Adding another to the list

I have just read an interesting news article which is practically begging for me to call out another religion, at least in part, for doing a really shitty job at the whole making the world a better place thing they all seem so keen on claiming. Todays violation comes from Buddhist temples in the United States, where it seems some monks have been, shall we say forcing themselves, on teenage and pre teen girls then supposedly vanishing back to Thailand for discipline only to reappear in another US temple shortly after.

The story reveals a systematic flaw in the running of the temples, positions where people are automatically given trust and excuses to be alone with vulnerable people tend to attract certain characters, those who genuinely want to help and those who see easy targets. This is why strict vetting procedures are needed, something which government agencies tend to do ok at but religious institutions, not so much. There is also the vow of celibacy that seems so important for many religious leaders, which has almost certainly got the better of many religious practitioners and lead to some rather unscrupulous behaviours. Due to human nature and every single human alive today being in a chain stretching back unbroken for hundreds of millions of years of individuals who had urges to engage in sexual behaviour, those that did not failed to reproduce and as such have no descendant, causing sexual desires to be so universal and powerful. Large scale attempts to suppress these urges have catagorically been spectacular failures and for these guys it is no different.

But that isn't the biggest issue with this story, the issue is the lack of an official hierarchy, it seems that in the US temples at least, noone claims responsibility. The monks are free to travel between temples as they see fit and noone outside of Asia has the authority to strip a monk of his title for misdeeds. As such the temples idea of handling things internally seems to be sweep it under the rug and if law enforcement turn up after the monk in question has moved to another area noone has any idea where he went, making tracking the guy down that much harder. People need to be held accountable so that stuff like this doesn't happen.

I am hoping every Catholic who reads this feels outrage at the behaviour before realising where they have heard this story before.

Those crazy catholics are at it again

Someone just posted this on facebook. In short it means that the catholic church considers child rape and allowing a woman to become a priest as equivalent crimes, both in the most severe category.

Regardless of if someone believes the bible or not this is entirely unreasonable, although the arguments are very different. For the non believer child rape is one of the most horrific and mentally scarring acts anyone can commit and deserves just about any punishment that can be thrown at the criminal, while a woman priest is a non issue, if she wants to let her.

From the christian point of view however woman preachers are condemned by the bible. (1 Timothy 2:11-14, Titus 1:6-9) The first of those says women may not teach or have power over men because man came first then women came along and screwed everything up, the second is instructions that the preacher may only have one wife, amongst other things, and repeatedly specifies he, a very clear implication.
Now for the main event, what does the bible say about rape? Deuteronomy 20:13-14 and Numbers 31:11-18 clearly states that when invading any female who is a virgin, regardless of age should be kept alive to do whatever you want with. Deuteronomy 22:28-29 say if you rape a virgin you must marry her for life.

So any true christian should condemn woman preachers but view child rape as entirely acceptable. Almost sounds like the bible was written by a bunch of sexist, bronze aged old gits rather than being the perfect, timeless work of an all knowing god.