Psalms one five fifteen says touch my anointed, Touch not my anointed, rather, and do my profits no harm. Normally, this means that God's chosen people, particularly those who are serving as messengers of God's word, should not be harmed or mistreated. Does this mean even when they do harm and also mistreat Tracy has the story Tracy.
In another horrifying series of events from religious institutions which we seem to never be in a shortage of recent finding, an Australian Russian Orthodox priest named Alexis rosen Tool has been found guilty of the sexual assault of two men
and a child. Following the release of this information and in a press release which I read as a bit detached, the Russian Orthodox Church apologized, and on Sunday, July sixth, a high priest at the offender's former church warned his flock not to judge the priest, as sheep do not judge the shepherd, and to judge a priest is to judge their God himself. He uses his God as an instrument in fear, saying that to condemn is pride, and
pride is one of the greatest sins. If condemnation is a sin, then their God must be the greatest sinner of all. This story is from the Friendly Atheist by Heaven't Metta on July ninth, twenty twenty five.
This is shit.
Internet apologists say say, which is unfortunate. And I want to ask you, Tracy, if you can kind of go a little bit deeper into this particular story. If you can, you know well basically what led to set events and also to lead said priest to tell basically the sheep, which are the dumb congregants, because sheep are one of the.
Most dumbest animals.
That walk the face of this earth, to basically say nada about the prophet hints or the Shepherd even in his wrongdoing.
So I don't really know what led up to them finding out about all this. I understand that there were some documents found about a former conclavor or project that he had been in the Holy Transfiguration Monastery of Bambala, and he had this really messed up list of rules and regulations and mission statements for it. I can pull up a couple examples here. Fear the Abbot as your lord and love him as your father. When you are
abuse to be quiet, offend no one. And when you are offended, Barrett patiently put no hope in vain plans and dreams. And then it goes on like this massive rant about how women are evil and will suck away your virtue with their venom, and it's really quite insane. I'm not one hundred percent, but I believe that this that made was it that the turning up of this document was what had caused them just to turn against him in the first place, or am I just off base entirely there?
No.
I think the condemnation of the of the priests was what they were talking about the congregation, and that's when the priest officiating that they said, do not judge him because he was one of our party. Sure, he was the priest at this congregation at the time. And then the the article talks about this other congregation that Rose and Tool created between the time of the events he was child for and the time he was charged. So all this is on the span of almost twenty years.
But yeah, you mentioned the passage about women. I'd like to read it to you because it's quite entertaining. Well in a way, it says, and I quote, the gaze of a woman is like a poison arrow, wounding, wounding the soul and to death. It is better to jump into a raging fire than to draw near to a young woman, especially when you are young. Avoid discourse with women if you hope to curb your body lusts. The
beautiful face is more destructive than thunder and lightning. So that's what happens when Yeah, yeah, that's that's what happens. When when when you prevent men from having a normal sexuality, then they developed an abnormal one.
And that's what I don't know, Cindy.
I think this kind of like leads to like some in cells that we see like on the intrawebs, like you know, because they talk like this, right and And I don't know, Cindy, when you last looked at yourself in the mirror, did you think of nothing but destructive thundering and lightning? I wish me too, I tell you, I tell you, I think that we would get our way with like all the time if we're like, you know, what, if you don't pay us equally, guess what thundering and lightning?
Bitch?
Yeah, but you know, but the city.
I did want to ask you because, like you mentioned in your notes about this article actually containing two parts.
Can you explain what you meant about that?
Yeah. The first of the first part of the elt is the let's let me put it back. So the archbishop uh what's.
His name, George Sefer, Yes, that's him.
Uh. And the the he so he's officiating after the conviction of Alexei Rosenthal, who was a member of this parish, and he says, do not judge him because your sheep, and he's a he's a shepherd. And so Alan Metta he worked, he researched Alexei Rosenthal to know more about him, and that's where the second part of the article comes, and the the information about his congregation where he was the leader and there were only women uh in there. So yeah, that's the two parts of them of the article.
Rosenthul was sentenced to ten months in prison for raping two men and a child. So I'm just putting this, uh ten just in month, Yes.
Yeah, ten months, because that speaks justice. Ten months actually doing you know, certain things to particular.
People, see the instances of sexual battery.
Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. Well you know should we say that?
Well, I guess because of the way that they looked at women that's the reason why they did it to two men and a child instead.
I don't know.
It's let me go, let me grab my thoughts here because I have so many. But before I actually go into all of that, Tracy, I want you.
To if you could just answer this question.
Yeah, what are the dangers of equating criticisms of clergy with blasphemy? And how does that believe silence victims and enable the actual perpetriggers.
I think you can see very clearly the dangers of questioning your clergy and equating questioning your clergy with blasphemy. In the story of history, as we've seen it over and over again, the divine right of kings led to some very very horrible situations. War's horrible living situations, and laws and society set up this you know, Uh, the entire feudal system as a whole largely came from like this divine right, this thing that I will not be questioned because my will is the will of God, if
you allow. I mean the the the old adage, of course, will always ring true that absolute power corrupts absolutely and and and it will happen like that as clearly happened. This man was handed an amount of power that he clearly could not control, clearly did not have the ability to to to to use well, and he used it
to harm others. This is one of the most obvious ways we can see that conflating those two things is extremely dangerous and one of the and it's one of the reasons that I find religious thinking to be so dangerous, because it isn't too long ago that and it is still kind of the case in some places that questioning even just your preacher is tantamount to blasphemy, and it's it's a very dangerous thing.
Yeah, you know, I can think of so many different instances when I was attached to a more strict church institution where basically the leader, the pastor the prophet, the apostle, the Angel of the house as you know, whatever type of you know, moniker you want to assign, was basically giving you know, absolution like the pope, regardless of what they said they did or you know, or even like whatever type of possible harm that they could cause out
another person. Now, you know, I can't really say in my personal experience that I knew specifically of pastors, ministers, or even priests when I was part of you know, a more Roman Catholic or even like Little Sea Catholic. That's what the episcopals were as far as like you know,
doing abuse. But of course, like you know, being part of this particular institution of the ACA and talking about these stories we talk about, you know, essay a lot when it comes to the church, and it's not just a Catholic church, right, And unfortunately there's this idea that's not just in the Catholic Church obviously, that the leadership should not be held accountable for some of the horrible things did they do to the more vulnerable populations of
their congregation. And it's always in some particular cases children or young people like I. I don't know how old the two men were who were assaulted, but if someone can actually find in an article, that'd be great. But you know, okay, but but you know, but we do
know that it was a child. And and unfortunately, and unfortunately, we have way too many, too many cases where children are the victims of people who are in authority that we're supposed to look up to to be infallible and they're supposed to be anointed men of God or whatever that we're supposed to look at them and feel and and and should feel some type of safety, but unfortunately
that's not the case. I remember, guys, my seventh and eighth grade teacher from my parochial school, Roman Catholic Parochial School unfriended me on Facebook because I put up a meme that said that more children were harmed in church than at drag queen shows. And he decided to scold me because I decided to do.
It on Holy Week, right before Easter.
And then I only replied to him one sentence that was a question.
I said to my teacher, where's the lie?
Next thing, you know that I was unfriended, But you know, but that's the thing, like, you know, we constantly are covering these stories, and we're constantly covering children and men and women and victims after victim after victim when it comes to and then we're supposed to keep silence about this, like you know, the congregation can't talk about it, People on the outside should not talk about it, and you know, but we want to demonize and you know, scapegoat to
the queer community as as far as like they're being predators, but they're not the predators.
They're not they're they're not the predators. I'm not and they're not. They're not, They're not the predators.
It's the same thing that bad guys have been I'm sorry, but it's the same thing that bad guys in politics have been doing forever. Is just pointing at a small group of people and saying, you see those people over there, they're doing everything that you're afraid people are doing.
And it's well living.
Your life and not necessarily having to ask permission in order for you to be happy, for you to be able to actually, you know, live.
The truth of who you are to you, you.
Know, I mean, like and again it just goes back to this, to this whole thing about like if you want to see control, this is how what the control looks like, Cindy, you know, talk about evidence, Like, if you want evidence about religion, what's that look like?
You know, there's what I was listening to you. There's something that I've been trying to to explain for for a little while. And we talked about teaching critical thinking in school. And so when we are children, we are wired to to listen to authority, to our parents, right, and religion relies heavily on this that's why they teach religion to kids because they they they mistake this, uh, this religious authority to parental authority to children the same.
So on the other hand, when when when we talk about science, uh, we we rely on the words and and and the and the studies and and all that from people and we use them as a source of knowledge. And so people, most people don't understand the difference between the two. And teaching critical thinking is crucial because we need to be able to live in society where we can make the difference between the two. Because this week while we're recording this, there's a big issue on the
US government with this Epstein client list. Does it exist, does it not? You shouldn't listen to it, etcetera, etcetera. And because so many people listen to one man in position of authority and believe what he said and didn't apply critical thinking. And now I don't know, I don't know how to how to explain this difference to people. But someone needs to.
Well, you know, because like here in the style Innidos and in other places where you know religion or even like you know, when you when you have regimes over
you that do not allow or discourage critical thinking and skepticism. Unfortunately, you have a vast array of misinformation in misdirection to happen to get into the frame, you know, and people start to who happen to be you know, the in the electorate are you know, propagandized to death and to the point where we're at the area of you know, between not necessarily knowing what is fact and what is not because we're basically being told that, hey, this whole
thing right here where the evidence looks like that this is actually thing, we're propagandized to say this is not a thing. Right. And unfortunately, we had a very long history due to you know, religion being such so intertwined with how our society has grown. Even though that you know, the United States is not.
An old country. We're like what two hundred and forty nine years old, you know.
And I mean even though the founders, like you know, made it a point when in the very first Amendment to do the Establishment Cause to separate church and state, religion and government because they saw in Europe how when you know, church gets involved with government, all types of you know, bad crap happens. Right, But unfortunately, we still had people who ended up getting into the government who
don't want that right we had. We have sitting Congress people now saying they don't believe in the separation of religion and government. Crap, you know, coming out of their mouths as they are talking to other you know, religious and religion institutions, right, And this is what we're fighting against now.
So when we are.
Looking at instances like this story where people are clearly being harmed and you know, and just to go on like a small rant. One of the things that really grinds my gears is when I am talking to you know, Christians specifically, who will confront you as a person who happens to be secular, non believer or agnostic, atheist, whatever
you decide you're going to call yourself. And you mentioned a instance or several instances where there was actual harm that came from the top down from a religious institution, and they say, oh, you left because a church hurt, and you're not supposed to lead because a church heart, because you're supposed to look at God and not the band. I said, well, baby girl, how in the hell am I supposed to separate to if I am taught that the man that's standing in front of me is a representation of God.
Make that make sense. So now we.
Are here at these crossroads, and we are constantly being bombarded with looking over there at the bush even though it's on fire.
Oh no, don't look at the bushes on fire. Look over here. Okay, I mean, like, what do you want us to do? Okay?
It has to be to the point where we are saying, listen, we cannot allow ourselves to keep silent when we are seeing people doing harm to the least of us. We cannot allow just because a person happens to have a religious leadership position to get away without being accountable when
they are doing harm to people. And you cannot continuously gaslight people into if there are leaving religion and they're leaving these institutions, and they're leaving belief systems and they're wanting to lean more to skepticism and critical thinking and actually gaining knowledge through using empirical evidence rather than wishful thinking.
Not to demonize them because that's what they decide to do, because it's obvious that we've been doing this belief faith crap all this time and it's not working for us.
It's not amen at all.