Even before the Pope started cheerleading for Holocaust deniers this week, I’d made no secret of my lifelong belief that the Catholic Church is pure evil. Now I know there are individual priests and nuns out there doing great work, caring work, necessary work but, as an institution, the church of Pope Benedict XVI makes Dick Cheney seem like Snuggle the fabric softener bear:
I’ve tried to be fair: even ignoring the church’s numerous and nauseating ongoing child rape scandals (I’m so generous!) but it’s the little things, like Fresno, CA priest Father Geoff Farrow, who bucked the church leadership and delivered a sermon defending gay and lesbian people in October and was promptly suspended.
Now fair enough, one will argue — Farrow was certainly not a team player there — but now the church is actively preventing Farrow from getting another job. “You’ll never work in this earthly plane of existence again!” they cry while Farrow risks joining the soup kitchen line he used to minister to.
Meanwhile, the Vatican — always with an eye on where the boys are — have discovered the internet, setting up their very own YouTube page. Now you can watch hate speech as it happens and stay tuned for their new video, “Two Nuns, One Chalice!”
Gay people are painted as the villain, says essayist Richard Rodriguez, “when the churches themselves have a great deal to explain.” I leave you with a charming interview clip in which he explains what the fight to ban gay marriage is truly about:
Why you can trust Xtra
