If you’re Catholic, please don’t take offense to the headline here. I am not anti-Catholics. Hell, I grew up surrounded by Catholics. A family that helped raise me, the Garganos, lived two houses away on Emerald Lane. They were wonderful people; devout Catholics. So, again, this is not again the worshipers, per se.
The church itself, however, is a joke.
A big, fat, pathetic, sad joke.
If you haven’t, do yourself a favor and read Laurie Goodstein and David M. Halbfinger’s riveting piece from today’s New York Times, titled, Amid Sexual Abuse Scandal, An Office That Failed to Act. The piece is an absolutely descimating blow to the Catholic Church and its current leader, Pope Benedict XVI; a recapping of the sex scandals but, more important, a look into why they happened, why they happened so frequently, why they went on (and still go on) for so long and why both Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict did almost nothing to stop the evilness from taking place.
It’s funny—even though I’m Jewish, I always sort of viewed the Church as this untouchable, holier-than-holy institution that cared for the poor, fed the hungry, etc … etc. Man, was I naive. The Church is, to be blunt, a machine. One that uses faith to grip parishoners around the neck until they are bled of both money and feistiness. Why has the Church never fully admitted to/tried to fix their wrongs? Easy—because admitting wrong shows humanity, and showing humanity shows frailty, and if you show frailty, how can you lord over the lives of ordinary people? Or, in other words, behind the stained glass and the crisp gowns and the majestic choirs and the Christmas Eve spectacular is, well, a dude. Lots of dudes. And they burp and fart and pick their noses and, at their absolute worst, molest little boys. They are expected to be Christ-like, yet it is an unattainable goal. So, in falling short, they fall waaaaay short. The whole lot of ’em.
And that’s the Catholic Church. Which is OK, because it’s finally being exposed for what it is. Which means, I hope, that soon enough people will start leaving. Stop going. Embracing their love of God and, perhaps, love of Jesus without falling under the evil spell of the wicked men of Catholicism.
Amen.
