The Catholic Church, Then and Now

The Catholic Church deserves some credit for what it had done a very long time ago.  Through the power of faith, it is true that we were able to come from the marauding barbarism that had taken over Europe in the Dark Ages.  Societies have been formed since long before Christianity existed by people coming together over a system of beliefs, which are often a ground-work for their continued growth as a culture.

Patton Oswald was right when he said that religion gave us writing and agriculture and fire and civilization.  However, the key thing that isn’t addressed is that what was once then, isn’t now.  The great truth of the Catholic church and what it once stood for has been washed away.  Granted, it has always been a corrupt institution.  There isn’t a single system of power that exists in this entire world that isn’t.  But it’s corruption was once off-set by what it gave back to society.  Such is not the case anymore.

Looking far beyond the Dark Ages, it cannot be denied that the corruption of the Catholic church has consumed it, and now it is nothing more than an institution that does so much more harm than good.  Before looking at the current examples, let’s take a trip back through history, and look at some of the more historically famous things that the Catholic church has been responsible for.

• 17 million African slaves were killed by slavers, which the Catholic church explicitly said was okay in 1836 and 1839.  These were official stances of the church, who favored slavery.
• In the 15th and 16th Century, and probably well after that, there were countless deaths after Pope Innocent VIII was the author of “The Declation Against Witches.”
• The Catholic church killed over 1 million innocent people in their Crusades to conquer The Holy Land (their term, not mine)
• The Spanish Inquisition killed over 350,000 people, all of whom were innocent, in order to suppress and silence those who were not in league with the church.
• The Catholic church had a very large participation in the the Rwanda ethnic cleansing.
• They continued to support a bloody and violent regime in Zimbabwe because they gave the church support.
• They supported the Croatian genocide of the Serbs.

Oh wait, look at the dates of all this.  This goes way back.  This goes all the way back to the Dark Ages.  Huh, well, scrap what I said before.  There was an order given to society, but at the same time, dating back to the beginning, the Catholic church has been nothing more than an organization of corruption and murder.

Today, on the other hand, there isn’t so much murder, but there is still a whole lot of corruption.  What are some of the more famous modern example of their corruption?  Some really modern ones?  Well, here’s another neat bulleted list.

• Mother Teresa, a woman who is revered by Catholics, non-Catholics, and even atheists like myself, advocated for no women’s reproductive rights of any kind.  She advocated for people in Africa not being able to use condoms, which would have exponentially helped in keeping the amount of AIDS cases down.  Her hospitals were poverty-stricken Third World nightmares, even though it has been shown that with the amount of money she had, she could have easily made them into very great palaces of health.  She also advocated poverty, which is why she didn’t funnel any of her untold and vast amounts of money into those hospitals.
• Over 5,000 priests and deacons are currently still active within the Catholic church, with there being public knowledge of their sex crimes against children.
• The Vatican keeps records of all the sexual abuse crimes committed by priests and who has been abused.  They pay off the abuse victims and their families, often adding the threat of excommunication if they go to the authorities.
• The Pope is expressly tied to the conscious efforts to keep the sexual abuse of the church under wraps, showing that this corruption comes down right from the top.
• When SNAP (Survivors Network for those Abused by Priests) came to the International Crimes Court to finally bring the hammer down on the Vatican and make them pay, the Vatican PR machine did everything in their power to vilify SNAP’s lawyers and those who were coming out against the sexual abuse that is rampant in the church.  They almost took a Stockholm Syndrome approach, telling the victims of sexual abuse that it wasn’t as bad as they thought.
• They are still working day and night to stop safe sex in third-world nations, along with abortion rights for women.
• They will let abstinence-only education be taught in Catholic schools (and we wonder why religious areas have the highest rates of teen pregnancy).
• At the Irish Sisters of Mercy, over 13,000 children were found to have been brutally physically abused.
• A plethora of financial crimes associated with the Vatican Bank, such as the laundering of 23, million euros.
• Oh, and the raping of all the kids.  Don’t know if we covered that.

The Catholic church is a corrupt organization, and the simple reality is this – this needs to stop.  It is high-time that the Catholic church felt the long-arm of the law.  They are completely exempt from taxes, yet they and all the other Christian organizations have a stranglehold on government.  This is an organization that couldn’t be more corrupt, yet couldn’t have more power.

On some level, it almost makes sense why the governments of the world are afraid to go after them.  This still is an incredibly powerful organization.  Their giant opulent palaces across the world should be testament to that.  There is a lot of money that governments need to finance their own corruption.  It is a giant network of corruption that infects this entire planet, and nobody will fight back against.

However, there is reason to hope.  There are groups coming together, refusing not to let themselves be ignored, and calling for justice against the Catholic church, until the abuse stops.  This organization needs to feel the hammer of the law, and until that happens, there needs to be a conscious effort against them.

Catholics, remember – we. are. watching you!