Shouldn’t We Send Missionaries Into Space To Convert E.T.?

It may have taken the Roman Catholic Church 359 years to recognize that Galileo was right, that the earth traveled around the sun, but now the Vatican’s chief astronomer has said “the extraterrestrial is my brother” in a relative New York minute rather than waiting a couple of centuries. Wow!

I didn’t realize that the Catholic Church is in such dire straits for priests and members that Pope Benedict has authorized a search of the heavens (so to speak) to bolster its numbers against the potent Muslim birthrate. The Vatican may be watching the latest Mars landing with more than general interest.

Benedict’s predecessors burned several of Galileo’s supporters at the stake (witness Bruno) so they would lose interest in pushing a “heretical” scientific approach.

The idea that the banana biker E.T. and “Starship” Chewbaca are out there just waiting to genuflect to a pope simply boggles my mind.

Is the Vatican following the Mars landing closely to see if it is a suitable moral home for Cardinal Bernard Law or a reservoir for priests?

What brought this on was an interview in the Vatican newspaper by the Rev. Jose Gabriel Funes, the Jesuit director of the Vatican Observatory and its chief astronomer. (Aren’t those Jesuits just a pack of trouble?) Funes said that “believing in aliens does not contradict faith in God” because aliens “would still be God’s creatures.” He added that ruling out the existence of space aliens would be like “putting limits” on God’s “creative freedom.”

This could turn out to be a real load. Let’s see. Dust was breathed on and Adam sprung from it. Eve was then fashioned from Adam’s rib. Did these two then create Atom and Pamela Parton, the first space aliens--or did God breathe again? Inquiring minds want to know.

Was Peter Showing His Peter In The Fishing Boat?

We are weird custodians of the earth. A Christian group led by a Quaker is planning to build Natura, a Christian nudist colony near sun-drenched Tampa, Florida, where religious sun-lovers can let it all hang out.

Cofounder Bill Martin claims that the early Christians were nudists and that Christ was naked when he washed the apostles’ feet.

If this is true, Mary Magadalene must have gotten an eyeful when she did the same thing for Christ.

Martin also claims that Peter fished from his boat in the nude. All church services will be “natural.”

He says he found a big investor to build Natura by advertising in the Wall Street Journal. This, of course, is Christian capitalism at its finest.

A group more weird than Christian nudists was Heaven’s Gate, a cult led by Marshall Applewhite (remember those strange alien eyes?). When the Comet Hale-Bopp appeared in 1997 the Heaven’s Gate cult figured it was a good time to get off the earth, as it was due to be recycled. Applewhite and 38 followers committed suicide so that their souls could fly to a spaceship hiding behind the tail of Hale-Bopp.

Heaven’s Gate was like a medieval monastic order, giving up all their material possessions to practice a highly ascetic life. So ascetic, by the way, six men of the 39 travelers underwent castration to make sure they would not be tempted.

All 39 were found dressed in black and white Nike athletic shoes with armband patches declaring they were the “Heaven’s Gate Away Team.”

Discovered in their bunkbeds, faces and torsos covered with a square purple cloth, each had a five-dollar bill and three quarters in their pockets. No one has figured out why.

They killed themselves by drinking vodka mixed with phenobarbital. They then placed plastic bags over their heads.
In what is stranger than fiction, the Heaven’s Gate cult supported themselves by developing computer-based instruction packages for the U.S. Army.

The Prayers For Prosperity Racket

Last week I received a different and unsigned pitch from a Saint Matthews Church. Geez, wouldn’t a pitchman-bishop sign his name when he is sending me a prayer rug (actually a piece of paper with a picture of a rug) and a “Prosperity Cross” which was guaranteed to bring me huge financial rewards? They did want me to send them “seed money.”

The Prosperity Cross really has paid off for some. I know this is true because their brochure stated that ECS got a $10,000 blessing. Mrs. T.F. of Texas was blessed with a “big 6-room house.” Sister Y had only $50 to stretch to payday so she spent a lot of time on the prayer rug supplied by her mother. Lo and Behold, after praying for a big blessing she received $46,888.20, the total of her debts. She did not say whether it was in cash, check, money order, stamps, or some other method of payment.

Thomas Jefferson, often named as one of the founding fathers of our “Christian” nation by evangelicals and other radicals, wrote this in a letter to a friend: “I have recently been examining all the known superstitions of the world and do not find in our particular superstition of Christianity one redeeming feature. They are all alike, founded on fables and mythology.” Ouch! And I thought I was a cynic.

Bill Maher, an atheist if there ever was one, put Old Tom’s words into a more modern context: “We are a nation that is unenlightened because of religion. I think religion stops people from thinking. I think it justifies crazies. I think flying planes into buildings was a faith-based initiative. I think religion is a neurological disorder.”

A lot of blasphemy potential there, but Maher has some good points because there are so many crazies in the religion business.

Does One Have To Wear Sanctioned Underwear To Get To Heaven?

Our next-door neighbors at Camp Lejeune over 50 years ago were a lovely Mormon family who kept six months supply of food in their basement. They said it was because of church rules.

We were Catholics when we lived on the farm and I guess we also kept about six months of canned chicken, meat, and vegetables in our root cellar, including a 20-gallon crock of saurkraut, because we had rules about starving when surrounded by plenty. So we didn’t think keeping all that food on hand was so strange.

But we never talked religious philosophy. Corky and I knew it was a patriarchal religion--but so is Catholicism.

But now with all the hassle about Warren Jeffs (his father Rulon had between 19 and 60 wives) and the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, all sorts of questions have been raised.

The “real” Mormon Church banned polygamy over 100 years ago because they had a hard sell convincing people that Joseph Smith’s 28 wives with their estimated 100 children (ten were also married to other men) constituted normal relationships.

Smith was in Illinois in the middle 1850’s and ruled his own theocratic state with a 5,000-man militia and served as mayor, chief judge, and commander-in-chief. He was appointed an earthly king by his people and campaigned for the presidency of the U.S. He also said all other religious teachings were “an abomination.” So the Mormons have always had their problems.

Where did the Mormons get the idea that in order for men to reach the highest level in heaven they had to have at least three wives? Was God’s order on the golden tablets given to Smith by an angel?

In Warren Jeffs’ FLDS all marriages are arranged by church authorities in a rigid culture where women must obey their husbands and TV and newspapers are banned. Pam Black, an ex-Mormon who had 14 children through arranged marriages, says females are “programmed from babyhood to say ‘Yes, yes, yes’.”

The women interviewed during the Texas ranch raid and later court actions reminded me of the robotic characters in the movie “The Night Of The Living Dead.” One woman claimed she was the oldest of 47 children sired by one man. A polygamist who broke with Jeff and moved to Bountiful, British Columbia, is said to have fathered 100 children.

Women really aren’t women in these situations. They are really brood sows, forever in the motel-like jails, producing litters for the glorification of men.

Sara Robinson, an expert on the Mormon “experience,” described their lives this way: “Almost every feature of these women’s lives is determined by someone else. They do not choose what they wear, whom they live with, when and whom they marry, or when and with whom they have sex. From the day they’re born, they can be reassigned at a moment’s notice to another father or husband, another household or another community...If they object to any of this, they’re subject to losing access to the resources they need to raise their kids. They can be moved to a trailer with no heat, and given less food than more compliant wives until they learn ‘to keep sweet’.”

Why should slavery exist in this country under the guise of religion? What does the word “equal” mean? There are other religions in the world where cannabalism must be practiced if one is to gain ‘heaven.”

In Jeffs’ FLDS church, where they base their “religious” profligacy on the premise that a man must have at least three wives to get into the upper levels of heaven, middle-aged and old men slobber and slaver over junior-high aged girls whose only instruction is “yes, yes, yes.” What a cruel life for them!

These men who use sex as their religion should be placed into the upper levels of the nearest state pen for 25-30 years and then be forced to register as sex offenders.

Human sacrifice used to be common among the Aztec religion because the priests said: “Life is because of the gods, with their sacrifice they gave us life...they produce our sustenance..which nourishes life.” So they tore the living, beating hearts out of the chests of young boys and girls and thrust them toward the sun.

In the end, what is the difference between the FLDS and the Aztecs?