Catholic Church is Full of Insane Annoying People

Obviously, I state the above due to some form of involvement with the church. It's difficult to state that level of rancor when you are not personally involved in some way with the subject. I don't really feel I was raised catholic, but somewhere along the way I learned the mass, went to sunday school, participated in the traditional rituals and had nuns scream at me and watched them hit and emotionally scar others. And I'm pretty young. And I didn't go to catholic school.

I never believed any of it. I realized when I was very young, about 4, that it couldn't possibly be true. That it made absolutely no sense whatsoever. Furthermore, as I grew older, I realized that I couldn't possibly care less if it were true as it had no impact on my life and what difference did it make whether I spent eternity burning in flames and being tortured or in heaven dancing around with angels? As anyone who has been under continuous stress and strain can tell you, at a certain point you adapt and it is what it is and you move on and you won't even recognize it as a difficult period unless you go through it again. So if you're stuck in hell for eternity, who cares? After a while, heaven and hell are essentially the same (part of why life is a bore, but for another time).

Part of the confirmation ceremony, the one that supposedly brings into the church as an adult, i.e., of your own right, will and volition (in like 8th or 9th grade - as if you have any idea what you're doing at that age - what a ridiculous anachronism that we treat that as the advent of adulthood) requires that you state that you renounce the devil, something along those lines. There are a series of statements about your involvement in the church and your acceptance of church beliefs and in response you are meant to say "I do" and I simply said "I don't," to negate any legitimate effect the ceremony might have. I'm not sure if I did it consistently or just for the, I renounce the devil's teaching-type one (i had a friend around that age who was a satanist and it seemed equally valid so I couldn't legitimately state that I would forever renounce satan, although of course, I only did it to assure that if this were some sort of legitimate ceremony, I would have failed to be swept into the flock).

I never attended church after that date, apart from being dragged there for relatives' religious affairs, and can't imagine willingly going apart from an interest in seeing different churches when you travel, like visiting museums. But I lacked a lot of the anger and antipathy for the church that so many older people I knew expressed and I wondered why. Today, the vatican clarified and know I actually strongly dislike the church - see, U.S. Nuns Facing Vatican Scrutiny.

In my opinion, at best, nuns are weird and creepy. They're a little too new age and they're just the type of people that give me an icky feeling on the inside when I'm around them - at worst, they're those crazy self-absorbed virgins who hit and scream and demean others. Either way, I have no interest in them, no respect for them, and absolutely deplore the fact that they exist in my society. However, given that apparently of late they're given to doing good in society, great. Let them do it. Who cares.

And I'll admit that people who can step back (or fall within their religious beliefs) and say the church can do what it wants, it's a religion etc. etc. have a point in terms of freedom of association. But let's just pick one little piece from the story - the church wants to make sure (i.e., doesn't believe) that it's interdictions against the support of (or rather, failure to attack) homosexuality are being upheld.

So yes, they're right. They aren't being upheld. I know this for a fact b.c. I've been in multiple churches across the country hearing priests rail against the attacks on homosexuality. Because it's offensive and gross and wrong to tell people they can't do something that they feel is entirely right and natural, not to mention, incredibly ironic considering the penchant of male american priests to engage in homosexual acts (total side-bar, but priests are totally creepy or really tight-ass regardless of whether they've got something on the side, which is perhaps a different study). The rub being that while the catholic church has its own little pseudo-city-state in Italy and doesn't have to pay taxes here, doesn't mean that they're allowed to discriminate against people based on sexual orientation.

Response: it's a private entity, you aren't forced to take part, etc. At what point does a private entity take on the responsibilities of everyone else in the nation or even a public entity? Here's a great one: so in Connecticut, they are requiring businesses to go along with the same-sex marriage act. The catholic church has gotten into the act, claiming that "florists," for example, should have a right to object to providing services for a same-sex marriage. I love when people do stuff like this and the catholic church has it down to a t. Basically, what you do is point out to those in power, government officials, the populace at large, just how radical you are and how wildly out of touch you are and it gives governmental entities and representatives free reign to absolutely annihilate anything you send forward. Florists can refuse to offer services to someone because that person is gay? Are you kidding me? Of course you can't do that.

It doesn't matter what your religious beliefs are, just like it doesn't matter that you personally don't believe that birth control should be used. Great, I couldn't care less, hand over my pills. Do pharmacists also get to object to other medications that you take? What if they feel that you've had enough pain killers, do they get to decide not to give you anymore? Or what if they personally think antidepressants are wrong, like the person in question is a scientologist - can they refuse to give you your prescription? No, they can't. So why would anyone think they could object to birth control or the morning after pill? It's absurd, illogical and wrong. And again, discriminatory.

Point being that in the United States we have laws that trump religion. As another example, some mormons believe that their religion requires them to take on multiple wives, often under the legal age of consent - two illegal matters, both of which have been prosecuted. And those laws should FULLY trump religion, including its ability to engage in and promote discriminatory practices that result in illegal and often violent acts against minority groups. Essentially, what the church does, when it follows vatican rhetoric, is to engage in hate speech. Pure and simple. And they should really be sent to jail, en masse, every time one of these things comes up. Children simply don't grow up hating people and disrcriminating against them. Someone teaches them this behavior and not at all infrequently, what would otherwise be an uneducated bias against people who are "different" becomes socially-acceptable and passed on through generations when sanctioned by a church, leading to the massive social disorder we witness today.

But back to the nuns, I think it is a huge blessing for the church and for society that you don't have a bunch of people sitting around in a convent figuring out the best way to humiliate youngsters or otherwise terrorize adults. It's a sick notion that that's ameliorative. And for those of you for whom it was or would be, you need to grow up and take responsibility for yourself. Why do all these people rely on others to tell them to do what they already know? My best answer is rather simple and is that men tend to respond better to these extreme treatments than women and men generally ran these absurd organizations and just did things in line with how they think. They're immature and as a result, frequently do not take responsbility for their actions and respond very well when someone yells at them and engages in corporal punishment if they forget their homework. It's the type of thing where you hear a man recounting the story and saying, I never forgot my homework again. If some nun/teacher did that to me, well to be honest I'd probably destroy that person's life, but I can assure you that I would regularly not turn my homework in on time and would completely disrupt the class and refuse to take part in any aspect of it. And I think it's because I'm a girl. I don't respect people who disrespect me. Period.

The vatican's involvement just shows, again, that this group of supercilious white men running a "religion" need to be thrown on their asses. Enough is enough with this tyranny and the return of the inquisition to attack females who don't follow their homophobic, gender-biased and otherwise dated notions of how people should behave. Just imagine you had a business that would not promote women to manager positions because they were women. Pretty straight-forward case. But if you're a "religion," you're free to do it. Does that make any sense at all? No, absolutely not. I could call myself a religion, call myself a saviour, take a book and claim god had spoken to me and I'd written it all down in this book. People have done it many many times. How many times do you honestly think that god speaks to people and gives them contradictory messages? Probably never. And why in the world do you think that you're part of the one group that actually got a message and got it right? Doesn't that seem extremely unlikely?

A final example, scientology. Scientology is not treated as a religion for federal income tax purposes in the united states (this was true in a number of other countries before the U.S. took this position and indeed, in some places is officially considered a cult and in in others, illegal). So who gets to decide? And why do religions get tax exemptions anyways? Couldn't I just do whatever I wanted to, link myself up with a church, and never have to pay taxes because in some way, it would be related to their church income? Yes, of course I could. That's what attracts many people to a religious vocation, the freedom to do whatever you want without economic burden or obligation to society. That's cute and nice, but explain to me again why as a taxpayer I should underwrite the ability of racist, homophobic, misogynistic and all-around nutcases to engage in their work, when they aren't doing the same for me?

I say, end the religious exemption for taxes and/or force the catholic church to engage in hiring and policy practices that mirror those for other publicly-supported organizations. It's completely outrageous and I honestly do think there is a case that it is unconstitutional, to say that religious organizations are free to disriminate when they are effectively getting taxpayer money by virtue of not having to pay taxes. By taking the exemption they make themselves subject to federal law and therefore, should have to abide by those laws or lose their exemption. At the least. I would prosecute but I'm not a district attorney or someone else who could engage in that behavior.