Catholic Church: Eaten Alive by Hypocrisy

Well, frumps, over the weekend I came across the story of a pre-schooler in Colorado who had a very close call but, through divine intervention, should now, I am happy to report, live long and prosper. The saving grace for this tot came in the form of his/her expulsion from Boulder, CO’s Sacred Heart of Jesus Catholic Pre-School due to his/her lesbian parents’ unacceptability per church and school policy.

Before I proceed with the story, though, I’d like to make a few disclosures. I am no fan of the Catholic Church (or most organized religions, for that matter). However, my objections to what happened in Boulder have far more to do with capital “H” Hypocrisy than they do with Catholicism. Hypocrisy seems to have infected the body of American society like some sort of galloping cancer. I have theories about why that is happening now – but, more on that later. For now, let it suffice to say, that I have an insider’s perspective on just how riddled with Hypocrisy the Catholic Church has become.

I also have no illusions that this is a battle that can be won. Crusty old institutions like the Catholic Church are too scabbed over to even bleed, when assailed, they simply ooze putrid pus that inevitably gets all over the assailant. No matter – I feel better for getting that out . . .

My Life As a Catholic

As I said, I have personal experience of attending one of these venerable old gulags for too many years; enough experience, moreover, to know that anything that I say about how horrific and damaging that experience was to my childish psyche will be met with an uproarious opposition from those who remember their Catholic School years as a time of “lollipops and roses” under the tutelage of jolly old nuns and priests who loved little children more than life itself. I won’t be changing their minds . . .

Of course the 21^st Century Catholic School is undoubtedly somewhat different than the 1950’s gothic schools of my memory. I grew up in an old-fashioned East Coast steel town largely populated by fairly recent immigrants grateful for the brute labor jobs on offer at the steel mill. Their families were large, chaotic affairs of too many children with too little home supervision who counted on the legendary nuns to civilize their offspring.

Hard-working, over-worked parents in those days, in that environment, happily gave the schools carte blanche in the corporal punishment department in the hope that the school would return well-mannered, educated children fit for their upwardly mobile social aspirations. Most of my old school chums will remember that if word leaked out that a kid had been roughed up in school, odds were good that the unfortunate victim would get a bigger, badder thrashing at home that night. Back in the day, nuns were so famous for effective “discipline” that kids who were expelled from public schools were temporarily admitted for the nuns to “break” them. I remember one boy, in particular, who chose to go to Reform School when faced with a choice between that and the local Catholic school. Most parents were as afraid of the nuns as their kids were, with good reason; in those days, the Catholic families’ social life revolved around the church-school complex so being on the outs with the clergy could spell virtual ostracism.

That Was Then, This Is Now

Today, although I don’t keep close tabs on that world, I do know that Catholic schools, which are private, are somewhat “enrollment-challenged.” Many have closed for various demographic reasons and those still-standing apparently have looser enrollment standards. One story that I came across, this morning, cited a woman who related that her niece, who is Jewish, attends a Catholic School and, after classes are over, is ferried across town to her Hebrew school to prepare for her Bat Mitzvah. This is the same church that, fifty years ago, referred to the public schools in our town as the “pagan schools” and implied that anyone who set foot in a synagogue would automatically roast in hell forever.

Even with fewer schools to staff, there is a shortage of actual nuns to teach in them. Evidently it’s harder for young women to “hear the call” than it used to be. “Lay teachers” (as civilian teachers are referred to) supplement the staff of most Catholic schools today however, the best and brightest of education graduates are not clamoring for these jobs because the Church is, shall we say, parsimonious about salary.

So it is that we arrive at the current day in which a pre-schooler is expelled from a Catholic School because his/her parents are gay. According to a Denver news report:

“The Denver Archdiocese says the student’s parents are two women and their homosexual relationship violates the school’s beliefs and policy. According to the Archdiocese, parents who enroll their kids at Sacred Heart of Jesus Catholic School are expected to follow the Catholic Church’s beliefs.”

“’No person shall be admitted as a student in any Catholic school unless that person and his/her parent(s) subscribe to the school’s philosophy and agree to abide by the educational policies and regulations of the school and Archdiocese,’” the statement said.”

“Because this student’s parents are homosexual, the Archdiocese says they were in clear violation of the school’s policy. Legal analysts tell 9NEWS the Archdiocese is within its rights.”

A Very Slippery Slope

Of course the Archdiocese is “within its rights” — it’s a private school. The dilemma that the Archdiocese may find itself in, quickly however, is that its “policy” is broad enough and vague enough that it might be construed to exclude a large majority of its current student body.

For example: The Catholic Church does not condone divorce, under any circumstances (I know that for a fact since my mother was excommunicated for divorcing my father whose weekend pastime was a) getting drunk and b) bouncing my mother, my baby brother and myself off the walls of our apartment). My mother accepted her punishment and walked my brother and I to Mass on Sunday and waited outside of the church to walk us home. I was so young that I was ashamed that my mother could no longer enter the church but the important thing was that we all lived longer lives because of her “sin.”

So. I think that, in order to be fair, Sacred Heart in Boulder needs to go down the rolls and expel any kids whose parents are divorced, especially the ones that are remarried.

And then, of course, there’s the “birth control issue.” If any of those kids’ parents are practicing Birth Control – out they go. It’s clearly not allowed.

Or, how about adultery or, for that matter, how about parents who break any of the Ten Commandments; isn’t all of it “against Church beliefs”? Why the obsession with homosexuality?

And, while we’re at it, maybe someone could remind me exactly how we’ve come to believe that measly little homosexuality, affecting only a small percentage of the world’s population, is this huge biblically proscribed taboo that carries far more weight and gets far more attention than any of the other innate anti-social behaviors that the Bible rummages around in and warns us off of?

Rev. Mel White who is a crusader for the inclusion of LGBT people in organized religion has said some of the most sensible things, in my opinion, on this topic. If I were independently wealthy I’d buy him a Coke and some airtime on national TV. Here are a few gems from Rev. White:

“Over the centuries people who misunderstood or misinterpreted the Bible have done terrible things. The Bible has been misused to defend bloody crusades and tragic inquisitions; to support slavery, apartheid, and segregation; to persecute Jews and other non-Christian people of faith; to support Hitler’s Third Reich and the Holocaust; to oppose medical science; to condemn interracial marriage; to execute women as witches; and to support the Ku Klux Klan. Shakespeare said it this way: “Even the devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.”

“Even when we believe the Scriptures are “infallible” or “without error,” it’s terribly dangerous to think that our understanding of every biblical text is also without error. We are human. We are fallible. And we can misunderstand and misinterpret these ancient words — with tragic results.”

“Almost 1,000 people believed Jim Jones was a faithful interpreter of God’s Word. They died with him in the jungles of Guyana. I studied Jones and leaders of other cults while writing the book and documentary film, Deceived. I found that the only people who were able to break free of the dangerous influence of such Bible-quoting cultic gurus were the ones who took the Bible seriously enough to study the texts themselves and make their own decisions about their meaning. The others ‘leave their bones in the desert.’”

The Bible is a book about God — not a book about human sexuality. [My emphasis] In fact, the Bible accepts sexual practices that we condemn and condemns sexual practices that we accept. Lots of them! Here are a few examples.

DEUTERONOMY 22:13-21: If it is discovered that a bride is not a virgin, the Bible demands that she be executed by stoning immediately.

DEUTERONOMY 22:22: If a married person has sex with someone else’s husband or wife, the Bible commands that both adulterers be stoned to death.

MARK 10:1-12: Divorce is strictly forbidden in both Testaments, as is remarriage of anyone who has been divorced.

LEVITICUS 18:19: The Bible forbids a married couple from having sexual intercourse during a woman’s period. If they disobey, both shall be executed.

MARK 12:18-27: If a man dies childless, his widow is ordered by biblical law to have intercourse with each of his brothers in turn until she bears her deceased husband a male heir.

“I’m certain you don’t agree with these teachings from the Bible about sex. And you shouldn’t. The list goes on: The Bible says clearly that sex with a prostitute is acceptable for the husband but not for the wife. Polygamy (more than one wife) is acceptable, as is a king’s having many concubines. (Solomon, the wisest king of all, had 1,000 concubines.) Slavery and sex with slaves, marriage of girls aged 11-13, and treatment of women as property are all accepted practices in the Scriptures. On the other hand, there are strict prohibitions against interracial marriage, birth control, discussing or even naming a sexual organ, and seeing one’s parents nude.”

All of the attention and airtime that the Church lavishes on homosexuality persuade me that the Church likes to pick its fights carefully, while discreetly remaining mum on other subjects — and that’s hypocritical. Maybe it’s the decades of pederasty scandals that have made Catholics in some quarters so positively shrill about the subject of homosexuality. From a human nature perspective that’s somewhat understandable but still doesn’t cut it when, at the same time, the Church can be proven to have assiduously denied and covered up the transgressions of its own. These women are lavishing love and care on a child to that extent that they enter the child in a private school; they are not sexually abusing a child. But somehow the church feels that its abusive members merit more understanding and protection than those who accept their sexual identity and choose to live it honestly and forthrightly without harming others.

Just in the last few months there has been a riot of Catholic Church news revolving around its internal problems involving sexuality along with its stubborn refusal to budge on its proscriptions for its followers. This bit comes from the Telegraph (UK) on the recent investigation in Ireland of decades of child abuse by priests and those who covered it up:

“The crisis erupted in November [2009] with the publication of an explosive Irish government investigation detailing the crimes and revealing that church leaders in Dublin had spent decades protecting child-abusing priests from the law. The Murphy Report found the Church had “obsessively” hidden child abuse from 1975 to 2004.”

“Armagh Archbishop Sean Brady, the primate of all Ireland, told Vatican Radio the meetings were part of a “journey of repentance, reconciliation and renewal” for the Irish Church. The 24 bishops will each speak to the pontiff about their knowledge of decades-long sexual, psychological and physical abuse of minors by parish priests and other clergy in Catholic orphanages, workhouses, and other institutions. One bishop said the talks would be ‘frank.’ The revelations shocked Ireland, and four of the five bishops who were criticised for failing to act on reports of paedophilia resigned.”

Meanwhile, in Germany, we have this story emerging, which involves the school where the Pope’s brother Georg is currently choirmaster:

“The child sexual abuse scandal in Germany’s Catholic Church continued to spread on Friday as a spokesperson confirmed abuse at Regensburg’s cathedral school for their famous boys’ choir, the Domspatzen. Victims have come forward to report abuse at the institution, and the two men, who both died in 1984, will still be charged with their crimes, the diocese spokesperson said.”

“One suspect, who was a religion teacher and the institution’s assistant leader, was removed from service in 1958. The other man was reportedly censured in 1971. ‘We want to investigate with transparency,’ the spokesperson said.”

“The diocese said it planned to create a commission to study the school’s old files and archives between 1958 and 1973, when the abuse is thought to have occurred.”

Elsewhere in Germany:

“On Thursday Bavarian police also raided the Ettal monastery, which runs a Catholic boarding school, on suspicion of child pornography. According to daily Münchner Merkur, a monk there has admitted to uploading such material to the internet. The monastery also admitted to at least two cases of sexual abuse.”

“The scandal was revealed in late January when Berlin’s prestigious Canisius school announced that around 50 former students had claimed they were sexually abused by priests. Since then lawyers for victims have said more than 120 people across the country have come forward with allegations of abuse by up to 12 different priests and teachers at other Catholic institutions. So far 18 of 27 dioceses have been affected. The country’s top Catholic bishop Robert Zollitsch, who issued a public apology in late February, is schedules to meet with Pope Benedict XVI at the Vatican in one week to discuss the scandal.”

And who hasn’t heard about the scandal at “ground zero” involving a Nigerian member of the Vatican choir who’s leisure time was spent procuring male prostitutes (some of whom were seminarians) for international visitors to the Vatican as well as a “Gentleman of the Pope” (a sort of high-ranking, well-connected civilian who ushers visitors in to have their audience with the Pope) who is currently incarcerated on unrelated corruption charges.

And then, of course, we can top that all off with Catholic Charities of Washington, DC making good on their threat to stop offering spousal benefits to employees should the District vote to approve Gay Marriage.

This all boils down to a very simple equation, in my mind, that has to do with people who live (preach) in glass houses . . . it might be a good thing for the Catholic Church to put its own house in order before it barges into others’ homes and lives and families with advice on how to live . . .

P.S.: To the family in Boulder that is no longer welcome at Sacred Heart Church and School – my wish for you is that you grow every day in family love and strength and cherished memories — and never look back.

[tags]Catholic Church, homosexuality, pedophilia, school expulsion[/tags]