A rchive Date
[ 14-08-2003 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Religion ]
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[http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/steward.html
Catholic Church is ever arrogant
By HARTLEY STEWARD -- Toronto Sun
August 10, 2003
Someone has to say it. The Roman Catholic Church, surely, has abdicated any right it might have had to enter the debate on same sex marriages. Its insistence on taking a public stand against homosexual and lesbian marriages is, at best, inappropriate, at worst, bigoted and arrogant.
The Church has got nothing right in the area of sex since its beginnings. Its edicts on sexual issues have been hurtful and counterproductive. They have done nothing to make for a better world.
A trail of misery, guilt and destruction has followed closely behind the Church's intervention in the sexual lives of its adherents and its hierarchy. It has not fostered understanding and compassion among peoples of differing views. None of it has helped us resolve our difficult moral and social issues.
On the contrary. It has caused heartbreak and stress throughout society. Encyclicals in the field of marriage, sex and relationships have always been a century or two behind the moral standards adopted by society.
While we struggle to deal with changing views on sex and marriage, while we debate the rights and wrongs of many emerging modern beliefs, while we worry about abortion and contraception, the church, like some Old Testament tyrant, holds fast to rules set in stone hundreds of years ago, many of them based on fables and mythical pronouncements.
My mother was a devout Catholic who practised as best she could the dictates of her Church. She worshipped sincerely and from her friendships with Church workers - mostly an order of nuns - she gained much comfort.
My father was pretty much an agnostic with a live-and-let-live approach to most of the world. Still, by the time I was old enough for a father/son talk on sex, he advised me to be careful about marrying someone of the Catholic faith.
"I love your mother," he told me. "But our sex life has been unsatisfactory, to say the least. Your mother never believed in birth control. She never allowed herself to enjoy sex. She was convinced sex for the sake of sex was wrong.
"She was wracked with guilt if she enjoyed it even a little bit. It has been a sore point throughout our marriage. I blame the Catholic Church completely."
But the harm the Church has done to marriage is nothing compared to the horror some of its priests have visited upon generation after generation of young girls and boys in every part of the world in which the Church holds sway. It pales in comparison to the wrecked lives of those children and their families, who had put their simple faith in the Catholic Church.
The betrayal is on a scale that takes your breath away.
Best estimates, by the attorney general of Massachusetts, say that since 1940, 789 minors were abused by priests or Church workers in the Archdiocese of Boston alone. Almost 240 priests there have been directly accused of abuse.
What would the number have been had the last bishop of the archdiocese not initiated a policy of transferring priests from one parish to the next to put their accusers off the trail? How many cases of criminal abuse remain undiscovered? No one wants to hear what even a conservative extrapolation of those numbers would be for all America.
In Canada, the percentages could be even higher, due to the scandalous operation by the Catholic Church of schools for our aboriginal population.
The horrors of Boston alone, to my mind, should disqualify the Church from even participating in the debate on same-sex marriage, let alone launching an aggressive campaign from the pulpit aimed at the nation's legislators.
Souls in peril
Catholic members of Parliament are being urged by their bishops and priests to vote against the proposed same-sex marriage legislation. Their very souls, they are told, will be in peril should they disobey.
Ontario's top bishop, Jean-Louis Plouffe, has said Liberal leadership front-runner Paul Martin is betraying the Church if he does not take a stand against the proposed law. The prime minister of Canada has been warned, by Calgary Bishop Fred Henry, that he risks his "eternal salvation" if he continues to support the legislation.
The spectacle of the Catholic Church condemning everyone who opposed them to hell has the smell of the Inquisition about it. It bespeaks an intolerable insolence and - in this day - an almost inconceivable conceit, born of years of intolerance and bigotry.
Nothing, it seems, will humble the Catholic Church. It will not be shamed into silence even by the worst scandals. It will, apparently, continue to pursue its ancient, destructive dictums no matter the devastation in their wake.
We can only hope our elected representatives have the strength to ignore the blatant attempts to hijack their legislation with spiritual blackmail.
Steward appears Tuesdays and Sundays. E-mail: hartleysteward@canoemail.com
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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