Why I Quit The Roman Catholic Church and why Others Should Consider it as well.

Religion remains one of the biggest banes to a civilized society.

Its base premises are:

• control via brain washing,
• promoting fear
• promoting guilt,
• aintaining divisiveness.

Like a cancer within the global body, it will continue to spread its tentacles until it kills its host.

My family, as well as many American families, was brought up in a small christian community in in rural suburbia. But these attributes are not limited to one particular area of the country. They are the rudimentary fundamentals that all 'religious' family units are founded on around the world.

Father was not religious, but encouraged all of us to attend church services with mother.

The teachings were strict and frightening to the children. It seems that everything was a sin in the eyes of God - according to the old priest who served our parish.

Catechism classes were an exercise in terror. You were not to look at your own "private parts", even while bathing, and you were never to touch yourselves there. Every time i bathed i thought i was committing a sin against god himself. And yet we were taught that cleanliness was next to godliness. Confusing, to say the least, to young minds.

As we grew into puberty and those "ungodly" changes (urges) were occurring, the old priest would say - "thinking about it (sex) is as bad as doing it - just as big a sin in god's eyes". Wow. Reflecting back on those days still gives me pause.

Recalling my first erection and ejaculation - what should have been an enlightening and enjoyable experience was extremely disconcerting. After all, that old priest said (and he read it out load from the bible) during one of our indoctrinating (brainwashing) catechism classes about the "sin of masturbation" (of course the boys were segregated from the girls) that - "spilling your seed onto the ground would be a direct path to god's wrath and lead straight to hell".

So, needless to say, my first time, along with the pleasurable excitement, i cringed and awaited that bolt of lightning that the old priest promised would surely strike me dead.

My first real glimpse of the absurdity of the "teachings" of that old priest was when my sister became engaged to a young man who was "baptist" and brought the wrath of the Roman Catholic Church down on my family with full force.

When the priest found out, he came to our house to speak to the parents of this errant child. He found my mother and myself the only ones at home and proceeded to spout on about this upcoming event. This was a 'gravely mortal sin' against God and the church and if the family allowed it to happen we would all pay the consequences.

Besides being condemned to burn in hell fire for eternity, we would be excommunicated from the church (like this was worse that burning in hell fire for eternity).

I recall my anger, as he was loudly chastising my mother, and i was compelled to intervene by telling him to stop.

He turned on me and said if i condone this sinful marriage i would pay for it along with my sister.

That is when i told him he had no right o speak to my mother, or anyone else in this manner, and to get out of our house. And, i then warned him that if he ever came back on our property, i would personally kick his ass all the way back to the hell hole he crawled out of. (I was 19 years old and had not learned the art of diplomacy as yet - and some say i still haven't, even in my elder years) - L.O.L

I never attended another Roman Catholic mass again after that. Even though my friends told me he preached his next several Sunday sermons using my family as his sermon's sinful fodder, i did restrain myself from going to the church to confront him. The only reason i did not, was i knew the consequences for doing it was not worth the simple pleasure of the act itself.

That incident at our house was the culmination of lesser events that made me question what that church (or any other church) stood for.

Here a few examples of those 'other' events that led me to my current conclusions:

• 1. All the while the priest was preaching about adultery and fornication he was "boinking" his 'housekeeper' that he had for years. His own private concubine.

• 2. Preaching for years, hearing confessions, and giving absolution for the "mortal sin" of eating meat of Fridays. Then suddenly the "Holy (blind) See" in Rome, made a declaration that eating meat on Friday was no longer a sin! Upon further investigation i discovered why the church originally declared 'eating meat' on Friday a sin in the first place:: the main livelihood back in those days (of Christ AD) was fishing, and people were tending toward eating meat 7 days a week. So to assist the fisherman's business enterprise the church declared Friday as 'fish day'. When people did not heed the Pope's demands, he then made it a "sin" to eat meat on Friday. I also find this attitude of "putting yourself at the level of god' quite distasteful.

• 3. Back in the days of my childhood i remember the priest making his "annual visit" to every household in his parish to collect the 'annual dues'. We were poor people and my parents struggled at times to provide us with 3 meals a day. Some meals were scant, but there was always something to feed us kids. I remember on one occasion on his annual visit, my mother told the priest she could not give anything at this time but if he would leave the money envelope, she would return it with the 'annual dues' on Sunday during the routine Sunday "passing of the plate" ritual during mass. He willfully reminded her that having so many mouths to feed was her own doing and not paying annual fees or weekly donations during mass could jeopardize her "salvation" after death. It took me till years later to realize we were 'paying our way to heaven". Like the mafia taking money to protect you against crime. Oh, what a greedy god we were being forced to worship!

• 4. After years of listening to how god hates homosexuals i discovered two things:
  A.) that the passages in the bible referring to this phenomenon was added by the "Roman" Catholic church many years after the death of Jesus, because they needed to build their armies to kill off their rivals. In those days homosexuality was not viewed as 'sinful' and when the government's church mandated men must sleep only with women to build their armies, and people paid no attention to this mandate, they made it a law. Because the armies (male birth rates) were not rising fast enough they then declared this practice a sin against god (like the eating meat of Friday thing). So the hatred began. B.) After many years of falsely preaching god's hatred against homosexuality, condemning all who practiced it to hell for eternity, the facts came out about how the priests were molesting young boys for years. They were not condemned to hell for eternity, but rather simply moved to another parish and told to not do it anymore. And this practice of sweeping the "sins" of their priests under the rug is still rampant today.

Although the "essence" of "Christianity" is (or should be) basic goodness, it should not be taught as a precept to gaining a secured seat into heaven.

Basic goodness should be taught to all as a positive aspect of our society, not solely attributed to religious teachings.

These basic concept of goodness, love, compassion, empathy, and sharing, should be taught as an essential to the survival of our species. These attributes must not be claimed as something spiritual or belonging to any religious group.

To live in peace and harmony is NOT a 'religious' concept.

It is humanity at its best.

By connecting this basic concept to religions that run on greed, control, intolerance and hatred, it undermines the true meaning of our living life in peace and harmony with nature and each other.

And as a consequence, negates its validity. I suppose this is reason enough for the negative concepts of greed and selfishness to take hold in our society, as a result, instead.

When we grow, develop, and evolve as as species, we hopefully become self-aware; learn how to think for ourselves, and learn abstract concepts.

With this evolution of awareness most intelligent people also ultimately learn to discard the negative teachings of religion. We learn to group together and discard all those negative subconscious things we were taught, as delusional superstitious lies and separate them from reality and truth

The Papacy (the system of government of the roman catholic church of which the pope is the supreme head that purportedly gets his messages for the people directly from God) is as corrupt as all other forms of government.

Probably more so, because they are doing their corrupt business in the name of our "creator" thus giving the delusion that somehow it is more valid.

Seeing the Papal decree condemning Chile for legalizing same sex marriages has only deepened my disdain for this corruption.

Condoning pedophilia by attribution; and condemning homosexuality for the same basic unrealistic 'rationalization' {as the eating of fish on Fridays farce} is an absurdity that the ignorance of the laity cannot yet, or will not, or simply refuse to, grasp.

Writing into the 'Holy scripture' that an act of mother nature is sinful does not make it so.

All it does is falsely promote hatred and bigotry in the name of the creator.

Now the Papacy is taking upon itself to negotiate peace in the middle east with the likes of Iran!!? This pair shares the same agenda. Both want to see Israel destroyed - the Jewish faith is an enemy of both the Papacy and Iran (Muslim) for obvious reasons.

Bringing to real life the saying that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend."

With this being said, there is no reason to not hold the belief that once this unholy pair destroys the Jewish faith, Iran [along with all the other countries promoting Muslim beliefs] will thrust its dagger into the heart of the' Christian' presence in the middle east.

Thus fulfilling their prophecy of ridding the middle east of the infidels once and for all.

And yet, we humans still deny that religion is a negative influence of our global society.

How sad.

by: d.william 12/13/10