Open Letter to Liberal Catholics: 'Its time to quit the Catholic Church'

[cleanhippie]

x-post from GD. Feel free to comment on that thread.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002336468

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.

-snip-

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.

-snip-

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

http://ffrf.org/news/releases/it-time-for-you-to-quit-the-catholic-church/

[Moonwalk]

1. Much as I agree with this p.o.v., I doubt....

...that anyone who has stuck with the church though all this wants freedom from religion or that this particular letter will will move them to leave it. It might even have the opposite effect of making them defensive. I'd love to think otherwise, but I'm doubtful.

Perhaps such liberal Catholics can be lured over to the Episcopalian faith that maintains the rituals but is not only democratic in its choosing of leaders, but supports women priests, gays and birth-control?

I would love to see the Episcopal church urge liberal Catholics to show their displeasure with their church by leaving it this Easter for a far more tolerant and rational, yet equally "Catholic" faith. I might, personally, wish for more freedom from religion, but I'll accept baby steps for others steeped in it: from a not-rational faith to a more-rational faith.

[cleanhippie]

2. If this letter makes liberal catholics uncomfortable, then the letter has done its job.

It SHOULD make them uncomfortable. Not because of the letter, but because of the FACTS contained in the letter. That uncomfortable feeling people may get while reading this is called cognitive dissonance.

[Moonwalk]

7. I didn't say it was going to make them uncomfortable, I said it was going to make them..

...defensive. Uncomfortable is fine. Defensive is not. Defensive means they don't hear what you say, but the tone in which you say it, decide you are an enemy, circle the wagons and get more protective than ever of their church and faith.

Putting it another way, you are attempting an intervention here, which is fine. But interventions only work if there is one person surrounded by friends and family emphasizing this message to them. They can deny one friend, but they can't deny all friends and family. But you are one person and a stranger, not a group of friends and family. Why should they feel anything but attacked?

You're quite right that those reading this will feel uncomfortable, but all too often, when a message makes someone feel uncomfortable, they ignore the message and blame the messenger. I think that's more likely to happen here then that they will read this, be struck blind by it and have a St. Paul revelation.

[Brettongarcia]

8. Going up to your priest, and telling him firmly you are leaving, and why - might be effective

There are many options here. But the mild ones don't work.

Many will compromise. Many will 1) try to half linger on. Others will 2) just drift away. If that is what you feel comfortable with, then OK.

But? 3) Another option that might be very effective, if you are so enclined? You might try a rather direct and verbally aggressive confrontation with your parish priest. Announcing dramatically that you are leaving.

Rather direct and loud confrontation, up front and in person, by the formerly faithful, would dramatize the problem.

If millions did this, there might be an effect.

Maybe in fact, it is time for more direct, aggressive action.

[Moonwalk]

10. I'm totally in favor of Liberal Catholics being aggressive and walking out--

especially during this time of year. It makes a marvelous statement for them to leave, en masse over Lent and Easter.

BUT, my point wasn't about whether or not it was time for Catholics to get aggressive. It was about the aggressive tone of the letter towards liberal Catholics and whether this will get the message across or cause a knee-jerk, defensive reaction.

Don't get me wrong, I'd *LOVE* it if this letter was the magic ticket, the hit-bottom point that the addicted or the wishy-washy must strike before they say "no more!" and militantly rebel. I'd love for this letter to inspire liberal Catholics like "Common Sense" inspired those fighting the revolutionary war.

But you'll have to excuse me if I don't think that a letter from an atheist telling the religious that it's time to go cold turkey is going to have Catholics--liberal or otherwise--walking away from getting that little ash cross on their foreheads today, or walking out of mass come Palm Sunday, let alone Easter Sunday. I'm an atheist, I know. They don't want to listen to us. They either have to have the revelation for themselves, or they have to hear it from one of their own. We're the sort of messengers who gets blamed for the message.

[HockeyMom]

3. I read somewhere that you can NEVER leave the Catholic Church

At least that is what THEY think. Maybe that is why their numbers are so high? You can "fall away" but you can return. Ever see their ads? "We want you to come back!" Um, after 50 years? Don't hold your breathe.

[DonCoquixote]

4. The Episcopals wait with open arms

All the the ritual, women clergy, and Gay Bishops. Think of it as Methadone to Catholic heroin.

[cleanhippie]

5. "Think of it as Methadone to Catholic heroin"

Perfect!

[smokey nj]

11. All the ceremony, half the guilt!

[ButterflyBlood]

6. I was raised Catholic and I now go to of all things a charismatic evangelical church...

and it's about a thousand times more progressive than the Catholic church. We allow women to preach and have women in leadership (married men and women too I might point out), we accept all people regardless of sexual orientation and don't engage in hateful ostracization of other groups of Christians, or even non-Christians. Not to mention no one ever freaks out about anyone wearing jeans which makes perfect sense since even the pastor is usually. If even charismatics can do that it says volumes to how far behind the Catholic church is. By far the most reactionary form of Christianity. I completely agree here.

[rug]

9. Catholics don't tithe.

Or are descended from ants.