Why I Rejected Catholicism and Christianity 60 Years Ago and Embraced Reform Judaism Recently

October 31, 2019 — Suzan

One very important word to remember.  Misogyny, the hatred of women..  Along with the hatred of LGBT people.

Reform Judaism.  Women Rabbis and Cantors. LGBT welcoming.

Plus the whole bit about “The Trinity”  That one didn’t seem very Monotheistic to me.

Catholic Bishops Agree: Anything but a Woman

The push to allow married men to serve as priests isn’t progress. It’s another form of misogyny.

By Sara McDougall
Oct. 30, 2019

he modern Catholic Church is beset with serious problems. Among them is that not enough men want to be priests. Over the past three weeks, 184 bishops gathered at a Vatican summit to seek solutions for the Amazon region in particular, singled out because of myriad crises it is facing, including environmental devastation, violence and a shortage of priests to serve the needs of the faithful there.

The bishops’ solution: Do anything other than ordaining women as priests.

On Oct. 26, in a “revolutionary” decision, the bishops gathered at the Vatican voted 128 to 41 to allow an exception to what has essentially been a 1,000-year ban on the ordination of married men as priests. They recommended this change for only certain parts of the Amazon and for only married men already made deacons, meaning men already allowed to perform marriages and baptisms, but not to officiate at mass, which only priests can do. It is now for Pope Francis to decide whether the decision goes forward.

It is surprising in many ways that the bishops made this decision. Allowing a married man to be a priest violates several longstanding rules. They voted as they did despite the tremendous importance of chastity for the Catholic Church and the old idea that sexual activity is a pollutant that cannot be allowed near the holy ritual of the mass. They voted in favor of married priests despite a longstanding fear that for a priest to have a wife and a family would lead to serious conflicts of interest. There is a legend that the word “nepotism” was invented in honor of the grasping nephews of popes who sought and obtained more than they deserved thanks to their powerful uncles (and “nephews” we can sometimes see as a euphemism for “sons”).

These potential conflicts of interest and other dangers that family influence and obligations bring, therefore, are something Catholic authorities have long recognized and have eagerly sought to prevent. They voted as they did despite the symbolic importance, too, of the idea that a priest be united to only one spouse, the Church, just as Jesus Christ was united in an exclusive bond with the Church.

All of that paled in comparison to letting a woman, even a celibate woman, act as priest.

To be sure, there are good doctrinal reasons for this, if one wants to find them. According to the laws of the Catholic Church, known as canon law, that priests might marry or not is man-made law, therefore mutable, while the exclusion of women is divinely ordained. But the priesthood itself is a man-made invention, an amalgam of Judeo-Roman and other traditions, refined and also only rather belatedly attached to the mass, a ritual performance that re-enacts and celebrates the most important tenets of Catholic faith.

Continue reading at: Catholic Bishops Agree: Anything but a Woman

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Transgender surgery linked with better long-term mental health, study shows

October 14, 2019 — Suzan

From ABC News:  https://abcnews.go.com/Health/transgender-surgery-linked-long-term-mental-health-study/story

By Dr. Danielle Weitzer
Oct 8, 2019

Surgery can be scary for anyone, but gender-affirming surgery for transgender people may provide better long-term mental health benefits, according to new research from the Yale School of Public Health.

Researchers looked at mood and anxiety disorder health care visits, antidepressant and anti-anxiety prescriptions and hospitalizations after a suicide attempt. These measures were assessed for 10 years before and after receiving gender-specific hormone and surgical treatment.

The study found that the likelihood of being treated for a mood or anxiety disorder was reduced by 8% for each year since the last gender-specific surgery.

“This study extends earlier evidence of associations between gender-affirming treatment and improved mental health,” Dr. Richard Bränström, senior author of the study and associate professor at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, told ABC News.

Compared with the general population, regardless of surgery or hormone treatment, transgender individuals are about six times as likely to have had a mood and anxiety disorder health care visit, more than three times as likely to have received prescriptions for antidepressants and anti-anxiety medications and more than six times as likely to have been hospitalized after a suicide attempt, according to the study.

The study showed hormone treatment was not significantly related to any reductions in mental health treatment compared to surgery.

“The exact reason for this we don’t know, but the group diagnosed with a gender incongruence diagnosis receiving hormone treatment, but not surgery, is a very mixed group,” Bränström said. “The process of being diagnosed with a gender incongruence diagnosis and receiving gender-affirming treatment is a long process and it is likely that this process can be stressful.”

That finding puzzled Dr. Dana Rofey, associate professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh, who added, “I am surprised by this and wonder if the right time points [with regards to the transition] were investigated.”

Rofey was not involved in the study.

Doctors say it may be important to first independently assess mental health problems affecting transgender individuals.

“We do not use gender-affirming treatments, either hormones or surgeries, to treat psychiatric disorders like clinical depression or anxiety,” said Dr. Hansel Arroyo, director of psychiatry and behavioral medicine at Mount Sinai’s Center for Transgender Medicine and Surgery. “These mental health issues should be directly addressed by a mental health provider and can be independent of the presence of gender dysphoria.”

“We know that people who are clinically depressed will often have a bad surgical outcome including poor wound healing, longer hospital stays,” said Arroyo, who was not involved in the study. He suggested that physical healing may become impacted: “People will often have difficulty taking care of themselves post-surgery.”

Continue reading at:  https://abcnews.go.com/Health/transgender-surgery-linked-long-term-mental-health-study/story

 

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Republicans Don’t Believe in Democracy

October 1, 2019 — Suzan

From The New York Times:  https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/16/opinion/republicans-democracy.html

Do Democrats understand what they’re facing?

Paul Krugman
Sept. 16, 2019

Item: Last week Republicans in the North Carolina House used the occasion of 9/11 to call a surprise vote, passing a budget bill with a supermajority to override the Democratic governor’s veto. They were able to do this only because most Democrats were absent, some of them attending commemorative events; the Democratic leader had advised members that they didn’t need to be present because, he says, he was assured there would be no votes that morning.

Item: Also last week, Representative Adam Schiff, the Democratic chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, issued a subpoena to the acting director of national intelligence, who has refused to turn over a whistle-blower complaint that the intelligence community’s inspector general found credible and of “urgent concern.” We don’t know what the whistle-blower was warning about, but we do know that the law is clear: Such complaints must be referred to Congress, no exceptions allowed.

On the surface, these stories may seem to be about very different things. The fight in North Carolina is basically about the G.O.P.’s determination to deny health care to low-income Americans; the governor had threatened to veto any budget that didn’t expand Medicaid. The whistle-blower affair probably involves malfeasance by high government officials, quite possibly President Trump, that in some way threatens national security.

What the stories have in common, however, is that they illustrate contempt for democracy and constitutional government. Elections are supposed to have consequences, conveying power to the winners. But when Democrats win an election, the modern G.O.P. does its best to negate the results, flouting norms and, if necessary, the law to carry on as if the voters hadn’t spoken.

Thus, in 2016 the voters of North Carolina chose a Democrat to govern the state; the immediate G.O.P. response was to try to strip away most of the governor’s power. Last year Democrats won a majority of the votes for the state legislature, too, although Republicans retained control thanks to extreme gerrymandering. But they no longer have a veto-proof majority — hence last week’s power grab.

Similarly, last year America’s voters chose to give Democrats control of the House of Representatives. This still leaves Democrats without the ability to pass legislation, since Republicans control the Senate and the White House. But the House, by law, has important additional powers — the right to be informed of what’s going on in the executive branch, such as complaints by whistle-blowers, and the right to issue subpoenas demanding information relevant to governing.

Continue reading at:  https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/16/opinion/republicans-democracy.html

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