Catholics from São Paulo to Paris
In case anyone’s feeling like shedding a tear for Pope Benny (unlikely, I know), here’s a reminder from 2009:
The Catholic Church (and Pope Benedict XVI) were presented with a public-relations powder keg in March when news broke that a 9-year-old Brazilian girl underwent an abortion after she’d been raped and impregnated with twins by her stepfather. Catholics from São Paulo to Paris were outraged by the swift public declaration of the local Archbishop, José Cardoso Sobrinho, that the girl’s family as well as the doctors who performed the abortion were automatically excommunicated.
What, just because the local archbishop valued the “life” of the process inside the 9-year-old girl more than the very actual life of the girl herself? Because the archbishop swiftly declared that the unaware unconscious unsentient pregnancy forced on the child mattered more than the child herself? Because the archbishop declared that the child should have submitted to likely death rather than halt the life-threatening process forced on her by her rapist stepfather? Yes, just because all that.
Monsignor Rino Fisichella, a solidly traditionalist Rome prelate considered to be close to Benedict, tried to soften the church’s approach to the case by writing in the Vatican’s official newspaper L’Osservatore Romano that the girl “should have been defended, hugged and held tenderly to help her feel that we were all on her side.”
Fuck that noise. You’re a million miles from “her side” when you’re forcing her to go through agony and likely death after being raped by her stepfather. Imagine being a 9-year-old girl gestating twins!! There isn’t room in a child’s body for that.
In a tucked-away “clarification” published on page 7 of a recent edition of L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican produced a document that unequivocally confirmed automatic excommunication for anyone involved in an abortion — even in such a situation as dire as the Brazilian case.
Because priestly power matters far more than the lives of mere little sluts who probably tempted their stepfathers in the first place. Bros before hos.
Updating to add, reminded by tigger_the_wing’s comment:
Shed a fucking tear? I should fucking think not. He was largely the fucking reason that nothing was done about fucking priests who fucking raped children.
The only fucking time he came within a fucking light year of being a fucking decent person was when he fucking retired.
Good fucking riddance, and I hope that a fucking Hell exists just for him.
Fucker.
Tim Minchin’s Pope Song comes to mind.
I was just going to update the post to add it.
@tigger, the only problem with popes retiring is that they always appoint a new one.
And guess who WASN’T excommunicated. The rapist.
I am reminded that a number of NAZIs were RC. Only one was excommunicated, and that was because of divorce; a crime far more heinous than genocide in the eyes of the Church.
Some churches and believers do good, but all religions carry seeds of evil within, and the Roman Catholic is the evilest, a multi-national criminal organisation that enjoys worldwide government protection.
I know Catholics who claim, if not “most”, then at least “highly persecuted” status for Catholics. They also claim that Pagans got their solstice and springtime rituals by copying from Christians, rather than the other way around. Nobody outside their cult believes these things. Why, then, are the genderists believed so widely by those outside their cult?
Sackbut, I have known a few Catholics, and am shocked to discover how little they know about their own religion. A friend of mine was at lunch with another friend and me, and I was talking about a book I was reading about women in the Bible (all Old Testament, written by a Jewish author, and funny as hell). I was talking about the harlot by the side of the road story, where Judah buys and has sex with his daughter-in-law, making her pregnant. He doesn’t know who it is, he thinks she’s just some prostitute.
My Catholic friend interrupted. “That is not in the Bible”, says she. “I have read the Bible from cover to cover”, says she. “That is not there”, says she. I gave her the book, chapter, and verse, but I doubt she ever looked it up. I imagine her eyes glaze over and her mind blanks whenever she reaches things she doesn’t like. She was a lovely person, but had a blind spot where her religion was concerned.
Another friend, also Catholic, told me she doesn’t read anything negative about the Catholic Church, and talks about the kind gentleness of Jesus. She knows nothing about things like “bring them and kill them in front of me” or “sell your cloaks to buy swords”, or “hate your [mother, father, etc, etc] if you want to follow me”. She doesn’t even seem aware of the more well known verses, such as not coming to bring peace but war.
I have had many interesting discussions with Catholics about birth control, euthanasia, divorce, transubstantiation, Crusades, and Inquisitions. They believe the church believes what they do, and they wave away the Crusades and the Inquisition by muttering that it was all in the past, and everyone else was just as bad.
I would hate to think that I was unwilling to read any of the negative stuff about atheism; it shuts off a channel of learning that might be important. I suppose it’s possible it calls into question my commitment to my beliefs if I’m willing to read those who disagree, but I personally think it’s the best way to strengthen your commitment if you can support it, and abandon it is you are mistaken.
iknklast, I’d love to know what book you are referring to, sounds delightful.
I know what you mean about the rejection or “forgetting” of negative parts of the bible. I’ve seen that with Protestants and even atheists, too; telling Christians they are doing Christianity wrong by not being the nice, pleasant, peaceful person Jesus was. I admit to dwelling on the negative parts, but I think the main point in my mind is that the bible can promote anything you want, not that it only promotes good things or only promotes bad things.
Re: “it was in the past”, “everyone was just as bad”, yep, yep, heard that many times.
One thing I do note is that Catholics are not monolithic. Lots of more liberal Catholics don’t agree with the declarations of the hierarchy, the Vatican, the US Council of Catholic Bishops (they seem to be the most right-wing group in the whole institution). Why these liberal Catholics don’t leave is a difficult question, hard for me to understand as someone who would never have joined and who has left various forms of Judaism, but I can see that “Catholic” is very important to their self-conception and their relationship with family, and it could mean leaving behind a lot of things.
Which is interesting from the point of view of “identity” and what we mean by it and why it matters and so on. “Catholic” can be more an identity than a religion, especially (I think) in contexts where it’s an ethnic group as least as much as it is a religious one. Ireland is a blood-soaked example of this but so is all of Europe if you take the long view. In the US it very much goes hand in hand with non-Wasp immigration history.