The Catholic Church

On Thursday, a good friend of mine in Italy alerted me to a news story that made the front pages of newspapers all over Italy. For those who read Italian, you can READ IT HERE.

At an annual televised May Day rock concert held in front of the Saint John in Lateran basilica in Rome, an Italian comedian, Andrea Rivera, spoke out against the Pope's stand on various issues. Among other things, he criticized the Church for denying a Catholic funeral to Piergiorgio Welby, a man who campaigned for euthanasia as he lay paralysed with muscular dystrophy (he died in December after a doctor agreed to switch off his life-support system). The Vatican's official newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, promptly accused Rivera of - believe it or not - terrorism. In its editorial, L'Osservatore Romano said that a presenter of a televised May Day rock concert had launched "vile attacks" on the Pope in front of an "excitable crowd". Extraordinarily, the editorial went on to say, "This too is terrorism. It is terrorism to launch attacks on the Church. It is terrorism to fuel blind and irrational rage against he (the Pope) who always speaks in the name of love - love for life and love for man." Italy's labour unions, who organized the concert, have distanced themselves from Rivera's comments.

In recent times, there has been an atmosphere of growing anti-clericalism in Italy, including graffiti and comments in blogs. Indeed, Rivera's performance came comes only a few days after Archbishop Bagnasco received a bullet in the post after allegedly making comments comparing homosexuality to incest and paedophilia.

The Vatican's response to Rivera's comments is breathtakingly heavy-handed. Why can't there be criticism of the Church? After all, we can criticise our political leaders, so why can't we disagree with the views of our religious leaders ... they are not infallible.

The Roman Catholic Church in particular has a long history of being inflexible, power-hungry, heavy-handed and corrupt.
As far as being heavy-handed is concerned, we all know about the Inquisition and the burning of heretics at the stake. Saint Thomas wrote in Summa Theologica (II, xi): "... much more may heretics, from the moment that they are convicted, be not only excommunicated, but slain justly out of hand." By the end of the sixteenth century, hundreds of thousands of people had been savagely tortured and burned alive ... just because they held opinions contrary to the Church (L'Osservatore Romano, had it existed in those days, would have called them "terrorists"). The twisted logic of the Church was that killing a heretic does even the heretic a favour, since it will prevent him/her from committing further sins and thereby decreasing his/her punishment in hell. It has to be said that Protestants were just as intolerant.

The Catholic Church has also shown itself to be corrupt. They have used the fear of eternal damnation to control the masses and to extract large amounts of money from the gullible. During the medieval era, the ideas of horrible punishment in the afterlife became very real fears to all Christians. Pope Leo X (son of Lorenzo "the Maginificent" de' Medici) exploited this fear by persuading the faithful to pay for scrolls of paper called "indulgences", which reduced the agonies of Purgatory, through which all souls must pass in order for their sins to be "purged" so that they could enter the pearly gates of heaven. The sale of indulgences - along with other practices - went towards supporting a huge Church hierarchy and all its extravagances. These practices spurred a young German priest named Martin Luther to take action: on 31st October 1517, he nailed to the door of Wittenberg Castle Church 95 theses demanding reform to the church. Even as recently as 1903, Pope Pius X was able to specify the number of days' remission from Purgatory that each rank in the church hierarchy was able to grant (for example, cardinals could grant 200 days).

The Roman Catholic church has a history of defensiveness in the face of rational thought. Science has always been a threat to the Church, and there are numerous example in history that show how the Catholic Church has sought to suppress (by whatever means) any scientific or philosophical thought that went against Church doctrine.
Giordano Bruno, the sixteenth-century Roman Catholic Scholar proposed that there is an infinite number of worlds, and that many are inhabited. For this, he was burned at the stake in 1600, and became a "martyr of science". The charges against Bruno were as follows:
* Claiming the existence of a plurality of worlds and their eternity.
* Holding opinions contrary to the Catholic Faith and speaking against it and its ministers.
* Holding erroneous opinions about the Trinity, about Christ's divinity and Incarnation
* Holding erroneous opinions about Christ.
* Holding erroneous opinions about Transubstantiation and Mass
* Believing in metempsychosis and in the transmigration of the human soul into brutes.
* Dealing in magics and divination.
* Denying the Virginity of Mary.

In 1543, a Polish Catholic cleric named Nicholas Copernicus proposed that the Sun, not the Earth, was at the centre of the universe; the Earth was just one of the planets. In 1616, the Catholic Church placed Copernicus's work on its list of forbidden books, where it remained for over 200 years (1835).

Of course, we can't forget Galileo Galilei. Galileo enraged Pope Urban VIII (formerly Maffeo Barberini, Galileo's friend) when he wrote his "Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems", in which he supported Copernicus's view of the universe. An elderly Galileo was summoned to Rome and was made to solemnly swear that he denounced his view that the Earth moves around the Sun (it is said that Galileo could not help muttering under his breath, "e pure si muove" - and yet it moves). He was sentenced to life-imprisonment, but on account of his age, the sentence was commuted to house arrest (what would his sentence have been had he not been a friend of Pope Urban VIII?). It took the Vatican 350 years - yes, 350 years - to finally concede that "errors were made" in this case.

Would Jesus have been a good Catholic? Jesus was remarkably willing to forgive sinners and openly associate with them. This did not make him popular with the authorities of the day, and it would not make him popular with the Catholic Church . The Roman Catholic Church was founded in Jesus' memory, yet his teachings on the subject of sin have not been seen in the Roman Catholic Church throughout its history (although, to be fair, individual priests would certainly get Christ's approval). Jesus would probably be branded a terrorist by today's "L'Osservatore Romano".

Today, the Roman Catholic Church holds views that are antiquated and offensive to many members of the community. Its views on homosexuality, its refusal to allow priests to marry, its refusal to allow female priests to be ordained, and its concealment of paedophile priests are examples of the irrelevance of the Church. Its views on contraception are just ridiculous; to this day the Catholic Church points to the sin of Onan (Genesis 38:9) as a good reason to prohibit contraception - thus showing itself to be ridiculous and immature. These kinds of views have drawn resentment from the faithful. In 2007, we have no reason to fear an Inquisition, and we are free to make our views heard (peacefully, of course). Thanks to the progress of science and rational thought, we know that the Earth is not the centre of the universe and that religions are fallible. The Pope does not believe in evolution, but his Church - that mighty global empire - must evolve if it is to retain any relevance whatsoever.
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