[LOL] Bill Donohue, head of Catholic League, declares that witchcraft causes scores of deaths...

[The Night Owl]

From ABC...

Muthee and Mayor Palin
September 25, 2008 12:19 PM

A grainy 2005 video has emerged from the Wasilla Assembly of God featuring a Kenyan pastor named Thomas Muthee and then-Wasilla Mayor Sarah Palin.

Some commentators have mocked the moment where Muthee prays to God to protect Palin from "witchcraft."

Catholic League president Bill Donohue said today that "For the past two decades, Americans have been lectured by educators and the chattering class that we must respect cultural, religious, racial and ethnic diversity. It seems that exceptions to the creed of multiculturalism are only made when it suits the ideological agenda of the left. ...Witchcraft is a sad reality in many parts of Africa, resulting in scores of deaths in Kenya over the past two decades. Bishop Muthee’s blessing, then, was simply a reflection of his cultural understanding of evil. While others are not obliged to accept his interpretation, all can be expected to respect it. More than that—Muthee should be hailed for asking God to shield Palin from harmful forces, however they may be manifested. And for this he is mocked and Palin ridiculed?"

...

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2008/09/pastor-muthee-a.html?cid=132200018#comment-132200018

To Mr. Donohue I say this...

Witchcraft is not the cause of scores of deaths in Africa, you tool. Witchhunts, instigated by zealots such as radical cleric Thomas Muthee, are the cause of scores of deaths in Africa. Idiot.

[codjh9]

1. Man, I had no idea Sinatra was involved in any of that...

http://www.lyricsfreak.com/f/frank+sinatra/witchcraft_20056399.html

[angstlessk]

2. your comment is exactly what I was about to reply...it is the Christian nut cases

in Africa who are accusing people of being witches and killing them out of fear and superstition

[rvablue]

3. Sorry, but you are completely wrong on this.

Have you ever spent time in rural Africa?

I have. Two years of time, in fact.

However, I do think that all of this still reflects VERY poorly on Palin.

The belief in what we call "witchcraft" is believed by almost EVERY SINGLE PERSON in the country I lived in in Central Africa. It's academically referred to as "animism", I think, I cannot remember exactly now (this was over a decade ago)

I never saw anyone killed. But I saw people beat up, homes burned, and people chased from their ancestral home. It was devastating and there wasn't one thing I could do to talk sense into anyone to stop it. Other westerners in the country actually witnessed people being killed.

Even as I was watching KO air the tape and then talk about it last night, I was thinking we are missing the point on this one.

It's about Palin's lack of judgement. It's about Palin being part of a church that invites this guy who openly advocates this stuff to their church. And it's about Palin connection to a lot of weird and creepy stuff.

I have no issue with you criticizing the guy that wrote this article. But your final statement was obviously made with no first hand knowledge and I thought mine could lend to the discussion.

[The Night Owl]

8. If you think that witchcraft causes deaths then you don't know what you're talking about.

I haven't been to Africa, but Tracy McVeigh of Guardian has been there and what she found is that Christian evangelicals are stirring up supertitious fears to the point that people are acting on them in frightening and violent ways...

Children are targets of Nigerian witch hunt
Evangelical pastors are helping to create a terrible new campaign of violence against young Nigerians. Children and babies branded as evil are being abused, abandoned and even murdered while the preachers make money out of the fear of their parents and their communities

The rainy season is over and the Niger Delta is lush and humid. This southern edge of West Africa, where Nigeria's wealth pumps out of oil and gas fields to bypass millions of its poorest people, is a restless place. In the small delta state of Akwa Ibom, the tension and the poverty has delivered an opportunity for a new and terrible phenomenon that is leading to the abuse and the murder of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of children. And it is being done in the name of Christianity.

...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/dec/09/tracymcveigh.theobserver

Witchcraft doesn't hurt anyone. In fact, there is no evidence that witchcraft has any effect on anything. Witch hunts and witch trials are what gets people hurt.

And, for the record, I'm not criticizing the person who wrote the article I posted. He isn't the one claiming that witchcraft hurts people. Bill Donohue, conservative head of the Catholic League, is the one who is claiming that witchcraft hurts people. Please read more carefully.

[Raksha]

9. I think most people understand this,

even if they haven't spent time in Africa or any other culture where animism is the prevailing mindset.

The belief in what we call "witchcraft" is believed by almost EVERY SINGLE PERSON in the country I lived in in Central Africa. It's academically referred to as "animism", I think, I cannot remember exactly now (this was over a decade ago)

I never saw anyone killed. But I saw people beat up, homes burned, and people chased from their ancestral home. It was devastating and there wasn't one thing I could do to talk sense into anyone to stop it. Other westerners in the country actually witnessed people being killed.

Isn't this kind of behavior what we "enlightened" Westerners normally call supersititious ignorance and scapegoating? But here we have these allegedly "Christian" missionaries not only not attempting to discourage this behavior, but actively encouraging it! Worse than that, often they encourage it with a barely-concealed motive of profiting financially.

[The Night Owl]

29. No follow up? I'm not surprised. {EOM}

[patrice]

4. Understanding MUST come before Respect is possible. It also has to be contextual.

Accusations of Witchcraft, within the context of 21st Century America, IS quite questionable and even suspicious.

[Ian David]

5. You're just saying that because you're possessed by Satan.

[patrice]

27. That's Herself alright, BUT If I'm possessed by Satan, how do you know whether everything I say

is a Lie or not.

[Raksha]

6. Muthee really let the cat out of the bag with this one:

From the article:

Re Perhaps of greater interest to others are the comments Muthee makes before calling Palin to the stage.

"God wants us, wants to penetrate in our society is in the economic area," Muthee says. "The Bible says that the wealth of the wicked is stored up for the righteous. It's high time that we have top Christian businessmen, businesswomen, bankers, you know, who are men and women of integrity running the economics of our nations. That's what we are waiting for. That's part and parcel of transformation. If you look at the -- you know -- if you look at the Israelites, that's how they work. And that's how they are, even today."

When Christian believers take over and become "the top transporters in the land...the bankers," Muthee says, "we will not have the kind of corruption that we are hearing in our society."

So that's their game, huh? It's an old one: Persecute the "witches," imprison or execute them...and then confiscate their property! That's exactly what they did in the Middle Ages.

[Beregond2]

7. OK, so in his cultural context, witchcraft is a real concern.

What on earth does it have to do with Alaska? And what does it say about those parishioners that they would welcome someone with such culturally irrelevant beliefs into their community?

[cali]

10. Fuck you Donohue you reprehensible sack of shit. In Africa

hundreds of innocents (mainly women and children) have been tortured and brutally murdered because the ignorant assholes thought they were witches.

[hedgehog]

11. It's very sad, because this literal witch hunting is a gross

distortion of everything Jesus stands for!


On edit, several years back, my town was caught up in the fears about Satanism that swept through Upstate New York and Pennsylvania. In that pre-net time, police departments faxed each other with warnings about Satanists abusing children, thus adding to the panic. Our pastor held a rally to discuss this with people after some kids spray painted a couple pentagrams on walls. I thought he was going to bring some reality to the situation, but I understand that he instructed people about how to fight witches instead.





Several years later, he was one of the priests quietly defrocked for improper sexual behavior.

[sarcasmo]

12. I wonder when Muthee is going to come to my town and run me out.

Fucking Idiot!

[asdjrocky]

13. Well there goes the Wicca vote. nt

[jrockford]

14. Since when do Catholics protect or defend Assemblies of God or Penecostals???

Those churches regularly condemn Catholicism...this makes NO sense

[redqueen]

15. Yeah, I was confused by that too...

it's surprising, to say the least.

[The Night Owl]

17. I'm not sure but I think a lot of people are mistakenly assuming that Bishop Muthee is a Catholic.

Muthee is not Catholic. Catholocism is but one of the Christian denominations which claims the Apostolic Succession.

[jrockford]

24. Was not mistaken...wasn't talking about him.

I wasn't referring to Muthee, but rather the so-called Catholic League.

[patrice]

26. You're forgetting about clumps of cells in the uteruses of women you have not and never willevermeet

[MisterP]

35. ah the Catholic League: for Catholics who want to be Southern Baptists

More on topic, Joseph Klaits gives a good anatomy of witch hunts--a late-16th- and 17th-century phenomenon. In a nice Foucauldian manner he shows the witch scare's strong ties to the hallmarks of Modernity: centralized states and religions trying to control the countrysides, sexism, Reformation and Counterreformation, peasant famines and uprisings, chronic destitution. The Counter/Reformation emphasized sinfulness, self-examination (that could veer into Maoist public self-denunciation) and the immanence of Satan, who was the quasi-Cathar Lord of this world. Satan even secretly led the denominations that weren't yours (something that recurs in Jack Chick). These all created heavy tensions and the courts willingly went along, the latter considering magic to be demonic.
He also notes that, after 1700, lower-class belief in witchcraft continued, but those few accusations being brought by the peasants were rebuffed by the courts.
Now Africa has been getting reamed economically since the 70s and warfare since the 60s, plus poverty, disease, crowding, and crumbling ecosystems. Add several hate-filled fundies and you have Western-style witch hunts--far different from any pre-independence accusations of supernatural malfeasance recorded by anthropologists like E.E. Evans-Pritchard, who noted that witchcraft had positive benefits among the Sudanese (contradicting Comte and other "rationalist" Eurocentrics).

[Marrah_G]

16. These people are so stupid they shouldn't be allowed to breed.

[GreenPartyVoter]

18. Witchcraft _hunts_ cause deaths. (What a frickin moran!)

[BreweryYardRat]

19. A reactionary Catholic believing in witchcraft.

Why am I not surprised, given the Catholic Church's history of trumping up witchcraft charges against innocent as a way to seize their land for the Church.

And then he vomits this huge load of bullshit out of his mouth:

""For the past two decades, Americans have been lectured by educators and the chattering class that we must respect cultural, religious, racial and ethnic diversity. It seems that exceptions to the creed of multiculturalism are only made when it suits the ideological agenda of the left."

No, "exceptions to the creed of multiculturalism" are made for REGRESSIVE CULTURAL BEHAVIORS THAT MUTILATE AND/OR KILL INNOCENT PEOPLE!!!

Ass. Hey, Donohue. Die of a bowel obstruction, you backwards freak.

[sakabatou]

20. ::facepalm::

[noel711]

21. The irony in Donohue defending Palin's 'bishop'...

is that the very fundies that Donohue is standing up for
probably consider him (a Roman Catholic) damned to hell;

for many fundie groups, the Catholic church is the whore
of Babylon, and not truly christian.

This whole morass is pathetic.

and is the media running these videos on an endless loop
day after day?

Where is Fox News, who took great delight in disemboweling
Rev. Wright, his church, and Obama?

Rev. Jeremiah Wright has many advanced degrees,
and despite his controversial remarks is a scholar.

These people 'anointing' SArah Palin... not so much.

[The Night Owl]

22. Very good observations. {EOM}

[TlalocW]

23. It's the accusation of witchcraft. There's no such thing as magic.

The accusation causes death as well as the actions by the so-called practitioners who are amoral enough to do things to hold onto their status as a witch doctor - the mother of a friend of mine was a Christian missionary in Africa who became deathly ill after being hexed by a local witchdoctor, and he believed it was witchcraft until I made him tell me the entire story, and it turned out that the witch doctor was worried about her status in the community if people converted to Christianity and had given his mother a present of a traditional doll. I asked him, "Doesn't it seem more likely that maybe there was something on the doll that would have made your mother sick?" He had never considered that before.

[Evoman]

25. *looks at a newspaper to make sure it's the year 2008*

[shadowknows69]

28. Well Shit Bill better call the eXorcist Men and go hunt those witches

[Solly Mack]

30. Did someone try to steal his winkie?

[KamaAina]

33. Yes. He was charged with petty larceny.

:P

[Solly Mack]

34. hehehehehehehe

[Raksha]

31. Donohue would like nothing more

than to bring back the Burning Times.

[distantearlywarning]

32. Let us party as though it were 1598, good sir! n/t