Yuku free message boards

tonydev wrote:

---

This post may be something disjointed, but I'll reply with what comes to mind.
My formation is one that drew on Anglican and Roman traditions. Between Europe and the States I attended secular and Catholic schools. I am a product of and married into Roman/Anglican backgrounds. (The term "Romanist" was part of my early vocabulary. It had a less than perfect denotation but was not necessarily derogatory. In my post it also stands as the corollary to the term "Fundamentalist".)

- As an aside note on language. We knew from and early age that a Burk with an "e" at the end was a Roman Catholic - as was a Rogers with a "d" - Rodgers".-

As a child I often endured nuns or monks who told me I should not question. That I was the "servant". That my voice was to be silent. As an adult, I have seen Roman Catholics grovel before their poorly spoken and poorly educated clergy.
I would also suggest that I am not alone in that observation. In my academic community there are a large number of former Roman Catholics, all of whom, without exception, have left the church precisely because they were treated with disdain.


In my own family, I see those who mindlessly submit to "Father said," or, in the case of their children "Sister said.".

Historically, it does not take too much to see how, particularly among the Irish Americans, who dominated the Catholic church in this country, that the priests controlled the people and made them feel that they were less than worthy.

We even see it in the liturgy. From the 16th century to recent times prohibition against the vernacular, to this day the withholding of the cup from the people. (Yet, back to language, there are those who treat Latin as though it were some kind of mystic tongue capable of greater intercourse with god.)

On a social structure, Catholic churches do not have vestries, decisions are made by the hierarchy. The people have no real say. Such an arrangement says quite clearly that it is because the people are inferior.

From a more academic view we have the teachings of Augustine who influenced all: Catholic and Fundamentalist alike, and armed them with all the morose details of human foibles, telling us that just about everything we do is subject to damnation.

__________-

Then, there is the Fundamentalist question where we can do nothing for our own salvation. We are the pawns of a maniacal god who has elected a chosen few and who will cast the rest into the fires of hell.


___________

And what has all of this to do with the teachings of the man Jesus? He rarely, if ever, spoke of our unworthiness or our inclination toward sin.

I am not a flower child for whom there is nothing but sweetness and light. But, I must say, that I am not one who can submit to the notions, implied or expressed, that treat others with some element of disdain.