Speculative Fictions: Scientology’s Tin-Pot Real Estate Empire and the Real Owners of the World
Yippee! We'll never have to pay tax on this building! Photo: Scientology Media (CC)
Business Insider pulls the veil aside a little on the vast global real estate portfolio of The Church Of Scientology, with 10 examples from the over 8,500 Scientology Churches, Missions and affiliated groups buildings in 165 countries around the world.
Still, Scientology is way behind the top five largest landowners in the world: Queen Elizabeth II (legal owner of about 6,600 million acres of land, one sixth of the earth’s non ocean surface, valued at £17,600,000,000,000); the Russian state (4,219 million acres); the Chinese state (about 2,365 million acres); the Federal Government of the United States, which owns about one third of the land of the USA (760 million acres); and the King of Saudi Arabia (553 million acres).
And not even in the same class as the more venerable Catholic Church, but of course Scientology hasn’t been able to take advantage…
Vatican.xxx
Let’s hope the buyer intends to (further) blow the lid off sexual abuse in the Catholic Church. From Reuters:
The Vatican said on Wednesday an unknown buyer had snapped up the internet address vatican.xxx, a domain combining its name with an extension reserved for pornographic content.
“This domain is not available because it has been acquired by someone else, but not the Vatican,” Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi said on Vatican radio.
It was not clear from his statement if the Vatican had tried to acquire the domain in order to prevent…
Pope Benedict Peace Message Calls For Wealth Redistribution
Wait a second — does this make Paul Ryan and Newt Gingrich a couple o’ them “Cafeteria Catholics”? From Francis X. Rocca at the Huffington Post:
VATICAN CITY (RNS)— Noting a “rising sense of frustration” at the worldwide economic recession, Pope Benedict XVI said that a more just and peaceful world requires “adequate mechanisms for the redistribution of wealth.”
The pope’s words appeared in his message for the World Day of Peace 2012, released on Friday (Dec. 16) at the Vatican.
The message laments that “some currents of modern culture, built upon rationalist and individualist economic principles, have cut off the concept of justice from its transcendent roots, detaching it from charity and solidarity.”
Authentic education, Benedict writes, teaches the proper use of freedom with “respect for oneself and others, including those whose way of being and living differs greatly from one’s own.”
Vatican Calls for ‘Central World Bank’
Philip Pullella reports in Reuters:
The Vatican called on Monday for the establishment of a “global public authority” and a “central world bank” to rule over financial institutions that have become outdated and often ineffective in dealing fairly with crises. The document from the Vatican’s Justice and Peace department should please the “Occupy Wall Street” demonstrators and similar movements around the world who have protested against the economic downturn.
“Towards Reforming the International Financial and Monetary Systems in the Context of a Global Public Authority,” was at times very specific, calling, for example, for taxation measures on financial transactions. “The economic and financial crisis which the world is going through calls everyone, individuals and peoples, to examine in depth the principles and the cultural and moral values at the basis of social coexistence,” it said.
It condemned what it called “the idolatry of the market” as well as a “neo-liberal thinking” that it said…
Pope Sends His First Tweet Via iPad
Pope Benedict XVI has posted his first tweet! The pope has gone digital, announcing the launch of the new site www.news.va, so the world can keep up with what’s going on at the Vatican.
Catholic Church Officially Blames Hippies for Their Child Abuse Scandals
Via the LA Times:
Blame the flower children. That seems to be the chief conclusion of a new report about the Roman Catholic Church’s sexual abuse scandal. The study, undertaken by John Jay College of Criminal Justice (PDF) at the request of America’s Catholic bishops, links the spike in child abuse by priests in the 1960s and ’70s to “the importance given to young people and popular culture” — along with the emergence of the feminist movement, a “singles culture” and a growing acceptance of homosexuality. It also cites crime, drugs, an increase in premarital sexual behavior and divorce.
The problem with this conclusion isn’t that it absolves molesting priests of responsibility. Even the study’s authors wouldn’t go that far. Rather, the flaw with the theory is that it’s unsupported by any data or evidence. It thus detracts from the report’s other findings, which are based on empirical research. Indeed, aside from its…
Jesus Christ is the Greatest Hippie (Rock Star) of Them All (Video)
Quick response to this story, Jesus is actually our greatest “rock star”/”hippie”/countercultural figure of them all (according to this musical), but there is a lot of debate here which I welcome based on the post below. Catholic Church, in my humble opinion, you f-ed up, but I ain’t the Pope.
BTW, if you could bring Carl Anderson back from the dead to play Judas, I would go every week to church again. This man is awesome:
The Vatican Takes on Climate Change
Eric Bangeman writes on ars technica:
The Vatican Pontifical Academy of Sciences has just released a strongly worded report (PDF) on global climate change demanding in the strongest possible language that humans act decisively to avert a coming crisis. “We call on all people and nations to recognize the serious and potentially reversible impacts of global warming caused by the anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases and other pollutants,” says the report. “If we want justice and peace, we must protect the habitat that sustains us.”
The report was not authored by the Pontifical Academy itself; rather, the Vatican convened a group of scientists with relevant experience, along with a few Nobel Prize winners. The group’s focus was on increasing evidence of glacier retreat, and the report ended up focused on its causes. The group’s co-chair, Nobel Laureate Paul Crutzen, used a somewhat controversial name for the “man-made” geologic era in which we are now living: the “Anthropocene.”
Hundreds Of Chinese Christians Arrested At Easter Congregation
Holy Trinity Church in Singapore. Photo: BertholdD (CC)
The New York Times reports:
The authorities stepped up a three-week campaign against an underground Christian church on Sunday, detaining hundreds of congregants in their homes and taking at least 36 others into custody after they tried to hold Easter services in a public square, church members and officials said.
The church, Shouwang, an evangelical Protestant congregation that was evicted from its rented quarters this month, has been at loggerheads with the government since announcing plans to gather outdoors rather than disband or return to worshiping in private homes. The authorities have repeatedly stymied Shouwang’s efforts to lease or buy space for its 1,000-member congregation, one of the largest and most prominent so-called house churches in the capital.
The Chinese Communist Party tightly manages religious activity, requiring the faithful to join state-run churches, mosques or Buddhist temples. Until the most recent crackdown on Shouwang and a handful…
Louis CK Learns About The Catholic Church
Louis CK’s 2007 investigative report about the religion he was raised in:
Catholic Church To Launch Exorcism Reality TV Series
Giotto's depiction of St. Francis exorcising demons.
The Catholic Church must be truly desperate in its quest to engage young people — it’s now resorting to creating a low-brow reality TV show in which its priests perform exorcisms. I promise I’m not making this up — here’s the story from Entertainment Weekly:
Discovery Channel is teaming with the Vatican for an unprecedented new series hunting the deadliest catch of all: Demons.
The Exorcist Files will recreate stories of real-life hauntings and demonic possession, based on cases investigated by the Catholic Church. The project includes access into the Vatican’s case files, as well as interviews with the organization’s top exorcists — religious experts who are rarely seen on television.
“The Vatican is an extraordinarily hard place to get access to, but we explained we’re not going to try to tell people what to think,” says Discovery president and GM Clark Bunting.
Bunting says the investigators believe…
Catholic Church Says Virgin Mary Appears In Wisconsin
The Shrine of Our Lady of Good Help. Photo: Royalbroil (CC)
It must be silly season for religion — this story made the front page of the New York Times today:
CHAMPION, Wis. — In France, the shrine at Lourdes is surrounded by hundreds of hotels and has received as many as 45,000 pilgrims in a single day. Our Lady of Guadalupe, in Mexico, draws millions of fervent worshipers a year.
Now, a little chapel among the dairy farms here, called Our Lady of Good Help, has joined that august company in terms of religious status, if not global fame. This month, it became one of only about a dozen sites worldwide, and the first in the United States, where apparitions of the Virgin Mary have been officially validated by the Roman Catholic Church.
In 1859, the year after Mary is said to have appeared in Lourdes, a Belgian immigrant here named Adele Brise said…
Vatican Bank Investigated For Money Laundering – Again.
I wonder which banking official will suddenly die during this investigation? Victor L. Simpson and Nicole Winfield report for AP:
VATICAN CITY – This is no ordinary bank: The ATMs are in Latin. Priests use a private entrance. A life-size portrait of Pope Benedict XVI hangs on the wall.
Nevertheless, the Institute for Religious Works is a bank, and it’s under harsh new scrutiny in a case involving money-laundering allegations that led police to seize euro23 million ($30 million) in Vatican assets in September. Critics say the case shows that the “Vatican Bank” has never shed its penchant for secrecy and scandal.
The Vatican calls the seizure of assets a “misunderstanding” and expresses optimism it will be quickly cleared up. But court documents show that prosecutors say the Vatican Bank deliberately flouted anti-laundering laws “with the aim of hiding the ownership, destination and origin of the capital.” The documents also reveal investigators’ suspicions that…
Pope Says Condoms Sometimes Permissible to Stop AIDS
Philip Pullella reports in Reuters:
VATICAN CITY — The use of condoms to stop the spread of AIDS may be justified in certain cases, Pope Benedict says in a new book that could herald the start of sea change in the Vatican’s attitude to condoms.
In excerpts published in the Vatican newspaper on Saturday ahead of the book’s publication next week, the pope cites the example of the use of condoms by prostitutes as “a first step toward moralization” even though condoms are “not really the way to deal with the evil of HIV infection.”
While some Roman Catholic leaders have spoken in the past about the limited use of condoms in specific cases to stop the spread of HIV/AIDS as a lesser of two evils, this is the first time the pope has mentioned the possibility himself in public.
The Vatican newspaper unexpectedly published significant excerpts from the book on Saturday night, days before…
Catholic Church Seeks Exorcists
Giotto's depiction of St. Francis exorcising demons.
Apparently America is overwhelmed by demons and a Catholic bishop says “each diocese should have its own” exorcist. Facing a shortage, the Church held a special training workshop in Baltimore this past weekend to teach clerics the esoteric rite, reports Reuters:
The church has signed up 56 bishops and 66 priests for the two-day workshop that began on Friday, seeking to boost the small group of just five or six American exorcists that the church currently has on its books.
“There’s this small group of priests who say they get requests from all over the continental U.S.,” Bishop Thomas Paprocki of Springfield, Illinois, was quoted as saying.
“Actually, each diocese should have its own” exorcist, he added.
Paprocki did not say why there was increased demand for exorcisms, which he noted were rarely performed.
While solemnly regarded by the Catholic Church, exorcism is a staple of Hollywood fright films…
Homer Simpson Is Catholic
Jill Serjeant reports for Reuters via Yahoo News:
“The Simpsons” just got a blessing from the Vatican.
The official Vatican newspaper has declared that beer-swilling, doughnut-loving Homer Simpson and son Bart are Catholics — and what’s more, it says that parents should not be afraid to let their children watch “the adventures of the little guys in yellow.”
“Few people know it, and he does everything to hide it. But it’s true: Homer J. Simpson is Catholic”, the Osservatore Romano newspaper said in an article on Sunday headlined “Homer and Bart are Catholics.”
The newspaper cited a study by a Jesuit priest of a 2005 episode of the show…
Belgian Archbishop Calls AIDS ‘Inherent Justice’
What is it with Catholic clergy? These guys just don’t know when to zip it! From Reuters:
Belgium’s Roman Catholic Church, already reeling from allegations of sexual abuse, faced a new scandal Friday after its primate wrote that AIDS was “a sort of inherent justice.”
Many lawmakers condemned Archbishop Andre-Joseph Leonard, the head of the Belgian church, for the remarks in a new book and Belgium’s center for equal opportunities received a series of complaints, including one by a lawyer who said his comments were incitement to hatred.
The Church is struggling to recover from the resignation of the Bishop of Bruges in April after he admitted sexually abusing a nephew.
In his book “Monseigneur Leonard – Conversations,” the archbishop referred to a remark by the late Pope John Paul II who said, when asked whether AIDS was a punishment from God, that it was difficult to judge God’s will.
“I would not at all…
Vatican’s Chief Exorcist Publishes His ‘Confessions’
By Lounge Daddy at Dateline Zero:
A new book is out from Fr. Gabriele Amorth, the Vatican’s chief exorcist. The title is Confessions of an Exorcist.
It’s in paperback, and … in French. This is a bummer; but I hope it’s only a temporary bummer. (Of course it’s in Italian as well, titled Memoirs of an Exorcist.)
For now the lucky French have this latest book to go alongside the first two Fr. Amorth titles that record his experiences with, and thoughts on exorcism. Good for them, those jerks.
However, I’ll be anxiously awaiting an English translation. If it sounds like I am committing the sin of envy, it is because I am.
This newest title is in an interview format; which sets it apart from the other two; which are more short essays, stories, and commentary on various points regarding his experience. (As I understand it however, this book is not in a Q&A…
