Church Leader Calls Me ‘Anti-Catholic’ Because I Told the Truth About His Faith

 “We are a community of believers who gather around a revealed doctrine that we do not get to determine, but are required to give assent to.”
I love to start my day with a big fucking laugh.

“And to be lighthouse we have to be a light, even when the world prefers darkness.”

BWHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!! The Catholic church is a light in the dark!!! BWHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!

Sorry, need a moment here. That is one of the funniest things I’ve read in a long time.

BTW Mr. Pope, the world prefers light, and that is why you (Churches) are failing.

 Yup.

Thinking about the lighthouse analogy is a poor one from Pope. They only work if everything else is dark, so for the church to be a lighthouse, it is their best interest to keep everyone else in the dark. Which explains their operating methods.

The Church leaders can cling to those beliefs all they want, but they
must be aware that they suck at making their case. Meanwhile, the rest
of us are making very powerful arguments as to why Church leaders are
wrong and not worth taking seriously. And if they’re wrong on these
issues, what else are they wrong about?

That pretty much sums up why they can’t admit they’re wrong.

the mere fact that he took the time to rebut your column shows that the church is running scared.  if you weren’t a serious threat he wouldn’t have bothered

Cross-post – here is what I posted there: 

“he will do well to consider that the Church has outlived all her opponents and confounded the predictions of all who have announced her demise.”   My father is a life-long and staunch Catholic.  At the height of the stories about the abuse and cover-up and priests being moved from parish to parish, I asked what he thought of the situation.   He said:   “The Catholic Church will survive.  It has been through a lot.   Nothing can destroy the Church.”I  . . .  actually meant . . ..  what about the children.   The people who have been abused and hurt. their abusers not held accountable, and it happening again and again.   His reply just gave me chills.   My dad is a very loving man, not a monster at all, but to him the health of an organization was the first thought he had, not  real live people who have one life on this planet.   If you are right, monseigneur, is it a good thing?  Why is it a good thing that the institution survives at the cost of hurting real people we can see and touch?   You know the examples – the thousands dying of AIDS in Africa because the Church opposes condoms and the woman who would die in childbirth because the church doesn’t allow abortions in their hospitals, in addition to the abuse and cover up.    I know you have scriptural and traditional justifications for the first two, but does it never occur to any of you that there is something wrong about honoring your understanding of the wishes of a omnipotent being who we couldn’t really hurt if we tried over the short, precious lives of real people? 

You should have elaborated the second point more.

Another term for “Tradition!” is “Shit we made up in the many years since the alleged revelation happened.”  Which is fine and all – it’s like precedent law – but just admit that it’s 100% a human invention, nothing divine about it.

It’s one logical fallacy after another. No True, From Tradition, From Authority and prolly a couple more.

Gotta love the implication that you can’t be right in your criticism of the Catholic Church because — in Pope’s mind — you’re “angry.” First of all, determining whether or not a person is “angry” is often a subjective matter. Second, even if you were “angry,” that doesn’t mean you can’t be right … it is, in fact, very possible to be both angry and correct.

Pope’s resorting to hurling accusations like “anger” at you, only shows he doesn’t really have much of a true defense. A grown adult would accept that there are people in the world who don’t like Catholicism, that they have a right to express their disapproval, and just live their lives as they wish. But Pope, and most of the rest of the Catholic hierarchy, are not mature adults. They can’t handle knowing that critics of Catholicism actually exist. They can’t tolerate their Church’s critics expressing themselves. It gnaws at them. So they launch invectives at, and make disparaging comments about, the insolent pigs who dare criticize their unassailable Church.

For the last few years the R.C. Church — both in the U.S. and worldwide — has been engaging in what I refer to as a “pushback” campaign. They view themselves as being “under attack” by the Forces of Darkness, which have wickedly conspired to undermine their authority … first by coercing some poor, hapless, and otherwise-innocent priests into abusing children, then by using that abuse and the Church’s cover-ups of it to attack it, and then by using governmental power to wipe out the Church utterly. That this spiritual war against the Church is not actually taking place, doesn’t matter to the R.C. hierarchy; they think it is, and they’ve decided to launch a counter-assault.

We are now seeing the ridiculousness of their delusions, in how they carry out this pushback campaign. They’ve long since lost touch with reality, and it shows.

“First of all, I don’t misunderstand the Church.Second, fuck you.”As an ex-Catholic, I say bravo to you Hemant (especially the fuck you part).

When the light you spread comes from burning books you’re doing it wrong.

 Well, why shouldn’t he? The catholic church is a despicable organization, so what’s wrong with being anti-catholic?

So, Bob, did you even bother to understand the points that Hemant was making, or are you just here to give assent to Mr. Pope’s irrelevant criticisms?

Oh, I don’t know. I’d say the “fuck you” is pretty compelling evidence in re: angry.   And all the rest is pretty compelling in re: anti-Catholic. 

 The sad part is they could have done a reasonable push back.

They could have actively condemned;

Child abuse and put steps in place to stop it that would have been a huge PR plus, not the disaster it turned in to.
Not done the dodgy financial actions that the pope’s butler uncovered. IF they did they sould have praised the guy who blew the whistle and fixed the issue instead of arresting the bloke and trying to hide it.
They could still sell that freaking gold throne the pope sits on and give the money to the poor.

The list is endless and not one of the steps would of being against their teachings and beliefs, but instead they hide and protect paedophiles and corruption, they keep their riches and assets, just making it worse.

It’s almost as if they believe they’re infallible and untouchable, and are now surprised and hurt that some of us are waking up and going “Hold on a darn minute, we’re not going to take that from ANYONE”

I have a feeling that their days are numbered, might be numbered in the 100s of years still, but if they carry on like this it will only speed up their inevitable demise.

I agree with Bob here. I don’t know why Hemant should take “anti-Catholic” as an insult either. He’s certainly not pro-Catholic, and neither am I.

“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”

-Gandhi

*in

Well, usually “anti-catholic” has the connotation of bigotry, rather than just profound disagreement. That connotation may be what he’s reacting against. Catholics have been oppressed at certain times and places, and the bigotry directed to them often came in the guise of criticizing their practices. So, Mr. Pope is engaging in a bit of sleight-of-hand by suggesting that Mr. Hemant is bigoted against Catholics by pointing out that Mr. Hemant is fairly animated by criticizing their acts and beliefs.

Still debating the “Second, fuck you” line.  On one hand I liked it, on the other I’m not so sure it was rhetorically a good choice.  Oh well, I guess I’ll get in the spirit – fuck it – you used the line.

Wow. Your second point really reinforces the title you’ve given your blog. Using vulgarities just shows you really don’t have an argument.

And your comment just shows you really don’t have a sense of humor.

Catholicism is a morally corrupt religion that is dying out over most of the world (including all of the developed world) because it is so out of touch with social change. It advocates much that a growing number of people consider reprehensible. As an institution, it has failed to take proper responsibility for the crimes of its leaders that even the Church itself considers immoral! How can any rational, thoughtful, moral person not be “anti-Catholic”? Why does this Popish joker use “anti-Catholic” as if it indicates some sort of unfair belief, or even a moral flaw? Does he believe that an argument based on this idea can hold up to the dozens of rational arguments that are used to expose the flaws in RCC dogma?

It is indicative of the deep problems within the Catholic church that their spokesmen have sunk to the same intellectual level as the handful of trolls in forums like this, whose only response to solid arguments against their belief system is “you just don’t understand Christianity (or Catholicism)”. Bad argument aside, I think most of us understand it just fine… as do more people in wider society, which explains the decline of those religions. A decline that is likely to continue.

If you completely ignore the “argument” part of his post then you’d certainly have a point.

Given what we know of the Catholic Church’s dogma, policies and behaviour, there is no respectable justification for being anything but anti-Catholic (meaning the church and its activists, not all individuals who were baptised into it and never thought deeply enough to leave) and pretty damned angry.

I agree to an extent, and the headline is misleading. The context of the letter sounds anti-catholic and righteously angry. The priest’s accusations using those words are not the same. Hemant’s “anger”, on the priest’s terms, supposedly comes from a denial of god and a wish to defy the rules, and the rules are the rules, and plus hates catholics especially for no good reason. Persecution complex. He pretty much waved his hands and ignored any foundation for Hemant’s, or anyone’s, grievances against the terrible organization he speaks for and loves, and I agree with someone else that said in this thread, for those wandering lapsed catholics, to see how much atheists hate us just for being ourselves as god instructs us to be. He can’t over-ride god, and nothing we can say to him will challenge his beliefs. Basically, he’s saying his hands are tied, and anyone who doesn’t like it is just angry at god and prejudiced against the organization that reveres him just so.

 Except that he then proceeds to make his argument, in spite of just having used a “vulgarity.” You can do both. You must have missed the argument part because you were too busy swooning and fanning yourself.

And if there’s an expletive more vulgar than the irrational shit the church is peddling, I have yet to hear it.

 Of course, he’s fully entitled to be both anti-Catholic and angry. And since both positions are based on the available evidence, it would be pretty hard to characterize either as bigotry, even if I were inclined to try.

The Holy Spirit is there to ensure that it’s not a fucking free for all.

So in other words, it’s a fucking free for all. 🙂

Indeed, one should call a spade a spade.

You’re such a bigot, Hemant. >.< But seriously, I'm proud of you for making that whole post without cracking one Pope joke. If would have been so easy…

” The Catholic church is doing a pretty poor job of being a “lighthouse”.”

After giving it some more thought I’d say the Catholic church is doing a great job of being a “lighthouse”, a lighthouse is supposed to warn and steer people away from dangerous areas. Their actions are very definitely doing that.

To me, “anti-Catholic” implies that one is bigoted against Catholic people. Hemant views the Church hierarchy as corrupt and immoral, which is a distinctly different thing.

 I posted a follow up to the reply by Monsignor Pope. For some reason it has now vanished. Not sure what happened there but I have my suspicions :-/

The Berkely
interface to the GSS is possibly a better tool than Gallup for
Gay Marriage; unfortunately they’ve not asked a lot about
contraception.

— attitudes on Gay Marriage (MARHOMO) are correlated to attendance
rates (ATTEND) and strength of religious identification (RELITEN) for
Catholics (RELIG(2))

— while the Church is not a democracy, the US is; such highly attending
catholics are only a third of the Catholic population, for about 8% of
the US overall at present (YEAR(2010))

— attitudes are even weaker for those raised Catholic (RELIG16(2)); this looks to
be one of the main reasons more those are identifying as not strongly or
not at all Catholic any more.

— as your numbers drop because people find Catholic beliefs ridiculous/unconscionable/whatnot, so will Catholic’s influence

Put simply: you’re only have leadership as long as you’re still followed. You may still be “right”, but not in any way that has empirical impact.

Catholics don’t have the highest rate of decline; largely due to immigration, they’re roughly holding steady. In relative numbers, Baptists are declining slightly, and Methodists and Lutherans appear to be declining faster still; the latter two just start with lower numbers.

The steady-state may not last much longer for Catholics, though.

 And the fact that you whine about the vulgarity while refusing to even look at the argument, much less address it, shows that you are full of shit. 

 It isn’t just them. I see it in liberal/atheist circles, too. Though, in those cases, they just call you a Fascist.

Given the nature of the issues being discussed, the second comment is well earned and an appropriate response to the condescending assumptions of superiority Pope projects.  Sometimes a sphincter really IS a sphincter.

My reply to your article seems to have provoked some anger. I am not sure it deserves the F-bomb from you. I suppose the term “Anti-Catholic” may have bothered you most and for that I regret any misunderstanding or misappropration of the word viz you personally. I used the term because I have found that if I use the word “Atheist” anywhere in my title I am picked up by atheist sites and then besieged with some of the hateful things rife with profanities and very personal attacks. Thus I used the term anti-Catholic in reference to you to avoid that and it worked for a brief time since I got no large atheist response until today. Sadly it was as predicted, though there were some very thoughtful responses too.

For the record I don’t know if you are personally anti-Catholic in the perjorative sense, though it is clear you are surely not pro-Catholic, at least in terms of the official Church.

That said I stand by my response to you a reiterate its main point:

And the point of the article is that most outsiders (as
illustrated by you) completely misunderstand the
nature of the Church and how we operate. The Church’s job is not to make
everyone feel nice and affirmed no matter what they do, her job is not
to fit in and be accepted by society, she is not a democracy and cannot
look to polls or take votes from her members as to what is taught.

Your quoting of all the polls is not really pertinent to the nature of the Church and is not the source of her teaching. It is no secret that many Catholics do not follow some or all the teachings of the Church. There is a reasonable debate as to whether Catholics who no longer attend Mass should even be considered in such polls as you cite. But even if they are, polls are not determinative for the Church as to what to teach. The Gospels and the Sacred Tradition received from the apostles is determinative. Your quoting of the polls shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the Church’s self understanding.

The
Church has the mission to proclaim the whole Gospel as received from the Apostles, in season or out of
season. Gay sex, contraception, secularism, materialism etc are
currently “in” and the Gospel is “out.” Such is our lot, but we go on
proclaiming the deposit of faith as we always have.

Those who want the
Church to toe the line with modern sentiments ought to look to the
liberal Protestant denominations to discover that such an approach would
be a disaster since, for all their relevant “up-to-dateness,” for all
their affirming of gay sex other modern views, etc., their numbers have plummeted.

Respectfully,
Msgr. Charles Pope

It was enough of a scandal on its own. It was compounded by the cover-up. And it’s not just that abusive priests were shuffled around to protect them and thus handed new victims on a platter; no, the fact that there must have been inside knowledge that this is how cases were dealt with can only have been the opposite of a deterrent to anyone fighting those urges. 

So it is arguably possible to say that not only did the Catholic Church’s policies (such as priestly celibacy) increase the tendency of its priests to satisfy their urges in unacceptable ways, since all acceptable ones were denied them, and not only did they obstruct justice as the cases became known, but the inside knowledge of this situation may have increased the number of potential child-rapists who actually became perpetrators. No, “lighthouse” is not the analogy that comes to mind.

 Sorry, but we do not misunderstand how the Church operates.  Some of us grew up in the Church.  In fact, the Church still considers me a member even though I haven’t attended for over two decades.  I am not a Catholic yet you consider me one and I can’t change that. Yet like most of it’s members in the US, I don’t believe in it’s teachings.  You want to get to have it both ways with an official policy that is disavowed at the local level.  That’s dishonest.  But that’s also the way it’s always been.

Hello Mr. Pope.

Would you agree that people who already disbelieve or disagree with most of the church’s teachings but continue to call themselves Catholic out of tradition and culture, should just go ahead and defect?

Not trying to put words in your mouth, I just thought it would be “friendly” if we could find some points we could agree on.

Respectfully,
Geraard Spergen

 When they disagree with the hierarchy then they aren’t really catholic, but when the church want to boast it’s importance in order to convince people that it’s still relevant they will count anyone who was ever baptized as a baby, even if that was the last time they seen the inside of a church, as catholic.

H. does not use “fuck” commonly on his blog.  Very rarely in fact. So for him, I think it’s fair to say it represents an angry response.

When you urge Catholics to abandon their church, I think you’ve safely crossed the border of “anti Catholic.”

Urging Catholics to leave their church is “anti” their church, but extremely “pro” those people being urged to leave it. One is asking them to take a positive step, one which will benefit them and all others.

Of course for most of its existence the Catholic Church simply executed all atheists and heretics. Those were the good old times during which atheism couldn’t flourish.

I thought it was quite clear from what you wrote that you meant anti-Catholic only to mean, roughly, “disagrees strongly with Catholic teachings and some of the acts of the institutional church”.  All I was saying was that historically, anti-Catholicism generally has an implication of bigotry that Mr. Pope was capitalizing on in a slight equivocation that I’m sure he hoped none of his readers would pick up on.

 You sell fear.

Wow – that is an interesting exchange. I’ve had similar exchanges with the Rev. John Codega regarding marriage equality.

I was brought up Catholic – but the mistake my parents made was sending me t Catholic schools. I realized early on that the whole God thing was just so much made up bovine effluent. And then as my education progressed and I was taught critical thinking skills, I was also told you couldn’t apply that to religion. What? What?

So it’s no wonder I’m an atheist.

Even a very friendly person – and Hemant is one such – might be angry given good reason. Which he has. Throw enough condescending, hypocritical hogwash at anyone and they’ll get a little testy. 

Msgr Pope, since you are presenting the Catholic church as an “all or nothing”, top-down kind of organization, perhaps you are right that it should slim down to just those True Scotsmen. I mean Catholics.  Perhaps you would be willing to make the first move by refusing any monetary donations from anyone who does not agree to the whole doctrinal package?

 Belief in gods has been a feature of civilization forever, yes. Of course, many of those gods were things like gods of thunder and fertility. The reason we stopped believing in those gods is because we got smarter, and we used science to explain those things, and now the idea of gods causing them seems ridiculous. Adherents of those religions probably thought monotheism was a ‘flash in the pan’ at one point too.

Also, I commented above on how condescending the original article was, but it still continues to amaze me. The current atheist craze? It is indeed classic. Remember, if you don’t like something, just casually dismiss it and its members and pretend it will go away if you don’t look at it.

 Every once in a great, great while, an adherent of the “New Atheist”
paradigm offers up a substantive critique against religious thought and
causes us to actually ponder deeply a certain issue.

This is not one of those critiques.

The
author of the article writes: “…tradition regarding contraception is
a bad one and I don’t care what your holy book says about homosexual
activity because it’s wrong. I never misrepresented that”.

You
don’t have to be a scholar to practice scholarship, and there is no
excuse for this kind of unenlightened criticism. You make no attempt to
explain why these respective traditions of the Roman Catholic Church are
wrong you simply assert it. To say that you “never misrepresented” that
the Church’s teachings are true is, of course, to beg the question.

You do the same thing in the opening statement of your “Catholic Church is Now Pissing Off the People Who Actually Like Them”,
when you say, “We know Catholic leaders are mostly a bunch of men who
don’t want to hear any legitimate arguments as to why they’re wrong on
issues like contraception usage and gay marriage”.

Really? We
who? Atheists? I didn’t realize atheists had a creed concerning the
Catholic Church. Have you polled your fellow atheists concerning their
thoughts on this matter or are you making an educated guess? Surely you
don’t suppose to gauge the thoughts of religious believers, do you? If
so, where do you get your data? Since you decline to give even word of
support for your assertions, I fail to see how they’re anything but
unsubstantiated personal jabs.

You are right when you point out
that the Catholic Church is having problems inculcating their views into
their parishioners, a fact that renowned Roman Catholic Archbishop
Timothy Dolan acknowledges. Dolan said,
““I’m not afraid to admit that we have an internal catechetical
challenge—a towering one—in convincing our own people of the moral
beauty and coherence of what we teach. That’s a biggie.” However, Gallup
also showed that the majority of Catholics sided with their leaders
over the the Obama contraception/abortafacient mandate.

Despite
their apparent support for contraception, Catholics are still loyal to
their leaders. Not to mention most every poll shows that the majority of
Catholics are pro-life in some sense, so apparently the bishops are
doing something right.

The author goes to call Bishop Pope a bigot, for whatever reason I’m not sure since the author does not care to clarify. And
he again makes a wild assertion saying that “in the bishops’ view, [the
Sunday School teachers are] just women who can’t possibly “know God”
any better than the men in charge”. I’m sure this was not meant to be
taken seriously since the author’s atheism precludes the reality of
supernatural mind-reading, and unless we are given some sort of reason
or even a logical connection between Catholic leaders teaching Catholic
doctrine and the authors last statement, how can we avoid the conclusion
that the author isn’t just taunting and slinging red meat?

The
author goes on to say, “The world doesn’t want darkness. We want a
world where — at least in these particular cases — people are treated
equally and they get a choice regarding contraception usage”.

Unfortunately
there is nothing to put the author’s ambiguous usage of the words “we”
and “world” in context, so the reader is left wondering who the author
is referring to (since the world is made up of both believers and non-believers). We have been given no reason to think that the leaders
of the Catholic Church want to force anyone to do anything ( requiring
that a worker under their jurisdiction voluntarily sign a statement of
faith, does not equal coercion) or that they want to treat people
unequally, for of course denying someone something that they don’t have a
right to (ie: same-sex couples and marriage) is not promoting
inequality. Please note that in a majority of states in the Union
homosexual couples do not have a legal right to marriage or legally
recognized partnerships.

Stating further, “In fact, a lot
of good Catholics are going to keep shining a light on the Church,
hoping they become more tolerant”.

This intrigues me. What is
good according to the author? On atheism morality is just the spin-off
of millions of year of random mutation, like a hand or tongue. Who is
the author to proclaim “good”? Why should we listen to the author? What
authority does the author have? The author wants to be an atheist, a yet
reap the benefits of a theistic worldview by assuming that such a thing
as “good” exists and that tolerance is one of those “good” things.

Finally
the author says, “It’s the sort of stubborn refusal to accept the
reality of the situation — that there’s nothing wrong with gay people,
that women have a right to decide what goes on in their bodies — that
will push more ‘Catholics-in-name-only’ away from the Church”.

The
author may be right that the more contentious teachings of the Catholic
Church will drive away the nominals. Only time will tell. However, the
author is wrong when he says that there is nothing wrong with gay
people. There is something wrong with those who experience same-sex
attraction AND those with heterosexual attraction. It’s called sin. It’s
what drives a person to say “fuck you” to an elder with whom he
disagrees with for not other apparent reason than that he disagrees with
him. It’s what drives a person to hold onto a form of godliness, such
as objective morality, and yet, deny it’s power and Source. It’s what
drives the author to shout bigotry, while making all kinds of
unsubstantiated attacks against those with whom he disagrees.

I think the author would do well to heed the words of Scripture:

“A man of knowledge uses words with restraint,
and a man of understanding is even-tempered. Even a fool is thought wise if he keeps silent” and discerning if he holds his tongue”.