The Mockery of Religion

The Catholic Church has just become so easy to mock over the past decade. The latest, if true, is the firing of a teacher at a Catholic school because she used in vitro fertilization. The first thought is ...HUH?? But remember the egg placed in vitro came from someone who rid themselves of the living being. Thus, the Church objection. And I'm still going ....HUH???


Doesn't the Church hierarchy have far more important social issues to condemn and comment on like the wars using drones to kill Muslims with impunity? Or coming out against the corruption of the banks and Wall Street that has left billions impoverished or more impoverished. Can't the bishops and cardinals bring their trumpeting clarions of moral superiority to bear on the issue of hunger around the world. Hunger and starvation that could be stopped but the alleged "first world countries" continue spending huge amounts to carry out the destruction of other humans.

War is profitable and the Church leadership has sat on its collective rosaries and praying hands when it comes to clearly and specifically condemning the current unending wars. Of course they can't. The boys of the Church are so feverishly attacking gays and attempting to subjugate women by their dogmatic intractability they just don't have time to look at their consciences for these other issues. They and all the other fanatics calling themselves the "true Christians" will quote the Bible, show the passages in the Bible that justify their insanity and feel this demonstrates the "WORD" of the only "living" God. And, they will look at their checkbooks and fear retribution should they take an upopular stand.

I don't come to mock the Church easily. Not so long ago I sought spiritual comfort and found it in the Church. Right parish and right priests for that time. They could deal with disagreement about the catechism. But by 2003, I knew I couldn't stay. Wars had already started and all the feelings of the atrocities I witnessed and took part in flooded me. I remembered the killing and sense of lost humanity, lost morality. I remembered thinking why would God allow these things to happen?

And, of course, the Church had the answer to that question. All would be forgiven in times of war protecting freedom and democracy. And every week there would be a call to pray for the "brave men and women in the military protecting all of us". I literally had to challenge the parish deacons to ask the laity pray for all the innocent victims of the wars. They did for a week or so but fell right back into old habits of only remembering our "peacekeepers".

I harbor no ill will toward those who are part of the military and are duped into fighting for an immoral system. There has been a huge propaganda onslaught attempting to make the wars moral. At one time in another war I was duped. I listened to the propaganda and drank the patriotic kool-aid. And rarely did the Church speak out against the slaughter in Vietnam and neigboring countries.

I'm tired of the kool-aid of the Church and this government. If this is what it means to believe in the alleged caring God, then I truly must be an athiest. If this is what patriotism calls for then patriotism is just another false concept of a nation's government rotten to the core.

The overt hypocrisy of Church and nation has made it easy to mock both.