Could this be the grand finale? The glorious death knell for the ugliest portions of organized religion and its relentless, impressive beat-down of the stubborn female species for lo these past 2,013 years? Can we at least hope?Not close enough. There's more but what amazes me is how young Mark
This much we know: Here in the stumbling, fumbling first world, where minorities have suddenly become the majority, gay marriage is increasingly no big deal, sexually awake women are surging into leadership roles like never before and the scales of influence have tipped away from frightened white males, organized religion is somehow looking even more dangerously, even cruelly out of touch and hostile to all that is beautiful, positive and worthwhile in the world.
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It all points to the most intriguing possibility of all: Two millennia into the church’s brutish rule of guilt, shame, abuse and fear of anything with an active vagina, we might finally be at a point where organized religion is hammering the final nails into its own coffin. Or perhaps refusing to remove all those it put there 2,000 years ago. Whichever.
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I know, it ain’t over yet. The GOP’s relentless war on women, abortion rights and contraception continues to repulse millions. And the church isn’t about to vanish completely. Besides, let’s be fair: organized religion still offers some balm, even to women: community support, a respite from the chaos, a rich connection to faith, ministering to the poor (that would be the nuns), a place to fully indulge in one’s spiciest daddy issues, all steeped in hazy devotion and murky tradition. Just because that tradition includes centuries of sexual abuse, shame, and the ongoing subjugation of women, just because the Catholic church itself no longer allows its priests to be alone with children, doesn’t mean it has nothing left to offer. But it’s close.
managed to pen a whole screed on the Catholic Church without once using the phrase "medieval bullshit".
2 comments:
I was raised in a traditional Catholic family and went to parochial schools K-12 but this was in the '60s when the American Church was "relatively" liberal. Nevertheless, the whole trust us we are right no matter our blatant internal contradictions so irritated me that by the age of 14 I almost overnight became an agnostic (an atheist affirms an unprovable proposition; my view is that the subject is beside the point). I had an excellent education and a lot of Catholic schools still provide that (though you have to be comfortably middle class to afford it nowadays unlike my day).
I was born in Japan. My mother is Japanese, my father was one of the first Green Beret Special Forces soldiers ever. He spent most of his time in Vietnam. My mother and I spent our time in America eventually being shunned by every local church because of our Asian heritage. Some churches actually told my mother not to return. I laugh at Jimbo for saying the 60's was when the America Church was liberal, HA! LOL! I've pissed on every church doorstep since I was 10. I'm in the 2500 range and still counting...
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