Going Down the Sinéad Road
Jul. 30th, 2003 04:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
talktoolooseWithout apology:
FUCK YOU, CATHOLIC CHURCH.
As a Jew I hereby do not forgive you for the Spanish Inquisition or for turning a blind eye to the Holocaust.
As a gay man, I hereby do not forgive you for your continued attacks on my basic rights and freedoms. I do not forgive you for the 1986 Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons. In this document you justified gay bashing by saying "...when homosexual activity is...condoned, or when civil legislation is introduced to protect behavior to which no one has any conceivable right, neither the Church nor society at large should be surprised when other distorted notions and practices gain ground, and irrational and violent reactions increase."
I do not forgive you for the constant harrassment of governments in their attempts to extend to queer people rights equal to those actually or apparently living a heterosexual lifestyle.
I do not forgive you for your latest interference to social progress as regards gay marriage in Canada. And, boy! am I not looking forward to the Vatican's paper tomorrow outlining how the faithful world-wide should help build pressure against extending marriage rights to non-heterosexuals.
If you are a reader who is offended by this, if you are a queer person or a person of conscience who finds comfort or direction from this church, I ask you to think about these issues the next time you are fed a wafer by a hypocritical representative of a sexist, insanely wealthy bureaucracy which has fed misery, threats of damnation and shunning to pregnant women, gay youth, battered wives and indigenous peoples. Perhaps it's time to ask what moral authority these protectors of child abusers have and why you are comforted by their words.
Ask yourself what stink is being hidden by the incense.
FUCK YOU, CATHOLIC CHURCH.
As a Jew I hereby do not forgive you for the Spanish Inquisition or for turning a blind eye to the Holocaust.
As a gay man, I hereby do not forgive you for your continued attacks on my basic rights and freedoms. I do not forgive you for the 1986 Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons. In this document you justified gay bashing by saying "...when homosexual activity is...condoned, or when civil legislation is introduced to protect behavior to which no one has any conceivable right, neither the Church nor society at large should be surprised when other distorted notions and practices gain ground, and irrational and violent reactions increase."
I do not forgive you for the constant harrassment of governments in their attempts to extend to queer people rights equal to those actually or apparently living a heterosexual lifestyle.
I do not forgive you for your latest interference to social progress as regards gay marriage in Canada. And, boy! am I not looking forward to the Vatican's paper tomorrow outlining how the faithful world-wide should help build pressure against extending marriage rights to non-heterosexuals.
If you are a reader who is offended by this, if you are a queer person or a person of conscience who finds comfort or direction from this church, I ask you to think about these issues the next time you are fed a wafer by a hypocritical representative of a sexist, insanely wealthy bureaucracy which has fed misery, threats of damnation and shunning to pregnant women, gay youth, battered wives and indigenous peoples. Perhaps it's time to ask what moral authority these protectors of child abusers have and why you are comforted by their words.
Ask yourself what stink is being hidden by the incense.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
Re: Q: Why should I be comforted by Catholic Church?
Date: 2003-07-31 05:55 am (UTC)I hold to the belief that religious expression and opaque power structures are anathema. The possibility (inevitability) that top positions will be occupied by the power hungry is too great. The Catholic Church has been involved in too much abuse of power for me to consider it a viable means of increasing good in the world, not that anyone's giving me a vote.
Yes, there are countries, especially in Central America where the Jesuits, priests and nuns are moral barometer. Good on them and I mean that. The outrage and pain that lead to my post are as genuine and the suffering caused to tens of thousands as real.
And it's not just Catholicism that makes me doubt institutions of profit or power as the appropriate vehicle for spirituality. My interest in Judaism mostly ends when I have to enter a synagogue, especially a large institutional one.
Anyway, the power of the church isn't what it was. The coverage of the SARS concert in Toronto yesterday was virtually indistinguishable from last years Pope-alooza on the same site. The traffic co-ordinator, responsible for seamlessly moving 450,000 in and out of Downsview Park called the Pope Mick Jagger's warm-up act.