Monsters Among Us

The main dome of St. Frances de Sales Roman Catholic Church was in local news reports all day, as the replacement of its colored tiles is now complete. The full renovation is costing around $29 million.

I regret that I never made a secret climb to the tip-top while the scaffolds went up that high to blip the view of my neighborhood. I'm standing three blocks from my door to snap this picture. This was by far the tallest structure in this part of Philadelphia when it was built in 1907. Still no taller building stands anywhere near it.

This parish boasts of being a base of support for successive immigrant communities, starting with Irish, then Vietnamese, and now from the swathe of countries that stand across Africa from Senegal to Ethiopia. Catholics from the nearby universities fit every description. I've attended one funeral and many rummage sales inside. Once when a friend was visiting, we went inside to look up at the dome and the pastor invited us to return to worship in a manner that seemed quite pushy. I was former Catholic and Atheist, my friend was Jewish, and the priest's invitation did not result in conversion. For some years I lived very close by, and I watched a fire-damaged building being torn down so that I could see the dome from my kitchen window. I was very glad for it.

I was raised up Catholic. My Mom was the child of Irish immigraants and was always ready with a tale of the faithful being tormented by English opressors. As cancer brought her closer and closer to death, Mom returned to the religion as she first knew it. She had me and my sisters read a prayer to her, which described the Archangel Michael pitching Satan from the walls of Heaven, straight down into the lake of fire. The priest would not allow that prayer to be read at her funeral mass. He said it was not the religion as he knew it or as he taught it. My mother had learned it as a little girl during the great depression in New York City.

I drifted away from the religion by the time I reached my teens, but as a young man I was still a fan of Pope John Paul II, who I saw four times in Rome. Mom was horrified when I told her I had pased up two chances to receive the communion wafer from the Pope's own fingers, but she relished my descriptions of the masses he led. Once, in fact, he looked straight into my eyes from about five feet away as he walked toward the altar in St. Peter's Basilica, and he held his gaze for a few seconds. It's hard to exaggerate the effect of all that high pageantry and glitter, with the pipe organ belting out triumphal marching music.

Mom died six years before the priest scandal hit the world Media. Now it's been a decade since the whole world started comparing notes and learning that the Catholic clergy has for centuries been molesting children on a mass scale, and that governments have been protecting the church from public scrutiny. Of course it wasn't only that many thousands of priests have been identified as rapists. The bishops and cardinals were transfering the offenders away from the scene or their crimes to parishes where they continued raping kids. The current pope (Benedict XVI) was in charge of the Vatican body that ordered that done. Isn't it odd that the FBI has never looked into all that? Isn't it fair to say that the violation of children is Catholic dogma?

Then we learned of the Magdalene laundries. Young women of Ireland were enslaved for life, by the church for three centuries, in order to supress their sexuality. Try watching the 2002 film The Magdalene Sisters without getting angry. Go on, try.
Then recently we learned that in Spain's Catholic-run hospitals, hundreds of thousands of newborn babies have been kidnapped from their mothers' arms and sold to approved-of families. The moms were told that Baby was dead. It's still being investigated as I write and you read.

All these scandals of the Roman Catholic clergy that have arisen in recent year come on top of what has been known from the 4th Century onward. The Roman government established a monopoly on religious affairs and began murdering believers of all other views, including Pagans, Jews, Protestants, and Muslims. Some of this was between armies on battlefields, but most of it was a jeering mob setting a young girl on fire, or slitting a Jewish shop keeper's throat and throwing him in the river. The idea was that the Jew had killed Jesus and more importantly, his money needed stealing. Truth be told, the atrocities committed by the Roman Catholic Church are not for the squeamish to examine closely. These are ugly matters.

Once I had a brief chat with a nun who lived in the convent across the street from St. Francis de Sales. I forget how the conversation began, but she invited me to participate in church activities, and i mentioned the priest scandal. She said to me, "There is no sin so great that God cannot forgive it." Perhaps I should have siezed her by the hair and pitched her into a lake of fire. Instead, I said that she'd given me some food for thought.

The Roman Catholic clergy is an army of monsters. Those who deny the gravity of the church's crimes are not stupid people. They are malicious people.

I wish all of you a safe, wholesome, and happy holiday season.