“Since tying the knot with Tom, she’s become estranged from all of her close friends and she doesn’t even make excuses for it. She’s become very cold. The only friends she talks to are Tom’s Scientology buddies, who are now her friends as well.”

Apparently, she’s even changed her mobile phone number because she was sick of her old friends calling her, you know, as friends do.

It always stinks to lose your friends to a boy, but to religion? Is Katie the type to disappear when she has a man and only show her face when she’s without one?

Source

In his new book, Blown for Good, former Scientologist Marc Headley claims that Tom Cruise was his mentor during “upper indoctrination” training. Now really, who signs up for “indoctrination” lessons? That sounds like brainwashing to me.

Anyway, during the training Tom ordered Marc to bark commands at bottles, books and door knobs. From Radar:

“It was supposed to rehabilitate your ability to control things,” explained Headley. “And to be controlled.”

He said he was appointed for the assignment as Cruise’s apprentice because he was young and inexperienced.

“It couldn’t be someone who might run off the next day and tell the National Enquirer that Tom Cruise was telling me to talk to a bottle for the last three weeks.”

Every once in a while, I like to poke fun at the Church of Scientology, but I rarely feel that its practices are dangerous — unless they prevent your son from getting proper medical treatment.

Still, it strikes me as odd to think that Tom might be training Suri (and maybe Katie too) by making her “bark” commands at inanimate objects. That would just confuse her and make her think daddy’s crazy. Or maybe she thinks it’s normal…

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According to an insider close to John, the grieving father remains “firmly committed” to Scientology, despite reports that Church big wigs aren’t happy with his public acknowledgment of Jett’s disease.

John apparently doesn’t hold a grudge against the Church, which doesn’t acknowledge chronic mental illnesses or prescription medications used to treat them — even though it’s now generally accepted that John’s son Jett suffered from untreated autism.

Jett died of complications resulting from an apparent seizure brought on by his untreated illness back in January.

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But there is the story of a man in a job known for its vows of poverty who is now being sued for child support.

All the juicy details appeared in the Miami Herald this week, from the relationship kicked up between the stripper (excuse me, exotic dancer — but really, she worked at a placed called Porky’s) and the priest to the church’s acceptance of their fallen father back into the fold when rejoined the celibacy bandwagon. Which he apparently fell back off — he started up with Beatrice Hernandez (the dancer, by then a store owner), and she ended up preggers (the Herald cites a paternity test as proof).

Fast forward to the baby, now nine months old, and a mum who wants help raising her kid. She’s filed for child support AND a restraining order.

So here we are: a priest who can be called father by two very distinct groups (although not in a church — he is on official administrative leave). And here’s the question: What do you get when you sue a priest for child support?

Contrary to most assumptions, not ALL Catholic priests take vows of poverty, but they are all bound by Church Canon “to foster simplicity of life and are to refrain from all things that have a semblance of vanity”. Which would make Father David Dueppen just another poor (in terms of his wallet — not in terms of our sympathies) schmoe who got a girl pregnant and left her to deal with it.

And what does that have to do with the rest of us? Turns out there are a lot more people like Beatrice Hernandez these days then ever before. Fathers who can’t pay child support are turning up in droves thanks to the bad economy. In a 2009 survey of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers, 39% “of the nation’s top divorce attorneys” cited an increase in modifications being made to child support payments.

The courts are typically forcing parents to turn over a portion of their unemployment checks.

Anyone else wonder what happens when the ex-priest walks into an unemployment office? Now that’s a joke for 2009.

Image:Guanabee

God Is is your second book with a religious theme. What inspired you to write it?

My children are all adults now. I was having a conversation with one of them a year or so ago and we mentioned the word God and she said oh, I don’t think I believe in God anymore. I thought I knew everything about her but it happened while I wasn’t watching you know.

So I went away, and thought well, that’s really her business and it’s not up to me to lecture her and try to change her mind. What I’ll do is go away and think about all the young people who don’t necessarily believe in such things and I will write a story about that.

What is your religious background?
I grew up believing in God, however the kind of god I grew up (I was raised as a Presbyterian) with was the idea of an old man in the sky with a big book that he wrote down everything dreadful that I had done — kind of like a terrifying parent who punished me and made me feel guilty.

I’m more interested in the idea of a God who has positive rather than negative, who is a friend and comfort and life affirming and nurturing force.

And then I started to think about, when I grew up as a child in the 50s, we were told that the whole of our future would be about technology and science that religion would be dead, there would be absolutely no point in belief in the future. Looking back on that, in my eyes, the complete opposite happened. In fact I don’t think that anyone really expected the interest that our society has taken in the metaphysical, the supernatural and belief systems.

I think the reason for that is that the more we have been chasing material wealth, the big house and the big car, the more that we thought would bring us happiness the more disappointed we’ve been. I think it’s a really important time, during the financial crisis, to be talking about “is there anything else”?

It seems to be a bit of a publishing trend at the moment, the ’search for spirituality in a modern world’. I have just finished Eat, Pray, Love which is for adults, but follows that theme.

Exactly. Many of us got all our material things that we thought would make us happy but they didn’t make us happy and so a lot of us are going, so, what else is there? And not just adults, it’s a lot of young people going ’so what else is there’. I think there’s a lot of searching in our world.

I guess I was lucky so far as I was brought up by parents and grandparents who believed there was something else. A lot of young people have been brought up by adults who don’t say that, who say well, ‘you find out for yourself when you’re ready’. So I hope this book is for them.

What I liked about the book was it was non-denominational – you could be talking about anyone’s God. I don’t know if that was your aim, if you wanted to write a particularly Christian book or deliberately kept it kind of free so anyone with a belief in a higher deity could read it to their kids and it would have some kind of resonance.

That’s completely my hope. As I said, I was brought up a Presbyterian, but as an adult I became a Quaker. And first of all as Quakers, we’re not interested in trying to change other people’s beliefs, trying to lecture them.

God Is was thought by the [Australian] school book clubs to be inappropriate to be put in schools. I’m not interested in making kids read this book, so I was not hoping that it would on any reading lists as that would be imposing my ideas on someone else but i thought it would be really good to have in the library if someone wanted to go find it. We’ve gone down that American route where people are so terrified that they might be be seen to be imposing their views on others that nothing gets.

I’ve got Muslim friends and Buddhist friends who say to me, “Get over it, celebrate Christmas. Don’t say Season’s Greetings or Happy Holidays like the Americans do, say Happy Christmas, that’s what it’s about.”

My Buddhist Chinese friend says well, my biggest celebration is Chinese new year, I’m perfectly happy for you to have Christmas. I don’t want you to feel like you can’t mention Christmas in case I’m offended.”

So I kind of feel like in a away, we’re a bit too cautious about this. For me, while it’s really important to create space for people to celebrate different beliefs, it’s also important to have space for mine.

Do you think it’s a kind of political correctness gone mad?
I do, I think we’re too polite and too cautious, which is a funny thing to say about Australians!

What seems to be popular for my generation, many of whom were brought up with fire-and-brimstone scripture classes, is to give our kids information about lots of different religions and allow them to make up their own minds. What do you think of that approach?

I think its a great theory and I think some parents carry that out really effectively. But for other parents, there’s a kind of laziness or absence in it, because being able to explore other religions and explain them to people, you need to have a lot of information and unless you’ve been brought up in those traditions, unless you’ve read them thoroughly and spoken to people se beliefs are shared by those religions, I don’t think you’ll have the information

While I do know of some parents who go on adventure with their kids in learning about a whole range of religious beliefs, I also know others who kind of basically leave them vacant and I’m not sure that that’s very helpful. I think that can result in confusion and emptiness rather than enquiry.

How much do you think a small child can understand the concept of God? When did you start talking about God with your children?

It’s never too early, I think. With all types of learning, it’s about putting concepts to the child in words they can understand. You know, in language we make mistakes before we find the right word, in walking we fall and stumble a lot before we become confident walkers. I think it’s the same thing in belief and understanding the world. When we’re children we think the sun comes up in the morning and comes down at night. Once we get into high school science we learn that we’re the ones that revolve around the sun. I think that we gradually accumulate knowledge Therefore I think it’s really important not just to think you need to need to teach it once and never go back to it again. You have to keep coming back to it. You have to keep the lines open with your kids.

As former National President of the Children’s Book Council of Australia, you must have a rather extensive kid’s book collection. What do you think makes a good book for children, and who are your favourite authors?

Ha ha yes – they’re piled everywhere!

As for what makes a good book… I think unless you have, what we used to call ‘the inner child’, the emotional memories of what it’s like to be a child, then you may as well give up. If you have forgotten what children ate when you were five, or what TV programs were on, you can find that out, the internet will tell you all you need to know. But if you’ve forgotten what it felt like to be the only child in class not invited to someone’s birthday party, if you’ve forgotten what’s it felt like to wet your pants on the bus when you were five, its very difficult as an adult writer to get that back.

I love funny books, and so in Australia, for very young children I love Pamela Allen because she often makes me laugh, her picture books are fabulous. For slightly older children, I love books by Andy Griffiths, or Andrew Daddo for slightly older children again; Margaret Clark makes me laugh or Morris Gleitzman or Paul Jennings.

So laughter’s really important and I hope that’s evident in God Is, as I was surprised when [Sydney Anglican] Bishop Forsyth said recently that there was no place for jokes or humour in church, I completely disagree with that, I actually went to school with Bishop Forsyth and in year 11 he was a very funny kid and he made a lot of us laugh. So I was very surprised to hear him say that. All I can think is that he really means, bad jokes or lame jokes. Humour is a bonding agent, it brings comunities together.

The report, released this week, showed the church averaged nearly a complaint a month between 1990 and 2008, and that boys between 10 and 15 were most at risk. Most victims took more than two decades to complain – and that’s just the ones who did speak out.

All up there were 191 complaints of abuse against 135 abusers. That’s… a lot of clergymen.

The report recommended that clergy and youth workers should never be alone with adolescents where abuse could occur, such as a home, church or car.

They also  recommended a triple check on people who work with adolescents (a criminal check, referees and the church’s own national register), that people other than the minister must be responsible for enforcing the code of conduct in a parish, and that the church should review its protocols and training.

They also suggested the Anglican and Catholic churches put aside their denominational differences to consider working together on child-protection strategies.

All very well and good, and the church has already taken some of these reccomendations on board over the last few years, but I want to know if there has been any research done in to why there seems to be a higher level of abuse within the church than in other areas of society – or does it just get more attention?

God is
in the hands that steadied you
the first time you learnt to walk
and the hands that will be there
when you learn again.
And more.

So begins new picture book God Is, written by Mar Macleod and illustrated by Kirrily Schell.

The book features a series of poetic meditations, coupled with quirky cartoon-like drawings, to answer the question, “where is God”? Macleods response is that God is everywhere: a non-denominational, universal force that imbues our every action.

For those that plan on introducing God to their children’s lives, this is a sophisticated and charming way to start the conversation.

It probably won’t, however, answer the really curly questions about religion that kids tend to come up with.

We get that he’s feeling it, but if only we could understand what he’s saying! I wonder if the kid has been watching too many evangelical videos.

[Via Boing Boing]

Finally a Vatican official has come to the defence of doctors who performed an abortion on a Brazilian 9-year-old who was pregnant with twins as a result of rape by her stepfather. The doctors, as well as the pregnant girl and her mother, were excommunicated from the Catholic church last week following the abortion, which is deemed a mortal sin by Catholics.

Archbishop Rino Fisichella told a Vatican newspaper that, “Before thinking about excommunication, it was necessary and urgent to save her innocent life and bring her back to a level of humanity of which we men of the church should be expert and masters in proclaiming.” Although against abortion, he believed that in this case, the girl “”should have been above all defended, embraced, treated with sweetness to make her feel that we were all on her side, all of us, without distinction.”

Fisichella, a Vatican prelate who heads the Pontifical Academy For Life, acknowledged that last week’s excommunication by the Catholic Church in Brazil has damaged the Church’s reputation, writing that it “unfortunately hurts the credibility of our teaching, which appears in the eyes of many as insensitive, incomprehensible and lacking mercy.”

This whole case has had be fuming from the outset. The fact that the victim was excommunicated while the rapist was allowed to remain in the Church still has me flummoxed.

The girl’s regional archbishop, Jose Cardoso Sobrinho, defended the actions of his Church by claiming that, “God’s law is above any human law. So when a human law … is contrary to God’s law, this human law has no value”

He added that though the man allegedly committed “a heinous crime … the abortion – the elimination of an innocent life – was more serious”. Even though doctors acknowledged that attempting to carry the twins to full term may have killed the small girl.

Okaaaaaaaaaay And that, right there, is why I am not a part of any organised religion. I am interested to hear what Catholic readers of Babble feel about the way this case has been handled.

Image: Jezebel

The case might help to set precedent for an unsettled area of law: where does an adult’s religious freedom end and society’s responsibility to children begin? Can parents who believe strongly that medicine is morally wrong be allowed to let a child die of a treatable condition while they pray for recovery?

Can the law dictate that children must get certain kinds of medical treatment?

It seems obvious enough that an insulin-dependent diabetic child should be treated. But what about vaccination resisters? Should they be forced to allow their children be immunized? Where do you draw a line between society’s responsibility and parental authority?

Defenses of the parents will probably draw on freedom of religion. Prosecutors will charge child abuse. What do you say? Should these parents go to jail, their children sent to foster homes? Or do they have a right to allow a child to die if they believe it is for the salvation of something beyond–and more important than — her physical body?