By Carl S --
I didn’t plan to be a troublemaker; maybe it’s in my DNA. Maybe I am as my wife said, “too sensitive” about justice and honesty . . . and hypocrisy. Yet, never a change for the better takes place without this. Honoring belief above reality dismisses truth itself, and the avoiders of reality can be obstructive of human rights while they bask in the sun of their own authority and wisdom.
At the age of 72, I told my wife that there’s a point at which a person becomes intolerant of bullshit. Although I know men in their 80’s and 90’s who still can’t recognize it. One of them, at 95, is a Catholic (still, after what his church has done.) who still bows down to a cracker and is a misogynist in regards to women becoming priests.
Image by bopuc via FlickrWhich brings me to the subject of “THE CRACKER,” and a suggestion that we all get on the bandwagon. Hey, people have been killed over this wafer. Let’s challenge those authorities to prove they know what the hell they’re talking about - a campaign.
My campaign started out as an inquiry. Over a year ago I wrote a letter to a big-city Catholic diocese’s rectory, asking a question: If an attendee at a Mass held up a wafer during the “words of consecration,” would the wafer likewise be consecrated? (Understand that the Catholic Church teaches as a fundamental belief that the wafers are the living body of Christ.) I expected a simple yes or no. I waited a month before sending another letter, this time explaining why I was asking the question. At my wife’s former church, a former priest started his own non-denominational church, taking former Catholic members of that church with him; people who, by all I could see, believed he “consecrated” the bread pieces used in the new service, even though he was no longer a practicing Catholic. Were they actually consecrated? Did the whole difference, consecrated or not, depend on the intention of the priest (or pastor)?
Now a big city rectory (nasty sounding, isn’t it?) consists of more than one priest, surely, but only one responded. He wrote, “It is beyond my expertise.” This is a man who says you must believe.
Still hot, two months later I wrote to the “experts,” the Jesuits, considered the great theological apologists of the RCC, this time adding another question. “If Jesus spoke Aramaic, shouldn’t the words of consecration be in that language in order to be effective?” (Note: I have no use for this B.S. to begin with, but as I said, not believing it has gotten people killed. And surely, abbacadaver” is not the same as ”abbracadabara.” ) I included a SASE. I should have saved myself the 44 cents. They know it’s nonsense, too.
What if we took a few of those Jesus-flavored wafers and a few of those not so, and sent them to various labs for analysis and published the results? Would there be human DNA in any of them, making them human? You already know the results. Nevertheless, the believers keep bowing their heads, bending their knees, and honoring the guys who tell them to worship a cracker. What power!
I missed a golden opportunity recently, for on the front page of the county newspaper was a Xmas message from a nearby pastor quoting St. Paul, who said that, “500 people witnessed the risen Jesus.” It was the perfect time to respond, “Despite a long history of dead people staying dead, you find the claim of this ONE MAN to be credible? The 500 people are irrelevant since Paul never named or produced those alleged witnesses. Some men much like him have real estate to sell you in Okefenokee Swamp in Florida. And, by the way, who witnessed the beginning of the world and interviewed those 900 year-old men?”
You can expect the Christians reading this will dismiss what I’ve written as the rant of a bitter, arrogant, narcissistic non-theist, but, as Bugs Bunny said, “They don’t know me very well.” I’m having fun pulling back the curtain, catching clergy with their pants down (somebody should have before they began raping boys). I’m telling them, in the words of Alice (of Wonderland fame), “You’re nothing but a pack of cards.”
I didn’t plan to be a troublemaker; maybe it’s in my DNA. Maybe I am as my wife said, “too sensitive” about justice and honesty . . . and hypocrisy. Yet, never a change for the better takes place without this. Honoring belief above reality dismisses truth itself, and the avoiders of reality can be obstructive of human rights while they bask in the sun of their own authority and wisdom.
At the age of 72, I told my wife that there’s a point at which a person becomes intolerant of bullshit. Although I know men in their 80’s and 90’s who still can’t recognize it. One of them, at 95, is a Catholic (still, after what his church has done.) who still bows down to a cracker and is a misogynist in regards to women becoming priests.
Image by bopuc via FlickrMy campaign started out as an inquiry. Over a year ago I wrote a letter to a big-city Catholic diocese’s rectory, asking a question: If an attendee at a Mass held up a wafer during the “words of consecration,” would the wafer likewise be consecrated? (Understand that the Catholic Church teaches as a fundamental belief that the wafers are the living body of Christ.) I expected a simple yes or no. I waited a month before sending another letter, this time explaining why I was asking the question. At my wife’s former church, a former priest started his own non-denominational church, taking former Catholic members of that church with him; people who, by all I could see, believed he “consecrated” the bread pieces used in the new service, even though he was no longer a practicing Catholic. Were they actually consecrated? Did the whole difference, consecrated or not, depend on the intention of the priest (or pastor)?
Now a big city rectory (nasty sounding, isn’t it?) consists of more than one priest, surely, but only one responded. He wrote, “It is beyond my expertise.” This is a man who says you must believe.
Still hot, two months later I wrote to the “experts,” the Jesuits, considered the great theological apologists of the RCC, this time adding another question. “If Jesus spoke Aramaic, shouldn’t the words of consecration be in that language in order to be effective?” (Note: I have no use for this B.S. to begin with, but as I said, not believing it has gotten people killed. And surely, abbacadaver” is not the same as ”abbracadabara.” ) I included a SASE. I should have saved myself the 44 cents. They know it’s nonsense, too.
What if we took a few of those Jesus-flavored wafers and a few of those not so, and sent them to various labs for analysis and published the results? Would there be human DNA in any of them, making them human? You already know the results. Nevertheless, the believers keep bowing their heads, bending their knees, and honoring the guys who tell them to worship a cracker. What power!
I missed a golden opportunity recently, for on the front page of the county newspaper was a Xmas message from a nearby pastor quoting St. Paul, who said that, “500 people witnessed the risen Jesus.” It was the perfect time to respond, “Despite a long history of dead people staying dead, you find the claim of this ONE MAN to be credible? The 500 people are irrelevant since Paul never named or produced those alleged witnesses. Some men much like him have real estate to sell you in Okefenokee Swamp in Florida. And, by the way, who witnessed the beginning of the world and interviewed those 900 year-old men?”
You can expect the Christians reading this will dismiss what I’ve written as the rant of a bitter, arrogant, narcissistic non-theist, but, as Bugs Bunny said, “They don’t know me very well.” I’m having fun pulling back the curtain, catching clergy with their pants down (somebody should have before they began raping boys). I’m telling them, in the words of Alice (of Wonderland fame), “You’re nothing but a pack of cards.”
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