nfotxn | Jul. 26th, 2002

I'm not a hating person. I really try to give people a chance, to understand what motivates them before resorting to hate. But my experiences in the past with Catholicism have taught me that these are not spiritually enlightened people. It's an institution of dogma and control over women and children. Here's my background to help you understand.

When my Mom was still living with my Step-Dad Gary it was pretty much expected that our faith would be converted from United Protestant to Roman Catholic. Mom had a discussion with Aaron and asked if we'd like to go to Christ the King, a giant monolith Catholic church. A very impressive building to be sure.

During our time attending mass there even at the age of seven I could tell that something wasn't.. fair. The expectation for me to take first communion was huge. I was made to feel by the clergy that if I didn't I wouldn't be seen in the eyes of god and that if I didn't do it soon I'd be somehow cast into a lower rank in his eyes. These were my honest impressions as a child at the time.

Additonally it came to my attention that in order for my Mom to be confirmed in the congregation she was expected to annul her marriage to my father. Now, thankfully, Mom is a strong woman. She wasn't going make the holy matrimony which created her two children ineffectual to her relationship with god.

Needless to say we stopped attending that church and in following years returned to Binkley United where my Mom went since she was a kid. I mean, I'm not a huge church guy. To me it's more like community philosophy class on Sunday mornings. We used to study Nietzsche and Descartes and relate it to the bible in Sunday school, we had a very cool Philosophy student at Mac teaching us. I don't think that would have ever happened at a Catholic Church, or at least Christ the King.

So those are my experiences with the Catholic and United Churches. And ya know, on basic principal I don't really mind World Youth Day. People coming together to share their faith for the betterment of humanity.

For instance Cardinal Francis Arinze accused gays and lesbians of haing "contracted disease because they offended against chastity." That in Old Testament times "the Earth would have opened and swallowed them without a trace." but in New Testament times "people do that sort of abomination and nothing happens to them immediately."

Let's take this appart, shall we? Old Testament book of Leviticus Chapter 18, verse 22:

Thou shalt not lie with man-kind as with womankind; it is abomination.

But come on, everybody knows Leviticus is pretty archaic. If you look at the rest of the verses from Chapter 18 you see that it's not really about who or who you can't have sex with. It's more about breeding I think. There's a lot more time devoted to explaining what won't make inbred freak babies and keep the peace amongst people. Don't sleep with your sister, aunt, brother's wife, goat etc. In context to the early Israelites these were some really handy rules for a people looking to most effectively sustain communities and grow in numbers. And also there's some really fucked up stuff Leviticus says about sacraficing beasts and sprinkling the blood, burning prostitues, killing woman if a beast humps her unwillingly (anyone been in a barnyard before?) or shunning woman who marry outside of Christianity. It's not hard to shoot down the validity of Leviticus.

Now Cardinal Francis Arinze says in New Testament times people aren't so quickly punished by god. This is because we're not a bunch of animal organ groping, blood smearing and woman burning savages. If he's referring to AIDS as retribution from god as punishment for offending chastity I'd direct his attention to the third world, namely Africa, where 24.5 million sub-saharan Africans (many of them likely Christians) are dying of AIDS having not all "offended chastity". I'd argue that the majority are likely rape victims, AIDS babies, drug users and people living in sub-standard living conditions without access to quality healthcare if at all. Out of the estimated 900 000 AIDS infectees in North America only 16% are gay men.

Anyhow, I think I've mused long enough about the wrongs of certain individuals in Christianity. But I find it offensive when a city in my country is invaded with bigots spreading hatred. Or worse, when perfectly constitutional protest is denied. Handing out Condoms on the streets of TO any other day of the year would be totally par for course.