Old Habits

[jchrisobrien]

Vatican says AIDS can slip through a condom

(I can't send any mail today, so I'm talking about this here).

I don't know why I get so bent out of shape when people knock the Church. In the Church's eyes, I'm not a good Catholic at all. I disagree with a lot of the proclamations of the Church, but I still think I follow the teachings in the Bible. The moment I hear people slamming the Church however, my hackles raise. The question is, why?

Part of that no doubt stems from my old beliefs about the Church. I was very devout all through high school. I actually liked reading the Bible (okay, mainly Revelations). I had a very active imagination, and love thinking about the angels and the War in Heaven and the Nephilim. The Old Testament can totally read like a fantasy novel (some would say that it is. ha ha ha.). I really believed in Good and Evil, and the Church and the angels were on the side of Good.

After reading lots of history, and growing more exposed to life, I came to see that the Church was made of people, who are good and bad. The Church became an institution, and fell prey to corruption and greed and all the things you'd associate with any organization. I thought that the priests would follow their beliefs and since they were the examples for the rest of us, they would follow their own rules. Some of them did. Some of them didn't.

The other thing that bugs me, is the double standard. A lot of faiths believe in abstinence, and find promiscuity a sin. It's not purely a Christian or Catholic thing. Other faiths are just as puritanical, some even more so. But GOD FORBID you say anything bad about Judaism or Islam w/out being labeled a bigot. Why is it okay to talk shit about the Catholic church and not Islam, or Buddhist monks, or Judaism? Oh, the Vatican is evil, they have done horrible things, they should be locked away. No one bats an eye. Now change the Vatican to a sect of Judaism, or the ruling body there. See how quickly you get called a bigot or racist.

The quick and easy answer is to not let it get to me. I am not the Vatican, I do think that telling people not to use condoms because they don't stop AIDS is irresponsible. (*) An attack on Catholicism is not an attack on the people who practice it.

Or is it?

(*) The Church could have avoided a lot of misrepresentation if they had said, condoms reduce the risk of getting AIDS, but they don't prevent it all together. If you want to avoid getting AIDS, don't have sex period. But instead, they make a stupid statement making them look like idiots.

Comments

[silas7.livejournal.com]

I see disagreeing as taking issue and arguing a position in the Church. Saying that the Pope should be someone's prison bitch, or even the top, is talking shit.

That is probably the biggest source of my discomfort. I still make that correlation between doctrine and institution. The more I can disconnect the actions of the Church with the teachings of the Church, the better off I'll be.

[alonewiththemoon]

I still make that correlation between doctrine and institution. The more I can disconnect the actions of the Church with the teachings of the Church, the better off I'll be.

It's funny, I grew up in my non-religious way understanding this difference because my mother explained to me that this was part of the reason why our family didn't go to church (that, plus my atheist dad). She hit her young adulthood and realized that while she believed in a lot of the basic messages of Catholocism, she couldn't in any good conscience support various positions of the Catholic Church, birth control being a prime example, and therefore could not be a member of the Church. I think going through the process of declaring herself a lapsed Catholic* brought her some sense of closure, because she could still respect some teachings without accepting the ultimate authority of the Church.

*I don't mean any official sort of declaration process, just a social one

[silas7.livejournal.com]

I need to figure out a faith that has all the basic teachings of Catholicism w/out the more objectionable positions of the Church.

We need a new lable for lapsed Catholics. There's a great passage where Jesus mentioned "when two or three are gathered in my name, I am there". Something that recognizes the smaller, personal nature of the faith.

[julishka.livejournal.com]

it's called protestantism. ;p

[ayun.livejournal.com]

I thought that was the big difference between Catholicism and 'Christianity' - one doesn't necessarily require adherence to the teachings of any particular church.

Hell, there are atheiests who could arguably call themselves christians, in that they respect and espouse the philosophy of Christ without necessarily believing that he was divine.

[atalanta.livejournal.com]

Hmm .. are you a Christian if you like the ideas but don't think Christ was divine? And if you don't, why would you call yourself a Christian any more than you'd name yourself after one of the thousands of other people who might have espoused the same beliefs? Just because Christ was more famous?

I doubt the Christians who do believe the divine part would go for including you if you didn't believe it :)

[ayun.livejournal.com]

I can't find the "Atheists for Christ" website that I saw a link to recently (didn't actually look at the website at the time, but it stuck in my mind a little - hence this comment).

I think of an atheist calling himself a christian in the same way that those who agree with Marx's philosophy calling themselves marxists - just a shorthand for the ideology you've chosen. Shorthand being the key word there - I can't think of anyone with the same amount of name-recognition value that taught the same things as Christ, though on face his ideas seem (especially today) pretty damn commonplace. There's a semantic argument to be made for either case, really - I'm not saying I wouldn't laugh at an atheist christian, just that I can see how one could make the case for being both.

But I agree that it probably wouldn't fly with big-c Christians, kinda like the way Jews for Jesus is considered more or less a joke (by most Jews and Christians, I think).

[silas7.livejournal.com]

Perhaps I should go with the Christian title more.

"Hi, I'm Chris, and I'm a Christian."

I sound like a fucking tool. :)