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 12, 2012 at 2:05 pm
Annie,
It sounds like you have writen a letter right off the lips of the evil one himself. I do hope you are proud of it, I know what I am proud of is your parents choosing life and not your evil lies. And this is the thanks they get for it a love letter composed by satan.
I will be praying for you I hope you repent of your evil ways and come home to us. We will be waiting for you.
Love,
A Roman Catholic.
March 12, 2012 at 2:33 pm
Jesus once told his disciples "If the world hates you, remember that the world hated me first. If you belonged to the world, then the world would love you like it loves its own people. But I have chosen you out of the world. So you don't belong to the world. That is why the world hates you. Remember the lesson I told you: A servant is not greater than his master. If people did wrong to me, then they will do wrong to you too. And if people obeyed my teaching, then they will obey yours too." – John 15: 18-20. So what we have is a choice, to be in the world, but not of the world – that is what a faithful Roman Catholic is being called to do. Are you in?
March 12, 2012 at 4:30 pm
And the serpent fed Eve a line about how she would be like God with power for good, to give life, or for evil, to deny life, whichever was more convenient for her. Eve thought this would make her happy, so she believed the serpent. Then she fed the line to Adam, her husband, and he wanted to be happy, too. So pain and sorrow, death and darkness entered the world.
Thanks be to God for the life of grace found, alive and well, in the Catholic Church.
March 12, 2012 at 7:30 pm
On the silly condom/umbrella comparison: I've heard the better comparison (oft used by frat boys who want to proverbially have their cake and eat it too) of likening condom use to the unnaturalness of wearing a raincoat when you're taking a shower.
March 12, 2012 at 7:34 pm
Instead we quit the NYT! Or as Fr Z likes to call it, Hell's Bible. Not much of a loss, though I think they have better sports coverage…
March 12, 2012 at 8:04 pm
I totally do not understand religion in general and the catholic religion specifically. There is nothing greater in the universe than yourself. It is up to you, the individual to live a good, moral life unfettered by superstition and fear of being eternally punished by an unhappy father figure. Most religions only have the father and the son to contend with but the catholics have an additional fear factor in the pope. I renounced this silliness a long time ago for all that is wrong with mind controlling beliefs not just the one that wants to control your sex life.
March 12, 2012 at 8:14 pm
If this advertisement had been about Islam instead of about the Catholic Church, then the Imams would be on TV declaring their outrage, the author would be receiving death threats, and Obama would be shaking his head about the intolerance and Islam-ophobia and once again apologizing to the world for the United States of America.
The way women are treated under Islam and the way women are treated under Catholicism are like night and day, but little Annie Laurie Gaylor and the so-called Freedom From Religion Foundation are ignorant about that.
March 12, 2012 at 9:51 pm
I once heard the president of Notre Dame University say that Catholics are "politically homeless" and I do believe it is true. The Church is pro-life, which makes her a control freak who wants to make women do things against their will, in some opinions. The Catholic Church is also in favor of social justice, including helping the poor, and being pro-workers' rights, which makes her a dirty socialist-communist in other opinions.
This is why voting is one of the most difficult things I do, and why I'm thankful that I only have to do it every couple of years.
March 12, 2012 at 9:58 pm
For those of us who Believe, no explanation is necessary, for those who do not, none is possible.
March 13, 2012 at 12:31 am
Apparently nearly all Catholic women use contraception at some point in their lives, their abortion rates are comperable to others too. When I was a child, most Catholic families were large; now they are the are about average. The rhythm method has not become reliable! It's time for honesty!
March 13, 2012 at 4:44 pm
I just posted a response to the ad, and linked here. Thought you would want to know. Thanks CMR!
http://procaritateveritatis.blogspot.com/2012/03/ss-ergorp.html
March 13, 2012 at 10:36 pm
I find it very amusing that atheists fight so hard against someone who they do not even believe exists. God. They sure are strange.
March 14, 2012 at 1:01 am
Just a question; why is speaking against abortion, gay rights, Judaism and Islam considered HATE speech by Liberal Media, Government and Hollywood, but it is
NOT when blaspheming the Catholic Church? Double standards and hypocrites are why our country is going to hell in a handbasket. Makes me proud also to be Roman Catholic.
March 14, 2012 at 5:16 am
It is time that the liberals and nominal Catholics leave of their own free will. They are probably only Catholics on paper anyway. Like the parable of the prodigal son tells us, the Father is a welcoming Father when they decide to return in the future. So the numbers of Catholics will shrink, then so be it. If they leave then we will be able to build from a solid foundation.
March 15, 2012 at 1:34 am
Religions are like penises…
It's fine to have one.
It's fine to be proud of it.
But don't wave it around in public,
And please don't shove it down our children's throats.
PS: Speaking against abortion, gay rights, Judaism ("God's people" according to the Bible, BTW) and Islam is considered HATE speech because it is. If you actually read what Jesus said, you would know that. Do ANY of you actually READ the Bible? Or do you just follow whatever party line you are fed? Use the brain God gave you, please. My faith in humanity is dwindling.
PPS: I KNOW the mind of God. Does that bother you? Good. Now rethink your own argument that YOU know the mind of God…and then calculate how unthinkably arrogant you are. I'll just step out of the way of the lightening while you sort that out.
March 15, 2012 at 2:56 pm
"Knowledge consists in understanding the evidence that establishes the fact, not in the belief that it is a fact."
Carl T. Sprading
March 15, 2012 at 9:04 pm
Hey loving Catholics. I thought we were called to not judge, 'lest we be judged' or talk about the 'speck in our brother's eye, ignoring the plank in our own.' What do you imagine Jesus would be saying to the lost souls on the edge of Catholicism. I believe He would sweep them up in his arms for He said, 'I came to call sinners, not just the virtuous' Let's be aware of the sins of complacency and self-righteousness. I truly believe the Lord would have us pray for them, not 'kick them out as so much baggage.' I was once a serious sinner and know so clearly the Lord of a forgiving, compassionate and merciful God who, Praise God, did not leave me on a dungheap of sin and self-destruction but loved and encouraged me back to real life in the Catholic Church. These souls are our brothers and sisters. PRAY FOR THEM as others have prayed for us. Perhaps we can make their revival to full Christianity and deliverance from lukewarmness one of our Lenten intentions. God bless us all
March 15, 2012 at 9:57 pm
Annie doesn't know what she's talking about and shouldn't rave on about what she doesn't understand. She is grossly misinformed. All people are free to make their own moral choices, whether good or bad and will someday be judged based on them. However, I don't want to to be forced to pay for services that go against my conscience. Our country was founded on religious freedom — that's why our forefathers came to this country. Sadly, however, this country is quickly deteriorating into paganism.
March 16, 2012 at 1:04 pm
Sadly, this is the kind of division and hate that has been ushered in by Barack Obama. We cannot afford four more years.
March 17, 2012 at 8:26 pm
Please stop engaging in a war you will eventually loose. Truth prevails all the time and the Catholic church as a custodian of truth as revealed by Christ will always triumph. Stop stirring up inordinate sentiments in feeble minds.be careful and don't lead people astray. And know this: the Church is solely for the promotion of the entirety of human and that is why She can't comprise otherwise for her founder Jesus Christ didn't comprise His values at all. Yes Obama may have comprised but it is never an option for a highly morally-minded body like the one,holy and apostolic roman catholic church