The Atheist Inquisition

By Tribunal del Santo Oficio de la Inquisición (Enciclopedia Española) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

So Happy 4th of July!  Before I even left for 6:30a.m. Mass yesterday, I saw the ad headline in the Los Angeles Times:   "Quit The Catholic Church". I was miffed, but it had to wait until after Mass.  In fact, I made it wait until after breakfast, when I read the whole ad.  Then I just rolled my eyes. 

Somehow, a group that has only been able to amass (pun intended) 18,000 members since its founding in 1978, is running this full page ad as they are able to raise funds.  It appeared in the New York Times way back in March, so obviously, they don't have a lot of support. Still, they are launching the same tired arguments about why the Catholic Church is such a bad guy. I say "tired", because they are calling women, like me, who are loyal to the church "ignorant", while they apparently refuse to acknowledge scientific evidence contrary to their primary argument, which is women's "reproductive rights".  I'm sorry, but as a mother of 4 children, I vote for the right of every woman to practice abstinence if she does not want to conceive, acquire an STD, or be a slave to her hormones.  To lower a woman's dignity so far that you have to call it "reproductive rights", is to say that she does not have the choice not to engage in sexual activity.  It is to say that she is too stupid to realize how babies are made.  That it is better for her to pump herself full of chemicals or extra hormones which will raise her risk of cancer, than it is for her to abstain from sex, or to have a baby. How can a woman possibly be happy and fulfilled if she is not having sex? Personally, that is more of a Dark Ages mentality than what the ad is accusing the church of.

Their other argument is that US healthcare reform is being held hostage by the Catholic Church. Not so. The church has worked hard towards affordable health care for all for years. The current health care law, in fact, coerces a faction of society, Catholics and Catholic Institutions, to pay for what they regard as murder, female oppression and religious persecution. In fact, if a non-Catholic, working at a Catholic Institution, wants free or low cost contraceptives, there are hundreds of family planning clinics they can get them from.

As for the sex-scandal issue, sex scandals and pedophilia, complicity, collusion and cover-ups are not exclusive to the Catholic Church. They are rampant at every level of society and in every institution in the United States.  Pointing the finger at the Catholic Church is just a smokescreen, using the currently popular bad guy, to cover up the fact that this is just an organization, like any other, trying to get more money to promote their agenda, which according to their own website is to educate the public on matters of non-theism.

We Catholics stopped murdering folks that refused to convert to our religion over a century ago. Don't shove your atheism down our throats just because you don't want to have kids to pass it on to.

They say "humanity above dogma".

I say "the truth shall set you free"!