The Cardinal Speaks and I Shutter

Cardinal James Francis Stafford has come out rather strongly against the president elect. Seems that abortion and stem cell research are so destructive to his sense of religion that he feels that Obama campaigned on “extremist  anti-life platform. . . .”

Here we go again. The Catholic church and its acolytes climb up in their high and mighty pulpits to preach from their sanctimonious platforms about what is right and moral. This is a church that actively hid child molesters in its parishes. Worse, even when the wretched sick pedophiles were caught and identified for what they were, they were secretly shipped of to another location and allowed to prey upon the young and innocent. Only when humiliated by the legal process did they take ownership of this sordid and inhumane treatment of its very own.

Who are they to dictate what is a danger to the world? Let's face it, the church has had its hand in many of the problems of the world. As recently as Pius XII there was collision with a repressive Nazi government. How is it that these moral beacons can look at the world in this century and talk of the dangers of birth control and stem cell research? How is it that the Vatican doesn't fully look into the early church and the gospels of Thomas and Mary?

The trouble with the Catholic Church is that it is a closed system ruled by a single person with absolute authority. While one can, if they strictly follow the cannons of the church, find a direct line back to Jesus, the fact is the cannons were in fact written by those whose position it was to reinforce the cannons. Martin Luther's objections to the church were its venal application of cannons that had nothing to do with Christianity. Yet the church, always from the moral high ground, condemns all those who sway from their outdated, if not inhumane cannons. They talk of life without a realization for what life is like for people in this 21st century. One can only look into history and see the ramifications of this influence. The inquisition was conducted by the Church and its priests.

The church clings to its outdated practices and principles because it is ruled by old men who have little but their standing and their outdated practices and principles. It is ironic given the fact that Christ was a radical. He was a man who stood for change, dramatic change in the face of the old outdated practices and principles. The rich history of Christianity doesn't lie in the gilded domes of old men's homes. Historians are uncovering serious questions about translations and other historic documents relating to the teaching of Christ. To restrict one's understanding of a subject is to favor ignorance over knowledge. The reason these old men seem so out of step is because they are dated. It will probably take the church as long to recognize the issues of the 21st century as it did for light to shed the truth on the Dark Ages.