Terry Firma, though born and Journalism-school-educated in Europe, has lived in the U.S. for the past 20-odd years. Stateside, his feature articles have been published in the New York Times, Reason, Rolling Stone, Playboy, and Wired. Terry was the founder and Main Mischief Maker of Moral Compass, a now-dormant site that pokes fun at the delusional claim by people of faith that a belief in God equips them with superior moral standards. He was the Editor-in-Chief of two Manhattan-based magazines until he decided to give up commercial publishing for professional photography... with a lot of blogging on the side. These days, he lives in an old seaside farmhouse in Maine with his wife, three kids, and two big dogs.
Dumb and Dummer. When two employees at St. Mary’s church in downtown St. Paul found what they believed was child pornography in the Rev. Donald J. Dummer’s living quarters in 1997, they brought the material to an archdiocese official. Over the next five years, the circle of church leaders made aware of the material grew. It included then-Vicar General Kevin McDonough, then-Archbishop Harry Flynn, and the Rev. Joseph Hitpas, Dummer’s superior in the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate, the order to which he belonged. It even reached the apostolic nuncio in Washington, D.C., Archbishop Gabriel Montalvo, the Vatican’s ambassador to the United States. Read more
As much as I loathe child-soliciting creeps like youth pastor Deric Peacock, I’m not entirely sure it’s a sound application of legal principles to give him a tougher sentence than a non-clergy perp. Deric Peacock, 30, was sentenced to serve five years in prison … by [Virginia] Circuit Court Judge Marcus Long. Peacock had online communications in which he exposed himself and said he fantasized about having sex with what he thought were a 12-year-old girl and her mother, but both were in fact a Christiansburg Police Detective. Read more
Upsetting news: the 2015-2016 official school calendar of Montgomery County, Maryland won’t mention National Pasta Day (17 October). Actually, I don’t give a damn about that, but Pastafarians might. In theory, and on principle, I’d have to side with their silliness, should it come to pass. If one religion gets its holidays listed, then, by rights, all others should receive the same state-recognized honor as soon as believers ask. It’s never a good idea for public schools to take the Constitution’s Establishment Clause lightly. In recent months, Maryland Muslims have advocated putting one of Islam’s holidays, Eid al-Adha, on said calendar. More power to them, I say. Their request is at least as reasonable as the so-far fictional one in the Pastafarianism example above. But when the Montgomery Board of Education, spurred by the Muslim activists, re-evaluated the practice of including religious references on school calendars, a majority of the board’s members decided to treat everyone the same: by declining to print any religious holidays on its school schedule from now on. School officials said the time off in December would become “winter break,” while the time off around the Easter holiday would be called “spring break.” Other days, such as Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, would be simply listed as a day when there is “no school for students and teachers.” … In practical terms, Montgomery schools will still be closed for the Christian and Jewish holidays, as in previous years, and students will still get the same days off, as planned. Read more
According to its Facebook page, WCSG [Radio] is a ministry of Cornerstone University in Grand Rapids, MI. Our mission is to encourage, energize, and equip listeners toward a deeper relationship with Jesus Christ. As you might expect, the place is thick with cloying Jesus jive and Bible verses such as 2 Timothy 3:16-17: All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. Despite such rock-solid divine guidance, one WCSG staffer fell perhaps a teensy bit short of that standard. A former Grand Rapids Christian radio host was sentenced to at least 25 years in prison after pleading guilty to raping an 11-year-old Battle Creek boy. Read more
Fleecing the faithful was all in a day’s work for the latest in a long line of devout swindlers. The pastor at San Fernando-based Zion Living World Christian Center, formerly known as Amistad Cristiana, admitted to running a Ponzi scheme that involved soliciting loans and saying the money would be invested in foreign currency. Instead, [Luis Alonzo] Serna said his firm Architects of the Future Investments only used a small amount of the money to invest in foreign currency. He… Read more
