First off I need to make a distinction. Prayer as meditation is just that — meditation. Prayer asking for intercession is nonsense.

On my way home (ok, if I take the long way) there’s a sign on someone’s front lawn: “Pray to end abortion.” I’m having trouble thinking of something more useless. In fact it’s double-ly useless. Let’s ignore the abortion issue since I don’t want to go there now, let’s concentrate on the “pray” part of things.

Let’s pretend that dude here is actually praying for the end of abortion. What is that really going to accomplish? Nothing. Nothing at all. If you want to do something at least try to do something — write your congress-critter or whatever you want to do. Remember the saying “God helps thous who help themselves.” By just sitting there inert you’re doing nothing.

One step further, putting the sign up front does even less. Is that your way of delegating prayer to someone else? (!)

What the hell, man? Really?

Same thing goes for a lot pf things. Praying for the poor? Give them money or a job; praying does nothing except make you feel better about yourself. It’s your own personal opium. Of you want something done, do it yourself.

Same thing with the box which is the Church. Jesus spoke that God is everywhere. Why must limit yourself to thinking inside the literal and proverbial box? If God is everywhere, go and find God yourself. If he (she?) is in the box — good for you. If God is in the mountains, go there. Plains? The shore? Go where you have the clarity of vision to see the truth the way it is. You don’t need to pray or meditate in the box. (By the way, care you hazard a guess at where the phrase “Jack in the box” came from?)

Again, I want to contrast this with the prayer as meditation. If your mantra is a a prayer, then it’s just a way of clearing your mind and letting you focus on the task at hand. As long as the result becomes concrete action then it’s done some good.

This one is a gimme. There is no excuse for the actions of the Church over the years and how they reacted to the sexual abuse of children in the recent past.

It’s not ignorance, but rather the active role that the Church had in covering up and protecting the priests instead of the churchgoers that need the protection.

A recent speech by the pope was:

Above all I must say that these revelations were a shock for me. They are a great sadness, and it is hard to understand how this perversion of the priestly ministry was possible. The priest, at the moment of ordination, a moment for which he prepared for years, says “yes” to Christ, in order to be his mouth, his hand and to serve with all his being so that the Good Shepherd who loves us, who helps and guides us to truth, may be present in the world. How a man who has said and done this can afterwards fall into such perversions is difficult to understand. It is a great sadness, a great sadness also that Church leadership was not sufficiently vigilant and sufficiently swift and decisive in taking the necessary measures. On account of this we are living a time of penance, humility, renewed sincerity, as I wrote to the Irish Bishops. I feel that we must now be engaged in a time of penance, a time of humility; we must renew and learn again absolute sincerity. In relation to the victims I would like to say that there are three important things. Our first interest must be the victims; how to repair the damage, how to assist these persons in overcoming their trauma, in finding life again, in finding again trust in the message of Christ. Care, commitment in favour of the victims is the first priority, together with material, psychological and spiritual assistance. Secondly there is the problem of those who are guilty. A just penalty must exclude them from all access to young people. We know that this is an illness, that free will does not rule where this illness is present, and that we must protect these persons from themselves and find a way to assist them and to protect them from themselves and exclude them from access to young people. Thirdly there is the question of prevention through education and the selection of candidates to the priesthood. We must be in such a way attentive so as to exclude, according to human possibilities, future cases. Here I would like to thank the British Bishops for their attention, their cooperation both with the See of Peter and with the civil authorities, and for their attention to victims and respect for the law. I have the impression that the British Bishops have been doing and are doing a good job and I am grateful to them.

Bullshit.

Much like the famous Nixon speech “mistakes were made,” it was a much a deflection of blame as anything I’ve heard. At least say you messed up — that the institution is broken and you’ll step and and fix it.

In a different speech he said that he would “pray for the victims.”

Then to say that it’s an illness and it’s not their fault.

I couldn’t give a shit about that. If it’s not their fault then get them away from the kids. If you think that there’s an issue, so something about it, don’t just pray about it. Prayer doesn’t protect the kids. It’s your job to do that.

A of of the victims’ statute of limitation have expired where they live. But the Vatican has its own legal system. Prosecute them yourself.

If I were elected to be pope (yes, it can technically happen *) I’d immediately investigate all the priests that have been accused. If they are deemed to be guilty they would be defrocked. Moreover the name of every preist that had been kicked out would be printed in every church bulletin in the world.

Falling back on the notion that they’ll get it in the end is of no consolation to the victims.

* – If it did happen I would be ordained a deacon, priest, bishop then pope in turn. It’s happened before, but obviously not with me.

Here’s a quick one — this is more aimed at a difference between Catholicism and most other forms of Christianity: the baptism of infants. This strikes at neither evil nor dogma, but I feel it is a personal thing for me.

The part that rubs me the wrong way is simple: once you are baptized, the Church deems you are “permanently marked.” Much like a tattoo, but invisible.

Unlike a tattoo, you can’t remove this mark in their eyes.

But unlike a tattoo, if you had the sacrament of baptism as an infant you had no say in the matter.

Now let’s take a step back for a moment. The rationale behind this is that you must be baptized to get into heaven. Until a priest dunks you in water you, having not yet sinned, are not allowed in. Of course the baptized murderer who repented on his deathbed can.

Through the years it was decided that since a human didn’t symbolically wash away sin that God would hate them. This was a good way of getting postumas indulgences in the past of course — expensive work forgiving sins after you’ve already died it was. All the poor babies just sat outside of heaven in the proverbial limbo.

Thankfully the Church recently realized their folly. In 1992 the Vatican said that God himself is not bound by sacraments. (Finally, someone admitted to the fact that man does not in fact control God! *) As recently as 2007 — just 3 1/2 years ago — they reiterated that babies have a chance to get in. Of course if you believe that your god is a merciful god then you probably reached that same conclusion without the help of the folks in Rome.

Now this is all well and good. But what if you want to be unbaptized? What if you want to cut the cerimonial ribbon that ties you the Church? The Church gives no way of getting out of it’s cult.

And that, my friends, is the problem.

Most other faiths give you until you know what’s going on before you get in for good. The Amish even have Rumspringa to let their hair down to see what it’s like on the outside. The Catholics want to get you in ASAP since you can’t say a thing about it at the time.

The likelihood that they’ll change their tune is slim though. Sacraments are expensive business don’t you know.

* – A counterargument is that god is always controlled by man, for he is its creator.

Switching gears from the mundane trappings of denying dogma, let’s delve into why I want to distance myself from the Church. Some of this is precisely why I want the Church to know I’m gone. My hope is that others follow and send a message to the papacy that this is not to be tolerated. Or maybe a bunch of priests will be all “holy” together while the world moves on. Europe already has.

This installment is directed at the Church’s involvement with the death of millions of innocent victims over time. I’m consciously ignoring wrongs from the long past such as the crusades. Today I am focusing on the past century.

Let’s look at the present: AIDS in Africa. Pope John Paul II said in no uncertain terms — against the wishes of the bishops who were advising him — that the use condoms is a sin. This set the tone for the mass spread of AIDS in sub-saharan Africa. Catholicism has grown from 1.9 million adherents in 1900 to 139 million in 2000. Most people there do not have adequate access to education — of course the Church is more that willing to step in and promulgate its own agenda.

The Church teaching that use of condoms is a sin, and then going against scientific fact stating that they don’t provide protection is sentencing millions of people to death due to their own ignorance, and their trust in your promise of protection. that you ensured they had. To say that a husband, who is HIV positive,must not use a condom with his wife is nothing more than a death sentence for the wife. What type of cold institution can promote such things? Even if you don’t believe that it’s OK show some simple human compassion and trust you have a forgiving god.

Not doing anything when you can is wrong.

Like during the holocaust.

Despite throngs of heroic Catholics, both ordained and lay, who bravely defended the Jews during World War II, the Vatican, headed by Pope Pius XII, did nothing to prevent the extermination of millions of Jews. My only question is: “why?”

When the founder of your own religion helped the lowest of his society, the beggars and prostitutes, why could you not help your fellow man? Just because the Jews killed Jesus? Remember that it was only in 2000 that an official mea culpa was uttered.

Not doing anything when you can is wrong.

This is one many reasons I cannot consider myself Catholic.

Let’s start off with a simple dogma issue:

We teach and define that it is a dogma Divinely revealed that the Roman pontiff when he speaks ex cathedra, that is when in discharge of the office of pastor and doctor of all Christians, by virtue of his supreme Apostolic authority, he defines a doctrine regarding faith or morals to be held by the universal Church, by the Divine assistance promised to him in Blessed Peter, is possessed of that infallibility with which the Divine Redeemer willed that his Church should be endowed in defining doctrine regarding faith or morals, and that therefore such definitions of the Roman pontiff are of themselves and not from the consent of the Church irreformable.So then, should anyone, which God forbid, have the temerity to reject this definition of ours: let him be anathema. (see Denziger §1839).

— Vatican Council, Sess. IV , Const. de Ecclesiâ Christi, Chapter iv

So was written back in 1870 during the First Vatican Council.

Proponents of papal infallibility point to scripture saying that Peter is the rock and so on and so forth. The way the Church equates a hand-picked successor to an elected official highlights the lunacy of the situation. An elected official that I must add is influenced by society and the politics of the time. I for one do not believe that a human being can ever be perfect enough to be infallible regardless of context. I will make a counter argument against this bit of dogma, hence making me anathema.

Let us begin with a few points:

• Man has free will
• Man can not control God

First off, let us examine how a pope gets that status. It is by election. By people — fellow clergymen. When the white smoke comes up at St. Peter’s there is a new pope. In fact the ballots themselves make up the smoke itself. In voting there is discord. There is disagreement. Eventually someone comes out on top. But to imply that the vote of the people can force the hand of God to impart this special power to that man is blasphemous if anything. The argument against is that the Holy Spirit guides the process. But the process of elevating a man to pope to have this power must force God to comply with the people.

Likewise to consider that even if one believes in the holy spirit that its message can unambiguously be heard — unambiguous to the level of infallibility is also ludicrous simply because man has free will. To assume otherwise implies that God is in control of the man claiming the power.

A good example of such silliness is the proclamation by Pope Pius XII that Mary was taken — body and soul to heaven. The notion that the body of a person can be removed from the universe is in direct violation of all sorts of physical laws, preservation of mass and energy the primary one. (Either she’s still somewhere in the Milky Way zooming away at near the speed of light toward “heaven” or she vaporized in a flash of energy equivalent to roughly a gigaton of TNT (assuming 120 pounds for her weight she contains ~ 4.9 * 10^18 J of energy)) Keep in mind that this was declared in 1950 — it was not dogma before then. Prior to that point one didn’t have to believe this.

Similar is the immaculate conception dogma brought about in 1854. Mary — a mortal and normal woman of her time — contained two X chromosomes. Any Y chromosome would have rendered her more male-like than female like. The fact that she bore a son — likewise normal and mortal — implies the spontaneous creation of a Y chromosome out of nothing. From what? All to prove somehow that sex is bad. This is before Watson and Crick et. al. showed us how this stuff really worked. (Ok, if the Holy Spirit wanted to create a sperm out of pure energy it would take the equivalent amount of energy would be about 10kgs of TNT assuming it weighs a microgram)

Tomorrow I’ll delve into a more concrete reason why I don’t want to be associated with the Church, but I wanted to get some simple dogmatic disagreements out first. It’s the easiest form of heresy in my opinion.