I think I’m pretty much done with the Catholic church at this point. It took a lot of thinking and pondering, but they’ve finally rubbed me the wrong way in a way that I don’t know if I can ever forgive them for.
When Pope Benedict was put into his position as Pope, I was happy. I felt that the church would move in a more conservative direction and stop trying to twist in the wind toward every social pressure under the sun. They wouldn’t cave to outside interference and would stay true to who they were. For the most part, that has happened. Benedict has gone a long way toward making sure that people understand that the church is the church and the world is the world, and just because something is socially acceptable or fashionable, that doesn’t mean it should be accepted into the church with a sigh of resignation.
I’m totally with that, and I’m more than happy putting my disagreements with the church on hold for a consistent message that I can understand.
Last week, however, the church decided that they needed to interject themselves into the secular world by turning secular issues into a new set of seven “social” sins. In doing so, the church has now made littering, drug abuse, stem cell research (they don’t specify embryonic or not), excessive wealth, and causing poverty sins. In a way, the church has turned things that were merely failings of the human condition into codified things that make you a bad Catholic.
Forgetting all the others, the one that sealed the deal for me was the excessive wealth part. Vatican City is a city clad in gold and marble, adorned with some of the finest paintings and sculptures ever created by some of the finest artists that have ever lived on this earth. The church in general is a continuous show of flashy wealth from its gold trinkets to the ring the pope wears to the staff he carries to the insanely expensive robes he wears. St. Peter’s Basilica is the largest Christian house of worship in the world, holding over 60,000 people simultaneously during pilgrimmage seasons. As a whole, the Catholic church is the single largest private land owner in the world.
The world.
People are asked to tithe ten percent of their annual salary to the church so as to avoid the fires of hell, and are chided for not giving enough to charity, the poor, and of course the church in the form of both money and service. Most Catholic churches in the United States even have their own schools directly attached to them. For a mere $5,000 a year (and in some cases a lot more) you’re able to give your kids a quality education while, of course, lining the pockets of the church.
And amongst all that, the church has the audacity to point out that we, the people of the church, need to live like paupers as they live like kings?
Is this the 17th century all over again?
I didn’t go to mass yesterday even though it was Palm Sunday. I don’t see myself going back any time soon. Maybe I just need to collect myself and go back to sleeping in on Sundays until I feel the need to go back. Either way, when the super rich tell the plebes that their wealth is a problem, I find it hard to sit there on Sunday and take moral advice from them.
Maybe it’s just me.
