CHRISTIANS BEHAVING BADLY #21: hiring a hitman

In my attempt to show that being religious

is not a guarantee of moral behavior,

this is just one post in my series of reports featuring

the bad behavior of religious people, past or present....

A former Roman Catholic priest has been charged with plotting to kill a teenaged boy. Unfortunately for the priest, the 'hitman' he tried to hire was an undercover police officer. On 11/23/10, John Fiala, 52, was charged in Texas with one count of criminal solicitation to commit capital murder. Bail was set at $700,000.

Apparently Fiala offered a neighbor $5000 to kill the boy. The neighbor called authorities who sent an undercover agent to speak to Fiala. Their conversation was caught on audio and video tape.

The teen's lawyer said the priest met the boy in 2007 and started giving the 16-year-old gifts including a computer and a car.

The boy filed a law suit in April accusing Fiala of raping him at gunpoint later that year and also filed against the church for covering up the priest's behavior. The sexual abuse continued through 2008 during private catechism classes and in hotel rooms.

The youth reported that Fiala had threatened him with physical violence and death. He also threatened to harm the boy's girlfriend and family if he ever revealed what had happened. The threats often came via daily text messages with Fiala threatening to kill himself and telling the boy they would 'go to heaven together.'

Finally in October 2008, the boy told a school counselor who reported the abuse to authorities, however Fiala was not arrested nor indicted on counts of sexual assault on a child until September 2010, and then he was freed on bond.

After the priest's arrest in the murder-for-hire plot, the teen, his family and lawyer are relieved the man is now in jail.

In Omaha, NE, the archdiocese has revealed that in 2002 a minor reported sexual abuse by Fiala which had taken place in the mid 1980s. Apparently nothing was done, except for moving the priest to another parish, as had/has been the Catholic church's practice. Finally when the San Antonio archbishop learned of the police investigation in 2008, Fiala was removed from active ministry.

Look for other posts showing the bad behavior

perpetrated by Christians and members of other religious groups.

For more information on the above topic search for "John Fiala" online.

IS RELIGION A GUARANTEE OF MORAL BEHAVIOR?

(This post was originally published in February 2009.

I made some revisions and am posting it again.)

My answer to the title question is an emphatic NO!

I’m not saying all religious people are immoral. The examples I give below represent a very tiny percentage of the religious community. What I am saying is:

Being a believer is not a guarantee of moral conduct.

"Morality is not determined by the church you attend or the faith you embrace. It is determined by the quality of your character and the positive impact you have on those you meet along your journey." ---as stated on The Immoral Minority blog.

Societal health:
A study by the Journal of Religion & Society (2005) concluded: “Higher rates of belief in and worship of a creator correlate with higher rates of homicide, juvenile and early adult mortality, STD infection rates, teen pregnancy, and abortion in the prosperous democracies... Higher rates of non-theism and acceptance of human evolution usually correlate with lower rates of dysfunction, and the least theistic nations are usually the least dysfunctional.”
The Cambridge Companion to Atheism came up with similar findings. High levels of atheism are strongly connected with high levels of societal health: low homicide, poverty, infant mortality and illiteracy rates, high levels of educational attainment, per capita income and gender equality.
In a 1999 study, George Barna, found the percentage of people who have divorced as follows:
Jews = 30%
Born Again Christians = 27%
Mainstream Christians = 24%
Atheists/agnostics = 21%

While I don’t personally believe divorce is immoral, many religious groups think it is a sign of moral weakness.
Ron Barrier, Spokesperson for American Atheists commented: "These findings confirm what I have been saying these last five years... It stands to reason that our families would be dedicated more to each other than to some invisible monitor in the sky. With Atheism, women and men are equally responsible for a healthy marriage... Atheists reject, and rightly so, the primitive patriarchal attitudes so prevalent in many religions with respect to marriage."
James Veverka, in "The moral hypocrisy of the Bible Belt," remarked: "We hear an awful lot from conservatives in the Bible Belt and on the TV about how we all should be living. Certainly a culture that teaches the conservative religious values of the Christian right must have clean living written all over it... It doesn't. Far from it... Joining its history of Biblically correct bigotry and discrimination, it is an area with the highest divorce, murder, STD/HIV/AIDS, teen pregnancy, single parent homes, infant mortality, and obesity rates in the nation. As a region, the Bible Belt has the poorest health care systems and the lowest rates of high school graduation."

Sex and religion:
James A. Haught: “Western religions have spent millenia inflicting shame, guilt, repression and punishment upon human sexuality... The West presents... a long chronicle of religious hostility to lovers -- for no rational reason... Every censorship effort, every attempt at sexual repression, still comes from religion.” (“Sex and God: Is Religion Twisted?” Free Inquiry, Fall 1997)
Episcopal priest Raymond Lawrence wrote in a national United Methodist journal: "The churches are in danger of evolving into havens for the sexually suppressed or, worse, communities of profound hypocrisy." (Quarterly Review, summer 1985)
Dan Barker, former evangelical minister and current co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation contends that when religious zealots spend so much time thinking and preaching against sex and homosexuality, they become obsessed with it, and eventually they cannot control their sexual urges.

Annie Laurie Gaylor, another co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation) wrote Betrayal of Trust, Clergy Abuse of Children (1988), which chronicles hundreds of cases of sexual abuse by priests, ministers and rabbis in the U.S. I can't help but think that her husband Dan Barker (above) was right.
When an avalanche of accusations against priests, for sexual misconduct, hit my local area, the newspapers were filled with letters to the editor blaming the church for not allowing priests to marry. However, priests who like young boys are not interested in adult women. Others were saying that pedophiles were joining the church to have easy access to children. But one psychiatrist who had treated some of the perpetrators wrote an article that made more sense to me. He argued that men who were Catholic and knew they had a problem, chose to become priests because they thought that if they prayed enough, were pious enough, read the scriptures enough, they would be cured. We see how well that worked.
I was astounded to learn that some bishops were directing priests to deny communion or even recommend excommunication to church members who were openly pro-choice, while at the same time pedophile priests were merely slapped on the wrists and allowed to move to other parishes.


The news media have covered extensively the sexual scandals of Ted Haggard, Jim Bakker, and Jimmy Swaggert, all three ministers who were either morally bankrupt or, at the least, hypocrites. Thus I will not go into the details here. However, suffice it to say they preached often about moral weakness and sin, then did exactly what they were preaching against.

Morality and politics:
I know our lawmakers cannot be perfect and I don’t expect them to be. But when they campaign on moral issues, then disappoint us, then they are hypocrites.
U.S. Representative Mark Foley (Catholic & Republican) who was known as a crusader against child abuse and exploitation, resigned following a scandal involving teenage male Congressional pages. His replacement, Tim Mahoney (United Methodist & Democrat) ran on a platform of restoring morals to Washington. What did he do? He had a two-year affair with a former staff worker. Just about the time that hit the news, it was discovered that he had been cheating on that mistress with a second mistress. Larry Craig (Methodist and Republican) who repeatedly voted Nay on gay rights issues was caught in an airport restroom, apparently soliciting men for sex.

Religion and crime:
There have been many notorious criminals who were church members. You may remember a serial killer who called himself BTK (Bind, Torture and Kill) in Kansas. David Rader, who killed at least 10 people, was a Deacon and the Congregational President of his Lutheran Church.
David Ludwig, the Pennsylvania teenager who killed his girlfriend’s parents was a home-schooled Christian. Mark Chapman who murdered John Lennon had been described by his friends as a “Jesus freak.”

One of the evilest Christians I know of is Fred Phelps, the preacher who pickets and disrupts military funerals. He physically and psychologically abused his wife and all of his children. The only reason he is not in jail is that he convinced his sons that if they told the truth and he was put on trail, that they would go to hell. Phelps is convinced homosexuals are responsible for all the evils in the world. (His son Nate's blog, A Journey to Reason, tells much of his journey from his father's home to atheism. Read his speech to the American Atheists HERE.)
In a report from the Federal Bureau of Prisons (1997) approximately 80% of the U.S. population claimed some affiliation with a religious group and 80% of the U.S. prison population stated a religious preference. Logical, right? But then why, if (at that time) 10% of the general population claimed to be atheist, only 0.2% of the prison population said they were atheists? There are many religious people who argue that prisoners choose to say they are religious because there are benefits to doing that in prison. If that is so, then our prison system is violating the church/state separation provision of the Constitution.

One of the biggest crimes of all, which senselessly kills innocent people every day, is terrorism. Many people don't want to admit that the terrorists are religious people, but that is exactly what they are. They may be of a different religion than those who are shocked by their immoral acts, but as I pointed out in a previous post, Christians killed at least 50,000 people, just as senselessly during the 1st Crusade, and did it in the name of Christ.

Steve Allen: “It is frequently argued that a return to formal religion is the solution to the problem [of corruption.] But the prescription leaves something to be desired, for one finds practically no formal humanists, agnostics, or atheists in the ranks of the corrupt. Most of the embezzlers, swindlers, con-men and thieves... are card carrying members of one religion’s denomination or another that formally pays respect to the Old and/or New Testament.” (Ripoff, a look at corruption in America, 1979)

I repeat, I’m not saying all religious people are immoral. These cases represent very few people among the religious. What I am saying is that being religious is not a guarantee of moral conduct.

William Lobdell: “To the chagrin of evangelical pollsters and leaders, Christians–for the most part–don’t act any differently than atheists. And, in fact, in some categories (divorce rates and racism) evangelicals act worst.”

I know most religious people are good, honest, ethical people. Most non-religious people I know are also good, honest and ethical, yet they aren’t that way because they fear retribution in the afterlife.

copyright 2010 C. Woods

Click on this link for an article by Paula Kirby: "Morality: no gods required."

Click on this link for an article by Austin Cline: "Irreligious People Just as Ethical as Religious Churchgoers"

WISDOM OF LAZARUS LONG - Part 1

HEINLEIN, ROBERT 

American author 

(1907-1988)

All of the following are taken from the sayings of Lazarus Long, a fictional character created by Heinlein. 

Sources: Time Enough for Love (1973) and/or The Notebooks of Lazarus Long (1978)

See also: 

WISDOM OF LAZARUS LONG - Part 2 

and MORE FROM ROBERT HEINLEIN

     

• “Any priest or shaman must be presumed guilty until proved innocent.”

• “The difference between science and the fuzzy subjects is that science requires reasoning, while those other subjects merely require scholarship.”

• “Everything in excess! To enjoy the flavor of life, take big bites. Moderation is for monks.”

• “Expertise in one field does not carry over into other fields. But experts often think so. The narrower their field of knowledge the more likely they are to think so.”

• “A generation which ignores history has no past and no future.”

• “God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent ---it says so right here on the label. If you have a mind capable of believing all three of these divine attributes simultaneously, I have a wonderful bargain for you. No checks, please. Cash and in small bills.”

• “’God split himself into a myriad parts that he might have friends.' This may not be true, but it sounds good ---and is no sillier than any other theology.”

• “History does not record anywhere at any time a religion that has any rational basis. Religion is a crutch for people not strong enough to stand up to the unknown without help. But, like dandruff, most people do have a religion and spend time and money on it and seem to derive considerable pleasure from fiddling with it.”

• “History has the relation to truth that theology has to religion — i.e., none to speak of.”

• “If it can’t be expressed in figures, it is not science; it is opinion.”

• “It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so, and will follow it by suppressing opposition, subverting all education to seize early the minds of the young, and by killing, locking up, or driving underground all heretics.”

• “Men rarely (if ever) manage to dream up a god superior to themselves. Most gods have the manners and morals of a spoiled child.”

• “The most preposterous notion that H. sapiens has ever dreamed up is the Lord God of Creation. Shaper and Ruler of all the Universes, wants the saccharine adoration of His creatures, can be swayed by their prayers, and becomes petulant if He does not receive this flattery. Yet this absurd fantasy, without a shred of evidence to bolster it, pays all the expenses of the oldest, largest, and least productive industry in all history.”

• “Natural laws have no pity.”

• “Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.”

• “Of all the strange ‘crimes’ that human beings have legislated out of nothing, ‘blasphemy’ is the most amazing ---with ‘obscenity’ and ‘indecent exposure’ fighting it out for second and third place.”

• “One man’s magic is another man’s engineering. ‘Supernatural’ is a null word.”

Learn more about Robert Heinlein HERE

Find more quotations from Robert Heinlein HERE

Read about his character Lazarus Long HERE

CHRISTIANS BEHAVING BADLY #2 pedophile Jesuits

PEDOPHILE JESUITS DUMPED IN ALASKA

In my attempt to show that being religious
is not a guarantee of moral behavior,
this post is a part of my series of reports featuring the
bad behavior of religious people, past or present....

Look for other posts showing the bad behavior
perpetrated by members of other religious groups..

In November 2008, Reuters reported that Oregon Jesuits had settled a sexual abuse claim in Alaska for $50 million.
"It seems that Alaska was a dumping ground for predators," said Barbara Blaine, president of the Chicago-based Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. The settlement covered 110 victims in native villages. "What happened in these villages was that they sent in a predator and people there had no contact with the outside world for four, five or six months, and during that time a guy could abuse every child. There is a whole generation of children who were abused."
Ken Roosa of Anchorage, Alaska, one of the victims' attorneys, said, "In some villages, it is difficult to find an adult who was not sexually violated by men who used religion and power to rape, shame and then silence hundreds of Alaska Native children. Despite all this, no Catholic religious leader has yet to admit that problem priests were dumped in Alaska.”
On February 5, 2009 The Seattle Times reported that 29 more plaintiffs were added to a similar suit which was filed in January in which 43 Alaskan Natives claimed they had been abused as children and teens by Jesuits or those supervised by Jesuits. Claims range from fondling to rape.
According to Insurance Journal, an investigator in those and similar cases in Alaska, Patrick J. Wall of Newport Beach, Calif., said 28 Jesuit priests accused of sexual misconduct against young parishioners in previously resolved lawsuits, pending lawsuits and others which have yet to be filed were sent to the Fairbanks Diocese from 10 other provinces, including four overseas.
Roosa said, "It was a pedophile's paradise.” Operating in impoverished hamlets far from police agencies in a diocese where the bishop also was a Jesuit, those priests were the ultimate local authority.
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported that Rev, Patrick J. Lee, the current provincial issued a statement last month through a spokesman stating that Jesuits were assigned to the Fairbanks Diocese at their own request because of their “deep desire to spread the gospel.”
It should be noted that Jesuits are “The Society of Jesus.” One can hardly find a group more “Christian” than that.