The Buddha and the Pope

Now we can all play at being the Pope. We can bully, wage war, lie, cheat and keep deep dark secrets while virtually having fun.

Cheyenne Erlich, a Tibetan Buddhist meditation guru and his world wide band of mysterious gamers at SGR Games, LLC launched their online game "Vatican Wars" on Facebook last week. The Holy Grail is to become the Pope and make changes to the hot button Catholic practices of abortion, same sex marriage, ordination of women and the use of birth control.

You just know the eyebrows are being raised at the Holy See but not a peep has been heard. It could go either way for the Catholic Church. The opening page of the site contains disclosure that SGR Games, LLC has no relationship with the Roman Catholic Church, the Vatican or the Holy See.

SGR Games, LLC was named after Saint Genesius of Rome who is said to be the patron saint of actors although the legitimacy of his sainthood is a matter of controversy in the Church.

It could very well be that this Tibetan Buddhist is helping to open the eyes of the world to the real Church or this Vassar graduate did the numbers...by this game will we conquer?

Catholic Mirror of the Wall: Catholic League Condemns Victim Advocates

Last week Bill Donohue, President of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights drew on an aged old Catholic practice reminiscent of the Inquisition. He condemned victim advocate organizations Snap (Survivors Network for Those Abused by Priests), NSAC (National Survivors Advocates Coalition) and BishopAccountalility.org by essentially labeling them witch-hunters.

Mr. Donohue seems to have a disconnect about who the victims are here - we're talking about young children in the care of men and women of God. The imbalance of power is so enormous as not to be believed. These children carried the shame, betrayal and Catholic secret throughout their lives until compassionate groups reached out to offer help. The Catholic Church did, and still does, almost nothing to heal the wounds inflicted by its demonic clerics.

We ask: "Mirror, mirror on the wall, who would Bill Donohue call if his child were sexually abused by the parish priest?"

The Pope and the Pew

The cat's out of the bag and Pope Benedict XVI has done something about it. Unfortunately I'm not referring to the sexual abuse crises of the Catholic Church to which the Church took roughly nine years to react. It was the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life that really got the attention of the Vatican.

In 2008 the Pew Forum published results of its U.S. Religious Landscape Survey identifying the Catholic Church as the denomination experiencing the greatest loss in membership as a result of affiliation changes. The study further indicates "These losses would have been even more pronounced were it not for the offsetting impact of immigration." (See http://www.pewforum.org/.)

The study's summary of major religious traditions in the U.S. had the Catholic Church in the number two spot with 23.9 per cent of the U.S. population behind Evangelical Churches with 26.3 per cent of the population.

So the Pope dug in his heels and resurrected Pope John Paul II's appeal for a new evangelization. In 2010 Pope Benedict XVI announced his creation of a pontifical council charged with pumping up the membership specifically targeting inactive Catholics, or as he described them, people "...living through a progressive secularization of society and a kind of eclipse of the sense of God." (Vatican City, Catholic News Service, June 28,2010)

Taking the lead from the top Church, the Catholics are looking for men and women whose lives have been personally changed by Jesus and who can find the words to share their personal stories with others.

The Church has also implemented the nifty corporate practice of merging with smaller entities, i.e. welcoming the conservative Anglican Church of America into its fold.

But beware, this "new evangelization" has a far greater reach. Pope John Paul II's initiative declared that "The new evangelization calles for a clearly conceived, serious and well organized effort to evangelize culture." (Pope John Paul II, Ecclesia in America, 1970)

U.S. Catholic bishops and organizations have rallied to that call with unprecedented grassroots political organization, taking the crusade off the battlefield into the voting booth. Their mission to "evangelize culture" has them in the pulpits, on line and in the media spotlight lobbying for Catholic agenda dignities to the extent that eyebrows have been raised as to their crossing the line of federal laws regulating non-profit organizations.

Bishops are using corporate bullying tactics to pressure Catholic politicians into towing the Catholic Party line by refusing sacraments to those who don't vote according to doctrine. Unwittingly, or not, the Church has a clamp on the U.S. Supreme Court with five Catholic Supreme Court Justices out of its nine members.

All this high profiling to garner new members while flying in the face of international accusations of the Church's crimes against children worldwide seems to be working.

The National Council of Churches 2011 Yearbook of American & Canadian Churches listed the Roman Catholic Church in the number one position with 68.5 million members and reported growth of .57 percent; however, according to the NCC, ten of the 25 largest churches did not report updated figures (News from the National Council of Churches, February 14, 2011). It's interesting to note that the Catholic Church found the time in 2010 to compile this report; but has ignored the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child for fourteen years....onward Christian soldiers.

Do Vatican Guidelines Protect Guilty Priests?

Whew! Finally the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops voted to accept revisions to its Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People that include child pornography as a crime against the Church. A day late and a dollar short for Kansas City but progress nonetheless. Interestingly, the vote was not unanimous. Five bishops dissented and four abstained. No word on who or why yet; and considering most of the discussions prior to the vote went on behind closed doors we may never know.

In May 2011 the Vatican circulated a letter to all bishops worldwide asking that they develop guidelines that establish clear and coordinated procedures to combat sexual abuse. The U.S. Conference put guidelines into effect in 2002 in response to the endemic allegations against priests originating in Boston under the guidance of Cardinal Bernard Law.

Here's what some of the top guns on the issue are saying about the those guidelines:

• "...a weak, vague and largely unenforceable set of guidelines, We have yet to see a single Catholic employee, from custodian to cardinal, disciplined for breaking any part of the charter." David Clohessy, Director of SNAP (Survivors Network for Those Abused by Priests)
• "The charter has served the Church well...the Bishops' Conference does not have the power to sanction church officials, and that when followed as written, the charter is effective.." Bishop Blase Cupich, head of the Committee on Protection of Children and Young  People
• "The Vatican letter likely will cause bishops' conferences worldwide to create policies that preserve the power of the bishops to handle allegations of clergy sexual abuse, and that allows priests with admitted or established allegations to remain in ministry." Terence McKiernan, President, BishopAccountability.org.

So why spend all that time and energy creating and debating a document that essentially has no teeth to protect our children and yourth? Consider the following:

• positive press image
• paper trail for litigation
• palliative posturing for the faithful

Reminder: This all comes on the heels of Amnesty Internationl's Annual Report 2001: The State of the World's Human Rights citing the Vatican's refusal to comply with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child requirement to file reports on its efforts to protect the rights of children. Member countries must file reports initially two years after acceding to the convention and then every five years. The Vatican's report is fourteen (14) years overdue.

The Book No Pope Would Want You to Read is filled with hard hitting truths tracing the Catholic Church's scramble for power and money using the veil of its self created religion.  The content goes beyond the smash TV series The Borgias and trumps all up to the minute media coverage of molestations and cover-ups. The Catholic Church serves as the template for today's corporate greed and world wars waged in the name of someone's god.

This site is to keep the dialogue going long after you've read the book...because we know the Church hasn't curbed its appetite nor positioned itself for an act of contrition evidenced by its US Conference of Catholic Bishops and local pastors violating US federal law by lobbying against amendments for federal funding of abortions, civil unions, euthanasia, health care reform and reporting of sex offenders. This practice takes the crusade off the battle field and into the voting booth.

Today that conference will convene in Bellevue, Washington, with an interesting line up on the agenda:

• vote on revisions to the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People (adopted in 2002 in response to the sexual abuse crises; revised in 2005)
• debate and vote of physician assisted suicide
• present efforts of the USCCB on the Defense of Marriage
• report on Anglicanorum coebitus, the Vatican guidelines allowing communities of Anglicans to enter into full communion with the Catholic Church
• vote on two liturgical items pertaining to the Spanish translation of the Roman Missal and a collection of prayers for major feasts in Spanish speaking countries.

It's taken the Catholic Church nine (9) years to reach a decision on how to deal will clerical sex offenders; it's going to debate and vote on what is already in place as doctrine about suicide and marriage and it's coups de grace - implementing the big corporate practice of buying up the little guy to increase numbers. They're on the move and the pulpits will be buzzing this Sunday.

Welcome to our first post

Best selling author Tim C. Leedom and co-author Maryjane Churchville announce the release of  their latest investigative work, The Book No Pope Would Want You to Read.
 View our trailer at: http://www.youtube.com/user/no pope