So, Michael Brendan Daugherty. Right.
Painting the Catholic Church as "out of touch" is like shooting fish in a barrel, what with the funny hats and gilded churches. And nothing makes it easier than the Church's stance against contraception.
Ha. Nothing as it happens makes it easier, or more bitter, than the "covering up child rape." Let's not fuck around. If the Catholic Hierarchy wants to assert any sort of moral authority, they have fucked up royally. Fuck the "funny hats." The whole point of the child rape scandal is that the Church is an an authoritarian institution more interested in its power than in anything else....
Many people, (including our editor) are wondering why the Catholic Church doesn't just ditch this requirement. They note that most Catholics ignore it, and that most everyone else finds it divisive, or "out-dated." C'mon! It's the 21st century, they say! Don't they SEE that it's STUPID, they scream.
You're the only one screaming, man.
Here's the thing, though: the Catholic Church is the world's biggest and oldest organization. It has buried all of the greatest empires known to man, from the Romans to the Soviets. It has establishments literally all over the world, touching every area of human endeavor. It's given us some of the world's greatest thinkers, from Saint Augustine on down to René Girard. When it does things, it usually has a good reason. Everyone has a right to disagree, but it's not that they're a bunch of crazy old white dudes who are stuck in the Middle Ages.
My rebuttal is "yes it is that crazy white dude shit." Because that it's not is not an "argument." As for the Majesty of Rome, here is an actual fucking extract from the entry for Torquemada in the Catholic Encyclopedia:
Much has been written of the inhuman cruelty of Torquemada. Llorente computes that during Torquemada's office (1483-98) 8800 suffered death by fire and 9,654 were punished in other ways (Histoire de l'Inquisition, IV, 252). These figures are highly exaggerated, as has been conclusively proved by Hefele (Cardinal Ximenes, ch. xviii), Gams (Kirchengeschichte von Spanien, III, II, 68-76), and many others. Even the Jewish historian Graetz contents himself with stating that "under the first Inquisitor Torquemada, in the course of fourteen years (1485-1498) at least 2000 Jews were burnt as impenitent sinners" ("History of the Jews", Philadelphia, 1897, IV, 356). Most historians hold with the Protestant Peschel (Das Zeitalter der Entdeckungen, Stuttgart, 1877, pp. 119 sq.) that the number of persons burnt from 1481 to 1504, when Isabella died, was about 2000. Whether Torquemada's ways of ferreting out and punishing heretics were justifiable is a matter that has to be decided not only by comparison with the penal standard of the fifteenth century, but also, and chiefly, by an inquiry into their necessity for the preservation of Christian Spain.
Fucking awesome.
And further great pup-level "argument":
Today's injunctions against birth control were re-affirmed in a 1965 document by Pope Paul VI called Humane Vitae. He warned of four results if the widespread use of contraceptives was accepted:
General lowering of moral standards
A rise in infidelity, and illegitimacy
The reduction of women to objects used to satisfy men.
Government coercion in reproductive matters.
Does that sound familiar?
Because it sure sounds like what's been happening for the past 40 years.
Heh. (1) "Moral standards" as regards women's freedom have definitely increased over the past 40 years. (2) Nobody gives a shit about "illegitamcy" anymore -- as they shouldn't. (3) See Mad Men. (Honestly...) (4) -- HAHAHAHAHAHA.
But this is the best part:
Is this all due to the Pill? Of course not. But the idea that widely-available contraception hasn't led to dramatic societal change, or that this change has been exclusively to the good, is a much sillier notion than anything the Catholic Church teaches.
This is so stupid.
The Catholic Church is free to teach whatever it wants. It is not free to claim that Church law trumps civil law. It is also not owed a Mulligan as to its past history of horrific, unaccountable authoritarianism.
So...
Human progress is people. Everything that makes life better, from democracy to the economy to the internet to penicillin was either discovered and built by people. More people means more progress. The inventor of the cure for cancer might be someone's fourth children that they decided not to have.
Throw away your condoms! Fuck random geeks bareback! That is how humanity became blessed with spyware! And Creed records! And Rock of Love! You can totally thank the Pope for that shit.
You can also believe that you are free to go somewhere less nuts than Galt's Gulch; this would involve "having a life."
Stupid little Catholic Boy, fuck off.
