Bill Maher: Catholics Must Walk Out of the Church Forever

[DeSwiss]

New Rule: Catholics Must Get Up Out of the Pew and Walk Out of the Church Forever


Bill Maher
Huffington Post -23/6
March 28, 2008

When Barack Obama didn't hear Reverend Wright say those awful things about America, he still should have rushed the stage, smite Reverend Wright with the cross, and left the church. If there's anything the right wing can agree on, it's that. And that gays are going hell, right after they suck them off in the airport bathroom. But it raises an obvious question, one that I haven't heard asked, which is strange because it's so obvious: If you leave a church when the head of the church says bad things about America, what do you do when your church hierarchy is caught up in a systematic and decades-long sex abuse scandal?

And did I mention the people being sexually abused were children? Hundreds of them? How about when the head of that church, or Pope, associated with and promoted members of the clergy who not only facilitated the sexual abuse and rape of hundreds and hundreds of children, but engaged in a decades-long cover-up of those crimes?

Reverend Wright associated with Farrakhan. The Pope works with Cardinal Law. Which is worse? Isn't it the man who shuffled "priests" like Shanley and Geoghan and many others from parish to parish with the full knowledge of their crimes, and then claimed he had no idea? Yes, by Sean Hannity's own logic, Catholics like him, en masse, would be expected to abandon their church. Which shouldn't be a problem, because they worship Reagan anyway.

COLMES: Then shouldn't John McCain say he doesn't support the views of a man who makes anti-Catholic statements?
OBENSHAIN: He did, I believe. He said I'm not--I don't agree with everything -- a
COLMES: And Obama says he does not support anti-Semitism, as expressed by Louis Farrakhan.
HANNITY: Leave the church.

Well, what about it, Sean? Shouldn't you leave your church? I mean, like, five years ago?

And since you haven't, how do we know you're not also a secret child fucker? Again, just using your logic:

HANNITY: ...What if he really deep down in his heart thinks like Pastor Wright?
LUNTZ: It's not for anyone to answer that question.
HANNITY: Well, is that dangerous for this country? I think that would be dangerous. That would mean we would have -- if he agreed with Wright, and I don't know that he does, but if he did, that would mean a racist and an anti-Semite would be president of the United States.

Side note: Does it occur to anyone that, for the past five years, the nuts every politician has been busy distancing themselves from--Reverend Wright, Reverend Falwell, Reverend Hagee, Reverend Haggard, Reverend Robertson--are all, you know, reverends?

Why don't we just go back to the days when politicians kept their religions to themselves? Wasn't that better?

http://www.236.com/blog/w/bill_maher/new_rule_catholics_must_get_up_5510.php">LINK

- Silly Bill. Doesn't he know that the things that apply to us regular folks doesn't apply to Catholic priests, Repukes and Fundies? Like laws and ethics and shit?

Hell, if they did half the shit written in the bible there wouldn't be any followers ....
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DeSwiss


http://atheisttoolbox.com/">The Atheist Toolbox

[Buzz Clik]

1. I likey.

Hey -- does the dark side really have cookies? Are they warm from the oven ... that is to say, are they baked in the fires of Hell?

[DeSwiss]

6. And not only that!

[BOSSHOG]

2. I did about five years ago

I don't know if it will be forever but we haven't been back since. I got sick and fucking tired about being instructed on a weekly basis to hate the group of American Citizens the priest happened to have a hard on for that week. My wife and I are damned fine law abiding tax paying productive citizens with no assistance from a church or their leaders.

[DeSwiss]

7. I hear ya....

...we don't need a church just to promote hate.

[eleny]

3. Haven't we had racist and anti-Semitic presidents?

Didn't Nixon speak disparagingly about Jews?

Oh, nevermind. It's Hannity and his corkscrew reasoning.

[DeSwiss]

8. That last thing you said....

"It's Hannity and his corkscrew reasoning."

- That's the one....

[Mothers]

4. New Rule, Catholics have the freedom to believe in their Church

I really like bill; however, his focus on bashing Catholics really puts his entire creditability on the line as being a liberty minded guy. Of course, he is free to say whatever he wants and I support that right. He clearly doesn't believe in my faith and who cares, he really knows nothing of it and it would suit him a bit better to focus his attention on something he actually believes in and knows something about.

He is funny and pretty honest about what he has on his mind, I would just point out when you trash a religious belief it doesn't achieve much other than hurting a person who has those beliefs.

[trotsky]

5. Still, if every Catholic who had a problem with molesters being protected...

actually left the church, quit giving their time and money to it, it would be instantly forced to change.

Yes, yes, I know the standard defense. "But MY church/diocese is good! We feed the poor and collect for charities and take care of little baby birds who have fallen out of their nests." Doesn't matter. You're feeding the beast.

[DeSwiss]

10. I don't think he's bashing Catholics....

...if anything he's bashing pedophiles, their protectors and their enablers. He's asking Catholic followers when is enough, enough??? He's asking them "how long and how can Catholics blindly follow and support a morally bankrupt leadership?"

- In other words, he's raising the questions that Catholics aren't and suggesting a remedy....

[eleny]

11. FYI - Bill Maher was raised as a Catholic

He's talked about this. But here's a small reference from Wikipedia:
"Maher was raised in his Irish American father's Catholic religion, and did not find out that his mother was Jewish until his teenage years."
This is referenced from an interview with Maher in 2002.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Maher

[rhett o rick]

13. How do you define "bashing"?

Is it bashing to mention that way too many Catholic priests have been caught molesting children? Or that the church officials have covered up this behavior? Is it bashing to say the the lay Catholics enable this behavior by turning a blind eye?

It is not bashing to bring attention to a very, very serious problem affecting children that the Catholic church appears to let continue.

Putting all rationalizations aside, there are some serious questions that Catholics need to find answers for.

Why is it that so many priests are involved in this behavior?
Why do many of the cases go on for so long without intervention?
Why do the lay persons of the church not object to the behavior of the priests and also of the church officials that try to hide it?

To get this situation to change, Catholics must answer those questions and take action to make them right.

I have my answers for the questions, but Catholics need to admit them for themselves.

[rhett o rick]

9. A lot of people, esp politicians go to church because it is considered politically correct.

They miss a lot of the services and they may not like what is said in the services but they can say "i belong to a church". To my way of thinking, they are hypocrites.

My view of the Catholic Church: I believe (no evidence to prove) that many if not most Catholics in the US were raised from a very young age to be Catholics. They stay Catholics because they feel it is the "family" thing to do. Mom wouldn't like it if they left the church. They were never encouraged to investigate other religions or churches and to decide for themselves. They freely pick and choose the rules they obey (e.g. birth control). They always go to church on Easter and Christmas but otherwise only sporadically. They turn a blind eye to the abuse committed by the church priests and some how rationalize that it is ok. They have no rationalization of the fact that the church is enormously wealthy yet gets tax breaks. Or that large numbers live in poverty.

I have Catholic friends that are wonderful people. I just can't understand why they remain in the church.

[DeSwiss]

12. "They stay Catholics because they feel it is the "family" thing to do."

Which to my mind speaks to the issue of how all of religion itself, continues to survive. We are programmed from a very early age to accept these beliefs in the same way that we learn to speak, to walk, to count. And who our parents and relatives are. We "bond" to it, just as we do to them. And it all ends up getting mixed in there together with our most basic personality traits and character.

Which is why many people (those who are honest with themselves) have such a hard time reconciling it later into their lives as adults. But to so many the rejection of religion would feel as though they are rejecting their family and those who are closest to them. Which I suppose in some way it is. And they can't find a way to either scuttle it, or at least put it into its proper context.

- Such as the fairy stories that we were read as children....



on edit: spelling (OH! there's the spell checker button...)

[rhett o rick]

14. Well put. nm

[knitter4democracy]

15. And this is why the Catholic Church is having such money troubles.

I know several good Catholics (they believe, they attend, they send their kids to Catholic school) who refuse to tithe one red cent. They know where the school money goes (only to the school), so they give to that and to charity, but they refuse to give any money at all to the main church. From what they've told me, they're not alone. The Catholic Church in the States is really in trouble financially, not just with losing (rightfully so) in court and having to pay the victims but with all of the other costs as well. Diocesan schools are closing and merging, churches are getting closed and sold off, and even monasteries and convents are having huge financial problems because of all of this.

Instead of leaving, they are doing something even more effective--they're withholding their money.

[DeSwiss]

16. It being "more effective" I suppose is one way of looking at it....

...however, what I learned about the "Good News" when I was a churchgoer, was that is was supposed to be about redemption, salvation and forgiveness of sins. And that "only the Father through His grace and His Son's sacrifice, can one be saved." Salvation (nor damnation) cannot be issued forth by a Pope, not by a preacher, nor any institution. And particularly not one that advances a belief that we must reject those whose relative "worthiness" is in doubt based upon another human's judgment or interpretation of "God's intent."

While the damage that these pedophile priests have done (and probably still are doing), has been catastrophic for the victims, the damage that the underlying premise in their message of exclusivity within their particular religious club, I believe in the end does much, much more......

[knitter4democracy]

18. And others would disagree with you.

The "exclusivity of their particular religious club," as you put it, is based on their history. It's hard to ignore two thousand years of history and just pretend to be an entirely new group instead. That history includes being the only church of any kind until 1054.

The church I belong to, the Eastern Orthodox Church, says and does the same thing. We're just better at ignoring it most of the time. ;)

[Dorian Gray]

17. I like the idea

of keeping religion separate from politics. It's so annoying how they are becoming more and more intertwined.