The New York Times published and ad from the Freedom From Religion Foundation which calls for nominal and liberal Catholics to abandon the Church.
The ad asks “Why are you propping up the pillars of a tyrannical and autocratic, woman-hating, sex-perverting, antediluvian Old Boys Club? ” and states “No self-respecting feminist, civil libertarian or progressive should cling to the Catholic faith.” [Full Text Below.]
It goes without saying that the brave brave NYT would never accept and publish an ad criticizing Islam in the same way. But leaving aside the obvious cowardice and their disgraceful perfunctory anti-Catholicism, I think the ad is good. If that is what you believe, get out.
Dear ‘Liberal’ Catholic:
It’s time to quit the Roman Catholic Church.
It’s your moment of truth. Will it be reproductive freedom, or back to the Dark Ages? Do you choose women and their rights, or Bishops and their wrongs? Whose side are you on, anyway?
It is time to make known your dissent from the Catholic Church, in light of the U.S. Catholic Conference of Bishops’ ruthless campaign endangering the right to contraception. If you’re part of the Catholic Church, you’re part of the problem.
Why are you propping up the pillars of a tyrannical and autocratic, woman-hating, sex-perverting, antediluvian Old Boys Club? Why are you aiding and abetting a church that has repeatedly and publicly announced a crusade to ban contraception, abortion and sterilization, and to deny the right of all women everywhere, Catholic or not, to decide whether and when to become mothers? When it comes to reproductive freedom, the Roman Catholic Church is Public Enemy Number One. Think of the acute misery, poverty, needless suffering, unwanted pregnancies, social evils and deaths that can be laid directly at the door of the Church’s antiquated doctrine that birth control is a sin and must be outlawed.
A backer of the Roman Catholic presidential candidate says that if women want to avoid pregnancy we should put an aspirin between our knees? Catholic politicians are urging that the right to contraception should be left up to states? Nearly 50 years after the Supreme Court upheld contraception as a privacy right, we’re going to have to defend this basic freedom all over again?
You’re better than your church. So why? Why continue to attend Mass? Tithe? Why dutifully sacrifice to send your children to parochial schools so they can be brainwashed into the next generation of myrmidons (and, potentially, become the next Church victims)? For that matter, why have you put up with an institution that won’t put up with women priests, that excludes half of humanity?
No self-respecting feminist, civil libertarian or progressive should cling to the Catholic faith. As a Cafeteria Catholic, you chuck out the stale doctrine and moldy decrees of your religion, but keep patronizing the establishment that menaces public health by serving rotten offerings. Your continuing Catholic membership, as a “liberal,” casts a veneer of respectability upon an irrational sect determined to blow out the Enlightenment and threaten liberty for women worldwide. You are an enabler. And it’s got to stop.
If you imagine you can change the church from within — get it to lighten up on birth control, gay rights, marriage equality, embryonic stem-cell research — you are deluding yourself. If you remain a “good Catholic,” you are doing “bad” to women’s rights. You’re kidding yourself if you think the Church is ever going to add a Doctrine of Immaculate ContraCeption.
It is disgraceful that U.S. health care reform is being held hostage to the Catholic Church’s bizarre opposition to medically prescribed contraception. No politician should jeopardize electability for failure to genuflect before the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. (Question to ask your Bishop: Does he hold up an umbrella against the rain? Isn’t that just as “unnatural” as using a condom or diaphragm?)
Your Church hysterically claims that secular medical policy is “an assault against religious liberty.” You are savvy enough to realize that the real assault is by the Church against women’s rights and health care. As Nation columnist Katha Pollitt asks: Is it an offense against Jehovah Witnesses that health care coverage will include blood transfusions? The Amish, as Pollitt points out, don’t label cars “an assault on religious liberty” and try to force everyone to drive buggies. The louder the Church cries “offense against religious liberty” the harder it works to take away women’s liberty.
Obama has compromised, but the Church never budges, instead launching a vengeful modern-day Inquisition. Look at its continuing directives to parish priests to use their pulpits every Sunday to lobby you against Obama’s policy, the Church’s announcement of a major anti-contraception media campaign — using your tithes, contributions and donations — to defeat Obama’s laudable health care policy. The Church has introduced into Congress the “Respect for Rights of Conscience Act, ” a bill to place the conscienceless Catholic Church’s “rights of conscience” above the rights of conscience of 53 percent of Americans. That the Church has “conscience rights” to deny women their rights is a kissing cousin to the claim that “corporations are people.” The Church that hasn’t persuaded you to oppose contraception now wants to use the force of secular law to deny contraceptive rights to non-Catholics.
But is there any point in going on? After all, your misplaced loyalty has lasted through two decades of public sex scandals involving preying priests, children you may have known as victims, and church complicity, collusion and coverup going all the way to the top. Are you like the battered woman who, after being beaten down every Sunday, feels she has no place else to go?
But we have a more welcoming home to offer, free of incense-fogged ritual, free of what freethinker Bertrand Russell called “ideas uttered long ago by ignorant men,” free of blind obedience to an illusory religious authority. Join those of us who put humanity above dogma.
As a member of the “flock” of an avowedly antidemocratic club, isn’t it time you vote with your feet? Please, exit en Mass.
Very truly,
Annie Laurie Gaylor
Co-President
Freedom From Religion Foundation
March 18, 2012 at 12:31 am
Well, anyone who cites Bertrand Russell is already outside the flock. By the way, the "ignorant" men and women who started the Church include Jesus and the Apostles, those "foolish" men and women who gave their lives that all may live.
The Vicar of Christ, the Chair of Peter, LIVES. With all charity, and the hope that Mr. Russell receives all of God's mercy, I cannot help but point out that Russell is dead–God lives! So does His Holy Church.
Having said that, I am reluctant to encourage the doubting to leave the Church. I would prefer they stay, attend Mass regularly, pray the Rosary, seek Divine Mercy and repent. This is actually true for all of us as none of us is without sin. We all hope that we may be "created" as the Holy Spirit renews the face of the earth. So, too, must we encourage the wayward to find the truth of Christ–this is one of the Acts of Mercy which we are all called to perform. And we should ask God to be merciful to all.
This is what makes us the "True Light of the World." As our Lord tells us in today's Gospel, we must abide in the light, not the darkness.
March 18, 2012 at 12:33 am
I do not like being anonymous but can't figure out how to profile???
March 18, 2012 at 1:46 pm
I guess it's time we roll up our sleeves!
We are converts since 2005 and have never looked back, thanking God for the 3 children we have had (so far) since our conversion. We already had three and if it wasn't for the Church, we would have never welcomed three MORE souls here! How profound and incredibly beautiful is the Holy Mother Church. There's a wind a blowin'!
March 19, 2012 at 5:18 pm
Who are you to tell me whether or not I am a "true" catholic or not. Beliefs are deeply personal and can not be judged by anyone especially by non-believers. I support my church even though I disagree with some of the doctrine. Are you a true democrat if you believe in fiscal conservatism or reform in entitlements? This has to be the single biggest piece of malarkey I have ever read on the subject.
March 20, 2012 at 3:53 pm
Every time something like this happens, I feel so lucky to have been born a Catholic. I have certainly had my ups and downs with my faith, but up always persevered. I guess I have a smidgeon of what the early Christians had, at least I hope and pray that is the case. What is going on in this society today, abortion, birth control, porn, pushing homosexuality, all things that bring down a society is scary in itself, but Jesus promised He will win and I believe Him.
March 20, 2012 at 6:19 pm
I hope you faithful catholics are observing Lent in a spirit of true repentance, and praying your rosary, in reparation for such vehement blasphemy contained in that ad. We want our misguided, gravely-in-danger brethren to be saved, not lost. Stand beside your bishops and hold up their arms like Aaron and Hur did for Moses in the battle against the Amalekites. Amen.
March 21, 2012 at 2:26 am
The government or the catholic church should not dictate whether a woman or man should use contraception. I'm catholic and am pro choice meaning no on entity (government or church) should tell me how to live my married life. If 99.99 % of couples choose not to use contraception than that is "their choice".
Birney
Plymouth
March 21, 2012 at 3:04 am
Looks like I picked the perfect time to convert to Catholicism.
March 21, 2012 at 4:13 am
Was going to send my response to Ann Gaylor, but decided against it. T'would only fall on deaf ears anyways. So I'll share it here…
Parachutes are like minds(and hearts), they don't work unless they're open. Ann, please re-consider purchasing future ads like the one you just published in the NYTimes. It's a waste of money because while lies are easy to strain, the truth is unrestrainable. And divine hearts and minds know the difference.