Does Satan Have Good Intentions?

by digby

As most of you know, I’m not a religious person, although I try to always be respectful of those who are believers. There is much I don’t know and in this realm I just try to maintain my secular equilibrium. But please, could someone who knows more about theology than I do please, please explain this to me?

Over at Townhall, horrible little shit Gary Bauer offers the Christian Case for Torture.

For Christians, intent is integral to determining whether and when certain techniques, including water-boarding, are morally permissible.

I guess the reason it was wrong to crucify Jesus was because the Romans had bad intentions, otherwise it would have been perfectly justified. It certainly explains why the Inquisition was fine and dandy. You learn something new every day.

And then there’s this:

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has been lobbying for three decades for the federal government to provide universal health insurance, especially for the poor. Now, as President Obama tries to rally Roman Catholics and other religious voters around his proposals to do just that, a growing number of bishops are speaking out against it. As recently as July, the bishops’ conference had largely embraced the president’s goals, although with the caveat that any health care overhaul avoid new federal financing of abortions. But in the last two weeks some leaders of the conference, like Cardinal Justin Rigali, have concluded that Democrats’ efforts to carve out abortion coverage are so inadequate that lawmakers should block the entire effort. Others, echoing the popular alarms about “rationing,” contend that the proposals could put a premium on efficacy that could penalize the chronically ill. “No health care reform is better than the wrong sort of health care reform,” Bishop R. Walker Nickless of Sioux City, Iowa, declared in a recent pastoral letter, urging the faithful to call their members of Congress. In a diocesan newspaper column this week, Archbishop Charles J. Chaput of Denver agreed, saying the proposal was “not only imprudent; it’s also dangerous.” The bishops’ opposition — published in diocesan newspapers, disseminated online by conservative activists, and reported in a Roman Catholic newspaper to be distributed this weekend at churches around the country — is another setback for Mr. Obama’s health care efforts. His administration has been counting on the support of Catholic leaders to help rally believers behind his health care plan. Just last week, he held a conference call with 140,000 religious voters to appeal to what he called their “moral convictions.”

I think this pretty clearly outlines what their “moral convictions” are and they don’t seem to apply to people who are already born.

I don’t mean to tar all Christians with these examples. But I do wonder about Christian Churches which accept this stuff. And I am more convinced than ever that trying to find “common ground” with people who agree with or fail to speak out against this myopic moral worldview out of common decency is a waste of time. Many churches are, as they ever were, political institutions with a political agenda and a thirst for power. Pretending otherwise is folly.

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