A City of God. (well, of Catholics at least.)

City of God
Tom Monaghan’s coming Catholic utopia.

Tom Monaghan: the tycoon who sold his assets to serve the Church.

Building the "City of God".

Yep. That's right. He's building a city of, by, and solely for, fundamentalist extremist Catholicism as a foundation for world domination on the back of his billion dollar fortune.

Here are some choice quotes:

"We’re going to control all the commercial real estate, so there’s not going to be any pornography sold in this town. We’re controlling the cable system. The pharmacies are not going to be able to sell condoms or dispense contraceptives."

For Monaghan, the enemy is the morally corroded secularism of modern America, and the freedom he seeks is the freedom to fully obey the moral teachings of the Catholic Church.

"I think it’s more difficult for someone who’s trying to live his life consistently with the Catholic faith to vote for Democratic candidates, because the party’s platform includes things which are clearly against Catholic teaching, such as abortion and homosexual marriage and so on,"

Don't vote for the smart candidate with facts to back him up... vote for the chimp who believes in an imaginary man in the sky and in stripping away personal liberties and freedoms to pursue the religious statist agenda of a single particular branch of a particular religious cult.

"My ideal would be for the entire human race to be fully and completely Catholic, and to serve God that way," Fessio answered. "But that’s not going to happen. What do I want for the town? I’d hope the town would be like I’d like the whole planet to be — fully conformed to the truth. But that’s not going to happen either. So I don’t know. I’ll accept whatever happens."

"The Truth" of course being Tom's vision of Catholicism... not actual facts, science and reality... but a specific, highly fictitious and repressive religious dogma of one particular religious cult.

The students and faculty are "pioneers" who will "win the hearts and minds of a new generation"; the university is "destined to be a mighty work of the Holy Spirit, a bulwark of Catholic truth against the windstorms of secularism and apostasy which seem to overwhelm our nation and our church."

"I think they really can’t do this, as much as they might want to," says Barry Lynn, the executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. "You can’t create your own town and then decide what all of the rules will be for living in that town. You can’t have a religious test for purchasing a house.... This kind of approach to creating your own little community is still governed by fundamental civil-rights and civil-liberties principles that are inherent in the constitution of the state of Florida and the federal Constitution. This is not a guy who’s buying his own island out in the Pacific. If he did that, he might be able to get away with all of this."

Honestly, at the core, I don't think there is any good reason why a group of people can't form their own community and live by those standards should they so choose. The issue with me comes when they start trying to forcefully exert their particular belief system and morals onto other people.

For instance, the brainwashed sheep of a girl who was saying how wonderful Mother Theresa was... She was a sick old woman who created centers for people to die in squalor and filth and discomfort because the very foundation of her belief system was that the only way to achieve salvation and understanding of Gods love was through misery and suffering. Her goal wasn't to help people, to give them comfort and aid and a clean bed... to ease their suffering while they died... it was to help them suffer as much as possible. Abject suffering and misery was her goal, because she honestly believed that that was good for the people she took in. The more you suffer, the more you'll need God... the more you'll be humble and understand Gods love etc.

Sick sick woman.

Jesus fucking God... I so hate religious people. There is a line of Religious Freedom that I try to protect... but I HATE the fuckers that perpetrate this delusional mindset onto others. That try to fill the government with their kind so that they can pass laws making it illegal for anyone to actually exercise their free will and personal liberties and freedoms. To force society backwards by leaps and bounds back into the days of the repression of science... of womens rights... of tolerance and diversity...

Sometimes I almost want to weep in despair that through sheer statistics, there isn't much we can do, as the perpetual minority. It is our lot as the smartest in the country to watch in dismay as the legion of sheep around us constantly shit in the very bed they sleep in... and do their damnest to force us to lay in the same filth because they think they know what's best for us.

Yep... thousands and thousands of the brightest and greatest minds on earth laying out the provable facts of the world around us, based on millenia of progress and discovery, and whom have in large part brought humanity, against great odds and mainly against the opposition, repression and even threat of DEATH from religious zealots... are wrong and evil in light of the "word of god" laid out in some 2,000 year old book written by primitive people with only a tiny fraction of the understanding of the world we now have.

This kind of bullshit almost makes me wish that Scientists would just start burning religious idiots at the stake for a change, and let them see how it feels.

"Well, see... I don't agree with you that there's some man in the clouds that controls everything. So... we're going to torture and kill you now for not agreeing with what we say."

See... I think both groups believe they're actually doing something for the good of mankind... the difference is that one can very easily be seen to have historically brought us forward, while the other strove to perpetually hold us back... and if given it's way, would have us all still living in mud huts, tending sheep and cowering at lightning, still believing it to be Zeus or some other god casting spears at us out of anger for us being naughty.

(Thanks to Jen for showing me this story.)