“The priests I know for the most part do believe in transubstantiation and reconciliation.” No, they tell you they do. It is their job. And it’s not “in my neck of the woods”. I have known many priests in many places. You will remember that my cousin is a Catholic bishop. (To be fair to him, I won’t give his name or his diocese in an open forum). I have had plenty of time to sit and talk for hours and days with many priests in informal, home atmospheres (instead of the formal work-related church atmosphere.) I am telling you point blank that they tell a different theology over an armchair then they do over a pulpit. Disbelieve me if you want, but it is definitely the case.

“cradle Catholics do go through a questioning of their faith for many years” I AM a cradle-Catholic, and yes it is brainwashing. Any good psychiatrist can tell you that repetition, recitation, and ritual indoctrinations like Confirmation and Holy Communion are brainwashing techniques. Seems to have worked well on you.

“Your problem is you give moral equivalency to things that aren’t equal.” Again, with the arrogance. Every religion (including the rats) has a moral compass. Every religions teaches to be good and kind and decent. It’s a basic part of the sales pitch of every religion. And yet you always assert that because Catholicism says it, Catholics are morally superior. FIGURE THIS OUT: there is nothing special or unique about the teachings of Catholicism. Every prohibition the Vatican has can be found in Mormonism or Judaism or even the Rat worshipers… And every one of them think they are special because of it. I have heard the exact same stuff you are saying about Catholicism from pretty much every faith out there. Because you say it (and believe it) does not make it any more true coming from your mouth than it did when I heard it from a Mormon Elder in Salt Lake.

“Every circumstance leads to small consolations and blessings. “ That is the big lie that sells religions. Sadly, it is not true. Most murders and thieves get away with their crimes. Decent people get stabbed, raped, murdered, and tortured. Religions try to sell you on the idea that there is some greater good to it… they these things are “tests” and that you will learn from it. It is crap, and dangerous crap at that. You build yourself up to believe that a god is looking after you, and you try to fit the reality into your fantasy. In the end, no matter what “lesson” or “insight” you might invent to justify horrible things happening, the horrible things STILL HAPPEN. Moreover, they happen equally to the faithful and secular alike. When you look out and see the world as it is, you find that the only difference between a religious person and a secular person is that the religious person creates a fantasy to explain the things that a secularist shrugs off as “life can be crappy sometimes.”


“If I’m ever hooked up on life support, don’t pull the plug. “

Spoken like someone who never expects to be in agonizing pain for the rest of their life. Here’s the reality:

For most people, dying is days and months of being tended by underpaid nurses. You spend most of your time begging for someone to give you more painkillers so you can sleep for a few hours instead of writhing in agony. Once a week or so the doctor comes by, but there’s nothing he can do short of telling the nurse to have a look at your bedsores.

If you’re a good Catholic you have a priest drop by… usually on a Sunday afternoon after services. He stays for ten minutes or so, maybe says a prayer or two with you. After that you’re alone again, still in agony. Your family tries, but the truth is they have only so much time and the months carry on… they have their own lives and families to deal with. Visits get scarcer, until they only come by at Christmas and (maybe) your birthday. Then it’s back to being alone. You want to pray and be holy, but the lack of sleep and persistent pain prevents you from focusing. You spend most of the last days of your life in a hellish trance… never quite awake and never truly able to sleep.

At this point, the warm sun you mentioned is only a chaotic dream, mixed in with every other thought that drifts by. Then, at some point, your breathing chokes up and you start suffocating. But this is long-term hospice care… they don’t have monitors on you 24/7. You die alone, sucking every breath through agonized tears until you finally collapse. A few hours later the nurse comes by and finds you dead. She calls your family, who make plans for a funeral where they will all sit around and feel guilty for not having spent much time with you “near the end”.

This is the reality. This is happening to thousands of people every day in every city. This is what death IS. If you want warm sunshine and meditative prayer, you will not get it in hospice. It is only the fantasies sold to you by religions that convince people that they can “pass away quietly from a long-term illness”. The reality is brutal, lonely, and worse than you have ever imagined. So no… I do not hold it against anyone who feels they want to die by their own hand while they’re still healthy enough to feel the sunshine and mentally prepare themselves for whatever is to come.

Maybe the priests out in your neck of the woods weren’t as pious as they ought to have been. The priests I know for the most part do believe in transubstantiation and reconciliation.

You would be surprised to learn that many cradle Catholics do go through a questioning of their faith for many years, often beginning around university age. These are educated individuals. After studying Church documents, and other religions, they come back to the Catholic Church. They are not brainwashed. They look for contradictions and decide that two opposing versions of the truth cannot be true.

Your problem is you give moral equivalency to things that aren’t equal. Worshiping a rat does not equal worshiping a saviour, a man named Jesus who was partly human and partly divine, who performed extraordinary miracles while he lived, who was crucified and who rose again. Your theory that he was some type of Yogi who slowed his heart rate down while on the cross (remember he had a big gash in His side, too), and then somehow snuck down to escape and reappear doesn’t wash with me. I believe Joseph of Arimithea wrapped Him in cloths, and laid Him in the tomb.

QUOTE: “In the end, though, it doesn’t make a bit of difference if you get mangled in a car accident and wind up living the rest of your life in agony. The comfort, like the gods people worship, is thin and illusory. The longer one relies on it, the worse it will be for them when it falls apart and they are left to face cold, hard reality alone.”

It would be awful to wind up in some sort of agony from a car accident. But every circumstance leads to small consolations and blessings. You could end up in a Catholic hospital and be helped by a truly beautiful person who eases the harsh realities of life. Maybe somebody like the wife you described in your last post. I think you SHOULD rely on God because He doesn’t fall apart. Life wouldn’t seem so cold and hard if you had hope, even in this dire state. If I’m ever hooked up on life support, don’t pull the plug. I want to feel the warmth of the sun, and the love of God surround me. That’s worlds better than the way an atheist values life. If he’s mangled and unable to work or produce some measurable achievement or experience life on his terms, it’s game over for him.

Now about the happy bachelors… Two points:

One, bachelors have a choice. They are not condemned to Hell for all eternity if they decide at 36 to break a vow they made when they were 22 and full of holy verve.

Two: ONLY single men can be priests. It is a condition of being “called”. That makes all teh difference. If it were an option, not a demand of the office, then you could argue that it is similar to lay bachelors. But the church forces celibacy on anyone who wishes to be a priest. If you “have a calling” and want to serve and say mass, you MUST be celibate. Why? Most of the apostles were married. Timothy in particular brought his wife with him everywhere. Certainly you would agree that a woman/wife can be an aid to her husband in his work and life. Why does this not apply if the husband is a priest? Why are spouses good for every vocation except a religious vocation? The Catholic explanation of total devotion to either God or a wife (as discussed earlier) does not hold when lacking a spouse makes you less able to serve your community.

And about why people don’t just leave and go to other churches… People are brainwashed from birth that being Catholic is the ONLY way to happiness and purity. To leave the church (even for another church) is taught to be a passage straight to Hell. Believing this, their only option (when confronted with something about the Church that bothers them) is to change the Church, as the only other option is to go to Hell.

As for the sacraments being administered by the laity, enjoy it while you can. It will not be happening in about 3 or four years time IMHO. One of Benny’s pet peeves is anyone but the priest handling or distributing the Host. He sees it as one of many ways the church is being weakened, and wants the power and control back in the hands of the priests. To do otherwise (he feels) is a public demonstration of the priests weakness. (You really need to read his pre-papal writing when he was in charge of the Congregatio pro Doctrina Fidei.)

[As an added note, I wanted to say that two years before he became pope I predicted that it would be him. I tried desperately to get someone to bet me on it, but no one would. JPII was the loving grandpa. After him, they wanted the stern father-figure who would whip the church back into shape. The next pope is going to be the "world's pope"... a man chosen for his charm and intelligence. I am betting it will be Cardinal Francis Arinze, a black Nigerian Cardinal. He's charming as hell, and having a black pope would make the church look very vogue and contemporary. I am willing to put money on it if you want to wager. Benny won't last long...]

For the time being, the Church has decided to choose its priests from a large pool of content, celibate bachelors. They are not forcing bachelors to become priests. Candidates for the priesthood take many years to discern their vocation, which includes deciding if they will be able to maintain a vow of celibacy. If they aren’t up to it, they can choose to be deacons or they can get married and perform a job that is somewhat related such as perhaps counseling or teaching theology. So the Church is not depriving them of intimacy.

Increasingly, lay people are taking up many of the duties formerly left to priests. However, some things are meant to be done by priests, such as administering the sacraments and celebrating the Eucharist.

The trouble with people always pushing to change the Church is they never seem to get that they CAN go elsewhere. For instance, if you really feel priests should be able to marry, you can become a United Church minister. Why does the Church have to change for you? Once you get your way on one thing, you will just want another thing. And that is why we have all these other denominations that end up conflicting with one another. Compare that to the unity and fullness of truth that can be found in the Catholic tradition.

The Pope is, by definition, a dictator. He is the head of a theocratic regime, governing a country known as Vatican City. [offset, of course, by the power struggles and power-jockeying within the walls of the Vatican]. It is the stated goal of Catholicism to extend his regime to the world… to make it “universal”.

Celibacy…

The Catholic version of celibacy comes from Augustine’s concepts of Love (which you deftly analogized). To Augustine, all forms of love vied for your attention, but could not exist in the same mind at the same time. Eros (sexual love), Philio (brotherly love), and Agape (divine love) were always in competition. Notably for Augustine, Eros and Agape. His answer: get rid of eros. Once free of sexual intimacy, your mind (according to Augustine) was free to serve God without hindrance.

The problem with this (as the church has found out) is that you can not get rid of Eros. To pretend you can opens the door to twisted and ravenous expressions of sex. It is like trying to tell someone that they can not eat. They are both basic human needs, and you can’t just simply decide that you are never going to eat again. Hunger (sexual or otherwise) will manifest no matter what. The Church’s response to this problem was to institutionalize marriage as a control mechanism. (As Paul said, “Better to wed than burn in Hell.”)

Simply put: I do not agree with Paul or Augustine. Reasons to follow…

You claim a married person has less time for the world. True… very true. But it is also natural, and you can’t beat nature. People seem to want to create pious saints that are entirely given to self-sacrifice and serving “God’s Will.” It is a dangerous fallacy. Nuns and priests fall in love all the time, and are often tortured inwardly for their “sin” of yearning to be held and cared for. No one can be what you want from these people. It causes pain and misery, and destroys them inwardly. But the cost to these people’s sanity is a price the Church is willing to pay in order to maintain the myth that humans should be asexual and eternally giving to society.

So no… a married priest wouldn’t be available 24/7 when needed. Nor should he be. There should be teams of trained volunteers in every congregation that can be called on. (I have no doubt that you yourself would volunteer for such). Leaving the onus for everyone’s trouble on one man is ridiculous, and using that as an excuse to deprive him of intimacy for the rest of his life is cruel and selfish.

You say that the world needs the example of single priests and nuns. I disagree. I think what they need is to realize that the troubles of the world around us can not and should not be addressed by professional “good people”. Instead, a church should be a place to teach the congregation how to be the good, helpful, and giving person instead of just a passive witness to the good deeds of priests and nuns.

I doubt they hate you, but I do think you’re right that they dismiss you. The thing is, there is a point in the Bible when Jesus advises his disciples to shake the dust from their feet if they can’t make an impact on their listener. I think He doesn’t want us to waste significant amounts of time on people that are Hell bent on going to Hell when we could be helping somebody else. Perhaps, He knows our time is limited.
I’m sorry that you haven’t experienced more charity from Christians. But, it may be a rare commodity anyways, perhaps even rarer among atheists. To really answer this point, I’d need to know specific instances in which somebody let you down.
You have to see things from our point of view. Intersecting with you and seeing the darkness in which you reside is painful and heart wrenching. When stanzebla wrote in and you two were discussing things, I felt I was in Hell along with you. Where are the exorcists when you need them? I thought.

QUOTE: As for “no great change in Catholic behavior”… if that is so, all you are telling me is that the Vatican will lose.

No. I’m telling you that they were already playing for the same team. You seem to think that the Church leaders can whip up all sorts of support with their members, members you believe are pledging allegiance in unison like papal automatons. In fact, the Church doesn’t operate like the Watch Tower or some type of dictatorship. The Church proposes. It doesn’t impose. And the members are free people. The Pope is the stated leader, but he has to serve the people. He is the servant of the servants.

RE: Celibacy

The best thing for Ikeshut would be to study Church teachings on celibacy with an open mind. That is to say, reading with the possibility that celibacy isn’t necessarily a bad thing, and is possibly a good thing.

When each of my siblings got married, their spouses became their first priority. Before that, if I needed something I could count on their aid. Not any more. Now, imagine you are sick and in need of a priest at 3:00 a.m. A married priest may or may not be able to leave his family to help you. A single priest will likely be more available. I’m single. I know I’m more available to other single people needing help than my married siblings. I have way more time and mental energy to write this response than anybody I know. Everybody who has a family is almost too busy to pray. If a priest is married and has kids, his free hours are severly curtailed. How can he get the reflection time he needs?

I don’t see priests (or nuns) as performing a job per se. Theirs is a vocation. They ARE priests. They don’t just perform a series of jobs.

Our society is so focused on sexual love that it really NEEDS the example of single priests and nuns.

Every time there is a new pope the issue of celibacy comes up. Bennie made it absolutely clear, though, that this was not a topic for his reign. It is a total no-go. Thing is, a pope only has so much power. If the cardinals really pushed it, he would be expected to give in. (Like the US senate pushing at the White House, basically). I think Bennie would rather fight the wolves than give in though. He’s old and doesn’t care. If he had his way (and he might) Vatican II would be undone and they’d all be back saying Latin Mass and singing only Gregorian chants. He’s already banned folk music I think.

On the flip side, a pope that DID want to change it all would still have to get it past the College of Cardinals. There’s the weird, off-chance that a pope could pass the ruling on his own, but he’d have to evoke the Edict of Infallibility to do so. As this has only been done three times (and once was wrong) no pope is ever likely to try this again.

In reality, it would take a new College of Cardinals and a hell of a lot more pressure from the laity and priests before Rome caved on this one. It may happen, but not likely in the next decade or two.

On the topic of Rome admitting being wrong, JPII did a great job of this in his day. Apologized to Galileo, abused kids, the whole works. Benny is not the same kind of pope. He gave a speech a while back on priests abusing children and made a moderate apology from the Vatican, but then let it be known in no uncertain terms that that would be the end of the matter. This pope is not elected to apologize for Rome. His thing is the defense of the faith, and the re-empowerment of Rome.

The next guy (likely a North African… probably black) will be the new trend setter. That’s where we’ll see a lot of major changes to things like celibacy in my opinion.

Christians are, by and large, very charitable to other Christians. I seldom see the “charity” you refer to here. As soon as they realize they’re not going to convert you they usually hate and dismiss you… though they would never use the term “hate” of course.

As for “no great change in Catholic behavior”… if that is so, all you are telling me is that the Vatican will lose. Something HAS to change, or Islam will own the conservative religious world in short order. It does not negate my blog, or the intent of the move by the Anglicans and Catholics.

As for my life “bearing fruit”… I hope not. I mean, I really, really hope not. I have no desire for posterity to know my name. I have no need to watch chubby grandchildren bounce on my knee. These things are just selfishness masked as “family values”. I will die and fade away. Everything I’ve done will fade, and my books will disappear in time, consigned to rot away in some dump somewhere. This is the real human condition. To aspire to anything grander than this is just ego.

So your contention is that, since what I say is stated by others, I should shut up? The fundamental issue here is that religions urge their flocks to change the lives of people that do not belong to their religion. Churches try to achieve this by banding together and soliciting the government to create new laws to reflect the ideals of their religion. And you know what? It happens all the time. If religious folk wanted to just go to church and do their thing, no one would have a problem with them (nobody argues with the Amish). But most religions don’t keep to themselves. They try to use the law of the land to remake the world into their vision of “good”. All too often, it works. If there weren’t people like me speaking up it would still be illegal to be gay, no one would be able to work on Sundays, and divorce would not exist. Admit it… you think all those things would be “good” for society. But they aren’t. They are good for you… for Catholics and religious people. Outside the realm of religious belief people want to live their lives the way they choose.

You say a relationship with God can help. I agree. In fact, I would wager that a devotee of the monkey gods of Thailand finds great solace and comfort in their god when times are rough. The people of Laos who worship rats find a beautiful fulfillment in their daily lives by tending the temples and making sure the rats are fed and housed. Yes, a god gives comfort and solace in times of trouble. In the end, though, it doesn’t make a bit of difference if you get mangled in a car accident and wind up living the rest of your life in agony. The comfort, like the gods people worship, is thin and illusory. The longer one relies on it, the worse it will be for them when it falls apart and they are left to face cold, hard reality alone.