Shiksa: Biblical Roots of Racism
by John Hartung


n [Yiddish, fem. of sheygets fr. Hebrew, blemish, abomination] 1. A non-Jewish girl.(i)

The Silent Holocaust

Most of us would agree that a distinction should be maintained between Gentiles who fall in love with Jews and Gentiles who haul them off to concentration camps. But Rabbi Epharim Z. Buchwald has a special insight in this regard -- the net effect is indistinguishable, and it's the bottom line that counts.

In a letter, tape and book campaign decrying "The Silent Holocaust," Rabbi Buchwald's National Jewish Outreach Program has been reaching out to individuals who might be sympathetic. You can get on NJOP's mailing list by buying a copy of The Talmud, The Midrash Rabbah, the Codes of Maimonides, or Jewish Publication Society translations of The Bible. Then you will learn about "a study commissioned by Harvard University" which found that "by the American Tricentennial year of 2076, there could be as few as 10,000 Jews in America!"

That's down about 10 million because of "a life-and-death battle" with shiksas:
Concentration camps and gas chambers aren't the only ways to exterminate the Jewish people . . . intermarriage . . . can accomplish the same evil end. What you and I do in the next few years will make the difference between a thriving American Jewry and a tragedy truly beyond comprehension . . . Never before has the future of our people been so threatened. . . . Can we do anything to stop this 'Silent Holocaust?' The answer is yes . . . Please join us in this life-and-death battle today.(ii)


Rebekah's Lament

Rabbi Edwin Friedman is a therapist who specializes in Jewish-Gentile marriages. His chapter in the classic psychotherapy manual Ethnicity and Family Therapy is entitled "The Myth of The Shiksa." According to Rabbi Friedman:(iii)
For 1000 years, Eastern European Jews and their descendants have used the term shiksa to refer to a non-Jewish woman who lures Jewish men away from religion and family. This attractive will-o'-the-wisp, as folk imagination would have it, is seductive, immoral, ignorant, and insensitive to Jewish values. It is not just that she is unsuitable to the warmth of traditional Jewish family life - she will destroy it!


In fact, the myth of the shiksa goes back much further than Rabbi Friedman's reckoning. The first lament over shiksas was directed at Isaac (Abraham's Jewish son, as distinct from his non-Jewish son, Ishmael, who married many shiksas) by Rebekah, Isaacs' wife. She was worried about their son Jacob (as distinct from their disinherited son, Esau, who also married several shiksas):
Then Rebekah said to Isaac, "I am weary of my life because of the Hittite women. If Jacob marries one of the Hittite women such as
these, one of the women of the land, what good will my life be to me?" (Genesis 26:46)


31,968 Shiksas

Rebekah's concern was prescient. While en route to The Promised Land, shiksa trouble became both the cause and the consequence of the largest single influx of non-Jewish women on record (from Numbers 31:1-35):
They warred against Midian, as the LORD commanded Moses, and slew every male . . . And the people of Israel took captive the women of Midian and their little ones . . . Then they brought the captives and the booty and the spoil to Moses [3 to 4 day march] . . . And Moses was angry with the officers of the army, the
commanders of thousands and the commanders of hundreds, who had come from service in the war. Moses said to them, "Have you let all the women live? . . . now kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known man by lying with him. But all the young girls who have not known man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves . . . Now the booty remaining of the spoil that the men of war took was . . . thirty-two thousand persons in all, women who had not known man by lying with him.


Only 31,968 of these virgins were made available as shiksas because 32 of them were given "to Eleazar the priest" as an "offering for the Lord" -- that is, for human sacrifice (see Numbers 31, RSV). The King James translation of the Bible specifies that these women were to be a "heave offering" (see Numbers 31:29 & 41) -- which means that after dismemberment, various body parts were "heaved up," or thrown in the air, in celebration.(iv)

The ostensible reason for killing all non-virgin Midianite women was "the LORD's vengeance" for involvement with a shiksa. Her name was Cozbi, and her affair with the Israelite soldier Zimri would not have been so threatening if he had not had the chutzpah to bring her home (Numbers 25:6-8 . . . 14,15):
One of the people of Israel came and brought a Midianite woman to his family, in the sight of Moses and in the sight of the whole congregation of the people of Israel, while they were weeping at the door of the tent of meeting. When Phinehas the son of Eleazar, son of Aaron the priest, saw it, he rose and left the congregation, and took a spear in his hand and went after the man of Israel into the inner room, and pierced both of them, the man of Israel and the woman, through her body . . . The name of the slain man of Israel, who was slain with the Midianite woman, was Zimri . . . And the name of the Midianite woman who was slain was Cozbi the daughter of Zur, who was the head of the people of a fathers' house in Midian.


Perks & Power

It would have been acceptable for Zimri to have sex with Cozbi if she had been a prostitute. Indeed, according to The Midrash Rabbah(v) (MR -- The Great Exposition, _ 400 BCE to 1200 CE), Phinehas gained entry to Zimri's tent by telling surrounding family members that he merely wanted to take a turn after Zimri finished (MR: Numbers 25):
He [Phinehas] was afraid of his [Zimri's] tribe who surrounded him. When he came near them they asked him: "Why have you come?" He said to them: "I have also come to indulge my desires." They gave him leave and he entered. If he had not said this they would not have allowed him to go in.


But Phinehas and Moses knew that Cozbi was the daughter of a major political figure, that involvement with her could lead to a substantive relationship with a woman who was not chaste by virtue of not being an in-group member, and that, in turn, could threaten the foundation of the Israelites' cohesiveness. This concern was explicitly confabulated in The Midrash Rabbah, where we learn that Cozbi was sent to cement an alliance with the Israelites by becoming Moses' fourth Midianite wife:(vi)
The woman [Cozbi] said to him [Zimri]: "I shall give myself to none but Moses, for so my father Balak bade me, not to yield to any one but to Moses your master, because my father was a king."(vii) Said he to her: "Behold, I am as great as he is! [as great as Moses] I shall bring you out before their eyes!" He seized her by her plait [her hair] and brought her to Moses. He said to him [to Moses]: "O son of Amram! Is this woman permitted or forbidden?" He answered him: "She is forbidden to you." Said Zimri to him: "Yet the woman whom you married was a Midianitess!" Thereupon Moses felt powerless and the law slipped from his mind. All Israel wailed aloud; for it says, They were weeping (Numbers 25:6). What were they weeping for? Because they became powerless at that moment. (MR: Numbers 23)


Coitus Interruptus

In order to bring back the power, Phinehas put on quite a show. He managed to give Cozbi the shaft, after a fashion . . . and the Lord God Almighty worked twelve miracles through an emissary (MR: Numbers20:25):
He pierced them both, as one lay on top of the other, through the unclean place of both of them . . . as he had been jealous in the cause of the name of the Holy One, blessed be He, He [God] wrought twelve miracles for him [Zimri].

The first miracle was that, though in the ordinary course they would have separated from each other [Zimri and Cozbi], an angel made them cleave to each other. The second miracle was that the angel shut their mouths so that they should not cry out. The third was that he directed the spear straight towards her belly so that his genitals might be seen inside the belly. This was done so that cavillers might not say that he [Phinehas] also had gone in to satisfy his desire [as he told Zimri's family].

The fourth was that the angel lengthened the iron so that it might pierce them both. The fifth was that He put strength in to his arm in order that he might lift them both up. The sixth was that He put strength into the helve [spear shaft] to sustain them both. The seventh was that the victims did not slide down from the weapon, but remained stationary. The eighth was that the angel turned them over at the top of the spear into proper position [man on top] in order to display their disgraceful conduct to all.

The ninth was that they did not drop any blood; this was in order that Phinehas might not be defiled. The tenth was that the Holy One, blessed be He, preserved their spirit, so that they might not die and Phinehas be defiled [as the pending highest priest, Phinehas could not be defiled by handling the dead, so God kept
the victims alive while on the spear]. The eleventh was that the angel raised the lintel [the entrance of the tent] so that both of them might pass out, carried aloft between his shoulders, before the eyes of all.

The twelfth was that when Phinehas came out the members of the man's tribe [Zimri's tribe, the Simeonites] stood ready to attack him, but an angel descended and commenced to strike them. When Phinehas saw that he sought to destroy them, he dashed the victims on the ground and, offering up a prayer, caused the angel to depart.(viii)


Heart & Soul

Clearly, shiksa-power was greatly feared. Moses' instruction regarding captured Midianite women, "Keep alive for yourselves" had to be curbed. So laws were established to curtail the threat posed by Israelite soldiers' propensity to bring women home (Deuteronomy 21:10-14):
When you go forth to war against your enemies, and the LORD your God gives them into your hands, and you take them captive, and see among the captives a beautiful woman, and you have desire for her and would take her for yourself as wife, then you shall bring her home to your house, and she shall shave her head and pare her nails. And she shall put off her captive's garb, and shall remain in your house and bewail her father and her mother a full month; after that you may go in to her, and be her husband, and she shall be your wife. Then, if you have no delight in her, you shall let her go where she will.


Writing in the late 11th Century, Maimonides summarized the elaborations and amendments to the law regarding captive women that are scattered throughout The Talmud:
If after the first coition, while she is still a heathen, she expresses her willingness to accept Judaism, arrangements are forthwith made for her ablution for the purpose of conversion. If she is unwilling to accept the Jewish religion, she remains in his house thirty days, as it is said: She shall bewail her father and her mother a full month (Deuteronomy 21:13). She weeps also for her religion and he may not stop her . . . He puts up with her, in the hope that she might accept Judaism. If she does, and he desires to marry her, she is converted and takes a ritual bath . . . If after the marriage [after resuming sexual intercourse] he no longer cares for her, he lets her go where she pleases.

If she refuses to be converted, she is put up with for twelve months . . . A captive woman who refuses, after the lapse of twelve months, to renounce idolatry, is put to death.(ix)


Filthy Lust

Anthropologists categorize societies according to their rules for marrying in (endogamy) or marrying out (exogamy). Endogamy is a strong force in many traditional cultures, and even within subdivisions of larger cultures. Accordingly, Rabbi Friedman reports that identical neuroses attach to marriages between Orthodox, Conservative and Reform Jews, none of which are more pathological than those which can ensue between Catholic, Protestant, Greek Orthodox and Russian Orthodox Christians, or between Sunni and Shiite Muslims. Indeed, the closer groups are in geography, economy, and the time of their initial separation, the fiercer the rules and the nastier the innuendos.

Having grown up among Protestant Christians, I remember hearing lascivious rumors about Catholic and Jewish girls -- primarily that they were 'easy'. Years of dogged adolescent research proved the rumors to be false, much to my chagrin, but they are still propagated. The message behind such tales is that other groups' women are not chaste, not clean, and certainly not fit for marriage. The Rabbis of The Talmud protected their flocks by spreading such rumors about non-Jewish women, though one wonders why they felt a need to go so far:(x)
One should not entrust cattle to a heathen shepherd . . . neither should we buy male cattle from [heathen] women, for fear of their having used them for immoral practice! . . . Why then should we not leave female animals alone with female heathens? Because heathens frequent their neighbours' wives, and should one by chance not find her in, and find the cattle there, he might use it immorally. You may also say that even if he should find her in he might use the animal, as a Master has said: Heathens prefer the cattle of Israelites to their own wives. When the serpent came unto Eve he infused filthy lust into her . . . when Israel stood at Sinai that lust was eliminated, but the lust of idolaters, who did not stand at Sinai, did not cease.


Herbie's Mother's Lament

Myths can defy reality for as long as they serve the interests of their believers, to wit the following complaint, unnervingly similar to Rebekah's, made some 4,000 years later, in a letter submitted by one of Rabbi Friedman's clients:(3)
Dear Herbie,

Well, if you want to commit suicide, I guess there is nothing I can do. But I can't tell you how much this shiksa business is hurting your father and me. I don't know if you realize that this will hurt us financially. We will probably have to leave town and I will certainly have to give up my job teaching Hebrew . . .

Your father is sick over this - you know he hasn't been well. All I can say is that if he dies, I will hold you responsible.

Mary may say that she loves you, but have you told her that we Jews think of Jesus as an illegitimate son?

Love,
Mother


Is Herbie's mother right? Wrong? Somewhere in between? Compared to Rebekah, she is only somewhat more loquacious. But compared to Rabbi Buchwald of the National Jewish Outreach Program, she has the patience of Job and the wisdom of Solomon (who, according to First Kings 11:1-3, married several hundred shiksas).

How so? Herbie's mother did not equate Mary the shiksa with Adolf the fuhrer.

Rachel's Shaygetz

For NJOP, the only thing worse than rejection is the ultimate acceptance. To be loved is as bad as being hated, or worse. Indeed, compared to hatred that strengthens in-group solidarity, love that leads to exogamous marriage is a disaster. That is why NJOP has received financial support or letters of endorsement from Rabbi Dovid Cohen, Rabbi Elya Svei, Rabbi Yaakov Weinberg, the Novominsker Rebbe, the Squarer Rebbe, and Rabbi Zelig Epstein, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu,the UJA Federation, AVICHAI, the Steinhardt Foundation, the Scheuer Foundation, the Gruss Fund, the Joseph Alexander Foundation, the Wolfson Family Foundation, the New Kalman Sunshine Fund, Inc., the Nelkin Family Foundation, the B.L. Manger Foundation, Inc. and the Fredman Family Fund.

Of course, those who wish to help the NJOP on a more modest scale can become an Associate, Supporting, Contributing or Sustaining Member for only $25, $50, $75 or $100. Even before checking off one's membership level and corresponding bonus entitlements, Rabbi Buchwald will share a letter that he received. It rounds out the exogamy problem by introducing the male counterpart of a shiksa, a shaygetz.(xi)

Across the letter's top, in hand-written script, Rabbi Buchwald explains that the letter tells "the story of the National Jewish Outreach Program better than I can myself:"
Dear Rabbi,

I have just received some of the worst news of my life.

I have two grown daughters, Miriam and Rachel. My husband and I sent them to Hebrew school and synagogue, and encouraged them to live Jewish lives.

But with Rachel, we have failed. Four years ago, she met a young man at work. They fell in love. He is not Jewish and he did not convert. They married anyway. Now Rachel has called to say she is expecting . . .

My heart is breaking . . . as a concentration camp survivor, I find this especially hard to accept . . .

Sincerely,
[Name Withheld]


Oblivion

In what must rank among the most demagogic analogies in the history of similitude, Rabbi Buchwald, Name Withheld and Herbie's mother demean all of us. They liken love to hate, romantic passion to cruel passion, marriage to murder, and giving birth to causing inconsolable despair. If you purchase NJO's introductory tape ($39), you will hear, more clearly, where these people are coming from:(2)
-- You see, we're engaged in a battle, what we are fighting today is a battle, it's a battle, it's a nuclear battle . . . One million American Jewish children are being raised as non-Jews . . . it's a silent holocaust ladies and gentlemen.

Just because we don't see the goose-stepping Nazi soldiers doesn't mean the end is not exactly the same. They are lost into oblivion . . . little Jewish children who never had a chance to live in the wealthiest, most sophisticated Jewish community in all of Jewish history . . . It's a silent holocaust!


Or you can read the perpetual plea of Morris Cohen from Brooklyn, as transcribed by Rabbi Buchwald from telephone calls to his NJO office:(xii)
Rabbi! How can we sit here when there is a Holocaust takng place all about us?! One million Jewish children are going up in flames!! We're not doing enough!! How much money do we need? One billion, two bllion, three billion dollars, let's go out and raise it and save them!!


Evil

Perhaps assimilation is even worse than "going up in flames." After all, those who assimilate draw the non-assimilated like a magnet. In a new twist on the old rallying cry "better dead than red," a final solution was clear to Mr. Kostner:
Hackensack, N.J., March 24, 1997 (Reuter) - A New Jersey jury Monday rejected the death penalty for a man who pleaded guilty to killing his two children because he feared his ex-wife would not raise them as Jews.(xiii)


If this were simply wrong, it would not have gone as far as it has. Evil is a pernicious kind of wrong, a sort of wrong that can be turned like a hologram until a very different, fleeting, almost subliminal picture appears. Evil is a kind of wrong that insinuates itself between layers of right.

In-groups sandwich an outline for animosity, an organizing principle for prejudice, between layers of social support. Whether Christian or Muslim or Jewish, every extremist is supported by a small number of less extreme admirers and each of those supporters is buoyed, in turn, by a larger group of sympathizers. These connections are continuous right down to the bottom of the pyramid, where vaguely sympathetic in-group members are offended by the very extremists who would have no base, and no basis, without them. It is that vague sympathy which needs to be examined.

Recognizing that "goose-stepping Nazi soldiers" and exogamy do not bring "exactly the same end" is too easy. The challenging continuum is the one that differentiates lovers whose marriage marks a small separation from lovers whose marriage marks a larger departure. In one third of the 486 societies classified by anthropologists for marriage preference, the first degree of separation is the family, with marriage between mates who are not first cousins bringing some level of disappointment. Then we have hand wringing over lovers who join from different local communities, then different sects within tribes, then different tribes, different nations, different religions . . . all the way up to different races. Ultimately, the challenge of where to draw the line resolves into the question of whether to draw a line, and why.

Line drawers promote two forms of evil -- hypocrisy and racism. Hypocrisy because although they renounce coercion, if members of a group are not free to leave, then members who stay can not be doing so of their own free will. And racism because despite explicit protestations to the contrary, one cannot disapprove of a marriage without disapproving of a person because he or she was born in a different group.

A wolf, no matter how big and bad, is not evil until it is dressed in sheep's clothing.

Ask any shiksa.

Notes & References

(i) Webster's Collegiate Dictionary. See also: Bermant, C. 1991. Some Carefully and Carelessly Chosen Words. Jewish Chronicle, May 17. [Back]

(ii) NJOP flyer, copy available on request. For a complimentary issue of Outreach, NJOP's Newsletter, call 212-986-7450, visit www.njop.org, or write to NJOP, 485 Fifth Avenue, Suite 70, NY, NY 10017. [Back]

(iii) E. Friedman, pp 499 & 501 in McGoldrick, et al., Ethnicity and Family Therapy [Back]

(iv) Human sacrifice of Canaanites and other non-Jews was common (for a poignant example see 1st Samuel 15:31-32), but sacrifice of Israelites by Israelites in order to appease or cajole their god was rare subsequent to recision of the commandment to sacrifice all first born children (cf. Exodus 13:2; 22:29-30 and Leviticus 27:28-29 with Exodus 13:13 and 34:20) -- a commandment for which the god of the Israelites eventually apologized (Ezekiel 20:26). Nevertheless, ritual sacrifice of a virgin Israelite woman was still well received and well rewarded (e.g., Judges 11:12 through 12:8). [Back]

(v) The Midrash Rabbah. Freedman, H and Simon, M. (eds). 1983. New York: Soncino Press. [Back]

(vi) According to The Bible, before marrying a Cushite, Moses spent his early adulthood among the monotheistic Midianites, where he gained his religious convictions and married three women -- Zipporah, a daughter of the priest Jethro, an unnamed daughter of Ruel, and an unnamed daughter of Hobab, Ruel's son (see Exodus 2:18-22, 3:1, 4:18-20, 18:2-5, Numbers 10:29, 12:1, Judges 1:16 and 4:11). [Back]

(vii) In the Bible, Balak is a Moabite and Cozbi is a Midianite, but as always, keeping the story straight was less important than making the story's point. [Back]

(viii) An even more eye-opening treatment of the Cozbi & Zimri story is supplied by Richard Friedman in his book Who Wrote the Bible? (New York: Harper & Row,1987). Using his own translation of Numbers 25:6-8, Friedman infers that Zimri brought Cozbi into the inner sanctum of the Tent of Meeting, into the Israelites' Tabernacle (the movable holy of holies), to have sex:
And here was a man from the children of Israel, and he brought a Midianitess close to his brothers in the sight of Moses and in the sight of all the congregation of the children of Israel. And they were weeping a t the entrance of the Tent of Meeting. And Phinehas, the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron the priest, saw, and he rose from the midst of the congregation, and he took a spear in his hand. And he came after the Israelite man to the Tent-chamber, and he thrust through the two of them, the Israelite man and the woman, to her stomach.


which provides a basis for the following apologia:
An Israelite man and a Midianite woman have gone into the Tent of Meeting "in the sight of Moses," but it is not Moses who acts, but Phinehas. He follows the man and woman inside the Tent. They are engaged in an activity whose arrangement makes it possible to thrust a spear through both the man and the woman, ending in the woman's abdomen. The execution without a trial is possible because death is the unquestionable fate of anyone entering the Tabernacle who is not a priest. Phinehas' reward is an eternal covenant of priesthood.

But non-ad hoc translations of the Bible (including all Jewish Publication Society translations, The King James Version, The Revised Berkeley Version, and the Revised Standard Version) have Zimri taking Cozbi to "his family," "his brethren," "his relatives" or "his companions," as distinct from into the Tent of Meeting, and in these translations Phinehas leaves the Tent of Meeting to go after them. The most recent JPS translation, Tanakh, reads as follows (Numbers 25:6-8):

Just then one of the Israelites came and brought a Midianite woman over to his companions, in the sight of Moses and of the whole Israelite community who were weeping at the entrance of the Tent of Meeting. When Phinehas, son of Eleazar son of Aaron the priest, saw this, he left the assembly and, taking a spear in his hand, he followed the Israelite into the chamber and stabbed both of them, the Israelite and the woman, through the belly.


It was also clear to both the Sages of the Talmud and the Midrash Rabbah, who could presumably read ancient Hebrew at least as well as Friedman, that these verses meant that Moses was at the entrance of the Tent of Meeting looking out while Zimri took Cozbi to the chamber of his own tent among the tents of his family. [Back]

(ix) Maimonides, M. 1195 (circa). The Book of Judges: The Code of Maimonides (Hershman, A.M. trans) New Haven: Yale University Press (1949). Treatise 5, chapter 8:2-9, pp 229-230. [Back]

(x) Babylonian Talmud, The. Epstein, I. (ed.). 1978 Quincentenary Edition. London: Soncino Press. Abodah Zarah, 22b. [Back]

(xi) The shaygetz problem did not exist before Jewish women gained a secular legal right to marry without their father's permission and began to do so in appreciable numbers, so this is a more recent phenomenon. When the Hebrew word 'shaygetz' was feminized into the Yiddish word 'shiksa', it still meant "an abomination" in Hebrew without a secondary meaning designating an non-Jewish male in particular. Accordingly, even though 'shaygetz' is a much older word, it did not take on its now familiar meaning of a male shiksa until after the word 'shiksa' had gained common parlance as a non-Jewish female abomination. [Back]

(xii) Outreach, the Newsletter of the National Jewish Outreach Program. 10:2, May 1997 (Iyar 5757), p 1. [Back]

(xiii) See also, The New York Times, May 17, 1997, p 24. [Back]

Maasai evicted and imprisoned to make way for safari hunting concession
20 August 2009


Maasai homestead burned down in July 2009
© Survival

Eight Maasai villages in the Loliondo region of Tanzania have been burnt to the ground, leaving 3,000 people without food, water or shelter.

On 4 July, heavily armed Tanzanian riot police set fire to Maasai homesteads and foodstores to evict them from their ancestral land. Thousands of Maasai are now destitute with their cattle in acute drought conditions. They were forced from their villages to create a game hunting area for the Otterlo Business Corporation (OBC).

One Maasai said, ‘Today our land is being taken for investment: luxury tourist hunting.’

Survival has also received disturbing reports that Maasai women have been raped and severely beaten during the evictions. Describing her ordeal, one woman said, ‘Two armed men chased me and forced me to lie down, at the same time another six men followed them and all raped me’.

Otterlo Business Corporation is reportedly linked with the United Arab Emirates royal families and has held exclusive safari and hunting rights in Loliondo, northern Tanzania since 1992. The area is traditionally Maasai land, but since obtaining the concession the company uses the area to hunt large game animals. The hunting concession has severely restricted the Maasai’s access to grazing land for their cattle, resulting in ongoing tension between the Maasai and OBC.

The recent atrocities show that the situation is now critical. Maasai women recently demonstrating in Loliondo against the violent evictions were told they had no right to protest. Anonymous threats have also been made to local community leaders.

The burning of villages has now stopped. But any Maasai herding cattle within the OBC hunting area are being arrested. Five people have already been tried without access to legal defence or bail, and have been imprisoned for six months. A further ten Maasai are due to appear in court on 24 August.

Powerful safari hunting companies have a history of impacting on the lives of tribal people in Tanzania. In 2007, the small hunter-gatherer Hadza tribe narrowly escaped eviction from part of their ancestral land following Tanzania UAE Safari Ltd’s withdrawal from its hunting concession in the Yaida Valley after pressure from Hadza, indigenous organisations and Survival.

“Alternativos”



Haverá por aí pessoal verdadeiramente alternativo empenhado na luta por uma alter globalização, mas que não coma parvoíces “místicas” e pseudo esotéricas, estilo comida rápida para ocidentais alienados, privilegiados, egoístas e fúteis?! Falo das tretas execráveis New Age; a astrologia; os calendários “Maia” e “Celta”; os “atlantes”, as fadas e os anjos – seres mitológicos todos com o aspecto de caucasianos que parecem ter saído de um catálogo de eugenia nazi (porra que até os seus gnomos canabinóides têm os olhos claros!)… Enquanto, não muito longe de nós, diariamente, em média, morrem 30 mil crianças devido à desnutrição e à nossa indiferença! Mas esses têm a pele escura e, como tal, são demasiado “inferiores” como para terem direito à guarda pessoal de “anjos”… Não é assim, rebanho cego?
E Misturam Vedas com citações filosóficas atribuídas a “índios estadunidenses” – que eles consideram culturas extintas, apenas se apoderando de imitações folclóricas e comerciais do seu misticismo.

Aliás, ao considerarem coisa do passado os povos tribais, ficam “escusados” de se envolverm na luta política (preferencialmente apartidária) em prol dos directos (constantemente atropelados!) de milhões de pessoas pertencentes a grupos étnicos que têm sido empurrados para debaixo do tapete desta civilização,onde “podem” ser espezinhados obscuramente.



Há ainda os “gurus” charlatães e manipuladores que debitam desbotados litotes e mantras embrutecedores (em workshops/oficinas de trabalho extorsionários e que prometem resultados imediatos aos neófitos…) sobre um oriente romantizado; os “leitores de áureas”; os que fodem com “extraterrestres”; os “iluminados” que promovem o consumismo esverdeado e sucedâneos reciclados das religiões abraâmicas ; a infantilidade (no pior sentido da palavra) estilizada e parasitária da cultura nórdica que foge do frio mantendo ares de “superioridade” decorada com arco-íris, unicórnios, duendes, girassóis, borboletas, colibris,… sem que consigam identificar no campo as verdadeiras espécies iconografadas.
“Adoram” a natureza sem se molestarem em tentar compreende-la verdadeiramente. Quando no campo, passam a maior parte do tempo com o olhar confinado aos seus brinquedinhos electrónicos, enquanto debitam um chorrilho de clichês imbecis das suas cartilhas urbano-utópicas, em que, hipocritamente, projectam na natureza valores morais dúbios; julgando os bichos pelo que mais detestam na nossa sociedade sob o peso ingente da cumplicidade. Querem fazer festinhas nos animais silvestres (os que tem um aspecto fofinho) e são tão egocêntricos e supersticiosos que acreditam que essas criaturas sabem reconhecer os humanos de “energia superior!” e mal podem esperar para lhes caírem nos braços, trocando afectos... já encontrei alguns (adultos!) que acreditam que os Flingstones são um retrato fidedigno da pré história!

os livros de merda que esta gente le só seriam úteis em cagatórios de apiadeiros indianos. Coisas como, por ex., «A Profecia Celestina»; os do Paulo Coelho; até «O Código da Vinci»; “ O Zen do seu Automóvel” e outros títulos possíveis do gênero:
“A Transumância da Alma no Alinhamento Cósmico da Era do Gambuzino”; “Meditação Transcendental para Impedir o Crescimento das Ervas Indesejáveis no seu Jardim & Horta”; “A Espiritualidade Monetária para Alcançar a Pan Sexualidade dos Bonobos ”; “Reinventar o Galo de barcelos no Contexto da Cultura Xamânica” ;
“Tratado Psicográfico de Magia Teúrgica Aplicado à Dieta Macrobiótica”; "Programe o Nascimento dos Seus Filhos de Acordo com o Mapa Astral dos Famosos"; “Guia das Viagens na Maionese (Chegando sempre a Tempo de ver o Thongdrol)”;"Reiki para Lavar as Partes Pudibundas (Sem Precisar de Tocar Nelas)"; "Oui Ja: Aprenda a Conjurar o Mestre Nostradamus e Ganhe nas Raspadinhas"; “O Portal Interestelar da Quinta da Conraria (com Ligação ao Ramal do Triângulo das Bermudas) e a Conspiração dos Illuminati para Devolver o Brinde ao Bolo Rei”; “Confissões do Anjo que Enrabou a Virgem Maria com um Ceptro Merovíngico”; “Como o Feng Shui @ Poderá Ajudar Reduzir o Peso da Sua Alma (de 21 para 19 gramas) em Apenas Uma Semana”;"Atinja o Nirvana Através de Trepanações e lobotomias "; "Os Mantras Rectais do Bonnacon"; “A Influência Emenagoga do Ninhal Lunar de Psicopompos”; “Como reencarnar num Golfinho Recorrendo aos Cristais Atlantes”; “Manual Devadasi para Neutralizar o Chupacabras ” etc,etc... Usem a Imaginação e divirtam-se! Até eu estou a pensar escrever um livro meio esotérico, ou não, intitulado “Blasphemare Absens Fides II : O Homem que Escarrou na Cara de Jeová e Sobreviveu para que o Seu Biógrafo Escrevesse a Estória.” Que tal, ein?...


Nem sei se ria ou se chore confrontado com as suas teorias (tão monolíticas quanto lamechas) sobre a visão “melhorada” da natureza, mais se assemelhando a um cruzamento entre zardins zoológicos e parques temáticos estilo Walt Disney. Testemunhas de Jeová e quejandos sentem-se igualmente confortáveis com estes conceitos controlados pela Megamáquina… Esse bando de velhinhas (mesmo que os seus documentos de identidades atestem o contrário) não raro forçam os seus cães e gatos a uma dieta vegetariana! E acham que ter tartarugas num tanque de quintal, ou passarinhos a esvoaçar esporadicamente dentro de casa, é um acto de bondade!...
Oh, e como irrita os ares de superioridade que exibem ao falar sobretudo da sua espiritualidade e das suas dietas – que tentam impingir com fúria doutrinária, mesmo quando se entregam ao consumismo fútil, apoiando as instituições/corporações com o pior historial de agressão à natureza...
E sonham com uma aliança entre o Greenpeace e Jesus Cristo (versão amaricada, com uma sedosa cabeleira cor-de-mel e olhos de um azul profundo) comandando um exército de anjos armados até aos dentes; apoiados por uma esquadra de fadinhas e ninfas lideradas por Peter Pan; O Sai Baba e o Michael Jackson de mãos dadas com crianças (que perderam a inocência da pior maneira); o Dalai lama e Buda (numa tanga de lutador de sumo), rodeados por monges de Shaolin; Gandalf e Merlin à frente de um grêmio de druidas e de bruxas (que mais parecem modelos da Avon, ou então dão azo à longa tradição dos estereotipados preconceitos anti-semitas ), respaldados pelos cavaleiros da Távola Redonda e pelo bando de Robin dos Bosques; o fantasma de Chico Mendes e de índios cujos nomes foram imortalizados por Hollywood – onde as estrelas nos enviarão os seus professores de ioga e de reiki para o confronto final entre o bem e o mal... haverá ainda naves espaciais, em que os alienígenas dividirão a sua mirabolante tecnologia com os hackers mais craques e ousados. Esses irão salvar o mundo in extremis.
Entretanto, vão-se entupindo com Coca-cola e Marlboro e luzem modelos XPTO de botas para trekking que a NASA desenhou a fim de que nunca percam a tracção nos pedais dos jipes (e a ninguém interessa que tenham sido fabricadas por crianças e adolescentes em condições deploráveis lá longe no Terceiro Mundo, que isso de ser fundamentalista certamente não nos conduz ao Nirvana...)



Não nos podemos esquecer dos discípulos do “mestre LSD” Timothy Leary que nutrem uma fantasia tecnófila e elitista. Mais do que Paracelso (que teve o duvidoso “mérito” de transformar grande parte dos europeus em antropófagos…)e a sua pretensão clínica de que a natureza foi criada para nos servir ( nomeadamente na fitoterapia, argumentando que morfología de diversas partes das plantas supostamente nos dá fáceis pistas sobre as suas propriedades medicinais de acordo com as semelhanças antropomórficas), estes arautos da Nova Era consideram-se a mente, a conciencia e o espírito do planeta vivo, a que gostam de chamar Gaia. Como agravamento de tais delírios de grandeza antropocêntricos , sentem a obrigação “moral”, assim como uma demanda “espiritual”, de pegarem no seu punhado de escolhidos e partirem para o espaço sideral, a fim de colonizarem outros mundos “sáfaros e sequiosos” da sua energia “superior”, pois consideram-se demasiado “evoluídos” para as limitações naturais deste planeta – o único a que podemos chamar o nosso lar. Na sua hierarquização da natureza, reservam um pedestal para a humanidade – na verdade, apenas para uma auto eleita elite em processo de deificação. (Quem ficará responsável pela selecção da alegada “nata da humanidade”? Em que critérios se basearão? A concretizar-se, não restam dúvidas que tal operação deverá ser coordenada por um “grande líder” que apenas tolerará junto de si, na nave espacial, os que tenham com ele uma sintonia política… )
Tão certo como esta ser uma versão de velhas utopias de cariz bíblico, é um facto que eles estão a fazer o jogo do complexo militar-industrial (e os seu verdadeiro deus – o capital), que pretende continuar a expandir-se, exaurindo os recursos das biorregioes que vão deixando para trás até que não haja o que predar para além da conquista espacial.
Alguns até são malta porreira, mas andam tão desorientados... Enquanto assim for, os poderes instituídos podem empanturrar-se – vampirando-nos e deixando um rasto de destruição ambiental – bem descansadinhos…
Muitos estão viciados na barulheira ensurdecedora, com as respectivas luzes mesmerizantes, velocidade vertiginosa e drogas de síntese química que levam para o campo molestando com gravidade tudo o que lá vive – e que não de dão ao trabalho de conhecer. Chamam a isto “música transe” e “comungar com a natureza”…Puta-que-os-pariu !!
Esse comércio de indigência intelectual e espiritual não me parece que tenha contribuído positivamente para o desenvolvimento e consolidação da ecologia e do respectivo activismo.
Precisamos de redescobrir e recrear uma espiritualidade telúrica e solidária, ou seja, um estado de encantamento radical (no verdadeiro sentido da palavra) perante a natureza, amando e respeitando todas as criaturas que habitam connosco este planeta maravilhoso, mas que já não reconhecemos como nossos parentes nem como garantes da nossa qualidade de vida e até da nossa mera sobrevivência.
Devemos olhar atentamente para as comunidades tribais que ainda subsistem tentando resistir à merda da nossa civilização – ao capitalismo rapace; ao urbanismo industrial; ao mercado de trabalho arregimentado e à tecnologia de exploração desumanizante; à corrupção completa da verdade; à competição desenfreada e às hierarquias injustas que o dinheiro impõe; ao Estado autoritário ao serviço das corporações; ao isolamento desesperante sob o fluxo suicidário das massas manipuladas; aos ambientes tóxicos (em termos físicos e intelectuais); à alienação aditiva e todas as dependências malsãs; ao hedonismo irresponsável; ao egocentrismo desenraizado; à passividade aliada à insaciável fome materialista que aborta sonhos envenenados; à homogeneização imposta das afirmações de “progresso” baseadas na destruição do que há de mais precioso; ao crime; às doenças e à iniquidade generalizada; às ideologias que justificam assimetrias sociais; à privatização da vida,…

Esses povos tribais são os guardiães dos valores redentores que nos poderão ajudar a criar comunidades sustentáveis, harmoniosas e tão felizes como é possível à nossa espécie – que assim viveu durante 99% da sua existência.

A propósito, aqui fica um excerto de uma entrevista a Jerry Mander (um autor altamente recomendável!):

INGRAM: Let's talk about virtual reality.

MANDER: I've never experienced virtual reality. I'm very skeptical about it. I think it's like every other technology in the sense that it has some entertainment value and maybe it has some interesting uses. I've heard that a new use for virtual reality programs is in training bomber pilots. Aside from such uses, which I find disturbing, what annoys me is the way virtual reality is embraced and celebrated by those who ought to be smart enough to see their way out of this technological maze.
INGRAM: You mean the new age crowd.

MANDER: Yes, it's such a sign that the new age has misunderstood something about itself. Proponents of the new age place primary value on the expansion of human consciousness toward some apparently higher level of understanding. They regard human beings as the ultimate expression of evolution, and they regard themselves as the explorers or the astronauts of human consciousness, trying to develop human abilities and live up to their maximum human potential. Such a view justifies any technological or even political development if it somehow is supportive of the drive toward expanding human consciousness. That's why the new age so favors space exploration and almost any other technology that offers new games, new ideas, new capabilities for human expression without any sense of the political or social consequences.

For example, a lot of new age proponents claim to celebrate Indians but they're truly celebratory only of what they think is Indian mysticism, without any appreciation of where that comes from, how that's rooted in community, in the earth, and in egalitarianism. Their interest in Indian spirituality attaches no importance to the political situation that native peoples face on the planet. If the knowledge of native peoples is going to be preserved, then you have to get involved politically to help them. And new age types are not interested in that; they're interested in skimming what they regard as the cream--the mystical aspects, the peyote rituals, or maybe the art. This is just personal aggrandizing, ego-oriented self- indulgence. It is politically right-wing and very counterproductive to the ideals of a survivable, sustainable world, and healthy human consciousness. It sustains a value system that is causing the problems. That kind of new age thinking is, to me, revolting.

The Catholic Doctrine and Reproductive Health
WHY THE CHURCH CAN’T CHANGE
by Stephen D. Mumford

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The following article is from Free Inquiry magazine, Volume 21, Number 1.


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The anti-abortion movement in the United States was created in response to the U.S. Supreme Court ruling on Roe v. Wade in 1973, which legalized abortion. However, it really owes its origin to a group of men in Rome 103 years earlier. This was 1870, the year of Vatican Council I, a conclave of great importance in recent church history. Why is this so?

Hans Küng, the renowned Swiss Catholic theologian, best summed up the problem accounting for its creation when he said, “It is not possible to solve the problem of contraception until we solve the problem of infallibility.” In his book, How the Pope Became Infallible, Catholic historian Bernhard Hasler describes in great detail what Küng meant: For more than a millennium, the Vatican had possessed temporal power that ensured its survival. With the loss of the Papal States in 1870, it appeared all but certain that a strong papacy would simply disappear. The Vatican urgently needed a new source of power.

A group of conservative and influential leaders, including Pope Pius IX, came up with a brilliant idea for a new source: an infallible pope. What is infallibility? According to Catholic dogma, when the pope formulates a doctrine, he is simply transmitting this dogma on God’s behalf. Therefore, the teaching cannot possibly be in error.

Roman Catholics could be certain that the teachings of the pope and of God were one and the same, and, if strictly followed, one’s entrance into heaven was guaranteed. Communicants found this concept very attractive and were eager to behave in any manner required of them. Such an arrangement placed enormous control over individuals into the hands of the Vatican, extending across national borders and even to the other side of the world. It could no longer control the laity by means of its governance, as it had in the Papal States which would later become Italy. But the Holy See could exercise control directly by adopting a policy of psychological coercion founded on a new doctrine—that of papal infallibility.

Protection at all Costs
Papal infallibility was a brilliant concept—and it worked for a century. But at its introduction in 1870, the Catholic intelligentsia recognized that, at some point in the future, this principle would lead to the self-destruction of the institution. Times were certain to change and in unpredictable ways, but the Church would be locked on an inexorable course—teachings that could not be changed without destroying the principle of infallibility itself. These distinguished scholars foresaw that one day, encumbered by its unchangeable teachings, the Church would find itself down a blind alley from which there would be no escape and faced with inevitable self-destruction as a result of a grave loss of credibility. The blind alley turned out to be the issue of birth control—contraception and abortion.

Since the 1968 adoption of the papal encyclical, Humanae Vitae, there has been a hemorrhage in the Church’s credibility. Humanae Vitae ruled out any change of the Church’s position on birth control for all time.

The proponents of papal infallibility could not imagine the population explosion of the last half of this century. Just as critics had predicted, institutional self-destruction is now well underway. But, as it stands now, the Church cannot change its position on birth control without undermining all of its dogma.

The following are only three among scores of findings to indicate how the Vatican is destroying itself:

1. In 1965 there were 42,000 young men in American seminaries studying for the priesthood. Today there are fewer than 6,000, even though the number of Catholics in this country has nearly doubled.

2. The average age of nuns in the United States is 65 years. Only 3% are under age 40, while 35% are older than 70.

3. One-half of all American priests quit the priesthood before reaching retirement age.

Self-destruction as a result of loss of credibility is underway but progressing slowly. The pope remains hopeful that he can turn this around. He is convinced that, if he changes the Church’s position on birth control and destroys the principle of infallibility, self-destruction will be very swift. We know that this matter was the focus of his attention for several years in the 1960s.

The Threats of Legalized Birth Control and Abortion
In 1964, Pope Paul VI created the Papal Commission on Population and Birth Control. It was a two-part commission and met from 1964 to 1966. One part consisted of 64 lay persons, the other, of 15 clerics, including the future Pope John Paul II, then a Polish cardinal. Pope Paul gave the Commission only one mission—to determine how the Church could change its position on birth control without undermining papal authority. After two years of study, the Commission concluded that it was not possible to make this change without undermining papal authority, but that the Church should make the change anyway because it was the right thing to do! The lay members voted 60 to 4 for change, and the clerics, 9 to 6 for change. Pope Paul did not act immediately. A minority report was prepared, co-authored by the man who is now Pope John Paul II. In this report he stated:

If it should be declared that contraception is not evil in itself, then we should have to concede frankly that the Holy Spirit had been on the side of the Protestant churches in 1930 (when the encyclical Casti Connubii was promulgated), in 1951 (Pius XlI’s address to the midwives), and in 1958 (the address delivered before the Society of Hematologists in the year the pope died). It should likewise have to be admitted that for a half century the Spirit failed to protect Pius XI, Pius XII, and a large part of the Catholic hierarchy from a very serious error.

This would mean that the leaders of the Church, acting with extreme imprudence, had condemned thousands of innocent human acts, forbidding, under pain of eternal damnation, a practice which would now be sanctioned. The fact can neither be denied nor ignored that these same acts would now be declared licit on the grounds of principles cited by the Protestants, which popes and bishops have either condemned or at least not approved.

In this and other texts, the pope took the position that a change on the birth control issue would destroy the principle of papal infallibility, and that infallibility was the fundamental principle of the Church upon which all else rests. A change on birth control would immediately raise questions about other possible errors popes have made in matters of divorce, homosexuality, confession, parochial schooling, etc. that are fundamental to Roman Catholicism.

The security and survival of the papacy itself is on the line. The Church insists on being the sole arbiter of what is moral. Civil law legalizes contraception and abortion. Governments are thereby challenging the prerogative of the pope to be the ultimate authority on matters of morality. Most Americans look to democratic process to determine morality. In the simplest analysis, the Church cannot coexist with such an arrangement, which in its view, threatens its very survival as a world political power.

For this reason, the Vatican was forced to interfere in the democratic process in the United States by lobbying for the passage of numerous anti-abortion laws designed to protect its interests. There is a plethora of documentation to support these findings, relating mainly to Vatican and U.S. National Conference of Catholic Bishops’ sources, some of which I will discuss later.

Only legal abortion and legal family planning threaten the Church. It has shown very little interest in illegal abortion. For example, in Latin America, where abortion is illegal, abortion rates are two or three times as high as those seen in the United States. However, abortion is essentially ignored by the bishops there.

Political Action
Even before the work of the Papal Commission on Population and Birth Control was completed in 1966, it was widely recognized in the Vatican that the Church faced a grave problem regarding birth control, including abortion. Vatican Council II, which ended in 1966, set the stage for the bishops to address this problem. One of the outcomes of this Council was the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World. Part two of the Constitution was titled, “Some Problems of Special Urgency.” In his book, Catholic Bishops in American Politics, published by the Princeton University Press in 1991, T.A. Byrnes observes, “This list of problems to which the Church was to turn its attention reads like a blueprint of the American hierarchy’s political agenda in the 1970s and 1980s.” The first was abortion:

God, the Lord of life, has conferred on men the surpassing ministry of safeguarding life—a ministry which must be fulfilled in a manner which is worthy of man. Therefore, from the moment of conception life must be guarded with the greatest of care, while abortion and infanticide are unspeakable crimes.

The Decree on the Bishops’ Pastoral Office in the Church, another Vatican Council II document, created the National Conference of Catholic Bishops (NCCB), which was organized according to universal church law. It was created to serve as a political instrument of the Vatican. During a meeting of the American hierarchy in November 1966, the bishops formally established the NCCB as their official collective body and established the United States Catholic Conference (USCC) as their administrative arm and secretariat.

From the very beginning, there has been a common and correct perception that the Catholic hierarchy was primarily an anti-abortion political lobby. Byrnes summarizes his study of the history of Catholic bishops in American politics by saying:

Before I end, I want to address one final matter, namely the unique position that abortion occupies on the Catholic hierarchy’s public policy agenda. Abortion is not simply one issue among many for the bishops. It is rather the bedrock, non-negotiable starting point from which the rest of their agenda has developed. The bishops’ positions on other issues have led to political action and political controversy but abortion, throughout the period I have examined, has been a consistently central feature of the Catholic hierarchy’s participation in American politics.

On January 22, 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court legalized abortion for Americans. According to Bishop James McHugh, “within twenty-four hours” of the court’s action, the bishops knew they would need to mount a political campaign in favor of a constitutional amendment prohibiting abortion.

The Vatican wasted no time in responding. In 1974, the stage was further set to create a political machine to end legal abortion in the United States when Rome issued a document titled, Vatican Declaration on Abortion, which states:

A Christian can never conform to a law which is in itself immoral, and such is the case of a law which would admit in principle the licitness of abortion. Nor can a Christian take part in a propaganda campaign in favor of such a law, or vote for it. Moreover, he may not collaborate in its application.

This statement is an unequivocal rejection of the legitimacy of our democratically elected government to pass laws legalizing abortion. The papacy had placed its authority on the line, pitting itself against the U.S. government. If the Vatican were to avoid the looming destruction of papal authority, it must minimize the number of abortions legally performed and ultimately succeed in reversing the effects of Roe v. Wade. The 1974 Vatican Declaration on Abortion follows the instructions set forth by Pope Leo XIII in his encyclical on the Chief Duties of Christian Citizens:

If the laws of the state are manifestly at variance with the divine law, containing enactments hurtful to the Church or conveying injunctions adverse to the duty imposed by religion, or if they violate in the person of the Supreme Pontiff the authority of Jesus Christ, then truly, to resist becomes a positive duty, to obey, a crime.

The current abortion law in the United States is unquestionably “hurtful to the Church.” Minimizing the number of abortions done in the United States is obviously helpful to the Church.

The Bishops’ Pastoral Plan for Pro-life Activities
On November 20, 1975, at its annual meeting, the American Catholic bishops issued the Pastoral Plan for Pro-Life Activities, a frank and superbly detailed blueprint of the bishops’ strategy for infiltrating and manipulating the American democratic process at national, state and local levels. It maps out the creation of a national political machine controlled by the Vatican through the bishops. The plan is directed toward creating a highly sophisticated, meticulously organized, and well-financed local, state, and national political machine. The plan candidly states that the Church will undertake activities to elect officials from local to national levels who will adhere to Vatican-ordained positions; that it will seek to influence policy in ways that will eliminate the threat to the Church; and that it will encourage the Executive Branch to deal “administratively” with matters that are unfavorable to the Church.

The Plan, in part, reads:

The abortion decisions of the United States Supreme Court (January 22, 1973) violate the moral order, and have disrupted the legal process which previously attempted to safeguard the rights of unborn children. A comprehensive pro-life legislative program must therefore include the following elements:

a) Passage of a constitutional amendment providing protection for the unborn child to the maximum degree possible.

b) Passage of federal and state laws and adoption of administrative policies that will restrict the practice of abortion as much as possible.

According to the Pastoral Plan, there is to be in each state a State Coordinating Committee, functioning under the State Conference or its equivalent, which will include bishops’ representatives from each diocese in the state and will function to monitor political trends in the state. Diocesan Pro-Life Committees are to coordinate groups and activities within the diocese, particularly efforts to effect passage of a constitutional amendment to protect the unborn child. The diocesan committee is to rely for the information and direction on the Bishops’ Pro-Life Office and on the National Committee for a Human Life Amendment.

Noting that well-planned and coordinated political action at national, state, and local levels would be required, the pamphlet states that the activity is not simply the responsibility of Catholics and should not be limited to Catholic groups or agencies. This instruction was a clarion call by the bishops for the creation of the New Right movement.

Indeed, during the period 1976–1980, all of the organizations that became known as the “New Right Movement” were created, with one exception: The Christian Coalition was created later to replace the Moral Majority, which had fallen into public disrepute. Catholics were key players in the creation of all these organizations and influential in their leadership. This assessment of the creation of this movement and the influence in it of the bishops is well documented.

In 1980, Federal Judge John Dooling ruled on McRae v. HEW, a challenge to the Hyde Amendment, which prevented Medicaid payment for abortion. The judge had spent a year studying the anti-abortion movement in great detail, including the bishops’ Pastoral Plan. His findings showed that the anti-abortion movement was essentially Roman Catholic with a little non-Catholic window dressing.

In a 328-page ruling, Dooling, a practicing Catholic, makes short work of the anti-abortionists’ pretensions to be a spontaneous grass-roots movement that owes its political victories to sheer moral appeal. He confirms that the right-to-life’s main source of energy, organization, and direction has been the Catholic Church, and he describes in detail how the movement works to achieve its goals.

The Protestant face carefully put on the movement, first by the Moral Majority and then by the Christian Coalition, was called for in the Pastoral Plan. Richard A. Viguerie, a Catholic, is the man most responsible for the development and success of the New Right. He was also involved in the original discussions that led to the creation of the Moral Majority and, as its fundraiser, can be credited with its financial success. Paul Weyrich, a Catholic, claims credit for originating the idea for the group and the name itself. In their search for an attractive front man for the organization, they chose Jerry Falwell.

Much effort went into avoiding public disclosure of the role of the Catholic Church in the creation of the Moral Majority. Maxine Negri, in “A Well-Planned Conspiracy,” exposed involvement of the Catholic hierarchy in the Moral Majority.

The Christian Coalition replaced the Moral Majority with the bishops still in full control. The evidence supporting this statement is compelling. For example, Maureen Roselli, executive director of the Catholic Alliance, a branch of the Christian Coalition, claims that the Coalition has 250,000 Catholic members. Catholic Georgetown University political science professor Mary Bendyna told the Religious News Service that she was surprised to find, even before the creation of the Catholic Alliance, that all five staffers in the Christian Coalition’s Washington, D.C., office were Catholic.

Claims of autonomy by the Moral Majority and the Christian Coalition should not be taken seriously. What is described here is exactly the organization contemplated in the Pastoral Plan.

What are some of the bishops’ successes on the three branches of our federal government? The February 24, 1992, issue of Time magazine showed that, with the election of anti-abortion Ronald Reagan in 1980, the views of the Vatican gained substantial influence within the administrative branch of the U.S. government in the area of population and family planning policy. Presidents Reagan and later Bush were arguably the most pro-Vatican presidents in American history.

This article was written by Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Carl Bernstein. He described what he referred to as the “Catholic Team”:

The key Administration players were all devout Roman Catholics—CIA chief William Casey, [Richard] Allen [Reagan’s first National Security Advisor], [William] Clark [Reagan’s second National Security Advisor], [Alexander] Haig [Secretary of State], [Vernon] Walters [Ambassador at Large] and William Wilson, Reagan’s first ambassador to the Vatican. They regarded the U.S.-Vatican relationship as a holy alliance: the moral force of the Pope and the teachings of their church combined with . . . their notion of American Democracy.

In a section of his article headed “The U.S. and the Vatican on Birth Control,” Bernstein includes two more revealing paragraphs:

In response to concerns of the Vatican, the Reagan Administration agreed to alter its foreign aid program to comply with the church’s teachings on birth control. According to William Wilson, the President’s first ambassador to the Vatican, the State Department reluctantly agreed to an outright ban on the use of any U.S. aid funds by either countries or international health organizations for the promotion of . . . abortions. As a result of this position, announced at the World Conference on Population in Mexico City in 1984, the U.S. withdrew funding from, among others, two of the world’s largest family planning organizations: the International Planned Parenthood Federation and the United Nations Fund for Population Activities.

“American policy was changed as a result of the Vatican’s not agreeing with our policy,” Wilson writes. “American aid programs around the world did not meet the criteria the Vatican had for family planning. AID [the Agency for International Development] sent various people from the Department of State to Rome, and I’d accompany them to meet the president of the Pontifical Council for the Family, and in long discussions they finally got the message. . . .”

However, the bishops may have had even greater success in targeting the judicial branch. In the 12 years of the Reagan and Bush administrations, these two presidents appointed five Supreme Court Justices and 70% of all sitting judges in the federal court system. All were anti-abortion, another goal of the Plan.

The legislative branch has been more difficult for the bishops, although they did achieve sufficient influence in Congress to the extent that pro-choice Congressmen could not override a presidential veto of family planning bills. As long as the anti-family planning interests controlled the White House, as they did during the Reagan and Bush years, this was sufficient for the bishops’ purposes.

One of the more profound accomplishments of this Plan is the capture of the Republican Party by the Vatican. This accomplishment was vital to the bishops’ legislative agenda described in the Plan. In a July 28, 1994, Los Angeles Times wire service story, Jack Nelson describes the maneuvers of the Religious Right so that this takeover is all but an accomplished fact.

On September 11, 1995, Bill Moyers gives his assessment of the influence of the Religious Right in remarks titled Echoes of the Crusades: The Radical Religious Right’s Holy War on American Freedom: “They control the Republican party, the House of Representatives and the Senate. . . .”

Outgoing Republican National Committee Chairman Richard Bond told the members of that committee on January 29, 1993, that it was time for the Republican Party to abandon the papal position on abortion. Bond said that the party should not be governed by “zealotry masquerading as principle.”

But who is the Religious Right? The Spring 1994 issue of Conscience, the journal of Catholics for a Free Choice, exploded the myth that the Religious Right is a Protestant movement. It was designed, created, and controlled by Catholics in response to the Pastoral Plan. These Catholics recruited opportunistic Protestants to give the appearance that Protestants were the instigators. The leadership is Catholic but the followers are often Protestant. The National Catholic Reporter predicted that the Bishops’ Pastoral Plan would lead to the creation of a new political party, an American Catholic Party. But instead, the Vatican simply chose to seize control of the Republican Party.

The outcomes of the Plan have been truly remarkable. And they have implications for all Americans.

The Vatican’s Bold Behavior
In April 1992, in a rare public admission of this threat, Cardinal John O’Connor of New York acknowledged:

The fact is that attacks on the Catholic Church’s stance on abortion—unless they are rebutted—effectively erode Church authority on all matters, indeed on the authority of God himself.

The Vatican claims the right to protect itself against “harmful laws”—even when democratically legislated. The central difficulty here, of course, is that what the Vatican considers “harmful” to itself and its authority often is exactly what patriotic American lay Catholic and non-Catholic men and women thoughtfully consider beneficial to themselves and their families. In a letter to American bishops from the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith—the most powerful Vatican office—Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger reminded the bishops that “The Church has the responsibility to protect herself from the application of harmful laws.” Obviously, if an institution has the “responsibility,” it also claims the “right.” The Vatican exercises its “right” to protect itself from the application of harmful laws in the autocratic way it defines harmful.

In 1995, Pope John Paul II issued his encyclical Evangelium Vitae (Gospel of Life). It frankly attacks the principles of liberal democracy and questions the legitimacy of the American government. He instructs Catholics to defy civil laws he deems illegitimate, and to impose papal teachings on all Americans through political commitment, even if it means that they must sacrifice their lives to do so. Evangelium Vitae is quite lengthy and contains 105 sections. The following passages, referenced by their section numbers, illustrate the pope’s message:

Laws which authorize and promote abortion and euthanasia are therefore radically opposed not only to the good of the individual but also to the common good; as such they are completely lacking in authentic juridical validity [#72].

Abortion and euthanasia are thus crimes which no human law can claim to legitimize. There is no obligation in conscience to obey such laws; instead there is a grave and clear obligation to oppose them by conscientious objection [#73].

It is precisely from obedience to God—to whom alone is due that for which is acknowledgment of His absolute sovereignty—that the strength and the courage to resist unjust human laws are born. It is the strength and the courage of those prepared even to be imprisoned or put to the sword, in the certainty that this is what makes for the endurance and faith of the saints [#73].

Christians . . . are called upon under grave obligation to conscience not to cooperate formally in practices which, even if permitted by civil legislation, are contrary to God’s law. Indeed, from the moral standpoint, it is never licit to cooperate formally in evil. . . . This cooperation can never be justified either by invoking respect for the freedom of others or by appealing to the fact that civil law permits it or requires it [#74].

To refuse to take part in committing an injustice is not only a moral duty; it is also a basic human right [#74].

Democracy cannot be idolized to the point of making it a substitute for morality or a panacea for immorality. Fundamentally, democracy is a “system” and as such is a means and not an end. Its “moral” value is not automatic but depends on conformity to the moral law [#70].

In her National Catholic Reporter article, “Defending Life Even Unto Death,” Professor Janine Langan, of the University of Toronto assesses Evangelium Vitae: “John Paul leaves no room for ghetto Catholicism. Excusing our silence about matters of truth because ‘we should not push on other people our Christian God,’ as one of my students put it last year, is not acceptable.” Professor Langan does not acknowledge that this encyclical is extremist in nature but she describes it forthrightly: “In a situation as grave as the present one, Christians are bound to come into conflict. . . . Evangelium Vitae is thus a challenge to defend life even at the cost of martyrdom.” Langan quotes the pope, “Life finds its center, its meaning and its fulfillment when it is given up [#51].” In her view, and the pope’s, martyrdom is admirable: “Martyrdom is the one witness to the truth about man which every one can hear. No society, however dark, can stifle it.”

This chilling view of martyrdom held by the pope and Professor Langan is not shared by most Americans. When fanatical Muslim extremists resort to it, martyrdom is almost universally condemned as religious extremism. Why should it be admirable behavior when exercised by Catholics?

Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, president of the Pontifical Council for the Family, who spoke on October 3, 1995, on “Culture of Life, Culture of Death in the Encyclical Evangelium Vitae,” makes it clear that the Church is at war with democratic America with its civil laws:

The Pope invites us with courage to the boycott of unjust laws which suppress the imperative of natural law carved into consciences by the Creator. And legislators, politicians, physicians, and scientists have the duty of conscience to be the defenders of life in the war against this culture of death.

This is an aggressive call to Catholics to impose papal law on all Americans through legislation.

On December 21, 1998, the American Catholic bishops brought this all even closer when they issued their statement, Living the Gospel of Life: A Challenge to American Catholics. As to the role of the Church in the political process, the bishops state: “. . . at all times and in all places, the Church should have the true freedom to teach the faith, to proclaim its teaching about society, to carry out its task among men without hindrance, and to pass moral judgment even in matters relating to politics . . .”[#18]. In other words, no one should offer resistance as the Church goes about passing laws demanded by the pope, such as parental consent laws.

The bishops have concluded that it is their job to pass civil laws that will protect the Catholic faithful from abortions that they would otherwise procure.

Conclusion
Vatican assertions, proclamations, declarations, and decrees serve, above all, to exemplify its intense desperation on the matter of legal abortion and family planning. Its very survival depends on halting all legal family planning and abortion which are causing a hemorrhage in the credibility of this religious institution. In my opinion, this remarkable dilemma is entirely responsible for the Vatican’s behavior. The Church, faced with disaster, is behaving like a wounded animal.

Americans do not benefit from any law now being used to restrict abortion. On the other hand, as others have documented, because of innovations such as parental notification laws, young women are irreparably harmed. Some will die. Some will commit suicide rather than tell their parents. Many will suffer adverse consequences from which they will never recover. The question is: should this human sacrifice of young American women who are not even Catholic be permitted so that men in Rome will be able to “infuse democracy with the right values” in order to try to save a Church which finds itself down a blind alley just as predicted by the Church intelligentsia in 1870?

The political machine created by the Pastoral Plan has had far-reaching consequences for all Americans. The impeachment of President Clinton, the most pro-choice president in history, would not have been possible without the successful implementation of this plan in the House of Representatives. He has defied the pope, strongly supporting access to abortion. All 13 House prosecutors were anti-abortion Republicans and were led by the most rabid abortion foe in the House, Roman Catholic Henry Hyde. According to the October 1, 1998, issue of the New York Times, Hyde and the lawyer he chose to lead the Republican impeachment team, David Schippers, another Catholic and father of 10, were both knighted by the pope three years ago for their outstanding service to the Catholic Church. Each of these 13 men most certainly benefitted from the existence of the political machine created by the Pastoral Plan. There are many other such examples and they are negatively affecting us all.

O sexo inferiorizado

O medo da sexualidade feminina que se quer exprimir de forma libertária/emancipada é, obviamente, muito anterior às religiões abraâmicas, estando fortemente implantado, desde tempos imemoriais, nas sociedades patriarcais. Provavelmente advém da insegurança instintiva de os homens nunca saberem ao certo (pelo menos antes dos testes de ADN) se são os pais biológicos das crianças que ajudam a criar. Em termos evolutivos, parece desastroso investir tanto em seres que não carregam o nosso legado genético. ( Atenção que, racionalmente, sou 100% a favor da adopção de crianças!) O facto de as mulheres terem uma vida sexual mais longeva e serem potencialmente multiorgásmicas (sem que os seus orgasmos tenham grande influência no processo de fecundação) e poderem receber o sémen de muitos parceiros sexuais (sendo possível terem sexo, forçadas ou não, mesmo sem estarem excitadas sexualmente), faz com que muitos machos tentem “cortar o mal (dos apetites sexuais femininos) pela raiz”, tanto em termos culturais (coerção psicológica) como até físicos. É por isso que diariamente em cerca de 23 países africanos continuam a excisar (o clítoris) de umas 6 mil meninas - muitas das quais morrem de subsequentes infecções. Comummente este procedimento bárbaro é complementado com o corte dos lábios vaginais que de seguida são cosidos (com espinhos), de modo a deixar apenas uma abertura mínima que assegure a expulsão da urina e do fluxo menstrual (chama-se a isso infibulação). Assim fica garantida a virgindade!... Imagine-se as terríveis dores que as sobreviventes têm ao iniciar a sua vida sexual (em conformidade com alguns seguidores do Corão). Em países como a Etiópia e o Sudão, entre outros, um elevado número de mulheres acaba por perecer ao tentar “dar a luz” como resultado destas práticas que as autoridades de 16 países se comprometeram protocolarmente a combater, mas que insistem em fingir ignorar (…)
Em 2006 um tribunal estado-unidense condenou um cidadão de origem etíope (que reside com a sua família nos EUA) a 10 anos de cárcere por, na privacidade do seu lar, ter excisado o clítoris da sua filha quando esta era um bebé de 2 anos (na altura do julgamento a menina tinha 7 anos), segundo os preceitos em que fora educado. A inusual severidade desta pena certamente que se destina a fincar um exemplo de tolerância zero quanto a estas práticas em terras do Tio Sam, amedrontando todos os que ainda acreditam na necessidade de mutilar as meninas, comprometendo toda a sua vida sexual e desobedecendo as leis do império. (Por outro lado, poucos acreditarão que, se algum estado-unidense filho de um proeminente político ou industrial for apanhado a furtar num país muçulmano ultra conservador, a pena habitual para estes tipos de delitos – a amputação da mão – será aplicada….)
Na caça às bruxas medievais, ter os lábios vaginais e/ou o clítoris grandes, era considerado um comprovativo de que estavam a lidar com um estrigídeo ao serviço de Satã.
Estranhamente, ainda hoje o clítoris quase não é merecedor de figurar em tratados de medicina.
O clítoris é um órgão muito maior do que se supõe (estando quase todo oculto à volta da vagina) composto por mais fibras nervosas do que o pénis; a sua única função é a de dar prazer e, após o orgasmo, não é afectado por um relaxamento muscular acompanhado de uma diminuição do afluxo sanguíneo (como acontece ao pénis), o que lhe permite provocar orgasmos múltiplos (embora possa ficar excessivamente sensível como para continuar a ser estimulado, provocando um desconforto doloroso). Para algumas culturas misóginas, tal capacidade feminina (digna de admiração, digo eu!) apenas contribui para o mito da ninfomaníaca fora de controlo (masculino)…

Um dos principais precursores da medicina ocidental, Hipócrates, associava as mudanças de humor e as doenças femininas à sexualidade, conjecturando que o útero era um órgão maligno e errante, capaz de se deslocar do seu sítio certo no baixo ventre para errar pelo corpo, provocando doenças em cada órgão que embatia…
Milhares de anos depois, o pai da psicanálise, Sigmund Freud, tinha algumas ideias deste calibre em relação às mulheres; eis algumas delas: «o orgasmo clitoriano é infantil»; «as mulheres só ultrapassarão a sua ansiedade crónica e desequilíbrio emocional [constituídos por um rosário de fanicos e de caprichos] quando aceitarem a sua condição de inferioridade [inata] em relação aos homens»…
aqui vai mais uma pequena amostra do que proeminentes teólogos vaticinaram sobre as mulheres:

"A mulher está em sujeição por causa das leis da natureza, mas é uma escrava
somente pelas leis da circunstância...A mulher está submetida ao homem pela
fraqueza de seu espírito e de seu corpo...é um ser incompleto, um tipo de
homem imperfeito [...] A mulher é defeituosa e bastarda, pois o princípio
activo da semente masculina tende à produção de homens gerados à sua
perfeita semelhança. A geração de uma mulher resulta de defeitos no
princípio ativo. » - Tomás de Aquino (in Summa Theologica, Q92, art. 1, Reply Obj.
1)


No século XII, Graciano, especialista em direito canônico, afirmou: "O homem,
mas não a mulher, é feito à imagem de Deus. Daí resulta claramente que as
mulheres devem estar submetidas a seus maridos e devem ser como escravas.»


"Abraçar uma mulher é como abraçar um saco de esterco. » - (São) Odo de Cluny
(monge beneditino, 1030-1097)
De S.Clemente de Alexandria sobre as mulheres: "A exata consciência de sua
própria natureza deve evocar sentimentos de vergonha. » (Paedagogus II, 33, 2)

Santo Antonino, arcebispo de Florença no final do séc. XV, diz que as "imundas
regras" são simplesmente o espelho de uma "alma imunda"

(S.) Agostinho colocou o dedo na ferida da fraqueza masculina (heterossexual) na sua luta contra os instintos:
«As mulheres não deveriam ser educadas ou ensinadas de nenhum modo. Deveriam, na verdade, ser segregadas já que são causa de horrendas e involuntárias erecções. »


A reforma protestante, de início, trouxe poucas melhorias para a libertação das mulheres, já que o líder desse cisma religioso, Martinho Lutero também era profundamente misógino. Eis algumas das suas “pérolas de sabedoria” machista:


«Não há maior defeito numa mulher que o desejar ser inteligente. »
«Os homens têm tórax grande e largo, quadris estreitos e mais entendimento que
as mulheres, que têm tórax pequeno e estreito e quadris largos. Isto significa
que elas devem ficar em casa, sentar-se quietas, cuidar do lar, gerar e criar
crianças. »
A sua conclusão doutrinária (tida como um dogma) mais devastadora foi a de que «As palavras e actos de Deus são bem claros: as mulheres foram feitas para ser esposas ou prostitutas» ...

Até os protestantes utilizaram o manual de caça às bruxas conhecido como "Malleus maleficarum" ("Martelo das feiticeiras"), que foi encomendado pelo Papa Inocêncio VIII a dois tenebrosos teólogos académicos chamados Heinrich Kramer e Jakob Sprenger. A sua publicação data de 1486 e vigorou por 250 anos. O livro afirma, entre outras coisas, que: "Quando uma mulher pensa sozinha, ela pensa maldades . (...) «Elas
são mais fracas de espírito e corpo (...)As mulheres são, intelectualmente, como
crianças (...)As mulheres têm memória mais fraca e é um vício natural nelas
não serem disciplinadas mas obedecerem a seus próprios impulsos sem noção
do que é apropriado" «A mulher é uma mentirosa por natureza...Ela é uma
inimiga insidiosa e secreta. » (...) «Se uma mulher se atreve a curar sem ter estudado,
ela é uma bruxa e deve morrer. » (quando um homem curava, era pelo poder de Deus
ou dos santos; quando uma mulher curava, era obra do diabo) «Ninguém causa
maior dano à fé católica do que as parteiras" (porque conheciam métodos de
parto sem dor, o que contrariava o mandamento de Deus de que as mulheres
deveriam dar à luz com dor; se não doesse, o diabo estava agindo) «E convém
observar que houve uma falha na formação da primeira mulher, por ter sido ela
criada a partir de uma costela recurva, ou seja, uma costela do peito, cuja
curvatura é, por assim dizer, contrária à retidão do homem. E como, em
virtude dessa falha, a mulher é animal imperfeito, sempre decepciona e mente. »
O livro trazia instruções detalhadas sobre métodos de tortura para se
obterem confissões, terminando as vítimas totalmente estraçalhadas (mas com
o devido cuidado para que sobrevivessem para serem queimadas na fogueira, com a
língua cortada para que não blasfemassem diante do povo).


E está escrito no Talmud: «A mulher é um vaso cheio de imundícies com sua boca cheia de sangue e entretanto todos a desejam» (Shabbath 152) «Quando nasce um menino, todos se alegram mas quando nasce uma menina todos se entristecem» (Niddah 31)

Numa reza matinal que já foi muito popular entre os casais judeus, cabe ao homem dizer o seguinte: «Obrigado, Senhor, por não ter nascido mulher», ao
que sua mulher responde: «Obrigada, Senhor, por me terdes feito de acordo com
sua vontade. »

«Nunca duvide de que um pequeno grupo de cidadãos preocupados e determinados pode mudar o mundo. De facto, é só isso que o tem mudado.» - Margaret Mead (antropóloga)

Apesar de continuar a detestar o capital, tenho pensado em como é possível ganhar uma pipa de massa sem que isso signifique sujeitar outros seres a uma exploração indecente e causar danos graves ao planeta. Não é um problema com uma solução fácil, mas creio que encontrei uma resposta possível.
Recentemente descobriu-se que os cães conseguem detectar pelo olfacto células cancerígenas mesmo nos seus estágios iniciais – e com tanta ou mais precisão do que as mais sofisticadas e dispendiosas máquinas e o laboratórios de análises. Basta colocar uma pessoa de forma a que cães treinados (teoricamente qualquer cão saudável pode fazê-lo) a cheirem completamente. Simples, rápido, eficaz e barato.
Também está provado que os cães conseguem (de forma ainda não explicada pela ciência) prever (com uma antecedência de até 1 hora) quando é que os donos vão sofrer um ataque de epilepsia. Algumas pessoas que sofrem dessa enfermidade já não saiam de casa há anos e viviam em depressão. Tudo isso mudou radicalmente com a aquisição de um destes cães treinados.
Temos que considerar que em Portugal apenas existe uma escola profissional que treina cães-guias para cegos. A lista de espera é enorme…
Há ainda hospitais nos EUA que têm gatos a andar ao seu bel prazer (talvez não seja a expressão mais correcta) por todas as alas, pois aperceberam-se que, de alguma forma, a maioria dos gatos pressente quando é que os velhotes solitários estão prestes a esticar o pernil, e vão para junto dos moribundos fazendo-lhes uma preciosa companhia até ao momento fatal.
A apiterapia tem feito pequenos "milagres" onde a medicina convencional se mostra totalmente impotente, nomeadamente nos casos de esclerose múltipla.
Claro que a poderosíssima indústria farmacêutica, os que vendem máquinas para os laboratórios e a maioria dos médicos estão a envidar todos os esforços para desacreditar e boicotar o uso de animais nas situações supracitadas. Afinal, eles vivem mesmo da doença não da saúde…
Já imaginaram centros de terapia animal acessíveis a todos e eficazes que, simultaneamente, pudesse dar "emprego", reconhecimento social e donos extremosos aos bichos vadios?
Seria óptimo! Se ao menos tivesse o dinheiro para investir…

A cartilha do sexo reprodutivo

É curioso que, para além da adoração monoteísta, a coisa que claramente os distingue dos outros povos que desprezam é a seu comportamento sexual [diferente]; o único aprovado por Jeová, mas de moralidade muito dúbia, ou não estivesse a bíblia cheia de casos de incesto e violência sexual por parte dos protegidos de Jeová.
Vejamos a narrativa bíblica de Loth (sobrinho de Abraão). Este, a fim de proteger da curiosidade hostil por parte dos homens de Sodoma os dois anjos que o visitaram, tenta aclamar os ânimos entregando à turba as sua filhas virgens: « eis aqui, duas filhas tenho, que ainda não conheceram varão; fora vo-las trarei, e fareis delas como bom for a vossos olhos; somente nada façais a estes varões(…)»(Génesis 19:8)
Os poderes mágicos dos anjos (que cegaram a turba de tarados sexuais) evitaram a violação colectiva das moças.
Mais tarde, habitava Loth uma caverna nas colinas que partilhava com as suas filhas, e chegou a ser pai-avô! (Génesis 19: 30-38) Esta violação incestuosa constitui um embaraço espinhoso que a Igreja tenta sacudir com explicações demasiado forçadas e indulgentes. (A desculpa mais recorrente é a de que as moças acreditavam que, ao terem consciência da destruição de Sodoma e de Gomorra, não haveriam mais homens na Terra, para além do seu pai, e elas sentiam a imperiosa obrigação de se reproduzirem. Como manda Jeová, a sua principal missão como mulheres é parir o máximo de judeus. Tal argumento sonega o relato de que, fugidos da catástrofe que acabou com as referidas cidades, ainda visitaram a cidade de Zoar , mas Loth teve medo de lá permanecer. Assim, antes de procurarem abrigo nas isoladas serranias, as filhas de Loth tomaram conhecimento de que, pelo menos em Zoar, ainda existiam homens disponíveis para as engravidar. )
Coerente com a sua misoginia, a bíblia atribui (mas sem se deter em juízos de valor) a exclusiva responsabilidade deste bizarro episódio às filhas de Loth. Como é que um idoso demasiado bêbado para ter consciência dos seus actos (nem deu pela presenÇas das suas filhas na sua cama noites seguidas) consegue ter relações sexuais e engravidar as duas jovens?! O relato indica-nos ele conseguiu esta proeza sem a ajuda de Jeová. (Genesis 19:31-36) Estes patriarcas bíblicos têm porras!...
Este incesto não foi condenado por Jeová, mas a desgracada da esposa de Loth, apenas pelo “pecado” da curiosidade que qualquer um de nós teria – até por obediência ao instinto de sobrevivência que geralmente vai contra a ontade do “bom deus” -, foi transformada numa estátua de sal... (Na região do Mar Morto abundam pilares de sal que os ventos caprichosamente cinzelaram. Alguns tem formas antropomórficas. É fácil deduzir onde os povos de lá se inspiraram para construir a fábula em causa. )
Para os não crentes nestas baboseiras, se as raparigas engravidaram durante a sua convivência com o seu pai num ermo, o mais provável é que tenham sido violadas repetidamente pelo velhote…
As estorietas absurdas e sórdidas da bíblia repetem-se com suspeita freqüência. Seguindo o mesmo guiao (até nos seus diálogos), no capítulo 19 do Livro de Juízes, deparamo-nos de novo com a cópia do episódio em que uma horda de violadores chega à porta de onde se acomodam os personagens principais. De estômago embrulhado, deparamo-nos de novo com forma aviltantemente misógina, traiçoeira e covarde como os protegidos de Jeová tentam “salvar a honra” de anfitriões e convidados, entregando as mulheres sob a sua protecção – até autorizando os malfeitores a perpetrarem as brutalidades e humilhações que lhes aprouver!...
A diferença desta feita é que, tanto a concubina de um sacerdote levita como a filha virgem do caridoso idoso que lhes deu hospedagem, acabaram mesmo nas garras rapaces dos violadores, que delas abusaram durante toda a noite (enquanto os homens que as deveriam proteger dormiam o sono dos justos?!...) – provocando a morte da companheira do tal sacerdote filho-da-puta! Este não esteve com meias medidas e cortou-a em 12 pedaços que enviou às tribos de Israel, à laia de um atroz apelo à guerra vingativa. Jeová, cujo apreço pelo sangue derramado certamente que em muito supera o da Condessa Bathory e do Conde Drácula juntos, deve ter ficado contente com o desfecho: mais de 60 mil mortos. Que o Senhor seja lavado – em sangue!....
Como mesmo entre o seu povo dileto Jeová trata uns como filhos e outros como enteados (no pior sentido da expressão) , muitas vezes não se limita a abusar dos seus super poderes, dando uns valentes cagacos a fim de que algumas ovelhas negras do seu rebanho aprendam licções traumatizantes, levando os seus jogos sórdidos até às últimas conseqüências – abstendo-se de intervir para evitar mortes inúteis.
Na véspera de uma decisiva batalha contra os amonitas, um senhor da guerra hebreu chamado Jafé fez um trato com Jeová: caso deus o ajudasse na desejada conquista militar (em nome do Senhor e a pedido Seu, no final das contas) , Jafé prometeu-lhe sacrificar a vida (com recurso ao fogo ritual) da primeira pessoa que saísse da sua casa para o receber de regresso vitorioso ao acampamento. Jeová deu então uma ajuda para que o desfecho da batalha fosse favorável aos seus seguidores (não o teria feito sema celebração do abominável trato?!), garantindo ainda que Jafé tivesse que sacrificar a sua única filha. (Não fica claro, porém, se Jeová forneceu a receita culinária a Jafé quando este cozinhou a sua própria filha em nome do bom deus e da palavra empenhada nos negócios com o Altíssimo, mas sabemos que Jeová e o seu povo nutrem uma obsessão mórbida por hímens fresquinhos...




Segundo os seguidores das religiões abraâmicas, toda a humanidade provém derelações incestuosas (com quem teriam então acasalado Caín e Abel, senão
com as suas irmãs, assim como os seus descendentes mais próximos?).
E onde é que está essa diferença em termos de comportamento sexual? Por mais que leia a bíblia e a história das religiões judaicas, cristãs e muçulmanas, só encontro um dominador comum que justifique essa diferença de comportamentos sexuais: o repúdio ao desperdício de esperma (começando pelo episódio de Onan & Tamar logo no livro do Génesis).
O Velho Testamento tolera a violência sexual, os incestos e a prostituição, mas não as práticas sexuais que não conduzem à fecundação. Isto parece-me típico de uma minoria étnica ameaçada que, para além da conversão, procura na demografia a sua sobrevivência e a conquista dos seus opressores. (A hierarquia patriarcal rígida e a imposição da obediência sem pensamento crítico são igualmente características de um povo envolvido em conflitos bélicos de longo termo.) +++

+++ No antigo Egipto a masturbação era socialmente aceite, ao ponto de integrar um dos seus mitos da criação, referente ao deus solar Aton que deu origem ao deus Shu/Chu e à deusa Tefnut, aproveitando o sémen da sua masturbação. Tal não deixa de ser irônico considerando que os hebreus copiaram e adaptaram dos egípcios muitos dos seus mitos religiosos basilares que deram origem a tabus doentiamente avessos a práticas sexuais que não conduzam à fecundação.

Os maiores heróis do Velho Testamento são varões que tiveram carradas de filhos. Logo no Génesis (15:5), Jeová promete a Abraão que a descendência do principal patriarca seria numerosa como as estrelas do céu.
A infertilidade é considerada uma maldição de Deus (tal como podemos verificar logo no caso de Raquel, a esposa favorita de Jacob).
Para os devotos a Jeová, sempre que o sexo se consuma em relações em que a fecundação resulta impossível, adquire um carácter pecaminoso. Quando tal envolve homens (ou seja, desperdício de sémen), “a semente da vida” torna-se na maior das imundices, sendo colocado no mesmo “saco” tanto a homossexualidade como o bestialismo. Por exemplo, se um homem tiver sexo com um animal (irracional), as antigas leis judaicas determinam que deverão morrer os dois, pois os animais assim conspurcados (e quiçá até viciados, valha-nos deus!...) não poderão ser consumidos e menos ainda oferecidos em holocausto em honra de Jeová. Mas o mesmo estava reservado para as mulheres que fossem apanhadas a cometer esse pecado contra natura. (Levítico 20:15,16)
De forma coerente, o Levítico (15:19 e 18:19) também proíbe o coito com as mulheres que estão menstruadas. (já na Grécia antiga esse tabu era mantido; pensava-se que tal prática sexual comprometia a fertilidade das culturas agrícolas, sobretudo tornando estéreis as árvores de fruto e azedando o vinho.)
Para os judeus ortodoxos (que mantêm a proibição homofóbica) o sexo é “ Cosh”, ou seja, uma bênção pelo seu poder de trazer uma nova alma ao mundo. Mas, para ser sinónimo de beleza e de virtude, deve ser uma prática discreta e frugal com fins procriativos.

O sexo que não é condenado pelas religiões abraâmicas restringe-se ao que é legitimado por estas no matrimónio, cuja finalidade exclusiva é a procriação.
Essa mentalidade judaico-cristã realizou todo o seu potencial nefasto na Europa medieval.
«A violência constituía o ingrediente essencial daquele mundo. A nobreza feudal tinha dois objectivos prioritários: ser uma forte máquina de guerra e gerar uma batelada de filhos.» - Alan Woods (2003)
como o primogénito (varão) herdava quase tudo, muitas dezenas de jovens nobres sentiam necessidade de conquistar e espoliar novos territórios – as cruzadas pareceram-lhes uma oportunidade de ouro paraconseguirem esses objectivos.

Se o lascivo Rei Salomão não tivesse escrito (?) o «Cântico dos Cânticos», e se este poema erótico não tivesse sido aprovado pelos autores e/ou compiladores das escrituras sagradas, duvidaríamos que a tradição judaico-cristã apreciasse o sexo como uma celebração prazerosa e mutuamente desejada e consentida entre os casais .
A prostituição já foi considerada uma actividade sagrada. As prostitutas eram representantes de deusas (manifestações da Deusa-Mãe; a força telúrica da fertilidade e da renovação cíclica da natureza; alguns dos nomes mais antigos que se conhecem destas entidades sacrossantas são : Inanna, Ishtar, Gaia...). fazer sexo com estas servas diletas dos deuses era considerado tanto um ritual religioso como uma afirmação de poder político. O meretrício era indissociável do sacerdotício. A prostituição
A prostituição de cariz ritualístico era bem aceite até entre os antigos hebreus. Não obstante, importantes teólogos doutrinadores da cristandade, como ,por ex., S. Paulo e S. Agostinho, condenaram a prostituição com tal ódio que nem reconheciam as prostitutas como verdadeiros seres humanos (os tais criados à imagem e semelhança de Jeová).
(S.) Tomás de Aquino (séc. XIII) considerava a prostituição como um mal necessário destinado a apaziguar o demónio da luxúria que domina os homens, deixando em paz as mulheres honestas e virtuosas, bem como evitando que se entregassem aos vícios homossexuais (se bem que, pelo menos nos bordéis da época, o homossexualismo nem era tabu). O Vaticano mantinha um política de misoginia hipócrita, ao excomungar as prostitutas; paneas lhes oferecia a chance de redenção ao abandonarem a profissão, abraçando a fé. Tal consumava-se tanto através do casamento com homens respeitados pela sociedade Cristã, como também através da clausura em comunidades monásticas (chamados “Lares de Madalena”; o de Saint-Marie-Madeleine de Avignon foi um dos mais conhecidos). Aí o arrependimentos era cultivado através de um férreo regime de provações que passavam pela quase ausência de contacto social, jejum e intermináveis horas de orações.
A Igreja até canonizou algumas prostitutas (ex.:Sta Pelágia, Sta Maria Egipcíaca e Sta Afra, entre outras) que deveriam servir como exemplo para as profissionais do sexo.
Em sintonia com a Igreja, as autoridades municipais resignaram-se à necessidade da manutenção da prostituição, encarregando-se de abrir prostíbulos públicos. (Estes foram institucionalizados entre 1350 e 1450) Apenas procuraram que estes se estabelecessem em zonas discretas das cidades – sobretudo longe das igrejas. E aprovaram também leis de higiene pública a serem implementadas em bordéis particulares e em saunas (onde o sexo era uma actividade corriqueira e comercializada). Algumas dessas sunas pertenciam à própria Igreja (ex.: a de Saint-Michele era propriedade da abadia de Saint-Etienne de Dijon). Não por acaso a generalidae dos gerentes de bordéis tinahm o apodo de “abades” e as cafetinas, por seu turno, eram chamadas de “abadessas”...





Paulo
Originalmente chamava-se Saulo, mas, para condizer melhor com o seu estatuto de novo cristão romanizado, adoptou o nome Paulo.
Este homem durante muito tempo divertiu-se a perseguir os cristãos, até que, devido ao "milagre da estrada de Damasco" (onde um raio de luz cegante o atirou do cavalo abaixo, a fim de lhe mostrar o verdadeiro caminho espiritual), tornou-se um converso iluminado e andarilho pregador.
Paulo mostra-se um ser angustiado que enaltece as sublimes virtudes da continência, considerando que a espiritualidade é incompatível com a sensualidade e vice versa.*-+ Não indo tão longe quanto S. Agostinho, Paulo também defendia a submissão e a mortificação (chegou, inclusive, a descrever o seu próprio corpo como um execrável presídio da sua alma), aconselhando aos homens que abraçassem Cristo para que prescindissem
do sexo. (Quanto ao casamento, este andarilho pregador, considerava-o um mal menor, apropriado para os homens fracos de espírito que não conseguíam resistir às tentações da carne.)

A sua influência cresceu até se tornar o teólogo [autoridade eclesiástica] mais influente no Novo Testamento, marcando o divórcio fatídico entre o corpo e a alma, entre a natureza e a religião. Este divórcio veio a tornar-se a própria essência da fé.
(Aos Romanos 6:6-13; 7:8-25; 8:12-13; 12: 1,2. Aos Gálatas 5:16,17; 5: 24; 6:8. Aos Filipenses 3:3. Aos Coríntios 15: 36-47)
«Porque a carne cobiça contra o Espírito, e o Espírito contra a carne; e estes opõem-se um ao outro, para que não façais o que quiserdes.» (Paulo – aos Gálatas 5:17)
«E os que são de Cristo, crucificaram a carne com as suas paixões e concupiscências.» (Paulo – aos Gálatas 5:24)
«Porque o que semeia na sua carne, da carne ceifará a corrupção; mas, o que semeia no Espírito, do Espírito ceifará a vida eterna.» (Paulo – aos Gálatas 6:8)

Paulo consolidou ainda a doutrina de repressão às mulheres:
«As mulheres estejam caladas nas igrejas; porque lhes não é permitido falar;
mas estejam submissas como também ordena a lei. E se querem ser instruídas
sobre algum ponto, interroguem em casa os seus maridos, porque é vergonhoso
para uma mulher o falar na igreja. » (1 Coríntios 14:34-35)
«A mulher aprenda em silêncio, com toda a sujeição. Não permito, porém, que
a mulher ensine, nem use de autoridade sobre o marido, mas que esteja em
silêncio. Porque primeiro foi formado Adão, depois Eva. E Adão não foi
enganado, mas a mulher, sendo enganada, caiu em transgressão. Salvar-se-á,
porém, dando à luz filhos, se permanecer com modéstia na fé, no amor e na
santificação. » (1 Timóteo 2:9-15)

«As mulheres sejam submissas a seus maridos como ao Senhor, porque o marido é
cabeça da mulher como Cristo é cabeça da Igreja, seu corpo, do qual ele é o
Salvador. Ora, assim como a Igreja está sujeita a Cristo, assim o estejam
também as mulheres a seus maridos em tudo. » (Efésios 5:22-24)

Em sua defesa, devemos ter em conta que Paulo (obcecado com a importância do seu papel, o que o levou a reclamar insistentemente, mas em vão, o estatuto de apóstolo, apesar de nunca ter conhecido Cristo pessoalmente) julgava que o fim do mundo se aproximava a passos largos (com a 2ª vinda de Cristo, precedida do reinado do Anticristo), e daí que fosse indispensável aos homens consagrarem-se ao desenvolvimento dos valores espirituais.

*-+ Diverte-me imenso imaginar a perplexidade, o choque horripilante e a frustração exasperada de Paulo quando este foi pregar para a ilha
grega de Corintos - que, basicamente, era o maior bordel da antiga
Grécia, e onde a licenciosidade/liberdade sexual e a religião estavam
profundamente ligados. A deusa dos coríntios, como seria de esperar,
era Afrodite. A felicidade dos seus
devotos, que viviam para o prazer carnal, tornava infrutíferos os
esforços de Paulo que, durante 18 meses, tentou converte-los ao
cristianismo, incutindo-lhes o medo e a culpa. Paulo, num tom
imperativo (repetindo o apelo apaixonado do seu Messias) dizia-lhes:
«segue-me!», mas enfrentava uma competição impossível de vencer, pois
as cortesãs escreviam nas solas dos seus sapatos exactamente o mesmo
convite, que ficava impresso nas pegadas seguidas pelos
fogosos/arrebatados mancebos...



«A fim de ser preservada a castidade, é indispensável manter o estômago vazio e roncando e os pulmões febris.» - São Jerónimo (340?-420)

S. Agostinho (nascido em 364) estendeu e consolidou a misoginia e a fobia à natureza silvestre de que padecia S. Paulo, deixando um pesadolegado à cristandade que ainda hoje faz misérias. S. Agostinho (que até teve uma vida marital aparentemente feliz, chegando até a gozar os prazeres de ser pai) acabou por renegar e condenar a sexualidade, torturado pela sua intelectualidade e espiritualidade em conflito permanente com os seus instintos animais. Esta infeliz dicotomia é mais consentânea com as filosofias de tradição clássica que então vigoravam no decadente/moribundo império greco-romano, do que com a tradição hebraica. O helenismo, e não tanto o Antigo testamento, defende a separação (irreconciliável) entre o mundo da matéria (que incluía a natureza e, inevitavelmente, a sexualidade), cheio de imperfeições e impurezas, e o mundo espiritual, considerado como a única via para a sublimação dos humanos e umnprivilégio exclusivo da nossa espécie. O clérigo Agostinho adaptou esta filosofia e especulou sobre a origem da "impureza carnal" na sua religião, tendo-a encontrado no "pecado original" de Adão e Eva. Para Agostinho, o pecado original era de cariz sexual e temia a vida
sensual e beleza - fatalmente "demoníaca"! - das mulheres, defendendo-se das tentações da carne através da meditação solitária e da auto flagelação. O sexo tornou-se assim a confirmação da imperfeição humana, e apenas se justificava (desde que abençoado pelo santo matrimónio, está claro) devido à necessidade de procriação. Assim, opunha-se tanto à homossexualidade como até ao sexo entre idosos (ou seja, a menopausa tornou-se mais um estigma para as mulheres).


Antes de se converter (com a idade de 42 anos) ao cristianismo, Agostinho andou apaixonado com a filosofia (carregando para todo o lado livros de Cícero e de
Hortesius), juntou-se aos maniqueístas (que afirmavam haver na alma humana uma dualidade interdependente entre o bem e o mal) e até simpatizava com a heresia
e a astrologia. Uma vez "cristão, tornou-se intolerante e perseguidor em relação às filosofias que tinha seguido até então. Provavelmente as maiores controvérsias em que se envolveu e que necessitaram o empenho máximo das suas notáveis capacidades intelectuais e do conhecimento aprofundado que possuía da bíblia, foi rebater os argumentos dos donastistas e dos pelagianistas. Os donastistas advogavam uma total integridade entre as crenças e a disciplina litúrgica defendidas pelos bispos católicos, mas respeitadas por poucos deles. Se a Igreja tinha um carácter intrinsecamente sacrossanto, os sacerdotes do Clero tinham que agir em conformidade em todos os seus actos quotidianos, caso contrário estaria apenas e debitar hipocrisias destituídas de valor e de sentido. Para Agostinho o divino sacramento não podia ser posto em causa e transcendia a conduta dos homens de Deus.
A Agostinho deve-se também o dogma absurdo (que o Vaticano manteve até ao início do séc. XXI) de que os homens nascem impuros devido ao legado pecaminoso de Adão.
A bíblia deixa-nos claro que nem Jeová consegue erradicar a maldade do (Seu?) mundo. Tal só será possível quando a humanidade for extirpada de tudo o que lhe é natural. No vigésimo segundo capítulo do Evangelho Segundo Mateus, Jesus ensina aos seus seguidores sobre a ausência de desejo sexual - e, logo, ficará anulada a necessidade do matrimónio – na sua visão do paraíso celestial.

Disse S.Agostinho sobre a poligamia: "Ora, uma serva ou uma escrava nunca tem
muitos senhores, mas um senhor tem muitas escravas. Assim, nunca ouvimos dizer
que mulheres santas tivessem servido a vários maridos e sim que muitas
serviram a um só marido ... Isso não é contraditório à natureza do
casamento. » (De bono conjugali 17, 20)"



Pelágio
Pelágio (350-425) e os seus seguidores defendiam a idéia (bem mais sensata) de que a pureza é inata e que só a partir dos 7 anos (idade que consideravam estarem as crianças aptas a fazer julgamentos e opções de consciência) é que perdíamos essa pureza (sendo o mal transmitido por influência dos adultos) e, como ela, a vida eterna, tal como Adão perdeu o direito à eternidade por ter pecado. Agostinho não podia concordar com estas ideias porque elas desacreditavam o poder regenerador do baptismo e a influência da graça divina na salvação dos eleitos, sendo os homens os únicos responsáveis pela sua salvação através dos seus actos. As pessoas poderiam redimir os seus pecados cumprindo a lei de Deus, o que não tornava indispensável a intermediação da Igreja (os pelagianos tinham a ousadia de afirmar:«a Igreja somos nós!»)

Para os pelagianistas o livre arbítrio seria mais uma habilidade
moral concedida por Deus a fim de que os homens pudessem evitar o
pecado (que para Agostinho era impossível) e, se estes obedecessem às
escrituras sagradas e sobretudo à mensagem de Cristo, tornar-se-iam
independentes e auto-suficientes espiritualmente, deixando a Igreja
de ser uma intermediária indispensável para os que pretendiam alcançar
a salvação (pós Armagedom). O corajoso monge bretão que foi para Roma
envolver-se em aguerridas batalhas morais e teológicas, pretendia uma
renovação moral da Igreja para que esta se tornasse de acordo com a
bíblia e com o que predicavam os sacerdotes, acreditando ainda que a
justiça divina não nos imporia preceitos fora do nosso alcance moral,
pois isso conduzir-nos-ia a uma condenação e a um sofrimento
inevitável e inútil.
Pelágio sentia-se tão longe da decadência moral e espiritual da
Igreja que sucumbiu à tentação da vaidade, vangloriando-se das suas
virtudes que, a seu ver, o tornaram num homem cheio de pureza
beatífica.