Pope Paves way to beatification of John Paul II
I admit it, I fall completely into the ex-Catholic atheist-convert stereotype. Catholics may not be any more wacky than any other religious kooks but for some reason no one pisses me off quite like Catholics do, too many years under the tyrannical reign of Sister Charlotte Anne and Don Settimio perhaps. Mormons, Muslims, Jews, Baptists, Buddhists, Hindus, you name it, as far as I can tell they're all at best harmlessly delusional, at worst dangerously so. I feel safe throwing them all in the same box because they have one major thing in common: they encourage the outsourcing of one's morality and basing one's sense of right and wrong not on one's own measured and thoughtful consideration of what's at stake but rather on the ideas expoused in ancient texts whose origins and authority are suspicious at best. But I digress, that's a matter for another day.
Still, Catholics may be special. They have been around for awhile so the number of atrocities they have to be ashamed of are all but innumerable and yet one must on some level marvel at their staying power, their ability to reinvent themselves, reinterpret doctrines, etc etc. After forcing him to recant the heliocentric theory of the cosmos, the Church cleared Galileo of any wrongdoing and reversed the edict of Inquisition on him, in 1992 a year when everyone had already realized that - although my esteemed compatriot may have been on the right track - neither the earth NOR the sun were the center of the universe! (This sort of begs the question: where was Galileo's soul in the interim between his death in 1642 and the reversal of his fortune in 1992, did he wait in the anti-room of heaven, isn't that called purgatory? I may have to consult Dante for the specifics.) If I'm not mistaken the previous Pope, a Pole by the name of Wojtyla, in the year 2000 had the good sense to apologize for the horrible acts committed against many of the Church's victims throughout the centuries, including against the native peoples of Latin America, women, Jews. He referred to these bone- chilling acts as "the use of violence some used in the service of truth." I've given more sincere apologies to furniture I've bumped into. As for the Church's strange love affair with fascism and national socialism, perhaps this new German Pope will get to apologizing for that before his black smoke comes rushing out of Saint Peter's.
Catholics may sort all their ideas out eventually, but when, and at what cost? Perhaps in a couple of years they will actually let (or if I may dream, even encourage that) child raping priests be prosecuted to the full extent of the law without protecting them in any way but how many more kids will be molested by these monsters before that happens?
Perhaps Ratzinger will get around to that but he's a busy man and first things first, first he should beatify Wojtyla, Wojtyla whose pet cause was campaigning against the use of condoms and so condemned vast numbers of people in Africa to death by AIDS and vast numbers of children on the same continent to life as sick abandoned orphans. He actually equated condom use with abortion! Come on! While I believe in abortion rights, I think every abortion represents a severe tragedy and I would hate to ever be put in a position to have to make such a difficult decision, this is why I am a firm believer in the almighty condom! Maybe eventually the Church will concede that even if some weirdo God has a divine hard-on for sex only for baby-making (it seems strange that He would have made the activity so enjoyable if this were its sole intended purpose), He probably has more of a hard-on for His beloved creatures not perishing senselessly of an unspeakably hideous disease and one, it bears mentioning, which we know how to avoid contracting! But before the Church gets around to making that concession how many more people will die?
Don't get me wrong, Catholics have some geat things going for them: pretty churches, gorgeous religious paintings, bloody crucifixes and all that other gory shit that looked great in Madonna's Like a Prayer video. No one loves sitting in churches more than I, I used to hang out in the Vatican when I was living in Rome and read (Bukowski, a little private joke I found endlessly entertaining). I'm torn because I was raised Catholic, I love the aesthetics of the Church but unlike most Italians I cannot even justify some purely formal Catholicism, the Catholicism of Christmas, Easter, Weddings and Funerals. The Church is NOT harmless, it hasn't been historically by its own admission (like Christopher Hitchens said, "Better late than never.") but what most Catholics refuse to admit is that it still isn't. And though ideally I'd much rather not be bothered with all this God mumbo jumbo at all, and would prefer it if these beautiful buildings were preserved as historical landmarks and museums of an at-once ugly and beautiful past, still, I'd feel better about entering the "House of the Lord" if His ambassador, Ratzinger put exposing child rapists higher on his list of priorities than beatifying a de-facto spreader of Aids.
I admit it, I fall completely into the ex-Catholic atheist-convert stereotype. Catholics may not be any more wacky than any other religious kooks but for some reason no one pisses me off quite like Catholics do, too many years under the tyrannical reign of Sister Charlotte Anne and Don Settimio perhaps. Mormons, Muslims, Jews, Baptists, Buddhists, Hindus, you name it, as far as I can tell they're all at best harmlessly delusional, at worst dangerously so. I feel safe throwing them all in the same box because they have one major thing in common: they encourage the outsourcing of one's morality and basing one's sense of right and wrong not on one's own measured and thoughtful consideration of what's at stake but rather on the ideas expoused in ancient texts whose origins and authority are suspicious at best. But I digress, that's a matter for another day.
Still, Catholics may be special. They have been around for awhile so the number of atrocities they have to be ashamed of are all but innumerable and yet one must on some level marvel at their staying power, their ability to reinvent themselves, reinterpret doctrines, etc etc. After forcing him to recant the heliocentric theory of the cosmos, the Church cleared Galileo of any wrongdoing and reversed the edict of Inquisition on him, in 1992 a year when everyone had already realized that - although my esteemed compatriot may have been on the right track - neither the earth NOR the sun were the center of the universe! (This sort of begs the question: where was Galileo's soul in the interim between his death in 1642 and the reversal of his fortune in 1992, did he wait in the anti-room of heaven, isn't that called purgatory? I may have to consult Dante for the specifics.) If I'm not mistaken the previous Pope, a Pole by the name of Wojtyla, in the year 2000 had the good sense to apologize for the horrible acts committed against many of the Church's victims throughout the centuries, including against the native peoples of Latin America, women, Jews. He referred to these bone- chilling acts as "the use of violence some used in the service of truth." I've given more sincere apologies to furniture I've bumped into. As for the Church's strange love affair with fascism and national socialism, perhaps this new German Pope will get to apologizing for that before his black smoke comes rushing out of Saint Peter's.
Catholics may sort all their ideas out eventually, but when, and at what cost? Perhaps in a couple of years they will actually let (or if I may dream, even encourage that) child raping priests be prosecuted to the full extent of the law without protecting them in any way but how many more kids will be molested by these monsters before that happens?
Perhaps Ratzinger will get around to that but he's a busy man and first things first, first he should beatify Wojtyla, Wojtyla whose pet cause was campaigning against the use of condoms and so condemned vast numbers of people in Africa to death by AIDS and vast numbers of children on the same continent to life as sick abandoned orphans. He actually equated condom use with abortion! Come on! While I believe in abortion rights, I think every abortion represents a severe tragedy and I would hate to ever be put in a position to have to make such a difficult decision, this is why I am a firm believer in the almighty condom! Maybe eventually the Church will concede that even if some weirdo God has a divine hard-on for sex only for baby-making (it seems strange that He would have made the activity so enjoyable if this were its sole intended purpose), He probably has more of a hard-on for His beloved creatures not perishing senselessly of an unspeakably hideous disease and one, it bears mentioning, which we know how to avoid contracting! But before the Church gets around to making that concession how many more people will die?
Don't get me wrong, Catholics have some geat things going for them: pretty churches, gorgeous religious paintings, bloody crucifixes and all that other gory shit that looked great in Madonna's Like a Prayer video. No one loves sitting in churches more than I, I used to hang out in the Vatican when I was living in Rome and read (Bukowski, a little private joke I found endlessly entertaining). I'm torn because I was raised Catholic, I love the aesthetics of the Church but unlike most Italians I cannot even justify some purely formal Catholicism, the Catholicism of Christmas, Easter, Weddings and Funerals. The Church is NOT harmless, it hasn't been historically by its own admission (like Christopher Hitchens said, "Better late than never.") but what most Catholics refuse to admit is that it still isn't. And though ideally I'd much rather not be bothered with all this God mumbo jumbo at all, and would prefer it if these beautiful buildings were preserved as historical landmarks and museums of an at-once ugly and beautiful past, still, I'd feel better about entering the "House of the Lord" if His ambassador, Ratzinger put exposing child rapists higher on his list of priorities than beatifying a de-facto spreader of Aids.
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