Spirituality ... for some HASSNERS the synonym is 'humane' or 'free spirit' or 'holistic'.

source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xbrfz1DIq9Q

I talked before about my dislike of certain words that have a religious context. The word 'Spirituality' is one of my pet hates!

From the BHA private forum.

One the BHA forum a contributor Oliver R said in May 2009:

RE: Atheists are not fully human

I am in two minds about this one, as I find the word 'Spiritual' quite meaningful still since I became atheist and Humanist, but you don't seem to acknowledge at all that there is a potential problem with the word in that it has traditionally been associated with the literal idea of a literal spirit/soul. I agree that it has become somewhat broader, but the possibility for confusion is still there, and I would say for most people is linked to supernatural beliefs - as when people say "I am not religious , but I am spiritual" - they usually mean they do not follow a particular dogma but think there is some sort of God and soul etc. or as when Ofsted inspectors are asked to check that schools are encouraging children's "spiritual development". It is a rather vague term, which I have heard often leaves  teachers unsure of exactly what is required and whether it is to do with religion or not.

I was just looking in my Chambers dictionary, and for "spirit" it suggests a plethora of meanings, some of which would work well for us, others definitely not:

vital principle, the principle of thought, enthusiasm, animation, verve, courage, mettle, real meaning, essence, a breath, vivacity,  the soul, a disembodied soul, a ghost, and incorporeal being, a subtle substance in the body,

for spiritual:
 relating to spirit/the mind/the higher faculties/ highly refined in thought and feeling/ habitually or naturally looking to things of he spirit/
 relating to spirits/the soul/incorporeal/eccelsiastical/ religious

 I was thinking that maybe one alternative is humane -- "havings the feelings proper to man, kind, tender, merciful, humanising"

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Cardinal Cormac: 'Atheism the greatest of evils.'

source: http://richarddawkins.net/article,3876,n,n

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by Ruth Gledhill - TIMESONLINE

Thanks to Alan for the link.
In light of the recent Catholics vs Irish issues this is even more disgusting. There is a petition to sign to oppose this sick, demented and thoroughly evil person at the top of the main page. Be sure to follow the links in the article. /Mike

http://timescolumns.typepad.com/gledhill/2009/05/cardinal-cormac-atheism-the-greatest-of-evils.html?OTC-widgets&ATTR=tolblogs


The outgoing Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, made a contribution at the end of Archbishop Vincent Nichols' installation that was at once touching, funny, serious and extreme. He said, rather controversially perhaps, that a lack of faith is 'the greatest of evils.' He blamed atheism for war and destruction, and implied it was a greater evil even than sin itself.

You can read our early online report here.

Archbishop Nichols also defended faith against the rise of secularism. In his homily he said: 'Faith in God is not, as some would portray it today, a narrowing of the human mind or spirit. It is precisely the opposite. Faith in God is the gift that takes us beyond our limited self, with all its incessant demands....Some today propose that faith and reason are crudely opposed, with the fervour of faith replacing good reason. This reduction of both faith and reason inhibits not only our search for truth but also the possibility of real dialogue.'
...
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Atheists are nice people who will roast in hell, says Cardinal

by The Daily Mash

Thanks to Nick Baxter for the link.

Reposted from:
http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/celebrity/atheists-are-nice-people-who-will-roast-in-hell%2c-says-cardinal-20080509937/

ATHEISTS and agnostics are decent people whose tormented souls will burn for all eternity in the scorching fires of hell, Britain's biggest catholic said last night.

Cardinal Cormac Murphy O'Connor said non-believers should be respected, right up to the point of death when they will finally come face to face with Satan and his blood-soaked pitchfork.

He told a conference in London: "Those without faith should not be shunned or abused. Jesus and Beelzebub are already cooking something up for them, don't you worry about that."

The leader of Roman Catholics in England and Wales stressed that a 'hidden God' was active in everyone's life, often nipping to the shops for them or wiping down their kitchen surfaces.

Stressing that God was not in the phonebook, the Cardinal said: "You can't just ring him up. You have to get an appointment and that can take up to 18 months.

"I suppose I could try to put in a good word for you... if only I wasn't so skint - if you catch my drift..."

He admitted talking about God was difficult, especially as some people genuinely believe a man was born of a virgin, performed miracles and then died and came back to life, while others believe that is a lot of insane, voodoo rubbish.

He added: "We must not allow Britain to become devoid of religious faith, otherwise how will I afford new hats?"

The Cardinal's lecture follows clashes over stem cell research and gay rights, where the church tried to impose laws based on a 2000 year-old book written by people who stoned each other to death for wearing the wrong clothes.

Cardinal spouts nonsense on Radio 4’s Today programme

from The Freethinker by Barry Duke

REASON alone is “dangerous” to society; it has to be tempered with faith if we are to avoid repeating horrors committed by the likes of Hitler and Stalin.

So said Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, leader of Roman Catholics in England and Wales, when interviewed this morning on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, following a lecture he gave yesterday.

He lamented the fact that “the Christian voice” was increasingly being stifled in the UK, and made the astonishing claim that people in Britain want Church leaders to speak out on key policy issues.

The Cardinal sounded less than pleased when interviewer John Humphrys put it to him that that religious leaders, in the view of people like Professor Richard Dawkins – interviewed earlier on the programme – “talk rubbish”, and should, therefore, not be permitted to interfere in government matters.

The Cardinal’s then went on dish out some garbage about atheists “constructing God” simply in order to knock him down, and to repeat the claim that Britain was a “Christian country, with 70 percent of the population professing a belief in the Christian faith”.

He added:

Britain should not be allowed to become a God-free zone.

In his lecture, the Cardinal said:

There are social currents today that want to isolate religion from other forms of knowledge and experience in order to marginalise it.

One of the things which I challenge is the desire to separate Christianity from rational inquiry. Many of our ‘new atheists’ seem unable to cope with the notion of an intelligent, reflective Christian faith. But the Catholic Christian tradition is characterised by a close relationship between reasoned understanding and religious faith. Faith for us is the flowering of reason, not its betrayal.

Terry Sanderson, President of the National Secular Society, lost no time in launching an excoriating attack on Cormac-O’Connor in this morning’s Guardian.

Murphy-O’Connor … speaks with forked tongue when he tries to portray the Catholic Church as some persecuted institution that means harm to no one. He says the Catholic Church is caricatured as ‘some heartless, insular institution that wants to deny people their freedom’.

Cardinal - this is not a caricature. It is the truth. Your own actions and pronouncements confirm it. You have tried to deny human rights to homosexuals, you have tried to rob women of the right to choose contraception and abortion and thereby take control of their lives, you have tried (and continue to try) to interfere with scientific research that may lead to the alleviation of enormous suffering.

You have attempted to manipulate the political process by pressurising Catholic MPs. On a personal level you - and your Church - try to control every aspect of your followers’ lives, from telling them what to think, what to eat and when to eat it, to telling them who they can sleep with and even what they can and cannot do when they get between the sheets …

I don't believe it -Terry Sanderson

Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor takes a patronising line on atheists - and reveals he doesn't even understand the nature of secularism

Profile

All Terry Sanderson articles

May 9, 2008 12:00 PM

Where does on start with a speech as specious and self-serving as the one given by Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor in Westminster Cathedral yesterday?

The BBC headed its report of the event: "'Respect atheists', says Cardinal". Can you imagine anything so utterly patronising than the leader of some rapidly diminishing religious sect (in the UK at least - with a 40% decline in attendance in a generation) telling a huge proportion of the population that he's prepared to tolerate them? And why is he prepared to tolerate them? Well, because even if they say they don't believe in God, God is still with them and, really, atheism is just a "distorted kind of Christianity".

But more worrying than that is Murphy-O'Connor's caricature of secularism as some kind of threat to people's personal beliefs. He conflates atheism and secularism, either through ignorance, or more likely deliberately, and then says that it is trying to rob people of their spirituality.

That is not what secularism is about.

Murphy-O'Connor is nearer the mark when he says that secularists want to "privatise religion" and reduce its influence in the public arena.

There is a difference between individual believers bringing by their version of morality into the public debate, and a Church wanting to write its dogmas into law.

Faith is about believers having a personal relationship with their God. Religion, on the other hand, is about organising those believers and bidding for temporal power in their name. Secularists have no problem with the former, but they have a lot of problems with the latter.

And as for the claim that Christians are "denied a voice", take a listen to the Today programme, as broadcast this morning. Richard Dawkins, who was personally attacked by Murphy-O'Connor in his speech, was given three minutes to tie John Humphrys in knots about the BBC's automatic deference to religious leaders. An hour later Murphy-O'Connor was allotted seven and a half minutes to repeat the unfounded assertions about non-religious people being incapable of living a full life, and about religion being denied a voice. Hopefully spurred by Dawkins' chiding, Humphrys did give the Cardinal a harder time than is usual with clerics on the BBC.

Murphy-O'Connor also speaks with forked tongue when he tries to portray the Catholic Church as some persecuted institution that means harm to no one. He says the Catholic Church is caricatured as "some heartless, insular institution that wants to deny people their freedom".

Cardinal - this is not a caricature. It is the truth. Your own actions and pronouncements confirm it.

You have tried to deny human rights to homosexuals, you have tried to rob women of the right to choose contraception and abortion and thereby take control of their lives, you have tried (and continue to try) to interfere with scientific research that may lead to the alleviation of enormous suffering. You have attempted to manipulate the political process by pressurising Catholic MPs. On a personal level you - and your church - try to control every aspect of your followers' lives, from telling them what to think, what to eat and when to eat it, to telling them who they can sleep with and even what they can and cannot do when they get between the sheets.

You have argued that Christian leaders should have privileged input to government policymaking. You have said that you should have unchallenged access to the BBC.

You are a politician as much as a priest, but no one has elected you. It is you and your church - not secularists or atheists- which are out of step with the people of this country.

Just how remote Catholic bishops are was illustrated in a YouGov poll (pdf) for Catholics for Choice in November. Only a seventh of the population agreed with the Catholic bishops or Vatican position on abortion law, and only just over a quarter (27%) of Catholics. And there is little doubt that the bishops' line on contraception and homosexuality would be even more out on a limb. Yet it is the Pope's three-line whip that the Catholic MPs are forcing the government to accept.

You ask why the government continually thwarts your will - the answer is that they are elected to represent the people, while you take your orders from an unaccountable central source in another country.

You may bleat that people no longer believe - but that is their choice and choice is the one thing that the Catholic church fears. As far as you are concerned, there is only one way - the Catholic way. Well, the country at large, and increasingly your own congregations, are telling you that the Catholic way is not their way, as this poll so clearly reveals.

Religious faith can benefit all

Religious faith can benefit all

posted on 08 May 2008

Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor delivering his lecture at Westminster Cathedral

Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, in a lecture at Westminster Cathedral delivered on Thursday, 8th May 2008, called for improved dialogue between believers and non-believers to establish the shared values that sustain our plural society.

This dialogue needs to be based on mutual esteem, he said, grounded in humility and respect for the other, rather than a rejection of difference.

He warned that our life together in Britain cannot be a God-free zone, with religion banished to the private sphere, both because of religion’s contribution to the common good but also to enable individuals’ search for truth and meaning.
The Cardinal questioned the basis on which some prominent atheists attacked faith.

In dismissing faith as, a priori, without reason they appear unable to cope with the notion of an intelligent, reflective Christian faith. Indeed, the Catholic Christian tradition is characterised by a close relationship between reasoned understanding and religious faith. “The interesting question about atheism is what is the theism that being denied? Have you ever met anyone who believes what Richard Dawkins does not believe in? I usually find that the God that is being rejected by such people is a God I don’t believe in either.”

Doubt lies at the heart of what it is to be human and is shared by believers and non-believers alike, argued the Cardinal.

Thus the certainty of those attacking faith should not be met with a closed attitude by believers. They both need to recognise each other better, more accurately, more appreciatively and with deep esteem.

Pope Benedict wrote, when Fr Joseph Ratzinger, in 1968 that the doubt that exists in the believer could become the basis for an open dialogue with those who do not believe. “Both the believer and the non-believer share, each in his own way, doubt and belief, if they do not hide from themselves and from the truth of their being…Perhaps in precisely this way doubt, which saves both sides from being shut up in their own worlds, could become the avenue of communication.”

The Cardinal was speaking, in a wide-ranging and personal lecture, at a packed Westminster Cathedral in the final week of his Faith and Life in Britain lecture series.
“I wanted this Cathedral to be a place for people to listen to matters pertaining to religion in the secular society in which we live here in Britain,” he said.
“I wanted religion to be, and to be seen to be, open to the questions of those who do not believe…I detect among many people a sense of loss, of not being in touch with living sources that can nourish them. They want to live by shared values that can sustain our society but do not know where to find them. They want to find a context that can give their lives a deep meaning, but, again, are unable to find it. There are unspoken aspirations in people’s lives that modern culture does not permit them to express.”
Expanding on the idea of spiritual homelessness amid material and technological wealth, the Cardinal said religion had a particular and important role to play in society.
“My hope and prayer is that we will all continue to foster the witness of faith in Britain today. In this way we help to create a culture in which God is honoured and worshipped and all women and men cherished, valued and supported from the beginning of their lives to their end”.
The Cardinal concluded his lecture with a reminder not to lose hope. The central message of the Gospels is God’s unlimited love for us all, learned through families, friends and the communion of all believers.

Related links:

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  View, read and debate the lecture here