As a child, the Catholic Church overwhelms you. It vice-grips the imagination. High ceilings ringing with stentorian echoes, all blood-red and gilt, intoxicatingly incensed and aromatic, dotted with black and red-robed men who seemingly glide a few millimeters above the earth we mere mortals walk. Secretly, they "transmogrify" matter in rituals creaking and venerable with age and import.
It's like fairy tales with princes and dragons evoking lands long lost and golden -- touched with the luster of the unattainable. I went to Catholic schools back in the day when witch-garbed nuns shamelessly beat students with rulers if they failed the flash card quiz. The schools imposed a militaristic authoritarianism, enabled with outright brutality both physical and psychological. They beat you, promised heaven and threatened hell. Again, a perfect exploitation of a child's simplicity; great reward through heaven, unendurable pain through hell, and an absolute arbiter of your fate in the Church and its minions. Mindless authoritarianism at its most pure.
As I matured, I saw past the costumes and stage paint. The very aspects so entrancing to a child became repellent to a teen: The insistence on men of flesh and blood being greater than other men and snatching the right to dictate to them. Black and raised by southern parents, the notion of the god-made elect lording over the unwashed masses repulsed me. It bore such resemblance to home-grown American race hatred and the despicable behavior so many whites believed that god gave them the right to sling at me.
Further examinations into church history and doctrine only deepened my alienation. An institution that grants itself the power of "infallibility" was hilariously absurd on its face. An organization that insisted that I submit to its functionaries' wills was offensive in the extreme. My decision was easy. This institution did not have the kindness, the intellectual rigor, or the moral right to guide my walk through this life in any way.
The years worth of priest-abuse scandals and the Church's reaction to them only underlines my point. Now, with evidence that the current Pope enabled the rape of children by his priests through inaction, it is appropriate to examine the Church's suitability to dictate morality and spirituality to the rest of the world.
The Catholic Church is a government. Vatican City is an independent city-state with the Pope as its absolute monarch in which cardinals hold legislative authority. It is also a bank; the Vatican Bank is worth billions and faces accusations of money laundering while sitting on a past worthy of a particularly lurid pulp thriller.
Which of the sane among us would appoint politicians and bankers to guide our spiritual development? A creation of St. Paul that invokes the thin veil of Christ as self-justification, the Church is an international financial and governmental institution with a past both corrupt and bloody. Popes have instigated and financed unprovoked wars, committed torture and incest (among the supposedly celibate you might call that a 'twofer'), and sat mute in the face of the deportation of Jews by the Nazis. See here and, for a more sprightly take, here.
Yet, Church doctrine declares that itself and its Pope can be infallible. And the current Pope, in his tone deaf, tommy-gun barrage of pathetic and/or repellant self-defenses displays the ungodly arrogance of the rich and powerful when faced with facts that threaten their empires.
The institution that turned a blind eye to its priests, its holy men, serially raping children is the same institution that insists that we suffer unimaginable agonies for as long as possible as we die. It is the same institution that tells a woman that she must sacrifice her health, he family's well being, her sanity, her aspirations or even her life to the single-celled blastocyst she carries in side her as a result of being viciously raped in an alley. It is the same institution that insists that men or women loving each another is offensive to god. I have no doubt that such love is an offense to their god -- the one who condones child rape by the extravagantly self-titled and self-indulged.
After a point, an institution so besmirched by sin (by its own definition), cruelty and scandal must lose all right to claim moral and spiritual authority. That point has come.
Kim Michele Richardson: NUN ABUSE: A Survivor's Message for the Vatican
Your point is perfectly logical and if the Catholic Church was merely a human invention it would disappear just as the once mighty Roman Empire crumbled away but the Catholic church was not founded by Jesus the Son of God and He promised the gates of hell will not prevail against Her.
Thus despite the failure of catholics to live in accordance with the teachings of their church and the horror of wolves in sheep's clothing the Church will survive.
If you want to see the beauty of the Mystical Body of Christ look to its great saints who lived it to the highest degree. Read about the Belgian priest who volunteered to go and minister to the lepers on the island of Molokai or Vincent De Paul who fed the poor in Paris.
People keep pointing out that the Church was in favor of restrictions in the health care bill on abortion. They neglect to mention that the Church is in favor of universal health care otherwise, as well as a social safety net for the poor that is far beyond what most U.S. citizens would support.
There are a lot of things that can be said against the Church. The statement that they only care about children until they are born is not one of them.
'social welfare safety net' is that historically,
women have had very little control over their
fertility . . .
That's where the Church came in. It gave a voice to what we were feeling, and it did it in an orthodox, sustainable way that brought people together from different tribes, It was a robust enough virus to transcend thousands of mixed-up, self-destructive world views that would have had us wiping each other out long before we could accomplish anything..
That made it worth the costs described above. But they're not worth it any more. Our childhood as a species is over, and it is time to (to quote a book that is often wise and beautiful, even though it's not the transcribed dictation of some all-powerful creator) "put away the things of childhood." I honor the Church's accomplishment on this Easter sunday, but Mr Gaiter is absolutely right. It's time to move on.
http://religionannarbor.wordpress.com/
I'm hearing a lot of people who left the Catholic Church who never really understood the essence of Christianity let alone their own former religion. There is something strangely foreign here I've never run into.
Let me challenge that comment a bit. Don't we read about some sicko school teacher sleeping with a student all the time? I have seen more of those stories this year than sicko priests. I don't hear anyone calling for the closing (or mass exodus) of the public schools.
I certainly don't condone any of the actions but why are we singling out one institution (the RCC) while giving somewhat of a pass to other ones?
http://religionannarbor.wordpress.com/
Their "god" is one messed up mofo. "It's not hate, it's christian love," they shriek, over and over. Funny, that.
In modern America, the church doesn't really have any state sanctioned authority do they? In other words, they can't really tell people how to have sex or how to vote can they? The only power they have is to say, "if you want to be a part of our group, here are the standards of behavior..." Every club, group or society has some standards of behavior and some things that can get you kicked out. As long as membership is optional....do you really have a problem with it?
Just curious.
http://religionannarbor.wordpress.com/
pope cannot approve and coverup. He must be held accountable, under international
law. When the pope declares that he has the right to let his priests abuse our children,
he should be arrested and charged with international crimes. What a monster. If you offer up
your children to priests to have sex with, you should go to jail. If you know about it, and
cover it up, year after year, hell has a special place for you. Shame on this stuff. Shame,
Shame, Shame on the pope, shame on religion.
http://www.aztlan.net/malachimartin.htm
"The smoke of Satan has entered the Sanctuary"
Pope Paul IV - 1963
And they have been covered up for decades if not centuries.
The entire assets of the church should be sold off to pay recompense to the victims. Not just the chidren sexually mollested, but the Jews destroyed by the church's boy hitler, who learned his hatred of the Jews from the church, growing up as a youth in very catholic austria,
And the Muslims. For it was the catholic church that combined with corrupt kings to bring the crusades to the Muslim civilization. From 900 to 1500 AD their were 13-14 crusades against these people,. Upwards of 50 million were slaughtered, poisoning their culture, religion and language. And societies have long memories, as we ,learned on 9/11
The current pope learned his lessons well, growing up in Nazi Germany. the church has yet to EXcommunicate hitler - prob because they'd have to excommunicate the church, But last year, the Pope UNexcommunicated a Bishop Williamson, a holocaust denier. To bring Williamson and his 600000 mad followers back into the church, along with their money.
The rot in so many ways reaches all the way to the top, proving.....
"Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely", And when you claim to speak for God.........
Great comment, fanned.
For all those who say, 'why didn't the kids go to the police immediately',
imagine yourself immersed in this culture. There is no way you would go to authorities,
or even tell your parents. Who are you to question activities the priest says are sanctioned by god ?
What if that is by design?
What if pimping children or worse was the way to advance in the ranks?
What if the pope confessing meant he admits that he was doing it too? I don't think he or the church is ready for that. But what if it is true?
Would they tell us? I doubt it, and he is looking guiltier of it by the minute.
I've thought of this too. It's such a dark idea that I haven't read it anywhere else. But it's worthy considering. This is more than a case of a few bad apples. This was SYSTEMIC and ONGOING. I'm really really wondering how far down the rabbit hole this will take us, and how evil this organization really is. Nothing would surprise me at this point.
The fact that the church cannot and will not police its own pedophile priests pushes us to call them to account in criminal court. Most certainly the priests who perpetrated the multiple sex abuse need to be incarcerated. They cannot be rehabed. I worked in the juvenile court (in child abuse cases) for many years, and heard over and over again from the experts who testified there that rehabilitation of pedophiles was not effective. The crime of child sex abuse is as serious as murder, and the public has every right to expect people who do it, no matter what their occupation or the color of their collar, should be locked away to keep the rest of us safe. The public also has a reasonable expectation that the management of the catholic church will keep them and their children safe.
If I could, I would vote for child abusers and rapists to be subject to capital punishment. Let the church decide to burn them at the stake. They threaten humanity more than any mystic or skeptic of holy mysteries. Yet the Church sure has been fast in the past to finish those hapless folks off in grand inquisitor style.