Humpday, 22 Sweltring 2010
I seem to be getting into the lists of late, so I thought I would bring a couple more points of clarity to those who have been following my personal exploits for a while. I have always considered the lack of ability of (most) humans to be able to rationally discuss politics, sex, and religion to be a problem that humanity needs to solve if we are to ever evolve beyond our current capacities*. Just as I have always been frustrated when conversations inevitably spiral into chaos if any of those topics (which also seem to be the main focus of many people's lives) get brought up in a social setting.
So, when I find out that somebody who can put into writing some of the way I feel on at least two of the big three (I haven't seen many of his writings on sex; but maybe I haven't been looking hard enough!) has written three (of a four part) series of essays about the Catholic Church and why he has some slight (cough) problems with the way they've been handling the fact that there have been a lot of priests doing a number of immoral (and illegal) things for years while the church's administration tried to cover it up, I like to point it out and explain a bit of the problems I have in similar areas.
Thanks to my good friend Bartcop featuring his latest article, I got a chance to revisit Barry Crimmins' site and catch up on Cath 22, Manic Compression, and The Legion Of Indecency. Barry's also informed the studio audience that there is still another essay in this bunch – something I am definitely looking forward to. You might want to check it out too...
The exposure of this long term, long time problem with the Catholic Church points to other issues within the broader scope of acceptable moral behavior for humanity as a whole. Will mankind decide that civility and empathy are not as important for their continued survival as duplicity and selfishness? Will the unique abilities and talents of mankind nurtured more by treating individuals as precious and brimming with the potential to revolutionize the system, or treating them as easily replaceable cogs that can be fit into place as need be to keep improving the running of the system? Will mankind's skill set include bigger and better ways of generating broad mental reservations about things they'd rather not face, or more flexibility to adapt to whatever reality we have to deal with?
On a personal note, my particular journey out of the clutches of the Church had two main pushes behind it:
- a long time friend of the family became a Catholic bishop after many years of (as far as I know) exemplary spiritual behavior. Then, out of the blue, he suffered a stroke. This led me to a couple of observations: what kind of Invisible Sky Fairy would 'reward' his most faithful minions with motherCheneying strokes? And why would it make any difference what I did - if such an entity could do that, and/or allow all sorts of other atrocities by others, in and out of the faith, to go by without similar 'reward', why should I even bother to factor it into the equation?
- many moons ago, I was so broke and destitute that I had to move back into my parent's house** during the Ronnie Ray-Gun/PapaDoc Putsch Recession of the late Eighties. The condition that caused me to move out six months later was that I had to go to (Catholic) church every week. The sheer hypocrisy of the uber-Catholic who required this as a condition of my keeping a roof over my head was bad enough, but after being away from it for a decade, it was kind of difficult to handle what I saw as the inherent contradictions of pretty much all religions (but particularly the one I was most familiar with, the Catholic Church) up close, and in my face, so to speak, on a regular basis. I do remember informing a few people that I would no longer be attending any Catholic services of any kind once I no longer had to as a condition of my residence. And I've pretty much kept to that vow to this day...
Now, of course those are not the only factors causing me to reconsider my membership within the religion I was enrolled in from birth; but both of those events caused me to reevaluate my decision to be a willing follower of the BuyBull. I was also able to take a year's worth of university courses on the major faiths out there; and I was able to flesh out those courses with supplementary reading - there's a ton of people who have written about the wisdom and truth of their particular brand of superstitious nonsense.
You can well imagine that my particular take on religion does not go down too well in most social situations. So it's somewhat refreshing to find someone whom I believe I might actually be able to talk to about (at the very least) religion and politics without the conversation going down in flames...
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* - I also consider one of the main failings of civilization as we know it today is the lack of common courtesy and basic civility for our fellow man – especially the promotion of said lack as a character virtue instead of a hidden flaw - that seems to be the accepted norm in society these days.
** - not in the basement - that was a packrat's paradise thanks to nature/nurture from both family trees - but back upstairs, in my old room before I had left for university ten years earlier.
