GOOD BLOODY BYE!

Once more unto the breach dear friends. In a foolish attempt to divert public attention from the cover up of sexually abusive priests, the Catholic Church has decided to ban gays from the seminary. Their reasoning goes something like this. Since the 1950s, when the abuse started, until the scandal finally broke, approximately 10,667 youth were abused, 81 percent of which were males. So of course, this means that we have to treat the entire gay community as if it were somehow diseased; or, worse yet, subhuman.

Of course, the missing figure here is the percentage of homosexual verses heterosexual priests, and that number seems to have been carefully and deliberately swept under the rug. Why? Because while 81 percent of the victims were supposedly males, there is a very real possibility that two thirds of the abusers might have been heterosexuals Moreover, in the general population, the lions share of child molesters are married, heterosexual males. If we go by this reasoning then we should be banning anyone with any kind of sexual orientation what-so-ever from the ruddy priesthood.

T he basic truth about child molesters is that they tend to be highly immature individuals, both emotionally and sexually, and the church's stand on celibacy only encourages immaturity. When you think about it, the whole idea of a celibate priesthood is an absurdity. Why should the personal lives of married and dating individuals be dominated by a group of (presumably) celibate men who aren't supposed to have any personal knowledge about sexual matters in the first place? Just what do these sexually, immature men know about personal relationships? I would argue that they know very little The idea that celibate priests can in any way understand the issues that sexually active people are dealing with is both preposterous and repressive.

The last I knew, my parish priest won't be raising children; nor wll he he ever have to carry aan eight to nine pound fetus to full term for eight to nine months. And, now that I think about it,my local parish priest will probably have little to no knowledge about the dating scene, married life, nor sexual situations in general. And yet we allow this inexperienced clique of sexually stunted (some might say warped and frustrated) individuals to tell the rest of us how and why we should be allowed to engage in sexual activities, and under what circumstances. Forgive me for asking this, but am I the only person who sees the irony in this situation? Is this not a little like asking a dysfunctional illiterate to teach a course in remedial reading?

So, what does it all mean? Well, my friends, it means that the Catholic Church has taken a severe and dramatic turn to the reactionary right. Once again the forces of sexism and bigotry have wrapped themselves in a cloak of Christian hypocrisy as they attempt to discriminate against and openly persecute the gay minority.

So, as much as it pains me, I

have come to the following conclusion. I am now finished with the Catholic Church. As far as I'm concerned this bigoted cult of one, the Great Whore of Bablyon in Rome can go to hell in a hand car. I refuse to support in any way what-so-ever an organization which preaches love and compassion out of one side of its mouth while it spews hatred, discrimination and anachronistic sexism out of the other.

There are plenty of open, accepting and truly Christian Churches out there which do not take the Bible as the literal word of God, and which correctly recognize the fact that the Bible was written by primitive, culturally-biased people who were trying to understand the political, religious, and natural occurrences of their time. To take it literally would be both foolish and self-destructive; to allow an immature hierarchy to take it literally and to interpret it for me would be both stupid and suicidal in the extreme.

So to the corrupt Catholic hierarchy, and to its new German Pope, I offer the following three words:


GOOD-BLOODY-BYE!