Catholic Bigots at Work

The bigots over at the Catholic League have launched another filthy smear campaign, this time against the respected bloggers Pandagon and Shakespeare's Sister. The article displays their own intolerance and bigotry in a clear and painful light. These trash-talking creeps pretend to find anti-Catholic bigotry (believe it or not) in the following statements:

...the Catholic church is not about to let something like compassion for girls get in the way of using the state as an instrument to force women to bear more tithing Catholics.

This is a fair and unprejudiced statement about the social agenda Catholics have been promoting. As long as the church insists on promoting medieval superstition over scientific fact, and insists on having the state enforce its "theology" on the rest of us, they have no legitimate complaint against the rest of us who object strongly to their notions. Only a perverse or intolerant reading could see this as anti-Catholicism; it is rather resistance to Catholic bigotry against the rest of the world.

...the Pope’s gotta tell women who give birth to stillborns that their babies are cast into Satan’s maw.

This is sound Catholic theology. I don't like it, but there it is. If Catholics find it offensive, they should complain to their leaders, not about those who expose their idiocy.

...some of Christianity’s most prominent leaders—including the Pope—regularly speak out against gay tolerance.

And this is anti-Catholic how? Pope John Paul II made many bigoted anti-tolerance statements, and I doubt very much that Pope Benedict is any different, though as I haven't listened to him (I out of principal do not listen to Nazis) I can't say. Catholicism has made anti-gay bigotry a cornerstone of its theology for centuries, and has cruelly persecuted this minority for a long long time. If you want to support evil, don't bitch if somebody calls you on it. As long as the Pope continues to speak out against tolerance, as long as the church takes this bigoted and hateful position, to call somebody who protests a bigot is beyond hypocrisy. It is the bully bitching about his victims protesting to the authorities.

For the supreme example of bigotry, however, consider this: they took one satiric example out of a piece exposing Catholic lies about contraception and claimed anti-Catholic bigotry. This from an organization led by a Nazi, for God's sake. This from an organization that has burned people at the stake (and yes I do know about their lame evasion of turning people over to the secular arm to be burned, an excuse worthy of a mafia boss or Ronald Reagan), has racked and hung and tortured people for trivial theological points of interest to nobody, has spread antisemitism and antiatheism and antiscience far and wide. And they have the unmitigated gall to call people bigots for protesting it.

I suppose these people take their cue from their leaders. Roman Catholic leadership during my lifetime has been, well, marginal at best. Most of the people they have selected to be called Pope frankly turn my stomach. Pope Pius XII, Hitler's pope, a little man called when the times required greatness, a small-souled man who looked the other way--whatever his motives--when the great abomination of the Holocaust blackened the earth. Pope John Paul II, who had had such guts in standing up to the Soviet beast before being raised to the papacy, and then kowtowed to the most ignorant and evil kinds of superstitions rather than be bothered with learning the truth. And Mr. Ratzinger--such vile filth defiles the institution he purports to serve.

On the other hand, I can't help but think of some of the greats who reconciled themselves somehow to the Roman Catholic faith. Galileo Galilei, who did so much to liberate humankind from medieval superstition and ancient mythologies; Gilbert K. Chesterton and J. R. R. Tolkien, brilliant writers who have provided entertainment that was not just junk, but gave us spiritual nutrition as well; Roland de Vaux, who made antiquity come alive. These guys show that bigotry isn't a Catholic phenomenon, but rather a human one. Maybe there's something about the papacy that corrupts the spirit. Galileo's good buddy Maffeo seems to have been a relatively enlightened character, until he became Pope Urban VIII and made it an article of faith that the sun moves and the earth stands still. (He was half right anyway.) But even so, what on earth motivates these clowns over at the Catholic League?

Which brings up an obvious question: are these guys even Catholic? Their utter indifference to the truth, their filthy lies about others--how do they sleep at night? Do they really believe in hell? Do they think their God will forgive them for the evil they've done, because it was in a righteous cause? Do they confess their crimes to their priest and receive absolution for them?

Or is this all some gigantic fraud? Perhaps these guys are Ku Klux Klansmen posing as Roman Catholics to bring the faith into discredit. I certainly prefer to think that. Of course wishful thinking is one of the most basic fallacies the human brain is heir to, but still--doesn't it make sense? How could God-fearing types spew such lies and slander? Aaargh, I don't know. It's too much for me. In the end I can only judge them by their fruit--and theirs are soft, brown, and filled with maggots.