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Why is the Roman Catholic Church so compelled to judge, demonize and persecute? |
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Jesus gave his followers this important instruction: 
" I give you a new commandment,that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another." |
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The biggest difference between this latest crusade and earlier ones is that the Catholic Church no longer enjoys the kind of total political power that it did in medieval Europe and can no longer count on the civil authorities to enforce its will on defenseless victims. Sadly, under the leadership of its current ultra-Conservative pope, instead of promoting love for a change, some 98% of the Catholic bishops of the U.S., recently voted to do all that they could to prevent the state from recognizing the rights of gay NON-Catholics to make the same life-long commitments to their partners that society expects of heterosexuals.
"Catholic Hatred.Org" may not be the perfect name for such a web site, but if someone can provide a better expression that briefly describes the Roman Catholic hierarchy's arrogance, pride, bigotry, hypocrisy, duplicity, shamelessness, triumphalism, superiority complex, pontificating, and finally, the result of those vices, namely the persecution of those whom they have looked down on over the centuries, and considered unworthy not just of respect, but of life itself. and destined for eternal damnation, unless and until they humbled themselves and submitted to the demands of those in power in the "Holy Roman Catholic Church", I will gladly use it that expression. The R C Church isn't the only religion that has a history of violence and persecution, but it stands out, on the one hand, in the degree that it has persecuted others, and the degree to which on the other hand it claims to be entitled to respect and admiration as "the one, holy and universal church", and the one church that can lay claim to having Christ's personal representative as its head. If those who ignore past history are condemned to repeat its mistakes, where does that leave an institution that can't admit it that it has made mistakes? Even the most highly educated Catholics believe that they know all they need to know about the history of their Church, if they believe what their church teaches them, namely that Jesus promised that "the gates of hell would not prevail against his church", and if they hold with blind faith that Jesus could not have had anything else in mind but what they have been taught to imagine when they hear the word "church", i.e. the institution governed by the bishop of Rome. Catholics don't think they need to know about the hatred and cruelty that "Holy Mother the Church" promoted against hundreds of thousands of Catholics just like themselves on the grounds that they were "heretics", or "witches", or "homosexuals". Instead of denouncing and repudiating the popes who were individually responsible for the killing and torture of many more of their fellow Christians, than all of the pagan emperors together had been, most Catholics embrace the belief that there can be no genuine teacher and representative of Christ unless he or she can trace his authority through this long line of murderous, scandalous, hate-filled, sometimes even insane "Vicars of Christ". Catholics don't think they need to know about the hatred and cruelty that their "Holy Church" promoted against the natives of countries all over the world whom they called "infidels" and "savages", and whom they treated with unspeakable inhumanity, faithlessness and savagery. To find out what this picture is all about,
Catholics don't think they need to know about the hatred and cruelty that their "Holy Church" promoted against the Jews of Europe for many centuries, and then told the millions of Catholics that Hitler needed to carry out his plans to do whatever he told them to do. Catholics don't think they need to know about the hatred and cruelty that their "Holy Church" promoted against the Serbian Orthodox and Muslims of Catholic Croatia during World War II, where Catholic clergy were responsible for the creation and running of concentration camps designed to terrorize, convert and/or kill the non-Catholics of Croatia. The Catholic Concentration Camps Catholics don't think they need to question their Church when it says that its the homosexuals turn to get persecuted, again! Millions of American Catholics are still reeling from the discovery that, over the years they have had a 4% chance of being assigned a priest who might use their church's sacristy or rectory to sexually molest their children, and pretty close to a 100 % chance that when their celibate, childless bishop found out about such crimes, that he would do everything in his power to defend the reputation of the "One, Holy, Catholic Church", rather than the dignity of their innocent children. But what, may I ask, makes the dignity and emotional health of a relatively small number of children so much more worthy of anger than the very lives of 6 million Jews, and 4 million Jehovah Witnesses, Gypsies, liberals, handicaps, homosexuals, Polish Catholics, and other victims of the Nazi holocaust? Is it simply that the molested children were contemporary Americans and the killed and tortured holocaust victims were only Europeans of a bygone era? All of this cruelty is, in my humble opinion a direct result of the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church not taking seriously the teaching of Jesus that targets them directly, (and being allowed to get away that behavior). And that that is what I invite you to explore with me below : |
| The Roman Catholic Church claims that -- unlike all of the other Christian churches, which are fraudulent and have nothing genuine to offer - "the Holy Catholic Church" is the one and only genuine, holy church in the whole world, the only one that Jesus intends this world to have, the only one that stands with an unbroken succession on the foundation laid by Jesus Christ in God's Word, the only one with a legitimate priesthood that can administer the "sacraments", i.e. the sacred instruments which Jesus provided in order to enable people to become part of his one true church and only route to eternal salvation. Let's take a look, shall we, at what Jesus actually said, and at what the Catholic Church has done about Jesus' teaching. | |
| THIS is what
Jesus taught : |
THIS is what
his have taught : |
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{ Matthew 16: 17-19 } "God has blessed you, Simon, son of Jonah," Jesus said, "for my Father in heaven has personally revealed this to you--this is not from any human source. You are Peter, a stone; and upon this rock I will build my church; and all the powers of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give you the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven; whatever doors you lock on earth shall be locked in heaven; and whatever doors you open on earth shall be open in heaven!" That sounds very impressive, doesn't it? But Catholics all seem to be following instructions by their priests or nuns to slam their bibles shut after reading those three verses, so as not to see anything else that Jesus said (unless it has been screened by the hierarchy). How many Catholics have read the very next verses (which are recorded in two Gospels, while the former, supposedly all important ones are only reported in one of the four Gospels) :
{ Matthew 16: 20-23 } : Then he warned the disciples against telling others that he was the Messiah.
From then on Jesus began to speak plainly to his disciples about going to Jerusalem, and what would happen to him there -- that he would suffer at the hands of the Jewish leaders, that he would be killed, and that three days later he would be raised to life again.
But Peter took him aside to remonstrate with him. "Heaven forbid, sir," he said. "This is not going to happen to you!"
Jesus turned on Peter and said, "Get behind me, Satan. You are an obstacle in my path, for the way you think is not God's way but man's."
according to Matthew, Ch. 23: "You know that among the pagans, rulers lord it over their subjects and their great men make their authority felt. This is not to happen among you. No, anyone who wants to be great among you must be your servant, and anyone who wants to be first among you must be your slave, just as the son of man came, not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many."
{ Mark 10:17- 18 }
(Matthew 20)
{ John 13: 3--17 } |
Those who were instructed to be humble servants have tortured and executed as "heretics" those who over the centuries objected to their demanding that those who wanted to follow Christ call them "Supreme Pontiffs", "Holy Fathers", and "Vicars of Christ", who can't be wrong when teaching "ex cathedra", and who have governed the church throughout the world like emperors from their throne in their imperial "Vatican City". From this imperial court they rule with an iron hand through their the "Roman Curia", which has codified the church's rules and regulations ("Canon Law"), and functions as the church's "Supreme Court", under the "Supreme Pontiff".
For centuries, the people of the various local communities, or "dioceses" elected their own leaders, or "bishops". But the Bishop of Rome has since iradicated just about every trace of democracy from the church and personally chooses the man to rule every diocese in the world and every last one of them is answerable to no man, but one.
absolute power corrupts absolutely." Lord Acton, in a letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton, 1887
Paschal II: (1099-1118)
Pope Innocent IV (1243-54):
Pope Boniface VIII (1294-1303) :
Pope Leo XIII (1878-1903):
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Himself 
"Vicars"
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The Mantra of "Anti-Catholicism": What is Bigotry? by Rosemary Ruether [a Catholic theologian], Autumn 2000 "It has become common among right-wing Catholics, such as the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, to pillory various cultural phenomena in the United States -- ranging from movies such as Priest and Dogma -- to Catholics for a Free Choice as "anti-Catholic." Significantly, this label is being used most frequently against liberal Catholics who hold views other than those of the Catholic League and other Catholic right organizations about what it means to be Catholic . . . American Catholics, since the Kennedy administration, have become fully integrated into American society. They are generally treated respectfully by the dominant culture and media as a mainstream component part of American religious diversity, despite occasional exploitation of stereotypes of nuns. There is no evidence of a rejuvenation of the old type of anti-Catholic bigotry in the United States, stemming from Protestant-Catholic conflicts of the Reformation. . . Rather, what is going on today is a new schism and conflict, stemming from the Second Vatican Council and new Catholic liberal thought, one that divides Catholics from each other. The mantra of "anti-Catholicism" from the Catholic right is primarily a reflection of this internal Catholic conflict. This term is being used by the Catholic right to claim that they and they alone are "authentic" Catholics, and Catholics that hold progressive views are not Catholics, are hostile to "authentic" Catholicism, and hence are "anti-Catholic." Furthermore, non-Catholics in the larger society who listen respectfully to the views of progressive Catholics are therefore also "anti-Catholic." In short, the charge of "anti-Catholicism" is being used as a scare tactic by the Catholic right in the service of repression of progressive Catholic views. It might be useful in this context to sort out the fundamental difference between critical thought and bigotry. Bigotry, whether racial or religious, is a stereotyping of an entire other religious or racial group as essentially evil and demonic by nature. It is not factual and by nature cannot be factually proven. It sets up the other group as the antithesis of all that is good and godly, characteristics supposedly monopolized by the bigot's own group. Catholics have practiced this kind of bigotry against Protestants, claiming that they are "heretics." Both Catholics and Protestants have a long and evil history of using this kind of demonic language against Jews as a religious and ethnic group. Critical thought is the fundamental opposite of such bigotry. Critical thought is based on nuanced judgments founded on historical reality. There is a world of difference between saying the Pope is the anti-Christ and making historically factual statements about the papacy as an institution as having been corrupt at various times, having abused power and wealth and having been less than truthful about its own history. Garry Wills new book, Papal Sin, is this kind of carefully documented critique of the papacy. Garry Wills is a Catholic. He makes his critique for the purpose of arousing critical thought among Catholics about these papal defects in the hope of promoting church reform. It is an insider's critique made by an esteemed Catholic scholar whose purpose is the improvement of the Catholic community's fidelity to its authentic values of truth and justice. The name for such historically accurate critique of a community made from within for the purpose of calling it to reform is "prophetic" thought. This kind of insider's critique is the core of the Biblical tradition. The Hebrew prophets and Jesus called down stern critique of the leaders of their own community in order to recall them to their more authentic traditions. Civil discourse in any culture depends on being able to distinguish bigotry aimed at stereotypical demonization of the "other" from historically accurate criticism made for the sake of reform and renewal of authentic values. The Catholic Right's misuse of the language of religious bigotry to repress progressive Catholics threatens both to cut the life line of renewal within Catholicism itself and to collapse the fundamental distinction between bigotry and critical thought that is at the heart of educated, civil society. In the Catholic Right's book, Jesus and Jeremiah would be "anti-Catholic" if the kind of criticism that they made at the religious leaders of their time had been directed against Catholic leaders. It is time for American cultural leaders to stop being intimidated by such language and start exercising critical public evaluation of the accuracy and context of the use of the term "anti-Catholic." from www.cath4choice.org/conscience/archived/AntiCatholicism.htm [ Rosemary Radford Ruether is the Georgia Harkness professor of applied theology at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary in Evanston, Illinois. She is also on the board of Catholics for a Free Choice and is editorial advisor to Conscience. ] Conservative Catholics who complain of being "victims" of "anti-Catholic bigotry" remind me of this statement by their Conservative ally, Pat Robertson, who said in a 1993 interview with Molly Ivins: |
We've had our say. Now it's your turn :  [email protected] Click here to  this pageor here to to friends (or yourself). Pope John XXIII was not only a different kind of pope. We believe that he was, like us a
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