I am what you might call a “recovering Catholic.”
Raised in the Catholic faith my whole life, after a recent experience with a priest who ended up getting arrested for statutory rape (no, don’t worry, not with me) and a church hierarchy that is more hypocritical than Snoop Dogg telling kids not to smoke weed, I’ve begun to realize that the Church does not share all of my values. While I have many Catholic friends and idolize President Kennedy, I think it’s about time I found a new “religion”–I believe in God, but as you’ll see, I don’t believe in hypocrisy and lies.
This is what Pope Benedict XVI had to say recently:
The Church “demands that the order of creation be respected,” the pope said Monday, defining “the nature of the human being as man and woman,” according to excerpts released by the Vatican.
…
The Church has as much responsibility to preserve what it sees as man and woman’s God-given roles as it does to protect endangered species, he implied.“The rain forest deserves, yes, our protection,” Benedict said, “But mankind does not deserve it less as a creature.”
There you have it, taking his place among all the other great Benedicts in history…you know, like Benedict Arnold.
So the Church doesn’t like gay people…OK, fine. It’s not my fault that they don’t understand the Bible and I’m not going to launch into an argument with a bunch of old, white-haired men who have gotten used to ruling the world over the past several centuries.
But that brings up another point–men. I love the Pope’s desire to “preserve…man and woman’s God-given roles.” You mean, like, telling women that they can’t become priests? Yessirree, it is December 2008, and the Church has held on to the silly notion that women are not as capable or as intelligent as men for over two millenia because, through some sort of interpretation, “the Bible says so.”
You are so keen on making sure that mankind doesn’t “destroy” itself? How do gays destroy anything? In fact, let’s go over this logically for you, Mr. Pope:
(1) You don’t like abortions. While you’re not going to change their legality, you and I are in agreement here. I’d like to see the number of abortions in this country become the limit as x approaches 0.
(2) Let’s say we encourage women who don’t think they can support a baby to have it anyway, and put it up for adoption. Let’s say that causes the number of foster children to rise.
(3) My goodness Mr. Pope, there already aren’t enough parents for all the foster children in this country and around the world! What are we to do?
(4) A perfectly stable, happy, loving homosexual family comes in and adopts a child…they don’t get a divorce…they are financially secure…problem solved.
My goodness! The world actually makes sense when we quit letting religious leaders make decisions for us!
You say you don’t want humanity to destroy itself, but in my experience, one of the biggest destructors of life in America is the concept of divorce. I’ve seen friends who’ve had their lives shattered because of divorce; families torn apart, never to be the same again. Your church, Mr. Pope, is staunchly against divorce…yet, I don’t see you vehemently opposing it in the media, or helping to introduce legislation against divorce in America. So what this means, I guess, is that I’m blaming you of trying to be popular and sacrificing your principles. Since a majority of Americans divorce, even though it’s against what you believe, that’s somehow perimissible? Even though a bit of misguided interpretation of scripiture causes your church to be against homosexuality, you fight gays tooth and nail, simply because they are in the minority. Is this your new “Crusade,” Mr. Pope?
Listen, Mr. Pope, it’s fine if you don’t want your church to marry homosexuals. That’s fine, I’m sure homosexuals will just go to another church (nevermind the fact that priests have been “sinning” on young boys all across this country for years). But you don’t run a country, you run a church. And as such, it’s time that you got out of the business of trying to tell world leaders what to do. Your church–and all the other churches out there–need to get out of government. This country was established so that you could worship freely, not so that you could rule over others. You do not have a seat at government–that isn’t discriminatory, that is just plain, common sense, secular government.
So, to Pope Benedict XVI: Be a good Christian. Stop the hypocrisy. Follow the one simple rule that God intended all his children to follow: Love thy neighbor. Really, Mr. Pope, because if you don’t do this, so help me, I’ll turn this Pope-mobile around so fast…
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