rosary has traditionally been associated with the Virgin Mary. With the recent events of the Sin Nod on the Family with it question on what the Bible says about family, the refugee crisis, women deacons, and Father’s Day coming up, I thought it high time to give equal time to the Incredible Miracle that was St. Joseph.   St. Joseph found out that Mary was pregnant with someone else’s child.  He could have bowed down to his ego and had her stoned.  He married her anyway.  From then on, he immediately acts and risks his life to protect Mary and her son from danger.  

Father is all about how it is the purpose of men to protect women and children.  Bull Compared to the behavior of the other men in the Bible, St. Joseph and his behavior of protecting Mary and Jesus is a miracle on the level of the Virgin Birth. Here are my Astonishing Mysteries for St. Joseph

He protected Mary from the ‘honor’ killing that would have been the result of her being an unwed mother rather than focusing on his wounded ego or a power trip.

He taught his son to respect women.  Jesus followed his step father’s example when he also protected the Woman ‘caught in adultery’ and refused to allow her to be unjustly stoned. (The Law would have punished the man as well.) The Gospels are full of Jesus talking to women as real live human beings and not just the property of their male relatives.

Every action of his is immediate and focused on protecting his family.  When told his family was in danger, he left that night for Egypt.

When fleeing as refugees to Egypt, he DIDN’T pimp his wife or use his family as human shields, unlike Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

He let Mary handle it. When Jesus was accidently left behind, he gave Mary authority in the family by allowing her voice to be heard in the temple. The Bible has Mary speaking in the Temple to her son and disciplining him for running away.  He didn’t come up with a flowery, self gratifying speech in Hebrew and tell her to stifle it.  Also remember, Catholic tradition has Mary serving in the Temple as a child.  She would have been the one to hear all the theological lectures, know where they would have been held and would have been the ‘college graduate’ in the family.

Recent discussions in the news and in my life have focused on when mothers should tell their sons it is wrong to rape.  If you wait until puberty, it is too late.  Children need to be taught from day one to respect one another. A friend related how her 14 year old daughter and girlfriend were chasing her 18 year old son around in circles.  She sat him down and told him to be careful, because if he could easily be charged with statutory rape.  He didn’t believe her.  She told him to ask his father.  His father confirmed it and he was shocked. The Boston Post editorial on the Rape Culture stressed that nothing will be accomplished without the fathers.  Men have to decide that the rape culture is immoral.  Instead, we get the vatican, supposedly the best of the best enshrining rape culture as a key point of theology.  The bishops endorsed a man who publically stated that he could whatever he wanted to any woman.

[magdaleneswift-blog]

The BIBLE explains FAMILY

The first question in the vatican’s  ‘survey’ on the family asks what 3 Latin documents and the Bible had to say on the family.

I had never heard of "Gaudium et Spes, Familiaris Consortio or post-conciliar Magisterium  and I am a life long Catholic. (Laity. born & raised in American Midwest [Lutheran territory] Public School raised so not terrified of the hierarchy.  Born 1964 so post Vatican II.  Active in all parishes since college.) Leaving 2016.

Taking this as a chance to read the Bible cover to cover. Going through the examples of family in the Bible.  What exactly DOES the Bible say about family? – Essentially, it is – You are lucky to survive. The first children, Adam and Eve, disobeyed life or death rules and were banished from the family home. We also have the 'snake' tempting Eve to become powerful.  SOP for strong arm men, i.e. Hitlers, mafia dons, 3rd world husbands etc.  is to make the wife or other underling do whatever illegal thing you want done so that she/they can take the blame. This is usually on threat of death or dismemberment.  They then have the weaker party under their control by threatening to expose them to the powers that be.  "Orders, I didn't give them any orders, they put those people in the gas chambers on their own."  Remember, the Bible has Adam standing right there when the 'snake' tempts her.  Eve's response to God is the 'serpent' told me to do so.  What serpent do you know of that speaks?  Remember the 'snake' tempts Eve with promises of power.  How many women do you know who are tempted primarily by power?  You know the old saying, "I wouldn't marry him if he was the last man on earth."  What if he was the ONLY man on earth?

God reiterates the Nuremburg verdicts.  Following Orders is NOT a valid argument for your crimes. Their children were Cain and Abel.  Cain slew Abel in a jealous rage then lied about it to God.  "I will put enmity between your children and the children of the serpent."

Then a bunch of begetting, with men only. (neat trick. Also women aren't even considered important enough to be considered parents) until we get to Lamech, who had two wives, then terrifies them by telling them he is a mass murderer and that if they disobey him; they are next. Then a bunch more begetting with people(s) living very long times until we get to Noah.  By that time. God is disgusted with his handiwork and destroys everyone but Noah's family. (Or at least destroys everyone in the Black Sea area.)  Noah gets drunk and his youngest son sees him naked.  His two older brothers cover their father and Noah curses his innocent grandson. Then lots more begetting until Abram. Abram goes to Egypt because of drought.  Since his wife is very beautiful, he has her tell everyone that she is his sister not his wife.  He 'sells' her to pharaoh; who gives him LOTS of presents until he finds out she is his wife.  Now being rich, he goes to the Negeb with his nephew Lot.

Then Abraham takes a concubine on his wife's advice and has a child.  Sarah and the concubine fight, even though this was Sarah's idea.  Sarah demands Abraham kick Hagar into the desert.  Abram is horrified but, kicks the concubine and his first born son out into the desert.  (Ishmael is described elsewhere as being 13, described here as being put on his mother's back, and later as being around at Sarah's funeral.) (Sarah must have been a terrifying woman.) Lot's family and Abram's family start quarreling, so they separate.  Lot winds up in Sodom.  When angels visit and the men of the town want to molest the angels, Lot offers them his virgin daughters instead.  Lot tries to get his daughter's fiancés to flee the city with them, but they refuse.  After God destroys the city, the two daughters, saying as there are no men around anymore, get their father drunk and have sex with him.  They each have a son. Abraham goes into the Negeb again and again tells the people living there that Sarah is his sister. The ruler there again tries to marry Sarah.  He then explains that she is in truth his half sister as they both have the same father.  The pagans are again horrified at this and again give Abraham large amounts of money and goods.

Abraham and Sarah have Isaac when Abraham is 100 and Sarah around 87.  When Sarah dies, Abraham sends one of his servants to his brother's family to get Isaac a wife to comfort him on the loss of his mother.  (Sarah does not sound like the sort of woman who would lovingly welcome a daughter in law. ) He brings back Rebekah, his second cousin, and Isaac marries her when he is 40. Her family asks Rebekah first. (I also don't know why Abraham couldn't have sent Ishmael to his brother's family instead of kicking him out into the dessert.) After Sarah's death, Abraham marries a second (third) wife and has six children. He does not give any of these children part of the inheritance, only cash settlements while alive and sends them eastward.  Abraham dies at 175 years of age. Isaac and Ishmael then bury him.  Only Isaac inherits.  Ishmael goes on to father the Arabs.  Isaac fathers the Jews.  They have been fighting for millennia over the inheritance ever since.  Sometimes I swear the best thing you can do for your children is to die broke. Another famine breaks out and Isaac and Rebekah head to the land of the Philistines.  Taking a page from his father's book, Isaac tells them Rebekah is his sister.  Again the pagans, figure out he is really her husband, are horrified and give him lots of money.  Husbands pimping their wives in times of famine seems to be becoming a family tradition.

Isaac and Rebekah have twins.  Isaac likes the eldest, Esau, who hunts.  Rebekah likes the younger, Jacob, who is smarter.  Esau sells his birth right to Jacob for a bowl of stew. (Of course Esau is a genius compared to the vatican.  The vatican can have the Keys of Heaven and the respect of the world. Instead, they tell the world pedophiles are preferable to women; thereby declaring their dicks god. They choose to and sound like depraved lunatics and become the laughing stocks of the world. ) When Esau is 40, he marries two local pagan women, whom his mother hates.  When Isaac is blind and dying, Rebekah has Jacob impersonate Esau to get the inheritance.  (I wouldn't let an idiot like Esau be in charge of the family either.)  Esau threatens to kill his brother, so Rebekah sends Jacob back to her family to marry one of his cousins. Seeing how much his father and mother hate his pagan wives, Esau then marries one of his half uncle Ishmael's daughters.

Jacob flees to his mother's brother and serves him seven years for the uncle's younger daughter Rachel.  His uncle Laban gives him the elder daughter, Leah, instead.  Jacob has to serve another seven years for Rachel.  Leah has four sons and hopes this will make her husband love her.  Rachel has no children so insists that Jacob sleep with her maid so that she can have children for herself.  Her maid, Bilhah has two sons.  Leah, who can no longer have children, does the same, giving Jacob her maid, Zilphah.  This maid also has two sons. Leah's son Reuben found fertility herbs.

 Rachel asks for them.  Leah is furious, so Rachel tells Jacob to sleep with Leah so Rachel can have the herbs.  Leah then has two more sons and a daughter Dinah. Rachel finally has a son, Joseph. 

Jacob gets sick of his dishonest father in law, who continually cheats him of his wages and his daughters of their dowries.  He asks his wives their opinion.  They also are disgusted by their father's behavior. He goes back home and reconciles with his brother Esau.  He sends his wives ahead to protect him from his brother in reverse order of how much he cares about them.  (I thought Church teaching is that the husbands are supposed to protect the wives. If that were true, women's lib would never have gotten started.) Back in Canaan, his daughter is raped.  The man who raped her says he loves her and wants to marry her. Her brothers are furious and insist that all the men become circumcised.  While they are still in pain, the brothers slaughter all the men of the family and enslave the women.

Jacob flees from the rest of the people.  Rachel has a second son, Benjamin and dies in childbirth.

Reuben slept with his father's concubine, Bilhah.  Israel (Jacob) was furious. Jacob's and Esau's families become too big for the land to support all of them, so they separate.  (Over population problems even then.)  Esau seems to have had a bigger family than Jacob. Joseph is a tattletale, so his brothers hate him. Then he has his famous dream about his brothers and father bowing down to him, so they plot to kill him.  Instead, they sell him into slavery. Judah's son marries a woman named Tamir.  Her first husband dies.  His brother refuses to get his sister in law pregnant and also dies.  When Judah doesn't give her to his third son, she tricks Judah into sleeping with her by pretending to be a temple prostitute.  When Judah finds out she is pregnant, he is going to kill her until he finds out that he is the father. ('Honor' killings were big back then, too as well as the double standard.)  He says that she was more in the right than he was.

Meanwhile, Joseph has been put in charge of his master's household.  As he is really handsome, his master's wife tries to have sex with him.  When he refuses, she cries rape.  Her husband is furious and throws Joseph in prison.  The chief jailer is so impressed with Joseph that he puts him in charge of the prison.  Joseph interprets the dreams of Pharaoh's baker and cup bearer correctly.  When Pharaoh has dreams of famine, Joseph correctly interprets them and is put in charge of all of Egypt.  During the famine, he forgives and feeds his brothers and their families.  So ends Genesis.

Exodus - Pharaoh orders all Hebrew male children killed.  Moses' mother saves him by hiding him in a basket in the reeds along the Nile.  (The crocodiles are less dangerous than mankind.)  Pharaoh's daughter finds him and adopts him.  He grows up to lead his people out of Egypt.  If the first premise is true, the Israelites at that time must have been mostly women.  They would also see dying in the dessert as the less dangerous option to protect their children. I keep thinking of this every time I read of the Central American women and children fleeing through the desert to the US to escape the gangs.  Golden calf or no golden calf, they would have needed to hide out in the desert until they had enough men  to fight to take over Canaan or fend off raiders while they carried the children.

Moses has good relations with his father-in-law who gives him good advice.  Male slaves are to be set free after 7 years.  Women are slaves for life unless their master/husband doesn't want them, then they can be set free, but the master still has to provide for her.  You can't kill a slave. If you maim a slave, you have to set them free. If a man seduces a girl, he must either marry her or pay for her.

Leviticus - Women are considered unclean when they have their periods and for a longer period when they have children.  The period of uncleanness is twice as long if she has a girl.  So much for the sanctity of life and vocation of child bearing and worth of girls. You cannot sacrifice your children to false gods.  The vatican should keep this commandment and not justify its previous policy of promoting pedophilia, thereby sacrificing our children to the gods between their legs

. Long list of who you can be killed or banished for if you have sex with them.  Both genders usually equal punishment except for female slaves.  They are considered blameless as they have no choice.  Male and male sexual relations is a capital offense.  No mention of woman and woman.  No mention of raping children.  I guess this is where the vatican got its idea that pedophilia is preferred.

Part of Mose's curse of the Israelites if they disobeyed God's Law: May you suffer siege and go hungry to the point that you eat your own children. Cursing your parents is a capital offense. The handicapped are not allowed to become priests.  I remember staying with a family where the unmarried brother wanted to become a priest.  He was not allowed as he was an epileptic, even though he had had only a handful of seizures his whole life.

Numbers - Any vow a girl or wife make to the Lord, her father or husband can render null and void.  The rest is the promotion of genocide.  You can keep the girls and the rest of the loot.  They were arguing with their relatives also. So much for Respect for Life.  This is incredibly depressing reading right before Lent.

Deuteronomy - Animals with cloven feet, hooves, and that chew cud (Ruminants) are clean and can be eaten, but not camels?  Winged insects are unclean, yet John the Baptist ate locusts and wild honey.  When grasshoppers grow wings, they are locusts.  Bad translation?

What does God have against linseywoolsy?  Mixing linen and wool is forbidden.  The Puritans survived on linsey woolsey yet conservative religions choose to keep the part about excluding homosexuals.

Gelded men are not allowed in the assembly of the Lord nor are children of incest.  (Yet the rest of the Old Testament promotes inbreeding.)  Moabites and Ammonites are never to be allowed into the Israelite community. Others can be after prescribed numbers of generations.  Boy do they hold long grudges. Kidnapping is a capital offense if a fellow Israelite.  A man can divorce a wife, but a wife can't divorce a husband.

Part of your harvest has to be left behind for the widows and destitute.

Joshua - Has the battle of Jericho with the Israelites outside the walls, breaking them down to fight the people within.  The archeological evidence is that the walls came down from the inside.  The people within overthrew their oppressive rulers and they and the Israelites settled the countryside together.  It was the story of Exodus and the knowledge of the Lord that brought down the walls.  That story didn’t have enough of a power trip to make it into the Bible.

Judges - Military Leaders decide right from wrong.  One of the Judges, Debora, is a woman. Abimelech killed his 70 brothers.  Jephthah is the son of a harlot and a Gileadite.  His legal half brothers drive him out of the area.  When they are attacked by the Ammonites, they beg him to come back and save them.  The Ammonites want their land back that Israel took from them when they came out of Egypt.  He vows to offer up in holocaust the first thing he sees if he wins.  His only daughter comes out to meet him.  The text implies he murders her.   Then Ephraim starts fighting against Gilead. Manoah's wife who is not named, sees an angel who tells her she will have a son.  When her husband honors the Lord with a holocaust, the angel ascends in the flames.  Manoah is terrified and sure they will die.  His wife matter of factly comforts him, telling him that if God wanted to kill them, he wouldn't have told them they were going to have a son. (This reaction is pretty typical throughout the Bible.  The male reaction to Holy presence is fear, death and destruction.  The female reaction is calm and associated with new life, healing, help in time of famine or resurrection)

Samson falls in love with a Philistine woman. His parents are appalled, but arrange the marriage as he insists.  He gambles with the Philistine wedding party for 30 sets of garments.  When the wedding party can't guess the riddle, they threaten to burn his wife and her family.  She pesters Samson until he tells her the answer to the riddle.  He is furious and kills 30 Philistines and gives their clothes to the wedding party.  Then he abandons his wife and she marries his "best man."  Later that year he goes back to reclaim his wife.  Her father offers him her sister instead.  Samson ties torches to the tails of 300 foxes and burns all their crops at harvest time.  The Philistines then burn his wife and her family.  Samson then goes on a killing spree.  When the Israelites come to take him captive to the Philistines, he breaks his bounds and kills a thousand men with the jawbone of an ass. (I would have thought it would splinter with that much use.)  God then miraculously provides a spring for him.

He goes to visit a harlot and breaks down the city gates to get out. He falls in love again with a woman named Delilah.  She is offered a lot of money by his enemies to find out the strength.  She finally wears him down.  He tells her even though she tried to have him killed three times. (not very bright)  His enemies blind and imprison him.  He kills thousands of them when he collapses the temple on top of them. Micah steals money from his mother, then returns it when she curses it.  She takes part of it and makes a silver idol for her son.  The Danites later steal the idol and slaughter a group of peaceful people.  So much for the ban on graven images.

Then we get to what must be the vatican's favorite story as it seems to be the example they most want to follow. A Levite marries a concubine who is unfaithful (doesn't clarify if she is an adulteress or hates her husband) and goes back to her father's house. He then goes with two asses and a servant to 'forgive' her and bring her back. Her father seems glad to see him, but tries to keep him and his daughter with him as long as possible.  Going back home, the husband refuses to stay with the pagans, but presses on to an Israelite town of the tribe of Benjamin.  There all but one man who wasn't raised there leave him to sleep out in the open.  The non-native takes him home to his house.  The rest of the town finds out he has a visitor and go to the old man's house so they can abuse his guest.  The old man offers his daughter or the man's wife instead.  The husband, to save his own 'neck', throws his wife into the mob.  They abuse her to the point that she dies.  He then cuts her body into twelve pieces and sends one piece to each tribe of Israel.  The Israelites then band together against the tribe of Benjamin.  Benjamin rather than being horrified at the evil of their tribesmen, defend their behavior by attacking their fellow Israelites; just like the Vatican and the pedophiles.  The rest of the Israelites slaughter the tribe of Benjamin, especially the women and children.  They leave none of them alive.  They also swear that they will kill anyone who doesn't take part in the slaughter and will not give any of their daughters to a Benjamite.  After slaughtering the entire tribe, they repent saying that they can't wipe out the entire tribe.  They want to find wives for the survivors.  They find out one city didn't send any warriors, so they slaughter the entire city except for the young girls and give the girls to the surviving Benjamites. There still are not enough girls so they allow the Benjamites to rape their young girls during a religious festival.

Ruth - A non-Israelite loves her Israelite mother-in-law and vows to protect her.  The mother-in-law knows of a decent Israelite man (apparently a rarity) and arranges for the widowed woman to marry him.  King David is one of their descendants.  One of the few books that is about family.

Samuel I - Again a husband loves his barren wife more than the one who bears children.  She again finally conceives and has a son she consecrates to the Lord.  She then has other children. The sons of the high priest are wicked thieves who steal from the offerings to the Lord (German bishop and Barbie Doll Burke) and they lose the Ark.  Eli refused to discipline them when they were young.  The Philistines are terrified of the Ark and try to pass if off city to city with hemorrhoids following it. (?)  They hitch it and peace offerings to a cart and send it back to the Israelites.  The milch cows abandon their calves to take it home!  The Israelites clean up their act for awhile. The Israelites are disgusted with this period of lawlessness and insist on a king rather than having the Lord as king.  They get Saul who was a good general until he lets power to his head and starts trying to kill David, who was the most promising of the next generation. (Saul is listening to that snake again.)  Saul keeps offering and retracting his daughters' hands in marriage to David.  David marries Saul's daughter Michal, then Saul takes her away from him and gives he to another man.  Her bride price was 100 Philistine foreskins. (Lovely symbolism there. So much for the sanctity of marriage. Saul trying to kill his son-in-law)

  While David is on the run from Saul, he protects the herds of an idiot named Nabal.  When David asks him for food, he sends David's messenger away.  Nabal's wife Abigail has sense and feeds David and pleads for her husband's life. (It is hard to imagine why. She must have been very generous. She agrees that he is a fool.  Overly maternal and protecting the helpless and self centered?  I've been there.  It's exhausting and jeopardized the welfare of my children. )  Nabal then conveniently dies and David marries Abigail and another woman. To escape Saul, David goes to the Philistines.  The Philistines give David a city.  When the Philistines go to war against Israel, the Philistine king sends David back to the land of the Philistines.  While the Philistines were attacking Israel, another enemy attacks the Philistine city where David and his men's families were.  Since the pagans are less blood thirsty than the Israelites, they only capture the women and children and did not kill them.  David overtakes the raiders with the help of an Egyptian he rescues and rescues all the families and gets additional booty besides.  He uses the spoils to bribe the people of Judah, the tribe of the king.

Samuel II

When David sings of his grief for the death of Saul, he tells the women to weep over Saul because he gave them fancy clothes.  He also sings of loving Jonathan more than his wives.  So much for David's opinion of women and marriage. The Judhites then make David king of their country while Abnor, Saul's general makes a son of Saul King over the rest of Israel.  David gets a bunch more wives and has a bunch of children. At least the Bible mentions the mothers for a change.  David and Saul's son (General Abner) fight for the kingship of Israel. Abner and David reconcile, with the price being Saul's daughter Michal. He already has six other wives.  Her husband follows her to the border crying at the thought of losing her. One of David's underlings kills Abner to avenge his brother's death.  David curses them and puts on a big state funeral.

David kills the murders who murder Saul's son in his bed. David captures Jerusalem and brings the Ark to it.  Michal is disgusted with David dancing in front of the Ark. (He might have been exposing himself?)  David refuses to sleep with her from then on.  Apparently David only wanted her because Saul took her away from him. She was better off with her other husband.  So much for the Church's insistence that only the first marriage is valid.

David builds himself a fancy palace, but doesn't think about a temple for the Ark until later.  God tells David HE doesn't want David to build him a house. David adopts Jonathan's crippled son. The young Ammonite king insults David's messengers at the state funeral.  So David slaughters them.  The Ammonites had hired mercenaries to protect them.  The mercenaries bailed.  Machiavelli always said to never trust mercenaries. You can pay a man to fight for you, but you cannot pay him to die for you. That requires sacrifice for a higher cause. Even with all his other wives, David sees a beautiful married woman and has her brought to him so he can have sex with her.  He then has her husband murdered when she becomes pregnant. "God' punishes David by making their child sick.  The boy dies and they have another child. David's favorite son Amnon rapes his half sister Tamar. Then immediately hates her.  Her brother is furious.  David doesn't punish him.  The brother of his daughter, Absalom, murders his half brother Amnon.  David pardons him, but he hates David and plots against his father.  He is killed and David mourns him.  The Israelites are annoyed because they were fighting for David against his son.   The kingdom splits into Israel and Judah.

I think I finally see the point of this question.  If the king protects those who molest the ones he should be protecting, the kingdom will collapse.

David makes the rest of Saul's family convenient scapegoats for a famine and slaughters the rest of them. David takes a census of the people and 'God' gets annoyed. David was only counting how many men could fight for him? (How else do you administer a country without good data? The vatican seems to be trying to do that.)  David has to choose between three punishments:  Famine, fear of his life, or pestilence.  Not wanting to risk his own neck, he chooses the pestilence, until he sees how bad it is.  Then he regrets his decision.

Kings 1. David is old and a young girl is brought to keep him warm even though he already has umpteen wives.  His two sons quarrel over the kingship.  David crowns Solomon.  Solomon 'forgives' his brother.  His brother asks for the young girl who nursed David and Solomon kills him and his fellow plotters.  He eventually kills the man who insulted his father.  As the temple has not been built yet, the Israelites offer sacrifices in various high places. Solomon gives his famous judgment where he gives the living child to the woman who loves it.  One shudders to think what kind of life the child would have had with the other woman who only wanted the child as a 'status symbol.'  She is one of the best arguments in the Bible for contraception.  Too many people have children only because they are able to figure out how to work a zipper.  As I get older, I know of more people that I thank God never had any children. The rest of us then have to try to clean up the mess.  No help from the vatican.  The vatican needs to get over the myth that all people are qualified to have children simply because they are breathing.

The early proponents of contraception lived in families where they watched their brothers and sisters die from lack of food and medicine.  Also read the Irish story "Angela's Ashes."  The children drop like flies. Lots of bragging about Solomon's wealth.  He makes friends with the cedar supplier and starts building a temple. When he finishes building the temple, he builds himself a larger palace and administrative building.  Even then they didn't have 'Sharia' law.  All the time of the Judges, they speak of military leaders and not religious leaders administering justice. Solomon completes the temple, offers huge sacrifices, and the Lord's Cloud fills the temple. Then a listing of kings.  The king's mother is often mentioned by name.  Israel and Judah fight periodically.  An awful lot of killing off of entire families and military coups.

Elijah the prophet flees the drought and the king of Israel and feeds a widow and raises her son from the dead.  I think the widow was a non-Israelite. Elijah repairs an alter of the Lord, but it would have not been in Jerusalem as this was for the king of Israel.  Yet the whole of the previous book rails against offerings in any place but Jerusalem.  He defeats and slays the priests of Baal.  The drought ends.  The Lord vows to kill all but 7,000 of the Israelites who have not worshipped Baal.  Jezebel  vows to kill Elijah and he flees.

Kings 2 -

Elijah calls down fire on the king's messengers when they come for him.  This seems to be a favorite passage for the Disciples as they keep asking Jesus to repeat the 'trick.'

Elisha curses boys who make fun of his bald head and they die. The Israelites go on a scorched earth policy against Moab when they refused to pay tribute to the new king of Israel.  The kings of Israel and Judah only seem to care about what the prophets say when they are predicting the outcome of battle or disease.  The Moabite king sacrifices his own son.

Elisha provides oil for a widow and her children.

A woman and her husband provide room and board for Elisha.  He then foretells of the birth of a son and later raises the son from the dead.

Elisha removes poison from a pot of stew he was feeding to his fellow (lower ranked)prophets.

Elisha also multiplies loaves of bread and oil for a widow.

Elisha cleanses a spring that was causing death and miscarriage.  This makes me proud to be a civil engineer and our history of providing clean water.

 On the advice of a captured Israelite slave girl, Naaman, the general of the king of Aram is cured of leprosy by Elisha.  When his servant tries to get payment for the cure, he becomes a leper.

Elisha finds an ax lost in the Jordan River.

He confuses Aramean so that they can't recognize him and are too frightened to attack him.  The king then lays siege to Samaria such that a woman and her neighbor eat her child.  The king of Israel blames God and Elisha.  Elisha tells the messenger that food arrives tomorrow.  Four lepers desert to the enemy.  The enemy had fled and the Samarians gorge.

Elisha predicts a seven year drought and tells his friend the widow to flee.

Elisha then instigates a coup against the king of Israel.  The new king slaughters all of the family and supporters of the old king. The new king then slew all the worshippers of Baal. Even though this king is supposedly doing the will of the Lord, the kingdom starts to be dismantled.

On the death of her son, the queen mother slaughters the rest of the family and installs a reign of terror with herself as the ruler.  A young son is saved by hiding in the temple until his nurse and the head priest can put him on the throne.  They then slaughter all the priests of Baal.  If Israel & Judea are supposed to only be worshipping God, how come all these pagan priests keep coming in?

The priests are given extra funds to repair the temple and instead line their own pockets. (The beginning of the vatican banking system?)

Israel declares war on Judea and wins.  Later a military dictator takes over Israel and punishes the people, including ripping open the bellies of pregnant women.

One king of Israel burns his son in sacrifice

Hezekiah, king of Judah, is pleased when Isaiah tells him his children will be carried off to Babylon as it means his life will be peaceful.

Chronicles I & II essentially repeat the previous books and pertain to family only in a genealogical sense.

Ezra - Israelites come back from Babylonian captivity and rebuild the temple and Jerusalem.  The Samaritans from the north want to help.  Rather than use their offer as a chance to mend bridges and reform their northern cousins, the returning Jews take a holier than thou attitude and refuse to allow them to help.  Ezra then orders all the men with pagan wives to divorce them and abandon the wives and their children.

Nehemiah - Variation of Ezra, coming back the Samarians and others don't offer to help build, they mock the Jews and try to attack them.  Some of the builders mentioned are women.   One of the prophets mentioned is a woman.  The singers are both genders. The nobles and magistrates are using strong arms tactics to enslave their fellow Israelites.  Nehemiah gets them to return the stolen land.  Nehemiah lives on his own nickel rather than tax his subjects. I remember a Lutheran friend of the family in my home town whose father forbade them from reading the Old Testament.  The whole point seems to be that if you believe in the Lord, you can kill whoever you want.  It certainly explains a lot of the behavior of the Muslims and Jews.  This also seems to have been the mindset of a lot of the Europeans colonizing the Americas, Australia, and New Zealand.  Zero Population Growth Old Testament Style.  This is the strongest argument I have seen yet for atheism. As the Curia is the strongest argument I have seen yet for Protestantism.  Since my daughter read the Bible her CCD teacher gave her cover to cover, her atheism is a lot more understandable.  So far the message of the Bible on family is - You are lucky to survive.

So far, I have not been able to figure out the point of the question, other than the Vatican's belief in might makes right, especially when caught in the act of evil, or that strong arm policies are the most convincing theological argument imaginable.  These policies only convince that the vatican is on a power trip and doesn't believe a word of what they are preaching.  i.e. Draft God into your cause and you can commit whatever atrocity you want. Father keeps saying that it is the duty of men to protect women and children.  Yeah, right. If you believe that, I've got a great bridge to sell you.  For far, the examples are mostly that women and children are supposed to be fodder for the male ego.  The vatican must love this.

Tobit - One of the few stories about family. A holy man goes blind and loses his money so God sends an angel to get his money back, cure his blindness, destroy a demon, and provide a wife for his son.  The wife is another close relative.  Promoting all this inbreeding may have religious benefits, but also leads to mental retardation, sterility, genetic mutations and other health issues. Judith - The Assyrian king starts to murder all those who did not help him in a campaign against the Medes when he drafted his slave states.  The Israelites are among those who are to be slaughtered for refusing to help.  The Ammonites and Moabites again side against Israel.  But the leader of the Ammonites, Achior, tells them that they cannot prevail against the Israelites while they obey the laws of God.  (He gives a full history of the Israelite relationship with God.) This message is repeated throughout history by Machiavelli, Aesop, Gandhi, and the Saints.  You cannot overtake a free people when their society is banded together by their promotion of the common good.  It is only when they have weakened themselves and the bond between them by greed and sin that you can overthrow them.   Aesop - The heavily laden ass when told that the enemy is near asks the messenger, "Will the enemy double the load on my back? Then let him come.  It matters not to me who loads my back." The king sends Holofernes as the master general. Everyone is afraid of him because of the strength of the army, which is made up of several different groups. He slaughters even those who surrender to him.  he especially wars against their gods so that all people will worship the king. The Israelites reach out to the Samarians and all the others they wouldn't allow to help in the rebuilding of the temple.  They band together and under orders from the high priest, defend the mountain passes and pray for assistance. Holofernes and the Moabites with him do not like Achior's warning and hold him captive.  Holofernes only believes in Nebuchandnezzar. Rather than allow the Israelites to stay in their mountain fortresses, he destroys their water supply. He sends Achior to the Israelites as a warning. The Israelites are terrified at the size of the army, but still prepare to fight until thirst gets the better of them.  They are ready to surrender and be slaves, but the priests say to give us five more days.  Judith, a rich and beautiful widow, is appalled that they are trying to force God's hand and tells them that she will solve the problem.  She also reminds them of previous trials by the Lord.  She leaves the besieged city and 'surrenders' to the enemy troops and asks to see the leader.  He is charmed by her.  When they throw a party in her honor, he gets drunk and she beheads him while everyone else thinks he is sleeping with her.   She takes the head back home and shows the Israelites, (men and women together).  She tells them to threaten the enemy and warn their allies so they will try to wake up the dead commander.  When they find the commander dead, they all scatter, for the only thing holding them together was the fear of the king.  All the rest of the Israelite allies chase what is left of the army out of the territory. Esther - A righteous captive Jew rescues the Assyrian king.  His queen refuses to come when summoned to a party as she is having her own party.  On the advice of all his male friends, he divorces her so as to terrify all the women in the empire. He then marries the captive Jew's orphaned niece.  When her uncle refuses to bow down to the second in command, the second in command convinces the king to order all the Jews to be slaughtered.  The king realizes that the stubborn Jew had saved his life and his niece Esther also pleads for her people's lives.  The king has the second in command slaughtered instead.  The Jews are given the right to go on a killing spree one or two days a year.  They happily slaughter their enemies on these days. So far it is two women and one man, (David) who rescues the whole race singlehandedly. ) Deborah and Samson are also even.

Maccabees I- A series of brothers lead a series of successful rebellions against Greek kings.  Part of their exploits include revenge killings against a bridal party and attacking a group of Arabs when the Greeks run away when they were spoiling for a fight.  They are mostly supported by the religious elite until the rebellion becomes more political than religious.  When they win autonomy, the Greek kings give them the high priesthood in the temple.  The true power of the Maccabees seems to be the fact that all the brothers fight together as a cohesive team rather than infighting among themselves.  They are succeeded by the oldest son of the last remaining brother.  Apparently, the older brothers died childless. The father peacefully turns over the kingdom to his son rather than an intergenerational coup.  They are able to defeat the Greek kings with help of the Roman Republic.  The big interpretation of family in this is that only those of the correct parentage are supposed to be priests, no matter what their abilities are.  i.e. It is better to have thieving morons in charge as long as they are of the 'correct' parentage rather than someone who knows what they are doing.  Sounds like the vatican.

Maccabees II - Writing is much better than Maccabees I - The tone is more conversational and easier to understand.  Also more in the style of Tobit with 'magical' happenings -with black petrochemicals setting fires to offerings and visions of 'angels' on horses fighting with Judas Maccabee.  A dishonest Israelite tells the pagan king that the temple has a huge amount of money.  The king's representative goes to confiscate it.  The high priest says the funds are security for widows and orphans.  The official is attacked by an 'angel.'  When he recovers and the king asks who should he next send to raid the Jerusalem temple, the official tells him to send his worst enemy so that they can be killed.  Both books tell of the pagans killing women and their babies for having them circumcised.  Lots of killing of women and children.  Killing of an old man for refusing to eat the pagan sacrifices.  Torture and killing of the seven brothers and their mother for refusing to eat pork.  The Church later emulated this great theological argument with the Inquisition.  Believe what we tell you or we will torture you death.  We think our beliefs are so stupid that no one would believe them if we just explained them. Judas Maccabee is a night raider, which makes sense when fighting forces with greater armament.  The pagan kings believe they can make money by selling the Jews into slavery.  The Jews win and take all the slave traders' money. Job - God and Satan have an argument on why Job loves God.  Satan says it is the blessings of God that Job loves.  To prove to Satan that Job loves God and not just the blessings, God allows Satan to torment Job.  Part of the torment is Job's three friends who all say that Job's misfortunes are his fault and to turn away from God.  To further torment Job, God leaves his wife alive to also harp against him.  Job holds fast to his belief. God tells Job's friends to beg Job's forgiveness, then gives Job back double what he had before. Psalms - I first listened to the psalms on tape while commuting.  They were read by an actor I liked in Babylon 5.  I was horrified how bloodthirsty they were.  Re-reading them with Father Perry, they weren't so bad.  Not much about families.  Some of them talk of God protecting the widow and orphan.  Hopefully this is not interpreted to mean that it is God's job to take care of widows and orphans and that means the rest of us can leave them to starve.  If Christians are supposed to have the presence of the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit is partially defined as the part of God here on Earth in our daily lives, then we all should be doing the most that we can for those least able to take care of themselves.  Instead the vatican, chose to define Roman Catholicism in terms of deranged predators of children.

Psalm 127 - Sons equated to having weaponry. Psalm 128 - Wife is fruitful vine - children are beautiful Psalm 137 - Rejoice smashing the heads of your enemies' children against rocks.  The notes say they hope it isn't that bad, but it does repeat Kings. Psalm 144 - God trains my hands for battle and my fingers for war. Request for beautiful children.

Proverbs Wisdom of mother & father both valued. Wisdom itself is considered feminine.

Hosea – I used to love Hosea.  The premise is supposedly a husband forgiving a cheating wife. It is supposed to represent God Then I read the meanings of the names of the children again in the Protestant Bible Guide.  It then sounds more like a woman desperately trying to flee with her children from a sadist.  Hosea marries Gomer.  She bears Hosea a son whom he names Jezreel.  This is the name of a serious historical defeat.  It would be the same for a Georgian father to call his son, William Tecumseh Sherman, a 9/11 survivor to call his son ISIS, a Pearl Harbor survivor to call his son Tojo.  This is extreme psychological abuse of his first born child. Gomoer than has a daughter he names Lo-Ruhama – She is not pitied (loved) Gomer again has a son that Hosea names  Lo-ammi – not my people / not mine / bastard. He then goes into a tirade telling the children to protest against their mother as she is not his wife and he is not her husband.  Nowhere does it say that Gomer or her children have done anything to deserve this abuse.  Hosea sounds like a delusion paranoid.  He threatens to strip his wife naked.  He says he will not have any pity on her children as they are not his.  The story opens acknowledging that they are his children.  She flees to lovers who provide for her. Hosea says that it is he who has been giving this to her.  Her threatens a scorched earth policy against everything she has.  Then he reverses and tries to convince her that he will love her and take care of her and love her children.   He buys her back from her lovers.  Not clear if this is something she wanted. He says will not have sex with her for while.  I don’t know if this is supposed to be a reward for coming back to him or a punishment. All of this sums up that you are lucky to survive and women and children are things that exist for the benefit of the man,  a view the vatican enthusiastically supports. One horror after another until you get to the miracle that is St. Joseph in the New Testament.

[magdaleneswift-blog]

Marines Demonstrate Femininity

Old County song –– sums up the church viewpoint perfectly

Put Another Log on the Fire

Lyrics by Tompall Glaser

Put another log on the fire Cook me up some bacon and some beans And go out to the car and change the tire Wash my socks and sew my old blue jeans Come on, baby, you can fill my pipe And then go fetch my slippers And boil me up another pot of tea Then put another log on the fire, babe And come and tell me why you're leaving me. Now don't I let you wash the car on Sunday? Don't I warn you when you're gettin fat? Ain't I gonna take you fishin' with me someday? Well, a man can't love a woman more than that Ain't I always nice to your kid sister? Don't I take her driving every night? So, sit here at my feet 'cause I like you when you're sweet And you know it ain't feminine to fight.

The Marines would disagree with that last statement. My ex-husband told me this story:

A small island in the South Pacific was in imminent danger of being overrun by the Japanese.   The Marines were greatly outnumbered.  In desperation, they gave emergency fighting lessons to all the native men and women.  When the invasion started, the men panicked and bailed.  The women, stayed, fought and won.  They knew they were fighting for the survival of their children.  The only way the Japanese were going to get to their children was over their dead bodies.  The men were only fighting for their ‘Emperor’ or self preservation.

I now consider the vatican the world’s greatest menace to the safety of my children. All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.