But It Happens To Be Right!

I’m an atheist. I see no more evidence for the existence of gods than I see for big foot, mermaids, or little green aliens that arrive at night to fondle people’s genitals then vanish without leaving the tiniest piece of evidence they were ever there. Religion makes me angry. Enraged actually. Why? Because it is a damaging, destructive, perverse “thing” that is treated with deference, blind respect, and kid gloves where ever and whenever it rears its fucked up head. What finally made me come out of the proverbial closet about my atheism was and still is the sickening and abominable attitudes of the Abrahamic religions towards women, gays, and sex in general. I will limit this post to my opinions on the Catholic Church because I was raised Catholic and spent most of my adult life working in one capacity or another for the Archdiocese of Chicago. Thus, I feel my opinion is most valid when it comes to Catholicism, though my opinion on the destructive nature of religion holds true for Islam and many sects of Judaism as well. But those religions I’ll leave for another day.

For centuries, the Roman Catholic Church has been a breeding ground for little boy rapist priests. As if that weren’t bad enough, The Church, as an institution, repeatedly hides these rapists, if caught, by moving them from the parish where they’ve been caught to another, unsuspecting parish, far away from it. This allows the pedophile rapists to have access to yet more unsuspecting little boys to molest, abuse, and rape. The Church, as an institution, has never been called out on this in a large, public forum, and, regardless of its claims to the contrary, its policy on how it handles accused pedophile rapist priests is the same today as it’s always been. They are removed from the parish where they’ve been accused and placed “elsewhere” until the matter can be “looked into.” No one but the Church knows where they’re sent, and the new community they are sent to is not warned an accused pedophile rapist has just arrived. In spite of this, the Church is still treated with special deference by millions upon millions of people solely because the men who make it up say they are empowered by an all-knowing invisible being whom they claim gives them the right to pass their perverse sense of morality onto others. To this I say, “Bullshit.”

A belief in an invisible guy that is outwardly expressed by condemning the sexual behavior of consenting adults on said invisible guy’s authority is something that should cause those expressing it to feel shame and utter humiliation, not righteous justification. Just replace the name Jesus with Peter Pan, and you’ll get my drift here. There is no more evidence that Peter Pan exists in an invisible realm and is dictating human morality to his high priests than there is for Jesus existing and doing the same thing for his. The Catholic Church was founded for and by men. It favors men. It places men above women, and it seeks to control women by telling them that it, and not they, have the right to what they can and can not do with their own bodies. The men who make up this church are sexually repressed and sick. Yet, they continue to receive deferential treatment, and are granted tax-exempt status on what amounts to nothing more than a multi-billion dollar entertainment/brainwashing industry. To top this all off, the Vatican is, as it has been for several centuries, a nation unto itself.

I’m A Deity Too!

The Vatican is a sovereign state: it answers to no one but itself. Thus, the records of its criminal activities remain locked safely in its vaults, and no one can view them without its permission. “Frontline,” a PBS news program produced here in the U.S. aired an episode entitled, “Secrets of the Vatican,” a few months ago. I recommend it to anyone who feels my condemnation of the criminal activities of the Holy See is unwarranted. The sick, perverse behavior of the Holy See is far worse than my angry mind ever imagined. That this fact does not produce deep shame in individuals saying, “I’m Catholic,” saddens me. And that the Catholic Church can then fight to deny gay couples the right to wed; fight to make a woman’s right to her own body illegal, and fight to keep insurance companies from covering birth control products sickens me to the core of my being. The audacity of these sexually perverted, sick, twisted men is stunning. How dare they point fingers and condemn the sexual behavior of consenting adults when the very core of their institution reeks from the crimes of pedophile rapists and those who hide them? How dare they! And what gives them the supposed right to do this? A belief in an invisible deity who inspired men to write a hate-filled piece of tripe called “the Bible.” In my view, if evil exists in this world, it exists in the behavior of the men who make up the hierarchy of the Catholic Church. I throw my biased blanket of opinion over all of them the same way they throw theirs over all gay people, transgendered people, and those competent adults who just like to fuck because it feels good. The difference between them and me is that I claim no justification from an invisible guy for my opinions. My opinions are mine alone, and I base them on what I see as right and wrong, not on what some invisible guy tells me.

Catholic Church!

I do not believe in violence, but I do believe that putting blame where it belongs is a good thing. I also believe that the only way to diffuse the differential treatment a religious organization like the Catholic Church receives is by calling it out for what it is: an institution founded by men who claim invisible, unprovable beings give them the right to point fingers at the behavior of mature, consenting adults while they harbor and raise pedophile rapist priests like a nation raises armies to defend its boarders. Shame is what one should feel whenever they defend such an institution, cold, icy shame. The Church teaches millions to be ashamed of their sexual feelings and the way they express them. I say it is time to teach those who make up the Church it is they who need to feel shame for being the misogynistic, pedophile rapist cowards they truly are. Once this becomes the mind-set of more and more people, the moral finger-pointing in the name of an invisible guy will whither and fade away into memory; then perhaps humanity can finally say it is starting to grow up.