All around the world, god has big problems

Gee, religion is having a rough time, as recorded in bulk by Harper’s Weekly Review:

The Indian government enacted a law that grants citizenship to refugees who are Hindu, Christian, Parsi, Jain, or Buddhist, but not to those who are Muslim.

A rabbi who was part of an American delegation for religious freedom was asked to remove his kippah while visiting a UNESCO monument in Saudi Arabia.

A priest in Michigan was pressured to resign after saying that a gay author invited to read to a pre-K classroom in the parish “did not represent the values of our Catholic faith.”

A priest in Brooklyn, New York, who previously canceled an annual Christmas party for children of incarcerated parents, canceled a monthly dinner for people with AIDS, and raised the rent on an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, said that a volunteer-run food pantry could no longer operate out of his church.

A pastor in Brooklyn was found guilty of spending $90,000 of one of his parishioner’s savings on luxury goods and personal expenses.

“If they need to punish me, they should punish me,” said a priest in Tenerife who ordered 300-year-old frescoes to be painted over.

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Keeping up with the Strongmen

From Harper’s Weekly Review:

Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose major political rivals are dead, exiled, or incarcerated, won reelection in a contest that one protester called “a farce” and one human rights campaigner called “an insult to elections.”

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What’s going to happen to that “elderly roue” I told you about?

This one, who must remind you of someone currently polluting our lives.

What’s going to happen to him? It ain’t good:

We know not what may be the nature of that eternal punishment to which those will be doomed who shall be judged to have been evil at the last; but methinks that no more terrible torment can be devised than the memory of self-imposed ruin. What wretchedness can exceed that of remembering from day to day that the race has been all run, and has been altogether lost; that the last chance has gone, and has gone in vain; that the end has come, and with it disgrace, contempt, and self-scorn — disgrace that never can be redeemed, contempt that never can be removed, and self-scorn that will eat into one’s vitals for ever?

— Anthony Trollope, Framley Parsonage

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