My take on Catholicism at the moment

[bigmacbear]

beardoc wrote this response to a message from nfotxn in which he said:

I think it's easy to write off Catholicism as a single entity with common beliefs that are whacked, but that's being a little simplistic. The "big C" Catholic Church might appear to be, but the reality is the the Church is an incredibly diverse and evolving organisation.

I chose to post this separately because it is long-winded and I'd rather not have it buried in someone else's journal. I've posted a link to it from the appropriate place in the discussion.

I consider myself a more-or-less Catholic these days. I was raised Catholic and left the church in anger and frustration some years ago. I now attend services with Dignity-Integrity Rochester, which is a combination of GLBT Catholics and Episcopalians, and offers the Catholic Liturgy of the Word and Mass in the Episcopal tradition. We are barred from offering Mass in the Roman tradition, ostensibly due to the shortage of priests -- we know full well it is because of Dignity's position on homosexual expression which is at odds with church doctrine. So insofar as D-I is more-or-less Catholic and more-or-less Episcopalian, so I see myself as such.

I can tell you that the church hierarchy is more than willing to come down with a stomping foot on any part of the church -- individual parishioner, nun, priest, or bishop, or any group thereof -- that does not completely adhere to whatever whacked pronouncement comes from Cardinal Rat's Ass Ratzinger (head of the Inquisition, formally renamed the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith) this week. I have my suspicions that he is making policy and getting the Pope to rubber-stamp it (not to say that the Pope doesn't necessarily agree, but I wonder how much church policy actually comes from the Inquisition rather than the Pope himself), and is getting pissy when Catholic theologians and rank and file parishioners see through this scam and call it for what it really is. So the Inquisition issues document after document and gets increasingly shrill about how "this is infallible" and "everyone must believe this" and "you will be excommunicated" and what not, and probably wishes all the while it could actually torture people and burn them at the stake like in the Good Old Days.

That said, to a great extent we more-or-less Catholics quite simply ignore what is being said when it makes no sense in our lives. In this we are aided by a "don't ask, don't tell" attitude by local church authorities, and harmed greatly by certain local tattletales and busybodies who actually believe this garbage. It was through their efforts that the priests were barred from our community.

So in my experience, the notion that the Catholic Church is a diverse and evolving organization is only true to the extent that local parishes and parishioners are willing and able to reject the nonsense that comes from certain quarters of Rome and still retain the core beliefs as contained in the Creed (which, incidentally, is identical in the Roman and Anglican traditions, oddly enough).

I hope this makes sense. And if what I've said really and truly means I'm no longer Catholic at all -- well, I'm okay with that too.