Ethic Soup

Ohio Pastor Asks Young Trick or Treaters: 'Wanna Comic Book with Pictures of Children Dying?'

Kids love to be scared on Halloween -- most of the time, kind of. Okay, not really! Just pretend.

FRIGHTEN THE LITTLE CHILDREN

Should they have to fear a church minister who has decided to scare the bejesus out of little children who just want to go trick or treating and get some Halloween candy?

That's stooping pretty low. Get religion children -- mine -- or you'll die. And here's some pictures of how you'll die. Sweet dreams!

No wonder more and more people are leaving the church. When a pastor doesn't even show common sense in how to treat and protect kids, you gotta wonder what his church is teaching in Sunday School.

The preacher is Rev. Kenny Cousar of the Northview Baptist Church (pictured below) in Hillsboro, Ohio.

Pet Blessings & The Ten Commandments From a Pet's Point of View: It'll Make You Cry Like a Baby

 
 

  

CHURCH PET BLESSINGS happen all year around, including Easter. The tradition began in the 4th century, with San Antonio de Abad, the patron saint of the animal kingdom, in a ritual of thanks for beasts of burden.

This week there were special pet blessings by churches across the country, including Los Angeles, Grand Rapids and Dallas. 

ON HOOF, FOOT & PAW

In Los Angeles, pets came out on "hoof, foot and paw" for the 81st annual blessing of the animals on Olvera Street, at the cobblestone plaza in downtown L.A. "with the sweet smell of fresh hay and manure," writes Jason Felch, Los Angeles Times.

"There were llamas, goats, geese and sheep. Parakeets, iguanas, goldfish and geckos. Turtles, horses, doves and a 25-pound albino python," wrote Felch. "And there were dogs. Hundreds of dogs. Dogs in tutus, leis and bunny ears. Dogs in bows and ribbons and T-shirts that read "Momma's Boy." 

It's Easter and Church Pews are Full: Unless You're in China

 
 
 

IT'S EASTER TODAY and a whole lot of prayers are being said. If you're one of those offering thanks to your Creator, give special thanks that you can celebrate your religion in a country that allows you that freedom and not a country like China.

I think most of us take this privilege for granted; we're so used to having it. America was formed so that those persecuted and denied religious freedom could have it.

Today China blocked more than 500 people from attending a planned outside Easter service -- actually blocking them from leaving their homes -- and detained more than 36 worshippers for attempting to attend religious services in Beijing, reports CNN.

Hundreds of uniformed and plain-clothes police swarmed the site of Shouwang Church, or Lighthouse, an underground Christian church. The church's senior pastor Jin Tianming is under house arrest. The church claims that 200 of its members have been arrested over the past month.

This church is considered an "illegal house," or unofficial church. Shouwang Church is an unregistered Christian group. There are an estimated 70 million Christians in China, but only 20 million attend government-approved churches, reports the BBC.

"The Chinese Communist Party tightly manages religious activity, requiring the faithful to join state-run churches, mosques or Buddhist temples," reports the New York Times.

"Sunday's worship ban came just days before an annual human rights dialogue between U.S. and Chinese diplomats scheduled for later this week in Beijing," said CNN.

CLICK & READ: "EASTER MEDITATION WITH MAYA ANGELOUS AND MARIAN ANDERSON"

CLICK & READ: "DANGER, DANGER: DON'T LET DOGS WOOFDOWN EASTER CHOCOLATES"

  

  by Sharon McEachern

Muslim Fatwa Order: Bangladeshi Girl Lashed To Death After Rape by Cousin

 

IT MAKES YOU ILL -- SICK TO YOUR STOMACH

The ghastly news out of Bangladesh is about a 14-year-old girl named Hena Akhter who has been killed by a public lashing. Hena was raped by her 40-year-old cousin. That's why she was beaten -- she was a rape victim.

Bangladesh is almost 90 percent Muslim and under sharia, or Islamic law, rape cannot be proved without the testimony of four witnesses. As explained by Andrew C. McCarthy, The National Review:

MUSLIM LAW STACKED AGAINST WOMEN

"Rapists tend not to bring witnesses along for their attacks. In any event, moreover, sharia values a woman's testimony as only half that of a man, so the deck is stacked and rape cannot be proved in most cases. Yet that hardly means the report of rape is of no consequence. Unable to establish that she'd been forcibly violated, the teenager became in the eyes of the sharia court a woman who'd had sexual intercourse outside of marriage. Thus the draconian lashing sentence that became a death sentence."

Hena's flogging under a fatwa -- for being a "participant" in her assault --would have been 101 lashes except she fell unconscious when the count was reportedly around 50. She was rushed to a hospital where she succumbed to her injuries and died, whipped to death.

VICTIM IS PUNISHED

"Died because she was raped," says the blog Conservative New Jersey. "What a loving religion."  (Pictured above right is another sharia flogging of a woman.) 

Surprise -- last year the Bangladeshi High Court banned punishments handed down by fatwa, or religious edict, following a series of cases of Muslim women who were beaten or caned for religious offenses, reported Huffington Post in July. The court ruling resulted from petitions filed by human rights groups and Bangladeshi women lawyers, who argued that women were publicly whipped for supposed crimes of adultery, having a child out of wedlock or even talking to people of other faiths -- and, of course, being a "participant" in their own rape.

The court's ruling also imposed jail terms for clerics and other members of village courts who order such punishment by invoking Islamic Shariah law.

FATWAS & VEILS RULED ILLEGAL

The same court ruled last April that women who were employed in public institutions were not required to wear the "hijab" or veil against their will, which would be a "flagrant violation" of basic human rights.

TEENAGE GIRL STILL WHIPPED TO DEATH 

Yet, although punishing fatwas were finally against the law, young Hena was whipped to death.

Following Hena's death, the High Court has ordered district officals to explain in 15 days why they failed to protect the 14-year-old rape victim from being beaten as per a fatwa, according to Bangladesh newspaper The Daily Star.

DOCTORS LIED ABOUT WOUNDS

The recent news is that three doctors are being investigated for claiming the teenage girl had no signs of injury in a postmortem examination, says The Guardian (UK):

"But Hena's body was exhumed on orders from the High Court and a second autopsy concluded that she had died from internal bleeding and septicaemia caused by wounds "of a homicidal nature" on her scalp, abdomen, back, chest, arms and legs."

Police are now treating the case as murder and have arrested six, including a Muslim cleric.

CLICK & READ: "Yet Another Saudi Sheikh's Fatwa: Women Must Wear One-Eyed Veils"

CLICK & READ: "Has Saudi Arabia Beheaded Fawza Falih for 'Witchcraft'?"

   

 

by Sharon McEachern

Holy Wafer! Priest Gives Dog Communion in Church

 
Oh My God! Apparently a whole lot of Canadian Christians are offended because at downtown Toronto's St. Peter's Anglican Church interim priest Rev. Marguerite Rea went and gave a canine communion during a Sunday morning service.

The dog, Trapper, a four-year-old German Shepherd mix was fed communion bread when it accompanied its owner for communion.

WANNA WAFER DOGGIE?

According to those in attendance at the church, it was a spontaneous gesture intended to make both dog and owner feel welcomed. It was their first time there. It had been a "simple church act of reaching out" to a new congregation member and his pet, said Rev. Rea.

Sadly, at least one parishioner saw the act as an affront to the rules and regulations of the Anglican Church and filed a complaint with the Anglican Diocese of Toronto and the reverend herself.

Again, sadly, church officials were not in the corner of the Priest and she has apologized.

Ethics Board Nun Excommunicated for Allowing Abortion at Phoenix Hospital

 
HERE WE GO AGAIN! Catholic Bishops around the world keep excommunicating people from the Church for saving lives -- just not the right lives.

NO EXCEPTIONS ALLOWED

If you save the life of an as yet unborn baby, that's okay. However, if medical circumstances force you to choose, or else both will die, don't even think about valuing the mother as much as the baby.

If carrying a pregnancy to term would result in the death of both mother and child, abortion is still not an option to Catholics.

EXCOMMUNICATION EQUALS CAPITAL PUNISHMENT

Two weeks ago, a nun who is an administrator at St. Joseph's Hospital and Medical Center in Phoenix, pictured above, was formally excommunicated from the Catholic Church -- basically the sacramental equivalent of capital punishment.

This post is a follow-up to an Ethic Soup post last year about a Brazilian abortion for a 9-year-old girl, who only weighed 66 pounds and was pregnant with twins -- after being raped by her stepfather. Doctors told her mother that the youngster, who was so small and as yet not completely developed, could not carry twins to full term and that she and the twins would most certainly die. They said she must have an abortion to live.

ABORTION WORSE THAN RAPIST'S IMPREGNATION OF CHILD 

After the abortion, Brazilian Archbishop Jose Cardoso Sobrinho announced the Vatican's  excommunication of the girl's mother and the doctors who performed the abortion -- all were Catholics, in the country which has the highest percentage of Catholics in the world. The stepfather was Catholic too, but his crime of raping the little girl was not considered bad enough for excommunication. In the eyes of the Catholic church, he remained a good Catholic. Brazilian catholics were outraged.

The Dutch Make Ethics News: Death and Sex Abuse

It's not all tulips and windmills in Holland. Currently, the Dutch are in the news for a variety of ethical issues -- euthanasia, assisted suicide, pedophile politics.

Actually, this story is a follow-up to the post "Dutch Nurses Say 'Hell Nee' to Patient Demands for Sexual Services." A Dutch nurses union launched a national campaign in Holland several weeks ago against such patient demands.

PEDOPHILE POLITICAL PARTY

The Party for Brotherly Love, Freedom and Diversity -- a Dutch political party formed by self-described pedophiles recently voted to dissolve. It's disbanding after failing for the second time to participate in national elections.

This group sought to lower the age of sexual consent to 12, but (thank God) could not get even the 600 signatures necessary to be placed on the ballot in the Netherlands, a country of 16.5 million. In order to win a seat in the 150-member Dutch parliament, the pedophile political party would have needed 60,000 votes.

ASSISTED SUICIDE PROPOSAL GAINS SUPPORT

The "Of Free Will" is a campaign to give elderly people in Holland the right to assisted suicide. Hoping to get the 40,000 signatures needed to bring the idea to parliament when the campaign was launched in February, the group has already collected 112,500 signatures -- nearly three times the amount needed to force a debate in parliament. 

Marie-Jose Grotenhuis of the Dutch campaign said: "We've been overwhelmed by the amount of reactions, especially because people took it so seriously and reactions were mostly positive."

Saudi Arabia Still Holds Witchcraft Trials: Lebanese Father of Five To Be Beheaded

 
Tomorrow in Saudi Arabia they are going to behead a Lebanese TV host and father of five for the crime of "sorcery." On Friday, April 2, Ali Sibat will be no longer, his head decapitated, his body dead.

The Lebanese father was sentenced to death last year for making predictions on a TV show from his home in Beirut and was arrested in Saudi Arabia while on pilgrimage in Mecca.

Saudi Arabia is an American top ally in the Middle East. This beheading will be "one of the most outrageous punishments against a man who isn't even a citizen of that country," reports CNN Anchor Hala Gorani at The Idesk.

Human Rights groups, including Amnesty International are trying to "raise the profile of this case because bad publicity seems to be the only thing that gets the attention of authorities," she reports.

Easter Meditation: With Maya Angelou & Marian Anderson

        

 

(Top Photo)  Marian Anderson, 1939, singing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on Easter Sunday. (Bottom Photo) Gelatin silver print of Marian Anderson photo by Richard Avedon.

  

This Easter Sunday, I'm reminded of another Easter Sunday 70 years ago. 

In early 1939, the great contralto Marian Anderson was told by the Daughters of the American Revolution that she could not sing at Washington D.C.'s DAR-owned Constitution Hall because of her race. This caused First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt to resign from the organization. Next, the DC Board of Education refused to allow Ms. Anderson to sing in concert at Central High School on the same grounds -- she was a negro.

Finally, Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes offered Marian Anderson the opportunity to sing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on Easter Sunday. And she did so 70 years ago.

    

  

The following poem by Maya Angelou, to me, seems most appropriate as we remember Marian Anderson's triumphant concert on Easter Sunday ... when still she rose.

 

"STILL  I  RISE"

By Maya Angelou

 

You may write me down in history

With your bitter, twisted lies,

You may trod me in the very dirt

But still, like dust, I'll rise.

 

Does my sassiness upset you?

Why are you beset with gloom?

'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells

Pumping in my living room.

 

Just like moons and like suns,

With the certainty of tides,

Just like hopes springing high,

Still I'll rise.

 

Did you want to see me broken?

Bowed head and lowered eyes?

Shoulders falling down like teardrops,

Weakened by my soulful cries.

 

Does my haughtiness offend you?

Don't you take it awful hard

'Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines

Diggin' in my own back yard.

 

You may shoot me with your words,

You may cut me with your eyes,

You may kill me with your hatefulness,

But still, like air, I'll rise.

 

Abortion Saves Raped 9-Year-Old Girl's Life: Vatican Excommunicates, Furor Among Brazil's Catholics

 

Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio

 

Hang on to your veil and don't drop your rosary. This story is beyond belief!

A little 9-year-old girl in Brazil has been raped repeatedly by her stepfather ever since she was six.The girl was found last week to be four months pregnant after being taken to the hospital for stomach pains, reports The New York Times.  The girl was pregnant with twins. Doctors told her distraught mother that the 80-pound child was too small to carry the twins to full-term. Labor would be dangerous and probably kill her.

EXCEPTIONS TO ABORTION LAW

 Although abortion is illegal in Brazil -- the nation with the largest percentage of Catholics in the world -- there are two exceptions to this law. Abortions are allowed in cases of rape or when the mother's life is in danger. Both of these exceptions apply to this case. An emergency abortion was performed.                                                   

TOO BAD, SO SAD

Here's the shocker. The Catholic Church does not care that the girl became pregnant due to rape. Too bad. The fact that she would probably die if she gave birth to two babies? Too bad, so sad. Her mother should be willing to sacrifice her child's life.

Archbishop Jose Cardoso Sobrinho, from Brazil's coastal city Recife, has announced that the Vatican was excommunicating the mother of the local girl -- along with the doctors who performed the procedure. By the way, the accused stepfather, the rapist, is not being excommunicated. The archbishop said that the rapist would not be thrown out of the Church, because although he had allegedly committed "a heinous crime," the Church took the view that "the abortion, the elimination of an innocent life, was more serious," reports the Belfast (UK) Telegraph.