Thank you for writing this, a great article and I love your unbending integrity to your values.
You are much more charitable than I am - I loathe the Church and I disdain pretty much anyone who believes their rubbish dogmas. I don't think freedom to practice your religion means freedom to act like a sanctimonious asshat and to do all you can to impose the tenets of your faith on every one you can. As is MY right, I won't buy Goya Foods products anymore because of their very public proclamation of their values, I sure as hell won't respect or support Catholics or the spread of their myth, even if some of its adherents don't completely understand what it is they are supporting.
So in the same way they will so readily critique or even condemn my life and the things I do and do not believe, I will freely and openly do the same toward them. I do not have to believe in what I opine is their fake god or their cannon law, or that any members of their clergy is worthy of respect and honor on the sole merit of being clerics.
Hell, Half the people calling themselves Catholics who support LGBTQ rights and equality are who we disdainfully called "Cafeteria Catholics" because they took just a little bit of this and a little bit of that. They talk of going only for the beauty and tradition of the mass but are pro-life, have no issue with pre-marital sex and so forth. Some of them are even agnostics but they blithely ignore some of the core teachings the church promulgates as they drop money in the collection basket.
I've written about this before but for anyone who hasn't heard it, here it is, the day I offended my Catholic neighbor by so wrongly refusing to fund the promulgation of her faith: My neighbor, who is also an alumnus of one of the parochial schools I attended, arrived at my door one day asking me to donate to it for her son.
I said no.
She was gobsmacked and became deeply offended when I told her I refused to give money to an organization that routinely hides its gravely horrendous perversion and criminality, shits on reproductive rights, and refuses to love LGBTQ+ people - and I mean, not just as a sounding brass but to put good works behind it, to really LOVE as St. Paul described in 1 Corinthians, to LOVE and minister as Jesus did without caveat. I mean to LOVE so as not to judge lest you also be judged, to mind the log in your own eye before trying to remove the splinter in your neighbors, and so forth.
Scripture clearly states, “By this shall all men know that you are my disciples, if you have love one for another.” Not by how loudly you decry a perceived sin, or the obsequies you ladle on church officials, how closely you adhere to dogmas, not by how you deny help to those of whom you disapprove — “If you have love for one another.”
I swear, every time I write on this topic, it becomes a tome - THAT is how utterly distasteful I find the Church and those who choose to believe and follow their nonsense. I've already got a 20-minute read of a draft that began as a comment and has grown into a draft for an article I'll likely never publish because it gets too ranty in my outrage at that organization.
Now granted, some nuns and priests are fine people - they don't all adhere to all of the church teaching on various issues. In school, there were a couple of bitter, cruel nuns but overall the other nuns were nice; I have a fond place in my heart for some of the nuns and priests who taught me. That said, I refuse to respect any person of the cloth or treat them any differently than any other person until they have proved their integrity and worth as PEOPLE in true service to other human beings before the Vatican - but alas, ‘true’ Catholics will not do that because they believe in things like papal supremacy and the the authority of church hierarchy, the succession of Peter, that when the Supreme Pontiff speaks ex-cathedra he is infallible, and in the Magisterium — i.e., the church’s authority to give authentic interpretation of the Word of God, whether in written or in the pillar of Tradition. They have bound themselves to the mystical body of christ via vows of obedience and poverty and they have an allegiance to that organization because they believe it does the will of God.
And I also say to them, DO NOT go on about your freedom to practice your religion when to do so contains an inherent, dyed-in-the-wool, foundational, and core imperative to strip me of liberties of which you don’t approve, and to try and bring me into alignment with your value system. A secular government allowing same-sex marital unions does not affect your faith or the sanctity of those who marry within it. It does however trigger your irrationally obsessive outrage and meanness to impose the tenets of your faith on the law of the land. You mistake your freedom of religion to mean you can influence our secular government but that government cannot influence or legislate decent, lawful behaviour to your church. Many of you gladly shove theocratic principles into our government because you believe we are essentially a Christian nation and that if we fail to loudly place God at its head, we will collapse. That is where I grab onto George Carlin's coat tails and say - if they want a say in how to run government, they can pay to do it like the rest of us. Drop the exemptions and tax the living shit out of them.
Throughout history, the church, even as they whinge about being persecuted, have gladly persecuted others and punished them for not adhering to their teachings. It happens again, and again, and again: The Nazis they ushered away via the ratlines from the lawful imposition of consequences for their crimes, the mass graves of children around the world, their part in destroying indigenous societies in the Americas. You can look all of it up quite easily — they’ll point to the preponderance of good works which is maybe true but c’mon, If you want some respect, just own the abject horror your shit and stop trying to water it down. Sure, it was done by a few people in your name but in many cases, it was done with the knowledge and support of a significant number of clergy right up to the highest levels of leadership.
Anyway, I think the religion is total bullshit and I do disdain people who buy into the tenets of the cult because I was once brainwashed by it and I know the thread of hateful bullshit woven inextricably into its cloth. Oh, they'll call it love, like this nun blathering on about the Magisterium, her great works, and her collection of higher degrees. It’s all so mysterious and us poor ignorant lay people need the hierarchy of Mother Church to light the one, true, holy, catholic, and apostolic, way to salvation while they amass billions and wank on about humility. Many of their teachings are horrible and insidiously superstitious and full of controlling, manipulative lies. I don’t know what they are saying behind closed doors today but the overwhelming majority of nuns, priests, and lay teachers when I was a kid in the 70s and 80s (even the nicest ones), where telling us with great certitude and authority that Protestants, Muslims, pagans, Buddhists, Hindus, animists, gay, lesbian, trans, and new agers were all sadly, all going to hell . So quick as we could, we droned out decades of Hail Marys to the Blessed Virgin and dedicated novenas to St. Jude for their conversion.
They wanted us to pump out babies, five or more if that was God’s will, and baptize and raise them Catholic to grow the faith. We couldn’t even use a non abortifacient condom or diaphragm to plan the size of our families because to do so spat in the face of God’s will… and the Pope said no. What, God can make all existence is six days from nothing, raise the dead, destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, split the waters of a sea, immaculately impregnate a virgin, but cannot cause a condom to fail?
“Oh! But we have the choice of the rhythm method and abstinence when you know your wife is ovulating! We must leave conception up to God.” We can use scientific knowledge to understand and track a woman’s menstrual cycle but can’t even use a condom? That’s something that has bothered me since I was 17 sat in my required “Christian Lifestyles” High School class: Okay, we don’t like abortion so at least teach people how to use barriers but as the church is clearly aware, asking people to abstain and count days doesn’t work all that well. God wants us to have free will but only when it doesn’t conflict with His will — what a mind game. And meanwhile, unmarried clerics fucking children, or other clerics, or both, think they’ve some right to council married people on their reproductive rights?
In their eyes, you and I are so angry. So, so, so, sadly lost — so they'll say — but the Church loves you. To hell with this nun, she has proved herself a horrible defender of her faith because she ultimately showed her true colors and the smallness that IS the Catholic faith. She may as well have kicked the Mystical Body right in the balls. Oh, but is that sexist and man hating?
