Tag Archives: Desmond Tutu

The right to commit suicide

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I suppose it is one of the many indicators of the corruption of Christianity in mainline denominations  that, where in prior centuries they pondered their God-given duties, we now catalogue lists of our God-given rights. We have degenerated from God making demands of us to our making demands of him.

One of our latest rights, apparently, is the right to die when we want to and Desmond Tutu, naturally, plans to demand it.

From here:

Throughout my life, I have been fortunate to have spent my time working for dignity for the living. I have campaigned passionately for people in my country and the world over to have their God-given rights.

Now, as I turn 85 Friday, with my life closer to its end than its beginning, I wish to help give people dignity in dying. Just as I have argued firmly for compassion and fairness in life, I believe that terminally ill people should be treated with the same compassion and fairness when it comes to their deaths. Dying people should have the right to choose how and when they leave Mother Earth. I believe that, alongside the wonderful palliative care that exists, their choices should include a dignified assisted death.

Desmond Tutu wants a global boycott of Israel

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Read it all here.

Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, in an exclusive article for Haaretz, calls for a global boycott of Israel and urges Israelis and Palestinians to look beyond their leaders for a sustainable solution to the crisis in the Holy Land.

The past weeks have witnessed unprecedented action by members of civil society across the world against the injustice of Israel’s disproportionately brutal response to the firing of missiles from Palestine.

[…]

I asked the crowd to chant with me: “We are opposed to the injustice of the illegal occupation of Palestine. We are opposed to the indiscriminate killing in Gaza. We are opposed to the indignity meted out to Palestinians at checkpoints and roadblocks. We are opposed to violence perpetrated by all parties. But we are not opposed to Jews.”

Earlier in the week, I called for the suspension of Israel from the International Union of Architects, which was meeting in South Africa.

The extraordinarily blinkered conclusion Tutu reaches is:

The pursuit of freedom for the people of Palestine from humiliation and persecution by the policies of Israel is a righteous cause. It is a cause that the people of Israel should support.

There is no mention of Hamas repeated violating ceasefires, using Gazans as human shields, having the destruction of Israel in its charter, the fact that, for propaganda, Hamas wants its citizens to die or the indoctrination of children to hate Jews. The article is reproduced on the Anglican Communion News Service; since it is sitting there without editorial comment, we must assume that the ACNS is untroubled by Tutu’s viewpoint.

Here is a different view from someone who has not succumbed to the miasma of leftist pollution that is afflicting Tutu’s neocortex:

Desmond Tutu calls oil sands ‘filth’

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The retired Anglican eco-cult Archbishop, giggling guru, Desmond Tutu has pronounced the Alberta oil sands “filth”. He must have flown from South Africa to Fort McMurray, where he intoned his disapproval, using jet fuel distilled exclusively from nice clean Saudi oil, the country where women are not allowed to drive, Christians are persecuted, rape victims are caned and girls are likely to have their genitals mutilated. He remains obstinately silent about that; much easier and more profitable to whine about Canadian oil sands.

From here:tutujpg

Anglican archbishop Desmond Tutu has called Alberta’s oilsands “filth” created by greed, and has urged all sides to work together to protect the environment and aboriginal rights.

“The fact that this filth is being created now, when the link between carbon emissions and global warming is so obvious, reflects negligence and greed,” Tutu told more than 200 rapt attendees a conference on oilsands development and treaty rights in Fort McMurray.

Desmond Tutu prefers Hell to homophobia

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Whenever someone uses the slippery word “homophobia”, we know immediately that rational thought has been abandoned in favour of a treasured but meaningless cliché. The OED defines homophobia as “an extreme and irrational aversion to homosexuality and homosexual people”. My daughter suffered from arachnophobia, leading to numerous pranks involving rubber spiders finding their way into her glass of water; the resultant shrieking was gratifying to no-one but the perpetrator – usually her brother. That was (she has overcome it now) a true phobia.

I don’t know anyone who is homophobic; I am not denying the possibility of the existence of such a phobia, but I’ve never encountered it. I suppose it could be treated in much the same way as arachnophobia, by systematic desensitization: first the sufferer would be invited to look at a photograph of a homosexual, then be placed in the same room at opposite ends, later a “good morning” could be exchanged and finally the whole thing would end with a hug.

That is absurd because, of course, it isn’t what Desmond Tutu and his ilk mean by “homophobia.” In Tutu’s view a person who is “homophobic” is anyone who doesn’t agree with him about the morality or immorality of homosexual activity, regardless of whether the disagreement is founded in rationality or revelation.

For Tutu, it’s all about emotion; if fact, it almost appears as if he experiences an extreme and irrational aversion – a phobia – to anyone who disagrees with him about homosexuality – including God.

From here:

“I would refuse to go to a homophobic heaven. No, I would say sorry, I mean I would much rather go to the other place,” Archbishop Tutu said at the launch of the Free and Equal campaign in Cape Town.

“I would not worship a God who is homophobic and that is how deeply I feel about this.”

 

Desmond Tutu given $1.6m for being spiritual

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More exactly, he was awarded the Templeton Prize for “affirming life’s spiritual dimension”.

Last year the Dalai Lama won it. Someone should tell Richard Dawkins that there is big money to be made in “affirming life’s spiritual dimension”.

From here:

Archbishop Desmond Tutu has won the £1.1m ($1.6m) Templeton Prize for “affirming life’s spiritual dimension”.

Organisers said he was awarded the 2013 prize for his lifelong work advancing spiritual principles such as love and forgiveness that have helped to liberate people around the world.

Desmond Tutu’s lucrative trade in clichés

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Archbishop Desmond Tutu has been given $1M for “Speaking Truth to Power”.

In criticising Tutu, I know I am beating a dead horse, so, going forward, I should probably take the high road by giving him some tough love. Still, it is what it is.

From here:

Veteran peace campaigner Archbishop Desmond Tutu has been awarded $1m (£620,000) by the Mo Ibrahim Foundation for “speaking truth to power”.

The London-based Foundation called the cleric “one of Africa’s great voices for justice, freedom, democracy and responsible, responsive government”.

He won the Nobel Peace Prize – and 10m Swedish Krona (£935,000) – in 1984 for his campaign against apartheid.

 

Desmond Tutu likens Israel’s treatment of Palestinians to the holocaust

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The only possibly explanation for someone seeing a similarity between having to pass through a security checkpoint and being gassed and incinerated in an oven is that the person is suffering from dementia – or is a rabid Anglican leftist. Tutu is probably both.

From here:

Nobel Peace Prize laureate Desmond Tutu, who is engaged in a controversial campaign urging divestment from Israel, in London on July 4  was honored for supporting travel to the Palestinian town of Bethlehem, identified in the New Testament as the birthplace of Jesus.

Tutu, who is Anglican Archbishop Emeritus of Cape Town, South Africa and became known for his fight against his nation’s apartheid system of racial discrimination, at a London meeting was awarded an honorary “Bethlehem Passport” by the charity Open Bethlehem, of which he is a patron.

The London-based charity’s founder, Leila Sansour, commented that Tutu remains “an inspiration to millions in your dedication to the principles of peace, reconciliation and freedom. We remember your certainty that ‘we will all be free’ as we struggle for a Palestinian state, but we also remember that this state is only worth the struggle if it remains open, democratic and teaches respect for human rights.”

Tutu said that he was “very sorry you have had to endure all this suffering. It almost seems endless but it will end. At home for so many years it looked like the apartheid system would never end. But it did. The Jews thought the Holocaust would never end but it did. They did eventually come into their own land once again.”

He added, however, that Jews “are inflicting the same suffering they experienced on others” in terms of creating armed checkpoints through which Palestinians must pass and security operations against Palestinian areas.

Desmond Tutu distorting Christianity – again

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Desmond Tutu spoke recently against one of liberal Christianity’s – using the word in its loosest possible sense – favourite whipping boys: globalism. Amidst the ritual bromidic meanderings on “equality”, the environment (did you know the Icelandic volcanic ash eruption was a result of our not working together – I didn’t) and greed,  we find this from African theologians Rev. Allan Boesak, and the Rev.  Johann Weusmann:

The Evangelical Reformed Church in Germany in 2007 embarked on a project to study the effects of globalization in the context of the Accra Confession, a 2004 statement of the then World Alliance of Reformed Churches that critiqued neoliberal economics. The German church worked with the church in South Africa to gain the perspective of a developing country.

Much of the “very activist” report, as Boesak described it, is devoted to economic issues, and is explicitly meant as ammunition in what is seen as the battle against the domination by a  financial elite using “empire logic.”

Just as Christ rose up against the Roman empire, it is the duty of Christians to resist the “lordless powers” of the global capitalist empire, the report says. It looks at issues such as the global food crisis, financial markets, ecology and militarism. It sets out a detailed programme for “breaking the dominance of financial markets over the real economy.”  The report distinguishes between globalization and globalism.

Have these theologians read the Bible? Any of it? Christ didn’t rise up against the Roman empire; some of his followers wanted him to; so did Satan in the three temptations in the wilderness (Matt 4:8-9). Nevertheless, he explicitly said his kingdom is not of this world (John 18:36).