“When the pedophile priests aren't abusing the
children the protestants are beating them”
----from “The
Quotations of Chairman Joe”
I have written about this before in posts detailing my
personal experiences with the vicars of god. (1)
It is one of nature's great mistakes that we are brought
into this world helpless and wholly dependent and, therefore, subject
to the whim of fate. For we have no control over what our
environment will be, or to whom we will bond. Stated simply, we have
no control over who are parents are and into what extended family we
find ourselves. The “church” falls into the latter category.
I've never understood how a woman can sit still in
church, for the doctrine laid down in the Judeo-Christian tradition
belittles them. Only recently, and then furtively, have the various
denominations embraced the idea of female priests, for the most part
the church is locked into the iron-age dictums laid down tens of
thousands of years ago when women were treated as mere chattel
property; daughters to be traded for livestock or land which in those
days was their equivalent of social security.
Nowhere has this legacy lingered on with such vileness
as the protestant penchant for beatings and the Catholic penchant for
sexual deviancy. Earlier this month a report was issued by
authorities in Pennsylvania that involved over 300 priests molesting
and otherwise violating over 1,000 children (2) mostly boys. While
this occurred over a time span of half a century the thinking is that
all of the transgressions may not be accounted for.
My god—if you can forgive a declared atheist—how
many priests are there in Pennsylvania? I mean this must be nearly
all of them. And this went on for decades.
The good news, if there be any, is that those victimized
are now organizing a class-action suit (3) against the church,
hopefully involving enough in restitution to bankrupt the
institution. But I doubt it.
The victims should also bring suit against the estates
of their parents for putting them into harm's way.
Again, it is the luck of the draw, or the caprice of
fate that determines in whose hands ones well being is placed. Why
anyone would drag a child to church has always escaped me.
When the priests are not fondling and raping, and the
sisters (talk to anyone who has gone to a Catholic school) are not
joining the protestants in applying the rod, one is still left with
the stark reality that even at its most benign the teachings of the
church are designed to accomplish nothing other than to terrorize the
young. Fill the child's head with sheer terror of burning for an
eternity in hell if you don't tow the line, if you somehow don't
measure up, if you don't make the grade.
Oh they gloss it over with tales of a loving god, who
will drop out the sky like Caesar Disgustus and sweep you up but the
underlying terror is at the base of what animates the soul to look to
these myths in the first place. Rule by terror: an idea early
perfected by the church and only recently adopted by every tin horn
dictator on the planet. Without terror one has no need of
'salvation'.
Then there is the ever-present danger of 'backsliding'.
In the Baptist tradition the child is taken, like in every other
sect, to church well before the bastard is able to take his, or her,
first step or utter the first word. A child is 'baptized', literally
and figuratively, into the fold well before it has developed any
capacity for critical thinking; cause and effect, empirical evidence,
social understanding. Then, just before pubescence, a ritual is
performed in which the 'elders' of the church, after due instruction,
declare the young one 'saved' from the fate that would otherwise,
inexorably, wait.
But there is always this nagging doubt. There is always
this voice suggesting that perhaps, just perhaps, god is, after all,
the god of Abraham. And so, the terror remains.
Let there be no mistake about it. Religion is a form of
child abuse. The revelations of the misdeeds of the Catholic church
are only a symptom—the latest manifestation as ugly as they are.
But the priests are, from a wider perspective, simply doing what they
are charged to do—terrorize the children. And who, after all, gave
them permission?
_______________
- See, for example the earlier post: April 27, 2015: The One and Only Billy Shears, Suffer the Little Children, American Madrasa
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