BroadSnark

I really liked this post over at Reconcile.  It’s time we start talking about higher education.  We shouldn’t just accept “get an education” as an answer to all our social ills.

And speaking of school, sometimes (just for a moment) I forget the horror that it was to be a teenager.  Then I read an article like this and that feeling of being strangled by socialization comes flooding back.

May as well stay on the subject of being oppressed in school.  I’m still livid about those Innocence Project kids being targeted by the prosecutors office.  I don’t know how she sleeps at night.

Finally, if you hadn’t heard, the DC Catholic Archdiocese says they will stop providing social services in DC if DC passes the same-sex marriage law (which also requires them not to discriminate).  So typical.

There are a lot of things that piss me off about the catholic church, but the worst has to be the church’s attitude toward contraception.

One of the main reasons the church gives for their position on contraception is natural law. As they explain it on the Catholic Answers website, “contraception is wrong because it’s a deliberate violation of the design God built into the human race, often referred to as ‘natural law.’ The natural law purpose of sex is procreation.”

So, by that logic, you might think the church would be against anything unnatural. Yet they aren’t.

Aren’t houses unnatural protection against the elements, an elemental prophylactic of sorts? Yet the pope lives in a house, a rather large one.

Aren’t cars unnatural? Yet, the pope has his own specially designed one.

Isn’t medical care unnatural? Yet the pope sees a doctor. When John Paul was shot they didn’t just let nature take its course.

Tsunamis are natural. Plagues are natural. Dying from poisonous snake bites or peanut allergies is natural. Should we do nothing to protect ourselves? Should we let nature rule no matter what the consequences?

The catholic church apparently thinks so when it comes to sex. If children are brought into this world to starve to death, so be it. If people do not use condoms and die from AIDS, so be it.

Thankfully, despite the catholic church’s (and other anti-abortion religious group’s) position on contraception, most practitioners take a more logical approach. Lets hope they can have some influence.

Today, in his Christmas address, the pope asked for people to work together to solve our problems “in a spirit of authentic solidarity.”

I thought about using this post to rant about someone who would call for authentic solidarity out of one side of his mouth while vilifying large swaths of humanity by talking about the evil dangers of homosexuality out of the other.

I thought about marveling at the shear audacity of someone who can add the accumulation of wealth to the deadly sins that will take you straight to hell, all the while sitting in the midst of thousands of years of accumulated riches.

I thought about a little diatribe on how many human beings have died of aids because they won’t use a condom, as the pope thinks birth control is a sin. Or perhaps on how many women have died because of back alley abortions or because a doctor in Nicaragua suspected a miscarriage might have been an abortion and didn’t want to risk prison.

I thought about recounting the history of Catholicism in the world. I thought about the crusades, the inquisition, forcible conversions, decimation of indigenous culture, appeasement of nazis, priests abusing children and concealment of their crimes…

But then I thought, who gives a damn what the pope thinks? The pope looks like what he is, a decrepit relic.

Catholicism is on the decline all over. In the United States, Catholic numbers have held somewhat steady due to an influx of immigrants from places like Mexico, but native-born Americans are dropping the religion. And with anti-immigrant hysteria and a declining economy keeping immigrants away, that number is bound to decline further.

Spain, once a bastion of Catholicism, is going the way of the rest of Europe and leaving the church behind. Latin America has been hemorrhaging Catholics. The number of nuns and monks in the world is on decline. The number of Catholic priests is on decline. And Catholic school enrollment is down. The drop-off in the United States has been precipitous, causing all sorts of ogeda in the conservative community. In fact, according to the Vatican themselves, Islam has now overtaken Catholicism as the worlds most practiced religion.

So who really cares what the pope thinks. Not even practicing Catholics pay much attention his dictates anymore.

You would think 1,000 years of intolerant rule would be enough, but the Catholic church continues to interfere in matters of state all around the world.

It has come out that it was the Archbishop in San Francisco who requested and received help from the Mormon church to pass California’s Proposition 8 (defining marriage as between a man and a woman). The Mormon church then sent a call out to its members to raise money and donate time to make sure the measure passed.

In Nicaragua, it was a Catholic church led movement that enacted a complete ban on all abortions. The ban, a violation of international law, imposes harsh criminal penalties on doctors who perform abortions and has made the medical community afraid to treat women who have miscarriages or ectopic pregnancies. Within a year, the ban had cost at least 80 women their lives.

The Catholic church tells people who to vote for. They rarely say outright the candidate by name, as that will get them into some hot water. However, they tell their followers to vote based on one issue and one issue only – abortion. If Hitler were against abortion, and his opponent for it, they would say vote for Hitler.

The fact that our current anti-abortion president is responsible for the death of hundreds of thousands in war doesn’t matter. Whether or not the next leader’s policies will help save some of the tens of thousands who die every day of starvation doesn’t matter.

The Catholic church has almost always been on the wrong side of human rights – from the inquisition to appeasement of Hitler to the continuous subjugation of women. And they – the people who brought us an epidemic of horrific and concealed sex abuse – want to dictate the morals of our governments?

How dare they.