Catholicism is Characterized by Another Trinity.

The Unholy Trinity: 
Self-loathing, Dishonesty and Hypocrisy

My iPhone died on the way home from Brazilian Jiu Jitsu tonight.  This is an unremarkable fact of course but it did deprive me of the excellent, often hilarious podcast Thomas and the Bible. Having nothing else to listen to, I decided to listen to some religious programing on the drive. Blog fodder of course, and I do enjoy the arguments I can have with Christian fundamentalists. I'm not averse to calling in. Tonight I couldn't call in, despite how deeply annoyed and saddened I was by the subject of the show (at least the segment I -briefly- listened to).

It is, almost anywhere in the US, exceedingly easy to stumble on to religious programming. There are at least ten fundamentalist Christian radio stations in my area here in Maine. It is impossible not to notice that there are no liberal Christian radio stations. Tonight, my torture took the form of a call-in advice show on a Catholic channel. I don't know if the host is certified psychologist, psychiatrist or therapist of  any kind.  Whatever her credentials her advice and preachments were prescriptions for personal disaster.
I would not like what heard there.

A father called in, in desperate need of advice.  I think the show was called Catholic Answers. He wasn't quite sure what to do with his five year old girl. Apparently she masturbated on the couch occasionally.  He said they had asked their pediatrician what they should do.  The pediatrician replied, sensibly, that this was natural, there was nothing wrong with her, and that they should have a talk with the girl about hygiene and doing such things in private. No panic, almost sanguine the good doctor seems. The contrast between the pediatrician and the host of the show is stark, troubling and unpleasant.

The host was immediately displeased.  The doctor, she said, was wrong. Masturbation, she informed this idiot parent was a sin, it was an actual evil. It was only normal in that many people did it. "That's what doctors really mean when they say normal."  "But just because lots of people do it doesn't make it right, does it." The host continued, "You need to tell your child that it is wrong, and we don't do that." This broad and robust assertion about masturbation being a sin, and a moral evil was made without even a hint of irony or self reflection.  Is it too easy to point out what a spectacularly bad idea it is to be getting advice on childhood sexuality from an organization whose sexual transgressions against children and the vulnerable give news cycles the world over fresh new atrocities to report almost weekly? Listening to the host you might actually think that the Roman Catholic church and its army of apologists had something important to say on the subject of human sexuality.
Of course they don't.

According to Catholic Advice Lady (hereafter CAL) the little girl was too young to hear why masturbation was so wrong, evil and sinful. However, CAL was able to explain to listeners why it was wrong.  No, strike that.  She was able to assert a suite of pseudo reasons for this ancient stupidity concerning masturbation. Later when the child attained the age of reason CAL suggested that the parents teach her that masturbation was evil and that masturbating was greedy. It would deprive her from giving herself to some one else, and cause her to not bring pleasure to her husband. Masturbation, catholics learn, subverts natural human instincts to give themselves to a mate, for their mate's pleasure, and, oddly, God's.  Does God watch all this marriage bed fucking? One has to wonder. And does he get bored while watching devout Catholic fucking? I have an opinion. If CAL has an opinion on this, she is keeping it too herself, which, as it happens, is probably for the best.

"Train your child to do something else when she feels these urges."  Apparently CAL used to make her son, who had this "problem," run whenever he felt these greedy, carnal urges. Teach that little girl that it is wrong to touch herself to bring herself pleasure. Have her do jumping jacks when she gets that "tingle."

Father-of-the-year was on board, but he had a follow up question, which I will paraphrase. It is all well and good to apply Catholic reasoning to my child when she is on the couch, but what about when she is in her room?

It was at this point I simply turned off the radio. I was worried CAL was going to suggest some horrific invigilation of this child while she was in her room. I imagined CAL was going to say something like, well you will have to be in there until she goes to sleep. I didn't want to hear whatever life crushing advice she was going to give, so I flipped the channel off and thought about coyote ecology.

Of course every single thing CAL said was wrong. Or merely unprovable. Given the preponderance of masturbation in the lives of nearly every human on the planet, CAL's hypothesis seems, at best, implausible. I'm not going to bother exploding it further.  The experience of everyone one reading this probably does that, sadly, necessary work for me.

While CAL and her ilk osculate the rump of human dignity as if it can possibly justify a single claim they make about human sexuality, lets reflect on a few salient features that make this call-in show a perfect example, in microcosm, of almost everything that is wrong with Catholic moral reasoning.

The Church teaches human beings to be self-loathers, liars and hypocrites.  It does this from a very young age, making it a way of life. While any examination of Vatican leaders and the Councils of Bishops makes this abundantly clear, imagine the beginnings of this cycle, through the eyes of the five year old girl at the heart of this ugly vignette. What will she learn from CAL and Father-of-the-Year (FOTY)?

Of course CAL and FOTY are deluding themselves that they are going to stop their children from masturbating. So where does that leave a catholic child? No where pleasant.

Unavoidably there will be self-loathing accompanying the act (especially if the parent is zealous in the preaching the sin and evil of self pleasure). This may carry over into future sexual relationships.  Indeed it probably will, given that the Catholic Church seems to frown on the very idea of pleasure during sex (to be fair, the Church sort of talks out of both sides of its mouth here). Unsurprising, given that its priests are not permitted to openly engage in that sweet act openly.  If they must feel dirty every time they have sex with themselves or others, I suppose there is a certain logic in wanting to see everyone else's good time dashed on the rocks. And so we find CAL enthusiastically suggesting that guilt and shame are to be heaped on this girl for an act which hurts no one, and might conceivably provide her insight into her own body.

Since the child is very likely going to continue to masturbate she will have to add dishonesty to her bag of tricks.  This means, within the Catholic paradigm, a life time of lying about masturbation.  A life time of faux shock, and faux disgust at even the suggestion of masturbation. This lying will also produce some guilt and shame. So kind of a double whammy there.

Hypocrisy. The child will likely grow up, and spout this same line to their children, to their friends etc, all the while continuing to engage in the same act. This isn't mere theorizing on my part.  While I never heard this kind of nonsense from my parents (thanks Mom and Dad!), I did see the unholy trinity of self-loathing, lying and hypocrisy play out among many of my Catholic School peers at the parochial school I attended. While my views on human sexuality weren't exactly sophisticated in those years (fourth to eighth grade) it was impossible not to notice these salient features of Catholic teaching on sex. Now as then the verdict on these teachings is and was clear.

Unhealthy nonsense, all of it.

Commenting on the Obvious

As many of you know I troll the religious radio shows because I am always looking for good blog fodder, and have a curiousity about what is riling up, enraging or captivating Christians. Such radio is almost always evangelical, Baptist, anti-science, and anti-reason. I recently found a local Catholic radio station that managed to convince me that my earlier opinion of Catholics, that they were a more progressive sect of Christianity was wholly mistaken or, failing that, more mistaken than I had originally thought. This really shouldn't have come as a surprise to me, I did attend Catholic School as a kid, and nothing that happened there ever made me think of the Roman Catholic Church was any kind of bastion of free inquiry or rationalism. Oh well, at least I didn't get raped by the priest or beaten by nuns. Though the only nun I ever knew, Sister Annette (a Catholic cyborg I think whose emotion chips were set to off), lamented, and seriously, that she could no longer hit us with rulers. She was only a fixture at Seton Catholic School for one year when I was there. Which was too bad because she was such a class act.
But I digress......

While listening to Catholic radio, some kind of call in show, a caller wonders if the Pope has ever said that the Church's behavior, specifically the burning of heretics, witches and Protestants among others was wrong. The host hemmed and hawed about, didn't really offer a clear answer and then said that Pope John Paul II had apologized for any sin the Church had committed, and hoped people who had been offended and wronged by that sin would forgive the Church. The host, and apparently the Pope, had some trouble saying that burning people with whom you disagree is the wrong way to go.
Caller: So the Pope hasn't said that burning people was wrong, and hasn't apologized for trying to supress differing opinion? [paraphrase by me]
Host: The pope has apologized for any sin the Church has committed. [paraphrase by me]
Caller: So no it hasn't said those actions were wrong and hasn't apologized for them. Then I have to ask what has the Pope specifically said about the burning of Wycliffe? [more paraphrase by me]

A little backstory is probably in order. Wycliffe, who was strong opponent of Papal authority, translated the bible (or he and his acolytes did it together) into vernacular English, and for this and other crimes he was burned. Well his exhumed bones were burned. He had died 31 years before being branded a heretic by the Council of Constance. I think you will agree, they sure showed him. back to the call already in progress....

The host of the show didn't seem to know if the Pope has said anything specific about the bizarre case of Wycliffe's pointless rapid oxidation. And the caller never mentioned why it was a big deal to him that the Council had a dead man burned 31 years after his death. Wycliffe though is important to students of Protestant history so it makes sense to me now that I have done a bit more reading. Burning long dead people matters a lot less to me than burning living heretics. So to me in the annals of religiously inspired batshit crazy this is really pretty mild.

What really blew my mind though was the way the host attempted to get the Church off the hook for its tawdry and bizarre desecration of Wycliffe's remains. First he began to suggest that Wycliffe wasn't really all that great a scholar, and his translation was absolutely horrible. "So there is a lot you maybe don't know about Wycliffe that sheds light on why the Church did what it did." I'm not making this up. The logic of the host seemed to suggest Wycliffe published a shabby translation of the bible (according to later scholars) so whatever the Church did was probably okay. I've heard Catholic scholars make similar noises when you bring up the Church's behavior toward Galileo. Of Galileo these scholars and lay defenders of Rome will say that the science of the day was on the Pope's side so they were right to oppose Galileo's hypothesis, as if Galileo's interrogators were simply journal referees sending his paper back for revision and correction, and not presenting him with a false choice (torture or recantation).

This is an old dodge by the Roman Catholic Church. It is loath to state specifically which actions in the past it has done were wrong (at least in many of the halls of leadership), and simply attempts to diffuse the legitimate accusations, charges with this soft non-admission, non-apology:

The Church apologizes for any sins it has in the past committed, and hope that anyone who has been offended by them will kindly forgive the one true Church, sincerely yours
-The Vicar of Christ on Earth, Pope Benedict

I think this maneuver is performed because ultimately the Church fathers don't really think that the Roman Catholic Church has done much wrong and that it probably views any admission of wrong doing damaging to its claims of ultimate authority. The Pope after all is infallible.

Roman Catholic Sex Scandal, or Why should we be shocked at the RCC?

Every day of the past week (3/15 to 3/21) the New York Times has run story after story after sad story on the growing sex scandal that is rocking the Roman Catholic Church (RCC)all over the industrialized world. I could go in that vein by the way, providing links to these ugly shenanigans for some time but there is no need. Of course it would be the case that Ratzinger (now Benedict) would have been responsible for moving some of these priests around, ones he knew had an experience of molestation from one church to another to avoid unpleasantries. One response by the RCC spinsters has been to point out that other churches have had their own sex scandals. Let me translate this response. Ours is the final word on morality, and the dignity of beings. We know and respect the rules God has given us better than contemporaries. Sex scandal? Uh well our behavior isn't any worse than other churches."

This is not really the mark of an organization interested in taking responsiblity for its rather loathsome and secretive actions regarding all this sex with children they've been having. Nor is it the mark of a body that can be taken seriously on any moral issue. Nor, I hope to show, has it ever been an organization deserving of our respect.

It is almost too easy to point out, as many have, the hypocritical cheek with which this racket operates. They spend no small amount of money opposing gay marriage in Maine, say (nearly two million) and other places besides, but are not interested in beefing up a staff of ten to quickly process the almost endless multitude of charges that seem to be coming in (ten is really the amount of personel the RCC seems willing to spare). It is too easy to point out that the RCC has been terrifically hypocritical on matters of moral and ethical action. No doubt they would argue that their work is vastly more important, and godly than its earthly abuses. It is funny though, or would be in other circumstances, that this body points its finger at us and presumes to dictate on terms of sexual moralilty. A group of largely pasty old virgins, liberaly sprinkled, it appears, with a healthy portion of sexually un-,repressed pedophiles thinks it is in the best position to dictate morals and to tell the rest of us what is sexually healthy and acceptable. They think they are still the best group to make these proclamations despite the fact that the RCC sex scandal now encompasses, the US, Brazil, Ireland, Germany, Austria, Australia, New Zealand (and those are just the most numerously reported countries)and more countries are sure to follow. Odd that. This dark religious tale seems even worse when we consider the treaty between the Vatican and Italy where Vatican officials enjoy a great deal of immunity from prosecution, and the general kid gloves treatment given the RCC by authorities in nearly all the industrialized West.

While it it expeceptionally easy to kick this Church in the gut at the momemt, I think that there is an important element of this sordid affair that isn't being addressed.
Historical context. And with that element it seems that we might batter the RCC leadership with even more vigor.

Several newspapers, both electronic and not, have reported on the current scandal and what effect it is having on the RCC's numbers, and the morale of the priests still in the cloth as well as the morale of Catholics in the face of it. While intersting, a scandal on this scale is not out of the ordinary for the RCC. The history of the RCC simply isn't pretty and the ever widening sex scandal represents only the latest, though admittedly one of its/their more grotesque, moral atrocities. So I would like to essay a brief list of the bullshit, and horror this august body has inflicted on the world. After this review, I hope you will see that it deserves all the respect of Scientology, and that its leader, Joe Ratzinger (now calling himself Benedict followed by some combination of Roman numerals) should only be taken as seriously as one would take Tom Cruise when he is ranting about psychiatry.

Lets start off with the easy ones.
The Inquisition (currently called the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith) The duty of this office, according to Pope John Paul II was to, "promote and safeguard the doctrine on the faith and morals throughout the Catholic world: for this reason everything which in any way touches such matter falls within its competence." It has of course served this function in spectacularly immoral ways historically.

The Catholic Inquisitional movements were largely about rooting out and supressing heresy. That is to say, they were involved most directly in supressing doctrines that might supplant their own authority. Though they also handled the banning of heretical literature, victimless crimes like witchcraft, blasphemy, and of course that most ancient of Christian crimes, being Jewish were all part of the Magesteria of authority of the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith. To these ignoble ends the Catholic Church approved of the most horrible torture one can imagine. They also confiscated property and sentenced an inordinate amount of people to death.

Of historical note was the Inquisition's treatment of Galileo Galilei in 1663 for his book Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems. This work compared the hypotheses of Copernicus and his heliocentric model, with the Church supported ideas of Ptolemy (which held that the Earth was the center of the universe and did not move). For this work, Galileo was ordered to stand trial. The charges? He held opinions contrary to RCC doctrine. Thus was he "vehemently suspected of heresy." Which was crime enough to be arrested and imprisoned for the rest of his life, and to have his books banned by the moral, and reasonable RCC. He was also forced to recant-under threat of torture. Pope John Paul II kinda, sorta apologized for this behavior by the RCC (to the extent that this den of vipers will apologize for anything). But Ratzinger is having none of that.

Ratzinger, shuffler of child molesting priests, has said this of the RCC's behavior regarding Galileo, "The Church at the time of Galileo kept much more closely to reason than did Galileo himself, and she took into consideration the ethical and social consequences of Galileo's teaching too. Her verdict against Galileo was rational and just and the revision of this verdict can be justified only on the grounds of what is politically opportune.” Her verdict was just and rational? This can only be stated by people who have shoveled shit so long they can no longer smell that which they shovel. When the Inquisition is involved, torture isn't too far behind. Think for a moment about this just and rational response. The RCC saw to it that Galileo Galilei spent his final nine years of life under house arrest (originally he was to be more forcably imprisoned)all for writing a book and making a case for a reasonable hypothesis. He had the unfortunate temerity to disagree with the Ptolemeic hypothesis.

Witchhunts (more Inquisitional fun!)
Wikipedia on this is priceless.

A witch hunt is a search for witches or evidence of witchcraft, often involving moral panic, mass hysteria and lynching, but in historical instances also legally sanctioned and involving official witchcraft trials

(emphasis added)

European witch-hunting sent thousands first to torture, then fire for a generally unpleasant Christian themed end of life ride. No evidence could pardon you after being accused. Maybe you could confess and repent and you would be spared death, or failing that at least be granted the garrot before the fire. Your property would be confiscated. And you would likely, man, woman or child, loose your life were you accused in the hay day of European witch hunting movements. Ah well, as the bible says, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." There is nothing quite like condemning people to death for imaginary crimes. If you are thinking about taking up the charge, you will definately need the manual Malleus Maleficarum commissioned by the supersticious oaf, Pope Innocent VIII and written by the even more credulous oafs, Jacob Sprenger and Heinrich Kramer. Click on the link to see a great swath of ugly nonsense. We needn't spend much time on this as the particulars of this ugly chapter of RCC history are pretty well known.

Then there is the unpleasant Inquisitional tale (1858) of Edgardo Mortara. Edgardo was a young Jewish child (one among many)whose ill health worried his 14 year old caretaker, frightened for his Jewish-baby-soul, baptised him without his parents knowledge, and most certainly without their consent. However this was enough for the Church, and certainly enough for its office of the Inquisition. Baptism conferred the status Catholic to the boy and this meant that he could not, in the Papal State of Bologna, be raised by his non-Catholic parents. The police came and took the boy, and whisked him off to Rome. Clearly this is an organization that loves families. The story of Edgardo Mortara produced something of an international backlash against Pious IX. None of it resulted in the return of Edgardo, but it certainly was nice to see that people resisted RCC power.

Okay lets slip out of the Inquisition and into other RCC bullshit.
The RCC was largely opposed to the Enlightenment.

The RCC favored Franco and his fascist regime. In fact the RCC has come under fire for beatifying nearly 500 nuns and priests killed in the the Spanish Civil War. These were men and women who supported fully what could well be called a terrorist government. Well done morons.

Pious XII endorsed Hitler. Slick move asshole.
The RCC endorsement of Mussolini, while a slightly rockier relationship, was no less committed.

From Mussolini to today the RCC leadership has demonstrated that it is a horrible horrible, unethical organization with almost a complete disregard for concepts like integrity, honesty, and freedom.

Condoms

Here the Church is almost genocidally imbecilic and dishonest to boot. On the continent of Africa where the use of a condom can make the difference between life and death, the RCC actively tries to restrict their distribution, while at the same time spreading lies about the efficacy thereof.

In an interview, one of the Vatican's most senior cardinals Alfonso Lopez Trujillo suggested HIV could even pass through condoms.

"The Aids virus is roughly 450 times smaller than the spermatozoon. The spermatozoon can easily pass through the 'net' that is formed by the condom," he says.

Some priests have even gone so far as to say condoms are laced with HIV/AIDs. Regrettably they are also saying most of this nonsense in the developing world where access to information that would render their faux authority null is extremely limited. It is in the developing world where the RCC is probably the most detrimental because it can influence policy with its wealth, and its ability to mobilize a credulous and largely uneducated people. The RCC even opposes use of condoms between married couples where one is infected with HIV/Aids and the other is not.

This was just a survey of the bullshit in which the Catholic Church (it's leadership at least) seems to glory. Priests turning the confessional into a glory hole represents only the most recent strata of unpleasant corruption, exploitative sexuality and predation, and utter dishonesty. Beneath the current sex scandal lay layer after layer of grotesque history, wherein an obvious quest for temporal earthly power is laid utterly bare.

Addendum
The NY Times coverage of the RCC sex scandal continues more or less unabated, and NPR, the BBC and numerous other news outlets have joined in. This may be the first time in centuries a Pope has been forced to step down (though this is admittedly an unlikely scenario). But what isn't unlikely is that this will damage the RCC's ability to act as a credible moral authority.