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.
Last year, Archbishop Jozef Wesolowski, the papal nuncio (ambassador) to the Dominican Republic, was recalled to Rome after allegations surfaced that he’d been sexually abusing Dominican boys for years. The Vatican defrocked him three months ago and announced it was conducting its own criminal investigation (I wrote about it here). Now, Wesolowski has been formally placed under arrest, which appears to be the first time that’s happened to a senior clergy member in the sordid history of the Catholic Church’s sexual child abuse scandals. The Vatican has arrested a former archbishop following revelations he sexually abused young boys while serving as papal ambassador to the Dominican Republic. Jozef Wesolowski of Poland was defrocked in June and is now being held under house arrest per the orders of a Vatican criminal court. Read more
As we noted on this blog a couple of years ago, Pastor Heath Mooneyham, of Missouri’s Ignite Church, is a little preoccupied with sex and masculinity. How preoccupied, I had no idea until I read this profile of Mooneyham over at Vocativ. To say that the man revels in frat-boy humor would be an insult to frat boys. Good-ole-boy humor is more like it, maybe — the foul-mouthed, sexist kind that is pumped up on testosterone, and whose purveyors regard every male who doesn’t join them in their crude observations as a neutered milquetoast. Since we last shone a light on him, Mooneyham’s church has grown by leaps and bounds (he recently raffled off a pair of assault rifles to boost church attendance, and says it was a great success). The decor of Mooneyham’s church (one of 300 in Joplin, population 50,000) might have something to do with that. Read more
Jim Bakker, the fundamentalist swindler, has always been good for some unexpected mirth. He made me laugh, for instance, when he earnestly confessed that the first time he read the Bible all the way through was… after he went to prison — that is, after almost a quarter century of being a professional God expert. Now Bakker is at it again. The televangelist who served five years in a federal prison on fraud and conspiracy charges in the early 1990s is now selling End of the World Biscuits, Time of Trouble Beans and other survival gear for the end of days… Read more
In Stamford Hill, North London, a district known for having the largest ultra-Orthodox Haredi community in Europe, posters went up the other day advising women to walk on one side of the street. The notices read: “Women should please walk along this side of the road only,” in English and Yiddish. Read more
Australian police officers claim to have prevented terrorist bloodshed with the arrest of Omarjan Azari. The cops acted after a senior member of the so-called Islamic State was reportedly found to be urging terrorist cells in Australia to behead one or more victims. It is alleged he conspired to commit the act with another man, Mohammad Baryalei, a former Sydney bouncer and actor of Afghan origin, reportedly an Islamic State leader. … The attorney general, George Brandis, said … that he believed the atrocities would have gone ahead, had it not been for the intervention of the security services, the Australian federal police and forces from Queensland and New South Wales. Read more
