Pulse Anniversary: the Catholic Church Continues to Harm Gays

Within the last week I wrote a post about the phenomenon of LGBT individuals supporting anti-LGBT Republican candidates who push an agenda diametrically oppose to LGBT equality and equal human dignity itself.  A similar bizarre phenomenon can be observed with members of the LGBT community who remain members of the Roman Catholic Church, or worse yet actively support the Church and its anti-gay hierarchy financially.  Having been raised Catholic and having spent 37 years to "pray away the gay," I know first hand the ability of the Church to screw one up psychologically and to instill unlimited amounts of self-hate and internalized homophobia.  But I grew up in a pre-Internet age when homosexuality was classified as a form of mental illness. Today, there is so much access to accurate information that never existed when I was a youth or even college age.  And then there is the sex abuse scandal that revealed the utter moral bankruptcy of the Church hierarchy. Thus, I am continually amazed at those who remain in a church that condemns them and denigrates them, especially when alternatives such as the Episcopal Church and Evangelical Lutheran Church in America are readily available.  Meanwhile, as a piece in the National Catholic Reporter sets forth, the Catholic Church continues to wound LGBT individuals and harm lives.  Here are excerpts: 

When Omar Mateen killed 49 people and wounded 48 others inside a prominent gay night club in Orlando, Florida, a year ago this week, the city's Catholic bishop, John G. Noonan, denounced what he called a "massive assault on the dignity of human life." The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops lamented the "unspeakable violence." The Vatican's press office released a statement decrying "such terrible and absurd violence." Among these sincere expressions of grief, not one recognized the fact that this assault on human dignity and this horrific crime had targeted gay people specifically.

The first step in what will be a slow healing process is for Catholic leaders to acknowledge the church plays a role in wounding LGBT people by using dehumanizing language.

While the Catechism of the Catholic Church rejects violence and "unjust discrimination" against LGBT people, it also calls homosexuality an "inclination" that is "objectively disordered." Before he was elected Pope Benedict XVI, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger led the Vatican's chief doctrine office for more than two decades. In a 1986 "Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons," Ratzinger described homosexuality as a "tendency toward an intrinsic moral evil." Seventeen years later, he wrote that growing recognition of same-sex civil unions legitimized the "approval of deviant behavior." Bishop Thomas Paprocki of Springfield, Illinois, even celebrated a public exorcism in 2013 to protest the Catholic governor's signing a same-sex marriage law.

Dehumanizing language has consequences. "It doesn't reflect that our experiences as gay and lesbian persons are a gift, something that brings us closer to other people and to God," said Francis DeBernardo, executive director of New Ways Ministry, an organization that works to build bridges between LGBT Catholics and the church. "People are alienated by this language and feel rejected. It ends conversations rather than begins conversations." San Diego Bishop Robert McElroy, . . . . he called that terminology "very destructive language that I think we should not use pastorally." He explained that "in Catholic moral theology it is a philosophical term that is automatically misunderstood in our society as a psychological judgment."

For a pope, the way that Francis speaks about gays and lesbians is nothing short of revolutionary. "A person once asked me, in a provocative manner, if I approved of homosexuality," the pope said in a 2013 interview. "I replied with another question: 'Tell me: when God looks at a gay person, does he endorse the existence of this person with love, or reject and condemn this person? We must always consider the person."

But these expressions are the exception, and not the rule. Over the past decade, at least 50 LGBT Catholics have been fired or forced to resign positions in Catholic schools after public disclosures of same-sex relationships. Students and families rally behind these teachers and administrators, who are often beloved leaders and role models with years of experience. While in most cases the school has a legal right to act, the firings leave Catholic institutions that want to teach students about mercy and justice looking blithely indifferent to those values. Contracts or "loyalty oaths" that some Catholic teachers are required to sign are often hyper-focused on sexuality. This disproportionate focus on sex and sexuality as the defining marker of Catholic identity is problematic. It eclipses the church's expansive social justice teachings that are rooted in the Gospel's focus on people who are poor, excluded and marginalized by the powerful. . . . . These firings tear apart communities that are filled with faithful people. The church is sending a contradictory message. We're told we are made in the image and likeness of God, but these kind of firings say that isn't true."

According to research, a majority of Catholics support same-sex marriage. Many church leaders usually interpret this evidence to assume there has simply been a failure to effectively teach and reach the faithful. Doubling down with the same message, however, has cost the church. Research shows that the growing number of Americans — especially Millennials in their 20s and early 30s — who no longer identify with any religion are especially turned off by what they consider to be unjust positions toward LGBT people. Those raised Catholic, according to data from Public Religion Research Institute, are more likely than those raised in any other religion to cite negative religious treatment of gay and lesbian people as one of the primary reasons they left the church.

If they want to retain the next generation of Catholics — including LGBT people and their allies — Catholic leaders should listen more closely and learn from the experiences of gay and transgender people. When more than 100 bishops and other Catholic leaders met in February for a conference organized by the National Catholic Bioethics Center, one of the top items on the agenda focused on how increased calls for transgender rights will impact Catholic hospitals, schools and parishes.

If Catholic bishops really want a church that listens, heals and goes to the margins as Pope Francis does, it's far past time to build a culture of encounter with the LGBT community. I recently met a Catholic deacon from St. Petersburg, Florida, who had a wake-up call after his son transitioned to a transgender woman. "I was blissfully ignorant of all things LGBT until it came to my family," Ray Dever told participants at a conference, "LGBT Catholics in the Age of Pope Francis." The Catholic father and others like him have a lot to teach bishops and priests who have rarely if ever sat down with a gay or transgender person. "There are so many families who reject their LGBT kids and that's tragic, especially when that is done in the name of faith," Dever said. "I'm no expert, but what these families need to hear is God created these kids just the way they are and that God loves them."

As I have noted previously, I left the Catholic Church and my best advise to LGBT Catholics is to walk away.  If you need/want a liturgical church,  I highly recommend the  Episcopal Church  or Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.  As for the Catholic Church, history has shown two things are what really forces the Church to reform: rapidly falling membership numbers and falling revenues. Rather than staying and "working for reform from within", walk away and urge as many family members and friends to do likewise.  That will bring the most rapid reform and an end to anti-gay animus. 

Mexico Supreme Court: Prohibitions on Same Sex Marriage are Unconstitutional in Every State

Mere weeks before the U.S. Supreme Court is to rule on the constitutionality of state bans on same sex marriage, Mexico Supreme Court for the first time has issued an opinion that states that laws prohibiting same-sex couples from marrying are unconstitutional in every state.  The opinion has yet to be released publicly, but the Clerk of the Mexico Supreme Court has written about the ruling in a blog post and indicates the broad application of the opinion.  Do Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia want to be more backward than Mexico (no slight intended to Mexico)?  A piece in BuzzFeed looks at this development south of the border which appears to be yet another major defeat for the Roman Catholic Church and its efforts to inflict 13th century knowledge and beliefs on all.  Here are highlights:

The Supreme Court and several lower courts have already ruled in almost every state that same-sex couples have the right to marry under the Mexican constitution. But because of the Mexican court system’s often confusing technicalities, none of those decisions have been binding in future cases. Theoretically, any court could rule against a couple who has sued for the right to marry even though there have been many cases decided in favor of others couples.

That is no longer true. On Wednesday, Mexico’s Supreme Court issued the first blanket statement that laws prohibiting same-sex couples from marrying are unconstitutional in every state — what is known as “generic jurisprudence.” The opinion is not yet public, but Supreme Court clerk Geraldina Gonzalez de la Vega — who worked on one of the early marriage equality suits before joining the court — wrote about the unpublished opinion in a blog post. (Decisions like these are ordinarily published within a week of when they are decided by the court.)

“The law of whatever federal entity that, on the one hand, considers the goal of marriage is procreation and/or defines marriage as celebrating the union of a man and a woman is unconstitutional,” held a Supreme Court panel in response to a suit out of the state of Colima, according to Gonzalez.

It will still take a lot more cases before same-sex couples can marry as easily as straight couples can in Mexico; federal judges must rule five times in each state to create precedent that would lead to full nullification of a local marriage code. And it’s not entirely clear how this process ends, Gonzalez told BuzzFeed News, because this marriage cases still making their way through the legal system are doing so under reforms enacted in 2011 that have never been fully tested.

“We’re playing in a new court,” Gonzalez said.

With South and Central America steadily moving towards marriage equality, the Catholic Church may find that its brand of ignorance and bigotry only has a market in Africa.

Has the Catholic Church Civil War Begun

For some years now the Republican Party has been caught in a civil war that pits the sane and rational Republicans - those that are left - against the insane, ignorance embracing forces of the Christofascists/Tea Party crowd who reject objective reality and oppose any and all modern knowledge.  Now, it seems a similar civil war may be igniting within the Roman Catholic Church in the wake of the recent synod on the family in Rome.  In some ways the mindset of the "conservatives" it is not surprising given the fact that it is minds such as theirs that kept the Church's on the wrong side of history time and time again over the centuries be it refusing to concede that the earth revolved around the Sun instead of vice versa or the condemnation of Galileo.  The Spectator looks at the lines being drawn in the latest battle over whether or not the Church should enter the current century.  Here are highlights:

‘At this very critical moment, there is a strong sense that the church is like a ship without a rudder,’ said a prominent Catholic conservative last week. No big deal, you might think. Opponents of Pope Francis have been casting doubt on his leadership abilities for months — and especially since October’s Vatican Synod on the Family, at which liberal cardinals pre-emptively announced a softening of the church’s line on homosexuality and second marriages, only to have their proposals torn up by their colleagues.

But it is a big deal. The ‘rudderless’ comment came not from a mischievous traditionalist blogger but from Cardinal Raymond Burke, prefect of the Apostolic Signatura — that is, president of the Vatican’s supreme court. As it happens, Pope Francis intends to sack Burke, whose habit of dressing up like a Christmas tree at Latin Masses infuriates him. But he hasn’t got round to it yet. And thus we have the most senior American cardinal in Rome publicly questioning the stewardship of the Holy Father — possibly with the tacit approval of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI.

Nothing like this has happened since the backstabbing behind the scenes at the Second Vatican Council 50 years ago. It raises the question: is the Catholic church in the early stages of a civil war between liberals and conservatives, fought not over liturgical niceties (the source of relatively harmless squabbles under John Paul II and Benedict XVI) but fundamental issues of sexual morality?

The October synod was a disaster for Pope Francis. Before it started, he had successfully tweaked the Catholic mood music relating to divorcees and gay people.

The synod’s ‘special secretary’, the Italian archbishop Bruno Forte, wrote a mid-synod report suggesting that the participants wanted to recognise the virtuous aspects of gay unions. In doing so, Forte — an even more radical figure — overplayed his hand. Most synod fathers wanted no such thing. Cardinal Gerhard Müller, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and Cardinal George Pell, head of the Vatican’s finances, were horrified. They ensured that the final report kicked Communion for divorcees into the long grass and did not even mention homosexual relationships. ‘Synod rebuffs Francis on gays,’ reported the media — the last thing the Pope wanted to read.

And now another voice is being heard. The last pope is neither dead nor senile nor as silent as we thought he was going to be. In the last month Benedict XVI has written to the ex-Anglicans of the Ordinariate expressing delight that they now worship in the former Bavarian chapel in Warwick Street, London; to Rome’s Pontifical Urban University about the dangers of relativism; and, most significantly, to supporters of the old liturgy.

Where does this leave Francis? Looking a bit like ‘the Hamlet Pope’, Paul VI, whom he has beatified. He supports some sort of reform, but uncertainty is breaking the church into factions reminiscent of the Anglican Communion. Old enemies of Benedict XVI reckon they can persuade Francis to stack the college of cardinals in their favour. 

Cristina Odone, former editor of the Catholic Herald, says that ‘Francis achieved miracles with his compassionate, off-the-cuff comments that detoxified the Catholic brand. He personifies optimism — but when he tries to turn this into policy he isn’t in command of the procedures or the details. The result is confusion.

 Regardless of what the so-called conservatives want to believe, the Church is dying in the west and it is largely because the Church's far right policies towards gays, women, contraception, and the divorced  are driving people away.  Especially the younger Catholics. Growth in ignorant backward areas such as equatorial Africa will not replace the losses in the west - especially since America and German are the main bank rollers of the Vatican. 

Millions Of Latinos Have Abandoned Catholic Church Over the Last 3 Years

The declining number of American Catholics has been masked to a large extent to date by the influx of Hispanic immigrants.  But that may be changing. based on the findings of a Pew Research Center survey that ought to have the Vatican worried.  No single cause for the exodus was found, but many fallen away Hispanics noted the sex abuse scandal among other reasons.  Moreover, the survey found a disconnect between an aging celibate clergy and younger generations.  Lastly, the survey found the Church to be losing Hispanics in South America.  Here are highlights via Fox News Latino:

More than 4 million Latinos in the United States have left the Catholic Church since 2010, according to a new Pew Research Center survey that spotlighted the church’s ongoing exodus of Latinos, a group seen as pivotal to the future of Catholicism.

In 2010, two-thirds of Hispanics (67 percent) in the U.S. were Catholic. Today, that number has dwindled to 55 percent of the nation's 35 million Latino adults. While close to 20 million Latinos still identify as Catholic, the church has lost 12 percent, or 4 million Latinos in the U.S. over the past four years alone, according to the Pew study released Wednesday.

At the same time, the share of Hispanic evangelicals rose from 12 percent to 16 percent, while Latinos with no religious affiliation increased from 10 percent to 18 percent.

The new survey confirms a concerning worldwide trend for the Catholic Church, which has been losing followers for years, and is the latest indication the church is particularly losing followers among its strongest base, Latinos in the U.S. and in Latin America.

he changes partly reflect religious trends in Latin America, which has also seen a steady decline in Catholics as the ranks of evangelicals and nonbelievers have grown.

Pew found no single reason for the changing Latino religious landscape.

Respondents most commonly said they gradually drifted away from the faith of their childhood or stopped believing the teachings. About 30 percent said they found another congregation that helps its members more. Others said they had a personal spiritual crisis or left for family reasons. While a large percentage of Latinos overall said the church should do more to address the clergy sex abuse scandal, only a tiny percentage cited the crisis as a reason they left.

Pew found about half of U.S. Latinos who left Catholicism did so before they arrived in this country.

However, U.S. religious life has also been an influence. The share of Americans overall who say they have no religion, or "nones," has increased to about 20 percent in recent years. The trend is more pronounced among young people. Pew researchers found similar patterns among U.S. Latinos. Most of those ages 18 to 29 who left Catholicism now say they belong to no particular religious group. Hispanics ages 30 to 49 moved toward both evangelical Protestantism and no religion.

Just as the hate and hypocrisy of the Protestant Christofascists is killing the Christian brand, so too is the Catholic Church's rigidity and is forcing younger individuals away from institutional religion completely. 

The Fight to Reveal Abuses by Catholic Priests - and Hierarchy Coverups

The Roman Catholic Church despite the nice words of Pope Francis on a few occasions remains one of the most anti-gay churches on the planet.  In terms of official dogma, nothing has changed and the Catechism of the Catholic Church continues to describe gays as "inherently disordered."  Paradoxically, the Church at the same time remains filled with gays, including gay prelates at the highest levels, and the Church hierarchy also has been shown to have conspired on a world wide basis to protect pedophiles and child molesters.  The disconnect between dogma and the pattern of knowing cover ups could not be more complete.  A lengthy article in the New York Times looks at the difficulty experienced by those seeking to identify  predator priest and to hold their protectors accountable.  Here are some excerpts:

Cardinal Edward M. Egan, the former Roman Catholic archbishop of New York, is in no way the principal face of the sexual abuse scandals that have buffeted the church and its priesthood almost without pause for three decades. But he embodies a certain mind-set among some in the highest clerical ranks. It is an attitude that has led critics, who of late include the authors of a scathing United Nations committee report, to wonder about the depth of the church’s commitment to atone for past predations and to ensure that those sins of the fathers are visited on no one else.

The conditional nature of the apology, a style favored by innumerable politicians caught with hands in the till, was not lost on many listeners. Nor was the cardinal’s use of “mistakes” to describe a pattern routinely described by district attorneys as a cover-up. As if that were not enough, the reluctant penitent turned thoroughly unrepentant a decade later. By then retired, he withdrew his apology.

That sort of unyielding stance amid institutional promises of change continues to bedevil the American church, the Holy See in Rome and, no doubt, many among the faithful. 

By now, the story is amply familiar. Thousands of wayward clerics have been found to have sexually abused and emotionally scarred many more thousands of boys and girls. It is, too, a story of the church hierarchy as enabler: bishops who ignored the criminality, or evaded public exposure by shuffling abusers from parish to parish. The scandals have cost the church dearly, both in lost moral suasion and in its coffers. 

Nor is this a uniquely American peril. Similar scandals have erupted in Europe, Latin America, Canada and Australia.

For sure, sexual maltreatment of children and cover-up are not Catholic monopolies.  . . . . The existence of a website like StopBaptistPredators.org points to problems in other denominations. As for secular institutions, who could be unaware of abuses within the Boy Scouts of America and at Penn State?

But the Catholic Church has a hierarchical structure unlike any other, not to mention two millenniums of tradition and a claim to universality. 

Then again, the church in this country has plenty of concerns other than sexual misconduct. . . . The number of American priests, 39,600 last year, is two-thirds what it was at the time of the Second Vatican Council in the early 1960s. Ordinations of new priests, 511 in 2013, amount to barely half the total of five decades ago. The painful closing of Catholic schools by financially burdened dioceses has become routine.

But it is the abuse scandals that loom ever-large. In early February, the report by the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child sternly took the Vatican to task for, in the panel’s view, not having acknowledged the extent of past criminality and not doing enough to protect today’s children. The relatively new pope, Francis, recognizes the problem. 

Yet as popular as Pope Francis is, he has left some skeptics wondering where his heart lies. He did not endear himself with support groups for abuse victims when, in an interview with two newspapers in early March, he said of the scandal: “The Catholic Church is perhaps the only public institution to have acted with transparency and responsibility. No one else has done more. Yet the church is the only one to have been attacked.”

To some ears, those remarks sounded almost Egan-like in defensiveness.

Let's be blunt.  Unless and until Francis sacks numerous current bishops and cardinals and ends the cushy retirements of men like Cardinal Egan, Cardinal Roger Mahony and Cardinal Bernard Law, his credibility will remain suspect.  Meanwhile, between the Vatican's refusal to end the anti-gay jihad being pushed by many bishops and cardinals and its failure to severely punish those who enabled predators, the Church's membership will continue to plummet in all but backward and ignorant areas such as Africa.  Hispanic immigration will help disguise the Church's decline in America for only so long.  And, with America providing some 60% of the Church's financial inflow, the decline will become catastrophic at some point. 

Benedict XVI's Failure to Revive Catholicism in the Western World

With Pope Benedict XVI scheduled to abdicate the throne of St. Peter at month end, much analysis of the overall failure of his papacy has commenced in earnest.  As have rumors that his resignation may have been part of a deal to clinch his protection from criminal prosecution:

The ITCCS report cites a letter from Rev. Kevin Annett to Italian President Giorgio Napolitano, written a week before the pope officially resigned.  The letter states, in part:

“On behalf of our Tribunal and people of conscience everywhere, and of the millions of victims of church abuse, I am making an appeal to you regarding your upcoming meeting with Joseph Ratzinger, who will retire soon as Pope Benedict, the Pontiff of the Church of Rome.

Our understanding is that, in the wake of pressure to have him resign his office because of his proven complicity in concealing child trafficking in his church and other crimes against humanity, Joseph Ratzinger is seeking the assistance of the Italian government in securing protection and immunity from legal prosecution.”

According to the letter, Benedict’s resignation is said to be part of an arrangement with the Italian government to avoid the arrest of a sitting pope.

Obviously, if these rumors prove true, it would be a bombshell that would further destroy the Vatican's credibility and authority.  But Benedict XVI's papacy is marred by other failures as well.  A piece in the New Republic looks at Benedict's failed goal of reviving Catholicism in Europe and the advanced world.  The irony is that rather than improving the position of the Catholic Church, Benedict's efforts likely accelerated its decline.  It's a phenomenon that is being mirrored in other reactionary denominations that are losing members as they ratchet down on orthodoxy and move to the extreme right.  Here are excerpts from the article:

Much of Benedict XVI's papacy necessarily consisted of damage control, most notably relating to the widening scandals relating to child molestation. But beyond the many crises he faced, Benedict's legacy deserves to be measured against the goals that he chose to devote himself to as leader of the Catholic Church. Indeed, the manner in which Benedict attempted to pursue one of his central ambitions—the re-evangelization of Europe—sheds revealing light on his other missteps and failures.

[T]he specific spiritual salvation of Europe has been a life-long concern for the current pope, one grounded in theology, as well as biography. Joseph Ratzinger grew up in a deeply traditional Bavaria in which the Church was a central part of religious, social, even political life. That pattern largely continued under the Nazis, and went on to flourish in the immediate years after World War II. Secularization seemed like a process confined to Europe's former Protestant heartlands like England and the Netherlands. 

Since the 1980s, however, even the most devout Europeans have found it impossible to ignore secularization's inexorable spread. Church attendance has plummeted even in such once faithful territories as Spain, Italy, and Ireland, as well as in Bavaria itself; in France, self-described Catholics have became a minority. Vocations to the priesthood have fallen precipitously; seminaries and convents are emptying.

[T]rue reconversion, Ratzinger believed, could only be achieved by small, dedicated groups of highly active and committed believers, like the small, super-loyalist movements that emerged during the sixteenth century, chiefly in Spain and Italy. The Jesuits and Opus Dei are the best-known examples, but also influential were the Italian Focolare, the Sant’Egidio Community, and Communion and Liberation, Spain’s Neocatechumenate, and the Mexican-founded Legionaries of Christ. So were charismatic offshoots like Rinnovamento nello Spirito Santo (“Renewal in the Holy Spirit”) and the Emmanuel Community. Like the early Jesuits, such groups demanded extremely high levels of participation and activism, and some were accused of cult-like behavior. 

But while Benedict's goals have been consistent, his achievements have been disappointing: Far from beginning a reconversion of Europe, Benedict’s papacy has actually witnessed an acceleration of European defections from the Church. Indeed, the Church’s position in Europe today is far worse than when he took office. The sex abuse scandals that have been revealed in a torrent in European countries since 2010, each quite as devastating as the American disasters of the previous decade and often implicating the church’s senior leaders, have gravely undermined the church’s claim to moral stature or spiritual leadership. A growing number of Catholic states are now openly defying Church authority; the rapid spread of gay marriage laws offers a gauge of the Catholic Church's fading influence.

It’s worth asking whether the emphasis on ecclesial movements actually contributed to the accumulating sequence of disasters.  .  .  .  .  the “ecclesial” strategy exacerbated other pervasive problems in the senior ranks of the hierarchy, especially a sense of elitism and a detachment from the ordinary faithful. Arguably, the new evangelism theme also took time and resources that might have been better used shoring up the church’s defenses against scandal—not least in developing a modern, professional public relations apparatus.

Europe now notionally accounts for just 24 percent of the world’s Catholics, but 53 percent of the Cardinal electors. In tilting the balance towards a European successor, Benedict was not slighting the rest of the world: Rather, he was declaring his intention to keep up the fight for Europe.

So the papal electors now face a strategic choice that goes far beyond personalities. Do they invest in success, choosing someone who can give even greater momentum to the church’s already thriving expansion in the Global South? Or do they hope that yet another European can succeed where Benedict failed, in staunching the losses in that continent?

The Catholic Church's Fading Influence in Poland

With the fall out of the sex abuse scandal that continues to explode all around the world (Australia for example is lately seeing case after case of the now familiar pattern of enabling of and cover up for known predators), the Church's reactionary rejection of modern knowledge and science, and the Church's anti-gay jihad, the Roman Catholic Church is largely in a much deserved free fall in the Western world.  In Ireland, once a bastion of Catholicism, the Church's reputation and influence has suffered irreparable damage.  Now Poland, another former bastion seems to be headed the way of Ireland.  Indeed, the only growth areas for the Church are in backward and uneducated areas such as Africa where ignorance and naivete have so far protected the Church's reputation.  Der Spiegel has an article on the Church's decline in Poland.  Here are some excerpts: 

Twenty years ago, the Catholic Church played a major role in the fall of communism in Poland. Today, with the country changing rapidly, the church's influence is quickly waning. Once considered the most Catholic country in Europe, the faithful are vanishing. 

Just past the Polish border, passengers traveling by train from Berlin to Warsaw can see Jesus. He is 36-meters (118 feet) tall, made of concrete, and towers over the surrounding fields near the town of Swiebodzin, a gilded crown perched nobly on his head. His gaze is directed over the Recaro plant, which makes car seats and is the region's biggest employer, and toward the setting sun. His outstretched arms seem to suggest that he wishes to take the Western heathens into his heart.

The plaque at the base of the giant religious statue says that Jesus Christ is the true king of Poland and will rule for eternity. It is not for nothing that the country is, in the eyes of the church at least, Europe's most Catholic nation.

Some 95 percent of all Poles still say that they are Catholic. Yet loyalty to the church is waning. Even the conservative Catholic publicist Tomasz Terlikowski estimates the true number of devout Catholics at little more than 20 percent. "We Poles like to proclaim our Catholicism," he says, but the reality looks quite different.

Only slightly more than 44 percent of young people say they go to church on Sundays, compared with 62 percent in 1992. Forty-two percent admit that they do not observe all religious commandments. Hardly anyone pays attention to rules about things like sexual abstinence before marriage anymore. The number of illegal abortions runs into the hundreds of thousands every year. In addition, four-fifths of Poles are bothered by the fact that the church regularly intervenes in politics.

[T]he church has failed to keep up with the modern age, says Barto. Many of his fellow Poles agree.
After joining the European Union, Poland turned to the West and embraced the Western lifestyle more than almost any other country. Nowadays, Polish women dream of careers, self-fulfillment and children. Hundreds of thousands of young Poles live together without being married. In booming cities like Warsaw and Poznan, gays and lesbians live their lives as openly as in Berlin or Madrid.  "More and more taboos are falling by the wayside. But the church reacts by hardening its positions even further," says Barto.

The church is short on answers to the challenges it faces in booming Poland. The priests routinely react to job market volatility and long working hours, emigration and return, stress and careers by invoking earlier, more pious times.

"In reality," says former monk Barto, "most clergymen are preoccupied with internal power struggles. If there is anyone who is especially ill-suited to teaching people ethical behavior, it's a scheming church leader."

I would certainly second the last sentence quoted.  Moral bankruptcy is the principal hallmark of the Church hierarchy and I would argue that most atheists are likely far more ethical than the Church's bishops, cardinals, and yes, the Pope.  Greed, secrecy and the quest for power and control are their main characteristics and objectives.

America’s - and the GOP's - Christian Hypocrisy

A piece in Salon looks at an issue that this blog looks at frequently: the hypocrisy of this country's conservative Christians and their puppets in the GOP.  As the sub-headline of the piece notes "The Bible preaches tolerance and liberal economics. So why do its proponents embrace right-wing politics?"  The positive news is that more and more of the so-called millennials are apparently waking up to this reality an walking away from institutional religion all together according to a new report by the Public Religion Research Institute and Georgetown’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace & World Affairs.  The denomination suffering the biggest losses?  The Roman Catholic Church - even among Hispanics.  The U. S. Bishops and the porcine Timothy Dolan may like to claim that all is well in Catholicism, but the numbers of millennials fleeing the Church tells a very different story.  As for the cause of the exodus, I would argue that much is the handiwork of far right Christians and the professional Christian set who are slowly but steadily killing the Christian brand.  Here are highlights from Salon:

As the Pew Research Center recently discovered, “Most people who agree with the religious right also support the Tea Party” and its ultra-conservative economic agenda. Summing up the situation, scholar Gregory Paul wrote in the Washington Post that many religious Christians in America simply ignore the Word and “proudly proclaim that the creator of the universe favors free wheeling, deregulated union busting, minimal taxes, especially for wealthy investors, and plutocrat-boosting capitalism as the ideal earthly scheme for his human creations.”

The good news is that this may be starting to change. In recent years, for instance, Pew has found that younger evangelicals are less devoutly committed to the Republican Party and its Tea Party-inspired agenda than older evangelicals. 

The better news, of course, is that the far right is not only losing allegiance to its hate and hypocrisy filled agenda with millennials, but it's losing more and more of this generation completely.  In terms of LGBT issues and immigration, here are some findings from the report of the Public Religion Research Institute and Georgetown’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace & World Affairs:

• Nearly 6-in-10 college age millenials favor allowing gay and lesbian couples to marry legally. 
• 8-in-10 college millenials attending a private college or university support same sex marriage.
• Almost two-thirds of millennials say that "anti-gay" describes present day Christianity.
• 6-in-10 say that present day Christianity is judgmental.
• 58% agree that "hypocritical" describes present day Christianity.
• Milleninials across all major religious groups favor the DREAM ACT.

Obviously not good news for the GOP long term.

Catholic Church Leadership Hypocrisy - And an Exodus of the Laity

This cartoon speaks volumes about the rank hypocrisy of the Roman Catholic Church leadership.

The good news is that American Catholics seem to be increasingly recognizing the cesspool like nature of the Church hierarchy. Indeed, as CNN is reporting, but for an influx of Catholic immigrants who have apparently not yet opened their eyes to the true nature of the hierarchy, the number of Catholics would be dropping markedly. Here are some highlights from the CNN article:

Even though Roman Catholics are the second-largest religious group in the United States, the tradition has seen an exodus of members in recent decades. One in ten Americans is an ex-Catholic. If ex-Catholics were counted as their own religious group, they would be the third-largest denomination in the United States, after Catholics and Baptists, according to the National Catholic Reporter.

If it weren’t for the infusion of Catholic immigrants, especially from Latin American, the American Catholic Church would be shrinking pretty fast. A recent study by two college professor tries to get at a simple question: Why are they leaving?

The report is based on one particular diocese, but its authors say it gives a good picture of challenges facing the broader church. "I think the same seven items would show up for the most part," in other areas of the country, Zech says.

The 7 biggest reasons Catholics from Trenton are leaving the church, according to the study:

1. The sex abuse crisis

The most common answer: the church’s inadequate response to clergy sex abuse. “The bishop’s refusal to list pedophile priests on the diocesan Web site and his non-support of the effort to lift the statute of limitations for bringing sexual abuses cases forward in the courts” did it for me, one man said, according to the report.

2. The church’s stance on homosexuality

The second most cited reason for leaving the church was that former worshipers felt homosexuals were unwelcome in the church.

3. Dissatisfaction with the priest

About half of those surveyed in the Trenton report were not supportive of the pastor they had left behind. According to Byron and Zech, words like “arrogant,” “distant,” “aloof” and “insensitive” were all used by respondents to describe their priest.

4. Uninspiring homilies on Sundays

A number of people responded that homilies, weekly Sunday messages from the priest, did not relate or “speak to” them. “I stopped going regularly because the homilies were so empty,” one respondent said. “And whenever the church wanted to raise money, they dropped the homily and talked money.”

5. Perception that church hierarchy is too closely tied to conservative politics

“Eliminate the extreme conservative haranguing,” said one person. Another respondent said politics and the church shouldn’t mix: “I feel the church should stay out of politics; it should certainly not threaten politicians.”

6. Church’s stance toward divorced and remarried Catholics

Catholicism’s stance on divorce and remarriage were also highlighted, especially by divorced females. The churches stance on divorce is closely tied to their stance on adultery. Without getting a marriage annulled, any marriage after a divorce is considered adulterous. Therefore, divorced people who have not had their marriage annulled or remarried are not able to receive Holy Communion.

7. The status of women

With the political debate over religious conscience and contraceptive coverage, women’s rights and the church have come to the forefront of debate in American politics.

Respondents also took issue with the fact that while other churches allow women to become ordained priests, the Catholic Church does not. “If the Catholic Church does not change its archaic views on women, it is going to become a religion that survives on the fringe of an open-minded, progressive society,” one person who was surveyed said.

Personally, I hope the exodus continues because only a loss of members - and more importantly to the bishops, their monetary support - will force the hierarchy to realize that it is steering the Church to disaster unless it wants to become a third world religion (which might not be a bad thing in my opinion).

Brazil's Roman Catholics Are Becoming "Non-Religious"

I have previously looked at the fact that the fastest growing religious segment in the United States is the "non-religious" category as individuals leave institutional religion altogether. I view the trend as the result of the constantly toxic and hate filled face of Christianity provided by the Christian Right - who are neither Christian or right - and the fact that science and knowledge is making it increasingly difficult to believe in the Bible as "the inerrant word of God." Instead, it is all too easy to see the Bible as a man made work that has gone through all kinds of revisions and editing to reinforce the views of "the winners" in the early church and political machinations over the centuries. To make up for membership losses in educated and advanced countries, the professional Christians and denominations like the Roman Catholic Church have looked to growth in the developing world to maintain over all membership, with Latin America and Africa being two such bastions. Now, however, that strategy seems to be crumbling for the Catholic Church in South America as Brazil appears headed on the same trend as in the USA. Some years back I read one of Bishop John Shelby Spong's books that made the case of why Christianity must change or die. Given the refusal of many denomination leaders such as Benedict XVI, the Nazi pope, to permit change, it looks like death rather than change is the long term future of Christianity. The Virginian Pilot has a story that looks at the trend in Brazil and here are some highlights:

Bruno Maragato went through the Roman Catholic Church's rites like so many others before him in this most Catholic of nations: baptism, first communion, confirmation. But his next step was not part of the Vatican plan and, in fact, feeds a worrying trend for Catholics leaders. At age 16, Maragato left Christianity altogether.

A new study by Brazil's top research institute finds Magarato's views represent a sea change among a younger generation of Brazilians and present a fresh challenge for church leaders already struggling to hold on to parishioners across Latin America.

Brazil's Getulio Vargas Foundation finds, the country's Catholics are still leaving the church and at a higher rate than ever, but many younger parishioners, like Maragato, are simply becoming nonreligious.

Experts say this new twist poses a more potent threat to Catholic leaders than earlier losses. Now, the church isn't just competing against the Pentecostals, but courting people who have decided organized religion has no part in their lives.

"It's the most important phenomenon in this study, the abandonment of religion and the Catholics," said Fernando Altemeyer, a theologian at the Catholic University of Sao Paulo. "A considerable part of the Brazilian youth today are agnostic."

What raises the stakes for the Vatican is that church leaders have been viewing Brazil and other Latin American nations as bulwarks against losses in Europe and the U.S., where sex abuse scandals have inspired many to leave the church. About half of the world's Catholics reside in Latin America.

The number of people under the age of 20 in Brazil who say they follow no religion is growing three times more quickly than those 50 and older, with 9 percent of young Brazilians saying they belong to no religion, according to the study. That mirrors a similar trend in the number of people leaving the Catholic Church. The study, based on 200,000 interviews conducted for Brazil's 2010 census, shows the Catholic share of the population hit its lowest level since census figures tracked religion beginning in 1872.

Experts say the changes have accelerated as many women turn away from the Vatican's prohibitive views on contraception and abortion, which remains illegal in nearly all cases in Brazil. "The Catholic Church is literally losing its future, and the loss of women and young people is the most important driver of the fall," Neri said. . . . Mexico is poised to take Brazil's place as the world's top Catholic nation, although the church is also losing members there.

Personally, I hope the trend continues - or even accelerates. Only massive losses of membership (and the money that goes with that) will force the Vatican to leave its 13th century mindset and move towards the 21st century. Obviously, this shift will not happen on Benedict XVI's watch. If anything, his leadership and that of the ultra-right sycophants that he has appointed to bishoprics will hasten the flight of church members.

Goodbye Religion? The Number on Non-believers is Increasing With Each New Generation

As I've noted many times previously, the best argument for not being a believing Christian is self-identified, self-congratulatory Christians. Or at least those who belong to conservative denominations which seem more identifiable by their hatred of almost everyone rather than by living their lives in accordance with the Gospel message. These Christians have no compassion for others, begrudge government programs for the poor, the sick and the hungry, and spew hatred via "family values" organizations. Instead they act in ways that make the constantly condemned Pharisees of the Gospels look like they were pretty nice folks in comparison. The result of all of this is that increasingly younger generations are opting to join the ranks of agnostics and atheists. The irony - which for me is too sweet in some ways - is that it is not liberals or gays who are killing Christianity but the most vitriolic Christians who claim to be protecting faith. God/Allah/the Creator must be smiling at their handiwork. An article in Alternet looks at the phenomenon and here are some highlights:

Something strange is happening to American teenagers. If you believe popular wisdom, young people are apathetic, cynical and jaded; or, they're supposed to be conformists whose overriding desire is to fit in and be popular. But if you've been paying close attention over the past decade, you might have seen any of a growing number of cases that conspicuously defy these stereotypes stereotypes: stories of teenagers who have strong principles they're unashamed to display and which they're committed to defending, even at great personal cost, against the bullying of a hostile establishment.

For example, in 2002, an Eagle Scout named Darrell Lambert was threatened with expulsion from the Boy Scouts, despite his having earned dozens of merit badges and having held literally every leadership position in his troop. His crime? He's an outspoken atheist. When the news of his beliefs reached scouting officials, they demanded that he change his mind. He was given a week to think it over. All he had to do was lie, but if he did that, he said, "I wouldn't be a good Scout then, would I?" For his honesty, he was kicked out of the organization he'd devoted his life to.

In New Jersey in 2006, a public high school teacher named David Paskiewicz was openly preaching Christianity in the classroom, advocating creationism and telling a Muslim student she would burn in hell if she didn't convert. A junior named Matt LaClair reported this illegal government preaching to the school administration. In a meeting with the principal, Paskiewicz denied everything -- whereupon LaClair produced audio recordings of him saying the things he specifically denied having said.

Stories like these are multiplying all over the nation. In South Carolina just this year, a graduating senior named Harrison Hopkins put a stop to school prayer with help from the Freedom from Religion Foundation.

All these individual facts add up to a larger picture, which is confirmed by statistical evidence: Americans are becoming less religious, with rates of atheism and secularism increasing in each new generation. This demographic transformation has been in progress ever since World War II, but in recent years it's begun to seriously pick up steam. In the generation born since 1982, variously referred to as Generation Y, the Millennials, or Generation Next, one in five people identify as nonreligious, atheist, or agnostic. In the youngest cohort, the trend is even more dramatic: as many as 30% of those born since 1990 are nonbelievers. Another study, this one by a Christian polling firm, found that people are leaving Christianity at four times the rate that new members are joining.

There are multiple theories, but only one of them that I'm aware of both makes good sense and is corroborated by the facts. Over the last few decades, society in general, and young people in particular, have become increasingly tolerant of gays and other minorities. For the most part, this is a predictable result of familiarity: people who've grown up in an increasingly multicultural society see less problem

But while American society is moving forward on all these fronts, many churches not only refuse to go along, they're actively moving backward. Most large Christian sects, both Catholic and Protestant, have made fighting against gay rights and women's rights their all-consuming crusade. And young people have gotten this message loud and clear: polls find that the most common impressions of Christianity are that it's hostile, judgmental and hypocritical. In particular, an incredible 91% of young non-Christians say that Christianity is "anti-homosexual", and significant majorities say that Christianity treats being gay as a bigger sin than anything else.

In a society that's increasingly tolerant and enlightened, the big churches remain stubbornly entrenched in the past, clinging to medieval dogmas about gay people and women, presuming to lecture their members about how they should vote, whom they should love, how they should live. It's no surprise that people who've grown up in this tolerant age find it absurd when they're told that their family and friends don't deserve civil rights, and it's even less of a surprise that, when they're told they must believe this to be good Christians, they simply walk away.

The Roman Catholic church in particular has been hit hard by this. According to a 2009 Pew study, "Faith in Flux," one in ten American adults is a former Catholic, and a majority of ex-Catholics cite unhappiness with the church's archaic stance on abortion, homosexuality, birth control or the treatment of women as a major factor in their departure. But evangelical and other Protestant denominations are feeling the same sting. According to a survey by the sociologists Robert Putnam and David Campbell, moderates and progressives are heading for the exits as the churches increasingly become the domain of conservatives

What all this means is that the rise of atheism as a political force is an effect, rather than a cause, of the churches' hard right turn towards fundamentalism. . . . . the truth is that the churches' wounds are largely self-inflicted. By obstinately clinging to prejudices that the rest of society is moving beyond, they're in the process of making themselves irrelevant. In fact, there are indications that it's a vicious circle: as churches become less tolerant and more conservative, their younger and more progressive members depart, which makes their average membership still more conservative, which accelerates the progressive exodus still further, and so on. (A similar dynamic is at work in the Republican party, which explains their increasing levels of insanity over the past two or three decades.)

Of course, Christianity is still by far the largest religious affiliation in America, and likely will be for some time. But the numbers don't lie, and the trends of the last several decades show more and more evidence of the same secularizing wave that's overtaking most countries in Europe. The major churches, clinging to the inferior morality of long-gone ages, are increasingly out of step with a world that's more enlightened, rational and tolerant than it once was. And the more they dig in their heels, the more we can expect this process to accelerate. . . . .

For me, the process cannot accelerate fast enough. I see conservative Christianity is a blight on society that we'd all ultimately be far better off without.

Survey Shows Decrease in Louisiana Catholics

I have maintained for some time that the Roman Catholic Church's refusal to address the issue of bishops and cardinals who enabled and/or covered up the sexual abuse of minors by priests and other Catholic clergy would eventually take a toll on Church membership and such seems to be the case in Louisiana based on a new American Religious Identification Survey that shows a significant drop in the number of residents identifying as Catholic. At least so reports the Daily Reveille. Given the Church hierarchy's continued rejection of modern knowledge on numerous issues - including sexual orientation - I suspect that the decline will continue except in backwards and uneducated parts of the world where the Vatican can still get away with its old ways and man made dogmas. Here are some story highlights:

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Scott Louque grew up indoctrinated in the Roman Catholic Church. After 22 years in the faith, the agricultural business senior abandoned his upbringing looking for something more. American Religious Identification Survey shows the population of Catholics in Louisiana has decreased 16 percent compared to survey figures gathered in 1990.“Younger people by and large are more likely not to identify with their parents’ religion,” said religious studies assistant professor Michael Pasquier said.

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This generational gap, along with migration of citizens out of Louisiana for economic reasons, has played a major part in this reduction of number of Catholics in the state, Pasquier said.

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Pasquier said the root cause for the priest shortage comes from changing social climate after World War II movement giving people new social causes to participate in besides religion.Catholics found different ways to benefit society like participating in or against the civil rights movement instead of trying to do good to society by joining an order in the church, Pasquier said.“Today, the reason for the[priest] shortage continuing has a lot to do with the sex abuse scandals which perpetuate a distrust of the priesthood,” Pasquier said.

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The reality s that modern, educated citizens will find it increasingly difficult to cling to the 13th century view of the world, science and sexuality favored by Pope Benedict XVI and similar bitter old queens in dresses at the Vatican. If Catholics continue to vote with their feet, perhaps some day change will come to the Church. However, I am not holding my breath to see it happen in my lifetime.