The discovery of a grave containing the remains of as many as 800 babies at a former home for unmarried mothers in Ireland is yet another problem for the Irish Catholic Church. The mother and baby home at Tuam in County Galway was run by the nuns of the Sisters of Bon Secours and operated between 1925 and 1961. It took in thousands of women who had committed the “mortal sin” of unwed pregnancy, delivered their babies and was charged with caring for them. But unsanitary conditions, poor food and a lack of medical care led to shockingly high rates of infant mortality. Babies’ bodies were deposited in a former sewage tank.

Sadly, the mass grave at Tuam is probably not unique. I visited the site — the home was demolished in the 1970s — and spoke with locals who remember babies’ skulls emerging from the soil around their houses. When boys broke open the cover of the sewage pit, they found it “full to the brim” of skeletons. Tuam was only one of a dozen mother and baby homes in Ireland in the years after the Second World War, all of which treated their inmates in a similar fashion.

--snip--

The warped code of honour behind the decades of silence had been inculcated by an all-powerful Catholic Church. For much of the late 20th century, the Irish civil authorities were in thrall to the hierarchy; Archbishop John Charles McQuaid threatened pulpit denunciations if the government contradicted his policies. So the state connived in the mother and baby homes, paying the nuns at Tuam and all the other homes a per capita rate for every inmate.

With hindsight, the church argues that it was performing a socially necessary task, helping to solve the problem of “illegitimate” children. It is true that pregnant girls would have been shunned by their families and left with no one to turn to. But the fact is that the church itself had created the problem by the stigma it attached to unmarried sex — and by its refusal to allow contraception or sex education in any form. Philomena was typical of the thousands who became pregnant through ignorance. She says she “didn’t even know which end the baby would come out.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/06/06/800-dead-babies-are-probably-just-the-beginning/

More than 500 passengers are killed when their train plunges into the Baghmati River in India on this day in 1981. The rail accident—the worst in India to that date—was caused by an engineer who was reverential of cows.

The nine-car train, filled with approximately 1,000 passengers, was traveling through the northeastern state of Bihar about 250 miles from Calcutta. Outside, monsoon-like conditions were battering the region. Extremely hard rains were swelling the rivers and making the tracks slick. When a cow and a Hindu engineer—who believed that cows are sacred animals—entered the picture, the combination led to tragedy.

As the train approached the bridge over the Baghmati River, a cow crossed the tracks. Seeking to avoid harming the cow at all costs, the engineer braked too hard. The cars slid on the wet rails and the last seven cars derailed straight into the river. With the river far above normal levels, the cars sank quickly in the murky waters.

Rescue help was hours away and, by the time it arrived, nearly 600 people had lost their lives. After a multi-day search, 286 bodies were recovered but more than 300 missing people were never found. The best estimate is that close to 600 passengers were killed by the engineer's decision.

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/train-avoids-cow-but-kills-600

Chris Naples says something snapped inside him that January day.

The Burlington County man sat in the gallery of the Delaware Supreme Court, watching as a lawyer for the Diocese of Trenton told the justices that the Rev. Terence McAlinden was not "on duty" — or serving in his capacity as a priest — when he allegedly molested Naples on trips to Delaware in the 1980s.

McAlinden, who once headed the diocese’s youth group, had introduced himself to Naples at a church-sponsored leadership retreat in Keyport. He’d heard his confession, included him in private Masses and discussed matters of spirituality with him.

Yet McAlinden wasn’t officially a priest when he took a teenage Naples to Delaware, the lawyer argued.

“How do we determine when a priest is and is not on duty?” one of the justices asked, according to a video of the session on the court’s website.

“Well,” replied the diocese lawyer, “you can determine a priest is not on duty when he is molesting a child, for example. ... A priest abusing a child is absolutely contrary to the pursuit of his master’s business, to the work of a diocese.”

http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2014/06/when_is_a_priest_not_a_priest_when_hes_molesting_a_child_diocese_says_in_defense_of_lawsuit.html

Rev. Franklin Graham told a group of conservative pastors that he loves LGBT people enough to warn them they risked falling into the “the flames of hell.”

“I love them enough to care to warn them that if they want to continue living like this, it’s the flames of hell for you,” Graham said Thursday night at the Watchmen on the Wall National Pastor’s Briefing in Washington, D.C.

“Now, if you don’t like that, don’t get mad at me,” Graham said. “I didn’t write the rule book. Almighty God wrote it, and it’s a sin against Him.” He said religious leaders were stifled by political correctness.

“We don’t want to be called a homophobic,” he said, “and I tell people, listen, I’m not afraid of homosexuals, I’m really not — matter of fact, I love them.” Graham, who has repeatedly praised Russian President Vladimir Putin for his anti-gay policies, cautioned the pastors not to compromise in their teaching.

“Listen gentlemen — we live in a world where there is so much compromise,” said Graham. “This city that we’re in, that’s all they do is compromise. We cannot go down that road because you and I are going to have to stand before God one day and give an account to Him, and you don’t want Him to say from His lips, ‘You were a coward.’”

He told the pastors should be willing to risk their lives to preach against homosexuality.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/05/26/franklin-graham-warns-gays-to-change-their-ways-or-its-the-flames-of-hell-for-you/

An atheist group said a Nebraska mayor rudely dismissed their concerns over a possible church-state violation.

Omaha Atheists expressed their concern over a “Faith and Freedom” Memorial Day event Sunday that was sponsored by the city of La Vista, Neb., reported the Friendly Atheist blog.

One of the group’s members, Robert Fuller, said he gave his business card to Mayor Douglas Kindig and asked to speak with him later about his concerns, but the mayor indicated he wasn’t interested.

“Take me to fucking court because I don’t care,” Kindig allegedly told Fuller.

The holiday event, which was held at La Vista Central Park, featured a pancake breakfast, carnival, and Memorial Day service held by the associate pastor of the town’s Bellevue Christian Center.

The religious service was sponsored by the churches of La Vista.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/05/26/ne-mayor-challenges-atheists-over-faith-based-event-take-me-to-f-cking-court-i-dont-care/

A leper came to Jesus and said, “Lord, if you choose, you can make me clean.” If Jesus had been a good religious Jew, he would have said, “Be healed,” and just walked away. Instead, he stretched out his hand and touched the leper, saying, “I do choose. Be made clean,” even though he was breaking the specific rules of Leviticus. Two chapters teach that anyone touching a person with leprosy is contaminated.

Jesus certainly was not a “Bible believer,” as we use that term in the post Billy Graham era of American fundamentalist religiosity that’s used as a trade-marked product to sell religion. Jesus didn’t take the Jewish scriptures at face value. In fundamentalist terms, Jesus was a rule-breaking relativist who wasn’t even “saved,” according to evangelical standards. Evangelicals insist that you have to believe very specific interpretations of the Bible to be saved. Jesus didn’t. He undercut the scriptures.

The stories about Jesus that survived the bigots, opportunists and delusional fanatics who wrote the New Testament contain powerful and enlightened truths that would someday prove the undoing of the Church built in his name. Like a futurist vindicated by events as yet undreamed, Jesus’ message of love was far more powerful than the magical thinking of the writers of the book he’s trapped in. In Jesus’ day the institutions of religion, state, misogyny and myth were so deeply ingrained that the ultimate dangerousness of his life example could not be imagined. For example his feminism, probably viewed as an eccentricity in his day, would prove transformational.

Jesus believed in God rather than in a book about God. The message of Jesus’ life is an intervention in and an acceleration of the evolution of empathy. Consider this story from the book of Matthew: “A woman who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years came up behind him and touched the edge of his cloak. She said to herself, ‘If I only touch his cloak, I will be healed.’ Jesus turned and saw her. ‘Take heart, daughter,’ he said, ‘your faith has healed you.’ And the woman was healed at that moment.”

http://www.alternet.org/why-jesus-would-have-hated-most-modern-day-religion