The theocrackpots are whining yet again

“Waa. Waa.” - Bill Donohue

On multiple occasions I have noted that those who most fervently claim belief in a ubiquitous and all-powerful deity tend to be those most easily disconcerted by perceived affronts to that deity’s honor (see here and here). One would think that a truly robust faith in the veracity of the underlying precepts would obviate the compulsion to lash out at instances of blasphemy.

But clearly this is not the case.

The most recent example of theocratic encroachment on free society involves a favorite target of religionists: a “controversial” work of art housed in a publicly funded museum. This time the piece in question was a four-minute video assembled by the late avant-garde artist David Wojnarowicz, who died of AIDS in 1992. The video came into existence with no public funding whatsoever and the exhibit itself at the National Portrait Gallery—a branch of the Smithsonian Institution—was privately funded. I say was because the theocrackpots succeeded in imposing their religious agenda and the display was removed.

What exactly is so horrifying about the artwork, “A Fire in My Belly,” that has some Christians foaming at the mouth? You may watch the full video here, but it sufficeth to say that the main offense is the portrayal of Jesus on a crucifix covered in ants. Far be it from me to point out that Christians seem to revel in describing the tremendous suffering Jesus experienced, and that having ants walk all over him would have been kinder and less deadly fate than the one he actually endured.

Naturally, Catholic League president and serial whiner Bill Donohue led the charge by citing that the Gallery and its staff are publicly maintained:

“This is not the first time the Smithsonian has offended us,” he said. “I’m going to cast my net much wider. Why should the government pay for this? ... How dare they take our money to fund attacks on (our religion).”

It seems there is nary a time when Bill Donohue is not indignant at someone or something that dares to treat his beloved religion with any hint of irreverence. Five hundred years ago, a scoundrel with his level of fanaticism and blind loyalty to the Vatican would have made for a highly esteemed Grand Inquisitor with near dictatorial powers. I suspect that the sheer number of screams a medieval Donohue would have elicited from the tortured throats of his heretical victims could have put Torquemada to shame. Today, however, such men are reduced to canting at public officials via email and telephone to say how much their feelings have been hurt by some offense to their Christian faith.

Sadly, Donohue’s inevitable involvement is not the most grotesque part of this story. Indeed, it is bad enough that the National Portrait Gallery capitulated to his theocratic whims, but the situation becomes even more absurd now the Republican leadership in the House of Representatives has involved itself in the matter:

GOP leaders John Boehner and Eric Cantor spoke out against the display Tuesday, an exposition entitled “Hide/Seek.” The video in question was created by AIDS victim and late artist David Wojnarowicz.

“Smithsonian officials should either acknowledge the mistake and correct it, or be prepared to face tough scrutiny beginning in January when the new majority in the House moves [in],” Boehner spokesman Kevin Smith said.

Cantor also demanded its replacement, and called it “an obvious attempt to offend Christians during the Christmas season.”

For his part, Georgia congressman Jack Kingston was given an expectedly amiable audience in the form of Fox & Friends, a show whose hosts assume a childlike innocence that always morphs into shocked disbelief when they are “presented” the latest Beckian conspiracy theory centered on the nefarious machinations of liberals. On the show, Kingston wailed,

“This is a museum that gets $5.8 million in taxpayer dollars and in the middle of a high deficit, 15 million unemployed Americans, they decide to have money to spend like this. This is a museum that, by the way, has next to it a display of the American presidents, on the other side, Elvis, and then you go through this—which is really perverted, sick stuff—ashes of an AIDS victim, in a self-portrait, eating himself. Male nudity, Ellen DeGeneres grabbing her own breast - lots of really kinky and really questionable kind of art.”

The line about deficits and the museum’s funding are completely disingenuous because both the artwork and the exhibit of which it was a part were privately funded. This pretense is simply a backdoor way of passing judgment on an individual work of art that Kingston et al. either do not like personally or because they think it offends their respective constituencies. Kingston himself is gunning for the chairmanship of the powerful House Appropriations Committee, and it would not surprise me if Kingston were simply grandstanding in this fashion in an attempt to garner support to that end.

The religious fascists have won this round thanks to the cowardice of the National Portrait Gallery in the face of relatively light opposition. People have the right to feel offended when viewing a work of art they find obscene, but they do not have a right to dictate the terms on which that art may be displayed. The right to take offense at art both begins and ends in the mind and speech of the individual. Any action that goes beyond is censorship.

- Max

Catholic Priest Arrested For Soliciting Sex From...An Adult Female?

Recently just across the border in New Hampshire, a 31 year old Massachusetts Catholic priest was arrested as part of a prostitution sting. The priest was responding to a Craigslist ad posted by police who obviously had nothing better to do than to commit entrapment and fabricate a “criminal” act where otherwise one would not have existed. Now mind you, this priest thought he was soliciting sex from an adult female, unlike the pederast ministers within the Catholic Church who prey on little children.

The priest in question has taken a forced leave of absence, and when the case is concluded the Boston Archdiocese will pronounce sentence on him. But we need not look that far ahead to consider that this leave of absence is already harsher than what the Archdiocese meted out for John Geoghan and other child-rapists who were simply shuffled from parish to parish once they had sampled all the available prepubescent ass at a given location.

But the police are arresting the wrong preacher. What of Bernard Law—the disgraced former cardinal of Boston who now resides in the Vatican out of the reach of the American justice system? Or of any number of Church officials still in America who helped cover up sexual abuse? Or Pope Ratzinger himself? These are suspects who had many victims, even if they themselves were not the ones pulling the pants off the children. Prostitution on the other hand, is victimless. Degrading? Yes. Criminal? No.

And what of the Nashua, New Hampshire police who set this sordid trap? Do they not have enough real criminals to track? Isn’t New Hampshire’s motto “Live free or die”? I find it ridiculous that a person can walk around New Hampshire with a loaded firearm strapped to his waste without getting hassled by any John Q. Laws, but a man may not anonymously and privately solicit sex in exchange for money. Ditto for the woman who offers such services. Am I missing something here?

The great irony in all of this is that a woman is allowed to sleep with whomever she wants, as long as money is not involved. If she posts an ad offering free sex to any man who comes along, that is fine. But request payment, and it becomes a moral scandal worthy of criminal prosecution.

I do not understand this society.

- Max

Christopher Hitchens Calls Pope "Institutionally Responsible" For Child Abuse Coverups

Speak Of The Devil And He Doth Appear!

Frequently I find that I have perfect timing. A couple of hours ago in this post about Pope Ratzinger ignoring a letter from the Milwaukee Archdiocese regarding a pedophile priest named Lawrence Murphy in its midst, I wrote, “I can’t wait to see what convoluted excuse Bill Donohue comes up with to explain away this one.”

It isn’t often that I watch daytime television, but when I just flipped the TV on MSNBC, sure enough, there was Bill Donohue telling David Shuster that the New York Times article never stated for certain that Ratzinger had seen the letters. This, despite the fact that Ratzinger was the head of the Vatican office to which these letters were sent. Donohue then said that not only should we not jump to any conclusions about Ratzinger, but insisted that there be no further investigation into the matter. But as this letter shows, Murphy himself later wrote to Ratzinger personally to ask him for leniency, which apparently means immunity from disciplinary action. Shortly after this correspondence was received by Ratzinger’s office, the Church’s investigation into the allegations against Murphy ceased at the direction of Cardinal Bertone in Ratzinger’s office. Are we to believe that Ratzinger, who headed this department, knew nothing of this horrendous scandal?

Donohue went on to say that “Catholics aren’t stupid,” and that they know that New York Times has a pro-gay, pro-abortion, “agenda.” Uh huh.

He also said that by the time Ratzinger’s office was apprised of the situation, Murphy was a sickly old man and had already committed his crimes.

So? Does this mean Donohue thinks that former Nazi war criminals should get reprieves because their crimes are behind them? Plus, there was no guarantee that Murphy had stopped molesting kids altogether. He should have been defrocked.

At this point we need to seriously ask ourselves whether the pope or the Catholic Church can do anything that will repulse Bill Donohue. My money’s on, “no.”

If I can dig up the video of the interview, I will post it pronto.

- Max

Ratzinger Ignored Pedophile Priest

His Unholiness

Pope Joseph Ratzinger ignored inquiries from concerned church officials about ongoing sexual molestations by priests. As the New York Times reported yesterday, in 1996 then Cardinal Ratzinger was apprised of the case of priest and serial rapist Lawrence Murphy, who admitted to church officials that he had molested children:

The Wisconsin case involved an American priest, the Rev. Lawrence C. Murphy, who worked at a renowned school for deaf children from 1950 to 1974. But it is only one of thousands of cases forwarded over decades by bishops to the Vatican office called the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, led from 1981 to 2005 by Cardinal Ratzinger. It is still the office that decides whether accused priests should be given full canonical trials and defrocked.

In 1996, Cardinal Ratzinger failed to respond to two letters about the case from Rembert G. Weakland, Milwaukee’s archbishop at the time. After eight months, the second in command at the doctrinal office, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, now the Vatican’s secretary of state, instructed the Wisconsin bishops to begin a secret canonical trial that could lead to Father Murphy’s dismissal.

But Cardinal Bertone halted the process after Father Murphy personally wrote to Cardinal Ratzinger protesting that he should not be put on trial because he had already repented and was in poor health and that the case was beyond the church’s own statute of limitations…

… In 1993, with complaints about Father Murphy [who died in 1998] landing on his desk, Archbishop Weakland hired a social worker specializing in treating sexual offenders to evaluate him. After four days of interviews, the social worker said that Father Murphy had admitted his acts, had probably molested about 200 boys and felt no remorse.

However, it was not until 1996 that Archbishop Weakland tried to have Father Murphy defrocked. The reason, he wrote to Cardinal Ratzinger, was to defuse the anger among the deaf and restore their trust in the church. He wrote that since he had become aware that “solicitation in the confessional might be part of the situation,” the case belonged at the doctrinal office.

It should also be noted that Weakland would later use $450,000 in Church funds as hush money for his former gay lover who was threatening a lawsuit.

I guess this is what the repulsive and obnoxious American papist Bill Donohue meant when he said the Church should be allowed to treat child rape as “an internal matter.”

It is difficult to discern which party displayed more shameful behavior in this travesty: the Milwaukee Archdiocese, which, when faced with the reality of a confessed child abuser in their ranks, thought it appropriate to contact Vatican officials instead of the local authorities in this, an obvious criminal matter; or Ratzinger and Bertone who swept the allegations under the rug as if they were no big deal.

But as Joe Biden would say, this is a big fucking deal. This is about the future pope, knowingly and willingly ignoring letters from officials within his own church saying that they have a rapist on their hands and that they—incredibly—are unsure what to do about it. In any sane universe, in any responsible organization, Ratzinger would be forced to step down in light of such allegations. But that’s not going to happen because the Church thinks it’s infallible.

I can’t wait to see what convoluted excuse Bill Donohue comes up with to explain away this one.

- Max

Bill Donohue Is A Disgrace

Nice shit-eating grin.

Recently I wrote a post on the absurdity of Guardian writer Andrew Brown’s reprehensible defense of the Catholic Church in light of the most recent revelations of child abuse. His argument that Catholic priests are no more likely than adults in other professions to rape children is tasteless and irrelevant, especially since it has been documented that Church officials in various parishes and archdioceses actively covered up the abuses.

Until the other day, Brown’s recycled defense of the Church’s child abusers was the worst opinion piece I’ve read about any of the Church’s scandals. But enter Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League, and loudmouth windbag extraordinaire. For CNN.com, Donohue writes,

Employers from every walk of life, in both the U.S. and Europe, have long handled cases of alleged sex abuse by employees as an internal matter. Rarely have employers called the cops, and none was required to do so.

Though this is starting to change, any discussion of employee sexual abuse that took place 30 and 40 years ago must acknowledge this reality. Thus it hardly comes as a surprise that Cardinal Sean Brady in Ireland did not summon the authorities about a case involving a priest in the 1970s. What is surprising is why some are now indicting him, acting as if his response was the exception to the rule.

Selective indignation at the Catholic Church is not confined to Brady. Why, for example, are the psychologists and psychiatrists who pledged to “fix” abusers treated so lightly? After all, employers from the corporate world to the Catholic Church were told over and over again that therapy works and to give the offender a second chance.

Where to begin? First off, Donohue is confusing sexual abuse with sexual harassment. It is true that employers often treat sexual harassment as an internal matter. Sexist jokes and unwanted physical advances—when reported—are generally met with disciplinary action, as they should be. The police are not usually called because although lewd jokes or even an awkward grope are tasteless, the victim generally does not notify the police. Suspension or termination may be enough to remedy the problem. Sexual abuse is an entirely different story. The children under the care of pedophile priests were not merely subjected to harassment; they were sexually assaulted. No one I know of, with the exception of Bill Donohue and KBR, would regard rape in the workplace as “an internal matter.” Victims are entitled to press charges, and they should in order to shed light on the sexual perverts who lurk in our places of business and elsewhere.

Bill Donohue thinks differently. If priests, or lawyers, or physicians, or indeed, even kindergarten teachers are believed to be raping children, Donohue says that their supervisors should handle it as “an internal matter,” as he says is the custom. And handle it that way they did. The former Cardinal of Boston, Bernard Law, handled it by simply shuffling accused child-fuckers from parish to parish where they kept abusing children. I guess this is what Donohue means we he says we should “give the offender a second chance.”

Donohue has made it his sole purpose in life to defend the Catholic Church against all enemies, real and imagined, no matter how corrupt, immoral, disgraceful, and discriminatory the institution behaves. Indeed, whenever a set of allegations arises accusing Catholic officials of child abuse, Donohue steps into the breach not to condemn the abuse, but to decry the “hysterical” reactions that inevitably follow, as if the level of indignation at the Church is unwarranted.

Amazingly, Donohue is not a fringe figure. He can occasionally be seen on the various cable news networks whining about perceived public insults to Catholicism, a hilariously ironic development given the ubiquitous and omnipotent presence the Church once enjoyed in the Western world. Clearly, much progress had been made if Catholicism’s defenders have been relegated to complaining about potshots at the Church which they can do absolutely nothing about. Still, Donohue is a minor nuisance despite his overall irrelevance as a cultural “warrior.” Thankfully, the sixty-two year old Donohue and those who think just like him constitute a literally dying breed. And for this endangered species, extinction can’t come fast enough.

- Max

Guardian Writer Says Child Abuse By Priests Is Totally Overblown. (Did I Just Say "Blown?")

[The Pope’s brother,] Georg Ratzinger, 86, said in a newspaper interview published Tuesday that he slapped pupils as punishment after he took over the Regensburger Domspatzen boys choir in the 1964. He also said he was aware of allegations of physical abuse at an elementary school linked to the choir but did nothing about it.

AP

Child abuse in the Catholic Church. Nothing new here. But when I was reading the Guardian’s coverage on this story I came across Andrew Brown’s blog, where he rehashes an old argument about child fucking/hitting by priests. Titled “Catholic abuse in proportion,” Brown wonders, “Many Catholic priests...have abused children in their care. But is the church's record worse than the world’s?”

A more absurd or irrelevant question would be hard to formulate. Brown actually attempts to defend the Catholic Church by citing murky statistics on child abuse before concluding, “I think that objectively your child is less likely to be abused by a Catholic or Anglican priest in the west today than by the members of almost any other profession.”

Wow. And to think that for years I have railed against pedophile priests, condemned the Church for covering up their heinous abuses, and have attacked the practice of celibacy for priests, lest their biological urges to engage in sexual intercourse manifest themselves in such assaults. What have I done?

Please. These are priests, not plumbers. If the Catholic Church and its ministers are going to present themselves as the personification of piety and god’s representatives on earth, they ought to expect to be held to a slightly higher standard than the rest of the general population. Indeed, if, “We’re no more likely to fuck your kid than your stockbroker” is the best defense the Church and its apologists have to offer, color me unimpressed. If the leaders of Catholicism are just as moral or immoral as everyone else, which is most certainly the case, what is it for?

- Max

Catholicism Is A Hateful Doctrine

And we’re sure the Catholic Church is anti-gay?

Catholicism’s bigotry reared its ugly head once again last week in two high profile reprehensible decisions by Catholic officials. First, in anticipation of Washington D.C.’s allowance of gay marriage which went into effect last week, Catholic Charities in D.C. announced that it would no longer provide health insurance to spouses of new employees or spouses of employees not currently enrolled in a plan with the organization. The reasoning is clear enough: gays are second class citizens and must be denied health coverage–even if it means denying straight employees insurance as well. Second, a Catholic preschool in Boulder, Colorado told a lesbian couple that their child may not re-enroll when next school year’s classes start because of their sexual orientation. As the abominable Archdiocese of Denver put it, “Parents living in open discord with Catholic teaching in areas of faith and morals unfortunately choose by their actions to disqualify their children from enrollment.”

Well fuck Catholic teaching.

I wonder if the Denver Archdiocese also checks public records to ensure that their schoolchildren’s parents aren’t divorced. I doubt it. And if they did, that would also be ludicrous.

It will be a cold day in hell when I take love and sexual advice from an institution comprised mainly of crusty old virgins. The preachers of the Catholic Church have no idea what it’s like to be married. They have no idea what it’s like to raise children; they only know how to fuck them. The ones who aren’t pedophiles still live in a celibate fantasyland—a very unnatural place where the biological urge to copulate is suppressed and labeled evil (but a necessary evil for the laity when procreation is the motive.) Hence the Church’s absurd position on contraceptives—that they are immoral—and Pope Ratzinger’s criminal assertion that condoms will only make the AIDS epidemic in Africa worse.

This transparent bigotry from the Catholic Church is astonishing given the dwindling number of church attendees in America and Europe. My late Catholic grandmother viewed the Church as a source for good for most of her life. But when a series of scandals involving pedophile priests hit the news in the early 2000s, even she was incredulous at the behavior of the molesters, as well as the Church officials who either willfully ignored the reality, or actively helped cover it up. Many Catholics like her put their hands up and finally said, “No thanks.” And yet, at a time when we’d think that the Church would be doing all it could to increase its ranks, its leaders cannot help but revert to their hateful ways, which is what the aforementioned incidents are: hate.

Religious bigotry is often excused because it generally has some biblical or koranic justification behind it. Let’s look at the Denver Archdiocese’s statement once again regarding the lesbian parents:

“Parents living in open discord with Catholic teaching in areas of faith and morals unfortunately choose by their actions to disqualify their children from enrollment.”

Translation:

“We hate fags and anybody else who violates our antiquated notions of morality.”

For those who do not think that this blacklisting is grounded in hate, then what do you call it when one group punishes banishes a child for who his parents are? Just because there is an emotionless, bureaucratic-sounding excuse behind the bigotry does not make it any less hateful or disgusting. In fact, it makes it worse. At least people with irreligious prejudices do not hide behind the dogmas of the bible or the koran to attempt to vindicate their Neanderthal worldview.

While I have a hard time understanding why any adult would ever call himself a Catholic, I particularly will never understand why any adult would ever call herself a Catholic. Women are, after all, second class citizens in Catholicism. The Church teaches that women are deficient because they cannot serve as ministers. It’s a total sausagefest. (Should it really surprise us that priests used helpless children as an outlet for their repressed sexual urges?) In the United States, the Catholic Church boasts the largest female membership of any officially sexist organization. Millions of women regularly attend mass, tithe, and count themselves among the faithful. How is this possible? Imagine an American or European political party of which anyone can be a member, but only men may run for office. The party would be a laughingstock, if not a reviled assemblage of chauvinistic buffoons.

The Catholic Church would be a laughingstock were it not for its sizeable following. But as mentioned, thankfully Church attendance is on the way down. The percentage of self-identifying Catholics in America has been stagnant as the Church remains unable to adapt to the changing social landscapes because of its rigid dogmas. In 2009, only 45% of Catholics said they went to church at least once a week (and even some of those were probably overstating), down from 54% in the mid-1970s, and 75% in 1955. The number of priests in America has gone down steadily since 1975. All signs point to a terminal Catholic decline. Although the Church has been making inroads in Africa, its power is waning. The once mighty institution that tortured and murdered those who dared to hold differing religious opinions, has been reduced to a shell of its former self; a curious novelty act in which the main players wear flamboyant attire and practice pagan rituals such as flesh-eating and blood-drinking.

I’ve never cared for cannibalism, or sexism, or homophobia for that matter. If you are a person who calls himself or herself “a Catholic,” then I strongly urge you to consider what that means. I personally know many Catholics who do not share the abhorrent views of their Church, but nonetheless continue to identify with it. How much disagreement must there be before there is a clean break? How many others must be discriminated against before Catholics across America and the world declare, “I no longer want anything to do with this organization”?

Hopefully not many. It is high time for a mass exodus from the Catholic Church, leaving behind only the most hardcore haters. As I see it, the main element that lends respectability to the Church is the laity, who collectively do not care much for doctrine, but describe themselves as Catholics merely out of habit. That pattern must be broken as soon as possible.

- Max

The Absurdity Of Vicarious Salvation

The Romans wasted some perfectly good lumber on an eccentric Judean preacher.

Fox News propagandist Brit Hume made waves this week when he said on air that Tiger Woods should convert to Christianity in light of his many extramarital affairs. In case you missed it, here’s what Brit (who will never be confused with David) Hume said:

Tiger Woods will recover as a golfer. Whether he can recover as a person, I think is a very open question, and it’s a tragic situation with him. He’s lost his family, it’s not clear to me whether he’ll be able to have a relationship with his children, but the Tiger Woods that emerges once the news value dies out of this scandal, the extent to which he can recover, it seems to me, depends on his faith. He’s said to be a Buddhist, I don’t think that faith offers the kind of forgiveness and redemption that is offered by the Christian faith, so my message to Tiger would be “Tiger, turn to the Christian faith, and you can make a total recovery and be a great example to the world.”

It is not possible for me to care any less about what Brit Hume thinks, but I am using his pretentiousness as a point of departure to highlight the breathtaking absurdity of the central dogma of his faith. You see, when I was a wee lad and church authorities attempted to inculcate me with batshit tales about child sacrifice in ancient Palestine, I was understandably suspicious about the veracity of such anecdotes. Teachers kept telling me that I had to be “forgiven” by Jesus Christ in order to be “saved.”

Forgiven for what? Saved from what? Sin and damnation, respectively. This never sat well with me. I remember being ten years old and wondering what possible sins I could have committed that would warrant an eternity of suffering. “Trust in Jesus,” they would say. “You can only be forgiven through him.” (I refuse to capitalize pronouns referring to so-called divinities.) That’s all I could think about when I heard pompous ass Brit Hume talk about how Christianity “offers the kind of forgiveness and redemption” necessary for Woods to “recover as a person.” Talk about holier-than-thou.

Forgiveness through Christ is of course the sine qua non of institutionalized Christianity, and it is required in two respects. The first, says the Christian narrative, is to be forgiven as an everyday person, a flawed human who will inevitably commit acts of wrongdoing throughout life. The second is to be forgiven as a metaphysical entity, a being who is simply guilty by default because his species is guilty, thus requiring forgiveness. The only way to be forgiven in either sense is to ask Jesus for forgiveness, and this will make it so. Failure to comply results in an ugly life and an even uglier afterlife.

Brit Hume was referring to the first application, so let’s start with that. According to him, the central lesson in the Tiger Woods sex saga is that Woods should convert to Christianity because he is in need of some kind of abstract forgiveness. Notice the conspicuous absence of any reference to Woods’ wife in Hume’s remarks. He mentions Woods’ family in passing, but that’s just a warm-up for the most critical part of this portentous pontification. For Hume and all other Christians, the most important person to receive forgiveness from is Jesus. While it is preferable to secure also the forgiveness of the victims of the transgression, it is not necessary for salvation. Indeed, it is not even necessary to ask forgiveness or even apologize to those who have been wronged. All that matters in the Christian faith is that one asks Jesus for absolution. On this score, Christ’s silence is taken as a tacit show of forgiveness. It has to be. What’s Jesus going to do? Say, “Ok, you’re forgiven”? He’s been dead for 2,000 years, if he lived at all.

The second sense in which humans need to be forgiven according to the narrative is that we are all inherently wicked. Thanks to the curiosity of Adam and Eve, god doomed humans forever. Instead of living for eternity in paradise, humans were condemned to live in places like Calcutta, Mogadishu, and Cleveland. Men would have to labor for a living, while women would have to squeeze children out of their vaginas causing them great pain. They would be forced interact with other humans in awkward social and professional situations, and god punished the intelligent by creating innumerable amounts of idiots in an attempt to drive them mad. Fear, lunacy, stupidity, incompetence, and bellicosity were to characterize the human race. And, to take a line from Hobbes, “the life of man, solitary poor nasty, brutish, and short.” And after death…nothing. Perhaps sheol, but that’s another story.

Enter Jesus. God finally decided that he had had enough, and sent his only son earthward to be brutally killed to “save” humankind. Jesus got nailed to some two-by-fours, thereby opening the door to heaven for mankind. But, with heaven comes hell. And because humans are by nature bad, hell is the default destination of all souls unless one gives Jesus the necessary props for taking those nails and saving everyone.

I don’t know about you, but I never asked Jesus to die for me. In fact, if I were there at the time of the crucifixion—if it in fact happened—I would’ve tried to stop it, or at the very least, suggested that it would be a bad idea. And yet, doing the moral thing in that instance would undermine the entire premise of Christianity. Thus, if we could travel back in time to Judea during the moments leading up to the crucifixion, we would be faced with a catch-22: do nothing (or even cheer on the execution), thus demonstrating our ignobility and immorality by allowing Christ to be crucified in order to save us; or, defy the notion that humans are inherently wicked by stopping the Romans from carrying out the death sentence against the son of god, but thereby preventing the redemption of all humankind. Or how about this scenario: what if we traveled back in time to find that the Jewish leaders had changed their minds for some reason? What if they really didn’t want Jesus crucified after all, and Pilate was willing to oblige their change of heart? According to Christian doctrine, somebody had to kill Jesus. Thus, in that situation it would be incumbent upon us to save humanity by murdering him.

These conclusions would be laughable were they not so unpleasant. And yet we are forced to draw them because of the ridiculousness of Christian doctrine, which is at bottom, disgraceful and lazy. Rather than attempt to live as Christ did, today’s Christians are redeemed by simply believing that he died for them.

All this is nonsense, of course. At the end of the day, we are responsible to ourselves and those around us, and perhaps by extension, the living members of society and humanity as a whole. Our behavior directly and indirectly affects more people than we could possibly imagine. However, one person we do not affect is Jesus Christ, because he’s dead. And he’s not coming back. But if by off chance he does, he’s going to be very pissed off at a lot of so-called Christians.

- Max

One Step Closer To Excommunication!

The Catholic Church is about to give me one of these...for life. Sweet.

So I’ve finally written that follow-up letter to the archdiocese that’s supposed to make my excommunication from the Catholic Church official. It’s short and sweet. I encourage all disillusioned Catholics to join me by also requesting excommunication. As I’ve said before, feel free to use my letters as templates for your own. I can’t wait for the actual letter stating that I’ve been expelled to show up in the mail. This is going to be awesome.

Dear Mr. Peterson:

Thank you for your prompt response to my letter dated August 17, 2009 requesting excommunication from the Catholic Church.

The purpose of this letter is to satisfy the requirements for excommunication in accordance with Canon Law 751. As such, let me state unequivocally that I repudiate the Catholic faith, and I refuse to submit myself to the diktats of the “Supreme Pontiff.” Herr Ratzinger is but a man chosen by other men. I owe no allegiance to him or any other “representative” of “god.” His recent remarks against the use of prophylactics to combat the AIDS epidemic in Africa is one of the most wicked things I have ever heard uttered by a person of supposedly good repute. That many on the continent take Ratzinger’s warnings to heart makes his position even more immoral. Reasonable people can disagree about abortion, but the Vatican’s stance on AIDS and contraceptives is downright unconscionable, and I have no doubt that many have contracted that awful disease because they heeded his horrid advice. For shame on that man and everyone who shares his backwards views on the subject.

Not only do I repudiate the Catholic faith, I heartily welcome the latae sententiae excommunication that will come with this apostasy. While this action is merely symbolic as far as I am concerned, I very much want to deny the Church the ability to claim me as a member of the faithful.

Sincerely,

Max Canning

The Catholic Church Responds To My Request To Be Excommunicated!

Jesus could ball, but he was no messiah.

I’ve been meaning to post this for a couple of weeks, but I’m just getting around to it now. You may remember this post in which I published a letter I sent to my former parish requesting my formal excommunication by the Catholic Church. It’s not that I think the Church still has some sort of power over me—they don’t; I just thought it would be pretty sweet to have an actual letter from the proper Church authorities banishing me for eternity.

It wasn’t quite what I was expecting, but it’s certainly a start.

(Just click for a larger image.)

Although I have a lot of things on my plate right now, I plan to have that letter written by the end of the week. This is going to be awesome.

- Max

If You Gave Bill Donohue An Enema, He Would Disappear

Not sure if Bill Donohue pissed off? Check his pulse. If he has one, then yes, he’s pissed off.

What do you call a loudmouth Catholic with nothing better to do than whine and issue press releases in response to perceived blasphemy against his religion? Why, a Bill Donohue, of course.

Donohue is head of the Catholic League, which, contrary to popular belief, is not an Italian soccer association. The League states that it is “for religious and civil rights,” but this is a crock because Donohue and the CL completely lose their shit every time some public figure or celebrity exercises free speech and disses Catholicism. As P.Z. Myers recently pointed out, Donohue is currently having a meltdown over an episode of Penn and Teller’s Bullshit! scheduled to air August 27 on Showtime.

Donohue is calling for Showtime—a subscription-based channel owned by CBS Corp.—to fire the comedy duo because he claims that the upcoming episode will defame Catholics. He says this because the show’s website contains a warning about the upcoming program that states, “Graphic Warning, Adult Content.” And he’s probably right about this, but who cares?

In his cute little press release titled, THIS IS THE FINAL STRAW (his all-caps, not mine), Donohue’s words drip with an indignation that would impress Bill O’Reilly:

“This is not the first time Showtime has featured a vile Penn & Teller show. In 2005, Mother Teresa was called ‘Mother F---ing Teresa,’ and her order of nuns were branded ‘f---ing c--ts.’ The year after, Jillette said on his CBS radio show that Mother Teresa ‘got her [sexual] kicks watching people suffer and die.’

“Just recently, Jillette took after me again in his usual foul way. That doesn’t matter, but what matters greatly is his pathological obsession with bashing Catholics and their religion. There is no legitimate place for this kind of frontal assault on any demographic group.”

Waaa, waaa. A couple of comedians are picking on Catholics. Boo hoo.

Somebody get Donohue a pacifier to suck so he’ll shut up. Or a dick. I don’t care which.

Since we’re talking about Catholicism, I’m going to make a confession. While I love blasphemy and religion-bashing in general, I particularly relish “this kind of frontal assault” on the Catholic Church about which Donahue is speaking. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that I was forced to go to C.C.D. (Catholic indoctrination) for ten years, but my main reason for this is a bit nobler.

As I mentioned in my letter requesting that I be excommunicated, the Church essentially owned most of Europe for centuries. The Vatican enjoyed vast resources and political power, could make or break kings, and pretty much went hog-wild. Pope after pope demonstrated an unyielding desire to punish seemingly anyone whose opinions or actions went against official Church dogma. And by punish I mean utilize some of the most fucked up methods of inflicting maximal amounts of pain the world will ever see. In fact, the holy inquisitions ushered in a golden age of torture devices which are now, thanks to the relative impotence of the abominable Church, curious relics of a bygone age of incomprehensible Catholic sadism. During this period, the Vatican scared the ever-living shit out of everyone and cast a dark fog over the European continent that stymied intellectual development and non-torture related technological innovation.

No thanks to the alleged god who watched these monstrosities unfold, the party has been over for some time and the Church has been defanged. Nowadays, the pope has been relegated to some sort of advisory role, admonishing the increasingly skeptical faithful not to do this or not to do that. Prominent Catholics are no longer the beneficiaries of preferential treatment, but must be content to bitch and moan about getting disrespected. A crotchety papist ass-hat such as Donahue—who was probably Torquemada in a previous life—is so bloated with self-righteous BS and subconscious Irish guilt, he doesn’t see the irony in crusading against mere verbal assaults that are in opposition to an institution which has caused more pain, suffering, death, and general misery than Satan would ever even want to.

So pardon me for relishing in some sweet Catholicism-bashing every now and then. I don’t believe in the divine, but if I did, I would certainly regard the Church’s dramatic decline over these past few centuries a form of divine justice. It isn’t often that massive historical injustices get rectified, and even if they do, the victims are hardly ever around to see the perpetrators receive their comeuppance. However, this heretic considers himself a sort of heir to those brave men and women who dared to say “no” to one of the most terrible, sadistic, and murderous institutions, and who paid quite dearly for it. They may not be around to enjoy the increasing irrelevance of the Church and the flak it gets, but I am. It’s true that the Catholics and other Christians of today hadn’t anything to do with the atrocities of the past, but the Church certainly did.

When I lay my head on the pillow tonight, I will close my eyes and let my mind wander back through the annals of time and keep my ears open to see if I might catch a faint echo of the gut-wrenching screams of those long-forgotten oppressed and tortured victims of the Vatican. I will then wander back to the present, and recall the petty grumblings of the politically impotent Bill Donohue. And then I’ll see if I can enjoy a little sardonic chuckle before drifting off to pleasant oblivion for a few short hours.

- Max

I'm Trying To Get Excommunicated!

Luther Before the Diet of Worms, by Anton von Werner

Since I long ago denied the existence of God and Christ as his savior, I have not called myself a Catholic for many years. However, I have decided to make my apostasy official by attempting to get excommunicated from the Church. This morning I called the nearest archdiocese and told them I had typed up a letter requesting that I be excommunicated, and they told me to contact my local parish. I did, and the nice lady on the other end of the line told me I should mail the parish the letter, which, my fellow apostates, you may feel free to use as a template for your own excommunication requests. Simply fill in the redacted parts with your information.

So, without further ado, here is the letter I dropped in the mail this morning.

To Whom It May Concern:

I am writing this letter to express my sincere desire to be excommunicated by the Catholic Church post haste.

In ______ of 19__, I was baptized as a newborn baby at _______________ church in _________, _____________ at an age when I could not have possibly consented to receiving that Sacrament. From the time I was about six years old until I was fifteen, I was subjected to the incessant inculcation of Catholic propaganda in Confraternity of Christian Doctrine. I wholly reject the fundamental tenets of this wicked doctrine, and I have no use for it—or the Church from which it emanates—whatsoever.

The idea that I am somehow eternally indebted to a long-dead Judean peasant for his “sacrifice” is entirely without merit. I say without equivocation that Jesus Christ was by no means divine, either by nature (Athanasianism) or by deed (Arianism). If he existed at all, Christ was at best an eccentric preacher who was under some serious misapprehensions, and at worst a devious huckster of the first order. Vicarious redemption is not only a false doctrine, but an immoral one.

I also deny in wholesale the alleged miracles he performed as described in the Gospels—a series of texts written many, many years after the crucifixion, using hearsay and legend. Even if the Gospels had been written by the real Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, I daresay this would do nothing for the veracity of these texts because these followers of Christ were delusional and illiterate simpletons. Indeed, their breathtaking credulity is responsible for much of the world’s misery over the last 2,000 years. Unfortunately for humanity, the Romans failed to eliminate the Christian menace in Palestine as it was beginning to sprout. If only they had the foresight to keep going until every Christian was neutralized, and every lion satiated, we might be much better off.

Additionally, I regard transubstantiation as a laughable, if not perverted concept. What the Church calls the actual body and blood of Christ, is in fact, an awful-tasting cardboard-esque wafer and watered-down wine, nothing more. To insist that that the wafer and wine are the real body and blood of Christ, is to make cannibals of all who receive Communion. This pagan ritual is clearly borrowed with some modification from ancient Dionysian tradition.

It may also interest you to know that the very first time I received the Eucharist as a small child, I promptly spit it out.

As for the Judeo-Christian god itself, I see no reason to believe in the existence of such a character. And not only do I not believe in him, but I am quite glad that he does not exist. The Old Testament is rife with the atrocious actions of this wretched, jealous, malevolent, genocidal maniac, who appears to have made humans for his own amusement and personal fulfillment, desiring to be worshipped in round-the-clock fashion.

Lastly, there is the Papacy. The Papacy is without question, the largest and most enduring tyranny in the history of civilization. For over 1,000 years, the church had free reign over Europe and made full use of its autocratic powers. It told people how to live and what to think. It imprisoned, tortured, and killed those who dared to hold opinions that went against Church doctrine. During that time it was the single greatest impediment to social, intellectual, and yes, moral progress. I shudder to think where we would be had the Church maintained its dark grip over Europe.

In our time, the Papacy continues to hold and advocate positions which have no business being promulgated in any decent society. I see no reason to think that abortion, homosexuality, or the use of contraceptives is wrong. Indeed, the Church’s position on contraceptives is entirely ludicrous. The idea that sex ought to be engaged in only for the purposes trying to conceive is harmful and outright stupid. Herr Ratzinger and his cohorts know nothing of sex, except for a select number of priests who alleviated years of pent-up sexual tension by preying on little children. Bernard Law could have prevented much of this by reporting Shanley, Geoghan, and the rest of the collared pederasts to the authorities, but instead he chose shuffle these deviants from parish to parish. Rather than enjoying a cushy job in the Vatican, Law should instead be rotting in a Massachusetts prison until death arrives to relieve him of his iniquitous life.

For these reasons and many others, I sincerely request that I be excommunicated forthwith from the Catholic Church. I do not wish for a rebuttal to any of the aforementioned points, nor do I wish to have a meeting about this matter; for my mind has been made up on this score for many years now. I have no use for God, Jesus, the Bible, the Pope, the Sacraments, or any other religious mumbo jumbo. I hope that someday the Church will be so diminished in its power, influence, and resources, that it will be necessary to bulldoze its houses of tyranny across the globe, with the exception of the great cathedrals.

Lest you think that you may ignore this letter and have that be the end of this matter, I am willing to do whatever is necessary to be expelled by this abhorrent organized racket. I am very serious about this, and I believe I have conveyed this sentiment given the tone of my letter. If I do not receive a reply within two weeks of my mailing this, I shall initiate contact again, and every two weeks thereafter until I receive a response. Hopefully, the Church will act on my request before I am forced to get its attention by doing something rash, such as marry a Protestant. If it is necessary for me to write to the ___________ Archdiocese or some other outlet, please inform me so that I may go through the proper channels in order to be officially excommunicated.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Regards,

Max Canning, Apostate