Reasons the Catholic Church sucks: Or How I Lost Faith in Organised Religion
DISCLAIMER: If you are Catholic and uptight about it, this post is not for you. Before anyone writes me off as atheist scum, I would like to point out that I was baptised and received a Catholic school education. Hence, I’m in a good position to comment on the state of Catholicism.
1. The bible is riddled with contradictions and therefore obviously not to be taken litererally. It’s funny that the church claims Genesis is the only true account of the origins of the universe and yet ignores the bible when it suggest the ritual slaughter of animals as a means to worship God. By the way did I mention that the story of Jesus was an oral tradition until the New Testament was written 60 years after his death? Umm…has anybody ever played Chinese Whispers? Yeah.
2. The church’s stance on contraception. Where does it say in the bible that people can’t take the pill? Meanwhile the world is overpopulated and people in Africa are dropping like flies thanks to AIDS.
3. The church’s stance on Homosexuality. Personally, I think God is too busy to care who people have sex with. If God made men and didn’t want them to engage in sodomy, why would he put the male g-spot in the anal cavity? Is it his idea of a joke?
4. Jesus’ teachings are supposedly the basis for Christianity, hence the name of the religion, yet none of the aforementioned values were ever mentioned by him in the bible.
5. All the fucked up things they have done or supported in the past i.e. feudalism, the crusades, the inquisition, Hitler.
6. The very notion of there being a heaven and hell. I find it hard to believe there is a place called heaven, where everyone is in white, people walk on clouds and angels play trumpets. Frankly, it doesn’t seem like a place I’d want to go. Hell seems even more ridiculous with the fire and brimstone. And limbo? What a joke. They’d been telling people since the 13th century that babies who died before baptism went to some kind of waiting room between heaven and hell. Then out of the blue and they announced it didn’t exist. No kidding!
7. Only recently the Catholic Church declared ‘obscene’ wealth a sin. Isn’t that a little hypocritical considering it is one of the wealthiest organisations in the world? Has anyone been to the Vatican? Talk about obscene wealth.
8. Paedophile priests. The stories just keep on coming.
9. The focus on symbolism at the expense of spiritual truth. More attention is placed on the rituals like mass and on symbolic objects like the cross than on spirituality. The death of Christ and the Catholic guilt which ensues, is spoken about far more than his message of acceptance (nothing could illustrate this point better than Mel Gibson’s excuse for a film, The Passion of the Christ).
10. World Youth Day. I understand some people may have had a spiritual experience, but to me it seemed like an excuse for Catholics to get together and out-Christ each other. Holy this holy that…and the singing dear God the singing…if I hear ‘Galillee’ one more time I’ll kill someone. It was undoubtedly a shameless marketing excercise with the aim of recruiting young people into the Catholic Church. It’s like they were trying to sex up Catholicism and make it hip. Lets hope they succeded for their sake, because less and less of the faithful are turning up on Sunday and those coffers are looking mighty empty.
3 years ago