Thursday, June 29, 2006

why I hate Catholicism, even though I am/was one

Let me count the ways:

primarily because of my own experiences...

Pope Benedict1. mental abuse by Catholic school children, physical abuse by nun;
2. religion ruled by guilt and fear;
3. abuse of sister by "counseling" priest;
4. firing of husband from Boston College by priest, never with any explanation;

but also...

5. forbidding use of condoms, especially in countries with astronomical HIV/AIDS levels;
6. unacceptance of homosexuals, women in church authority, divorcees, etc.;
7. Pope Innocent III sponsors 4 "crusades" to exterminate the Albigenses;
8. in July of 1209 A.D. an army of Louis VII orthodox Catholics attack Beziers and murder 60,000 unarmed civilians;
9. at Minerve, 14,000 Christians put to death in the flames: ears, noses, and lips of the "heretics" cut off by the "faithful";
10. wars of extermination committed by the Church against the Cathars, Knights Templars, and other break-away Christian groups;
11. Pope Alexander IV establishes the Office of the Inquisition within Italy in 1254;
12. silence of Pope Pius XII during the Nazi holocaust;
13. children starved to death iconcentration camp of Jasenovec in Catholic Croatia, one of whose commandants was a Franciscan Monk, Father Filipovic: more than 2,000 Eastern Orthodox children die;
14. Monsignor Tiso, head of the Slovak State, delivers first trainload of Jews to Auschwitz;
15. hundreds of thousands of women burned alive as witches in late Middle Ages and Renaissance;
16. Saint Cyril and monks burn the great Library at Alexandria, destroying 600,000 volumes of knowledge of the ancient world, the greatest property crime of all time;
17. Protestant Reformation and following wars during which Germany lost half its population in a generation;
18. destruction, plunder, rape, and papal pillage of the people of the Americas and the eradication of their culture;
19. extermination of the Huguenots in France;
20. issuing of Vatican passports to Nazi leaders after World War II so that they could escape prosecution for war crimes;
21. castration of boy singers in the church so that they could continue to sing in high pitch into adulthood;
22. clergy sexual abuse;
23. Irish Magdalene laundries;
24. church leaders once taught that was acceptable under a wide range of situation;
25. church equates abortion with murder at all stages of pregnancy;
26. church placed under house arrest or burned alive number of scientists and philosophers, such as Galileo and Bruno;
27. church once taught that parents must not give their children inoculations against disease because it would thwart God's will. God was seen as expecting a certain percentage of children to die; inoculations would have prevented those deaths.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I was a devote Catholic, wanted to be a nun when I grew up and at about age 13 - two months before I made my conformation I left the church ... I feel your pain and frusteration...You have many many reasons to leave the church - I only had a few - but you just listed a few more for me to ponder on...

carroll atlee hardin cadden said...

I don't like Catholicism, though I respect that my family is still "that way": to each his own, of course. I had bad experiences with the Church and felt alientated at every step. I think we would all be better off if we'd been reared as Unitarians!

I don't know much about world history, so don't take all my other facts as 100% accurate, though I imagine they're close. I culled them from other Web pages, instead of doing my own research.