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.
The Arm Chair Pontificator 
Pingback: Religion And Sex | Scotties Toy Box
It’s pretty obvious that sex in an authoritarian regime like the Catholic Church is used as a method of social control.
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True. But the pedophile rape goes beyond even that into just plain sickness.
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{{{ Applause }}}
Very well done. Between the rapist priests, and the endless amount of blood spilled by religion, who the fuck sees religion as anything special? Only the blind devotees. The rest of us have eyes.
Only 1 nitpick. Genitals. Unless gentiles has taken on a new meaning I am unaware of….
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Thanks, and thanks for the spelling correction. I’m off to fix that. I need a copy editor!!!
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This is well done. I love it.
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Thanks. Guess who tried posting a ranting comment about how stupid I am just now? You bet ya, SoM! I deleted it pronto just cause I know it bothers the little girly man so much when I do that. Oh, it is the simple things that make me smile in life, like irritating twits like him. 😀
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He got internet?
That guy makes me sick to the bones. His ilk are a pain in the wrong place
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I guess so. I almost missed that he was trying to post here as his comments go right to spam, but I saw it before I deleted the spam. Didn’t read it all, as it is merely the rantings of a boy-child calling me names and such, but what a pair this ass has on him. He must know I will never let his tripe comments post here by now, and yet, like a child trying to get his mommy to let him sit at the grown up table at parties, he just keeps trying only to continually be told no.
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That’s the thing that surprises me with him. Why keep trying when he knows he has been banned or does he pray before he posts and comments and hopes his invisible daddy will make it somehow go through?
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Guess so. Or maybe it’s just that his meds have worn off.
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Maybe both,
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Yes. Both.
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Jeff, I mean David, 😉 I found the documentary on YouTube. Apparently, only those in the U.S. can view the full doc. I will watch it today. Thank for bringing it to our attention.
I recently watch a documentary about how they handle their wealth. Let’s just say — it, too, was very damning.
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I’m sure you’ve heard the conspiracy theory that John Paul the First was given poisoned tea by Opus Dei because he was about to blow the lid off the Vatican Bank and its mishandling of billions of dollars. That’s one conspiracy theory I feel has a tad bit of hypothetical weight to it. I could see such a thing happening. The Godfather 3 used it as a plot device, too. I wouldn’t be surprised if Pope Francis wakes up dead one day. He says some rather humanistic, and thus, unpopular with the Holy See, type of things.
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“I wouldn’t be surprised if Pope Francis wakes up dead one day. He says some rather humanistic, and thus, unpopular with the Holy See, type of things.”
I wouldn’t be surprise, either. As John Dalberg-Acton (an English Catholic historian and politician), said “Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. And as you are aware, neurological studies show that unfettered power changes the brain, “leading to gross errors of judgment, an imperviousness to risk, huge egocentricity and lack of empathy for others.” I think that pretty much nails the RCC.
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Yes. It sure does.
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Very well said. Thank you again for another thoughtful, honest outpouring.
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You’re most welcome. Just feel it is time the Church should feel the shame of its behavior. Really, how much more despicable could a group of organized human beings behave toward other human beings?
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Oh, Yes a thousand times! Great piece! Clean up the naughty words and submit it to the NYT’s OPED section, follow link:
A meme i saw yesterday just popped into my head: “In America, if you don’t believe in a talking donkey, you’re in the minority.”
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Only a few bad words to clean up, so I just may send it to them.
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Well constructed post – well said – well done!
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Thanks. Just felt like pontificating a bit. So I did. 😀
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A well constructed argument I’d say.
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I do pontificate well. 😀
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Thunderous applaud. What few people are aware of is that 1.7 percent of the females and 3.3 percent of the males had been sexually abused in childhood by a priest. But you rarely hear about the female victims.
According to articles in The New York Times, Newsweek and Psychology Today, the number and proportion of sexual misconduct directed at girls under 8 years old was higher than that experienced by boys the same age.
Barbara Blaine, the founder and president of Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests (SNAP), and a victim herself when she was a girl, stated in Newsweek that her experiences have led her to conclude that there is “far more urgency when the victim is a male.”
“In part because of sexism and homophobia, journalists, police, prosecutors, attorneys, and sometimes even parents feel even more outraged when a boy is sexually abused by a powerful man than when a girl is assaulted, and are thus more apt to take action, pursue charges, file lawsuits, and talk publicly.”
http://www.newsweek.com/sex-abuse-church-girls-also-victimized-70741
So we can again, thank the Bible for that. Outside of the RCC, the stats show that approximately 2/3’s of the victims of sexual abuse from clergy are perpetrated on girls. Again, rarely gets media attention.
I agree, and I really appreciate this post more than I can express in words. I wished there were more of them. The only way to bring down the Catholic Church is to hit them where it hurts — their pocketbook. In America, they rake in approximately 170 billion a year, tax exempt, and only a little over 2 percent goes to charity.
Where are the David(s) that will slay this Goliath?
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I’m a David, and I’m trying. The Frontline piece I mention in the post dealt a lot with female victims as well as male. It is the most damning news documentary on the role of the Vatican in all this that I’ve seen yet. In my opinion, the media does not focus on any of the victims nearly as much as it focuses on those defending the accused rapists. Like christians say of gay people, “We love the person but hate the gayness in them,” I love the persons who are religious but hate the “religion” in them.
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