A new poll sheds some interesting light on what behaviors Americans think are sinful. Adultery tops the list at 81% of respondents. (Beware of marrying the other 19%!) Use of hard drugs is 65%, abortion, interestingly, is 56%. Gossip (47%) and swearing (46%) beat out premarital sex (45%).
Only 91% of churchgoing Catholics believe in the concept of sin.
This is a pretty thorough poll, give it a look.
Muslims now exceed Catholics in number, though not Christians in general. Sad day. I'd editorialize on this but I hiked seven miles in the snow today and have to get to bed.
(Thanks to Gary for this one)
An expose on the Quran has caused an uproar on the net. First a site that hosted it got death threats. Those peaceful Muslims again. Then the domain on which it was supposed to be released was suspended by Network Solutions upon receipt of complaints that it violated the acceptable use policy (yeah right, I believe that one). Add to this the time that Pakistan took YouTube entirely off the Internet a few weeks ago for a brief period of time because they displeased them, and you see what kind of people these are. (At least Pakistan didn't threaten anyone.) There will continue to be wars of all kinds with these people.
Did you hear about the Islamic convert to Catholicism that Pope Benedict baptized? Karl Keating of Catholic Answers writes all about it and its significance in his e-newsletter. The individual already had a fatwa out for his death so I suppose he couldn't do any worse. Benedict has a lot of courage baptizing a Muslim so publicly. He's sending a clear message and it may not be well received. Makes one wonder if he will be the target for assassination.
Those Filipinos a bit overenthused with Lenten penance are being advised to check the whips they use to flagellate themselves and make sure they are clean. (God forbid you should get hurt whipping yourself.) In general the Filipino Catholic Church looks down on the Lenten custom of re-enacting the Crucifixion but there is no stopping some people.
This has got to rank among the weirdest of customs among Christians. (I won't even dignify it by calling it a "Christian custom.") I think it is seriously misguided and I sure wish the church there was more vigorous in their opposition to it. But hey, maybe this year there will be less tetanus ...
Amsterdam has announced that it will no longer try to stop gays from having sex in public parks so long as it is away from playgrounds, condoms are cleaned up, and it is not done during the day. They claim a restriction can't be enforced. (Although they are restricting it during the day, so obviously they don't truly believe that as a reason to not forbid it.) Will somewhere in America be next?
Dr. Laura is blaming Spitzer's wife for driving him into the arms of another woman. See, she didn't meet his needs, didn't validate him as a man and so forth. Oy vey! I am disappointed.
I don't really see how a prostitute's validation can be meaningful to a man at all. She will just tell him whatever he wants to hear, and it won't be honest. A man who is satisfied by that is nothing but shallow.
(Historical context: Eliot Spitzer, governor of New York and former attorney general, resigned recently because he had been caught patronizing prostitutes.)
P.S. The link is fixed. Thanks, Caleb.
Eliot Spitzer will not be missed by the pro-life movement. According to the Family Research Council, he was a "bully towards pregnancy care centers and pro-life organizations and as a champion of abortion-on-demand and NARAL. As New York's attorney general, Elliot Spitzer spent taxpayer time and treasure attacking those who aid pregnant women. Shortly after winning the governorship, he pushed for legislation that would have made abortion in New York even more pandemic while stomping on the rights of religious providers like Catholic hospitals." So thanks be to God he has resigned.
This news is a few days old since I sat on it hoping that Zenit would publish the news, as I try to get Catholic-based versions of news like this instead of secular wire stories, but they have not published anything on it. The head of the Apostolic Penitentiary listed various "new" sins in an interview in L'Osservatore Romano, such as genetic manipulations and other experiments. He mentioned as well drugs, pollution, and the gap between the rich and the poor, though I think these things have already been cited as sins.
Naturally I found several errors in the wire story, such as attributing it to "the Vatican" when it was merely a Vatican official cited in an interview.
The Wall Street Journal reports that networks are deliberate pushing the envelope of good taste
Advertisers are our big proponents here. '"A lot of marketers don't want to be associated with a show that has too much sexual content," said Brad Adgate, senior vice president of research for Horizon Media, an ad-buying company.' So keep calling them and protesting.
A big controversy is over Showtime's serial killer drama "Dexter". Get it? Dexter, Latin for "right" and opposite of "sinister" (left)? Talk about outrageous perversion; portray a serial killer sympathetically and give him a name that means "right". (His victims are hard-to-catch murderers, so that is part of why he is named "Dexter". But it's still a perversion if you ask me.)
A very good reason not even to watch TV nowadays ...
I haven't forgotten about the blog, just been too busy (I am arguing with some friends over my lack of exercise, and I argue that I'm too busy to exercise, and recently I've been too busy not only to exercise but to even post to the blog or for that matter open my snail mail). So we'll see how it goes ... Since it prevented today's blog post (feel guilty, Dan?) I may as well say that tonight I spent my time bottling some wine I had made with Worm. Six more months and it will be ready to partake of. Now if I can only keep my first floor cool enough during the summer.
Meanwhile, two notes: 1) Less than three weeks of Lent left — hooray!; 2) Daylight Savings Time starts this weekend. A harbinger of spring! But don't miss church.
Churchmarketingsucks.com (who came up with that domain?) reports how in the Netherlands they are trying to pitch Lent by comparing it to the Islamic month of Ramadan, because apparently young people there are more familiar Islam than with Christianity.
The big disappointment (and surprise) here is that Dutch youth are more familiar with Islam than with Christianity. I guess it wouldn't be surprising that they aren't familiar with Christianity as it is largely a secular country, at least last I checked. The question is where is this interest in Islam coming from them? Is there a large immigrant population that they rub elbows with? Or are they just interested? Maybe there is a small but effective Muslim contingent evangelizing them? Obviously what we have here is a gross failure to evangelize on the part of the Christians. The Netherlands has been under the sway of liberal Christianity for many years so this should not be surprising. Now we're reaping the fruits of it.
I knew that Europe was seeing an influx of Muslims but I didn't realize the extent of their effect on the society there. We're seeing an influx as well; will the results be similar? Will we become so politically correct and tolerant that we allow our culture and religion to be effaced from society and perhaps from most of the earth? I think that's what we're facing, what with falling birth rates and a militant Islam. Perhaps they'll compete the conquest of Europe they failed to accomplish in the Middle Ages. Just so you know what we are up against.
(From my friend Caleb from the Hail2Pitt blog who read this on ChurchMarketing sucks who read it on Cheaperstising which highlighted the Got Religion blog that covered this story in the Telegraph.)
