Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Why believe in things that make it tough on you ...

especially if you don't genuinely believe in them at all? Many people complain that a religious organization regards them as inferior for being LGBT or female, yet remain in that religious organization and presumably even throw something into the collection plate. Such people give the sanction of the victim to that organization.

Some such people justify their continued involvement in Catholicism by claiming, usually without proof, to have some special insight into the true meaning of Catholic doctrine that has somehow eluded the Catholic hierarchy itself for almost two millennia. That attitude is just silly. Like it or not, Catholic doctrine is not whatever you decide it is, but what the Catholic Church decides it is. Either you accept the teaching authority of the Catholic Church, or you do not. When I decided that I did not, I preserved my intellectual integrity by leaving Catholicism.

Others claim that they are working to reform a religious organization from within. Good luck with that. Some of the finest theological thinkers in Christian history either could not or would not reform their churches from within and ended up founding new denominations. Moreover, a church that survived the Reformation has little to fear from the cheap publicity stunts that so often pass for protests against Catholic doctrine. We must weigh the probability that such publicity stunts will achieve their goal against the probability that they will have unintended consequences - something that the nimrod who dropped the Eucharist on the floor of the cathedral evidently forgot to do.

2 comments:

Specops17 said...

Along those same lines, can you explain Log Cabin Republicans to me?

The Heterodox Homosexual said...

Good question. Those whom I know have tended to be so out of self-hatred, an adolescent desire to spite some big bad thing called the Left, or both. Then again, I acknowledge that my experience may not be universal, and I shall have to give the matter more thought.