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So once again, here we are with the bigotry of the Catholic Church on display, this time coming to us from Denver, CO.
A few days ago, I first noticed the stories on how the Archdiocese of Denver had banned a child from re-enrolling at one of their schools because the parents were lesbians. Of course, the Archdiocese is defending the decision:
"The Church does not claim that people with a homosexual orientation are ‘bad,’ or that their children are less loved by God," wrote Archbishop Charles J. Chaput in an article to be published in Thursday’s edition of the Denver Catholic Register.
It appears to me, that the Archdiocese has taken to heart the admonition from Exodus 20:5-6 :
You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, 6 but showing love to a thousand {generations} of those who love me and keep my commandments.
But somehow, it seems the folks at the Archdiocese making this decision missed the admonitions from Jesus in Matthew 19:14:
Jesus said, "Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these."
Apparently, the Archdiocese (like many of the fundamentalist "Christians" organizations) gives far more credence to the Old Testament rather than the New Testament, even though they all profess their love for Jesus and his teachings.
My question for them is do they really want to take this path? Especially given the concurrent reports over the last couple of weeks about the Vatican Choir? Combined with allegations of physical and sexual abuse in a choir run by the Pope’s brother?
Maybe the Archdiocese and the Roman Catholic Church as a whole should once again be reminded of Jesus’s statement in John 8:7:
When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, "If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her."
But then, this is the church that has been active in covering up for pedophile priests across the world for decades, so I think I already have the answer to my questions.
64 Comments
“Apparently, the Archdiocese (like many of the fundamentalist “Christians” organizations) gives far more credence to the Old Testament rather than the New Testament, even though they all profess their love for Jesus and his teachings.” ; and the obvious contradiction between the two ‘testaments’ in the main attributes they assign to their god doesn’t seem to be of concern or be noticed by them.
And for the record, the child in question is pre-school age which makes the protests from the Archdiocese and the priest who made the initial decision that much more wrong (as if there can be degrees of wrongness in this)
Well, lord knows the hierarchy of the R.C. church is not lesbian, only guys wearing dresses. All else follows.
Everything about this, including all the defenses the Archdiocese has provided are just wrong. No matter how they spin it, they’re punishing the child for what they perceive as the sins of the mother(s)
As others have noted, the next step is to ban the children of divorce (amongst other groups) since the parents who divorce and re-marry or live with someone else are all going against the teachings of the church.
Once again the church’s selective enforcements show them for the weasels they are.
I’m watching the R.C.s getting their knickers in a twist. Hypocrisy magnified to the nth degree. Have some hope that non-Stupidpak parishoners get disgusted and quit altogether. The only peeps R.C.s seem to be able to fool these days is sub-Saharan Africans.
But the rightousness in the OT is so much more emotionally satisfying than the humaneness of the NT. Let’s get real here. Venegence vs. tolerance? And the winnah is…
Yeah, they proclaim their love for Jesus and his teachings then do the opposite
No mention of eternital damnation in the everlasting fire of hell until the gentle and loving Jesus Christ reveals this tidbit of information in the New Testament.
So there’s that interesting contrast.
Course, the OT calls explicitly for the murder of family members who attempt to bring home a false religion.
The requisite stoning of disobendient children by the village elders is also a classic.
I’m quite unclear as to the origin of hell. My late husband, weakly Jewish in a cultural sense, said there was no hell in Judaism. But other Jews I’ve known say it’s not so. What is the definitive reading on hell in the OT anyhow?
Hell is not mentioned at all in the Old Testament. You don’t get to the subject of Hell til Jesus shows up in the New Testament.
Maybe that’s why Jews don’t believe in Hell. I don’t know much about the Jewish faith, but I have heard most Jews I know and some on tv say that their religion does not beleive in hell.
No Christ, No Hell, Perhaps.
Here’s the wiki on Judaism and the afterlife, fwiw.
On a different post, as I recounted, when Clint Eastwood was asked of the popularity of his westerns and dirty Harry movies, whether people came for the violence, he said, no, it was the vengeance. A very astute statement in MHO.
Vengeance, revenge…., funny, that answer stuck with me also and its been quite a while now.
They’re Catholics. You can’t expect them to behave like they live in the twenty first century. In fact, expecting them to behave like that is as silly as them behaving as they do and expecting people to keep coming to church and supporting them.
My grandparents were divorced in 1922. At one time, I was told that when the church ex-communicated my grandmother for the divorce (and they did do things like that in those days), she said “If you don’t want me, there’s no way you’ll get my daughters.”
So we wound up being raised in the Christian (Disciples of Christ) Church which is one of the more liberal denominations. I have often given silent thanks for that (my grandmother was very much of a “Steel Magnolia” who was probably the most gracious and loving woman I’ve ever known)
And you need religion why? (No need to answer if you don’t want to.)
Oh, I don’t need religion and have no problems admitting it. I went to Sunday School growing up and the church services most Sundays. Vacation Bible Schools in the summer helped to pass the time and a lot of the churches in my hometown had annual Ice Cream socials during the summer as well.. One of my father’s first cousins was a Methodist minister. During the holiday seasons we would attend most all the churches, including the local Catholic Church.
But a lot of that is just life in small towns.
I’m still culturally Christian. Luv sacred music. When I used to visit European cities on weekends surrounding biz trips, used to go to the most lavish service in the most beautiful church or cathedral on Sunday. Also this is one of the best concert series in NYC.
Oh, I love good gospel music but that’s as much loving the music for the talent of the singers.
Music and church architecture are two things religion has to offer, yep. Most renaissance art is religious in nature and I have studied that and in a lot of ways, incorporated some of it in my own technique. There is no way to separate the good from the superstition ultimately though. Just my opinion.
Oh, lordy. Don’t ge me going on “The Old Rugged Cross”. I love that song.
“How Great Thou Art” is another good ‘un
YES!
I was brought up in the Catholic church. I like to think that I would still be anti-theist if I had been raised in a more liberal denomination but we’ll never know that for sure. The only thing I DO know for sure is that the medieval attitudes of the Catholics drove me out of the church at age 13 and ultimately was the direct parent of my anti-theism.
LOL. I converted from rabid R.C. to ‘who cares’ atheist, also at age 13.
Catholics certainly seem to have the conversion of pre teens to atheists down. :-)
Sample of 2?
LMAO! Okay, that’s a tiny sample but it’s two out of seven people who have commented on this thread. Not that small and certainly not insignificant. Of the other five, how many were raised Roman Catholic? I once attended a Thanksgiving Party where everybody there had been raised Catholic and all seven of us were atheists.
I’ll bite. I was raised RC also. Now Atheist.
How can anyone with a functioning brain reconcile the horse shit that is the bible?
What is even more ludicrous are the folks who believe that [fill-in-the-blank version] Bible is the “inerrant word of doG to be believed explicitly and without any question.”
That’s three just on this thread eCAHNomics. Starting to see a little more of a trend….
I am another “recovering Catholic” I was brought up in a strict Irish Catholic home, was never allowed to miss Mass or any “Holy Days”, etc. etc.
I began getting bored with the whole mess at about age 9; I attended Mass with my father (who I could tell was also bored with all of it) because he & I would skip out of Mass early at the first opportunity… I went to Jr. High and HS at RC schools (the education was better, despite the propaganda). As soon as I was old enough, I “attended Mass” with my friends — we skipped it and went out for coffee and pie instead. I am agnostic now, or a bit pagan; I have no use for the RC church; it is corrupt and greedy. I think there are a lot of us out there.
Hurray for your grandma, dakine! I love mine too. She divorced her husband when my 81 year old dad was born and went to HOLLYWOOD! What a gal!
Mine stayed on our small home town. One of my biggest regrets was not being able to get home for her funeral (she died early on a Monday morning and was buried on Tuesday morning – I was in the USAF stationed in Hawai’i and there was just no way for me to get flights and make it – one of my cousins made it in from San Diego and she barely made it)
I blew that. My grandma was a young woman when she went to Hollywood. My dad is now 81. Sorry!
But I’m proud of my grandma for leaving Minnesota with a 2 year old, after a divorce, to try her goods in Hollywood. She went by herself with her baby!
Divorce in those days…
I hate religion.
Then in some way…, are you not attached to it?
No. I drifted, along with my parents, from one mainstream protestant religion to another, depending on the town. Whichever religion was the most popular, my parents joined. Weird, I suppose, but I doubt it was unusual.
By attached I meant in an emotional way, as in “hate.” I find it impossible to “hate” something and not be emotionally attached to it (in a self injuring way).
“(in a self injuring way)”; you got it.
I like the ideals, but the practice is beyond humane.
I worked as a teacher with the wife of THE pastor in town. I was 23 and had no materials. The town’s most respected pastor’s wife asked how she could help. I asked if I could borrow some (puzzles, blocks, clay etc.) materials until mine arrived, and she said NO. She did say prayers with her kids, but was never able to share.
And how one teacher “ownes” the supplies, I’ll never understand.
I remember precisely the day I lost religion, where I was, what I was doing and why I lost it. Don’t get me wrong though, I had been questioning all of it’s more ridiculous tenets for ages and had been scratching my head over all of it’s contradictions and hypocrisies. “Losing” it was just the formal decision I made that it was all bullshit and I would be better off without it.
Catholics raise a big ruckus about aborting the unborn – Don’t care much after they’re born.
The current Pope (when he was Cardinal) had many meetings with Neil Bush.
The Cardinal denounced John Kerry and helped insure Dubya’s second term.
The Catholic Church works hard for The Republican Party all the time.
Catholics are like Republicans: They’ll take care of you from conception to birth. After that, you’re on your own.
Thanks for this excellent post Dakine.
Thers upstairs.
Thanks egregious!
I look at the bible like any other work of fiction, except in this case it has been exploited to prop up a power structure that has benefited the elite few on the backs of the downtrodden many for centuries. It has been in the hands of flawed, sinful human beings for over two thousand years. Even in the unlikely event that it ever WAS the word of god, there can be little doubt that it has been so perverted that it scarcely resembles it’s original now.
Well most of the versions that are worshipped are translations of translations and the translators were A) no where near the original documents, B) No where near proficient in the languages of the original documents.
When someone starts telling me how the King Jams version is so wonderful, I start asking a few questions:
1) Can you read Shakespeare without a cheat sheet?
2) Shakespeare was a contemporary of King James
3) So how can you trust a version based on languages that were not the native tongue for the translators and documents that were written 1,600 – 3,00 years before when you can’t understand books/plays without a cheat sheet that were written 400 years ago and it’s the same original language?
Asking religious zealots to use logic? Hope you have a fire extinguisher handy…
Goodnight pups. Dunno if I can sleep but I have a new book to start anyway. :-)
Nite, Margaret. Sleep well.
AND THE KILLIN’ GOEZ ON AND ON AND…
Citizen darkine01:
I have a cousin who was a victim of one of the most notorius defrocked Catholic pedophiles and who won a settlement with the Church that includes his not detailing any of the interactions the Church had with the family of the victims over the course of the years that the sleazy bastards were coverin’ up the awful crimes…but not to fear, all the racism, homophobia, sexism and hate-filled deflected anger remains and the poor guy will live out his life in a nightmare made phyically comfortable by the Church that put the demons into his life in the first place. Buit this is not new, this is part of the pattern of history the Catholic Church is inseparably tangled up in for almost 2,000 years. Our current battle with the evil monsters of the Church of Rome goes back at least as far as Pope Pius XII and his cozy relationship with the Reichsbank and Albert Speer continuing right through the current unrepentant exNazi. And does anyone remember St. Ronnie of Reagan granting diplomatic standin’ to the Vatican just 25 years ago??!!!
The tapeworm of the Church lives in the bowels of humanity and keeps the larger body of the world’s population weak and vulnerable to the corporate rulers who live off their sweat and blood and the health of the children.
There is no place in the modern world for organized religion of any kind that carries capital letters in it’s name and offers salvation in the next life in return for obedience in this one…organized religion is the single-most cause of all the suffering and war in the last 2,000 years. May we do away with it along with it’s capitalist chariot.
KEEP THE FAITH AND PASS THE AMMUNITION, THERE IS NO COMPROMISING WITH THE DEVIL!!
Your cousin needs to get a new therapist. These demons can be put to rest.
Really? I thought the current term was “Christianist” for people who adopt the outer forms of Christianity, but aren’t too concerned with what it actually means.
BTW, I’m Christian, a Congregationalist (Directly descended from English Puritanism), but I have serious problems with ideas of the afterlife as I spent about a decade in the Navy, where we took ideas on leadership and discipline very seriously. I just can’t see the regular visions of the afterlife as being effective at getting people to behave while they’re here. I see the afterlife as being more like a German beer hall, but I’d have a hard time justifying that theologically.
“the bigotry of the Catholic Church”
I take exception to that. Please don’t confound Catholicism with ultramontanist papism. The answer to the old gag “Is the Pope Catholic?” is, in our day at least, a resounding “NO!” I am a relatively devout Catholic who has not been inside a Catholic Church in close to 30 years because they are controlled by the authoritarian, schismatic, heretical, perverted clique that has controlled the Vatican exclusively for 40+ years and largely for about 130.
Much as it would like to think otherwise, the Papacy and papally appointed clergy of the Catholic Church are NOT the Catholic Church, any more than the Congress or the White House is the United States. The Catholic Church is the entire community of the faithful, and that community is by and large no happier with the old guys in dresses that run it than most decent Americans are with the Presidency, Congress, and judiciary. The Papacy and the hierarchy long since parted company with the Catholic values that most Church members hold dear. The historical backbone of Roman Catholicism–Western Europe and the the United States–are thus likewise parting company with this hierarchy by turning away from the seminaries and withholding financial support. The Western culture that the Catholic Church engendered has thus, in the eyes of the old guys in Rome, failed to do the only things that the higher clergy values in the laity. As a result, the Papacy sees its future among the supposedly ignorant, more pliable masses of Africa, Latin America, Asia, and Eastern Europe.
Fortunately, Catholicism is a lot older than 130 years. It has a rich history, good and bad, all of which testifies to the underlying truth of the teachings of Christ, the Apostles, and the Doctors of the Church. The current clique of clerical goosesteppers in Rome is desperate to erase that history, to replace timeless truth with the worn-out rightist politics of Emperor Franz Josef, General Franco, and Marshall Pilsudski. They won’t succeed. But please, on the Left, let’s not aid and abet them by repeating the same, tired, anti-Catholic nonsense that they do.
Let us not forget the split between those who believed, as St. Paul clearly stated, that it was best to be celibate, and those who denied this, a schism that raged for five hundred years, to be put to rest by St. Augustine. Who, in his wisdom, declared that because all were born of semen, and hence tainted, all were equally bad (ergo, the Doctrine of the Emmaculate Conception, beyond the scope of this writing). The fact that his sexuality was not subject to his will, that he could get an erection even though he didn’t want one, convinced Augustine that humans were cursed by their sexuality, not sanctified by it.
This conclusion culminated in the declaration that it was the proper role of the Church to determine what constituted proper and moral sexual conduct, and to employ civil authority to enforce these determinations. And when the Roman Church set out to evangalize the world, and they discovered, to there horror, there were cultures where folks had sex with the woman on top, they required the converts to only have sex in the proper position; the woman in the naturally inferior position. That would be what we now, and for good reason, call the “missionary postion.”
The most important factor here is Augustine’s establishment of the role of secular law in enforcing the Church’s beliefs about sexuality.
I am perhaps unusual nowadays in that I have read both Augustine’s major works, the “Confessions” and the “City of God”, and several minor ones. I can only assume that you have not.
Augustine’s views on sexuality are rather complicated, being–as he himself realized–heavily influenced by unfortunate personal experiences and by the fiercely anti-sexual views of the pagan philosophers that he followed prior to his conversion, notably the Manichaeans. Augustine was personally celibate. But most Catholic clergy probably weren’t at the time, and Christian theology, like Judaism before it, viewed sex much more positively than contemporary paganism did. In fact, up until the later Middle Ages at least, Christian confessors viewed sexual sins as the least culpable because they are closest to their corresponding virtue, love. Greed and pride were considered much worse, because they were less natural and less loving.
That said, Augustine’s realization was indeed that ALL human motives–not just sexual desire–are in some degree corrupt, as you say. This is what makes him a powerful Christian thinker and a central point for criticizing judgmental and absolute positions like those so easily adopted by contemporary religious persons, Catholic and non-Catholic.
Augustine taught that human moral perfection exists in so far as God intends for man to be perfect. Everyone can be perfect. But God also made us free and refuses to force us. So we make our own decisions and our own world. Some people act more nearly as God intends and come closer to achieving perfection. Others fall short. But–and this is crucial–we never know who is who. Only God does.
Augustine thus spoke of the world as two cities: the City of God and the City of Man. The former is the eternal, morally perfected world that exists in potential, as the object of every well-meaning person’s efforts. It is visible to God, the One who is able to judge our intentions and acts fairly. The other is what all persons–well-meaning and not–actually achieve in this life, for good or for ill.
Crucially for the present debate on the Papacy and the Catholic Church, Augustine introduced a third term that complicates this dichotomy: the Earthly City of God, which is the institutional Church. The institutional Church thinks that it is the City of God, even though it is on earth. But in reality, it is itself part of the City of Man. Its policies and pronouncement are, as often as not, driven more by the personal vanities, desires, and ambitions–the politics–of the Popes, priests, and bishops that run it than they are by the Word of God.
Augustine’s moral legacy is thus a warning about the perils of judgmental self-righteousness and clerical presumption. None of us should be surprised, in Augustine’s view, if “good” Christians who seem to follow all the rules of the Church end up in Hell, while pagans, loose women, and, presumably the lesbian mothers of toddlers, end up in Heaven. The key to Christian life is to be very introspective and critical of one’s own motives, but slow to criticize others and slow to see the will of God in things that we find comforting or convenient, like one-man/one-woman marriage.
This is the lesson that has been forgotten in the Vatican. It is what makes child rape so easy for the Roman prelates to excuse and the marriage of two women so hard for them to accept. The Church is bigger than they are, though, much older, and peopled over the centuries by much wiser folk. Augustine knew he couldn’t marry for good reason, but also knew, even more strongly, that others could and should, that sex was God’s creation and that his personal views and troubled history did not demonstrate God’s will for anyone other than himself. This is the Catholicism that gives me hope.
This long winded, meandering screed nailed it for me robspierre – It’s self evident that you’re a genuine papal apologist that can justify the Vatican and it’s church for crimes against humanity no matter what they are.
The various people who call for tearing down the wall between church and state might want to consider that the first thing lots of us would want to do after the wall comes down is to dismantle the Catholic church.
Catholicism changes its message from innocence to guilt at puberty, when a Catholic child goes through “confirmation,” essentially a tribal “coming of age” ritual. And the Catholic Church is not alone. Most primitive, superstitious tribal groups holding similar beliefs have a similar ritual, with “coming of age” ceremonies coinciding with sexuality entering the picture…which must be controlled…through guilt.
Sex bad. Sex bad. Sex bad. Unless the sex is okayed by the religious authorities. Then, the sex is good, but only if the sex involves making more babies, who will grow up to make more babies, who will grow up to make even more babies, building the congregation/tribal community to the point that through sheer numbers that congregation/tribal community will rule supreme, will rule the world, will rule the universe, hahahahahahahaha, heehee.
Thus, homosexuality is bad. Masturbation is bad. Early, pre-marriage sex is bad (as in a young unmarried girl losing her virginity, however it happens, as well as virginity tests in primitive tribal cultures). Divorce is bad. Sex with sheep is bad.
On the other hand, one man and one woman, coupled together for life, making as many babies as possible, or one man and a whole lot of women (orthodox Mormon or Muslim, or whoever), also making as many babies as possible…good.
BTW, I was raised Catholic, so around 12 years of age I noticed this shift from a message of innocence and hope (and unconditional love) to a message of guilt and control (and harsh, inflexible judgments arising from hate), along with other instances of hypocrisy or outright cluelessness, and therefore lost interest in being a “good” Catholic, and looked elsewhere, searching for any religious tribe that taught and demonstrated what Jesus Christ taught and demonstrated, unconditional love, hope and innocence.
The search proved fruitless. Conservative orthodox types always seek to censor the liberal out of their tribe, like what happened to Jesus almost two thousand years ago. Instead, hell and sin and guilt and control are promoted, while the orthodox conservative religious leaders plan their next religious/cultural war, building their baby base, hoping for enough males who will be their tribe’s warriors, who will lead them to victory, where they will rule supreme, rule the world, rule the universe…hahahahahahaha, heehee.
Which contradicts everything about what Jesus was teaching, about God, about Spirit, about ourselves, about what true Freedom entails.
This is a very clear description of Bills of Attainder, which are prohibited for good reason under the US constitution:
“punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, 6 but showing love to a thousand {generations} of those who love me and keep my commandments”
in choir ring minds want to know…
You are quite correct, that my knowledge of Augustine is from secondary and tertiary sources. Are you asserting that he did not continue to live with the woman with whom he had a child? Are your asserting that his writings did not inspire the Doctrine of Immaculate Conception? Are you asserting that his writings did not enjoin civil authorities to enforce that sexual behavior only proscribed as proper by the Church? Explain to me why it is called the “Missionary” position.
I think those are questions worth answering.
These papist nut jobs are a crime against humanity – Making childern suffer for the “sins” of their parents. If that’s what Jesus would really do then fuck ‘em and those that run his religion for him.
If you can’t think for yourself then join a religion, they’ll do your thinking for you. All you have to do is give up your intellect and free will, vote for whom they tell you to and then give them at least 10% of your earnings every week.
For those so weak that they need the kind of intellectual and emotional crutch religion offers just so you can deny your mortality and get thru life by giving it “meaning” I say to you…Cowards, chumps and fools all.
If you have a problem with my position on this subject please feel free to flame me all you want. After all, that’s what “good christians” and “god fearing” people always do to defend an indefensable proposition.
And if you think your “thoughts” or “comments” on defending the existance of god or this organized religion bull shit means anything to me all I can offer up is – Go suck an egg. And fer sure, don’t go saying you’ll “pray” for me or my soul either, that’s an even bigger waste of your time than your belief and trust in the “rightousness” of religion.
There is no god, deal with it…