Catholic Church

“Tell me your image of God and I’ll tell you your politics.” - Marcus Borg
“Sacred texts teach deference to authority; that´s part of what makes them sacred. A credible idea of God implies an idea of power.” Adam Gopnik. The New Yorker
the Catholic Church is by self-definition a structure of hierarchical authority run by a single man who holds the keys of heaven given by Jesus to St. Peter. If that’s not a conservative institution, I don’t know what is. PLAYING GOD: American Catholic Bishops and the Far Right, by Mary Jo McConahay (from a New York Times review.)
I think one can provide many illustrative examples of the way in which politics has interfered with the progress of health. And the influence of religion never did show itself until the Vatican began to use its influence through the church organizational structure, which, incidentally, probably is one of the best organizational structures the world's ever seen. So, one way or another, sometimes surreptitiously, the Catholic church used its influence to defeat, if you will, any movement toward family planning or birth control. Milton P. Siegel
There's free thinking and then there's indoctrination. Too often conservatism has tended and continues to tend towards the latter. Catholicism in particular, from the destruction of the texts of the Greek and Roman atomists, and the library in Alexandria, to the imprisonment of Galileo, and the policing of Diderot's Encyclopédie, has a rich history of knowledge suppression. And throughout it has used the power of the state to enforce its dogma. In this respect it has been indistinguishable from the Taliban, which is important, because we can see where conservative education led the Islamic world......into obscurity. Letter to the New York Times

About 22% of the US is Catholic, but 66% of the Supreme Court is. Former US district court judge Albert Levitt estimated that 140 principles of the Catholic Church were in conflict with the Constitution. (See The Court and The Cross, the Religious Right's Crusade to Reshape the Supreme Court a 2008 book by Frederick S. Lane.)

Why is the Vatican a threat to Americans?

Spanish clergy sexually abused more than 200,000 children, inquiry estimates (10/27/2023)

Letter suggests Pope Pius XII knew of mass gassings of Jews and Poles in 1942 (9/16/2023) Guardian

Priests Accused of Sexual Abuse

“ Countries with a high percentage of nonbelievers are among the freest, most stable, best-educated, and healthiest nations on earth. When nations are ranked according to a human-development index, which measures such factors as life expectancy, literacy rates, and educational attainment, the five highest-ranked countries --- Norway, Sweden, Australia, Canada, and the Netherlands -- all have high degrees of nonbelief. Of the fifty countries at the bottom of the index, all are intensely religious." Greg Graffin and Steve Olson: Anarchy, Evolution, Faith, Science and Bad Religion in a World Without God
“If the B52 bombers flying over Vietnam were dropping contraceptives, the American Catholic hierarchy would have condemned that in a minute, but they were dropping napalm”
— James Carroll
The Cold War was one of history's great religious wars, 'a global conflict between the god-fearing and the godless'. (p. 1) It was a war in which 'Christianity was appropriated by Western propagandists and policy-makers for their anti-communist arsenal' (p. 2), nowhere more so than in the USA. But in addition, as this volume demonstrates, Christianity was not simply a tool of psychological warfare. Church leaders were not merely pawns in a political game; they were active participants. Their flocks were not only recipients of propaganda; for millions religious faith was central to their lives. This fact is most vividly demonstrated in the several chapters that deal with the Catholic Church and Pope Pius XII during the early years of the Cold War. Religion and the Cold War edited by: Dianne Kirby
“Major ways of thinking about the world constitute just-world theories...The Catholic Church is a just world theory. If the Inquisition burned heretics, they only got what they deserved. Bolshevism was a just-world theory. If Kulaks were starved and exiled, They got what they deserved. Fascism was a just-world theory. If Jews died in the concentration camps, they got what they deserved. The point is not that the good people get the good things, but the bad people get the bad things. Neoclassical economics, our principal source of policy norms, is a just-world theory.” Avner Offer, author of the Challenge of Affluence , Self-Control and Well-Being in the United States and Britain Since 1950 quoted in Wages of Rebellion, the Moral Imperative of Revolt:  Chris Hedges pg 77.
Whatever the stated intentions of those who attacked and suppressed liberation theology, in practical terms they were the allies of tyrants, land-grabbers, debt slavers and death squads. For all his ostentatious humility, Pope Francis was on the wrong side. George Monbiot, Cardinal Sins. 2013
"… the Roman Catholic Church, an institution directed at the control of thought in the European world. Its power was based in regular surveillance of the conduct and thoughts of every human being, around the censorship of all reading material, and, in the end, upon the ability to predict and to punish unorthodox thought." Eben Moglen quoted in Journalism After Snowden.
Christianity - makes sense.

Leo the Cancer: Leonard Leo, Opus Dei & the Radical Catholic Takeover of the Supreme Court

Sexual abuse victims know the truth. George Pell allowed lives to be destroyed to protect himself and the Catholic church (1/15/2023)

Deep in Vatican Archives, Scholar Discovers ‘Flabbergasting’ Secrets (5/27/2022)

Pope meets Canada Indigenous groups seeking apology for abuse of children (3/28/2022) Guardian

Former Catholic bishop admits covering up sexual abuse allegations (3/27/2022) Guardian

Extraordinarily, the effects of the Spanish Inquisition linger to this day (12/22/2021)

Donald Cozzens, Priest Who Pressed Church From Within, Dies at 82 (12/16/2021)

Opus Dei Ignores Complaint of 43 Women Held in Slavery (10/8/2021)

Over 200,000 Minors Abused by Clergy in France Since 1950, Report Estimates (10/5/2021)

Key member of bishops' group that wanted to deny Biden communion resigns after Grindr use exposed (7/26/2021)

William Barr and Opus Dei, the Secretive Ultra-Conservative Catholic Organization That Poses an Existential Threat to Democracy and Pluralism (8/2/2019)

7 facts about American Catholics (10/10/2018)

Pennsylvania ‘predator priests’: More than 1,000 children sexually abused by Catholic church figures, report says (8/14/2018)

The Secrets of Leonard Leo, the Man Behind Trump’s Supreme Court Pick (7/24/2018)

Sask. First Nations leaders call for Catholics to boycott Sunday mass over residential school issues (6/11/2021)

Canticle of the Sun (6/21/2015)

Is the Catholic Church a Fascist organization ?

It’s not just that it allies and supports fascists, previously Hitler, Mussolini, or more recently Donald Trump and apparently other right wing movements world-wide.

Like other authoritarians, its leader claims to be infallible, talks to 'God', demands loyalty, and seeks to expand its reach using brutal military action by national allies.

It relies on an underclass. In the case of the Church, it is women who are second class and sex repression is enforced in the form of celibacy, opposition to abortion, LGTBQ, or sexism. It has been prosecuted for wide ranging instances of pedophilia to the point of bankruptcy in some areas. It is at the heart of the culture war.

The Catholic Church seeks to expand, encourages large families, which is why it opposes recognition of population overshoot, and abortion.

The Dark Ages were dominated by the Church which stifled creativity just as all Fascist regimes do. Art and science did not recover much until the renaissance.

The Church motivated the Crusades and the Inquisition, kept Europe in a more or less constant state of war for centuries, accompanied European Colonial expansion, was complicit with the slaughter of indigenous people in America and Africa. It continues Middle East chaos. The Cold War was a religious war against godless Communism. It's opposition to women's choice continues to lead to occasional violence, political polarization, and poor healthcare.

Like other fascist movements, it is accompanied by censorship, propaganda and unbelievable misinformation. As Voltaire explained: "those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities".

The real reason we have a majority of Catholic conservatives ruling in Supreme Court robes, is that they have shown themselves to be the most amenable to the corruption of keeping the American aristocracy at the top. Mitch and Trump and Barr have said as much. Own the courts, own the law, own the poor. comment in the New York Times.
In “Courting Disaster: How the C.I.A. Kept America Safe and How Barack Obama Is Inviting the Next Attack,” Mr. Thiessen, a practicing Roman Catholic, [Bush speech writer] says that waterboarding suspected terrorists was not only useful and desirable, but permitted by the teachings of the Catholic Church. Defender of Waterboarding Hears From Critics (2/26/2010)
subjecting women

Canadian government asks Pope to apologize for mass graves of Indigenous children (6/3/2021)

The Catholic Sex Abuse Crisis Is Far From Over (11/10/2020)

Deep State, Deep Church: How QAnon and Trumpism Have Infected the Catholic Church (10/30/2020)

Catholic Priests used to perform abortions, and it was considered a lesser sin than fornication (10/1/2020)

Amy Coney Barrett and the New, Old Anti-Catholicism (9/26/2020)

The Court of God: How a Catholic Secret Society Took Over SCOTUS (9/28/2020)

Opus Dei’s Influence Is Felt in All of Washington’s Corridors of Power (1/22/2019)

‘Church Militant’ Theology Is Put to New, and Politicized, Use (12/30/2016)

How the Vatican influences population growth policy (12/27/2016)

“I know there have been holy popes, but the overarching history of the Vatican has been secrecy, lies, antipathy to democracy, crimes and unscrupulous finances.”

That explains why the Catholic church is authoritarian and why most of its laity are ‘conservative’. They claim the Pope is infallible.

So Catholics, like other authoritarian religions, naturally ally with Republicans, a far right, authoritarian, minority party that win elections without the popular vote, who have worked for a long time to create an imperial Presidency. Some evangelicals say Trump is the chosen one. The Pope urges Catholics to vote against Trump. If Catholics listened to the Pope, they would abolish the death penalty (that would be pro-life), and believe the science warnings of impending climate destruction.

The truth has a liberal bias. “Conservative antipathy to science is nothing new has long denied and denigrated the scientific consensus on issues from evolution to stem cell research to climate change. This hostility has several causes, including populist distrust of experts, religious rejection of information that undermines biblical literalism and efforts by giant corporations to evade regulation.” It cost lives in the pandemic and climate collapse will be devastating.

Pro-choice Catholic Democrats who have been instructed to forgo Holy Communion include former Kansas governor Kathleen Sebelius, former New York governor Mario Cuomo, former US Secretary of State John Kerry, and even President Biden.
Elizabeth Adeliba

It is tribalism, not the moral tenets and humanitarian thought of pure religion, that makes good people do bad things. The Meaning of Human Existence, Edward O. Wilson

Religion is a critical part of every culture. It is tribal. History reveals continuous wars, genocide, and chaos caused by it. Jews were harassed for centuries, notably from the inquisition to the holocaust. The Crusades were wars on Muslims which continue today. Religion was the cutting edge of colonialism and inspired the slaughter of many indigenous. The Cold War was with godless communism. It is the motivation for authoritarian government like Fascism, terrorism like 9/11, and war like Iraq and Afghanistan. It is mostly propaganda and its refusal to acknowledge science results in poor education and is at least partly responsible for the suicidal agenda in progress in the US.

It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so." Robert Heinlein

It is the Catholic church that interferes in politics to outlaw abortion, such zealotry causes violence. Abortion like race is also a wedge issue for Republicans. Catholic politicians who dissent are punished. Religiosity is the reason US social programs are weak, since they compete with the public to provide services, which come with some ideology.

Religion and socialism are like two buckets. When one goes up, the other goes down.

“ Vaticano S.p.A. (Vatican Inc.) by Gianluigi Nuzzi was published January 1, 2009. Documents obtained by a Vatican employee who didn’t want them published until after his death show the IOR functions as an “off-shore” financial institution for rightwing politicians, the Mafia, Italian tax-evaders and other disreputable characters. “The IOR…ensures privileges to be granted in exchange for political backing, legal provisions and business support.”  

Catholics have been one of the major forces attacking Obamacare, filing lawsuits arguing that non-church Catholic employers should be able to decide whether or not employee health insurance plans will cover contraception. This is effectively an argument that a woman's employer should be allowed to force her to pay more for medical coverage, or even place it out of her reach altogether, based on his religious beliefs.

William Barr,a paranoid right-wing Catholic ideologue won’t respect the separation of church and state, defends Trump’s corruption by dismissing US Attorneys who are investigating Trump, and is acting like the President’s Roy Cohn, putting him above the law. This is not what the Constitution intended.

David Kertzer spent seven years researching the history of Italy during the years prior to World War II. The professor of anthropology and Italian Studies at Brown University dug into Vatican archives, looking at documents that had just become accessible, in addition to poring over government and private papers from other countries. His conclusion was disturbing: Although it was believed the Roman Catholic Church vigorously opposed the Fascists, the opposite was true. The Vatican abetted the Fascist regime, kept it in power and supported harsh measures against the Jews. Kertzer’s book is The Pope and Mussolini: The Secret History of Pius XI and the Rise of Fascism in Europe .

Catholics are authoritarians and support the like minded Republicans who are looking more and more like fascists, allying with other right-wing dictators. They are sworn enemies of democracy. The 2020 election was between a dictator and democracy. It should not be a tough choice. The religious right is wrong.

The Church is deeply into politics, which by law is the condition for their tax exempt status.

About 22% of the US is Catholic, but 66% of the Supreme Court is.

HOW POPULATION GROWTH CONTROL THREATENS THE PAPACY

The Catholic Church Is Sick With Sex (8/31/2018))

The Catholic Church: Abusing, Endangering, And Intimidating Women (5/25/2011)

The Catholic News Stories Fox Doesn't Care About

Catholic Bishops Put Sex Obsession Ahead of Mission to the Sick and the Poor

Why the Catholic Bishops Who Pushed Through the Stupak Amendment Are Hypocrites

Freakonomics on the relation of abortion and crime.

The Impact of Legalized Abortion on Crime

The CIA was also closely in league with the Vatican, itself still embroiled in its wartime alliance with the Nazis. The Vatican was smuggling to the West war criminals such as Father Andrija Artukovic, the Franciscan who had helped exterminate hundreds of thousands of Serbs in Croatia. Hiding in the Vatican was one Walter Rauff, a German Nazi who had spent the last months of the war leading an extermination unit of SS men across Italy, gassing to death some 250,000 victims, mainly Jewish women and children. Rauff's protector was Allen Dulles's old friend Monsignor Don Giusseppe Bicchierai, who assembled a terror gang charged with the task of beating up left-wing candidates, smashing political gatherings and intimidating voters. Their money, guns, and jeeps were furnished by the CIA. Whiteout: Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St Clair pg 138

The Alliance Between the CIA and the Vatican

Google 'CIA Catholics' and visit here

Video

‘It’s being abused by an entire belief system’: a haunting film on sexual abuse by Catholic clergy Guardian 11/2021

Bibliography

PLAYING GOD: American Catholic Bishops and the Far Right, by Mary Jo McConahay

The Pope at War by David I. Kertzer

Vaticanism: Political Principles of the Roman Catholic Church. By Albert Levitt

How to separate church & state : a manual from the trenches by Barry McGowan

God and the Fascists: The Vatican Alliance with Mussolini, Franco, Hitler, and Pavelić, by Karlheinz Deschner

Bad Faith, Race and the Rise of the Religious Right by Randall Balmer

CATHOLICISM: A Global History From the French Revolution to Pope Francis By John T. McGreevy

When There’s a Heartbeat: Miscarriage Management in Catholic-Owned Hospital

The Court and the Cross, The Religious Rights Crusade to Reshape the Supreme Court: Frederick S. Lane

MORTAL SINS Sex, Crime, and the Era of Catholic Scandal: Michael D'Antonio

Taking Liberties: Why Religious Freedom Doesn't Give You The Right To Tell Other People What To Do: Robert Boston

Agony in the Garden, Sex, Lies and Redemption from the Heart of the American Catholic Church by John van der Zee

God and His Demons: Michael Parenti

The Pope and Mussolini: The Secret History of Pius XI and the Rise of Fascism in Europe. Kertzer, David I. (2014). Oxford University Press.

Hitler's Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII: John Cornwell

God And the Fascists, the Vatican alliance with Mussolini, Franco, Hitler and Pavelic: Karlheinz Deschner

Constantine's Sword (a history of anti-Semitism in the Catholic Church based on James Carroll's book of the same name. Explores the link between the U.S. military and the Christian right.)

One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America: Kevin M. Kruse

Terror in the Mind of God, The Global Rise of Religious Violence by Mark Juergensmeyer

Religion and the Cold War edited by Dianne Kirby

The thesis of Kirby's excellent introduction is that the Cold War was one of history's great religious wars, 'a global conflict between the god-fearing and the godless'. (p. 1) It was a war in which 'Christianity was appropriated by Western propagandists and policy-makers for their anti-communist arsenal' (p. 2), nowhere more so than in the USA. But in addition, as this volume demonstrates, Christianity was not simply a tool of psychological warfare. Church leaders were not merely pawns in a political game; they were active participants. Their flocks were not only recipients of propaganda; for millions religious faith was central to their lives. This fact is most vividly demonstrated in the several chapters that deal with the Catholic Church and Pope Pius XII during the early years of the Cold War.

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