SEX, LIES AND CATHOLIC CHURCH

The basic urges of living beings are two: self-preservation and self-propagation. Hence the pleasures associated with food and sex. Plants to a lesser degree and animals to a greater degree satisfy these urges through instinct whereas man tends to temper his instincts with a rational approach. If pleasure was not associated with these two propensities, Adam and Eve would have been the first and last humans. There would have been no need for Jesus to die to save us. And the Catholic Church would not exist today. With no Catholic Church, there would be no priestly celibacy and no pedophile clergy abusing children.

I read the following somewhere on the internet:

Sex is an interesting topic. We tend to think we have free will, and that we are not animals. The reality, however, is that our character is inherited genetically and supplemented by hormones and other chemicals that drive behavior. Of course, there is free will within a small environmental envelope, but survival by reproduction seems to be the dominant instinct! “Our behavior can be altered within narrow parameters according to the social and cultural customs of where we live and how we are raised. But much of our life cycle is pre-ordained. In all major essentials, we are a reproductive skin covered bag of water, subject to instinctive controls of an organic machine, run by genes, hormones, enzymes, acids, salts, proteins and small electrical currents.”

One of the cleverest inventions of the Catholic Church is the guilt associated with sex. Credit must go mainly to St. Augustine of Hippo, the brilliant fourth century theologian. Like Tiger Woods, David Duchovny and Michael Douglas of the present era, he suffered from sex addiction in his early life. But unlike today, when these celebrities can check into a sex de-addiction centre, Augustine had to rely on his own resources. First, he chased away his concubine of seventeen years and the child they had together. Then his brilliant mind went into overdrive and he ‘invented’ the idea of original sin. All men and women (except Jesus and Mary – I am not sure about Joseph) are born in sin from the time of Adam and Eve’s honeymoon. Human nature as a result is corrupt. The ideas of the Stoics and of Plato in particular helped Augustine in this invention. The latter had developed the concept of the duality of human nature wherein the ‘soul’ is regarded as superior to the ‘body’ and the ‘spirit’ at a higher level than ‘matter’.

The ideas of life after death, heaven, hell, and devils also helped. Unlike the body that does not survive death; the soul is destined to live forever – happily in heaven or crying in hell depending on how one lived on earth. One had to save one’s soul by all means. For this, man has to overcome his corrupt nature and there is nothing more corrupting than sex. Hence celibacy and chastity are hoisted over family life as the superior ideal in life. The list of sins against the flesh is a legion: even your private thoughts and words are added to those of your acts.

However all is not lost. The Catholic Church introduced the idea of ‘confession’ to help you save your soul from eternal damnation. The moment the little lamb has entertained an ‘impure’ thought, he or she can rush to the priest, confess and be absolved so that the door to heaven is reopened. He can now have a go at another bad thought; confession is there to save him. Thus the fear of hell and God’s anger bring the little lambs back to the church again and again for salvation. The association of guilt with sex is part of a master plan towards controlling the minds of the lambs leading to the consolidation of church’s absolute power over all matters spiritual and temporal.

“All power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Lord Acton.

Very few are aware that he was referring to papacy when he said those famous words.

Along with confession came ‘confessional solicitation’, something quite common, but not frequently talked about. Many a priest uses the confessional for the detailed cross examination of sexual sins so that the conversation sounds like the sound track of a highly erotic movie. This in itself is highly pleasurable to the ‘celibate’ priest starved of intimacy. The more adventurous opportunists of the lot use this occasion to identify the weak willed and easily available ones and propose a more private one on one physical encounter. After all, he cannot be faulted since self-propagation is a basic human urge.

Against this natural human urge the Catholic Church has declared celibacy and chastity as superior. Priestly celibacy was enforced from the early days of the church. At first the intentions were noble; later the purpose was not to let church property fall into the hands of the children of priests and bishops. Right from the outset, it was doomed to failure. Presently we are seeing this compulsion’s sad fallout – abuse of children and cover up of the abusers. The present Pope is also in a pickle with the revelation that he was aware of abuses but did little to stop them.

“Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Archbishop in Munich at the time, was copied on a memo that informed him that the Rev Peter Hullermann, whom he had approved sending to therapy in 1980 to overcome pedophilia, would be returned to pastoral work within days of beginning psychiatric treatment. The priest was later convicted of molesting boys in another parish.”

Hans Küng, a highly respected theologian who was banned from teaching because of his opposition to the doctrine of infallibility, unleashed a fierce attack on the Pope demanding that the pontiff "acknowledge his share of responsibility, instead of whining about a campaign against his person".

Pope Benedict XVI has apologized to Irish Catholics for the sexual abuses of its clergy through a pastoral letter.

The following is part of an email from a good catholic commenting on Pope Benedict’s pastoral letter:

“The overwhelming feeling conveyed by the document is that the moral authority of the Church has to be upheld at any cost — even at the cost of truth itself or of finding a genuine solution to this crisis that has been like a slow cancer eating away the heart of the Church. What comes across in this document is an attempt to portray the Pope as some sort of Divine Being and Teacher himself who speaks down to everyone else in Creation, including Bishops.”

Denial of truth, inability to move with the times, disregard for the sufferings of the faithful, a permanent ‘high’ brought on by a feeling of absolute power continually reinforced by sycophants groveling and offering adulations 24/7 – these have been the recurring pattern of papacy throughout the ages. 2000 years ago, in a fit of righteous anger Jesus said:

"Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which looks beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men's bones and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.”

His words are more relevant today. The following is one example of how ‘priestly celibacy’ is one big fat joke.

Church Head in a fix over affair with cook

Bangalore: A priest in Bangalore has found himself in a spot for ordering sex from a cook - something like what Tiger Woods did when he ordered a `plate-full' of hot and spicy sex from a waitress in the US.

The priest, Arokya Das, heads the St Peter and Paul Church in a posh locality of Bangalore. Reports said that the priest had been having a sexual relationship with the cook in the church. While this has been going on for quite some time, church-goers warned the priest to focus on the work of God and not on the assets of the cook. But Das obviously had his own preferences and continued his relationship with the cook.

When things started to spill out into the open, three youngsters thought of teaching the ‘reverend’ father a lesson. According to the police, soon after Sunday mass, the three youngsters tried to assault the father in full public view.

A shaken father managed to escape and dialed the police. But the three youths prevented the police from entering the church saying that they wanted to give the father a lesson or two in morality. Later, the three were arrested.

Soon after the arrest, hundreds of church-goers surrounded the church and wanted to know why the three youngsters were arrested and not Father Das. The police had to summon the president of the Karnataka Tamil Catholic People's Voice, John Kennedy.

Kennedy admitted that Father Das had been having an affair with the cook and despite warnings, he had continued to maintain a clandestine relationship.

Later in the evening, Vicar General Father S Jayanathan visited the church and held a meeting. He assured the agitated crowd that action would be taken.

There was no word from Father Das or the cook. They were probably cooking up something!