The Catholic Church

I am a Christian.  In the past, I would describe myself first as a Catholic which, in my mind, included the characteristic of being a Christian.  There are pleny of Protestants who believe that Catholics are not Christians, and they're wrong.  But I choose to describe myself now as a Christian first because I am fed up with the institution of the Catholic Church.

There are plenty of doctrinal issues that, taken collectively, could mount a case for leaving the Church.  Priestly celibacy, ordination of women, Vatican II leniency -- the list is endless.  For me, however, there are two principal reasons for my personal schism with the Church.

First, what the Church did as a religious institution in the wake of the revelations of priestly pedophilia was a travesty.  The notion that a Church that prides itself on the one true original Church would go the lengths it has to protect pedophiles and those that protected pedophiles is disgusting.  Sending Cardinal Bernard Law to Vatican City so he could be beyond the reach of civil authorities is nauseating.  To act like nothing happened for so many years and then lie about what was known is hardly the mark of an institution practicing what it preached.   How can it lecture the flock about sin when it was committing one of the most reprehensible sins against its own people, the very people to whom it was supposed to minister and protect?  No measure of Jesuitical sophistry can absolve the Church of this hideously ugly behavior.

Speaking of Jesuitical sophistry, the Church's position on artificial insemination is indefensible.  It rests its argument on the law of nature and a bunch of other gobbledegook to dress up its position as being supportive of loving, nurturing relationships.  In the first place, how does in vitro fertilization detract from a loving, nurturing relationship?  If a couple loves each other enough to overlook infertility -- which, ironically, is grounds for an annulment in the canons of the Church hell-bent on protecting loving, nurturing relationships -- what can be more loving and nurturing than to subject oneself to the scientific and sometimes humbling processes involved in in vitro fertilization to bring life into being?

But the Church finds itself in an conundrum of its own making, to wit:  If man is allowed to use the genius God gave him to devise and make weapons that will take human life in a just war as authorized by no less a personage as Thomas Aquinas, why can he not use the genius God gave him to devise and make instruments that help create life?  Taking life is against the Sixth Commandment.  Using artificial means to create life violates no Commandments.  Therefore the Church, resting on the syllogism of one of its learned saints, trumps the Word of God, but uses no such support to ban a procedure that is not in contravention of God's Word.

The Church is more concerned about its image and its rules than it is promoting the Word of God.  For that reason, I no longer attend Mass.  My Catholicism was a gift our Mother gave me, but as is sometimes the case with gifts, this one has become worn, broken down and almost useless.

I am a Christian.

(c) 2012 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles