I hesitate to call myself a Roman Catholic. I have not a drop of Mediterranean blood in me. Of course the Romans did not limit themselves to dominating that region alone. I usually refer to myself as an Irish Catholic, which for me has an entirely different feel and intent. For some of us, the professed religion of our parents and grandparents shapes a significant element of our identity. I will always identify as an Irish Catholic, although I joke that I may some day be excommunicated for my beliefs, or lack of them.
I have a friend who was raised in a non-denominational household. I joked with him one day asking which would be more shocking to his father, if he went home and told him he was a homosexual, or if he went home and told him he had converted to Catholicism. Of course, he in-formed me, the former would not have caused his father any consternation at all, but the latter would result in a very strong reaction indeed
Interestingly, the form of Catholicism I was raised with was not rigidly interpreted in my life. I attended a Catholic elementary school, and at-tended Sunday school for a time when I moved to a public high school.
I am intimately familiar with the bible, both the Old and New Testaments. I must say that the images contained in that book have been seared into my mind. They stubbornly occupy an archetypal region of my consciousness.
As a child, I very much wanted to become a priest. It seemed to me that if what they were telling me was true, then what better alternative could there be? I was an alter boy of course. I was so small, that when I served Mass for the Monsignor he would place the mammoth book from which only he read on top of my head as he read from it. As much as that seemed a bit humiliating at the time, I feel the weight of every word he spoke from that book balanced up on me to this day.
By the time I was attending a Catholic college, I was a professed atheist. There I studied philosophy, and furthered my knowledge of the religion in which I had been raised. I was introduced to the autobiography of Doro-thy Day there, and realized that Catholicism seemed to have rebels among her saints. This may be why I still consider myself to be a Catholic to this day.
When it comes to being a Catholic, there is the Apostles Creed of course, but I have long since abandoned the foolishness of the deific scion, of the virgin birth, and of the material ascension. It seems to me even as a child these ideas had some silliness about them. But they only seem to me to be vehicles for delivering concepts that escape the material world easily. I suppose I am a Jack Catholic.
The images of the Catholic tradition permeate my mind though, and I see the world often through them as through lenses. It is a complicated relationship for me, and I often contemplate it with an ironic good humor that liberates me from serious consideration.
When I see the costumed old man padding about raising his hand and bowing his head I am forced to have more serious considerations about Catholicism. I feel it is incumbent upon individuals like me to speak up and clearly address the problems created by such an anachronistic character. I was thinking today that pedagogy is crippled by the fact that one generation is teaching the next, what the last generation thought that one needed to know. In the case of the Pontiff, this crippling effect is multiplied by many, many generations.
When this fool potentially condemned people who followed his advice regarding prophylactics to an early and unpleasant end, I was ashamed to be associated in any way with his ideological idiocy. This man is so thoroughly cloaked and robed that he is insulated entirely from the realities of the earth.
There was something about the previous Pope that allowed me to respect him; it may have been his knowledge of so many languages, or what appeared to be a more compassionate human personality. This man though does not encourage me to have any sympathy for him at all.
It is one thing to contort and confuse while appealing to twisted logic and selected facts, but there is something deeply offensive about someone who appeals to all that is divine as the force for their argument, when that argument condemns so many to suffering and death and indentures them to drug companies for the remainder of their lives.
As a Catholic, I reject the authority and credibility of this man, and I am growing weary of the reverence that is paid an old fool.