Peaceful Buddhists Burn Down Mosques

Yesterday, in Myanmar,

Two people, including a Buddhist monk, were killed and at least three mosques were destroyed after riots broke out [between Buddhists and Muslims] in a town in central Myanmar, police said. Around 200 people fought in the streets after an argument in a Muslim-owned gold shop turned violent in Meiktila on Wednesday. …

Myanmar

The unrest comes amid heightened concerns over Muslim-Buddhist relations in Myanmar, where communal conflict in the western state of Rakhine has left at least 180 people dead and more than 110,000 displaced since June 2012.

[image via Al Jazeera]

How a Methodical Methodist Got Rid of His Wives

They’ll probably make a movie about pastor Arthur Schirmer (of Reeders United Methodist Church in Pocono Township, PA) some day. But rather than being a celebration of divinity, the flick will feature treachery, lies, adultery, and double murder.

A former pastor was sentenced Monday to life in prison without parole in the fatal bludgeoning of his second wife in 2008. Arthur “A.B.” Schirmer, 64, was sentenced nearly two months after a jury convicted him of first-degree murder in the death of Betty Schirmer. The conviction brought an automatic life sentence.

Schirmer is charged separately with killing his first wife, Jewel Schirmer, in 1999. He awaits trial in that case.

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Prosecutors said he clubbed Betty Schirmer on the head with a crowbar, then loaded her into their car and staged a low-speed accident in an effort to conceal the crime. …

Local police initially believed Betty Schirmer’s July 2008 death was the result of a car crash. State police began a more thorough investigation months later, when a man committed suicide in Schirmer’s office after learning the pastor was in a relationship with his wife, the church secretary.

Authorities ultimately concluded the fender-bender could not have caused Betty Schirmer’s extensive head and brain injuries. Police also found her blood on the garage floor, along with evidence that someone had tried to clean it up.

[image via Lebanon Daily News]

Something to Reform: Treasurer’s Thieving Ways

Let it never be said that Rudolf van B., the treasurer of a Reformed Church in the Dutch town of Zeewolde, is insufficiently ambitious. Over a period of five years, Van B. (for some reason, Dutch media usually don’t report the last names of suspects or convicts) robbed his own church, and the parishioners. He did so by falsifying records and diverting the princely sum of some 360,000 euros total — close to a half million dollars — to his own bank account.

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A Dutch court sentenced him to 240 hours of community service and a year’s probation.

[image by colourbox, via Metro]

Kumaré, the Movie: Filming the Folly of Blind Faith

Vikram Gandhi is an American of Indian descent. He grew up in New Jersey.

As an experiment, the young filmmaker wanted to see if he could credibly transform himself into a guru. He grew his hair and beard to conform to the expected guru look, tried as best he could to embody a spiritually enlightened mystic, practiced a thick Indian accent, and then “came to America.”

In no time at all, he had acquired an ardent following. Luckily for us, Gandhi had a camera crew in his wake the whole time. Watch what transpired.

The movie Kumaré: The True Story of a False Prophet is now available for streaming on Vudu, Amazon Instant Video, and iTunes (it’s currently just 99 cents on iTunes, for the high-def version no less). You can see the official trailer here.

Bad Baba

Last year, Hindu holy man Baba Shailender Puri, whose real name is Sanjay Kherwar, kidnapped and raped an underage girl who visited his house of worship in Barara, India. A local court just convicted him to 10 years in jail.

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It wasn’t the first time the Baba (Father) was ordered behind bars. He’d already been sentenced to a life term in a murder case in Kanpur, but escaped from police custody and started a new life under an assumed name.

Kherwar used to organize religious functions at Shiv Mandir, a Hindu temple in Barara.

[image via Act for America]

Being Gay, Killing People — Same Difference

As Hittman, my fellow Moral Compasser, pointed out in this blog post about Senator Portman’s gay son last Saturday, Traditional Values Coalition president Andrea Lafferty equated being gay with driving drunk.

Not to be outdone, Bryan Fisher, a policy warrior for the American Family Association, corrected Lafferty and wrote that being gay is really more akin to robbing banks.

Today we find that that still wasn’t le mot juste for WorldNetDaily founder Joseph Farah, whose standout contribution to the debate is that actually, being gay is just like being a serial killer.

Lafferty, Fisher, and Farah: Spreading God's love

Lafferty, Fisher, and Farah: Spreading God’s love

Tune back in tomorrow, when I suspect we’ll hear that Harvey Milk was a homegrown Stalin, and Matthew Shepard a wannabe Pol Pot.

[images, from left, via Fortress of Faith, 10thousandcouples, and Media Matters]

New Visitor Record Yesterday: Thank You!

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We’re really happy that our page views and unique-visitor numbers keep rising; in fact, yesterday, we more than tripled our previous peak number of ten days ago.

I know there’s something unseemly about getting all self-congratulatory, so we won’t bother you again until … we get into the five figures. We’re looking forward to that milestone. Thank you for putting Moral Compass on your radar screen!

Pastoral Care — In a Teenager’s Panties

The youth pastor of a suburban Chicago church had his bond set at $300,000 today. Darin Evans is accused of sexually grooming a teenage girl under his pastoral care, ultimately committing sex acts with her in

…his vehicle, in parks, cemeteries and men’s restrooms, and during a religious retreat in Wisconsin.

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Evans is charged with 11 counts of criminal sexual assault and two counts of aggravated criminal sexual assault. He is married and the father of three children.

[Image via Huffington Post]

Sex Offender Inherits Dad’s Job; Now a Rabbi

From rapist to rabbi in one easy step.

Ex-convicts are usually sent to post-imprisonment rehabilitation programs, but in Israel such a person has immediately attained a high position. Yaakov Yitzhak Rata, who was convicted of [child] rape and sentenced to 16 years at the Maasiyahu Prison’s religious wing, was released from jail last week only to become a rebbe – a position he inherited from his father, who died during [the son’s] imprisonment. …

rebbe

Haredi website Kikar Hashabat reported about “great joy in the Hasidic movement” when “the righteous rabbi, Yaakov Yitzhak Rata, was released from a 16-year imprisonment.”

What gives this story a special flavor, however, is that the people with the clearest sense of how positively dippy Rata’s appointment is turn out to be the assorted criminals who were his prison homies.

Ex-convicts who served with Rata in prison were surprised to learn about the position waiting for him outside. “How can it be that a person who served a prison sentence for sex offenses is now appointed as a rebbe?” one of them wondered. “It’s amazing to discover how cheap this job can be.”

When the sense of propriety of robbers and rapists is head and shoulders above that of pious believers, I’d say the latter have a little re-evaluating to do.

[image via Failed Messiah]

Well, If You Put It Like That…

 

Pope_fashion[image via Photobucket]

Bill O’Reilly Unweds Wife, Douches Up the Divorce

Fox motormouth Bill O’Reilly is a devout Catholic and a fairly generous contributor to the Church (at least $65,000 in 2011 alone). His views regarding marriage couldn’t be more public. O’Reilly has blustered on TV that the institution of holy matrimony will be harmed, and families destabilized, if gay people gain the same rights as straight people. He equates same-sex relationships with beastiality and frequently mocks European countries where marriage equality is seen as perfectly normal, claiming falsely that in the Netherlands, “You’re allowed to marry a duck.

But the talkshow host’s own marriage, to the equally hardcore Catholic Maureen McPhilmy (photo), has been on the skids for at least a couple of years. Now, courtesy of Gawker, there’s confirmation that the two got a divorce — a no-no according to the Pope — and that O’Reilly subjected their kids to a nasty custody dispute.

Entertainment Weekly 8th Annual Academy Awards Viewing Party

The first public evidence of strains on the marriage came in 2003, when Falafel-gate broke out. Andrea Mackris, a member of O’Reilly’s production staff at Fox, claimed that her boss had subjected her to a sustained barrage of sexual innuendo. She said he frequently referred to threesomes and the size of his manhood; talked of vibrators he wanted her to buy; invited her to phone sex with him (she declined); and initiated business calls during which he appeared to be masturbating. According to Mackris’ 23-page complaint, O’Reilly also informed her that he’d love to take her on a Caribbean vacation, where he would massage her “spectacular boobs,” and do exciting things involving a “falafel” and her “pussy.”

O’Reilly and his lawyers decided to pay off Mackris — that is, they persuaded her to take a settlement, reportedly in excess of two million dollars — a move that  allowed the Fox celebrity to deny any wrongdoing.

Presumably, through it all, O’Reilly’s wife (who in 2003 was pregnant with the couple’s youngest child) was not amused.

When she and O’Reilly finally split up for good, they worked out a shared-custody arrangement for Spencer, then about 8, and Madeline, then about 13. A family therapist, they agreed, would “act as a neutral mediator to help them resolve any parenting disputes.” Gawker now reveals that O’Reilly immediately set to rigging the deal: Unbeknownst to McPhilmy, he offered the therapist they picked, Lynne Kulakowski, a six-figure salary to work long hours in his home, with his kids — and incredibly, Kulakowski accepted. Naturally, this made a mockery of the therapist’s so-called “neutral” status.

O’Reilly now has his icy heart set on erasing his entire marriage — not just from his memory, but from the Catholic books, Gawker says:

He is … seeking an annulment of his 15-year marriage, which produced two children. Null and void. Invalid in the eyes of God. Never happened. This despite his manifest belief in the “stability” that straight marriage brings.

The Catholic Church can choose to nullify if an ecclesiastical tribunal determines that the sacrament of marriage was invalidly contracted, which would make the marriage retroactively invalid from its very first day. The standards for such a decision are strict and relatively precise, however. To a layman like me, O’Reilly doesn’t seem to qualify.

Then again, there’s no telling what another sizable donation may do to induce a little extra flexibility in Catholic church authorities.

If the annulment comes through, there’s every chance that O’Reilly will see it as further proof of God’s existence. Marriage comes, marriage goes; you can’t explain that.

[image via The Hollywood Gossip]

The World’s Tallest JPEG?

And to think, it could easily have been a thousand times taller. Still, pretty impressive (enlarge the picture by clicking on it after it loads).