Can I Hate Catholism Any More? You Bet.

I made a post recently about my defection from the Catholic Church, and apparently Catholics are on a rampage to make me hate them even more.


There exists a group called the "Catholic League." The Catholic League exists to "to safeguard both the religious freedom rights and the free speech rights of Catholics whenever and wherever they are threatened." As we all know, it must be difficult being a member of the largest denomination of the largest religion in the world. What next, an organization defending white men? (Oh wait, we already have that.) 


The Catholic League also "defends the right of Catholics – lay and clergy alike – to participate in American public life without defamation or discrimination." 


Are Catholics really discriminated against? According to the CL's website....

Harvard professor Arthur Schlesinger, Sr. once observed that prejudice against the Catholic Church was “the deepest bias in the history of the American people.” Mount Holyoke College professor Peter Viereck commented that “Catholic baiting is the anti-Semitism of the liberals.”
And today’s brand of anti-Catholicism is more virulent and more pervasive than ever before in American history. While it is true that Catholics as individuals have made progress in securing their rights, the degree of hostility exhibited against the Catholic Church is appalling. Quite simply, Catholic bashing has become a staple of American society.

 So....what you're saying is, you want to be able to profess your beliefs in public without discrimination? Huh. Which makes this next part really interesting.


The CL is launching a campaign called "Adopt an Atheist."

Here’s what our campaign entails. We are asking everyone to contact the American Atheist affiliate in his area, letting them know of your interest in “adopting” one of them. All it takes is an e-mail. ...
If we hurry, these closeted Christians can celebrate Christmas like the rest of us. As an added bonus, they will no longer be looked upon as people who “believe in nothing, stand for nothing and are good for nothing.” [emphasis mine]

So a group that supposedly stands to stop discrimination is...openly discriminating? Cool! Where do I sign up? Oh, they're even kind enough to link to the American Atheists page-- oh wait, no, they didn't, they just copied all the state directors and hosted it on their own page. Well, here's a link to the AA page of directors, whom you can contact and talk to so you can let them know they're doing a bang-up job. You can also go here to donate to AA for Christmas!


Anyway, this campaign is obviously silly and patronizing. I have no specific empirical evidence to support this assertion (but if you do, I'd love to have it), that there are more Catholics becoming atheists than there are atheists becoming Catholics currently. 


The CL directs these evangelical Catholics to  "Let them know of your sincere interest in working with them to uncover their inner self. They may be resistant at first, but eventually they may come to understand that they were Christian all along." Right, except for the fact that WE KNOW MORE THAN YOU. Atheists know more about religion than do religious people. In fact, Catholics scored pretty low.

Catholics don't even know about their own religion. According to the Pew study, "More than four-in-ten Catholics in the United States (45%) do not know that their church teaches that the bread and wine used in Communion do not merely symbolize but actually become the body and blood of Christ." That is because if they knew that, they would probably leave their ridiculous religion. That's why the Catholic church deters people from reading the Bible and making their own conclusions about it; because if they did, they would realize how messed up the Bible and church teachings are and leave. You expect me to believe that this stale cracker is literally the body of some dude who died over 2,000 years ago? 

But of the whole campaign (which has already been destroyed by JT), I think the thing I find most patronizing is this picture:

Seriously? If any Catholics go through with this (and dear FSM, I hope they do), it will not be like taking a young child to a park and holding them up in front of a sunset. It will be a fight, and we will win. There are no atheists out there thinking, "You know, I wonder if there's someone who loves me so much that he cast original sin upon me, then exempted one woman from that, who he then magically impregnated to raise a kid who would then die in a torturous and horrible way, only to come back to life and have people write four confusing and contradicting gospels about. Yeah, that makes sense." Here's how I envision a conversation between me and a Catholic going about the Immaculate Conception:

Catholic: "Mary was born free of any sin!"

Me: "Well of course she was, all babies are, how can babies commit sin?"

Catholic: "Well, babies don't commit sin really, but we're all born into sin...it's called original sin, and it's from Adam and Eve's first sin of disobeying God."

Me: "So wait, we're all born with original sin, even though we didn't do anything wrong?"

Catholic: "Well, yes. But Mary was born free from that! God exempted her!"

Me: "So why doesn't God just exempt all of us?"

Catholic: "Well, we don't deserve it. [Insert more blather about god and forgiveness and blah blah blah.]"

Me: "God sounds like kind of an asshole."

The long story short is that Catholicism is ridiculous dogma, and the Catholic Church is an evil organization that hates women, children, and anyone not-straight. I hope Dave Silverman over at American Atheists really capitalizes on this and invites the shitty Catholic League to, ahem, bring it. Because guess what? We can take it.