Why Roman Catholic priests hate gay sex

I always wondered why the Roman Catholic church hates gays. We're just people who are trying to live our lives according to the rules we were born with. So where does this intense animosity come from?

Yesterday, I got a clue when I read a post by PZ Myers at Pharyngula. It's about the church's insane view of sexual relations between married people:

Church laws teach that spouses must fight against or quiet libidinal pleasure when they have relations or else they commit a fault for seeking to enjoy the libidinal pleasure. In Her laws and practices the Church has condemned the belief that spouses can have relations for lustful pleasure and not commit any fault or sin. The March 4, 1679 Holy Office decree on the errors of various moral subjects condemns spouses who have relations for libidinal pleasure. Canon Law 1013 teaches that the secondary motive for the marital act is mutual aid but does not mention mutual love or indulging in libidinal/lustful pleasure. Pope Pius XI’s Enyclical Casti Connubii’s teaching on the quieting of concupiscence rules out seeking to enjoy libidinal pleasure. He teaches that the purpose of marriage is the procreation and rearing of children and that the secondary purpose is companionship and friendship through the struggle of life. He also says couples should pray in order for God to help them conquer temptations. The Church Fathers are unanimous on the necessity to fight against lustful pleasure during intercourse. The Church Fathers teach that spouses sin when they have relations for lustful pleasure.

Can you believe that? Even married people aren't allowed to enjoy sex! They have to fight against it, lest they sin. How ill is that? You know, as I read this sickening tripe, I remembered distant Catholic lessons learned in my childhood. I'd forgotten they were this crazy but it's all coming back now.

This explains why they hate gays and lesbians and transgender people with such ferocity, and fight gay marriage with verbal howitzers. Here it is in a nutshell:

Our sex is all about the fun. It's literally the reason why we have sex: to enjoy it. Wow, what incredible sinners we must be. Jeebus.

With this in mind, I can finally understand the outlandishly stupid argument priests always make when gay marriage comes up: it can't produce babies, so it's wrong. In light of the insanely ill position of the church, highlighted above, it finally makes a lick or two of sense (in their addled brains, anyway). If even married people are not allowed to enjoy sex, and it has to be only about making babies, then gay marriage truly is outside the tent.

So that's why they say such stupid things about gays and marriage! I finally understand. Their argument is as stupid as it ever was, but now I see the tattered strands of their warped logic. Oy. What an ill church!

Bruni and Dowd for your Sunday

In the NY Times today, both Frank Bruni and Maureen Dowd have excellent columns about the Pope and Roman Catholicism. It's a Mother's Day extravaganza. Since the Times keeps its stories behind a paywall, I'm providing readers with free links to both. Here you go.

Bruni says:

Those matters take center stage in an expanded employment contract that the Archdiocese of Cincinnati is forcing on more than 2,000 teachers, some of whom are refusing to sign it. In what the document does and doesn’t spell out, it sends the tired message that virtue resides in whom you share your bed with and how you do or don’t procreate.

And Dowd says:

The cool pope suddenly doesn’t seem so cool, allowing Rome’s grand inquisitors to torque up the derogation this Mother’s Day of the American sisters who have mothered so many — even as an endless parade of ghoulish priests were shielded as they defiled vulnerable kids in their care.

Both columns are terrific. What are you waiting for? Go read them.

Evil done in the church's name

NOTE: updated below

From this morning's NY Times:

MEXICO CITY — An ill Salvadoran woman who had asked the courts for — and been denied — an abortion during a high-risk pregnancy delivered her 27-week-old fetus by Caesarean section on Monday...

The A.P. reported that Beatriz, who has asked that her last name be withheld to protect her identity, was recovering in the hospital and that her baby daughter was born without a brain. 

Because the country is Roman Catholic, the mother almost died for the sake of a baby that couldn't possibly have a life of its own.

This is Roman Catholicism in a nutshell: the life of a woman is not as important as a baby without a brain. You don't need any further instruction in the Catholic religion.

UPDATE: The baby died five hours later. They risked a woman's life to "save" this mindless creature. Catholics have such a tight handle on morality. One wonders how they do it.

Belief in god makes people fearful

I know someone who lives in fear. Although he professes a belief in the Christian god, he worries that after death he will remain in his body, rotting away slowly while remaining aware of the process. This is where religion brought him.

You think this is an odd belief? It's not. The thing about Roman Catholics (that's his variety of Christianity) is that each of them "believes" in virtually nothing. It's very mushy, this set of beliefs. If you take ten Catholics and ask them about their faith, you'll get ten different answers -- none of which are compatible with the others.

That's because the god idea is so vague. Is he a good god? They hope so but the bible reveals a terrible god at times, so they're not sure. Are they themselves good enough to make it into heaven? Again, they don't know. It's even possible that they'll suffer for all eternity in an unending fire. They have no clue.

And what is this heaven that (hopefully) lies in their future? Again, they don't know. It may mean they kneel in a church for all eternity, looking at this god fellow and trying to worship him (whatever that might mean).

I'll say it again: they really don't know. Christianity is amorphous. It has no definite shape. Fear, hope, terror, joy, justice, punishment -- all these components come into play but there is no one to tell them what's right and true. Because no one knows. And so the fears of the faithful grow.

Atheists have no such fears. There is no reason to fear death, and certainly there is no reason to fear an afterlife that will never come your way. The time after you die will be exactly like the time before you were born. You didn't hate that pre-life period, did you? So you have nothing to worry about after you're gone. Atheism. It just makes sense.

I have one question for the church

Cardinal Timothy Dolan's handling of the child sex abuse scandal that rocked the Catholic Church will soon be public...

All of the documents relate to the alleged sexual abuse of children by clergy in Milwaukee.

"I think the Catholic Church has learned a very painful lesson on what not to do in terms of dealing with sexual abuse," said Joseph Zwilling, spokesperson for the Archdiocese of New York.

Yes, the church learned a painful lesson -- not the kids but the church. As usual with such remarks, there is no grasp of the tremendous harm done to children by priests. It's all about the church and its mad game of hiding sexual abuse under the rug.

So here's my question, Zwilling:

Why is it that the Roman Catholic church, sole arbiter of Christian virtue and morals, had (and has) no clue that the abused children are the important end of the sexual abuse equation? Why, when the church got wind of the rampant sexual abuse of children by priests, did the church not immediately report the crimes to the police and try to help the children? And why are they still not trying to help the children?

That's the big question and the church has no answer, none at all. And they never will. This church knows nothing about moral behavior. It is a cesspool of evil. You only have to view Zwilling's final quote in the linked story, to understand this:

The sexual abuse of minors, Zwilling said, is a societal problem not just confined to the church.

They still don't understand what they've done. It's amazing and mind-boggling. There isn't a shred of morality in this church.

The church of sex

Last night while watching the local (NYC) news, I heard a righteous rant. The station has a fairly rightwing guy who opines late in the show (along with a great leftwing funny guy, so you don't mind it so much). Anyway, he chose the Vatican as his sparring partner last night.

What he said was why is my church totally focused on sex? What happened to god and religion? Today's Roman Catholic church is just about opposing contraception, belittling gay couples, fighting against abortion and raping little kids when no one is looking. He was aghast and hoped the new pope would return the religion's focus to, you know, religion.

It was a great rant because it made sense and was easy to understand. The Roman Catholic church is all about sex -- which isn't allowed for priests (right!), single people and teh gays. The only thing priests do anymore is rant about everyone else's sex lives (while refusing to talk about the sex lives of priests). How did this come to pass? When exactly did the Vatican turn Roman Catholicism into the church of sex? And lastly and most importantly, why?

I went to a Catholic high school in the 1960s and even did a semester at a Catholic college. And I assure you no one, including the priests and brothers, was focused on this stuff. This is a new, sick addiction for the church -- and it needs to move on. Somehow, some way, the church must learn that people have a right to govern their own sex lives. And after the priests shut up about sex, if they have something to say about, you know, religion, they should let us know. Until then, the church of sex should be shunned.

Taking down the Catholic mafia

In that den of sin, the Archdiocese of Los Angeles (AKA L.A. Child Sex Ring), corrective action has been taken. Hopefully this is the beginning of a process that will result in the jailing of multiple priests.

Cardinal Roger M. Mahony, who retired less than two years ago as the leader of the nation’s largest Roman Catholic archdiocese, was removed from all public duties by his successor, Archbishop José H. Gomez, as the church complied with a court order to release thousands of pages of internal documents that show how the cardinal shielded priests who sexually abused children.  

He's not in jail yet but he soon will be if the authorities do their job. The church also took down his capo, Bishop Curry. I especially liked this bit:

Both Cardinal Mahony and Bishop Curry...have said that they were naïve at the time about the...impact on victims. 

Could the fact that they were "naive" about the "impact" on children who were raped by priests have something to do with the total absence of moral values in Catholicism? Ya think?

It's good to see one or two priests get sacked and/or jailed. But the number should be in the thousands. And these two should be jailed immediately.

The "God is Dead" guy is dead

I came across an obituary this morning:

Theologian William Hamilton, a member of the Death of God movement of the 1960s that reached its peak with a Time Magazine cover story, has died in Portland, Ore. He was 87.

I remember that Time Magazine cover. The issue came out when I was a senior at the odious Archbishop Molloy High School in brain-dead Queens. That very morning, the Marist Brothers who taught us rushed into our classrooms, holding the issue up and pointing at it as if it was a picture of the devil himself.

They had a stern message for the students: "Tell your parent to cancel their subscriptions to Time magazine immediately!" It was an ultimatum, not an option. We were compelled by the lord jeebus to do this.

I was 15 or 16 at the time and I remember thinking, "What dimwits! Like people can't say things in magazines unless they comport with your illusions." I was already an outspoken atheist (including in religion class, much to the Brothers' consternation). I guess this was the first wingnut thing I observed up close: the inability of these clerics to read something without blowing up. Apparently the whole world had to cowtow to Roman Catholics. Sounds like today's Muslims, doesn't it? I mean, okay, they didn't incite us to riot. But there was no room for non-Catholic opinions in the world. This was made clear to us.

It was a seminal moment for me. I always thought the school was run by nitwits, but now I had confirmation. Thanks, Marist Brothers, for helping me to see Catholicism as the authoritarian, narrow-minded cult that it really is.

Funny stuff from the rightwing Catholic church

 I roared with laughter as I read this story in the LA Times this morning. Let's dive right in.

Led by the indomitable Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York, the bishops are arriving in Atlanta for their annual spring meeting this week determined to throw the spotlight on what they perceive as an assault by the Obama administration on religious liberty.

Surely that statement is not political in any sense of the term. Heaven forfend. Going against one of the presidential candidates in an election year has absolutely nothing to do with politics.

Archbishop William Lori of Baltimore insisted to the National Catholic Reporter last week that there was nothing partisan about the church's campaign. "We're not trying to throw an election," he said. "We're simply trying to defend fundamental freedoms."

In doing so, however, the bishops have used unusually strong language. Dolan said the White House was "strangling" the church. The bishop of Peoria, Ill., compared what Obama had done to the treatment of churches by Hitler and Stalin.

Nah, not political at all. What could make anyone say that?

In addition to the Fortnight observance, the bishops also are using their pulpits to let the Catholic faithful know that they believe the administration has crossed a line. Dolan has even written a brief e-book, scheduled for publication later this month, in which he lays out an intellectual argument for "the Gospel of life."

We'll sure want to read that, huh?

McGuire [of the Catholic Association] defends the bishops from charges of partisanship, saying: "I don't think the bishops are trying to influence the campaign.... I mean, the bishops are not going to get behind one political candidate or another. They never have and never will." 

Surely not. And let's remember this is all (allegedly) about contraception. And as we learned yesterday:

Less than a quarter of U.S. Catholics attend Mass every week. Most reject church teaching on artificial contraception and a majority support same-sex relationships. About one-third of Americans who were raised Catholic have left the church, according to the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

That's quite a church they've got there. It is hypocrisy writ large (and wearing big, silly hats).

Birds of a feather

So the popey guy is sending his shtick to Africa, the land of voodoo. And he wants to make nicey-nice with the voodoo folks:

Catholics need to cultivate respect both for Islam and for traditional practices, the pope said in the document. But he also told bishops they must carefully discern which traditional practices might clash with church doctrine so they can "separate the good seed from the weeds."

In with the good voodoo; out with the bad. Here's the birds-of-a-feather image:

As he signed the 87-page papal treatise, several dozen Voodoo practitioners sat in plastic chairs in the Temple of the Pythons located at the opposite end of the basilica's square, less than 100 yards from where Benedict was preaching. The high priest, who sat with his foot on a bottle of gin, a traditional Voodoo spirit offering, said they had gathered to hear the pope's message . . .

The popey guy finally found his people! It's such a great image because it shows there is little or no distinction between catholicism and voodoo. They're just different flavors of insane nonsense.

Let's all wish the popey guy luck. "Luck, popey guy! May you find several new voodoo saints for your church!"